Possibly Contentious Buffy/Angel Question of the Day

Would Spike have been a better character if they'd moved him to "Angel" right away with Season One, rather than waiting for Season Five?

My logic for asking is this: Spike's character began as a foil for Angel, an unrepentant (and in fact, downright gleeful) vampire who contrasts with Angel's "I am so tormented over my former evil and I has a soul now and it hurts hurts hurts!" demeanor. The twist at the end of Season Two works because Spike is so unrepentantly sadistic and evil--once Angel loses his soul, he becomes so utterly mad and destructive that even Spike has to change sides. If Spike thinks you've gone too far, you've gone too far.

But instead of making him a recurring foil and comic-relief figure in "Angel", they kept him in "Buffy" for the next four seasons, where he slowly transformed from a contrast to Angel into an Angel wannabe. He stopped being threatening to the Scoobies, then he became their ally, then he fell in love with Buffy, then he got back his soul. By the end of Season Seven, he was basically a blond version of Angel in Season Three.

Then he went over to "Angel", where they quickly realized that having a blond Angel and a dark and spiky-haired Angel was one Angel too many, so they had to go to great lengths to suddenly and wrenchingly turn Spike back into Spike. Which seems like a lot of work to go through, hence the question: Would they have been better off putting him in "Angel" right from the get-go, thus keeping the character more consistent and avoiding the pitfalls of giving him a soul, a chip, et cetera?

I'm leaning vaguely towards yes-ish, but I'm mostly interested in what others have to say.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-9

Last time, we had six teams left on the Amazing Race. This time, we have...still six, because of a timely non-elimination leg that saved Gary and Mallory. Everyone seems pretty aware that they're not going to get that lucky again--I (and presumably all the Racers at this point) expect that it's going to be the last NEL of this Race, which is good because we've had three episodes where nobody got eliminated and I want blood. Blood! BLOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

With that in mind, the six remaining teams left Austria and headed to Lichtenstein, home of the undead sorcerer...no, wait. There are no actual liches in Lichtenstein, are there? Dang. Just when you think they've found the coolest location for the Race...oh well. They head to the tiny little postage-stamp country of Lichtenstein for the next leg. How small? Well, let's find out! All six teams must measure the western border of Lichtenstein as their Road Block, riding motorized bicycles and measuring the distance on their odometers. Correctly navigate the 22 km course, you get the next clue. Screw up, and you go 22 km back to start and then 22 km back to the end and guess again.

As you can imagine, getting this one wrong is Very Bad. And it's around here where we say to ourselves, "What's the one problem that otherwise super-competent team Jet and Cord have had this season? Oh, right. Navigation." Sure enough, as we watch everyone navigate the course, we see Jet getting lost somewhere in the tiny country of Lichtenstein. And although he can't get too lost in a country that's actually smaller than some Oklahoma ranches, this is one case where precision pays.

"Ah," you say, "but what about the other teams? Surely someone is going to help him out by screwing up just as bad?" This is where the bit that left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth comes in...Zev and Justin, who get it right, pass on the information to the Globetrotters (specifically Flight Time, if I recall correctly) who then lets Gary know. So of the six teams, only three got it right the first time (Vyxsin and Kisha both did it without help, although Kisha had her guess confirmed before submitting it), but only one had to do the course over. This seems a trifle unfair to me. There's no rule against it, there's nothing that says that other teams can't do a little kingmaking by getting rid of a team that's been almost supernaturally good at breezing through Detours and Road Blocks, but it still leaves me with some uncomfortable "what ifs" in a show that doesn't normally have them.

But the Cowboys made a good effort at catching up. They might have hit the Detour well after everybody else (probably an hour or so behind, given that it was a roughly 10-mile course and the Velosolex they used, while capable of high speeds, was probably being ridden at about 20 mph for safety's sake)...but man, did they catch up fast. The Detour was a choice between delivering luggage and eating an entire pot of cheese fondue, and they knuckled down and ran luggage around town like nobody's business.

Unfortunately, everyone had an hour's head start. Zev and Justin took the cheese (they were the only one, hence the old saying, "the cheese stands alone") and muscled through it in about an hour, with only one bout of vomiting. (Also legal, also leaving a bad taste in one's mouth, but for entirely different reasons.) Kent and Vyxsin did luggage and we saw again that Vyxsin is way more determined, way better suited to the physical challenges, and way less patient with her partner than her last time on the Race. At one point, she tells Kent to get on the empty luggage cart and literally drags him back to the checkpoint. That's right, after years of jokes about one partner carrying another, it's finally happened for real.

Oh, and at the end of the Detour right before the Pit Stop, there's a Double U-Turn. This is a brutal place to put a U-Turn; since it's right before the Pit Stop (not that the Racers knew, but...) anyone who gets U-Turned is pretty much left in the dust. There's nowhere left on the leg to make up the time. That's why they made it a Double-U-Turn; a single one would be like a sign saying, "Who do you want eliminated?"

Unfortunately for the Cowboys, the first four teams didn't use that U-Turn. Vyxsin and Kent couldn't, because you can only U-Turn once per race and they'd already used theirs to FUBAR the Cheerleaders, and the other three teams who got there early (Gary/Mallory, Jen/Kisha, Zev/Justin) decided that as long as they were doing okay, they weren't going to piss anyone else off by U-Turning them. Which meant that when the Globetrotters got to the checkpoint, mere minutes ahead of the Cowboys (well, at least that's how it was edited to look--they might have been further behind, but the Globetrotters did screw up the luggage task and had to deliver an extra two bags...) they knew exactly what to do. Put the game out of reach by slapping the Cowboys' picture up there.

So sure enough, the Cowboys arrived to see that they were DOA. They went back, had a nice, leisurely meal of cheese fondue, and checked in for their inevitable Philimination. Which is tough for them, since they mainly got eliminated because nobody wanted to help them the one time they needed it, but then again, maybe those people just had gay friends. (Yes, I went there.) And honestly, at this stage of the Race there are no "good" eliminations. Everyone goes out hurting.

Five teams left, next week is Switzerland, and apparently Kent gets into an argument with a guy big enough to use him as a toothpick. Good luck, Kent!

A Brief Clarification

When River says, "I've never seen you looking so young," (in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead), she's not referring to the physical age of his current incarnation. She's referring to the youthful, carefree demeanor he has about him--a demeanor she'll never see in him again, because this is the only time he ever meets her that he doesn't know, to the exact second, when she's going to die.

Please stop pointing out that Matt Smith is younger than David Tennant, because that is missing the point.

Staking Out a Bold Position

It's Star Wars. It's just Star Wars, people. Yes, it was re-released as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, but 28 Days Later was re-released as 29 Days Later when they put it back in theaters with the alternate endings and nobody calls it that. The standard naming convention for motion pictures is to call them by the title they were originally released under, then mention any alternate titles below that for means of convenience (such as Braindead, also released under the title Dead Alive.) Obsessively correcting everyone with, "Actually, it's A New Hope" isn't just pedantic and obnoxious, it's incorrect.

Star Wars. Ask for it by name.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-8

We're down to...six teams, now? Wow. It's starting to get pretty easy to keep track of people, now that we've winnowed away almost half the field. In any event, those six teams started off in India, but now need to go to Vienna, Austria, where a Ford Focus commercial is waiting for them. Jet and Cord once again decide to spot all the other teams a head-start, this time by a half-hour, as they pick a different flight in the hopes that one or more people will miss a connection and give them an advantage. Instead, they hit Austria a half-hour behind everyone. Guys? Not that I actually want you to win, given your attitude towards gay people, but you are reaching that point in the Race where those are elimination mistakes instead of charmingly doofy mistakes.

The teams all get to Vienna, where they each get a brand new Ford Focus to drive, and are instructed to use its easy touch-screen system to get the next clue. This backfires slightly on Ford, as we then get a scene of Gary mildly swearing as he tries to figure out how to make the easy touch-screen system work. But eventually he figures it out, and all the teams head to an Austrian castle!

...where they get a book, which they're instructed to deliver to a library via Ford Focus. Is it just me, or is the product placement a little bit more intrusive this season? Other than the "lifetime supply of 7-Up" from Season 16, I can't think of another time they've been this much in your face with the sponsor's stuff. (Oh, and the prize for this week is a Ford Focus for each Racer...which isn't a lifetime supply, unless the Ford Focus is an amazingly reliable car. Or an unbelievable deathtrap.)

In any event, at the library, we finally ditch the Ford Focus to do the Detour. One option is to deliver a couch from the Freud Museum to the University of Vienna (presumably without a single Freudian slip.) The other option is to eat a lot of schnitzel and baked potatoes and chocolate cake. Not one, not two, but three teams forget the cardinal rule of the Amazing Race: The better the food in the eating challenge, the nastier the catch in the challenge has to be. In this case, it's a timed eating challenge. All three teams fail, giving everyone else (in specific, the Cowboys) a chance to catch up.

Everyone delivers their couches--and surprisingly, the Goths do so amidst much bitching at each other. Their relationship this time out is very different, and a lot less supportive. (Rumor has it that they aren't actually dating anymore, just pretending to for purposes of the show. I obviously don't know, but they're not acting very much like a couple. Except in the sense that Nick and Vicki acted like a couple.) Then it's back to the Ford Focus, to go to the Road Block! (I was half-expecting the couches to be delivered via the spacious cargo room of the Ford Focus!)

Unfortunately for Gary and Mallory, who got passed by the Cowboys, the Road Block turns out to be one of those simple, mechanistic, takes-everybody-about-the-same-amount-of-time tasks. Fortunately, this turns out to be the season's first official non-elimination leg. (At least, fortunately as far as I'm concerned. I know there are people who can't stand Mallory's squealing excitement, but I think she's sweet.) And next week, we're off to Switzerland to see if they can catch up!

We Need a New Word

The other day, I got to thinking about South Africa. I don't even remember what prompted it, but it popped into mind (oh, wait! I do know what prompted it! The radio was playing Lionel Ritchie's song "All Night Long", and thanks to a childhood thoroughly corrupted by MAD Magazine, their South Africa-themed parody "All-White Song" popped into mind. Never let it be said that I am too deep and somber a thinker for a casual pop-culture blog.)

In any event, I thought about Apartheid, and was reminded of Reagan's stance against the boycott of South Africa. And it occurred to me that it was, in its own perverse way, a very courageous stance to take. I mean, by the 1980s, pretty much everybody had come around to the idea that state-supported racism was a Bad Thing...some more reluctantly than others, of course...but the idea to publicly stand up and say, "I support a governmental policy of institutional bigotry against all comers!" was one that took a lot of guts.

And Paul Ryan, the representative from Wisconsin, is showing a similar degree of courage. It takes real guts to stand up and say, "I don't care who's against it--I'm going to loot the public treasury and leave America's elderly to die like dogs, and I'm funneling the proceeds to my millionaire cronies!" Most people would balk at that kind of stance, hedge on it to some degree at least, but not Ryan. He's boldly going forward with a plan despite the vast, principled opposition of over 80% of the voting public.

I propose that we coin the phrase "immoral courage" for this sort of behavior, a counterpart to the more commonly recognized "moral courage". It is rare, in this day and age, to find someone who is willing to be unabashedly, unrepentantly evil despite the very real risk of political and personal consequences for their actions, and such courage needs to be recognized.

Not applauded, of course. Just recognized.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-7

And after a two-week delay, we get going again! (I mean "we" as in the viewers, natch. I don't think they actually made the Racers sit down and wait for the Country Music Awards to finish. Actually, this episode was live-tweeted by Phil himself, as @PhilKeoghan, and he said it takes about 23 days for the Racers to go around the world. Um, suck it, Jules Verne?)

This time, we started with a little airport drama--Jet and Cord didn't ask the right questions at the ticket counter, and wound up on a flight an hour later than all the other teams. Ordinarily, this would be a cause for concern, except that a) I'm not really rooting for the Cowboys, because they were apparently the recipient of favorable editing their first time around that covered for their homophobic tendencies, and b) even if I were, I wouldn't be that concerned because they do have a tendency to make up whatever time they lose in navigational ineptitude by being that much better at the tasks than everyone else.

And sure enough, they made up their mistake in the Road Block (a fairly standard needle-in-a-haystack challenge where the teams had to find specific people in a crowd.) Ron, meanwhile, tanked it very seriously, coming out of the Road Block in dead last. But surely nobody else could make that many screw-ups, right?

Well, it was actually kind of close. Because while Kent and Vyxsin are by no means inept, they are not communicating and co-operating nearly as well as they did on their first run. Vyxsin has less patience with Kent (it does seem to be common knowledge that they're not dating anymore, despite what the show says) and Kent seems to have less enthusiasm for the Race. The two of them are making more mistakes, and handling their mistakes less well--that said, Vyxsin's decision to jump into the Ganges rather than continue going down the river the wrong direction was pretty gutsy.

(Oh, and there was a Detour involving buffalo manure. This was about the only interesting thing about it.)

In the end, though, Ron and Christina couldn't psychically convince the other teams to make enough mistakes to catch up after the disastrous Road Block, and they were duly eliminated. This does not break my heart. While Ron wasn't as bad as I heard he was the first time he was on the Race, he certainly wasn't that good. Unfortunately, the only thing we'll continue to see of them is their faces on the credits, which is my least favorite thing about them--Christina's smile is so fixed and wide, it looks like she's been replaced by an Auton duplicate of herself or something.

Next week, Kent and Vyxsin yell at each other some more, and Gary and Mallory eat a lot. Oh, and they're in Austria. I've always liked the European legs of the Race, so this should be fun.

Hipster Zombie Only Listens To Singers That Are Dead

Leaping onto the "Hipster Ariel" trend (I'm no expert at image modifying, but you get the idea):



And for those who want to do it themselves:

Half-Hearted Song Parodies Still Count, Right?

I'll probably come back to this at some point to do the other verses, but I'm concerned that if I don't post the beginning now while I can still remember it, I'll forget that part too. So...

Way out in outer space, so far away from here,
On a far-off distant planet past the Sense-O-Sphere,
In a tiny little igloo made of ice and wood,
There lived an alien name of Johnny B Ood,
And he never ever learned to read and write so well,
But his telepathy song was just as clear as a bell.

Go go! Go, Johnny go! Go! Go...Johnny B Ood!

Things I Miss: UHF

Not the movie. I own that. No, I miss UHF TV stations. They're still around, of course, but they're not the same as they were when I was a kid. Back before UPN and the WB and the CW (which is, like, the WB and UPN combined like Voltron, right?) there were only three networks (four, counting PBS)...but something like nine channels in any given area as you flipped through the VHF and UHF dials. Which meant that you had, at any given time, four or five channels that weren't network affiliates to anyone.

Pretty much all those networks showed the same thing: Re-runs of old television shows and cheap movies well past their theatrical prime. This was back before first-run syndicated shows like "Star Trek: The Next Generation", when the shows you were more likely to see on a UHF station were things like "Perry Mason", "F Troop", and...well, okay, "Voltron". Because old Japanese cartoons were cheap, too. The days were filled with a surprisingly random selection of TV shows, the evenings were reserved for movies that, in a pre-video era, you probably hadn't seen and wouldn't mind watching. It was sort of like being in a room with someone else's streaming Netflix subscription.

Which was fun in and of itself (in a way that has obviously been far surpassed by today's five hundred channels of cable, DVDs of virtually every single TV series and most movies, and streaming online videos)...but the best part was the way that these old UHF stations distinguished themselves from their competitors. They didn't have original programming, they didn't have original movies, all they had was a library of old stuff that was virtually indistinguishable from everyone else's...and a group of underpaid, bored people with video cameras.

This was a recipe for awesome.

The advertisements were usually great; one of our local stations, Channel 41 (which only came in grainy, staticky, and vertical-hold challenged) called themselves "TV Heaven" and suggested that they were where good television shows went when they died. Another had ads for "Star Trek" re-runs where they advertised the Amazing "Bones" McCoy! "He's an escalator!" "I'm a doctor, not an escalator!" "He's a diplomat!" "I'm a doctor, not a diplomat!" "And he can even shuttle traffic to the moon!" "What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor!" What they lacked in steak, they made up in sizzle. And it was fun.

And when it came to movies...some people claim that comics are the truly American art form, but I think that horror hosts are almost more American than comic books. Whether Vampira, Svengoolie, Ghoulardi or Elvira, they treated classic horror movies with the mix of love and amusement they deserved. And I, of course, feel privileged as hell to have been a viewer of the ultimate evolution of the horror host phenomenon, the one-season wonder that made it good on a national scale, "Mystery Science Theater 3000". (Lucky me, right?)

It's cheesy, it's silly, and arguably everything about these networks is better now...but part of me feels like TV stations used to have more personality when that's all they had to work with. I liked these old UHF stations that ran things on the cheap, and part of me still misses them.

Rural Kentucky Begins "That Boy Ain't Right" Awareness Month

Disassociated Press, KY

Once again, rural Kentucky has announced that April is "That Boy Ain't Right" Awareness Month. "Although the number of incidences of 'That Boy Ain't Right' Syndrome have once again decreased, we still have a number of children in rural Kentucky that, for whatever reason, ain't right in the head," said Big Jim Crenshaw, chief of the Not Right In the Head Research Institute. "We hope to raise awareness of this serious condition, and explain the treatment options to parents of boys that aren't right in the head."

While it was once common nationwide to see boys and girls who simply weren't right in the head, the number of cases has gone down at approximately the same rate as the rise in cases of autism, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, Asperger's syndrome, separation anxiety disorder, Tourette Syndrome, and similar other behavioral disorders. Only a few pockets of "That Boy Ain't Right" Syndrome remain in the United States; tragically, most of these areas suffer from a lack of qualified mental health professionals, making it even harder to diagnose and treat children who aren't right in the head.

Symptoms of "That Boy Ain't Right" Syndrome vary widely, but can include screaming fits, dull stupors, biting, never having been that bright, exposing themselves in public, or simply daydreaming about a life outside of the misery and deprivation of rural Kentucky, one where all the houses have electricity and running water and nobody beats them up at school for liking poetry.

Says Big Jim, "We try to remind parents that contrary to established medical consensus, recent findings have shown that most cases of 'That Boy Ain't Right' Syndrome can't be cured by whupping the crazy out of 'em. We've been studying the effectiveness of exorcism, but in the meanwhile, we recommend that you just try to be patient and don't get too close to Billy Wilkins, 'cause he's a biter. Oh, and don't give sugar to little Susie. Not unless you want to stay up until 4 AM with her."

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-6

Okay, I lied. This is the kind of leg that must be hard for the editors to make look interesting.

On the one hand, I thought it was a very well-designed Road Block. It was a needle in a haystack challenge, but one that didn't rely purely on chance--the racers could, if they had paid attention back in China and remembered the taste, scent, and color of the tea they had drunk the previous day, solve it very quickly and easily (as Ron did. Yes, I know, Ron is not completely useless! We are all equally amazed here, including Christina.) But if they just swigged down the tea and ran for the plane, and they didn't remember what it tasted like, well...they were going to be drinking tea until they cried. Literally.

At that point, it really just came down to "Is this a NEL/double leg?" Because the Detour was not hard enough to give the last-place team a chance to catch up, and that meant that unless it was a NEL, Margie and Luke were screwed. And we found out that it wasn't a double leg pretty early on, and we haven't seen any plan NELs this season. So we spent a whole lot of time suspecting strongly that Margie and Luke were screwed.

At this point, I'm beginning to suspect that the final three will be Zev/Justin, Jet/Cord, and Gary/Mallory. All three have been running strong races leg after leg, and while it does take just one bad leg to put you out of the running (as with last season, where Gary/Mallory just got epically lost and washed out), they don't seem to be prone to that. Whereas everyone else has been kind of trying to come in "not last", it seems, which only works as a strategy for so long.

Next week, no Race, which means no Race recap. But in two weeks, more Race! And Zev apparently gets annoyed by loud noises. Oooh.

I Do Not Make Friends Easily

Recently, in my capacity as guest commentator on Mightygodking.com, I posted a review of the novel Ravenous that was, to put it lightly, not positive. In the comments section, an author named Steven Spruill took issue with my opinion of the novel, suggesting in no uncertain terms that my lack of enjoyment of the novel was due to my inexperience with the written form, and that Professional Authors such as himself knew better about its quality. A lively discussion ensued from there.

(It should be noted that the actual author of the novel, Ray Garton, has not involved himself in the discussion, presumably being far too classy to get into a dust-up with every person who gives his books a bad review. One rule I've learned, over a decade or so of reading and writing in a medium that allows fans and creators an unprecedented opportunity to interact, is that it is never a good idea to respond to a bad review in any way other than saying, "Thanks for your feedback." You will not convince people that your book is better than the reviewer says it is, but you will convince them that you are petty, small-minded, and unpleasant.)

(And for the record, no, this is not my opinion of Steven Spruill. I think he's possibly being a bit overzealous in defense of his friend, and his attempts to throw his weight around as a Professional Author are faintly pathetic, but I don't think he's a bad person or anything. He just has a few lessons to learn about how far your reputation will take you in Internet discussions, and I think he's learning them now.)

But one thing he said did have weight, and I wanted to address it here. He pointed out that it was unfair of me to call Ray Garton an "inept" author, based solely on a single novel out of the sixty-plus that Garton has had published. In this, at least, he is absolutely right; it is unfair to judge Garton's talent on the basis of one novel. The only answer I can give is: Life isn't fair.

I don't mean that in a trite, dismissive way; I mean it in the sense that the reader of a story is not in any way obligated to the author of a story. In fact, it's the exact opposite; the author is asking for the reader's time and (frequently) money, and is obligated to the reader to provide an experience that is worth that time and money. Authors don't get to put a little note in the front of the book that says, "Look, this one is actually an old manuscript of mine that the publisher dusted off once I got famous, but it's really not my best work, so don't expect too much out of it." They don't get to sit down and tell the reader before he/she starts reading, "Oh, this one? Man, I totally locked up on the last forty pages. But deadline was already two weeks ago when I got to that point, and so I just pushed through and got something down on the page and called it good. Really sorry, but it's going to disappoint the hell out of you." They do not have the luxury of expecting the reader to give them a second chance--heck, they don't really have the luxury of expecting the reader to give them a first chance. Every opportunity to impress a reader is a precious gift, and should be treated as such.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-5

So when last we left Kent and Vyxsin, they were in last place with a second leg coming up and a missing passport. Could they find their passport? Could they make up the missing time on the second half of the double leg? And who would be penalized for breaking Race rules?

As it turned out, the answers were about as anticlimactic as you can get, at least for the first two questions. Kent and Vyxsin found their fanny pack and made it to the Pit Stop, only to find that they were still racing and that the next "task" involved going to a train station where the producers had arranged for some truly spectacular bunching. And I mean truly spectacular. Even Kent and Vyxsin didn't stand a chance of missing this one.

Don't get me wrong, I think that bunching (the practice of giving teams that are behind a chance to catch up by putting everyone on the same train, plane, bus, boat, et cetera; or arranging hours of operation for the location of the next task so that everyone has to wait for the place to open in order to start the task) is necessary sometimes. If you never bunched, you'd have a situation where the really good teams would wind up with an insurmountable lead by the sixth leg or so, to the point where Phil would have to sub-contract eliminations to a second host while he went on ahead to check in the leading teams. But a double-leg is supposed to be a continuation of the previous leg, an endurance test as well as a chance for teams that are behind to make up ground. Starting every double-leg with "go to the train station/airport and wait fifteen hours" turns something that should be difficult into a glorified non-elimination leg, with the added benefit that the last team doesn't get a Speed Bump. I'm actually pretty disappointed in the way this turned out.

That said, Kent and Vyxsin did earn a thirty-minute penalty for taking the wrong flight. (The rule used to be that your penalty was equal to the time saved by taking alternate means of transport. If that had happened here, Kent and Vyxsin would have jumped forward several places due to penalty.) The producers were at least maintaining the pretense of double-legs being challenging, so instead of serving it during the meaningless Pit Stop, they were informed that it would be waiting for them at the end of the next leg.

After an inconsequential-but-adorable sequence of the teams waiting for the train (they played three-on-three, with a Globetrotter on each team and Jaime and Cara acting as cheerleaders) they moved on to the next destination, all nine at once. They then had a second detour, which was a memory challenge on one side and a lift-and-haul-heavy-things-then-assemble-them challenge on the other side. Oh, and there was a Double U-Turn (also known as "the only fair U-Turn") waiting at the other end of this one.

Surprisingly, it wasn't much of a factor. Perhaps this was because several teams got spectacularly lost between the Detour and the Road Block (the two teams that got U-Turned actually wound up in sixth and seventh, ahead of Zev/Justin and Gary/Mallory--they tried to follow Ron/Christina instead of getting directions themselves, and their cab drivers turned out not to be that good at following.) Perhaps it was because the memory challenge didn't throw many teams; I was assuming we were going to see lots of slow, sad head shakes from the guy with the clues, but most teams seemed to get it fairly quickly.

The Road Block, on the other hand, was a major challenge. It involved assembling a giant 3-D dinosaur puzzle (actual dinosaur size, in fact) and all the teams were working at it when the last team arrived. Said last team was Gary/Mallory, who promptly assessed their odds and said "Screw it, we'd rather use the Express Pass than get eliminated." It was a wise idea; even skipping the Road Block, they still wound up in second. (This is a bad sign, actually; when Gary and Mallory got eliminated last time, it was due to major problems with navigation and not any issues with the tasks. If they got lost twice on this leg, it means they haven't gotten rid of that weakness, and they don't have another Express Pass to help them recover.)

In any event, the dinosaur assembly turned out to be harder than expected, mainly because they were all working off of one picture of the finished product and half the teams didn't do a good job checking their work. When it comes to lifesize puzzles made of very big chunks of heavy wood, the last thing you want to find out is that you put the hips on backwards. Lots of teams had problems, but in the end, it was Jaime and Cara whose problems turned out to be insurmountable. They reached the Pit Stop exhausted, grumpy (Jaime actually said that "things never go our way", which is a pretty impressive statement for a team that finished second in their first race and a respectable ninth in their next attempt) and, of course, last. They were Philiminated, meaning that I'll thankfully never have to see another Jaime-tantrum again.

Next week, India, where Luke seems to be having terrible difficulties with the Road Block. Which means, given my theory on Amazing Race trailers, that they are the one team safe from elimination next week. See you then!

Someday They'll Get the Cybermen Right, Right?

I'm still waiting for a really good Cybermen story on Doctor Who. (On TV, that is. "Spare Parts" got it right on audio, in ways that I'm about to explain.) Oh, sure, we've had lots of stories where the Cybermen show up, and even some where they do somewhat interesting things, but it says a lot that the coolest Cybermen story I can think of is mainly memorable for them getting their butts kicked by the Daleks.

The problem is that nobody really seems to understand what makes the Cybermen work, and I include their creators. The horror of the Cybermen isn't that they're tough, or that they have laser blasters, or that they have a cool catchphrase (which, apart from anything else, they don't. "DELETE!" sounds like the off-brand Dalek knock-offs.) The horror of the Cybermen is that what they do makes perfect sense. They want to convert every human being into a Cyberman because they genuinely know--not just believe, know--that it willl improve their existences, and they will never stop because they know they're right. The horror of the Cybermen isn't, "DELETE DELETE DELETE", it's "You will become like us."

But everyone writes them like big stompy villains who sneer and boast and preen and strut. For bad guys who aren't supposed to have emotions, they certainly seem to get upset a lot whenever anyone challenges their worldview. Instead, they should be calm, remorseless, and entirely certain in the rightness of their attitude. To the Cybermen, human beings are suffering from a mental illness that makes them irrationally attached...to irrationality, ironically enough. These poor people believe that their brain disorder somehow gives their life meaning, and need to be forced to undergo conversion for their own good. It's unfortunate that they can't understand how much better life is with a superior body and none of the distractions of emotion, but they will. Once they undergo the process, they'll understand just how much sense it makes. And then they'll help to convert others.

My idea for a Cybermen story involves a small group of Cybermen setting up shop on a space station, promising that they will not use violence or force, and simply asking people to volunteer for the process--convincing them, through the logic of their position. Yes, being a Cyberman means an end to joy, but it also means an end to fear, an end to rage, an end to misery and suffering and pain and sorrow and all the weaknesses of the flesh. There are some people who would gladly give up their flesh and blood if it just meant the pain would stop.

Their endgame plan, of course, would be to convert the unwilling by force once they had enough recruits. Because deception, while again unfortunate, is sometimes necessary when dealing with the irrational. It's like dealing with a madman, sometimes. But the Cybermen have a cure for that.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-4

I suspect this one must have been a difficult one for the editors; it's always tricky when one team gets way behind the others. Do you try to use clever editing techniques in order to make it seem like the lagging team is closer than they are, or do you just go ahead and acknowledge that there's not going to be much suspense in this episode and show how far behind they really are?

In the case of Kent and Vyxsin, the team that pretty much dominated this week's episode, the situation was complicated by some major bunching that kept them at least theoretically in the race long after what should have been sheer, unmitigated disaster. Driving a full three hours in the wrong direction and missing the flight that every single one of the other teams was on should have meant doom, full stop. (Especially since the subsequent flight wasn't for five hours. You do not want to spot everyone else a five-hour lead on the Amazing Race.) But when everyone else has to wait for an 8 AM bus, suddenly some of that lead gets eaten away, and it's worth focusing on the drama of whether or not running one of the worst legs in Race history is enough to get Kent and Vyxsin eliminated.

And it was a spectacular trainwreck of a leg. Vyxsin starts by insisting the theme for the day is "Positive Mental Attitude", then proceeds to get lost, sob into the map, scream at herself, stare into space, sob at the map some more, give up, lose her passport temporarily, and then berate herself a lot more while attempting the Road Block. Kent, meanwhile, has decided that the best way to deal with a partner who's having difficulties is to stare into space and wander around like an automaton, then say to her, "Well, I was just doing what you told me to do." (In case I haven't made it obvious yet, Kent's checking out was just as bad as Vyxsin's freaking out.) Oh, and then he loses his passport for good measure.

Next to all that, everyone else's mistakes seemed like amusing larks. Ron had his bizarre food cravings (I get that he's a fan of the local cuisine and doesn't get to eat Chinese food this authentic very often, but the man was actually stopping on the way to a Detour to smell the fish frying. I think if Christina had one of those toddler leashes for him, she'd have used it.) The Globetrotters didn't know what sign of the Chinese Zodiac they were (they've never gotten bored at a Chinese restaurant?) Mallory screamed, Jen admitted that there's really no way to feel good about yourself after calling a deaf guy a bitch, and the only racers who had any real trouble were Zev and Justin, and even they were way ahead of Kent and Vyxsin by the end.

(Assuming penalties don't come into play. Kent and Vyxsin might get a penalty for not taking the mandatory flight, although to me the penalty should be the five hours they had to wait for the next flight, and Justin might get a penalty for throwing one of his charms in the grass when he found out it was a duplicate, thus making it potentially harder for Vyxsin to find hers. Oh, and Ron and Christina might get a penalty for flinging themselves out of a moving trolley and throwing rocks at a bus to get it to stop instead of going back and taking the bus all the way like the clue said. No, really. They actually did that.)

And then, of course, we find out that the end isn't the end after all. Yes, for the first time in Race history, we get two double legs! (Which has led to some speculation that there will be no non-elimination legs, only double legs. That's a pretty big advantage to the teams at the back--no Speed Bumps!) Which means that Kent and Vyxsin are saved for another week. Even better for them, next week's leg includes a Double U-Turn (the only fair kind, in my opinion--being U-Turned is such a huge disadvantage that the only way to keep it from being "automatically eliminate one team" is to make it a double-team penalty)...and frankly, given how inept Kent and Vyxsin were this week, nobody's going to see them as enough of a threat to U-Turn.

Boiling It Down

The United States government collects money in the form of taxes, to "pay the Debts and provide for the common defence and general Welfare of the United States". That's a nice, vague, catch-all term, made deliberately vague by a group of men who wanted their government to be flexible enough to adapt to a number of future situations; the general point, though, is that there's a lot of United States, which means there's a lot of taxes and a lot of people who need their general welfare provided for...which means that there's a whole hell of a lot of money that the US collects and spends.

A small group of wealthy private citizens are bribing politicians (predominantly Republicans, although there are certainly a few guilty Democrats) to take a large chunk of that money and hand it over to those wealthy private citizens in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, and similar. The politicians then use the resultant budget deficit to justify cutting spending for the purposes that the money was originally collected for--in essence, looting the public treasury with both hands through the use of creative book-keeping. Those wealthy private citizens, in turn, skim off a chunk of the money that the Republicans have embezzled for them and pass it back to the politicians in the form of "campaign contributions", thus completing the circuit and starting the process again.

This is not fiscal responsibility. This is not austerity. This is not good governance. This is a small group of wealthy criminal masterminds who have figured out that if you make the laws, then what you're doing can't be considered illegal. The Republican party has been almost thoroughly co-opted by these crooks, and they are stealing from widows, orphans, the poor and the sick in order to get a cut of the loot. Don't listen to what they say--heck, don't listen to what I say, either. Follow the money, and look at where it goes and who it comes from. Because that's the only thing that really matters.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-3

Another week, another week of "The Amazing Race"! This time, we're off to Japan...well, eventually we are. The first half-hour of the show this week was really "The Amazing Hang Around Airports and Discuss Strategy". Not that I minded one hundred percent, because it was actually kind of interesting to see some of the strategizing involved in the Race. Basically, for those of you who missed it, the Racers had a choice of two different flights. One had a connecting flight in Hong Kong (not a tight connection, but a connection nonetheless) but got in at 6:00 AM local time. The other was direct, but didn't get in until 6:15. The question was, is it worth risking the complications of a connection for a fifteen-minute lead?

Long story short, no. It wasn't. The "leading" flight got seriously delayed, putting the five teams who tried to get ahead pretty seriously behind for the entire Tokyo leg. Which was a shame, because some of my favorite teams were on that second flight, and I spent a lot of the back half of the episode twitching. (Except for the time I spotted Zev's "Duck Whisperer" T-shirt, which was just pure awesome.) (It's a reference to their first time on the Race, when they had to herd ducks. If I ever go on the Race, I am wearing nothing but obscure geek reference T-shirts. "I'm Bill Pardy" for the million, baby!)

The next big chunk of the episode was, "Who can drive around Japan best?" This was not Jaime and Cara, who actually took the sideview mirror off a local's car. This was not the best team to be involved in a minor traffic fracas, given that the first time she was on the Race, Jaime expressed her frequent anger at people who had the nerve to speak only the language of the country they lived in. So getting into a car accident, even the most minor one, with someone who spoke no English and wouldn't just accept a wad of bills from a strange woman. (Not even one who said, in sing-song, loud, slowly spoken English, "Maybe if we give you some mon-ey?") Oh, this also featured one of the two...interesting editing choices of the episode. Jaime is explaining that they have to stop, "because..." and it cuts ahead to her already out of the car. Now, I'm assuming that they were editing out some sort of technical explanation of the rules on how Racers interact with local laws, but why keep the "because" then? Oh, well.

Finally, we do get to the Road Block, which is one of the "do as I do" variety. Racers performed a little samurai kata, then fired a bow at a target from a very short distance. (While being spun, admittedly, but still a very short distance. If anyone missed, they didn't show it.) They did show lots of people failing the kata, though. Repeatedly. This provided much of the excitement of the episode, giving many teams a big chance to catch back up.

Then they drove to the Detour, a choice between another "do as I do" task (this one involved performing a purity ritual under a freezing waterfall) and a "needle in a haystack" task, which involved rooting around in mud for a small ceramic frog, while being pelted with more mud by locals. Surprisingly, only two teams opted for the freezing waterfall. Yes, I understand, I wouldn't want to have to stand under a waterfall for a full minute in 45-degree water, shouting strange Japanese phrases either. But you know what? There's a little rule I have about the Amazing Race, which is, "If you can do something that's not a 'needle in a haystack' task, don't do the 'needle in a haystack' task." Because sure, you can find the frog quickly and be out of there in five minutes...but you can also spend two, three, four hours rooting around in cold mud until you get hypothermia and have to stop, and then another team passes you by and gets the frog. Hypothetically speaking.

Still, since just about everyone did the frog task, it wasn't such a big deal. Zev and Justin took first, the Globetrotters would have taken third but for an after-the-fact penalty involving them accidentally taking another racer's stuff...which resulted in the second interesting editing choice. See, when the Globetrotters checked in, the Race judges didn't know they'd done it. So they didn't have to wait out a penalty, as rule-breakers usually do. Instead, Ron and Christina showed up at the Pit Stop complaining about the Globetrotters, and Phil announced that he would give them a half-hour penalty as a result, putting Ron and Christina into third. Or, at least, he seemed to...but we don't see his face while he's making this announcement, and Ron and Christina are distinctly unmoved by their good fortune. Almost as if he actually told them he'd look into it, and the decision to penalize them was made afterwards and dubbed in. Could it be?

In the end, it's Mike and Mel who get the hypothermia instead of the frog, and Jaime and Cara who slip by them to avoid elimination. I'm sad, because Mike and Mel are genuinely class acts (and Phil clearly agrees...he doesn't choose favorites, but you can usually tell from his body language who he's having fun talking to and who makes his job more of a job than usual)...but on the other hand, I did not expect Mel to get far at seventy. The Race is intensely physical, and even a fit, athletic seventy-year-old is going to have trouble with that.

So now we're at nine. Next week, China, and what promises to be an epic tantrum from Ron!

Probably Unfair CNN Post

As I mentioned on mightygodking, I've been watching a lot of CNN at work lately. (While working--it's not like I just sneak off to the breakroom and veg out all day.) They've been covering the Libya situation, and while I can appreciate that there's a case to be made for intervention, I gotta say, it really does seem like CNN is pushing like hell for the USA to go to war ASAP.

Which makes a certain amount of sense. Let's face it, CNN made its rep off of Desert Storm, and they're probably best known for their determined, courageous war reporting. To CNN, a war might mean dead soldiers, tragedy, and the failure of everything fine and noble about the human spirit, but it also means ratings, Emmys, and the very real possibility that one of their reporters will become a sex symbol as he bravely reports from inside Tripoli as the bombs fall. And that's a trade I feel like CNN will take any day.

I'm willing to admit that I could be wrong, but when you hear their tones of voice as they talk about "establishing a no-fly zone", or "arming the Libyan rebels"...they almost sound eager. It's a little creepy, especially for an outfit that prides itself on its non-partisan, non-agenda'd reporting. Democrat, Republican, the important thing at CNN seems to be, "So when are you going to start the shootin' match?"

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-2

Sorry for the lack of a Thursday post, but I got sick with a fast-moving virus Thursday morning which I'm just now recovering from. While I was too sick to write, move, or do much beyond sit on the couch and play "Plants Vs. Zombies" (my Tree of Wisdom is almost 600 feet tall!) I decided I'd devote the Monday post to the current season of "The Amazing Race" while it's in season, because a) I like the show and like talking about it, b) it means I have to only think of one vaguely clever thing a week, and c) why not? (Those of you offering up, "Because I don't care about 'The Amazing Race'" as an answer to c) can be comforted with the knowledge that there will still be one post a week that is not Race-related.) The post will be a mix of recap, discussion, and snark, blended according to mood.

I discussed the first episode on Mightygodking last week, and it left off with a big cliffhanger: The teams checked in at the Pit Stop had already discovered that they were on a double-leg, so they had to keep racing with no chance to rest! And Jet and Cord, the only team who hadn't yet made it to the Pit Stop, were falling further and further behind as the Road Block continued to stump them!

And this episode, we see that the next challenge...was to find the place to sign up for the charter flight that left the next morning. I have to say, I was really disappointed, and not just because I'm rooting against Jet and Cord because they're homophobic idjits. After a first episode that established quite well that this Race was going to be tougher and more grueling than usual, due to all the seasoned Racers, bunching them all up again essentially turned the double-leg into a non-elimination leg, rescuing Jet and Cord from a spectacular foul-up without even the penalty of a Speed Bump.

The Detour did somewhat make up for it, though, being a well-designed choice between a fiddly detail-oriented task that would take a while and reward staying calm under pressure...and something that sounded kind of icky, and could be tricky, but could also be completed very quickly for those willing to try it. (Which was exactly one team, and them only because they had to. But hey.) Pretty much everything we'd already seen of these teams was on display again; Ron and Christina bickered non-stop, Flight Time and Big Easy took everything in good humor, Jaime and Cara got frustrated easily with people who weren't helpful even though said people weren't there to be helpful to begin with, et cetera et cetera.

After the Detour, we had a very good navigation task--I like that the destination was expressed in the form of highlighting elements on the Periodic Table and forcing the Racers to figure it out. Of course, nowadays that just means stopping a passerby and asking to borrow their smartphone for a moment, but let's face it, that's the world these days. It's just about impossible to keep the Racers away from the Internet, and honestly, I'm not sure it's such a bad thing. Without the Internet and sympathetic passers-by, about half the teams would wind up standing around for hours, arguing about whether or not Hg stood for Hydrogen. Which yes, does separate the men and women from the boys and girls, but makes for boring television.

Oh, and they all had to find the intersection while wearing kangaroo costumes. Probably didn't make it that much more challenging, but a lot more amusing.

Then it was just a race to the Pit Stop, and despite my hopes that we'd see a swift exit for Ron and Christina (well, Ron, at least; Christina could stay, but Ron was being rude not just to his own daughter but to Mallory to boot) ...it was Amanda and Kris who made the exit. So basically the U-Turn again proves to be fatal, which is why they should use the Double-U-Turn from last season instead. As it is, the presence of a U-Turn almost removes all the suspense from an episode.

On the one hand, it's a bummer that Perfectly Nice Couple Amanda and Kris went home while there are at least four teams (Jet and Cord, Ron and Christina, Kisha and Jen, Jaime and Cara) that I'm actively rooting against. On the other hand, I can at least take some comfort that none of the teams I'm actively rooting for (Margie and Luke, Flight Time and Big Easy, Kent and Vyxsin, Mel and Mike) went out, especially given that Mel still looks like he's about to collapse in a heap at any second.

Next week, Jaime and Cara appear to run someone over. Presumably, Jaime will get out of the car and berate them for slowing her down. And then berate them again for not screaming in English.

The Problem With the Tea Party

Their rhetoric talks about "taking back government for 'we the people'," but their platform is more about "I the person" than "we the people". The whole idea that government was founded on, that of people uniting to do important things that they can't do by themselves, is conspicuous by its absence. Which almost certainly wasn't what the Founders intended; after all, the very first line of the Constitution talks about forming "a more perfect Union".

Not busting one.

The Grim Truth About "Atlas Shrugged"

Nobody would notice or care what happened to John Galt, because the world runs perfectly well without a rich douchebag telling it what to do.

And within about a week, he'd be dead, because rich douchebags like him are so used to people doing things like washing their clothes, cooking their food, and cleaning their houses that they wouldn't know what to do without them.

The book appeals to rich douchebags because it validates their egotism: "Of course I'm harder-working, smarter, and more important than everyone else! Otherwise, how would I have gotten so rich? I should be allowed to do exactly what I want, and answer to nobody but other rich people, because civilization depends on me."

When in fact, they depend on millions of people that they don't even notice. Their whole existence is an exercise in ignoring all the people that enable their lifestyle, and the people best suited to do that are not the brilliant, but the sociopathic. And in fact, when you look at the actual plot of the story, John Galt fits the part perfectly--his primary goal is to destroy human civilization as punishment for not recognizing his achievements, and he's presented as the hero. Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for.

Bad Super Bowl Joke

This is the problem with having such an overachieving quarterback on your team. Ben Roethlisberger was trying to see if he could be the MVP of both the Steelers and the Packers.

(In all seriousness, it's not so much that I was rooting against the Packers as it is that Packers fans tend to be insufferably smug about their team even when the record doesn't justify it. I hate to see what they're going to be like when they've actually accomplished something.)

(On the other hand, it is nice to see Aaron Rodgers stick it to the overrated, over-the-hill Brett Favre. Guess we'll call it a wash.)

Rhyme Assistance!

There's a song I've been hearing a lot lately at work. (KDWB--your place to go for one of up to six different songs!) It's a gentleman who's quite upset about the lack of emotional support he's getting from his girlfriend, relative to that which he gives her. He claims he would "catch a grenade for ya", and "throw my hand on a blade for ya", but after that he runs out of good rhymes and needs to resort to "jump in front of a train for ya" before claiming that she wouldn't do the same. (Incidentally, two points on this: One, most women care more about whether you'll run out to the store at 2 AM to get them donuts than whether or not you'll throw yourself in front of locomotives; and two, if you have actual first-hand knowledge of whether or not your girlfriend will catch a grenade for you, her lack of commitment is the least of your worries.)

In any event, I've decided to help the gentleman out by giving some other things that he would do for her. Such as...

"do time in a stockade for ya"

"drink some pink lemonade for ya"

"spray a cockroach with Raid for ya"

"put my hair in a braid for ya"

"wear a garlic pomade for ya"

"get pets neutered or spayed for ya"

"perform at Farm Aid for ya"

"take a nap in the shade for ya"

"lose my shirt in a trade for ya"

"sing a serenade for ya"

"dodge, parry, spin and evade for ya"

"freshen my room with Glade for ya"

"get all my clothing frayed for ya"

"score a high passing grade for ya"

"carve a statue of jade for ya"

I hope this helps. Although I understand that it makes it even more likely that she would not, in fact, do the same.

My New Corporate Whistle-Blower Law

Originally, I had intended this to just apply to employing illegal immigrants, but I found I like the idea so much that I want to apply it to every corporate crime. My idea is that if a company violates the law (such as by polluting, employing illegal immigrants, OSHA violations, et cetera) then the company is fined, on a yearly basis, an amount equal to 100% of the salary of the person or persons responsible for the violation as long as they stay on the payroll.

...AND...this is the important bit...they are also fined, on a yearly basis, an amount equal to 100% of the salary of any persons on the payroll who are accused of complicity by the person or persons responsible. (And once those people are accused, they count as "persons responsible", so if they in turn accuse someone, those people become responsible too.) Note the phrase, "accused", not "proven". The corporation is proven guilty in a court of law like normal, but their fine is determined solely by how many people point fingers.

The logic being that too often in corporate malfeasance, there's a sort of passive "things were done" atmosphere to the whole event. The blame is shared in such a way that everyone has just enough of their fingerprints on it that nobody can really say no, and nobody really does say no because nobody wants to be the one to step in front of the slow, ponderous juggernaut that is corporate decision-making and put their career on the line when everyone else is going along to get along. This way, the momentum is reversed: Everyone has a very good incentive to speak out to stop a corporate crime, because if you don't say anything and someone gets caught, the dominos can topple all the way up to the CEO and bankrupt the company (or get plenty of upper management fired.)

Is it fair? Probably not. There's a strong, deliberate incentive for witch-hunts and backstabbing. Disgruntled former employees can always choose to simply shaft their bosses just because they're mad about being fired. But you know what? That means that maybe those bosses have one hell of an incentive to keep a close eye on the corporate practices of their subordinates, instead of turning a blind eye to them because hey, profits are up and expenses are down. It would change the culture of large corporations, something badly needed in a climate where corporations have all the rights of people, but none of the responsibilities.

Review: Doctor Who - The Forgotten Army

As wonderful as it's been to see the return of Doctor Who to our television screens, it's difficult to argue that TV's gain hasn't been print's loss. Whereas we used to get classic novels like 'Transit', 'Human Nature', and 'Set Piece' (to name just a few of the many, many classic novels released during the fifteen years that the series was off the air), now we get empty wastes of space like 'The Forgotten Army'. Although honestly, it's an insult to the other empty wastes of space that are the current book line to lump 'The Forgotten Army' in with them.

For one thing, it's pretty clear that Brian Minchin didn't have a chance to see an episode of the new season, and is working entirely from the writers' bible in his portrayal of the Eleventh Doctor and Amy. This is a bigger problem than it sounds like, because an actor's portrayal changes the way the character actually behaves, not just in the subtle ways (Karen Gillan's portrayal softens Amy's rough edges and makes her more charming and likeable) but in overt ways, as the writers see the way the actor plays the character and adjust the scripts accordingly. So an Amy Pond that's written just from the initial concept of the character comes across as startlingly unlikeable, while an Eleventh Doctor written just from a quick glimpse of the writers' bible comes across as a spastic idiot obsessed with bow ties. (Yes, yes, I hear you in the back. Shush. Matt Smith is sodding brilliant.)

But even if you account for that, this still is a pretty terrible book, because it never feels like Minchin is trying. The idea of little teeny aliens invading Earth by hiding in a woolly mammoth (that they think is perfect camouflage) should be the start of a hilarious romp, but Minchin never gives the aliens any personality and the whole thing winds up feeling terribly generic. It's as if he feels like he's "just" writing for kids, so why should he bother working hard? (And the actual children in the novel feel as though they're shoehorned in so that the kids reading can say, "Ooh, kids like us!")

When I described this novel to my wife, she said, "But it's still not as bad as 'The Pit', right?" I replied that I wasn't so sure. 'The Pit' might have been bloody awful, but I felt like Neil Penswick went out and wrote the best novel he was capable of. On reading 'The Forgotten Army', I felt like Brian Minchin went out and wrote the worst novel he thought he could get away with.

Pet Peeve of the Day, Shockingly Mundane Edition

(Rooney)

You know what I hate? It's when you go to a store, and instead of giving you the best possible price, they give you a slightly less good price and offer to make up the difference if you join their "free customer loyalty program". Call me crazy, but I don't think that I should have to jump through extra hoops and essentially sell you my demographic information in order to get the same price I can get just by going to your competitor that doesn't have a "loyalty program". Perhaps there's a certain irony at work there--I'm more loyal to stores that don't demand my loyalty.

(/Rooney)

A Plea For Honesty

You know what I'd really like? I would really, honestly like evangelical Christians to just sack up for once in their lives and admit they don't like gay people.

Now, I'm clearly not talking about all evangelical Christians. I know plenty of Christians who have no problems with gay people, and whose faith is deep and abiding. Which is kind of the point, actually; there's all these Christians out there who have no difficulty at all treating gay people as equals, and yet don't seem confused or insincere in their faith...and then there's those other people.

The ones who can't remember which are the Beatitudes and which are the Ten Commandments, yet have all the relevant verses of Leviticus memorized (and in some particular cases, tattooed on their flesh. Which is tremendously ironic, given that elsewhere in Leviticus, there are rules against tattooing.)

The ones who insist that they don't hate gay people, but God says they're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and really, they can't go against the word of God. (Except for the eating pork thing, because God really didn't mean all that stuff to still apply now that we know about trichinosis.)

The people who insist that they "love the sinner, and hate the sin"...but continue to vote for people who hate the sinner, too.

The people who, in short, try to pretend that they're not bigoted at all, just devoted to the Lord. In this one, specific, particular instance. What I would really like to see is for those people to stop hiding behind the Bible, quit pretending that they don't feel deeply uncomfortable around homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals, and quit wasting time pretending that this is a religious stance so that we wouldn't have to stop arguing about it. Sure, part of why we'd have nothing left to talk about is that I'd find such a stance morally abhorrent, but at least I could stop wasting my time poking holes in all their Scriptural arguments and get on with the business of confronting their prejudice. As it is, they combine all the worst aspects of being bigoted and cowardly at the same time.

So please, if you are one of those Christians (and you know who you are.) Have the courage of your convictions, and stop blaming your attitudes on God. At this point, it's just embarrassing.

An Open Letter to Zombie Story Writers

(inspired by Joe McKinney's "Dead City" and "Apocalypse of the Dead", but generally applicable...I'm looking at you, "28 Days Later" in the back, there):

Dear Zombie Story Authors,

As much as I, your reader, appreciate a commitment to verisimilitude, and as much as pseudo-scientific explanations of how a zombie apocalypse could be "real" are fun, please stop trying to explain it away as a brain disease that affects living human beings, giving them superhuman pain tolerances and a mindless, ravenous appetite for human flesh. Because you then proceed to treat your "infected" just like they were zombies straight out of a Romero movie, which drastically undercuts the very sense of realism you were trying to create.

Look, we all understand that willpower is an amazing thing, and that people can do incredible stuff when they're sufficiently determined. But I have news for you. When your femoral artery is severed in the course of a zombie attack, it does not matter how determined you are to get up and eat the flesh of the living. You're going to bleed out in a matter of minutes, your circulatory system is going to collapse from hydrostatic shock, your brain is going to be completely deprived of oxygen, and you are going to die. Likewise, mindless determination to keep moving, hunting, and killing is not going to protect you from the rigors of exposure in the midst of a North Dakota winter. Starvation, dehydration, and blood loss are absolutes, even if determination can temporarily overcome them.

In essence, the human body is a machine, like an automobile. You are trying to describe the ways this machine can malfunction to produce a specific effect, and that's good, but please stop explaining to me how it keeps going without wheels, gasoline, or a functioning engine.

Thanks in advance,

John Seavey

My Question About the Clone Saga

I recently read an old 'But I Digress' column on Peter David's website, where he talked about the Clone Saga back when it was just a crazy rumor that Marvel would never, ever do...right? And it reminded me of the Clone Saga (yes, I know, they have medication for that now...) and the big question I've had about the Clone Saga for a few years now.

Namely, who was Ben Reilly, really?

Because I remember reading the Clone Saga at the time, and Ben Reilly was the clone of Peter Parker who died in Amazing Spider-Man #149, and who Peter threw into an incinerator in #150. As we were told, he was merely unconscious, not dead, and he survived the fall and woke up at the bottom of the shaft and escaped the flames and went on to make a new life for himself as beloved Nephew Ben.

Except that a while back, thanks to the magic of Marvel's Essentials collections, I actually read Amazing Spider-Man #150. And Peter doesn't just throw his clone down the chimney shaft. He first keeps him in a walk-in freezer for a few days so that Curt Connors can autopsy the body and definitively determine whether it's a clone or not. (Peter doesn't read the results, a conclusion that Gerry Conway probably would have never written if he'd known what he was setting up.)

The clone wasn't just "a little banged up". He was dead. Even before taking a header down a smokestack, his body was frozen and cut open to see how it died. I'm aware that Curt Connors and Peter Parker have both made their mistakes when it comes to biology, but never the kind that involved storing a dead body for more than 24 hours without noticing that it was still alive.

So with that said, who was Ben Reilly? Was he just a recent clone, created with fake memories of years on the run (and, presumably, supported with an elaborate cast of back-up clones who could corroborate his story?) Or did the Jackal just create dozens of Spider-Man clones, sending them off into the heartland of America while his "best model" perished at Spidey's hands? Given how toxic the Clone Saga is to fans, I doubt we'll ever find out.

At the very least, it explains that stupid skeleton in the smokestack, though.

The Five Best MST3K End Credits

Not the actual end credits to the episodes, although they did sometimes do some fun things with those, too. ("JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDD!!") I mean the movies where the credits run extra long, forcing Mike/Joel and the bots to hang out in the theater and try to find something funny to talk about while the movie is doing not a whole lot. They frequently wound up doing comedy sketches that didn't riff on what was happening onscreen, but were nonetheless hilarious. (Which is why the otherwise-perfect ending to MST3K: The Movie, where they riff on their own names, is disqualified for purposes of this list. They're actually riffing on the credits.)

So without further ado, we're off!

5. Alien From LA. Actually not one of my favorites, but it's such a crowd-pleaser that I feel like I have to include it or the MiSTies will rise up en masse to lynch me. Crow and Mike get into a long, bitter, eventually-refereed-by-Tom argument about who is into the "femmier" movies. I kind of feel it works better as a concept than a sketch, but I know people who consider this to be the perfect gag sequence. (For myself, I prefer the argument from 'Space Mutiny'. "You and your precious 80s. It would have continued to be the 70s if not for you!")

4. Laserblast. Taking off from Leonard Maltin's rating of 2 1/2 stars, the trio go through his video guide to list all the other movies that Leonard Maltin considers to be on a par with 'Laserblast'. The list is as much terrifying as it is funny.

3. The Final Sacrifice. Mike and Crow play a studio executive and a nervous screenwriter (respectively) discussing plans for "The Final Sacrifice: The Series", as Tom sings along to the theme in the background. Not sure which is funnier, Tom singing, "This part sounds like Danny Elfman, Danny Elfman, Danny Elfman..." or Mike explaining how they should have Zap Rowsdower do nude scenes once a season.

2. Werewolf. A full musical extravaganza, as the cast uses the generic beat of the end-credit music as the backdrop of a fantastic medley that spans everything from The Verve Pipe's 'Freshmen' to 'Easter Parade'. It's not just just funny, it's catchy as hell.

1. Soultaker. Sometimes, MST3K is at its best when they go dark and twisted, and this is one of the best examples. The bots do a long, bizarre extrapolation of what must have happened after the end of the movie, which involves the romantic leads breaking up, DUIs, and straining wood alcohol through burnt toast. Mike tries to posit an alternative, only to be derided as hopelessly naive. "So that's it. It's either drinking wood alcohol in back alleys, or animals in feetie pajamas?" "Yes, Mike. Why is that so hard to accept?" Sheer perfection.

Do you have an MST3K end credits sketch you liked? Share some, won't you?

Things I Learned From a Tour Of Mythbusters Forums

1) The reason the Mythbusters couldn't replicate the feats of a true ninja is because only a true ninja can do them. The reason that the ninja they brought in couldn't do it either is because he's not a true ninja, because true ninjas don't exist anymore, and even if they did, they wouldn't deign to appear on television because they're too busy walking on water and deflecting bullets with their mind.

2) The same is true of cowboys, only they don't deflect bullets with their mind. They fire them.

3) Despite direct evidence that a particular urban myth is impossible, it totally happened to one of the commenters and the Mythbusters just didn't properly replicate the exact conditions under which it happened. Crucial elements they left out involved the exact make/model of device, the precise angle/trajectory/velocity of its travel, and the fact that it happened on a full moon in Transylvania. Unless they retest the myth under a full moon in Transylvania, they can't call it busted.

4) The commenters always know more about guns, cars, and explosives than the Mythbusters. Every single one of them.

5) The reason that Jack Burton could shoot a lock off a door and the Mythbusters couldn't is because Jack Burton's guns gain additional speed from surfing on the sheer current of awesome that Kurt Russell radiates at all times. (Okay, that's just my explanation.)

6) The moon landing totally didn't happen. Wake up, sheeple!

7) For a show that demonstrates the basic scientific principle of submitting a hypothesis to empirical testing, Mythbusters sure attracts its share of pseudoscientists.

And the Discussion Continued...

As it turns out, John Scalzi did read my post about his post about Star Wars, and he responded with a post here. I think it's worth reading, especially the comments section, and I feel like I understand what he was getting at a lot better now. I'd like to thank Mr. Scalzi for taking the time to discuss the idea with me...and hordes of Internet readers, of course, but it's not exactly like I sent him a private email, either. But that's just part of what makes the Internet so much fun!

What Haunts Me About Firefly

We all know what 'Firefly' is about, right? Mal was one of the Browncoats, who fought a failed war against the Alliance and, after it was over and his cause of freedom was lost, he went out to the frontier to live free like a person oughta. The Alliance and "civilization" are slowly encroaching on his wild frontier, but he's determined to defy them any way he can.

It's a great story, one that feels authentic because it is authentic. Joss Whedon took his inspiration for his "space Western" by transplanting a lot of the causes of the original "Wild West" to a different setting. The original American frontier got its reputation for lawlessness due to an influx of Confederate veterans who felt frustrated and bitter living in the Reconstruction South. They migrated westwards, where they used their military skills to carve out a living however they could. Until, of course, the federal government moved west as well, taming the new frontier.

So the Browncoats are basically the Greybacks. Which is what haunts me...because Joss Whedon never really says why the war started. What was the cause the Browncoats fought for? Mal and others say that the Alliance "meddled", but that was the basic attitude of most slaveowners as well. Mal certainly doesn't seem to show any socially unpopular attitudes--he's friendly to Book, to River, to pretty much everyone as far as a misanthropic cynic like him is capable of being friendly--but what did he stand for? What made the Alliance say, "No. This cannot be tolerated, not in a civilized culture"?

I wonder. And I wonder if maybe Joss Whedon didn't intend me to wonder, just a little.

John Scalzi and the Myth of Inerrancy

I recently decided to pick up John Scalzi's book 'Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded', based on the fact that I'd heard good things about him as a blogger. I did feel a little trepidation doing so, having already read his 'Rough Guide to Science Fiction' and found myself more than a little irritated by a few of its claims, such as "You're not a true science-fiction fan if you don't like 'The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai'!" (a claim right up there with "You're not a real gourmet unless you can appreciate the subtle flavors and distinct aroma of yak vomit," or "The true automotive enthusiast loves the classic lines and dynamic handling of the AMC Gremlin.") But on the whole, I found myself greatly entertained by the book, and thought Scalzi was generally pretty clever and insightful.

Except for his column on Star Wars, which takes a few good points and weaves them together into a wild mess of incoherent fanboyish speculation that bears no connection to the worlds of art, commerce, film theory, mythology, and quite possibly chemistry and physics as well. I'm aware, of course, that despite Scalzi's repeated assertions that he's not particularly famous, his fame relative to mine is similar to George Lucas' relative to his, but nonetheless I feel bound to reply, knowing he'll probably never see this. (Which doesn't mean I plan to insult him just because I don't think he'll answer back. My policy when blogging is never to say anything I wouldn't say to someone's face. Which should tell you something about my lack of social graces, looking back...)

Scalzi's basic assertion, for those of you who couldn't be bothered to follow the link, is that the reason the prequels weren't any good (he takes it as an article of faith that you'll agree, but I don't mind that, because the prequels really weren't any good) is that Lucas doesn't actually have any talent as a film-maker; he's obsessed with detailing the mythology of the Star Wars universe, and anything good in the movies is either (to quote Scalzi) "unintentional, achieved through special effects, or is the work of hired guns, notably Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett".

This statement tells me something pretty important right off the bat. Namely, it tells me he hasn't actually seen the movies in a long time. Fan opinion has a tendency to petrify in the absence of occasional connection with the material; over time, the actual feelings you had about the original work slowly get leached away and replaced by the discussions you had with other fans. Everybody "knows" that 'Empire' is the best Star Wars movie, because we all talk about it all the time at conventions and we all agree on it.

In fact, Empire is pretty damn awful. It's a long, shaggy-dog story that starts with the Rebels having established themselves in a very stupid position with no logical explanation, and then proceeds to make an entire plot of, "Will our heroes get away?" Which is a problem, as the answer can never be anything other than, "Well, yes, of course." (Except for Han, who gets captured in a weak attempt at a cliff-hanger; it's funny fans excoriate 'Return of the Jedi' without ever considering the fact that it's forced to spend a half-hour extricating itself from the plot cul-de-sac left at the end of 'Empire'.) Most of its reputation rests on the fact that "it's dark" (never underestimate the attraction to grown-up fanboys of a "darker, more adult" version of something they liked as kids), the romance between Han and Leia (which was rightly eviscerated by Jeanne Cavelos as the moment when Leia stopped being a strong female character and started being a shrill, whiny stereotype of the Girl Who Just Needs a Man In Her Life) and the "I am your father" bit, which was good but not nearly good enough to rescue the movie. The actual great movie is the original, always has been, but it's become fashionable to hate it because We're Too Grown-Up For That Now.

The point is, the second I hear, "The only good one was 'Empire'," I immediately know that this is going to be someone who is discussing the fan orthodoxies of the Star Wars movies, rather than the movies themselves. And Scalzi doesn't disappoint. He makes the entirely correct point that Lucas has nobody who can gainsay his opinions when making the prequels, nobody who can edit him, but then goes on to make the claim that this means that we're seeing undiluted Lucas, without the filters of talented people making him better, and that this just shows how inept Lucas really is without others there to save his bacon.

Now this isn't just stupid, it's disappointing. Scalzi is a very intelligent man. He knows the value of a good editor--hell, he extols it elsewhere in the same collection of blog entries. But somehow, he completely forgets that film is a collaboration and that strong editorial voices make your work better when he has the chance to take a baseball bat to someone he doesn't like already. Of course, Lucas' work isn't as good when nobody can tell him where he's going wrong! Twenty years off from writing and directing probably didn't help much either. But to suggest that this means that the movies were good despite Lucas, not because of them, shows an absolutely staggering ignorance of the basics of film-making.

Yes, Lucas hired other people to do important work on the movies. That's kind of the nature of film-making; the number of movies that can be made by one person can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. But his role on the film was to provide guidance and direction to the "hired guns" that Scalzi apparently thinks did their work in the dead of night, having possibly tied Lucas up to prevent him from interfering with their attempts to rescue his film from mediocrity. Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan didn't turn up with a finished script for Lucas to delight over, then hand off to Irvin Kershner to film; at every stage, from the initial script conference to the two-page brief to the outline to every single draft of the movie, they got copious notes from Lucas on what he wanted changed. And when they finally got around to shooting, it wasn't like Kershner did his work in a vacuum, either.

Lucas was responsible for everything that happened in the Star Wars movies, because that was his job. The man created an entire new company, staffed it, and helped them revolutionize the entire special effects industry because he had a very specific idea of what he wanted his movie to look like and the technology wasn't there yet when he started filming, and we're supposed to believe that the end result of the original 'Star Wars' was "unintentional"? (And anyone who says, "It just had good special effects" misses the point so completely that they've pretty much disqualified themselves from the conversation. 'Star Wars' created a whole new standard for special effects based on the visual aesthetic that Lucas wanted to create--it wasn't just that they were "good", it was that they created an immersive effect that no other film had tried to create before. They were an artistic decision, not merely a technological innovation.)

Ultimately, I feel like there's something fundamentalist in the assertion (not unique to Scalzi) that the Star Wars movies were good despite Lucas, not because of them. The fan mentality simply cannot cope with the idea that the same people responsible for works of staggering genius like the original trilogy can make something so staggeringly inept as the prequels. So in order to preserve our belief in a Towering Auteur Figure Who Can Do No Wrong, we make the brilliant genius someone else in the process and insist that it's them who did all the great stuff. (Which may be the other reason why 'Empire' has become the Official Good Star Wars Movie...although you don't exactly hear people lauding Kershner's other films like 'Never Say Never Again' and 'Robocop 2'.) We don't like our creative idols to have feet of clay, and we don't like to think that studio interference makes movies better, not worse. Lucas' reputation is a casualty of that mindset.

Or, if none of the above convinced you, I can put it another way...Scalzi's essay is the equivalent of arguing that the 'Sandman' comics wouldn't be nearly as good if Neil Gaiman didn't have any editors, and if he drew it all himself. Sure, it's true, but it's meaningless, and anyone who would actually try to present it as an argument for a lack of talent on Gaiman's part would be an idiot.

Sorry, better Scalzi that up a bit, just in case he reads this. "Would be a spastic lemur with the brains of a syphilitic toad." Hope that's a little more entertaining.

A Brief Recommendation

I am given to understand that Tom Tomorrow has released another collection of cartoons, "Too Much Crazy", available on Amazon. I strongly suspect that Tom Tomorrow needs my help promoting books like Arnold Schwarzenegger needs Woody Allen's help moving a couch, but for what it's worth, "This Modern World" is the best political comic going today, by a country mile, and it's always filled with humor and brilliantly incisive wit that perfectly skewers everything wrong with politics today. Tom Tomorrow has the ability to cut through the bullshit like no other, and I include "The Daily Show" in that.

So yes, "Too Much Crazy". I recommend it sight unseen, and I look forward to getting it myself.

Debunking Myths About The "Amazing Race" Finale

Amazing Race 17 is over, and we have another million-dollar winner! (Yes, I actually care about The Amazing Race. Indulge me for a moment, here.) But before we start looking forward to Amazing Race 18: Unfinished Business, we should take a look back at the finale to the last Amazing Race and briefly debunk some of the myths circulating around the events of the last leg of the race. This is spoiler-heavy, so if you're one of those people that waits a few days to watch, wait a few more days to read.

With that in mind, let's move on!

Myth #1: It was bad race design because there was no chance for the racers who were behind to gain on the leading team.

Actually, there were two big chances and one small chance for racers to swap positions. At the float road block, teams that made mistakes could and did lose time on the racers who did it right the first time. (Although I would agree with anyone who pointed out that usually, the judge at a "assemble this thing" challenge doesn't point out what the racer did wrong, only whether or not they did it right--without that advantage, this would have been a third big chance.)

After that, the puzzle represented a huge opportunity for one team to take the lead. If anyone had known the answers to those questions without having to look it up, they would have jumped ahead. And one team did come up with a speedy, clever way to look up the answers without having to drive out of their way, giving them a huge speed advantage over the other two teams. Unfortunately, it happened to be the team already in the lead. Likewise, the "game show" memory challenge could have been a huge stumbling block to any of the three teams, allowing the other two to pass. It wasn't, but it could have been.

Myth #2: It was unfair because one team got a bad taxi, which lost them the race.

Jill and Thomas didn't lose the race because they got a bad taxi. They lost the race because they let their taxi drive around aimlessly for long periods while shouting, "Do you know about the Internet? Can you Google something for us?" instead of just saying, "Take us to the nearest hotel," or "Take us to the nearest Starbucks." By the time they did realize that the cabbie was not going to look up the answers to their clue for them, which was officially Way Too Long, they were in full-on panic mode and just started stopping at random places hoping they had Internet access. I'm not saying they were stupid, or bad racers--just that they had a brain-lock moment at the worst possible time. The taxi driver had very little to do with it. "Taxi roulette" is real, but it's not what lost Jill and Thomas the race.

Myth #3: If the teams are going to have a puzzle clue, they "shouldn't be allowed to look it up on the Internet".

Technically, this isn't a myth, it's an opinion. But it's an opinion that doesn't take into account the facts, which makes it worth debunking anyway. The fact is, any kind of puzzle clue that actually takes local lore into account (which they should, being Amazing Race clues and all) is probably not going to be one the racers know off the top of their heads. Which means either asking locals (and replacing "taxi roulette" with "knowledgeable stranger roulette") or going someplace to look it up. At that point, you might as well send them to the local library and put the clue there. (And technically, Nat and Kat called the local library, making their strategy more in line with the supposed ethos of the "puzzle clue" than either of the other two teams.)

Myth #4: The Race was "stacked" this time around to allow a female/female team to win.

This myth centers on two arguments: One, that they allowed an "unusual" number of female/female teams, and two, that they purposefully chose "weak" male/male and male/female teams so the female/female teams wouldn't be challenged. As to the first...there were eleven teams racing, same as usual. There are three possible gender combinations: male/male, male/female, and female/female. Four teams out of eleven is about a third, and a third of the teams being one of the three gender combinations is perfectly sensible. And as to the second...it's a circular argument, and a sexist one to boot. How do you define a "weak" team? If, as many commenters seem to be doing, you define it as "a team that loses to a pair of GURLS!", then by definition any female/female team that wins is beating a "weak" field of competition. Whereas in fact, Nat and Kat beat out several teams that had as good a chance as any to win. Some of the teams were obviously DOA, but the same is true in any season of the Race. Nat and Kat won because they were smart, and because they stayed calm under pressure and didn't make mistakes. And as a result, they're each $500,000 richer. Good for them!

Underrated Movies: Jason X

Naturally, as all those of you who follow Feng Shui know, this is the story of renegade Buro supersoldier Jason X and his struggles to overthrow the tyrannical government of 2056. They took a few liberties with the source material, but--

No. Wait. This was the movie that actually got parodied before it got made, on MAD TV. The concept of "Jason In Space" was so inherently silly that most fans didn't even watch it. The few that did, though, got a surprisingly sly and silly horror comedy that gleefully sends up the tropes of the science-fiction genre by sending them up against Jason, one by one.

For those of you who haven't seen it, the basic premise is as follows: Having gotten thoroughly sick of trying to shoot, stab, incinerate, detonate, and strangle Jason Voorhees, the government decides to freeze him until someone can figure out why he's so damned unkillable and finish him off. Due to a wacky accident in the cryogenics process, a top expert on Jason's mutant physiology got frozen along with him. (And let me say that I just love this straight-forward, common-sense extrapolation of what we've seen in all the previous movies. Oh, and David Cronenberg makes a cameo in the beginning.)

Fast forward a few hundred years, and a group of Archaeology students are taking a field trip to the ruined world known as Earth. They find Jason and the expert, take them on board, and revive her...little knowing that Jason is pretty self-reviving. Just as soon as two teenagers start having sex, he's off and running!

What follows is a hilarious sci-fi slasher mash-up. We get holodecks, Space Marines, sexy lady androids (the sexy lady android gets all the best lines and the second-best moment in the film) and basically every sci-fi cliche, all of whom get hacked, beaten, and in one spectacular scene, frozen solid in liquid nitrogen and shattered. And speaking of holodecks, the holodeck does provide the single best moment not just in this movie, but the entire Friday the 13th series. There are times when you're not sure that you're supposed to be laughing at what you see on the screen--the film boldly straddles the line between "camp" and "so-bad-it's-good"--but you will have fun the whole time.

Given that it has a Rotten Tomato rating of 21%, I'd say it definitely qualifies as "under-rated".

An Apology, and a Personal Goofy Idea

First, the apology. I know that my posts are getting delayed to the point where I've actually missed a couple in the last couple of weeks; the long-story-short is that after four months of being unemployed, I lucked into a job that is not only offering full-time work at a decent wage, but is actually offering unlimited overtime. It's a golden opportunity to catch back up on my finances, but it's cutting into my free time and energy something wicked. Rest assured, though, that I have no intentions of quitting. My wife wouldn't let me, for one thing.

So today, I'll share one of those little ideas that I might someday pursue, if I someday luck into a lot of money and get to do my own thing without worrying about whether my business is all that successful. I'd like to buy an old movie theater.

Now when I say "old", I don't really mean that old. I'm thinking one of the multiplexes that they overbuilt back in the 90s, when the movie theater business geared up for a huge expansion and found out the hard way that the studios were passing all the losses for crappy movies like 'Godzilla' and 'Waterworld' onto them. A lot of them have been repurposed or demolished, of course, but I like to imagine I could find one. Then I'd transform it into a revival theater. Not one that shows art-house movies, but one that shows classic popcorn flicks--my ethos, plain and simple, would be that it's just more fun to see movies in the theater.

The concessions stand would serve real food--either I'd subcontract out to local restaurants or I'd hire a good chef, but it'd have actual yummy fast food like burgers and fries and stuff instead of just popcorn and nachos. (And yes, I know, movie theaters have expanded their menus a lot lately. That just shows it's a good idea.) I'd also have an arcade in the theater--not just a few video game machines in the corner, but an actual arcade. And the movies...

Every month would be themed, with movies that fit that month's theme and a published schedule for them. For Valentine's Day, for example, the theater would be split into two halves--the "Romance" side would feature flicks like 'The Princess Bride' and 'Say Anything', while the "Anti-Romance" side would feature movies like 'Heathers' and 'Heavenly Creatures' (although some might call that really romantic. After all, nothing says "love" like killing your mom.)

October would be huge; nothing but classic horror flicks all month long, culminating in a Halloween "lock-in" where one double-price ticket buys you as many flicks as you can stay in the theater for (and yes, sleeping bags would be allowed.) And we'd show the complete Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween series.

And every Friday night at midnight, we'd have the Midnight Movie Cage Match--two movies play in two different theaters, and I keep track of attendance. Winner stays, loser goes. (Rocky Horror Picture Show is not invited to this competition, because I think that too many people would go to it simply because "we always go to Rocky Horror!") Films like 'Little Shop of Horrors', 'Shaun of the Dead', 'Slither', 'Clue', 'Grindhouse', 'From Dusk Till Dawn', 'Army of Darkness', 'Mars Attacks', 'Return of the Living Dead', 'Doomsday', 'Donnie Darko'...two movies enter. One movie leaves.

I'm aware that this is not a major money-making proposition. It is, in fact, probably a money-loser (although I like to imagine it wouldn't hemorrhage cash.) But I think it'd be a fun place to work and spend time and run, and that's almost more important than money. Assuming you have money to burn, which I don't at the moment, which is why I'm working sixty hours a week. Which is why, to bring it all back to the beginning, I'm apologizing for the slow update schedule of late.

Meet 'N Greet #7

Today, ye scurvy dogs, we be talking about another City of Villains character I made. This sea dog were once another ordinary pirate like you and me, until he ran afoul of cursed treasure that forced him to sail the seven seas for all time, doomed to search endlessly for the man he stole from so that he can return it!

His ailment, Cursed Treasure Syndrome or CTS, strikes a pirate every thirty seconds. CTS is the single largest cause of undeath for pirates, swashbucklers, privateers, and buccaneers across the Spanish Main. The CTS Spokes-Pirate is stealing, maiming and killing to raise awareness of CTS throughout the Rogue Isles. Your involuntary donation could help remove an unlucky seagull from around a sailor's neck, return cursed gold to its rightful owner, or just let an unlucky pirate have a night on the town (inasmuch as he can, given his inability to taste real food and drink.)

CTS can strike anyone at any time. So please, give before it hurts.