DSC_0057, originally uploaded by jason.bennion.
Want to know how to ruin a beautiful springtime Sunday afternoon? How about having someone back into your Mustang and bugger up pretty much the entire passenger side? Yeah, that’ll do it…
It has come to my attention that B.B. King’s latest album is called One Kind Favor, not One Small Favor as I previously said. Just in case anyone is keeping track…
So did anybody catch this week’s CSI? The murder-victim-of-the-week was an arrogant guy who’d produced a new version of a beloved 40-year-old science fiction TV show called Astro Quest (any resemblance to an actual beloved 40-year-old science fiction TV show with a similar name is purely intentional). Seems there were a lot of potential suspects because this guy’s “redux” was so poorly received by the fans of the original. Where the original had been “antiseptic,” “brightly lighted,” and populated by noble characters that “ordinary people couldn’t possibly live up to,” AQ Redux turned out to be dark and grungy-looking, with angsty, sweaty, deeply flawed, and horribly unlikable characters. The producer justified this as “more realistic,” but the fans who saw his preview reel in a convention setting responded by rioting.
Obviously, the writers of this episode have been thinking about the upcoming remake of Star Trek, but, in an in-joke I’m sure they thought was terribly clever, the fan who starts the riot by shouting “You suck!” was none other than Ron Moore, the executive producer and primary creative force behind the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. In other words, a guy who did in real life exactly what the fictional producer in the CSI episode had done. It was a cute moment for those in the know, but I find myself trying to decide just what was being said here. In other words, at whose expense was this joke made? Is Moore (or at least the writers of CSI) acknowledging that fans of older properties are justified in being unhappy with “gritty” remakes? Or were they slamming grumbly old-school types like myself as buffoons?
Honestly, I think you could make either argument. The episode does include a scene in which one of the regular characters explains to another why fans get upset when people tamper with the things that matter to them, but that same scene also features some dismissive remarks about that behavior. The episode itself closes on a rather sweet note, with an homage to a well-remembered scene from Star Trek, er, Astro Quest, and the CSI crew planning a marathon viewing of the classic show. So I guess you could see it as trying to present an even-handed view of the whole phenomenon, at least as far as is necessary to tell the weekly procedural story. But, while I acknowledge I’m probably too touchy about these things, I can’t help but feel like, yet again, the people like me — who prefer the “cheesy” and “campy” (god, I hate those adjectives!) originals to the slick-but-depressing modern versions — are being dissed.
You damn kids can keep your edgy shit. I assure you it will one day seem as archaic as the stuff where Starbuck is a guy and the captain’s shirt is weak around the shoulder seams. In the meantime, I think it’s really just a matter of taste. As far as I’m concerned, real life is edgy, gritty, and angsty enough. I prefer heroes I can aspire to over tragic, uncertain trainwrecks…
The Girlfriend and I have seen the legendary blues guitarist B.B. King perform live several times, and every time we do, we seem to end up discussing the possibility that this might be the last time. That may sound ghoulish, but consider the facts: The man is 83 years old, and a plus-size diabetic to boot. Surely we can’t have that many more opportunities to see him in concert, as sad as that is to contemplate.
I am working on something a bit more substantive, but for now I couldn’t resist grabbing the “Alphabet of Obscure Science Fiction Classics” Meme from SF Signal. Here are the rules:
“You know the drill. Copy the list and make titles for movies you’ve seen appear in bold.”
And now for the list, with my boldings and a few comments:
If you listen much to National Public Radio, one of the things you notice is how the names of all the hosts don’t sound much like, say, your name. There’s a lot of ethnic diversity in NPR’s ranks, for one thing — on any given broadcast, you’re likely to hear the voices of Lakshmi Singh, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, or Sylvia Poggioli, for example — but even the more “regular” names just have a certain ring to them: Neal Conan (any name from the Hyborian Age is guaranteed cool, right?), Jason Beaubien, Salt Lake’s own Howard Berkes, Noah Adams, Steve Inskeep… these simply aren’t names you’re likely to encounter in the real world. I’ve long lusted after a cool name, the sort of name that invites respect and conjures images of exotic lands, daring deeds, and arcane knowledge. An NPR name.
Now, thanks to the link my buddy MikeG sent me this afternoon, I can have such a moniker. The formula is surprisingly simple:
Here’s how it works: You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.
And just like that my name becomes — are you ready? — Regjinald St. Goar.
Regjinald St. Goar, named for a delightful little village on the Rhine River in Germany. I like it! So what’s yours?
What follows is without a doubt the most obscure LOLcat I’ve ever posted here at Simple Tricks… possibly the most obscure one I’ve ever seen, for that matter. I think I have maybe two readers who will get this one (no need to stand or anything, you know who you are). But I get it, and I think it’s pretty damn funny:
This came from our old friend, The Bad Astronomer. I believe he created it, too, the clever fellow.
(Note: If you don’t get it, I doubt an explanation will make it seem any funnier, but you can always try. Go here and here for the necessary context.)
After three TV-oriented entries in a row, my loyal readers can be forgiven for thinking I’ve given up on any pretense of an actual life, but I want to mention that The Girlfriend and I have really been enjoying the new series Castle. It’s basically a throwback to the ’80s-vintage detective shows I grew up on, somewhat similar to Moonlighting, only without the smug self-awareness that so often came across as less clever than irritating.
Nathan Fillion of the late, lamented Firefly plays Rick Castle, a very successful writer of crime novels who, as the series begins, has just killed off the protagonist of his best-selling series in a fit of creative boredom. Chance brings him into contact with NYPD Detective Kate Beckett when she comes to him for consultation on a murder case that appears to have been inspired by one of his books. Inspired himself by Beckett, Castle pulls a few strings and becomes her unlikely (and unwilling, on her part) partner. Ostensibly tagging along on Beckett’s cases in the name of “research,” Castle naturally starts helping her solve bizarre murders by working out the “plot” of the mystery.
Honestly, the mysteries are probably the weakest aspect of Castle, but they always were on the classic detective shows I loved in the ’80s, too. Like Magnum or Simon & Simon, the real pleasure comes from watching the likable characters interact with one another. Fillion is perfectly cast as a flirtatious, wisecracking man-child, spoiled by fame and a seemingly bottomless bank account that allows him to pretty much get away with anything; as the show progresses, however, he’s started to demonstrate that there’s a good and even noble man lurking under the smart-ass exterior. Stana Katic as Beckett has been a little more difficult to like, a little tougher to see as anything but a straight man to Castle’s nonsense, but she’s starting to reveal some interesting depths as well, and she and Fillion have an enjoyable chemistry.
My favorite relationship on the show, however, is between Castle and his teenage daughter Alexis, played by newcomer Molly C. Quinn. Predictably, she’s characterized as the mature counterpoint to Castle’s childish behavior, but the two actors bounce off each other with such comfort and good timing that they appear to be a real father-daughter pair.
One final element that has endeared the show to me: each episode appears to contain a single geeky in-joke. So far, I’ve caught references to Highlander, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Land of the Lost, and I imagine there are probably others that I didn’t notice. I can only assume these are intended as Easter eggs for Fillion’s Firefly peeps, but whatever the reason for them, I like…
Castle is on ABC on Monday nights. Check your local listings, as they say. And let’s hope this show gets more of a chance than Firefly or Fillion’s last network series Drive, which was ignominiously canned by Fox — of course! — after only four episodes. Too bad, too, as I thought that one had potential…
I made several references in the previous entry to St. Elsewhere, a series I remember with a lot of affection but honestly not much detail. It’s been a long time since I posted a TV title sequence, so I thought this might be a good time to revive the category. The sound quality on this clip is a little dodgy; the source appears to be an old VHS tape that’s seen its better days:
I always liked that music. Somewhere I have an old audio cassette containing a bunch of themes from the early ’80s that I recorded by holding a microphone up to the television speaker, and I know the St. Elsewhere theme is one of them. And I’d completely forgotten that Denzel Washington got his start on this show! How unlike me, given my usual command of useless trivia. Would it redeem me in the eyes of my loyal readers if I mention that William Daniels, a.k.a. Dr. Mark Craig, was the voice of KITT in the original Knight Rider series?
The first season of St. Elsewhere is available on DVD or Hulu, if you’re interested. I’m thinking I need to check it out again myself…
I haven’t watched ER on any kind of regular basis for years. I started losing interest after Dr. Mark Greene — wonderfully played by Anthony Edwards of Top Gun fame — died of a brain tumor in Season Eight, leaving Noah Wyle’s Dr. John Carter as the only remnant of the show’s original cast. Nothing against any of the actors who rotated into County General as the old folks left, but I just never found any of the newer characters as compelling as the first group. Also, while the really over-the-top “event” episodes were still in the future (I think… it’s hard to recall quite what happened when, considering I haven’t seen many of these episodes in years), the show was already evolving toward sensationalistic (and frequently ridiculous) sweeps-week plotlines and a tangled soap-opera-esque preoccupation with who was hooking up with whom in between patients. (Honestly, was there any woman around that hospital that Luka didn’t have a go at? Maybe Kerri Weaver, but that’s only because she turned out to be a lesbian…)
And yet, I never did give up entirely on the show. I kept tuning in from time to time, even after I’d reached the point of not knowing the names of any of the characters anymore, and I was thinking of them only as “John Stamos,” “the Rock and Roll Kid,” “Red-head Dude with the Beard,” and “Cute Nurse with the Big Watchband.” Oh, and, of course, Neela, whose name stuck because I thought she was a babe. I guess I took the show for granted; I always knew that if I couldn’t think of anything better to occupy my attention on Thursday nights around 9 PM, well, there was always ER.
