December 2008 Archives

Here's a random bit of flotsam I've been intending to post for a while, a really cool photo of the great silent-film comedian Buster Keaton taken late in his life:

I found it over at Booksteve's Library, where it's theorized that this image has something to do with a number of beer commercials Keaton made for television in the 1950s. (Ironic, considering Keaton was an alcoholic.)

As I said, I've been meaning to post it anyway because I like Keaton and I like the moody, noir-ish atmosphere captured in the pic. But it's got some special significance to me tonight, as I sit alone with my thoughts in a dark and quiet house. I'm feeling pretty moody myself, for reasons I'll explain later. In the meantime, just enjoy this uncommon look at a genuine Hollywood legend...

If you drive due west from Salt Lake City, past the Great Salt Lake and out across the West Desert, you'll arrive in an hour or two -- depending on how heavy your right foot happens to be -- at a dusty outpost town called Wendover. Well, technically you'll find two Wendovers out that way, because the town straddles the Utah-Nevada border. On the Nevada side, a handful of casinos and other, ahem, adult businesses lend West Wendover a certain glitz and affluence. Wendover, Utah, on the other hand, is much quieter, darker, and sadder, a fading remnant of more important days.

So, as I mentioned earlier, I sat up half the night last night talking politics with an old friend. The conversation -- which occasionally flirted with becoming an argument but thankfully never went too far in that direction -- was pretty standard liberal vs. conservative stuff and isn't worth detailing here. (Not that I could reconstruct much of it anyhow; one consequence -- or perhaps it's a blessing -- of having these conversations at two in the morning is that they end up looking pretty hazy the next day.) But one thing my friend said struck me as noteworthy, because it was so unexpected and, from my point of view, so very odd.

My friend said that he and others he knows who share similar views often feel like they don't dare express their opinions, for fear of offending people, starting an argument, and/or being unfairly judged. Now, I completely understand and sympathize with that feeling. As a self-identified liberal* living in the reddest state in the Union, I experience it to one degree or another just about every day. It's the reason why I rarely blog about politics or controversial topics, because I know the bulk of my audience doesn't agree with me and I don't want to pick fights with my friends (or, indeed, with anyone; I don't need the elevated blood pressure and anxiety that comes with it). But here's the thing that I found so strange about my friend's comment: his opinions are basically the same as those of roughly 75 percent of this state's population. In other words, the overwhelming majority of people around these parts are on his side. So realistically just who does he think he's going to offend? Why should he of all people feel insecure about speaking up?

I don't mean to make light of what he said or invalidate his feelings in any way -- if he feels intimidated or inhibited, that's what he feels and it's not my place to say he's wrong for feeling that way. And perhaps I misunderstood what he was getting at; maybe he was just saying what my mom has always told me, which is that it's impolite and generally a bad idea to discuss religion and politics openly. Maybe his job places him in situations where he's more likely to find himself interacting with that dissenting minority and he's had to learn to keep his mouth shut to avoid problems (welcome to my world). But given the overall demographics of our environment here... well, it just struck me as a very odd thing to say...

* For what it's worth, my friend told me he doesn't think I'm as liberal as I believe myself to be. I suppose I should take that as a form of compliment.

...first thing after a foolishly late night of debating politics with an old friend followed by very little sleep:

more animals

McMuffin anyone?

I hope everyone reading had a nice Christmas or other mid-winter holiday unique to your tradition and preference. My own was unexpectedly good, with much more contentment and much less angst and drama than in years past. Of course, the weather sucked. Seriously, after three days of more-or-less constant snowfall and four sessions of driveway clearing, you can have your winter frickin' wonderland. (God, my shoulders are sore.)

My corporate overlords have kindly granted me the next week off, so, among lots of other projects I need to do around the house, I hope to complete some unfinished blog entries that have been hanging over my head for a while now. Stay tuned...

If I was embarrassed by the level of my own geekery on display in the previous entry, than this one is going to be downright mortifying. Still, it made me laugh, so I figured it was worth passing on, although you'll have to be something of a geek yourself to see the humor:

This is a clip from a BBC sketch comedy show called Dead Ringers. I'm not familiar with it, but they certainly live up to the name in this piece. The guy playing the Fourth Doctor especially amazes me; he doesn't particularly look like Tom Baker, but the voice and, my god, the laugh are uncanny. Good stuff!

My thanks to SamuraiFrog, who is pretty uncanny himself in his ability to find stuff like this...

I'm late in commenting on this, so I'm sure everyone reading already knows that Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and the only actor with the distinction of having appeared, in some form or other, in every incarnation of the long-running franchise -- including the Saturday-morning cartoon in the early '70s and, reportedly, the upcoming remake film -- died last week after a short fight with leukemia. She was 76 years old.

You'd never guess from the usual content of this blog, but I'm not always comfortable with my own fanboyism, especially when it comes to revealing the depths of my attachment to the nerdy stuff that consumes so much of my attention. Still, I have to admit that I flinched when I heard this news. Another of the original crew gone...

Seeing all those glorious mullets and baggy t-shirts and big-block plaids earlier sent me wandering around the InterWebs in search of more of the nostalgic same, which eventually led me to 80s-Music.net and the following compilation of music-video clips that span the entire decade. It's pretty fun:

Is it just me or did music go to hell the year after I graduated from high school (1987)?

I've noted before that I'm not a big fan of Christmas music, and the stuff from that I do like tends to be of the more melancholy, wistful variety. The upbeat songs usually make me squirm, because their cheerfulness so often strikes me as synthetic and forced, if not downright hysterical -- "Carol of the Bells" is a particular offender in the "hysteria" category; it always sounds to me like the performers are going to ram their bells down our throats if we don't acknowledge their mantra of "merrymerrymerrymerrychristmas!" -- and also because I simply don't want to give into their shiny insistence that everything is holly-jolly-wonderful. So I was a little bit surprised at just how happy this old music video made me feel when I ran across it earlier, especially considering that I've been teetering at the edge of my annual funk for a couple of days:

Yes, I know this song -- "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid, in case you don't remember -- and its American counterpart, "We Are the World," are sappy and condescending toward the very people they were recorded to help, and we all got really damn tired of hearing them every five minutes (especially "We Are the World," which at its peak was well-nigh inescapable). But I got a kick out of seeing the old clothing styles and trying to identify all the participants, and... well, hell, I'm not going to apologize for the fact that this little piece of '80s claptrap made me feel better on a gloomy morning. Maybe it'll do the same for someone out there...

Via Sullivan, who made me smile with his quip that, "George Michael's hair always makes my yuletide gayer."

For the record, I still miss my mullet.

By now, everyone has no doubt seen that video of a disgruntled Iraqi journalist hurling his shoes at President Bush in a gesture of contempt. Naturally, the Internet was immediately awash in parodies, mash-ups, and remixes of said video. Here's my favorite response thus far:

(I moved it below the fold as a favor to anyone with a slow-loading connection...)

My lovely Girlfriend has informed me that yesterday's entry may fall into the dread category of "Too Much Information." To anyone whose sensibilities were offended by my description of my physical symptoms, I apologize.

Still... I thought the hand-cranked egg beaters were a pretty powerful image. Sometimes I actually believe I might be one of those writer fellows you hear so much about...

Chugging a Starbucks grande caffe mocha and then immediately going to The Old Spaghetti Factory for a gargantuan plate of spinach tortellini with alfredo sauce is a really bad idea. I had the lousy night's sleep last night -- during which my torso felt like a 50-gallon drum packed with Crisco that's being gently whipped with a set of old-fashioned hand-cranked egg beaters -- followed by the sour stomach all day today to prove it. Ugh. Off now for another swig of Pepto... hope everyone reading this is doing better than me.

Remember that slightly off-color item I posted last week, the one about the 130,000 inflatable novelty breasts that had gone missing somewhere between China and Australia? Well, they've been found... turns out there was a paperwork error and the plastic mammaries went to Melbourne instead of Sydney. Employees of Ralph, the men's mag that purchased the boobies, are even now frantically stuffing them into bags so the holiday issue of the magazine will go out on time.

I must confess to being somewhat disappointed. In the words of one commenter over at Boing Boing, I was looking forward to reports of these things washing ashore somewhere. On the positive side, the article I linked above says that Ralph "is expected to break the Guinness world record for the most boobs given away at one time."

It's the story that keeps on giving, I tell you!

I can't say I'm unhappy with the results of this "Which Action Hero Would You Be?" quiz:

You Scored as James Bond, Agent 007 James Bond is MI6's best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license to kill. He doesn't care about rules or regulations and is somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner. James Bond, Agent 007 79% Batman, the Dark Knight 79% Indiana Jones 75% El Zorro 75% Neo, the "One" 71% Captain Jack Sparrow 63% William Wallace 63% Lara Croft 63% Maximus 58% The Terminator 54% The Amazing Spider-Man 50%

Suave, sophisticated... yeah, I like the sound of that. And I do look good in a tux, on the very, very rare occasion I'm called upon to wear one. I find it kind of weird, however, that I scored equally on Bond and Batman. What do these characters have in common, aside from access to high-tech gadgets and seemingly unlimited financial resources? Hm. Well, maybe I just answered my own question.

As for the equivalency of Indy and Zorro, well, I suppose they both use a whip, even if Zorro is better known for his swordplay. But wait, none of the questions asked about whips. And since when is The Terminator a hero? Strange...

Via Jim by way of Konstantin.

Something occurred to me yesterday while I was watching a re-run of The Incredible Hulk on our local RTN affiliate. Well, actually it occurred to me during a commercial break: of all the "as seen on TV" crap products that used to fill the airwaves with their seductive flim-flammery during the '70s and '80s, how is it that the only one that seems to have followed us into the 21st century is the Chia Pet? Seriously, this is what turns out to be the timeless kitsch classic that endures? Whatever became of the Pocket Fisherman, Mister Microphone, and those el-cheapo plastic boxes that were supposed to let you mold snow bricks and build igloos but somehow never quite worked as advertised? I wonder about these things...

Incidentally, that episode of The Hulk was an unbelievable confluence of nostalgic awesomeness... first of all, it was The Incredible Hulk, a series I watched pretty faithfully as a kid (and yet oddly, I can't really remember a single individual plotline; of course, they were all pretty much the same plot, weren't they?). It was set in one of my favorite cities, San Francisco (even though it was obviously filmed on the Universal backlot in Burbank), and the story involved a young cop struggling to choose between the path of peace offered by his zen martial-arts instructor and the violent quest for revenge advocated by his older brother. The older brother was Gerald McRaney of Simon & Simon, another childhood fave series, while the young cop was played by none other than my main man Rick Springfield. The episode felt like it might have been intended as a stealth pilot for a vehicle for Rick, as by the end of it he's become the new master of the dojo (following the death of the old master) and a private eye who promises to take only the clients he can really help. If it was a pilot, it's too bad it wasn't picked up... it might've been interesting. Kung Fu meets The Rockford Files, maybe...

Business writing is so painful sometimes...

Some see the emergence of UC&C as the catalyst for a sea change in long-established business organizational models, particularly as new methods of team productivity supplant conventional corporate hierarchies as potent mechanisms for wealth creation.

The first half of that sentence isn't too bad, but everything from the comma forward... oy. It makes my heart hurt.

A few excerpts from a particularly astute piece at the ever-amusing McSweeny's called "Fifty Years of Popular Songs Condensed into Single Sentences":

In case you haven't noticed, I devote a lot of my energies around this place to memorializing, eulogizing, or otherwise trying to recapture, through whatever magic my words may posses, the recent past: the pre-digital, pre-Internet, pre-adult-responsibility (for me, anyhow) era of the 1970s and '80s. But sometimes words just aren't up to the task. Sometimes a little visual aid is helpful. So, for those whippersnappers in the audience who never knew The Way Things Used to Be and for you older folks who still pine for 1985 -- you know you do, just admit it! -- allow me to present BetaMaXmas.

This fun little website runs YouTube clips of old Christmas specials, holiday-themed episodes of '80s-vintage sitcoms (watch for a mulleted George Clooney on The Facts of Life!), and appropriate vintage commercials and music videos, all of which would be entertaining enough on its own. But what makes BetaMaXmas a real treasure is the cleaver virtual environment, which you can see in the screengrab above. Yes, kids, that's really what the world used to look like: tacky wood-veneer paneling, ugly upholstery, a TV screen smaller than the window on a modern microwave oven, and of course the rabbit-ear antennae that make a snowy picture, um, somewhat less snowy. (You can even manipulate the rabbit-ears, for the full old-tymey effect!) The Star Wars poster peeking out from behind the Christmas tree is an especially nice touch, I thought, and don't neglect to click on the copy of TV Guide up in the corner.

And now if you'll excuse me, a Very Special Episode of Alf is about to begin, so I'm going to pour myself some 'nog and put my feet up...

(Via Boing Boing, of course.)

The Girlfriend just called me at home to ask if I'd heard the news: Forrest J. Ackerman, the original and possibly greatest fanboy of us all, died yesterday at the age of 92.

I imagine a lot of my readers probably have no idea who old Forry is, but to those of us who travel in certain rarefied circles, the man is a legend. He founded the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland way back in 1958; it was, so far as I know, the first professional publication devoted exclusively to genre movies. He was a writer and editor, and a literary agent for such giants of science-fiction literature as Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, and Hugo Gernsback (for whom the distinguished Hugo Awards are named). Forry was the first to publish a short story by some kid named Ray Bradbury. And he is credited with coining the term "sci fi," much to the chagrin of a certain strain of too-serious-for-their-own-good fans who think this contraction of "science fiction" too undignified and childish.

But most of all, Forry is known for collecting stuff. To every fan with a basement full of cherished memorabilia, Forry is our spiritual godfather. He spent his entire life amassing books, magazines, posters, original art, movie props and costumes -- anything and everything that had to do with his beloved horror, sci fi, and fantasy genres. His collection at one time reportedly comprised 300,00 pieces, and was valued in the mid-1960s at $10 million in today's money.

Some people, maybe even most people who had a collection like that would treat it as a mere investment, keep it to themselves, and worry constantly about its worth and safety. Forry, however, and to his great credit, was always happy to share it with whomever was interested. I've heard that all you had to do was show up at his California home, the "Ackermansion," on a Saturday morning, and he would greet you at the door in Bela Lugosi's Dracula cape and take you on the grand tour. Anne and I talked several times of making our own pilgrimage to the Ackermansion but just never got around to it.

Sadly, Forry's collection is mostly gone now, sold off a little at a time over the past decade to cover medical and legal expenses. It's a damn shame. To paraphrase Indiana Jones, all that stuff belonged in a museum as a monument to one man's life and passion, and to a big chunk of Hollywood and publishing history. C'est la vie, I suppose. (For the record, I'm proud to own a small piece of Forry's collection, a few American Cinematographer magazines I purchased off eBay a while back when I heard he was liquidating his stash.)

I never had the opportunity to meet Forrest Ackerman, and that is something I will long regret. He was, by all accounts, one of the truly good guys of this world. And probably of several others, too, given his life's pursuits. His LA Times obit is here; an older piece containing more information about his collection is here.

Rest in peace, Dr. Acula...

A pretty good laugh, courtesy of SamuraiFrog:

Paris Hilton can’t find a record label willing to release her second album. Between that and Ann Coulter having her jaw wired shut, atheists appear to be losing the argument.

In an unrelated note, the Frog also mentions that remakes have been announced this week of more movies from the '80s, specifically They Live, Romancing the Stone, and Arthur. While new versions of Romancing the Stone and Arthur sound like disasters waiting to happen, remaking They Live actually isn't such a bad idea. I just watched this one last week for the first time in 20 years (good lord, how I hate saying things like that!), and I think it's the exceedingly rare case I mentioned the other day of an idea that didn't live up to its potential and deserves a second attempt. It had a great premise (an ordinary joe accidentally discovers there are aliens among us disguised as normal human beings, and that they're controlling us with subliminal messages in our advertising and entertainment) and, if anything, the film's social commentary probably applies even more now than it did back in 1988 (people are more obsessed than ever with mass media and self-destructive materialism), but holy crap was that movie a mess. All set-up, no pay-off, and a big disappointment coming from one of my favorite directors, John Carpenter. So, assuming that They Live Redux is more thoughtful than the original and not just an amped-up FX spectacle, this is one remake I might actually be interested in seeing...

We interrupt your regular programming for an important historical note: Today is the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, the disastrous social experiment that did very little to curb the behavior it was designed to end, but did manage to make some very bad people very rich and powerful while bringing appalling levels of violence to the streets of American cities. (See also Drugs, War on.) As I've noted before, I find it endlessly amusing that my home state of Utah, home of the tee-totaling Mormons, was the one that cast the deciding vote in favor of repeal. (In a nice bit of historical symmetry, Utah was also the deciding vote in ratifying the Constitutional amendment that created Prohibition in the first place, so perhaps it was only fitting that we undid it as well.)

I've been on quite a run of epic nerdiness lately -- you're very kind to say you hadn't noticed, but please, we both know better -- and I'm beginning to worry about alienating that segment of readers who don't know an alluvial damper from a flux capacitor. Therefore, as a favor to all you non-fanboys and fangirls out there, I promise that none of the following links has anything whatsoever to do with Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or any of the other shows whose titles I used to scribble on my notebook covers back in elementary and middle school...

For many years, it's been something of a parlor game among the nerdy classes to speculate on what would happen if one of the starships Enterprise from the Star Trek franchise faced off in battle against an Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars. In fact, this particular hypothetical has been such a common topic of discussion in sci-fi fan circles that it's become a tremendous cliche: Much like those 2 a.m. college dorm-room discussions in which someone suggests that maybe, just maybe, our lives are only dreams and none of the other people in the room are real and how damn trippy would that be?, it's the topic that everybody has encountered at some time or another.

The outcome of this debate is both inevitable and inconclusive: it ultimately comes down to simple partisanship, i.e., which franchise the debaters happen to be a bigger fan of. The Trekkies usually cite Star Trek's defensive shielding technology (which seems to be lacking or at least far less impressive in George Lucas' universe) and the seemingly infinite flexibility of phaser weapons as the decisive reason why the Enterprise would kick butt. Meanwhile, the arguments of Star Wars fans (Warsies?) usually depend on the sheer scale of Imperial machinery and the brute force commanded by those British-sounding guys in gray.*

This video (one of the better-made ones I've seen in this particular sub-genre) introduces a hitherto ignored factor into the equation:

Picard and those guys on the Enterprise sure are smug bastards, aren't they? You think whoever made this clip was making a comment about the Trekkies he'd encountered? (Seriously, there's a subset of Trekkies that can be downright insufferable... Star Wars fans generally seem to be a lot more relaxed about their pet obsession, as long as you don't mention Jar Jar Binks.)

* For what it's worth (and at the risk of sounding even geekier than I did when I analyzed the provenance of the USS Kelvin the other day), I tend to side with the Warsies on this one. It's been established time and time again that the Enterprise's deflectors can only take so much abuse, so I think the Empire could win simply by dropping a hundred or so TIE fighters to pound away at the Big E while the Destroyer hangs back out of phaser range. The TIEs would be too small and fast for the E to efficiently take down with its artillery-scale phaser banks; meanwhile, the fighters' weapons might be puny against the E's shields but they would take their toll. It might take all day, but eventually the shields would collapse; then a couple of well-placed turbolaser blasts and it's back to Coruscant for a round of cold ones with Palpatine... but that's just my theory.