I am apparently a sexist, hypocritical bastard

People who look like this don't get jobs as waitresses.
They get a million dollars for talking funny and getting naked every three episodes.

I hate seeing so many pretty people on TV.

Alright, obviously that's a lie. Maybe vitriol, if I can save some face. I'm tired of seeing average people on TV dating or married to smoking hot individuals (The League, any family dinner-comedy, and every show where a fat comedian is married with the exceptions of Roseanne [giving her a hot husband would have been disingenuous and double-standards prevented it from seeming believable] and Mike and Molly [which I'll get to in a second]). I'm also tired of seeing gorgeous people having hard lives as if they didn't know they were gorgeous. (True Blood, The New Girl, Two Broke Girls, etc.)

Do you know what happens when you grow up pretty and outgoing?

You become a successful actress. Brooding and Tortured Guy doesn't hang around playing video games all day in his boxers, he grows up and works three jobs in between auditions until he lands a gig opposite Zooey Deschanel for a couple seasons making good money. And yeah, in his free time then he plays Call of Duty in his skivvies. But he's not clinically depressed about never meeting girls.

The nerds on The Big Bang Theory date gorgeous women. Haha, joke joke, everyone's pretty on TV. Yes. Everyone. Even the ugly people on TV aren't that ugly. Hell, Ugly Betty was pretty cute, they just did a major reverse-montage on her every episode, like watching a high school prom movie backwards. We're creating neurotic children with impossible perceptions of beauty because we just don't like to look at anyone who isn't uncommonly attractive in our leisure time.

And yet I don't like Mike and Molly. I don't like looking at Ron Howard's brother on The League. I have no interest in watching any of the women from Bridesmaids in any of the things they have ever been in, including that amazing film I still haven't seen, simply because I do not find myself enjoying looking at them.

I've been sucked into this scheme as much as everyone else, so all I can do is propose this:

Let us hold ourselves to a higher standard than we have, so perhaps there will be fewer obese, slothful, unhealthy people in the real world.

And let us hold others to a standard lower, so that we will see beauty in unaugmented human beings who genuinely try to be their best.



Also, let's murder anyone who starred in a reality show just because they were famous for being famous. I figure that's gotta give us a leg-up.

Swamp Pawn?

What?

I'm sorry, did you just take the best rated shows from the History Channel and slap them together?

How about throwing the word "Ice" in there? Maybe some extras, too.

Who wouldn't watch Ice Swamp Pawn Boss Top Wars?

On Turning 26

Considering all the tech in my room, I guess I never really outgrew my nightlight, huh?


Router, tv, cable box, BluRay, Roku box … yup, no monsters getting in here.

Their Name Is Jonas

They have an "autographed" picture of Nick Jonas hanging in the back room at work. I wanted to mock it one day. This is what my brain immediately came up with, and I instantly regretted not living in the one universe among the infinite where Disney takes risks and pays for music rights and is just generally more awesome than it is here.


*Note: Video is blocked in Germany due to international copyright restrictions. To my Deutch readers, sorry, and I hope you can proxy.

On Cable Television

Probably the best cable box replacement for your buck.
Love this little guy.

I'm trying to cut back on watching cable television. I was out of the game for a while, and then I discovered The Hub, which, late at night, is pretty much every badass cartoon show I watched from ages five to fourteen. It's a better way to fall asleep, even compared to dozing off to Food Network, dreaming only of eating bacon and beef.

See, I'm in the process of moving, and one of the easiest ways I can save money is to not pay out the colon for cable T.V. I'm not going to watch, except for a few hours a night and maybe one weekend day. Frankly, that's why I have internet.

Fiscal Planning Blog!

There is no reason to have cable T.V. A family splitting streaming-only Netflix and Hulu+ pays $15/mo. for a ton of movies and 90% of cable television, with backlog. I watched ExoSquad for god's sake. And you can get it on your T.V., your computer, or your phone/tablet. I'm tossing in Amazon Prime, and now I can rent/stream damn near anything for free or cheap, for only $39. (Amazon Student gives you free shipping but not streaming for a year, however it discounts the normally $79 Prime membership after that for up to three more years.)

So, basically, the only thing I can't watch is HBO, which my family never had anyway.

Oh, and of course there's still the wonderful Bangladeshi black market that is the Internet when I'm otherwise out of luck.

Oh, where will I get my local news?? I live outside New York. My local news is FOX 5. If I'm worried about the weather I'll look outside, check to see if I have a sinus headache, and maybe go to the local radio's website. I get my news from the BBC, tech blogs, and Jon Fucking Stewart.

The important part of the blog:

Not including my DVDs an Blu-Ray, I now have about four different ways to watch Firefly.


"You can't stop the signal, Mal."

Patty Mayonnaise: Race Warrior?

Girl, you knocked me to the ground. Bitches always be trippin'.

I've discovered one wonderful thing about becoming a responsible adult:

If you stay up late enough at night, there are plenty of old cartoons on television.

Admittedly, it's also kind of a curse, insofar as Transformers Generation 1 is pretty weak, as is G.I. Joe, Doug, Rugrats, Hey, Arnold! and every other show I can catch at 1 a.m. Up-shot: these shows were really straightforward about being preachy or, more often, a little racist.

Except when it came to race, surprisingly. I guess you could be a little culturally racist back then, just not racially racist. Point in fact: I just watched a few episodes of Archer. They openly say, "You're black…ish?" Granted, that's for adults, but adults who are my age and therefore remember characters like Suzie from Rugrats. Suzie was black. No one ever said anything, because it didn't matter to her character, but she definitely spoke and acted with a particularly … urban '90s flare.

Or, let's continue being forthcoming, Patty Mayonnaise was almost certainly at least a quarter black.

Listen, Doug was Caucasian. His dad was a little Jewish or Mediterranean, and his mom was so pink it's patently obvious she was Irish. Skeeter was clearly supposed to be African-American as far as style was concerned, but is dad was an angry, stout, German type. Beebe Bluff was a WASP, but purple, Roger was classic, middle-America green-trash hick, and the Dinks were also rather violet, and rich, so let's accept that they're similarly in vein with Beebe's heritage.

But Patty was orange. So was her dad. She definitely wasn't Hispanic, but she was by far the darkest character on Doug next to Skeeter, even though she and her father both had blond hair. Taking Skeeter into account, and her resemblance to her father, the most reasonable explanation is that Patty was the offspring of her half-black father and her either also half-black or otherwise light skinned, now-deceased mother.

Is this a big deal? Not in the slightest! But it's weird, in retrospect, to realize it was never addressed. The protagonist's love interest was a minority in their school, who at times faced discrimination, but only ever for being a girl, or talented, or too popular for her own sanity. Never because of her heritage or her paraplegic father. Did all the other Bluffington kids work through those foibles prior to the fourth grade?

Honestly, I'm pretty glad that race was never made an issue in Doug. It was entirely superfluous to the characters, which says a lot about race relations among the children in Bluffington. Maybe that's not how they did things in Bloatsberg.

Still, they made a big deal out of everything else, even the Beat(le)s. Just surprising they never tapped that well.

You know, like Doug obviously did after prom.

Happy Days Is "Eyes Wide Shut" Without the Masks

"Guys, I think Kate Chopin had a point about
women being raised to expect an external
locus of identity. I'm going to need to reread
my Showalter."
"AAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!"

I ran across an episode of Happy Days with the premise that Richie needs to find a better place to take his girl, because it's too cramped having three couples "necking" in the same car.

Now, I'm all for being a sexual libertine, but six teenagers groping in a single roadster at make-out point doesn't sound so much like a date as a borderline orgy. Once Ralphie's leg crossed that center console and he asked Richie to rub it, that clinched it.

Too many questions, though. Why were all these girls comfortable making out with dudes in such close proximity. I mean, I know why Richie and Potsy were down, and I got a little sideways feeling about Ralphie, but I thought ladies were supposed to have taste in the fifties. Is Mad Men not a horrific representation of rampant sexism? Were people really okay with this type of behavior? Surely Mr. and Mrs. C. had a problem with this, or did The Fonz just hit them until they did what he wanted?

Look, I'm not suggesting the fifties weren't really some dark, outwardly repressive but hypocritically fetishized. I'm just surprised anyone was willing to admit it on television prior to 1998.

I need a bourbon. And a lap dance. Call my secretary.

80s Cartoons Were Wonderfully Awful

"I FECKIN LOVE RUNNING THROUGH SPACE!
AND KILLING THINGS! AND SMOKING!"

I recently went channel surfing and found something called "The Hub," which at midnight at least showcases Generation 1 Transformers episodes backed up by original G.I. Joe. Basically, it's my childhood mornings and I couldn't be happier.

These characters talk about murdering the hell out of each other, though. Every six seconds, Galvatron is demanding they kill a Prime, or Dr. Mindbender is working with deadly neurotoxins.

And copyrights? Well, they were at least kind of alluded to. Mostly they were just thinly veiled. Example to both of the last points: A James Bong knock-off who looks exactly like Burt Reynolds of 1984 just entered a mobbed-up ritzy club called "Ritzy Club." Then he made references to smoking and hit on a woman by pandering and treating her like a child.

Oh, and no one writing these shows has ever heard of the concept "Show, don't tell." In their defense, animation was really really hard. I mean, you had to pay a Korean studio to draw all those little pictures. Better to just reuse footage of a head nod an have a bunch of words spoken off-camera, then show someone diving from an explosion. So, really no change. Except now it's a Korean computer studio.

Of course I also watched Mighty Max last week and it was exactly the same, so maybe I just love really lame TV regardless of age, so long as they straight-up try to murder characters left and right. That's sure improve the Disney Channel.

Does Liking Fairy Tales Make Us Realists?

For the record: great show.

Why have we recently become so engrossed in the idea of fairy tales? Some of it, granted, is the burgeoning of a genre suddenly popular. Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman, for example, were in what is charmingly referred to as "pre-production Hell" for years until interest in fables came around. Red Riding Hood, Jack the Giant Killer, "Once Upon A Time," "Grimm," "Locke & Key.""Fables." Movies, television, and comics once considered eclectic, literary nods are becoming hugely successful mainstream products.

Why? What is the root cause of this popularity in the first place? How did a few trepidatious attempts grow wildly successful in the first, and what is it about the concept of magical folk stories that fans the fire amongst the general population?

I remember an era of intense, explosion-ridden action films that left you feeling wired and hopeful for the future, specifically movies centered around the idea of narrowly averting world-wide devastation. This era was the late 1990s, and it's where Michael Bay cut his teeth.

Armageddon, Independence Day, Deep Impact, Mars Attacks! These were all space-based disaster movies released in either 1996 or 1998. Bill Clinton was reelected to a second term in office, our nation had a surplus for the first time, and peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis were actually amiable and preventing deaths. America was still cresting, and our taste in disaster movies reflected that. There was a hope for that slim chance at success in the face of impending ruin, and the belief that we are strong and brave enough to make a concerted effort at that chance and come out the other side victorious.

Near-Apocalypse movies are for cultures approaching their peaks, a possible collapse ahead to be overcome with the zeal of the present.

What indicates a society becoming cognizant of its own acme? Apocalypses are the turning point, the destruction we see as inevitable and the collapse that will ruin most of us. Only the strongest–those of vitality, cunning, and questionable ethics–will survive. Corporations and bureaucratic politicians are frequently to blame for the disaster, or at least exploit the downturn for their own profits.

The Day After Tomorrow, the Resident Evil franchise and the rebirth of George Romero's zombie sagas, Terminator 3. These are the end for most of us.Come what arguments may about who would die first, all but the barest, strongest, luckiest of us would die soon enough. There is no hope, no future but what you make, and the only ones capable of making that future are not us. We are not special, and we will fall the same as Egypt and Rome and England before us.

Fairy Tales are for a post-defeatist culture. We have accepted our mortality and are ready to move forward into a new age. Maybe we won't be in charge. Maybe we'll all agree together or maybe we'll be blown to bits somewhere down the line. We're still here, though, and there's plenty of life worth living between now and any possible future. We have to maintain our society without the promise of ever-reaching progress, because to do otherwise would be the only guarantee of failure.

Fairy tales are indicative of a wistfully, dreamily, hopeful people, a culture desirous of the quick-fixes and happy endings they do not in their hearts expect. Fairy tales are for a society witnessing collapse and struggling with the burden of actually fixing its own problems, willing to work hard and make tough decisions.

But in their escapist vacations, these people still yearn for a simple, elegant, magical solution to their everyday problems, one which minimizes the larger world's impact by superimposing a grander scale with different rules, different physics, and the import of various figures. We have no simple enemies, not even petty dictators; they are just men with some power. There are no cure-alls or incantations, no Midas touch to steady inflation, not even the promise that leading a morally righteous and unwaveringly goodly path will grant a being anything in return.

There are no rules promising us punishment to the wicked and fortune for the just. We have only ourselves and ourselves are not long-lost princesses.

But fairy tale princesses are lost princesses. And when they inhabit our world, they are dragged down like the rest of us. But unlike us, they are still empowered by the magic of stories. They can break the spell that holds them down and keeps them from expecting to live happily ever after, which while we don't believe, we secretly wish for as well.

Oh, wouldn't it be nice?

30 Rock's Kenneth Parcell | The Cure for Aging?

It surprises some, and infuriates several, that I do not actively watch NBC's 30 Rock. If it's on and I've got nothing better to do, sure, I'll watch an episode, and I find the characters to be healthy doses of self-serving pessimism and woefully optimistic. Except one.

Kenneth Parcell might just be a living Buddha. Sure, he sees the world through Muppet-tinted glasses, but what I find most compelling about him isn't that or his folksy, down-home advice of questionable bias and utterly uselessness, it's that he seems to be at least 140 years old.

Oh, ha-ha, the jokes the jokes, but click the "Kenneth's Age" heading in the article above, and you'll find that other old-timers seem to remember him just the same. He truly appears to be ageless.

Thus, I have come up with some theories as to how Ken seems to manage this.


"Human" Possibilities:

• Decent genes - First possibility, Ken might just be pretty lucky. Maybe clean living was enough for him.

Related theories:

• He's a mutant. Still technically human, in the same way Neanderthal and H. erectus were both human.
   
• He is a postmortal. Good genes, magic potion, fortuitous cocktail, whatever it was, his aging might just be turned off. Gene expressions, hormone cycles, everything might just have stopped progressing when he reached physical maturity.
  
  
• Kenneth is at least the third in a line of perfectly identical male Parcells. It is possible that his grandfather was also named "Kenneth" and Ken III is often mistaken by others for him. The autographed picture of his dated 1947 could be for that Kenneth, passed down to him in a long line of family history. Kenneth's recognition of old celebrities and places? Family lore. "You are the Kenneth now, son! Where that name proudly!" "Yes, Pa!" *Father expires*
  
  It could work for some of it.

• Kenneth is a Highlander.
   
• Clones - Kenneth is actually the latest in a family line of clones, secretly created since at least the first World War. Why? Haven't the foggiest. Maybe as a replenishable supply of hard-working and intensely loyal company clerks. Once the war ended, the clones could have been repurposed for civilian/corporate usage by the military industrial complex.

For a few of these, shared memory and "brain transplant" could account for Ken's 'personal' memories of decades past.

Hell, maybe like The Man From Earth, he's simply a genetic freak who's been alive since the dawn of modern man.

• Ken's a wizard. As with all magical creatures, wizards are long-lived. They have access to else-worldly powers and the alchemic arts. Surely a mage as powerful as the Grand Ken could halt his aging.
  
  Might also explain his tremendous luck and that whole obliviousness angle he puts on. He'd know secrets.
  

Nonhuman Possibilities:

• Some sort of old servant god.
  
  Like Hermes or Vulcan, he'd be something akin to a god's god, the same way Stephen Fry would be considered the ultimate gentleman's gentleman. Yeah, he's a complete servant, but he's still got godly powers all his own.

• A robot powered by hamsters.
  
  Pretty self-explanatory here.
  
  
• A Force of Nature.
  
  A universal law? A personification of an aspect of all creation? He has intimated that he's been around "forever." At east he seemed concerned someone else might have said that.
  
  Let's start checking 15th century tapestries for little blue jackets.

•  A dhampire.
  
  Like Blade, or Vampire Hunter D, or even I think Rayne, dhampires are the half-breed children of true vampires, granted some of their powers but few of their parents' weaknesses.
  
  I.E. Why Kenneth can go out in the daytime and has (at least some manner of) reflection.

 A Non-Player Character from Jumanji.

Lost in the real world, since no one has yet won a game (Since young Robin Williams and his girlfriend threw away the box and some poor kid found it), Kenneth has since given up being a hunter or savage, or whatever he was originally in order to, you know, eat.

As the cartoon said when they tossed the hunter Van Pelt into a bottomless chasm, thus removing him from play without 'killing' and allowing him to regenerate, causing his personality to superimpose itself over I think Peter, slowly turning him into a new Van Pelt. "There must always be a Van Pelt."

"There must always be a Kenneth.

• Kenneth is a golem, created by Lorn Michaels to serve him at NBC.
  
  I don't know if he's the famous Golem of Prague or an earlier model, possibly even the original, once-sinless Adam now roaming the Earth in a self-induced innocent stupor, maddened by his induction or Original Sin. Or maybe Lorn just molded him from the remnants of Chris Farley he found lying around only half-dead. I would, of course, include in that list David Spade's career and haircut. Also, he's got wooden teeth, so why not make the rest of him out of clay?

Demand On-Demand | Instant Gratification Culture Has Ruined Me

I have a stack of books in my "To Read" pile, and another dozen of so out on the book shelf that I just never got around to, to say nothing at all of those books I acquired and donated to charity without ever so much as reading a chapter.

Throughout the year I also have about three or four television programs at any given time, which I follow as they air. During lulls I may also watch another show's past seasons on Netflix, where I keep a modest queue of maybe 15 titles either to stream for the above reasons, or because I'd like to have them available on my account when I'm at a friend's house and they don't have a copy of, say, Good Will Hunting. (This has never once happened.)

I read about nine or ten ongoing monthly comic books, plus three or four manga titles on a more sporadic basis.

I have to restrain myself from the urge to download an artist's entire discography when I discover I like a single song over a club's stack of speakers. Because it's out there. It's there to be had. Barring a desire to not break (alright, irreparably shatter into infinitesimal pieces) copyright law, I could have all these things instantly.

And yet my nightstand is still a tiny cupboard filled with books, on which a shelf has been fashioned out of more books. I still have shelves covering all remaining wall space filled with books I've yet to really read, a hard drive filled with comics not yet read, and queues to keep me busy for weeks, were I to make their un-queueing my day job.

And I'm still thinking of getting a DVR so that I can see my live shows whenever I want, because this "waiting eight days for online availability" things is bullshit.

No wonder I can't sit down to read a book for an hour. I have too many screens to watch and not enough eyes for the job.

Falling Skies | "We Actually Know What We're Doing…Promise."

Having watched TNT's new show Falling Skies, set in the aftermath of a brutally effective alien invasion which basically could be a sequel to "District 9" about some very unhappy green people, I've come to the odd conclusion that this show has some surprisingly well-thought out plot points.

1. Noah Wyle is kind of an embarrassing amalgam of his characters Carter (from E.R.) and … er, well, The Librarian (from The Librarian. It doesn't matter that he had a name). However, I love Noah Wyle spewing historical inanities and looking befuddled when people do not do the 'right' thing automatically. I also love Noah Wyle with a beard, so this is actually more of a selling point than anything else. He plays former U.S. history teacher Tom, second in command to an army guy (played by the shitty dad from Armagedon who gives his kid the toy space shuttle), leading 100 fighters and 200 civilians in an exodus out of South Boston.

"Hey, Weaver! How d'you like them apples!?"

2. There are two types of aliens so far, "Skitters," the actual alien soldiers who seem to be some kind of lizard-insect cross, possessing six segmented legs balanced radially beneath their humanoid torsos, and "mechs," what we currently presume to be robots, since they cannot house a grown Skitter in their chassis. *SPOILER* The aliens also kidnap human children and strap them with organic, millipede-like critters to mind control them for some horrible purpose. A side character, a teacher to the civilian children in the show, says that one girl from his older class raised an interesting point about the mechs when they were discussing the aliens' biology and technology; humans tend to create robots that look like humans, but Skitters are hexapedal and Mechs are bipedal. Noah suggests it's a psychological tactic, but I'm calling it now: it's human kids in the suits. Aliens stole them, put them in walkers suited to their physiology, and now you're blowing up your own children. Aside from the psychological impact of that, I assume it helps dwindle the gene pool and kids are just more susceptible to the brainwashing. One of these kids is Tom's middle son, Ben, and at least the first half of Season 1 looks like it's going to deal with rescuing him and finding a way to detach his painful, parasitic "harness."

3. The CG is surprisingly not so great, but the puppet work makes up for a good bit of it. It seems like a show out of which TNT could milk 3 solid seasons before the plot gets too contrived.

4. Colin Cunningham is a badass outlaw, which is awesome, but he's more a "Whatever is the best option" kind of badass, so he's going to be fun to watch. How many times will he betray people? I'm guessing like twice in this season. He's certainly not that douche from Battlestar Galactica.

He's like some kind of Jamaican hillbilly.
The guy who tried that on SG: Atlantis is now Conan the Barbarian, so it seems a wise career choice.

4. There are two smoking hot blonde girls. One is Jessy Schram as Karen, in military khaki and she rides a motorcycle. The other is Margaret (Sarah Carter), a damaged, possible sociopath with leather and lots of guns. Karen is dating Tom's oldest son Hal, but an annoying 15 year old Catholic is sweet on him, and Maggie is the one who kicks his ass, SO THEN WHO GETS TO HOOK UP AWKWARDLY!?

Karen, the second most badass blonde girl on the show.

5. Human tenacity seems to be the main theme. We respect nature, but fuck these bug things. Even the religious girl isn't super religious. She wants to work for God, but Karen openly mocks her (jealous), right after a scene where a biology teacher explains that we should be thankful for the opportunity to study even the life forms we hate. It's all very secular humanist and I'm completely down for that. It probably helps that TNT is known for its procedural dramas, so viewers are going to want another show that makes them feel like they know a substantial amount about more stuff they didn't major in at college. History, war, guns, explosives, medicine, robots, nukes, spaceships, exobiology, this show has all of it. Even lacrosse. Lacrosse for God's sake. And Rip-Sticks? That's gonna date the show like hell in a few years, but why not, grab the cool thing from last year while you can, TNT.

Religious girl who almost certainly will die horribly, and Moon Bloodgood's Doctor character.
Hot Asian-American lady with a background in ass-kicking roles and the coolest vampire name ever.

Two episodes in and I'm down for the first season. Not like I was doing anything on Sundays anyway.

On Glee

Here's my overview of FOX's "hit show" Glee:

• It's about a high school choral group of unreasonably attractive ragtag players.
• It is half musical, half "the making of" for that music.
• Drama can only surround singing or the functionality of the group. Legitimately dramatic, life-altering events must be glossed over or resolved within a single episode. Maybe two.
• Rachel Barry is a tremendous prima donna, raised the Jewish-American princess of a Broadway-happy gay couple. She has zero depth of character.
• Kurt is the only openly gay kid at his high school, therefor his only scenes are about him being gay. All his songs are traditionally for female leads, except the one time he questioned his sexuality and sang John Mellancamp. He and Rachel are basically the same character, except Kurt cares about hurting others and being likable. Were they to fight to the death, Rachel would rip his throat out.
• RThe only mature characters are Puck the badass and Quinn, the girl who got knocked up in season 1. The rest are as reasonably stupid and self-centered as children should be, but so are the adults.
• Season 1 was about babies. Season 2 is about … actually, no one has figured that out yet.
• If they have not ruined your favorite song yet, either they'll get to it or you're lucky enough to like speed metal.

Here's the thing, though: Lea Michele is pretty sexy. Her character is a frumpy frigid priss I'd like to strangle with a Miss Congeniality sash, but the 24 year old actress is pretty decently attractive, especially considering we're both Jewish and as such have a habit of putting down our own attractive women.

See? Super Jewish-cute. It's the Sephardi.

In fact, a few nights back I had a rather provocative dream with Lea Michele coming onto me, which is weird because I rarely have dreams that awesome and also because I don't dream about celebrities. (Of course, two days later I dreamt of Kevin Corrigan's eyes exploding because the South Pacific tranny in a yellow sundress and one shoe he was photographing at my grandmother's house tore a teddy bear, the resulting eye-goo littering the yard and driveway being something my brain decided was "Corpus Christi" like "corpus collosum" but actually it's a city in Texas.)

ANYWAY, my personal, self-hating Jewish opinion of Lea Michele was somewhat quickly overpowered by a celebrity in a schoolgirl outfit trying to mack with me, and the only thing I can tell you is Lea Michele's neck-nuzzling boob-area has the exact same texture as a blanket draped haphazardly over your sleeping face.

This is why I can't have nice dreams.

The Walking Dead Know Our Brains

I got a promo poster postcard. Neat!

So I'm heading down to the lowest level of the Javits Center on 34th Street last Sunday, weaving my way through anime nerds, comic nerds, sci-fi, steampunk and just your general, cheese-scented nerds attending the last day of New York Comic Con/New York Anime Festival.

I'm heading into the IGN theater for the last big panel/screening of the weekend, a Q&A with Robert Kirkman, creator of award winning comic series The Walking Dead, along with Fred Darabont and Gail Anne Hurd, executive producers and series adapters for AMC network's television take on the Kirkman's books.

A cute blond girl in a NYCC "Con Hero" yellow shirt is getting exasperated corralling geeks for the event, so I just strain my ears and follow the unwashed masses rather than ask her again for specific directions. Obviously this does not work. I head over to a different yellow-shirt and ask him where to find the theater. The third day of the con, I am no longer clad in a tank top and a glowing, Iron Man chest piece. All this guy sees is a guy with glasses in a t-shirt and styling jacket. Oh, and a press badge.

He sees that press badge and immediately ushers me through the black curtain behind his back, down a hallway to which just yesterday I had been denied access. I love my press badge.

I head through the maintenance hallway until I come out in the side of the massive auditorium. I take a seat as close as I can to the stage and in the middle of the two massive movie screens to either side. About ten minutes later somebody comes on stage asking all of the press gathered–about a third of the room already–to make sure we fill in the front seats because there are several thousand fans about to shuffle in. Have I mentioned how much I love my press pass?

The big draw is footage. At San Diego Comic Con this past Summer, AMC released the first trailer for TWD, but today there has been a promise of actual scenes. Host Eric Moira quickly introduces Kirkman, Darabont and Hurd, and then informs the enormous crowd that there is nothing he can do to stall so many people, so they are just going to show the first scene immediately: six-and-a-half minutes from the second episode.

The screen dims and what follows is a wonderful 390 seconds. Without spoiling anything (I'm sure this footage will be online shortly), the crowd erupts in cheers when a certain young Asian man makes his first appearance. To be fair, the resemblance to his (entirely fictional) comic counterpart is disconcertingly precise. There are many cheers for familiar characters, but there's also an incredibly groan let out at a particular zombie take-down. Which raises an interesting point.

How the hell is this show going to handle the gore of zombie killing? They're not people, not animals, not even alive. Does the FCC have a policy for what you can show on television when the critter's already dead as all get out? Maybe, but zombie killing is maybe 5% of The Walking Dead. People killing and extreme emotional talks are the rest. Surely AMC is going to have to do something to censor such an (awesomely) graphic series.

Not so much, says Darabont. "Remember, this is the network that makes Breaking Bad. And Madmen." Trying to explain the series' content as closer to an "R" movie rating, the analogy eventually breaks down and he just says, "Breaking Bad … we're going to make them look like pussies."

Kirkman, who has also penned the script for episode 4, adds, "People will be shocked at the level of … stuff we can get away with." The two describe their disbelief at emails of energetic approval from Standards & Practices, then renege, saying the bosses were there and that S&P were doing their jobs very well.

After a few more scripted questions, Moira called out members of the cast, Andrew Lincoln ("the pretty boy from 'Love Actually,'" as Darabont put it) who plays protagonist Rick Grimes, Sarah Callies (Lori Grimes), Jon Bernthal (Shane), Laurie Holden (Andrea), Steven Yeun (Glen) and Normal Reedus as one of the television version's original characters, Daryl. (Reedus is best known for his role as "Boondock Saints" brother Murphy.)

The actors introduce themselves and their characters, Yeun being cheered, Bernthal being openly booed by fans who have read the books. He laughs, and actually thanks New York. Apparently he was expecting such a reaction from San Diego and was rather disappointed when he didn't get it. He does, however, add that maybe those of the audience who booed will feel a little differently when they see how his character is fleshed out on air.

Which is an important point to make:

The Walking Dead premiers at 10 p.m. (EST) on Halloween night. It is 90 minutes, half and hour longer than a regular episode. However there are only six episodes in the entire season.

Why would AMC green light a show for only six episodes? Well, they're partially playing off the English method of T.V. broadcasting. They're not short changing the show by demanding they snag a massive viewership with one pilot episode, something some shows never make it past if they air their pilot at all.

Instead, AMC is giving the series six episodes to bring in the fans they already know the book has. Basically, they're hoping everybody tunes in for the first six weeks, because if even half the audience for the comic watches the show they are going to smash some season one basic cable records. Kirkman and Darabont plead with the audience to get everyone to watch live. There is no benefit in watching online or on DVD with this one. From the get-go, people need to tune in if they want to see a longer second season.

And why not? The show is going to look pretty amazing. According to Darabont, they chose film and cameras that would make the zombies look as disgustingly realistic as possible. "We shot on actual film," he adds, to surprisingly celluloid-knowledgeable applause. "Super 16," in fact. This gets significantly less applause, but those who do clap are very enthusiastic. Kirkman, for what it's worth, adds that the first time he was told all this it flew completely over his pencil-and-paper head. The long and short of it is, these zombies are going to look incredible and they're probably going to re-die in some pretty visually visceral ways.

And it's going to be awesome.


If you want to hear more about The Walking Dead screening and a whole bunch of other Comic Con nonsense, I'll be co-guest hosting The Mild Mannered Podcast sometime hopefully this week.

On NBC's "The Event"

I watched NBC's "The Event" last night. I had an idea of the first episode from Wiki, but a friend came over and we ended up watching the second half of the first episode and then the whole new, second episode.

Interpretation #1: "NBC Desperately Attempts to Maintain Hold on Former LOST Viewers"

This one's pretty straightforward. Stark, bold title cards and font, lots of mystery, non-linear story telling, strange populations of "others," no one ever explains themselves, sci-fi elements pop up unexpectedly and no one's sure if they're ripping off X-Men, V or The 4400. Also, there's a plane in the first episode. It'll be real important later, but for right now it's blown up 4,000 miles from where it should be. Buzzwords in the first two episodes include, "The plane," "You're the only one who can save her," "Tell me the truth," and "electromagnetic radiation."Theory #2: "Reality Bites Era Ethan Hawk Was So Cool We Should Have Made Him An Action Star. Like That Terminator Kid."


Seriously, I couldn't follow the plot. Not because it wasn't told chronologically, that was fine, and not because the story itself was a convoluted Gordian Knot of secrecy, cover-up, lies and intrigue, that too was incredibly easy to follow. In fairness, I have an English degree and I watch sci-fi like it's my job. I mean it will be my job, as soon as my book gets published, but that's off-point.

No, what I can't deal with is watching creepy-ass John Ritter's creepy-ass sketchball of a son being confused on camera in every scene, looking so much like 2001's Ethan Hawke that I keep waiting for Winona Ryder to pop out and hit Ben Stiller with her car. Never mind the fact that Kurt Cobain has been dead for 16 years and Hollywood is still biting his style.

"Is that a fucking bear?"

Theory #3: "It's the Same Show We've Been Watching For Eight Years"

The government lies to us. It is run by unscrupulous bureaucrats who cover up domestic disasters and human rights violations by removing them from the jurisdiction and eyes of regulatory powers, ever hiding behind the idea that they know what is best and what is damaging to the country they claim to serve, but rather administer.

Laymen save the universe. The universe being far grander than we ever imagined, except for all the other times we imagined semi-immortal humans from the future/past/outer space came and couldn't talk to us without poluting our time period/civilization so we imprison them. Except there's more of them than we knew, and they've interbred with our people, creating hybrid capable of wondrous things, one of whom just happens to be the protagonist. And everybody would just get along if they were willing to sit down and talk with each other, but the only one willing to do that is the naive, newly elected black president.

Guys, we have a black president. Black presidents aren't futuristic any more. They're not sci-fi. Morgan Freeman popularized that, and it ended with the black president on 24. Both of them. Apparently, now having black president means "hopeless idealism you will have to compromise in order to get anything done, because the government is actually administered by a bunch of war-hawking, paranoid conservative holdovers with a Cold War mentality.

Honestly, at this point I find it insulting. I'm tired of "thinky" shows that are nothing but the same material a thousand times over that only takes so long to pan out because no one uses specific verbs or nouns.

Take the first season of this show and splice it back into chronological order, then replace all the dialogue with useful information like, "We can't interfere with your civilization, but can you please let us live quietly in the Amazon somewhere? We promise to not be assholes about it."

Swear to God, it'd take like four episodes to finish.

On 'Dancing With the Stars'

So a simple Wiki search tells me that in the past five years Dancing With the Stars has had ten seasons. That's ridiculous, but let's try to keep some measure of scale going in this discussion. Saying two seasons a year for five years is ridiculous when you refer to a show with contestants like Kate Gosselin, T.O. and Donny Osmond is like saying solar systems are really pretty big things.

Jump ahead.

The two most talked-about possible contestants for Season 11? Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino and political right-to-life disaster Bristol Palin.

Now as for The Sitch, that seems par for the tap-dancing course. He's hot right now, he's in shape and, frankly, he's Italian so his mother very likely demanded he learn how to dance in some way that isn't reminiscent of fucking his partner or beating the roof/floor of the club he's in to a bloody pulp with a clenched fist. Mike is clearly the most prolific 'character' to come out of The Jersey Shore. He's supposedly getting booked to the shows third season (for which the original casting agency was seeking new housemates), has a tongue-in-cheek guide to G-T-L ready to be published, and is on track to make $5M both this year and next. Truthfully, he's a great person to cast on a show only watched by the absolute dregs of mainstream pop-society.

But Bristol? Really? Yes, let's take a teen mother who is also the daughter of the most brain dead and incompetent political figurehead since Dan Quail and stick her on a show where three washed-up media clowns judge you by your ability to learn complex dance maneuvers in a short period of time despite no practical training.

On the other hand, let's look at this from a ratings perspective. I have no idea how Dancing With the Stars works. The only times I've seen it were in the background during the less-than thirty minutes or so between the ending of a good show on another channel and the start of whatever used to follow DWTS. Castle, I think. I know the idea is one celebrity and one classically trained dancer, but I think they do some exhibition stuff too, but I might just be hoping that because I really, really want to see The Situation get all "Dirty Dancing" with Bristol Palin. She's small. He can throw her around. And I feel like it could solve most of the social problems around the girl if The Sitch would just creep on her for like a month straight. Of course this would likely throw her mother back into the spotlight, but hopefully frothing at the mouth about knuckle-dragging Italians will finally kill her career and drive her back into whatever naked mole-rat hole she lives in nine months out of the Alaskan year.

I have a friend who will actually be forced to write about all this for his job. He is a pop-culture blogger type person. He says he can't believe this, but neither could he believe Kate Gosselin participating in the show. Honestly, I get that a lot quicker than I get Bristol Palin. She's only got one celebrity baby. Gosselin had eight. DWTS was probably the first time she got paid to be out of the house and away from the kids since Jon tried to bribe her out of taking sole custody. Eight weeks of aerobics class for $30,000 and daycare? Hell yeah.

On "Undercovers"

I saw Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World tonight. It was awesome. I don't think my brain was capable of handling the rapid translations between romantic comedy and sweet action flick, so it just slapped a stupid grim on my face and made me feel a bottomless well of sadness that caused me to curse my blink reflex.

Anyway, that's not what I came to talk to you about. I want to talk to you about NBC's upcoming show "Undercovers." Or "The Undercovers," I wasn't too clear on that after the five minute trailer they slapped as a time waster in front of the regular trailers and in between Coke Zero ads.



Imagine if Mr. & Mrs. Smith had worked together from the beginning instead of trying to kill eachother. Better yet, imagine a T.V. remake of the movie Undercover Blues, accept it doesn't have Dennis Quaid or a baby or even young Dave Chapel. Now make the couple of reactivated former CIA agents black.

Essentially, it's Tyler Perry's Casino Royal.

Things I Have Learned From True Blood

"Is that an umlaut in your name or are you just happy to see me?"


Things I Have Learned From True Blood:

• If you can't name the last time you saw boobies using only the days of the week, you are doing something terribly, terribly wrong with your life.
  
  
• Every relationship is comprised of one codependent dreamer and one fuckhead. Look critically to determine which of you is the fuckhead.

  If you watch True Blood, you will be very sad to learn you are not the fuckhead.

• Hypothetically, go down to the hardware store and then hypothetically rent a chainsaw. It's cheap and by-the-hour.
  
  
• The only types of fucking are break-up-sex, revenge-sex, hate-sex, reunion-sex, make-up-sex and terror-sex. No one on Earth has ever actually "made love."

  It's not good sex until someone bleeds. Or both of you. But make a habit of it and things will quickly grow stale. Also, cold and clammy. Which leads us back to the chainsaw.

• There are no ugly strippers in Louisiana.
  

On Death and W.C. Fields

We held my grandfather's funeral today. It was all very tasteful, small, but one glaring irregularity struck me.

The rabbi on hand sounded exactly like Jay Leno doing his W.C. Fields impersonation.

At first I couldn't place it, likely due to the fact that he was speaking Hebrew, but in my own defense I couldn't understand anything he said by rote in English immediately after. So it took a while. When I tried to place the sound-alike I got this:

That would be Mayor Manx from Swat Kats, a show about renegade fighter pilots being deputized into law enforcement for their heroic efforts in building a fighter jet and flying it through the city without clearance shooting at mystical, biological, and technological monstrosities. Oh, also, they're all anthropomorphic cats.

It wasn't exactly smooth sailing trying to Google search who Manx's voice was based on while driving in a funeral procession. Eventually Fields' name popped up in some creative Googling and I forewent the traditional Facepalm of Obviousness for not crashing my car into the hearse or anyone else in front of me.

This rabbi, though? Not nearly as interesting as W.C. Fields. You know what Field's own tombstone reads?

"All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

On Motorcycles

I promise a longer, funnier blog in the afternoon.

Until then subsist on this: my riding instructor at motorcycle school looks and talks exactly like John C. Reiley's character, Dr. Steve Brule, from Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job!












So many things wrong with this.

Addendum: So we road this morning. Instructors use constructive criticism. Peers build me up. Apparently having absolutely no idea how to ride a bike or even use a clutch works in my favor. Some kind of tabula rasa situation.

We also took our written test today instead of tomorrow. The "review" session? Instructor Steve reading off the answers instead of asking us. Those answers? Straight off the test we immediately took. 42 of them. Out of 50. I counted. And then I wrote them back down.

Learning is weird.