Stop a Limited, Specific Quantity of the Hate! (No, Not That Hate. The Other Hate.)

Television Without Pity has weighed in this week on the current season of The Amazing Race, providing a detailed and specific listing of why they hate it. (In handy slideshow format, no less.) Speaking as someone who has now watched...um...a full two-and-a-bit seasons of the show, and hence clearly an expert, I thought I'd weigh in on their weighing in. (I know, I've got strong opinions on The Amazing Race. I feel so bourgeois. But I'm stuck for topics this week, and it's either this or the NFL draft.)

Their first complaint, about the eating challenge in Leg Four, I'm going to rate as bogus. Yes, sauerkraut is arguably less disgusting than some of the things that contestants have had to eat in the past (I say arguably because I personally consider the stuff to be about as appetizing as toenail clippings, and would eat it only at gunpoint) but to me, the addition of a time limit makes it an innovative twist on the conventional eating challenge. (For those who missed the episode, you had to choke down a massive plate of the stuff in the amount of time it took a polka band to play "The Sauerkraut Polka." Didn't finish before the song ended? They refill your plate. So the more times you fail, the harder it gets.)

Their second complaint--that a disproportionate time was spent on the bizarre feud between Carol and Brandy and Brent and Caite--is absolutely true. Carol and Brandy were irritating and whiny, Caite was blatantly homophobic and trying to justify it with claims that "they were mean" to her (claims that relied pretty much entirely on a single incident that was relayed to her second-hand in Leg One) and in general, I do not watch The Amazing Race for interpersonal drama anyway. I watch it for the, y'know, racing. Every time they play up the "teams don't like each other" crap, I find myself wanting to fast-forward.

Their third complaint, that the cops are obnoxious catchphrase-spouting stereotypes that seem to be angling for a spin-off series--is true, but it hasn't really bothered me. But this is definitely the funniest complaint, and is worth reading simply for the humor value.

Their fourth complaint...seriously, Television Without Pity? "The cowboys have gotten lucky"? Seriously? Come freaking on. Every winning team gets a healthy dose of good luck to go with their good decisions. Remember when Tammy and Victor had the good luck to be stupid on the one leg where another couple missed their connecting flight and got there the next day? Or when the penultimate leg went through China, which gave them (the only team fluent in Chinese) a huge advantage? TAR is luck-based as well as skill-based. Get used to it.

Their fifth complaint...yes. "Mom-trepreneurs" was extraordinarily stupid. You had to put up with it for three episodes. Get over it.

Their sixth complaint was about the Blind U-Turn returning. (See my previous post on The Amazing Race for an explanation of how U-Turns work. Blind U-Turns work like that, except you don't have to let anyone know who it was that U-Turned.) This is a silly complaint to me, because a) Joe and Heidi did know who U-Turned them, because there were only two teams ahead of them and they got there less than ten seconds after the second team did, b) knowing who U-Turned them didn't help them, because they got eliminated by the U-Turn, and c) nobody else cared that they'd been U-Turned, because the only thing you care about when a U-Turn is used is, "Was it used on me?" If it wasn't, you're too busy thanking Fate to care about whichever team got hosed. This is not a game where long-term strategic alliances matter. The only way the "Blind/Non-Blind" option makes an actual difference is if 1) you U-Turn a team that survives the U-Turn, 2) it's not obvious to the other teams that you did it, and 3) you don't tell anyone. Since those are pretty unlikely, I say it doesn't matter. In fact, I think all U-Turns should be Blind, because as previously mentioned, I hate Drama, and anything that the actual producers use to "start shit" between two teams irritates the hell out of me. It's a game, not high school.

Their seventh complaint...yep. Brent and Caite are tremendously irritating on every level. No arguments there.

Their eighth complaint...again, yep. This season seems to have had a pretty weak field in general, with several teams that feel like they'd have been eliminated a long time ago if they'd been in any other group of racers. The fact that Jeff and Jordan lasted until Leg Six speaks volumes.

And finally, their ninth complaint--I honestly don't think that the drinking challenge was intended to be a major hurdle. (Teams had to share an oversized beer at a German bar. Actually, this one would have been a major hurdle for me, since I don't drink, and it was a similar problem for many teams. But I don't think that's "incompetence" on the part of the teams in question, like TVw/oP does.) But it wasn't a Road Block, it wasn't a Detour, it was just one of those little things they throw in to dick with the racers. I certainly don't think it qualifies as a reason to hate the season. (Certainly not as much as Brent and Caite do. Good Lord, if I have to hear her complaining about "the Lesbians" one more time...)

Personal Favorites: Vengeance on Varos

Some part of me feels a little guilty rhapsodizing about Doctor Who--after all, I've been a Doctor Who fan so long that I just assume that everyone already knows about every episode. I feel like I could almost just say, "Vengeance on Varos--pretty awesome, right?" and everyone would know what I was talking about.

But then I remember that not everyone comes to this blog through Doctor Who fandom. Some people might only have seen the new series, or not seen the show at all. So for those folks, let me sum up Vengeance on Varos for you a little bit better than, "pretty awesome, right?"

Vengeance on Varos is one of those stories that seems a little bit smarter every year. It's set on a mining colony (a staple of Doctor Who) that was originally a prison colony, a la Australia. There's a lot of social unrest, with the workers constantly in thrall to the "company store" (an off-planet mining consortium run by slimy aliens. The alien representative, Sil, is one of the series' few genuine special effects triumphs; the actor who played him, Nabil Shaban, was born without legs, and the costume is designed around that. There's a great scene where he's resting on a platform that you assume houses the actor, and then his manservants pick him up while he continues to talk and gesture.) As a gesture to ease the unrest, the ruling class televises the execution of prisoners in a grotesque form of reality television (a good decade or so before the term was coined.) Prisoners must run a demented obstacle course called "The Punishment Dome", with numerous fatal traps for the unwary. The audience delights in the spectacle of watching them match wits against the designers of the traps.

The Doctor and his companion, Peri, stumble into all this when the TARDIS malfunctions, and the Doctor needs the mineral Varos produces in order to restore it to working order. Of course, the TARDIS materializes square in the heart of the Punishment Dome, and to escape, the Doctor winds up assisting a group of rebels who are trying to overthrow the social order. There's lots of fun to be had with the metatextual layers of story; after all, we're watching the Doctor struggle for his life against the Dome, putting us in the position of the miners in a sense. (The ultimate example of this is the frankly brilliant cliff-hanger at the end of Part One. The Doctor has entered a virtual reality trap that convinces him he's dying of thirst in the middle of a trackless desert; his slow, agonizing struggles against the seamless illusion are contrasted with the TV execs cutting from camera to camera, finding the best angles to catch his death throes. He collapses, and the director says, "Perfect. And cut it...now." And on cue, the end credits roll.)

In the end, this is probably the only Sixth Doctor story to really make good use of the era's strengths. The violence is grotesque and over-the-top, much like the rest of the Sixth Doctor's run, but here it seems genuinely disconcerting, instead of simply layered on for shock value. The Sixth Doctor is manic, unstable, self-righteous and arrogant, but he's fighting a system so obscene that his theatrical gestures (and nearly un-Doctorishness tendency towards violence) seem in keeping with the story. And the actors (particularly Martin Jarvis, playing an ineffectual governor who's trying to change the system from within) do real justice to the script. If you ever want to watch a Colin Baker story, but have been turned off by the reputation of his time as the Doctor, this one is the one to watch to get a real feel for the potential of what his era could have been.

The Deliberate Trilogy: Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, and The Omega Man

A while back, I posted a guest column on Mightygodking.com about the thematic linkages between late-70s sci-fi movies The Omega Man, Logan's Run, and Soylent Green. Someone posted in the comments section that they were actually hoping to see "the contrived and hilarious explanation of how these three movies were actually a trilogy."

To be honest, I just thought that was too obvious to post at first. Clearly, the radical overpopulation of Soylent Green eventually turns humanity into the breeding ground for a new supervirus, a radical plague that wipes out most of the human race and turns many of the rest into mutant vampire-like creatures. Only Charlton Heston, who narrowly survived his injury, escapes the plague's deadly effects. (Clearly, the fact that he has a different name and profession speaks to a fascinating "film between the films" showing his failed revolution and subsequent adoption of a new identity.)

At the end of The Omega Man, of course, Heston sacrifices his life to find a cure for the younger generation. He succeeds only too well--without an older generation to provide stability and tradition, the young people decide that there's no need for a post-thirty humanity, and they turn to scavenging pre-plague technology to create a futuristic Utopia for themselves. Which works fine, unless you decide to run.

And of course, somewhere above all the chaos, Bruce Dern silently watches and guards Earth's precious natural resources...

Surprise Cute Kid Story!

Well, first, "Surprise, cute kid!" story. I don't normally blog much about my personal life, because I'm actually pretty boring, but it's worth mentioning that my girlfriend will be moving in with me in a little less than two weeks. (Which may cause me to miss a few blog posts. Can't be helped, there will be a lot to get organized and unpacked et cetera.) It's also worth mentioning that she has an utterly adorable four-year-old daughter who I'm very happy to be raising alongside my girlfriend. (You may now "awww" or "ewww", depending on your child-friendliness.)

I've been doing shuttle service for the Kidlet these last few months to and from preschool as we prepare for the move...and today, I had a conversation with her so utterly brain-destroying that my girlfriend absolutely insisted I share it here.

It started pretty normally...well, as normally as these car conversations ever go. She was asking me where Mister Sun was. (Heavy rains this morning, very overcast day.) I told her he was hiding behind the clouds. She said, "Oh, but I like Mister Sun!"

"Yesterday, you told me you didn't like Mister Sun because he was shining in your eyes," I said. "Are you being fickle?" (I like to toss in vocabulary words in conversation with little kids. If they don't pick it up, you can always clarify. If you do, they've learned a new word!)

...this was where things got weird. Her response was, "Fickelson!"

"Fickle-son?"

"Fickelson! You be Fickelson!"

"..." I'm not going to represent the full length of my confused pause here, but it was a good 'un. "...Phil Mickelson?" I said at last, a blind stab in the dark.

"Yeah! You have to be Phil Mickelson!"

"The Phil Mickelson who won the green jacket on Sunday?" I asked, not really sure if she was really talking about Phil Mickelson or just agreeing with what I said.

"Yeah! You have to be Phil Mickelson and wear the green jacket to play miniature golf!" (She has played miniature golf in the past. Obviously, Phil just plays a very large version of miniature golf.)

"Okay," I said, willing to go along with make-believe as usual. (I have, at various times, been John Lennon, Bubbles and Buttercup simultaneously, and on more than one occasion, "a bad guy".)

"Phil Mickelson?" she asked. Once I had confirmed my new identity, she said, "Why do you wear the green jacket?"

I replied, hoping to teach her a new fact for the day, "Because that's what you wear when you win at the Master's."

"NO!" she shouted, very angrily. "No! The Master does not get to play miniature golf! Because he will static you!" (Yes, she's seen 'The End of Time'. When she saw that scene, she got visibly upset and insisted that the Master had just given the Doctor "a BAD touch!")

At this point, I'm trying hard to keep the car under control, let alone the conversation. I placated her by telling her the Master would not be allowed to play miniature golf, and she happily went along explaining how I could wear my green jacket and she could wear her purple dress and we could be the Prince and Princess of miniature golf.

So there you go. Phil Mickelson and the Master, dueling it out in miniature golf for the fate of the universe. Call me, Steven Moffat!

Basic Multiplayer Strategy (As Seen On 'The Amazing Race'!)

I don't normally talk much about 'The Amazing Race', because if it's a weekly play-by-play you want, the folks at TV Without Pity can do it better than I can. And if it's a sort of pithy "lessons learned" type of post, well...most of the time there's not a lot to learn from 'The Amazing Race', because unlike a lot of other reality shows, the strategy is pretty elementary. (This is because it's an actual competition, and not just an excuse to get people to bicker.) For the most part, you do the tasks as quickly as possible, you haul your butt from place to place, and you try not to do stupid things. There's not much opportunity to screw over other racers, and almost no deliberate opportunities to do so. (Stealing their taxi when yours drives off might be a cunning move, but it's not like you can set it up.)

But there's one big exception to that, and we saw a pretty significant example of it last night. The U-Turn is the one major, officially sanctioned "FUBAR another team" opportunity, available about twice a race and usually sufficient to knock whoever gets U-Turned out of the running. (For those of you who don't watch 'The Amazing Race'...every leg of the race, teams perform a Detour, a task they do together and must complete to move on. There are always two options for a Detour; teams choose which one to do, and can switch tasks with no penalty save the time they've already lost by trying the first task. If you get U-Turned, you must perform both options on the Detour before being allowed to move on. This is significant, especially since Detours are usually designed so that one option is easier than the other.)

(The option that is easier may not be the one that looks easier, which is where the fun starts.)

Last night, there were five teams remaining in the race. Jet and Cord, apparently their real names, had won three of the nine legs. Louie and Michael, two New York cops, had won three as well. Dan and Jordan, Brent and Caite, and Brandy and Carol, the three remaining teams, had not won a leg between them. Brent and Caite arrived at the U-Turn first (Dan and Jordan got to skip the Detour and the U-Turn by completing a special challenge called a Fast Forward) and U-Turned...

We'll pause here. Who would be the best to U-Turn, simply from the point of view of generic multiplayer gaming strategy? Obviously, it's between Louie and Michael, and Jet and Cord. Louie and Michael had made an informal alliance with Brent and Caite, which would ordinarily be a point in their favor...but this is the Amazing Race, and there really aren't many opportunities to help another team any more than there are to hinder them. However, it's worth remembering that Louie and Michael won their legs back-to-back-to-back, benefiting a little from the head start that the first team sometimes gets. Jet and Cord might be the stronger racers overall, and Brent and Caite knew that they were having difficulty with the Detour.

So who did Brent and Caite pick? Carol and Brandy. Why? Two reasons: One, Louie and Michael suggested it. They had insisted over the past several legs that Carol and Brandy were major threats and needed to be U-Turned at the next opportunity. And two, Caite heard from Dan and Jordan that Carol and Brandy made a disparaging remark about her in the airport on the first leg. (And dear god, just typing that sentence temporarily turned me into a twelve-year-old girl.)

Obviously, this is epic fail on everyone's part. To start with, Brent and Caite get a spectacular, multi-generational epic fail. We're talking the "Roots" of fail, here. What's the most elementary multiplayer strategy there is, the first thing you learn when playing a multiplayer game? If Player A says to you that Player B is a major threat and you need to help them out by devoting all your resources to knocking Player B out of the game, then if you listen to them, it is a virtual guarantee that the last thing you will see is Player A's smiling face as they take all the marbles. Brent and Caite got played like a harmonica.

And their second motive makes their first motive look downright smart. This is a race with a million dollar prize at the end, not junior high. You take out the racer with the best chance of beating you, not the one who was mean to you back in Los Angeles.

Which is not to say that Louie and Michael were brain trusts, here. Yes, they accomplished their primary goal--making sure that Brent and Caite never got to thinking about how much better their shot at winning would be if Louie and Michael weren't around anymore--but they had a chance to manipulate someone into taking out their biggest remaining threat, Jet and Cord, and instead they tricked them into getting rid of a team they'd beaten on four of the last five legs. Admittedly, Caite was more likely to listen to tales of how the mean lesbians said nasty things about her tiara, but still, when dealing with marks as gullible as those two, you can probably go for the gusto.

So now there are four teams. Soon there will be three, then one million dollar winner and two runner-ups. My guess? In three weeks' time, Brent and Caite and Louie and Michael will wish they'd U-Turned Jet and Cord when they had the chance.

I Get Political Again

Some say it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

Republicans say that it is actually better to wait until it's sunny and sell the entire candle supply for cheap while decrying the purchase of candles as another example of the previous administration's wasteful spending; then when it gets dark, blame the Democrats for the inadequate lighting conditions and insist on a free-market solution to the crisis. And by the way, they happen to know a dear friend and true patriot who recently obtained a supply of candles that he's willing to part with. Admittedly, he's asking quite a bit for them, but that's just the way it is, laws of supply and demand, and the government shouldn't be sticking its nose into what is at heart a strictly business proposition.

Oh, and if you think there's anything suspicious about the whole arrangement, you hate America and you want the darkness to win.

How Wrong Is This?

On a scale of, say, one to ten, how wrong is it that I'm envisioning a remake of Lillian Hellman's classic play, 'The Children's Hour', that updates it for modern audiences as a wacky romantic comedy? In my revised version, Mary Tilford tries to get revenge on two of her teachers by spreading rumors that they're having a lesbian affair with each other, only to have the whole thing backfire when the community comes together to protest the school board's treatment of them and insist that they be allowed to stay. (There would, of course, be a humorous scene where the school board president tries to explain that they never had any plans to fire them to begin with, but nobody listens to him because they're all too busy being outraged at his intolerance.)

At that point, the whole school becomes involved, using the two teachers as a model for their classroom activities about diversity and tolerance. Both teachers continue to insist that not only are they not a couple, they're not even lesbians, but everyone just assumes that this is just a fear of persecution, and all they need is more unconditional support from everyone before they can be comfortable enough with their sexuality to come out of the closet. Wacky hijinks ensue, until both of the teachers finally start to wonder if maybe everyone else sees something that they didn't...

I figure you slap Bonnie Raitt's "Something To Talk About" over the trailer, cast Julia Stiles and Carey Mulligan as the teachers, and it's a guaranteed hit. (Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" playing over the end credits is optional.)

So, how wrong?

Isaac Newton, Trying To Come Up With Something Pithy

If I have seen further, it is only by wearing really good glasses.

If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of werewolves.

If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of dire badgers.

If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. Specifically, titans. I don't think it would be ettins, because they're not that much bigger than humans...maybe frost giants, but I think they're all evil-alignment. Hold on, let me go get my Monster Manual...

If I have seen further, it is only by getting piggyback rides from other scientists. Wheeeeeeee!

If I have seen further, it is only because I'm a lot smarter than everyone else. Frankly, you're all a bunch of idiots compared to me!

If I have seen further, it has been despite my weird obsession with alchemy. What was up with that?

If I have seen further, it it is only by standing on the shoulders of archaeologists. Look! I'm eleven foot four! Today, I hear the robins sing...today, the dove is on the wing...today, who knows what life will bring? TODAY!

If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the testicles of giants. Angry, screaming giants.

If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. Do they still have giants in Fourth Edition? It was so lame that they got rid of gnomes. I had the coolest gnome illusionist, only she multi-classed into ranger so that she could use two daggers at once, and she had the Still Spell and Silent Spell feats, plus like a billion ranks in Concentration, so she could swordfight and cast illusions at the same time, and...hey, wait, come back!

Games Past: Star Wars TCG

Okay, everyone, prepare yourselves for a little nerdrage. Because this particular discussion of an old game (card game, in this case) is going to get a little...political. And by "political", I mean nasty. Depending on which camp you're in, you might find yourself working up a little reciprocal nerdrage of your own, in fact. We'll see if the comments section fills up or not.

Because the reason that the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars trading card game went out of print has to do mainly with politics--specifically, fan politics. In case you're not familiar with the history of the Star Wars TCG, it was not the first collectible Star Wars card game to come out. Before WotC got the license, Decipher made a Star Wars CCG.

And there's no nice way to say it: It was a piece of shit. Decipher literally does not know the first thing about designing a collectible card game. And unlike so many people on the Internet, I'm actually using "literally" in its proper sense. The first principle of a collectible card game is that you cannot assume that anyone is using any specific card in his or her deck; a good CCG has a solid framework of rules that can support the ever-increasing complexity of multiple card sets, each one being over a hundred cards, without getting bogged down in minutiae or errata.

Decipher's Star Wars CCG, um...didn't do this. Not only was the basic structure of the rules hideous and complicated in and of itself, but cards made specific reference to other cards. If a card turned out to be overpowered, Decipher would make a "magic bullet" card that specifically canceled the overpowered card; then the game devolved into rock-paper-scissors, as everyone either packed the magic bullet against someone who hadn't bothered putting the overpowered card in their deck because everyone used the magic bullet card now, or else didn't have it when they needed it because they'd stopped putting it in their deck because it was useless unless someone happened to put the specific overpowered card in their deck. And then, they released an expansion set, and had to put in errata explaining that the magic bullet card now also worked against this new card that it should have worked against all along, but that card didn't exist yet when they made the magic bullet card...

Decipher was known for putting out a full page of errata for every single set. This is not good design.

But Decipher still managed to sell a lot of Star Wars cards, for two reasons. One, it's Star Wars, and Star Wars anything sells to a certain percentage of the populace. And two, Decipher's graphic design people are as good as their game design people are bad. The cards looked beautiful, despite the fact that the game was so ugly as to be nigh-unplayable without a complete set and a masochistic attitude towards fun.

Then the prequels came out, and Decipher refused to make sets for them, because it wouldn't make sense to have Luke Skywalker being able to fight Darth Maul. Instead, they made a second, non-compatible game for the prequels...which utterly bombed. So then they backed down, and made expansions for the prequels, but didn't include characters like Anakin because their rules wouldn't allow for it. Then they released yet another CCG, which wasn't compatible with either of the previous two. Then LucasArts got sick of all that, and awarded the license to WotC when it was time to renew.

WotC looked at the original game and saw that after all the expansions and errata, it had devolved from a nigh-unplayable piece of shit into a completely unplayable piece of shit. It went back to the drawing board and got Richard Garfield to design a totally new TCG, with an elegant rules structure that allowed for loads of fun and could accommodate the entire Star Wars universe, and which became better with every single expansion. Seriously, this was an absolute triumph on every level, from the mechanics to the playability to the flexibility to the sheer fun factor of having stormtroopers fighting Krayt Dragons and Jango Fett fighting his own son and getting your very own Death Star to blow up planets. It was a thing of beauty.

But Decipher fans refused to support it, because they couldn't use their old cards and they'd already spent hundreds of dollars on the old game and WotC just didn't get it, man! Instead, they made up "virtual card sets" for the old game, which they could print out and play with the old cards (and which managed to be just as incompetent as the professionally released sets, although that's more the fault of the rules they were working with than the people that were designing the new mock cards.) WotC's game managed to last long enough to cover all six movies, but without the support of the Star Wars gamer community, it was eventually canceled.

Which is immensely frustrating to me. Because sure, I still have all the old WotC cards and I can pull them out any time I want and have a grand old time pitting the Republic and the Rebels against the Separatists and the Empire (with the bounty hunters and smugglers playing both sides against the middle)...and sure, there's a fan group putting out "virtual card sets" for this game, too...but one of the wonderful things about a CCG is the way it evolves with each new set. The game that WotC released with "Attack of the Clones" was playable, even fun. But the game that they had when "Revenge of the Sith", the last official set came out? That was brilliant. WotC has a great design team, and I was really looking forward to what they were going to do next.

And because of some people who were unwilling to walk away from a shit sandwich to feast on filet mignon, I don't get it. Sometimes, there is no justice in the world of great games.

Why I Love Mystery Science Theater 3000

To be strictly accurate, this is "One of the Many, Many Reasons Why I Love Mystery Science Theater 3000". I remember turning on Channel 23 one Sunday evening and seeing some cheesy science-fiction movie, and wondering what that thing was on the bottom. Then I realized it was theater seats, and that the guys sitting there were making fun of the movie, and I immediately knew that this was the Best Idea Ever.

But actually, the words "making fun of" don't really describe what MST3K is and what it does, which is one of the many, many reasons why I love the show (and the one I'm discussing today, just to reassure you.) Joel Hodgson, creator of the series, uses the term "riffing", and I think that describes it better. It's not a process of tearing the film down, although some of the people whose works have been featured have (understandably) seen it that way. The riffer creates a new structure around the film, but it's one that rewards careful viewing of the movie with humor. It doesn't destroy the movie, it preserves it...albeit on its own terms, and not those of the original film-maker. But I'd argue that this is still heaps better than obscurity.

For example, let's take "Manos: The Hands of Fate". This is not a good movie. I don't think that Hal Warren, its writer/director/star, would dispute that. But he went ahead and made it anyway. His goal was to prove that anyone with enough determination and drive could make a feature film, and in the process, he made something truly unique and personal. Good? No. But interesting? Absolutely. Nobody but Hal Warren could have made "Manos", just like nobody but Coleman Francis could have made "The Skydivers", or nobody but Ray Dennis Steckler could have made (deep breath) "The Incredibly Strange Creatures That Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies". These were the visions of people who were sometimes brilliant, sometimes incompetent, but always iconoclastic and determined to bring something of themselves to the screen.

And MST3K rescues those films, in its own way. More people have seen "Manos" as a result of Joel and the bots than Hal Warren could ever have imagined. Many of them have found something to like about the film; not the whole thing, of course, because it is very bad. But during the bad bits, you can focus on the riffing. During the good bits, the film catches your attention. ("Manos" might not be the best example of this, due to the lack of actual good bits. But there are films that work better.) You can almost think of MST3K as a "celebrity roast" for people who won't get celebrated by the usual Hollywood crowd.

The same is true for actors. Peter Graves, before his death, was on record as saying he didn't approve of MST3K. But there are almost a half-dozen of his films that I saw due to MST3K, and I appreciated the sincerity and conviction he brought to less-than-stellar material. MST3K preserved these films, even if it wasn't necessarily reverent about the way it did so. That's what I love about MST3K. It dusts off long-forgotten films that might deserve to be riffed, but don't deserve to be forgotten.

An Open Letter To All Science-Fiction Authors Everywhere

Dear All Science Fiction Authors Everywhere,

I realize that it's a classic science-fiction trope that is rich with thematic possibilities, but it's not sustainable, long-term, to use human beings as food. You see, meat is not actually a very efficient use of agricultural resources; you use more grain in fattening an animal to the point where it can be eaten than you get from that animal. In other words, a typical cow...or to be more germane, a typical person...consumes more than 200 pounds of food in the course of their growth to a 200 pound person. Even if you assume that our hypothetical dystopian cannibal overlords are like Native Americans, and make use of every single part of the human being, they're still wasting resources. It'd be cheaper and more efficient just to feed them the grain in the first place. (And if you don't have grain available for some reason, like, say, the Earth is enshrouded in a perpetual cloud cover, the laws of thermodynamics say you're pretty much screwed.)

The main reason you hear about isolated groups of people turning to cannibalism is that those people are already full-grown adults, looking to eke out as much time as they can from their existing food supplies; the food costs of fattening a human being up has already been paid, and doesn't need to factor into their calculations. But as a permanent survival plan? Sorry. It just doesn't work. (This is why, when I had to come up with a "mysterious processed foodstuff" for Feng Shui, I used seaweed and rats as my ingredients. Just as icky, far more common.) So please, let's not see this trope again, save in outright comedies (Futurama's use of Soylent Green as an Iron Chef ingredient was hilarious, for example.)

Thank you in advance for your co-operation.

Sincerely,

John Seavey

George Lucas' Big Mistake

I should probably start out by saying that I love the Star Wars movies. How could I not? I was born in 1975. The original 'Star Wars' practically rewrote the entirety of pop culture during the most formative period of my life. I'm always going to be a Star Wars fan, and there is nothing that George Lucas can do to wreck it. That said, I am not one of those people who believes that Lucas Can Do No Wrong. He made lots of mistakes in crafting the six films that make up the Star Wars saga--Jar Jar Binks, having Boba Fett get beaten by a blind guy with a stick, abruptly changing the inspiration for the Jedi fighting style from samurai movies to wuxia films, the whole "having the Trade Federation guys talk like Thai busboys", failing to explain who the Sith are and what they want revenge for, failing to explain what the prophecy about "bringing balance to the Force" was and whether the Jedi were for it or against it, the entire podrace sequence...

But he only made one big mistake. George Lucas made one key mistake in the Star Wars films, one that affected the entire perception of the story for generations of fans. Specifically, he made the Jedi too awesome. (Especially Yoda.)

Because the point of the whole Star Wars saga is that the Jedi are no better than the Sith. Sure, the Sith establish the Empire, crushing the Jedi and ruling the galaxy with an iron fist...but the Jedi establish the Republic, and it sure does seem like all the alien races immune to the Jedi mind-control powers wind up stuck on the arse end of the galaxy with a chip on their shoulder, doesn't it? The Jedi don't believe in love. They take away children and raise them to believe that it's bad to love their parents, it's bad to form attachments to other human beings, and the only thing that's important is "the greater good". (And notice that we never see any failed Jedi? Plenty in the Expanded Universe, sure, but we've seen lots of evidence that the Expanded Universe doesn't represent Lucas' vision. In the Lucas-helmed Star Wars films, we're left to wonder.) The Jedi philosophy is sterile, cold, repressed and joyless, and they're the enforcers of the peace in the Republic. Does that sound like a fun place to live? Everyone pointed to the line "Only a Sth thinks in absolutes" as an accidental irony, but there's no accident to it.

And Yoda, the exemplar of the Jedi philosophy, is wrong about everything. Literally everything. He tells Luke that there's no such thing as redemption--"once you start down the path of the Dark Side, forever will it dominate your destiny." He says that love always leads to fear and pain and loss, that if Luke tries to save Vader that he will die and his cause will be lost, and that Anakin's only path to redemption is to give up on his love of Padme and stand by and watch her die. His inflexible, blinkered philosophy is directly responsible for Anakin's fall as much as Palpatine's influence. When Luke says, "I am a Jedi, like my father before me," it's not just a repudiation of the Emperor, it's a repudiation of Yoda as well. The implication is clear. Anakin was a true Jedi; before he failed the order, the order first failed him.

But all that gets lost in the sheer awesomeness of the Jedi. The signal-to-noise ratio is too high--Yoda is a cool Wise Old Master with all the good bits in Episode Five, Qui-Gon Jinn is played by Liam Neeson and Mace Windu is Samuel Freaking Jackson, and the lightsaber is the coolest weapon in the history of film. Everyone takes Yoda's words at face value--even the authorized sequels, which show Luke trying to re-establish the Jedi in the image of the old order. Everyone assumes that Luke narrowly won his struggle with the Dark Side at the end, but in fact, he did exactly what people do every day. He got upset, he channeled his anger constructively, and then he calmed down. Only the Manichean nutbags who run the Jedi and the Sith think that this is some kind of near-impossible achievement. The Jedi aren't the heroes of the film, Luke is, for realizing that there's something more than the false duality that trapped and ultimately destroyed his father.

That's the message of the Star Wars films, and it's a shame that Lucas made it so hard for people to notice.

What's Up With Texas? One Man's Theory

Texas has been in the news a good bit lately, mainly for their bizarre insistence on rewriting every textbook in the country to conservative standards. (I could go, at this point, onto a tangent and point out that this is typical conservative thinking--"The facts say we're wrong...but what if we make up our own 'facts' that say we're right?" But I'm trying to stay on-topic.) They're also one of only two states that are refusing to take part in the effort to establish a national set of educational standards, insisting that only Texans should decide what gets taught in Texas schools. (I could also tangent here by pointing out that this is why, in the long term, this kind of Lysenkoism does more harm to the people who believe those fallacies than to those people they attempt to ostracize--"Oh, I'm sorry, Oxford won't accept people who went to a Texas school..." But again, staying on-topic.)

And that topic is, "Why does this always seem to happen with Texas?" I understand the value of self-reliance and independence, but Texas always seems to have an inexplicable belligerence about its relationship with the United States and the other states therein. No matter what the country proposes, from health care to education to taxation, the response from Texas always seems to be, "Yeah, well, maybe we don't even wanna be part of your country! We could totally do this without you, you know!"

Since I have family in Texas, I've had both reason and occasion to think about Texas and the chip it seems to have on its shoulder from time to time. And on thinking about it, I've decided that Texas has a clear case of Short Man's Disease, or the political equivalent thereof. (Yes, I'm aware that the actual psychological disorder of Napoleon Complex has been discredited, and that the historical Napoleon probably wasn't all that short to begin with. But the analogy works on the political scale.)

"No, it doesn't," you might well say. (Especially if you're from Texas.) "Short Man's Disease is the tendency for short people to compensate with aggression, and Texas is one of the largest states in the USA!" (That last part gets mentioned by Texans a lot.) But while Texas is large for a state, they're small for a country. And not just small, but short-lived. The Republic of Texas only lasted ten years before volunteering to let the United States annex them.

Ever since, I think that Texans have felt the need to prove that they could have made it on their own as a nation if they really wanted to, and that they're only really in the United States because they feel like it, not because they need to or anything. They might be a small, sub-ordinate political entity, but theyr'e tough enough to kick anyone's ass! They could secede, you know--anytime they felt like it!

I think the whole "secession" thing is the political equivalent of elevator shoes.

Grammar Niggle of the Week

If curious people are said to possess curiosity, monstrous people are said to possess monstrosity, and generous people are said to possess generosity, why do mysterious people supposedly possess a "mysteriousness"? Shouldn't they have a certain mysteriosity to them?

Likewise, furious people should be known for their furiosity, a wondrous event should be claimed to possess a quality called wondrosity, and of course, the nose of an elephant seal is remarkable for its bulbosity. And yet, the tyranny of the spell-checker insists that none of these are words. It's downright tragic, it is.

And since this is a fairly tiny, silly post, I'll puff it out a bit by mentioning that starting tomorrow, I'll be doing occasional guest posts on the explosively talented Christopher Bird's Mightygodking.com every Friday! He's generously consented to let me have a say every now and then, and I'm happy to ride on his coat-tails to the greatest extent the law will allow.

Top Five Cool Alternate Takes

The process of film-making is always a case of continual revision. Sequences change due to unavailability of actors, unreliability of special effects, bad weather, sudden inspiration, and any number of other factors that turn a screenplay from a Bible into a blueprint. With the advent of DVD and the ubiquitous "Special Features", we can sometimes get little glimpses into the movie that could have been--glimpses that can totally change the nature of the film. (And frequently do: Witness the vast number of "Director's Cuts" of movies out there.) Sometimes the alternate takes are just tiny changes here and there, but sometimes they radically alter the movie in fascinating ways. Here are a few of my favorites!

Honorable Mention: Big Trouble in Little China. I can't really include this as a major change, because it's really just a tiny addition to the film, but seeing this missing scene completed the movie for me, even though I didn't realize anything was absent until I saw it. Right after they escape from Lo Pan's lair, when they're at the red light, there's an unused sequence where the red car from the beginning ("Son of a bitch must pay") passes by. Jack chases it down, rams it off the end of a pier, and says, "I feel much better now." I gotta say, after seeing that scene, I agree with him.

5. Clue. This is perhaps unique in that it's one case of an alternate ending that actually made it to theaters. People who only saw it at home might not be aware that the "This is how it could have happened"/"This is how it might have happened"/"This is what really happened" ending was an attempt to recreate a truly inventive theatrical experience--different theaters were shipped different prints of the film, each of which had one and only one of the three endings. (The DVD version has a branching option that allows you to watch it as it was originally shown.) Thus, it was impossible to spoil the mystery, because someone else might see a version with a different killer. It's an epic head-trip that was, to the best of my knowledge, never done again, and deserves kudos.

4. Alien. This one is interesting to me, because it's a scene that would have changed the entire face of the franchise if it had made it into the finished film. The "Director's Cut" of 'Alien' shows a sequence where Ripley, in her effort to escape the alien, stumbles upon the missing crewmembers Dallas and Brett. Far from being dead, as the theatrical cut implies, they've been cocooned by the creature and are gradually being rendered down into the raw ingredients of a new face-hugger. The hold full of eggs at the beginning? That was what was left of the original crew.

Had that scene made it into the finished film, James Cameron would never have gone with the Alien Queen. 'Aliens' would have been an entirely different movie, perhaps an unmade one, and all the subsequent spin-offs, adaptations, and sequels would have changed. It might not be the best unused scene, but it's probably the most consequential.

3. Lord of the Rings. Perhaps the most commercially successful "director's cut" ever, the LotR films gave Tolkien fans the chance to experience an expanded, enlarged, super-faithful (well, mostly) version of their favorite adaptations. This version included the final fate of Saruman, showed the bestowal of the Elven gifts, and generally made the movies long enough that I don't have the patience to sit through them. Oh, come on. They were already three freaking hours apiece! How much better can the extra footage make them?

And before I'm lynched by angry Tolkien fans, I think I should just move on to...

2. Army of Darkness. This film was released right on the cusp of the DVD revolution, and due to the original ending appearing in the comic book adaptation, fans of Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy had just enough time to build their excitement to a fever-pitch before they were finally able to see it for themselves. For those who haven't seen one of the sixty-seven DVD editions of the film, the original ending features Ash taking a potion to sleep until the present day instead of reciting an incantation to travel through time. He accidentally OD's on magic sleep juice, and wakes up in a post-apocalyptic London. It's a very nice sequence, and a hint at the direction the series would have failed to go instead of the one it already hasn't. (I know. We got Hercules, Xena, and the Spider-Man movies. I shouldn't be bitter.)

And the Number One Alternative Version of an Existing Film is...

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. No, really. This was an excellent direct-to-DVD movie in which a future protege of Batman takes on the seemingly-resurrected nemesis of his mentor, and it has a wonderfully epic feel to it. But the original version (which was finally released in an "uncensored director's cut") pulls out all the stops in its depiction of the final battle between Batman and the Joker. I really don't want to spoil, but the alternate take truly does elevate the film to a whole new level.

White-Hot Incandescent Rage Directed At An Insignificant Target

So let me get this straight, Pierre Bayard, author of "Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong". You think that Holmes' solution to "The Hound of the Baskervilles" was absurd, filled with numerous plot holes and logical inconsistencies. You propose an alternate, more logical theory. And that theory is...

...that Jack Stapleton, lost heir to the Baskerville estate, decides to move back to the area of his ancestral home after a falling-out with his wife that has led to her demanding that he publicly pretend to be her sister. He complies, and happens to find out that his uncle (the current tenant) has made a fortune in South African gold and is phenomenally wealthy. He befriends his wealthy uncle without bothering to mention his family connection (presumably not to bother the philanthropically-inclined relative who laments the fact that he has no children to pass on the title to) and discovers that his uncle's will leaves the fortune to the inheritor of the title, and that his uncle has a weak heart. He then decides, quite innocently, to buy a giant black hound. And in order to make sure that he can see the dog when he takes it for night-time strolls, he paints it glow-in-the-dark.

Then he falls in love with a married woman, and convinces her to ask his uncle for the money to fund a divorce. Then he changes his mind at the last minute, tells her not to ask after all, and goes to ask his uncle himself. Unfortunately, he brings his dog along, entirely forgetting his uncle's weak heart and morbid preoccupation with the spectral hound that supposedly murdered his ancestor.

Following the entirely accidental fatal heart attack caused by the friendly giant black hound lunging out of the darkness, its face glowing with phantasmal light, his wife Beryl (who has decided to pose as his sister) comes up with a plan to kill her husband as punishment for having an affair with a married woman. She knows that he is in the habit of wandering through the deadly swamps of Grimpen Mire, which has swallowed people without a trace, and that the two of them have marked out a safe course through the bottomless mud. Naturally, her plan is to frame him for the murder of his uncle and convince Sherlock Holmes to investigate, getting him down to the Baskerville estate so that she can then convince everyone that her husband/brother fled justice by running into the swamps and losing his footing.

She suggests to Doctor Mortimer, the executor of the estate, that he should go to Holmes to investigate the evidence that a demonic hound was involved before the new heir to the estate arrives. He agrees instantly, and heads off to meet Holmes. Meanwhile, she travels to London and attracts Holmes' attention with a bizarre letter that warns the new heir off (she is, of course, entirely certain that he will ignore this, based on her superior knowledge of the psychology of total strangers she's never met. And a lucky thing, too, as her entire plan hinges on him ignoring the warning she's giving him.) She also shadows the new heir in disguise, in full sight of Holmes in order to convince Holmes that someone is shadowing the new heir. This might be seen as slightly risky, given that Holmes might catch her and unmask her, but it's necessary because Holmes...um...because she needs to...because it is, of course. Oh, and she steals the new heir's boots in order to convince Holmes that they're needed to give the dog a scent.

Holmes and Watson arrive, with Holmes traveling in secret to make sure that nobody knows about him. Luckily, during this period, Stapleton doesn't decide to innocently walk his glow-in-the-dark giant dog, because if Holmes or Watson bumped into him when he was walking the dog, he'd explain the entire situation and Beryl's entire plan would fail. Also luckily, an escaped convict in the area wearing the new heir's old clothes just happens to trip and fall and break his neck, which Holmes attributes (foolishly) to his running away from the dog.

Then, Beryl's plan comes off perfectly. She tricks her husband into inviting the new heir out to dinner, pretending to be ill so that nobody sees her, providing her with an alibi for...no, wait, um, so that she can not be there when things happen, so...OK, skip that bit. The point is, she pretends to be ill. Then, when the new heir leaves the house, she sprints off, lets the hound out, sprints back to her husband, lures him into the marsh by telling him the dog got loose, shoves him into a mud pit, and finally sprints back to her room while Holmes and Watson are killing the dog. Finally, in order to provide herself with an airtight alibi, she beats herself up and ties herself hand and foot to a post for Holmes to find. (Actually, she manages to somehow tie herself hand and foot, gag herself, then bind her own arms and legs with strips of cloth. It's sort of like being an escape artist in reverse.) All in the time it takes for Holmes and Watson to chase down the dog, shoot it, and return to the house searching for her husband.

And Bayard seriously expects people to pay money for this book?

Review: The Zombie Diaries

It's interesting--you'd think getting a laptop and being able to post a blog entry from anywhere would help you keep on schedule when you go out of town, but it actually doesn't. Which is why there was no Thursday blog entry last week. Sorry about that!

I did manage to watch a movie in the airport on said laptop, though; it was "The Zombie Diaries", a documentary-style film from 2006 about a mysterious disease that compels people to carry video cameras everywhere they go and bring them to a small farmhouse in the British countryside. Will these people be able to stop themselves from videotaping everything? Will their footage be assembled into a vague, incoherent storyline that purports to be utterly realistic because it doesn't explain what's going on, yet uses incidental music and editing techniques that scream, "Look, I'm a movie!"? Will there be trite 9/11 comparisons? Why did the director ever think that Kyle Sparks could do an American accent? Watch the movie and find out!

In all seriousness, the movie is a classic example of a good idea for a short film that the film-makers decided to expand into a feature because there's not a big market for short films. The premise for the first "diary", where a film crew gets trapped in the British countryside during a zombie outbreak and runs afoul of both zombies and other survivors who are taking advantage of the chaos to indulge in, um...anti-social behavior...it's not bad. (Although it does feel like some of the characters accidentally wandered in from a slasher movie that was being filmed twenty yards away in the same forest.) It never feels necessary or original, but it's not bad.

But once they introduce the other two diaries, which don't have the excuse of being about a film crew, the "found footage" conceit stops making sense. The characters never develop any real depth or connection to the audience (seriously, I'm not sure I even understand the final twist, because the characters were so interchangeable that I wasn't sure who it was that was rescued at the end.) And the screenwriter uses the "found footage" angle as an excuse not to fill in several dangling plot threads. What happened to the other psychotic drifter? Who buried the documentary crew? What prompts the gunfight/massacre at the end? Oh, too bad, the camera wasn't turned on right then. Sucks to be you, audience.

Documentary-style horror films are very hard to pull off at the best of times, because they all struggle with the central premise that someone would, in the midst of a zombie crisis/giant monster attack/endless nature hike through Maryland, lug a video camera around and film it all in dramatically appropriate fashion. To suggest that three such people exist, and that they all happen to be in the same part of rural England at the same time, is a little too much to swallow.

Why "Planet Terror" Doesn't Work

This post, by the way, kind of assumes you saw "Planet Terror", Robert Rodriguez's contribution to the interesting-but-flawed film 'Grindhouse'. And it was, in fact, interesting...but flawed. What was the flaw? (Apart from casting the human particle board known as Rose McGowan in the lead female role, that is.) Simply put, it's the flaw of the script's actions not following its words. Slightly less vaguely put, it's that it's not enough to have characters telling you that a female character is strong, powerful and self-reliant, you actually need to have her being strong, powerful and self-reliant. Even if the film's text is about female empowerment, it's not going to matter if your subtext is sexist as all hell.

Basically, for those of you who haven't seen the film, it centers (more or less) on Cherry Darling, a go-go dancer who discovers her true calling in the middle of a zombie outbreak caused by a theft of biological weapons gone wrong. She becomes a rough, tough zombie-killing cyborg with a machine gun for a leg (replacing the limb that was torn off by zombies, natch) who leads the human resistance to safety. Sounds nice and feminist, right?

Except for one thing. El Wray. El Wray (played by Freddy Rodriguez, no relation to the director) is Cherry's ex-boyfriend, who makes a point of telling her how strong she is, how tough she is, how powerful and resilient and charismatic and heroic she is...um, while he's, um, actually doing all the heroic stuff. He rescues her from the hospital, he literally forces her to stand on her foot and prosthetic leg while she's sitting there moping, he rescues her another two or three times, he finds her the machine-gun leg, and her heroic plan for guiding the refugees to safety? It's his plan. She follows it after he tells her, with his dying breath, to become their heroic leader.

Seriously, that's the end of the movie. "Become a charismatic and heroic leader, Cherry." "Yes, sir." There's just no way to make that scene work, because it undercuts itself.

And this is the difference between feminism as text and feminism as subtext. Lots of horror movies have a text that isn't particularly feminist--they have psycho killers with mommy issues galore, axe-wielding maniacs, and guys who love to kill women for fun. But when the female characters respond by fighting back and killing the killers, that shows them, through their actions, to be strong and resilient and powerful. Whereas if they aren't actually strong, resilient, powerful people, just having someone else in the film talk about how great they are isn't going to ring true. That's why "Planet Terror" doesn't work. It doesn't ring true.

(That, and it's not nearly as cool as the trailers that follow it. Why are those not on the DVD, dammit?)

Shortpacked Is Right!

You know how all the "Who's Who" entries describe Batman as an "Olympic-level athlete"? Does that apply to every Olympic sport? I mean, is Batman an Olympic-class curler, able to throw the rock with pinpoint precision down the ice?

If so, who would his sweepers be? Robin and Nightwing, obviously, but who would his third be? Batgirl? Alfred? I think there are probably rules against it being Ace the Bat-Hound.

And who does Batman play against? Perhaps Mister Freeze and the Penguin, but who else would make up that team? Not Killer Croc; reptiles go into torpor in winter. Maybe they'd have to make up new villains just for the epic curling match between good and evil, like "The Dirty Sweep" (opposite of a clean sweep, of course) and "Black Ice" (the faster you chase him, the more dangerous he is!)

Or maybe I'm on the wrong track, here. Maybe Batman wouldn't be curling against other villains. After all, Captain America is an "Olympic-level athlete" too.

DC Vs. Marvel: All-Curling Edition!

This Should Get Me Some Hate Mail

You know, I'm not saying that Alan Moore wasn't cheated and robbed of his intellectual property rights by a loophole in his 'Watchmen' contract...I'm just saying that someday, I too would like to be cheated and robbed in such a way that gets me enough money to buy my own house in the country.

"Oh noes! They continue to promote and reprint my work again and again, making it a multi-generational best-seller! CURSE THEM!"

The Best Watchman Adaptation Ever (spoilers for "Heroes")

Surprisingly enough, it's not the movie "Watchmen". That actually ranks a distant fourth, behind "Watchmen: The Motion Comic" in third and "not doing an adaptation of 'Watchmen' in the first place" in second. (Hint: I was not impressed with the movie "Watchmen".)

No, the best adaptation of 'Watchmen' was the first season of "Heroes". I don't think it was deliberate plagarism, but I do think that Jeph Loeb, who was a major player in the first season of NBC's super-hero drama, was heavily influenced by the classic comic book series (he's gushed openly about the book in interviews.) And what he came up with turned out to be a remarkably good treatment of Alan Moore's mini-series.

He ditched a lot of the things that wouldn't work for an audience unfamiliar with the tropes of comic books (the capes, the retired heroes, the code-names...things that worked great on the printed page, but much less well on screen.) Instead, he used a lot of tropes familiar to TV fans--shadowy conspiracies, secret agencies, and rich families with great power and greater ambition. The fundamental concept, though, remains the same--an altruistic, powerful individual who's seemingly withdrawn from the public eye (metaphorically in the case of Ozymandias, literally in the case of Linderman) asks the question: What percentage of the populace is it acceptable to kill in order to bring about a Golden Age? And, having answered the concept to his satisfaction, he proceeds to carry it out.

Of course, as a continuing series, "Heroes" can't actually pull off 'Watchmen's ending of destroying New York. (Although, from what I've heard about subsequent seasons, maybe they should have just ended it like that...) Instead, it cleverly uses prophecy in a variety of forms (Charles Deveaux' prophetic dreams, Isaac's drawings of the future, Hiro's time travel) to create a concrete sense of the consequences in the audience's mind if the heroes don't succeed in stopping Linderman's plans. It also creates a clever ambiguity in the prophecies that it can exploit for dramatic tension--since Sylar and Peter have essentially the same powers, is it going to be Sylar's deliberate act that destroys New York, or Peter's out-of-control abilities?

Ultimately, as with 'Watchmen', all the various interweaving threads come together in a tense showdown, with plenty of dramatic payoffs as the various characters have to make their own moral choices. It ends differently than the comic, of course, but so did the movie. And at least this one didn't have giant blue penises.

My Personal Star Wars Canon

Hot on the heels of last Thursday's 'Star Wars' post comes...another 'Star Wars' post! This is actually something I've been thinking about for a long time, ever since I posted my list of sequels that shouldn't be considered canonical back in...oh my gosh, was it really September 2008? Wow, time really flies. But it got me thinking about what I consider to be my personal 'Star Wars' canon, out of all of the sequels, prequels, books, comics, and general Expanded Universe material. And my answer is...

'Star Wars'.

No, really, that's it.

Because when I watched the first 'Star Wars' movie, I imagined a whole universe around it. I pictured the next movie, where the victorious Rebels took the fight to the Empire throughout the universe. I imagined the romance between Luke and Leia, and Luke's final battle against Darth Vader, the man who killed his father. I imagined all sorts of things, and every single tie-in and sequel and prequel since then has taken away a bit of my imagination and replaced it with someone else's. And I've decided to take it back.

Just think of all the benefits I get from thinking of it this way:

• The kiss between Luke and Leia is no longer creepy and incestuous.
• Leia remains the smart, brassy, ass-kicking hero of 'Star Wars' instead of becoming the whiny, useless girl who just needs a Big Strong Man to give her some lovin'.
• I no longer have to care about the obvious plot hole in 'Empire' where Vader refers to himself in the third person just so Lucas can have a big third-act shock to leave his audience hanging.
• My Ewoks are awesomer than your Ewoks. (Yes, I still have Ewoks. I love the little bloodthirsty cannibal warriors.)
  
• Midichlorians? What midichlorians?
• Jar Jar? Who's that?
• Boba Fett is not a loser who gets taken out by a blind guy with a stick.
• My Clone Wars actually involved fighting against clones.

Feel free to list your personal canon, and the advantages thereof, in the comments! (Or, alternatively, feel free to tell me I'm a crazy person who's betraying Lucas' vision in the comments. But be aware, you will be defending Ziro the Hutt.)

Contentious Statement of the Day

No matter what George Lucas says in interviews, I believe that Darth Vader was not originally meant to be Anakin Skywalker; in fact, I think he was basically an afterthought in the first "Star Wars" movie whose role was greatly expanded based on fan response to the character. If you watch the original film without the dubious benefit of the Expanded Universe backstory, he's clearly meant to be a minor thug compared to the real villain, Grand Moff Tarkin.

Many Apologies

As some of you may have noticed, there was no Thursday post last week; while I don't generally apologize for late posts, I do feel that it's my responsibility to make sure that whatever was here last Thursday isn't still the top of the blog come the next week. I had planned to post something Friday, but inclement weather in North Carolina made the weekend even more hectic than originally expected. (Stupid inclement weather.)

But as it happens, I'm not the only person to be making apologies today! Let's dive into the big bag of apologies and see who else has something to feel bad for!

Dear Humans,

Really sorry about the whole "acid for blood" thing. It's totally our fault, we drank something like six billion Mountain Dews and then topped it off with some Sour Patch Kids. Next time we'll take a Tums.

Sincerely,

the Aliens (Queen, Warrior, and little "Chesty")

Dear Comics Fans,

Sorry about the delay on "Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do". I know you must have been so excited about it, and it must have been just as bad as those delays on "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". I'm sure you were really waiting with bated breath for the last...oh. Not so much? Oh. Not even a little bit...? Oh. Well, sorry about the delay anyway.

Sincerely,

Kevin Smith

Dear Historians,

Sorry for the apoplectic fits, heart attacks, and brain aneurysms. But hey, "This! Is! Sparta!" was a really cool line, right? We'll try to make the sequel a little more accurate. (Well, sure, there's gonna be a sequel. Did you see how much that movie made? I dunno, maybe Leonidas was stabbed with "time spears" or something. Oh, crap. Just lost a dozen more historians.)

Sincerely,

Zach Snyder

Dear Marvel,

Sorry about the "time bullets" prank. I didn't really expect you to publish it!

Sincerely,

Ed Brubaker

...and last but not least...

Dear Everyone,

Sorry for being so awesome. I'll try to be slightly less awesome in the future, but I can't promise anything.

Sincerely,

Simon Pegg

Games Past: Robo-Rally

Ah, sweet, sweet Robo-Rally. If there is a Valhalla for board games, truly, you hold a place of honor within its halls. This was a board game designed by Richard Garfield, of "Magic: The Gathering" fame, and is justly remembered by board game fans all over the world as a brilliant piece of game design, a tremendously fun game to play among friends, and a challenging game with simple rules. That's pretty much the trifecta of great games, right there.

In the game, you play a computer who is controlling a robot remotely, sending it through a factory floor that has been converted into an improvised race-course (while not shutting off the conveyor belts, crushers, welding lasers, and other sundry obstacles. After all, it's a factory that builds robots. Plenty more where that came from.) You send commands to your robot by playing cards, which it interprets as instructions to move forward, back up, turn left, turn right, and so on. Pretty simple, right?

Yeah. Except for three things. One, the aforementioned obstacles. By the time all the expansions were released for the game, these included flamethrowers, toxic waste, oil slicks, bottomless pits, teleporters, and flooding. Everything did something to your robot, and pretty much none of it was good. (Well, the teleporters could be good. And if your robot fell into the toxic waste, it could spontaneously develop super-powers...)

Two, everyone took their turns at once. You lay down five face-down cards, representing your "program" for that turn, and everyone flipped theirs over at the same time. Another robot gives you a hearty shove, moving you three squares to the right of where you thought you were? Your robot just kept right on executing the program you told it to, even if that sent it into a bottomless pit. Made a mistake laying down your cards? Hope you survive to correct it next turn. The gleeful chaos of one turn of Robo-Rally put some entire games to shame.

And three, your robot wasn't just limited to two states, "fine" or "dead". Lasers, flamethrowers, and the like could damage your robot, reducing the size of your hand of cards and giving you fewer options in programming your robot. With a small enough hand size, you would actually have to leave your cards from last turn in play as your robot's antenna broke and it kept repeating the same actions over and over again.

All this made the game brutally fun. (It worked even better with an "unlimited lives" house rule, which allowed you to be a bit more cavalier about the many many times robots went boom.) The game won four Origins awards, released four expansions, and was re-released in 2005, but is sadly now out of print. (There is an online version at GameTableOnline.com, which includes a board editor and is hence automatically the Coolest Thing In the Whole Wide World Ever, but I've never been able to get the damned thing to work on any computer I've ever tried it on.)

So if you can track down a copy (try eBay, or a gaming store that stocks used games), this is a once-in-a-lifetime good game. Get seven friends together, pick out your 'bots, and go nuts. You won't regret it.

It Must Be Said

The official Leverage convention has the best name of any convention ever.

It's ConCon.

I'm not going, because I don't have the time or the money, but I like to just bask in the sheer, unmitigated joy of that name from time to time.

(Really, the Transformers people dropped the ball. Come on, "BotCon"? How do you do an official Transformers convention and not call it "DeceptiCon"? Oh, the lost opportunities.)

"Zombie Attack? I'm On My Break."

It would be totally awesome to work as a janitor for the Umbrella Corporation. Like, in one of their top secret Hive facilities hidden deep below ground outside Raccoon City. That has to be a sweet gig.

Seriously, think about it. They probably pay their janitors something like ten times the normal wages, because why else would a janitor take a job that required him to live in a top-secret facility deep underground for years at a time? The scientists all do it because it gives them a chance to do that crazy mad-science shit that they're not allowed to do at other, saner companies, but it's not like the janitors get to do mad-sanitation. No, the only way you attract someone for a job like that is with big dough.

And once you do get the job, you know you can totally slack off as much as you want. Because it's hard enough to fire someone at a normal big corporation, when all you have to do is go through the process of documenting every single thing they did wrong, getting the bosses to sign off on it, documenting the ways that the person didn't correct their behavior, giving them several chances to prove that you're not biased against them somehow so that they can't sue you after they get fired, and finally making sure they leave the building without stealing stuff. Can you even imagine how much extra paperwork it takes to assign a black-ops surveillance team to them afterwards to make sure they don't spill their guts to the media, and then a black-ops kill team to them if they try? (The black-ops kill team alone is probably something like fifty pages of forms to fill out.) Nobody's going to bother with all that just because you took a week to change a light bulb.

And even if they don't mind doing all the firing paperwork, you know that they're not going to want to jump through all the hoops to hire someone new. It's got to be something like seventeen layers of background checks, twenty-three non-disclosure forms, relocation expenses (to the top-secret facility hidden underground, which is probably a pain in the ass all by itself) and then you wind up with a new guy who'll be just as bad as you are, probably. Nah, they'll just let the little stuff slide, and you can sit around all day surfing the Web and drinking homemade booze. And they'll be all, "Hey, man, there was a T-Virus outbreak on Level Three that resulted in a bloody gunfight with hideous zombies, can you clean that up?" And you'll be like, "Sure, man, when I get to it."

And you know some scientist will clean it up before you get down there, because they won't be able to stand working right next to the rotting corpse. Yeah, that's a sweet job.

Until everyone dies in the zombie apocalypse, of course.

More Lesser-Known Movie Adaptations

What, you thought I was done with these? You should have known better when I gave it its own tag. Yes, back by unpopular demand, more failed film adaptations of great science-fiction/fantasy novels! The Hollywood hacks made our classics almost unrecognizable until I unearthed the connections with the originals...so be grateful, dangit!

Childhood's Endless Love: As we all know, creepy kids are box-office gold. So are doomed romances. So it shouldn't be any real surprise that Hollywood producers diminished the scope of Arthur C. Clarke's epic novel until it was about a pair of teenagers, Jade and David, whose parents aren't ready to let them merge with the Overmind together. When Jade is forbidden to see David, he burns down the Earth as a form of rebellion.

The King and I, Robot: Yul Brynner always felt like he'd been typecast after appearing in this historical drama about a young human woman who goes to become a nanny to the robot children of the robot King of Siam, and must learn to live in a kingdom where there is only one ruler, King Mongkut, and only three laws, "Robots cannot harm a human by action or inaction," "Robots must obey human commands except where this conflicts with the first law," and "Robots must act to preserve their existences except where this conflicts with laws one and two." In spite of (or perhaps because of) playing his part brilliantly, Brynner had difficulty getting non-robot parts after this film (although he was excellent in "Westworld".)

Enter the Dragonriders of Pern: This is probably most famous as Bruce Lee's last film, in which he is asked to infiltrate a martial arts tournament run on a mysterious island, using nothing but his wits, his fighting skills, and a telepathic dragon. Well worth watching for the fight sequences.

The Fall of the Animal House of Usher: This film defied all critical expectations and became an enduring cult classic, as audiences loved the idea of a mysterious, unnamed narrator pledging Roderick Usher's fraternity despite its being under a "double secret curse". Belushi's role as lecherous party animal Roderick Usher is considered to be one of his stand-out performances.

Children of a Lesser Corn: Stephen King fans in the 1980s were used to bad film adaptations of his works, so nobody was really too surprised when they saw the changes Hollywood had made to this film. That didn't stop King fans from becoming upset at the inconsistencies in the plot. Why would William Hurt even be hired to teach in the small town of Gatlin? Why wouldn't Marlee Matlin's character just kill him as a sacrifice to He Who Walks Behind the Rows? And who the hell wrote the line, "Outlander, we have your woman!" and thought it would be good? Unfortunately, seven sequels haven't managed to answer any of these questions.

The Master Plan

First off, let's just clear out everyone who hasn't seen "The End of Time", the two-part final adventure of the Tenth Doctor. Please exit the post in an orderly fashion to your left. (It is important that you turn left when leaving the post. Turning right will lead to the eventual victory of the Daleks and the destruction of the universe itself.) (Oh, and um, if you also need spoiler warnings for the Season Four episode, "Turn Left", please ignore the previous parenthetical comment.)

So right, wittering on for a moment to clear out the spoiler space nicely. I do think that Doctor Who fans are the luckiest sci-fi fans in the universe. Other science-fiction fans have to grit their teeth as their favorite show enters a long, slow decline, with the people both in front of and behind the camera gradually running out of ideas and losing their passion for the show. All these Trek, Buffy, and BSG fans can hope for is that their show will die a merciful death before it embarrasses itself, and that some ten years down the line it will be rebooted by a new creator who gets it right again.

But with Doctor Who, the regeneration is built right into the series. Change is an essential element of the show. It changes actors, characters, writers, directors, producers, genres...Doctor Who, above all other shows, is constantly reinventing itself. It's always fresh. Roll on Steven Moffat and Matt Smith, I say. And they, too, shall pass someday. It's part of the glory of Doctor Who.

So that's philosophy out of the way...now, let's get on to my fanwanky theories about "The End of Time"!

Any fan who followed the Doctor during that long, strange, wonderful period when he was off the TV airwaves and ran as a series of novels (The New Adventures, published by Virgin, and the Eighth Doctor Adventures, published by the BBC) cringed when they saw the flashbacks to the Master as a little boy, staring into the Untempered Schism. This is because it's been very definitively established by the books that the Time Lords were incapable of having children; instead, they "bred" through devices known as Looms. These machines stored the entire Gallifreyan genome, and "wove" it into genetic patterns that then created Time Lords cell by cell, before pushing them out as fully grown adults. (In a charming bit of worldbuilding, Time Lord nurseries have oversized furniture to give the young Time Lords a feeling of being small.) So a ten-year old Master should be impossible.

But, I say, there is a loophole. The actions of the Doctor in "Lungbarrow" (well, technically the actions of Leela sometime before "Lungbarrow", and the actions of the Doctor in bringing Leela to Gallifrey in "The Invasion of Time") restored the Time Lords' ability to breed naturally. Meaning that if the Master was born after "Lungbarrow", he could be a child.

"But wait," you say. "Surely the Master and the Doctor grew up together?"

They did...the first time. Remember, at the end of the TV movie, the Master is reduced to an ectoplasmic body-hopping entity that's then sucked into a black hole. Not a whole lot for the Time Lords to work with when they "recreated" him as a weapon in the Time Wars. So my theory is that the Time Lords, unable to restore his old body, decanted his essence into an infant (donated by some extremely patriotic Time Lord family, one presumes.) That infant possessed...or more accurately, was possessed by...all the memories and knowledge of the original Master.

And then, at age ten, he looked into the Untempered Schism. And heard the sound of drums. Which drove him even madder than he was before (and that's hard to do) and forced him to flee to the very end of the universe itself and erase his own memories to escape it.

It explains a lot. It explains why the Master could be a Time Lord child, when there aren't any according to the books. (Those of you who insist that the books aren't canon can happily turn right.) It explains why the classic series' Master never once mention the drumbeat, but the new series' Master can't freaking shut up about it. (Sorry, editorializing there.) And it provides a stronger reason for the Master up and running from the Time War, beyond just, "Ooh, it's a bit scary."

Whaddya think, sirs?

No. Just No.

Dear Everyone Who Feels the Need To Remind People That the Decade Doesn't Really Start Until 2011:

Please stop. Not only are you being an intellectual snob, you are being an inaccurate intellectual snob. Yes, you are correct, there was no year "Zero". However, you are proceeding from a false assumption, namely that the celebration of a new millennium, century, decade, et cetera, celebrates the anniversary of the first year of the Common Era (or Anno Domini, if you prefer it.) In fact, the decision to mark the decade is a purely arbitrary one, which could be marked from any point (one might as well mark it from 1582, the year the Gregorian calendar was adopted,or 1752, the year it was adopted in Britain, just for example.) None of these milestones are actually important in anything other than human opinion. And since consensus opinion holds that we mark as important the years that are divisible by ten, we celebrate at those times.

Of course, since the division is purely arbitrary and unimportant, you may continue to celebrate the arrival of the new decade in 2011. Heck, you can celebrate the arrival of the new decade every year if you want to; it's always been ten years since ten years ago. But please, stop pretending that you're "more right" than everyone else when you do so. It's 2010 because the calendar's odometer rolled over to show a zero at the end. There doesn't need to be a better reason.

Either I Post It Here, Or I Start Hitting People With Baseball Bats

OK, listen up, people, because I'm only going to say this once.

If you think that entertainment has gotten too violent, remember that the most popular public spectacle was once watching a dog and a bear try to kill each other.

If you think that civility has vanished from American culture, remember that insults used to be settled with an exchange of gunfire from twenty paces.

If you think that politics has gotten more polarized, remember that there was a point in American history where one Senator beat another into unconsciousness. On the Senate floor.

If you think that the Fifties were an era of shiny optimism, remember that one of its most prominent poets described the time with the phrase, "I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness," and that lynching wasn't prosecuted.

If you think that everything got better in the Sixties, remember that Kennedy started Vietnam.

If you seriously think that the Great Depression was some kind of noble, decent era in American history...why do you think they called it "The Great Depression"?

If you think that athletes are no longer the great role models they once were for our nation's youth, remember that Mickey Mantle drank like a fish, Ty Cobb was a racist, and the White Sox took money to throw a World Series in 1919.

If you think that people are getting dumber, remember that people used to think you could cure infirmity by cutting someone open and pouring out their blood by the cupful.

If you think that people have become sinful and immoral, remember that prostitution was legal in America until around the start of World War I, and that the President's mistress published a memoir of their extramarital affair in 1928.

If you think that people used to be more patriotic, remember the CIVIL WAR.

If you think that somehow the world used to be a better, happier, cheerier, more joyful place than it once was, and that it's getting worse, and the decline of civilization is just around the corner...you just don't know enough history. Until you do, learn more and talk less.

A Modest Comics Proposal

Let's all eat comics!

No. Wait. Wrong kind of modest proposal. Let me start over.

Everyone talks about how comics are insular, and how they've become insular and self-referential and can't find a new audience. (OK, I've been talking about it. But I've been talking a lot about it, and that has to count for something, right?) We have a few things to rectify this, like "Free Comics Day" (although I think Marvel would do better by giving those free comics away at the movies the weekend "Iron Man 2" opens, but that's just me) or the "Ten Cent Adventures" comics aimed at "new readers" (although again, "new readers" in this case translates to "existing comics fans who don't read this particular book, because we don't promote this nearly enough outside of comics stores.")

Which is, ultimately, the problem. Comics don't get promoted enough outside of comics stores. They have a huge, devoted fanbase who is absolutely passionate about the hobby, they have the kind of brand recognition that just about any other company in the world would kill for (well, the Big Two do, but due to the crazy economics of the comics industry, the Big Two subsidizes the hobby by keeping comics stores solvent, so they're the most relevant economically.) And yet, their promotions never really click.

So here's what we do. We go viral. Once a year, DC and/or Marvel has a "Share the Love" month. Every comic that month a) tells an entirely self-contained story that explains the premise of the book for someone who's never read a comic before, b) contains information on how to find a comic book store, how to subscribe to a comic, and how to find comics (and specifically that company) online, and c) is half-price. And then they ask retailers to stock twice as many copies, and ask fans to buy two copies of that comic and give one to a friend who they think would like it.

Now obviously, it's not actually going to double sales every year. Not everyone will go along with the idea, either at the retail or the fan level, and not everyone who gets a free comic will actually become a regular reader of that title. But it's a promotion that works at the word-of-mouth level, the only place that comics still have any kind of hope in hell of getting through to people; it's a promotion that harnesses the passion and energy of the fans, which is better than any marketing tactic; and it's a promotion that's pretty cheap to do. One half-price book a year isn't a major dent in the company's bottom line, and it's really no cost to the retailer or the consumer at all if they go along. They've already budgeted that money for a comic, and now they get two. One to keep, one to share.

It's pretty modest in scope, but it might have some pretty big results.

(And if you don't like the free comic, you can always eat it. No, wait...)

Heretical Thought of the Day

Lance Parkin, in his retrospective on Doctor Who that appeared in "Time, Unincorporated" from Mad Norwegian Press, said that the Fifth Doctor was "subtle, restrained [and] sweet" as opposed to the "brash, exuberant, nasty" Sixth Doctor. With all due respect to Lance, and to the millions of other Doctor Who fans who share this view...you're all wrong. Peter Davison is subtle, restrained and sweet. The Fifth Doctor is rude, condescending, and temperamental. You just don't notice because he's being played by Peter Davison, who could murder puppies in the street and still have passers-by saying, "Awwwwww..."

Seriously, go back and actually watch any Davison story. Pay attention to what he says and does. He shouts, he blusters, he snaps, he's constantly berating his companions; he's doing to Tegan the exact same thing that the Sixth Doctor does to Peri, only Peri always looks like she's about to cry whenever he does it. (By the same token, the silly throwaway short "A Fix With Sontarans" shows that the Sixth Doctor, paired with Tegan, becomes half of a great comedy double act. There is a parallel universe where Janet Fielding decided to stick it out for one more season, and it's awesome.)

This isn't meant to be a slight on Davison; he consciously modeled his character on Hartnell, and did a magnificent job of using his natural charisma (see point A, above, about puppy-killing) to make the Doctor sympathetic even while he was spiky and temperamental. But please, Doctor Who fandom, stop saying that he was the "nice" one. He was just as big of a jerk as Colin Baker, but Baker wasn't as good at hiding it.

Things That Will Make You Go "Huh"

James Cameron's "Avatar": Humans come to a distant alien planet after years of hypersleep in order to mine the planet for its natural resources. The native inhabitants violently resist the incursion of their home, and despite their confidence and superior technology, the humans are ultimately beaten back and must flee.

James Cameron's "Aliens": Humans come to a distant alien planet after years of hypersleep in order to mine the planet for its natural resources. The native inhabitants violently resist the incursion of their home, and despite their confidence and superior technology, the humans are ultimately beaten back and must flee.

For extreme amusement, imagine Sigourney Weaver switching roles between the two movies.

Lesser-Known Movie Adaptations

Many of the younger science-fiction and fantasy fans out there really don't understand just how good they've had it. They've seen so many top-notch, high-budget, meticulously faithful adaptations of the great works of sci-fi and fantasy that they don't even realize that there was an era where something like "I Am Legend" or "I, Robot" was an exception, not the rule. Back in the bad old days, the source material was just grist for the Hollywood mill, and the finished adaptation was barely even recognizable as the classic book it started out as. So in order to remind you younger fans of this shameful era, here are a few of the lesser-known adaptations of popular sci-fi and fantasy classics.

Brewster's Silmarillions: Montgomery Brewster is left one million dollars by his eccentric uncle, Melkor, but he must spend it all in one year in order to be granted his true legacy, the three legendary Silmaril jewels of the Elven Kingdom. Can he spend the money fast enough? Will the elven host of the Noldor kill him and take back the Silmarils which they see as theirs by right? Will he find true love, or will the First Age of Middle-Earth end before he gets the girl? This wacky 80s comedy attempted to answer those questions, but despite a solid performance by Richard Pryor, it failed.

The Forever War of the Roses: This Danny DeVito-helmed adaptation of Joe Haldeman's classic science-fiction novel jettisoned most of the book to focus on the angle of the relationship between William Mandella and Marygay Potter. The result, a black comedy about a couple that no longer love each other but have difficulty obtaining a divorce due to frequent changes in the divorce laws (frequent, that is, to them--they experience a year in subjective time for every century that passes, due to their frequent use of near-lightspeed travel) turned out to be confusing and alienating to average audiences. It did, however, get good reviews from many critics.

The Sexy Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World: By now, even if you haven't seen this film, most of you have probably heard of Harlan Ellison's infamous response at learning that his short story about alien beings poisoning the Earth with madness had somehow been turned into a crime caper starring Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley. The negative publicity did nothing to harm the film, though, which took in $8 million at the box office and gave Kingsley an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Brian's Song Of Ice And Fire: It was, perhaps, insanely ambitious to attempt to realize George R.R. Martin's entire saga about the war of succession to the Iron Throne of Westeros as a two-hour long made-for-television movie, but to make the eventual winner a terminally-ill football player was definitely one step too far. Despite the sentimentality of the story, fans of the original were enraged, and the story's signature line, "I love Brian Piccolo...and I will see him on the Iron Throne," became a by-word for B-movie schmaltz.

The Colour of Money: Without the budget or the special-effects technology to depict Terry Pratchett's sprawling Discworld novel, this film adaptation centered the action entirely in Ankh-Morpork, with Paul Newman portraying Rincewind as a retired pool hustler who goes back into action when Twoflower, a skilled but naive player from the Agatean Empire (played by Tom Cruise) comes to town hoping to score some quick cash. Rincewind takes Twoflower under his wing, but the personality clashes between them form the bulk of the film's story.

Insane Comics Moments, Part Seven

Sometimes, you can find some real surprises when you go back and read the classic comics of the Silver Age. For example, I'd been familiar with the X-Men villain Sauron for ages, but I'd always assumed that his name had something to do with the fact that he was a sort of weird not-quite-mutant dinosaur vampire type thing. (He was scratched by pterodactyls in the Savage Land, and that woke his latent mutant abilities...I guess...and so he became an energy-draining hypnotizing pterodactyl-man.)

(The above was not the insane bit, I promise.)

But as I say, I'd always assumed that he was named "Sauron" because he was some sort of dinosaur...or possibly, in a bit of a stretch, because his wings allowed him to soar through the air and he was a lousy speller or something. But no, when I got into "Essential Classic X-Men, Volume Three", and finally read his origin for the first time, I found the true reason for his name.

He was a huge "Lord of the Rings" fan before he was scratched, you see, and when he started to mutate, he felt himself growing more evil. "In fact," he shouts, "I am now so evil that I shall name my new self after the most evil character in all of fantasy literature...Sauron!"

No, I'm not kidding. That really happened.

The really sad part is I actually see guys like this all the time, running around in MMOs. You sign into "City of Heroes" the day after they introduce dual blades as a fighting style, and suddenly you're surrounded by guys named things like "Drizzzt" with three "Z"s. Presumably like them, Sauron's true arch-nemesis is Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Man, with his dreaded ultimate weapon, the Cease and Desist!

(And of course, TSR circa 1981 is saying, "Wait, they went after us but they missed this?")

The Missed Opportunity of "Infinite Crisis"

This is, of course, a very different thing from "The Mistakes Of 'Infinite Crisis'", because I don't know if Blogger has a posting-size limit, and I don't want to find out the hard way.

But for those of you who don't follow comics overmuch, "Infinite Crisis" was a sequel to "Crisis On Infinite Earths", which was designed to do a bunch of harsh, necessary things to DC continuity and then never be mentioned again, ever. Basically, a bunch of the characters from "Crisis On Infinite Earths" who were never supposed to be seen or heard from again because their backstories were too complicated and unwieldy for any but the most hardened DC fanboys to follow turned back up because DC realized, "Hey, that's pretty much all we've got left of our audience!"

And they then proceeded to make a big, universe-altering machine that recreated reality like it was before the original Crisis, because there was so much cool stuff back then, and it was a shame that it was chucked out, and wouldn't it be cool if we brought back the Multiverse, and it's so lame that Batman's parents' killer was never found, and Power Girl really should be the Earth-2 Supergirl, and...and basically, it was the most spectacularly meta-textual story since Grant Morrison's "Animal Man" run. But to make a long story short ("too late!") it ended with the DC history being revised again (third time in twenty years.)

The key thing they did was bring back the Multiverse, which I've likened in the past to having an operation to put someone's appendix back in. Because ultimately, the Multiverse was there as a mechanism to get characters from different DC continuities to team up. When the writer wanted Captain Marvel and Superman to meet, but it was established that there was no Superman in Captain Marvel's world and vice versa, well...Multiverse! All is good. But the original Crisis made the difficult, painful, but ultimately necessary adjustments to DC's history to establish that no, all of these people are in one history, and it had two great waves of super-heroes. There was a Golden Age Flash, and he inspired the Silver Age Flash, and he inspired the Modern Age Flash. No Multiverses needed anymore. (In other words, the new Earth-2 has...all the same heroes as on Earth-1. Only, you know, they're...um, the same age, and...um, there's a new generation of heroes and Robin is now the new Batman, which is totally different from DC now because, um...look, just shut up! Earth-2 was cool when Geoff Johns was twelve, and it's still cool now!)

Which leads us to the great missed opportunity in DC's "Infinite Crisis". Because they're revamping DC's history yet again, right? And meanwhile, over in the Wildstorm universe (which started out as part of Image but was bought by DC, lock stock and every single marketable character), they're rebooting that whole universe from square one (Captain Atom and Void accidentally blew it up. Oops!) So what do they do?

They make the Wildstorm universe Earth-50. So now, if the Teen Titans want to team up with Gen-13, all they need to do is find a convenient dimensional portal to a parallel Earth, see, and then they can meet up and have a several-panel long explanation of the physics of alternate timestreams before they get their adventure started, which will have to involve dimension-crossing villains as well, of course, and...

Why, oh sweet suffering baby Jesus why didn't they just take the opportunity to make the Wildstorm universe part of the DC universe? They own the characters, they're revising both continuities at the exact same freaking time, and if fifty years of pre-Crisis continuity should have taught them anything, it's that having your marketable characters stuck in different fictional universes is a royal pain in the ass that you should correct sooner rather than later, because the longer you let it go on the more irritating it is to fix!

**pants like Animal after a rampage***

But they didn't, and the defining ramification of "Infinite Crisis" remains that it gave us "Countdown: Arena". Which is alone enough to make comics fans everywhere wish it hadn't happened.