Game of Thrones Spoilers from Someone Who Has Never Watched or Seen Game of Thrones

"So I smacked the grubby little priss I'm Tyrion Effing Lannister.

1. Right before he is to be beheaded, Eddard Stark passes on his secrets of metallurgy to his son, Robb. Robb sires Arno Stark, great-grandfather to the eleventh of Antonio, father of Howard, who begat Iron Man/Robert Downey, Jr.

2. Dire Wolves never manage to learn how to catch a Frisbee.

3. Eventually, something will break down the wall and come through. I imagine it will be rather large.

4. There will be a lot of sexing.

5. It will be revealed in the final chapters that all the characters have been clockwork mechanisms as hinted at in the opening credits. In a further twist, the entire world's history has been a massive holographic simulation at the behest of Peter Dinklage, before he must make an address to the Interstellar Consortium of Sentients. George R.R. Martin is heralded as the new Prince of hard science fiction.

6. Eventually, someone finally cuts their butt sitting on that pointy chair.

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.

Thomas and Friends: Non-Stop Ass-to-Mouth All Day

Does it bother no one that anyone not an A-Lister in Thomas the Tank Engine, anyone whose toy has a magnet on both ends, is effectively going ass-to-mouth all day long?

You think they get hazard pay for that?

Or do they just do it because they like it?





At least I didn't make a "Human Centipede" joke. I just ripped off Kevin Smith. That's way more tasteful.

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.

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.

On Getting Ahead

I spent yesterday working as a production assistant on another TV show. This time I might actually get an IMDB credit, which would be really cool.

My satchel, however, which I brought to help me carry binders and other P.A. gear and never used, gets to appear in at least three different scenes. I do not know whether or not it shall receive its own credit, I am merely jealous.

Worse yet, my man-bag got carried by a lady. A pretty, feminine lady. Way to "murse" out, there, buddy. No one in the bedroom closet's going to be making fun of you for that anytime soon.

Stop Telling Me I Need To Watch Your New Favorite Show | A Form Letter

Dear Friend,

I know you just got into it but you're already on the third season. I know you think it's the [funniest/most dramatic/best ever] [insert genre] show ever.

Yup, the dour, sarcastic one on the right.

I understand that you really, really like this show now. The characters are incredible and the writing is so much better than [that other show that came first you tried to get me to watch three years ago].

That's cool! I've heard it's really good! I like [that thing I see every few weeks over dinner and find amusing], and I'll freely admit I adore [actor on show]; [s]he is just too cute. I would marry that [girl/guy] in a heartbeat. Not even kidding.

And yeah, I hear the writing is really good and I like how they did [that thing that's been done to death but they do somewhat more originally]. I'm not usually a fan, but they make it work. I even appreciate how hard that is to do. Honestly, I think I'd really like the show if I ever sat down to watch an episode.

I have, in fact. I've seen bits and pieces here and there. Maybe not more than 20 minutes of one episode and a few clips of others, mostly tags right before the show right after came on, but I liked what I saw.

And of course I know the basic gist of it all and who most of the characters are. I made sure to look it all up because I wanted to see what it was about.

Here's the thing: I don't care.

Really. I don't know how, but as much as you love it, [TITLE] just isn't a show I feel compelled to watch. Ever, really. There's no draw to it. It's like looking at the pretty [girl/guy] your friend's been crushing on all year and saying, "Okay, yeah, [s]he's really cute, I guess."

There's just no attraction there, I'm sorry.I'm not disinterested in the things you like, I'm really not. And I've already told you it's not an issue of style or actors or genre; I'm into [previously mentioned similar titles]. I just don't feel like seeing this is something my happiness is contingent upon.

I dunno, maybe it's a commitment thing.

When I start a new show, I'm usually in it for the long-hall, and that means giving up a good portion of my prime time weeknights for a few weeks every year, so I really gotta watch what and how many commitments I make.

Yes, I understand the first [NUMBER] seasons are on [Netflix/Hulu/other streaming service]. And thank you, I appreciate that you're willing to lend me the DVDs. That's not an issue. But when I sit down to watch a whole show like that, it's worse than the hour a week I'd lose watching it live. I lose weeks until I've seen everything. I look up Wikipedia pages; I find the fan Wikia; I got to bed and wake up dreaming the theme songs and original story plots. I just don't have the kind of time to lay out for every show people tell me I need to see, alright?

And before you say it–I know! I know this show is different. I know I'd love it. Because it's so good and you don't normally tell people they "have" to see or do anything, but [FAN-ABBREVIATED TITLE] is just so good and as soon as I see [MINOR SPOILER AND YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE] I'll be hooked.

I'm just not willing to make that commitment, alright? And I'm not going to watch your show. Truthfully, I'm more turned off from it by how hard you're pushing for me to watch it than I am at just the idea of the show I had in my head before you started this conversation. Frankly, if I'd wanted your opinion about [your new favorite show] or any show in particular, I'd have asked you specifically about it. Except now, after all this, I think I respect your taste in television shows even less, so I won't be doing that.

Maybe before I've entertained the idea of giving [your obsession] a shot. Maybe I've even watched an episode or two while cooking a meal and thought, "Hey, this is pretty [funny/good/cool/badass]!" Maybe I even watched the first [x-number] seasons but gave up after [ridiculous plot twists reduced the show to a formulaic nightmare unsalvageable by even increased graphic nudity].

But now I don't even want to hear about it. Because I know that it's all I'm going to hear about for the next [number weeks until conflicting sport season/returning show you liked last year]. So if you have any hope of me watching this show and having us talk about how great it is, your best chance at this point is to stop telling me every six seconds how great it is and how I need to see it. I still love and respect you and your opinions both, but I'm tired of hearing about [show] and I just need it to stop.


Thank you for your patience, and I am sorry if I offended you in a any way, but it was the only way I could see to communicate my feelings to you.



Best Wishes!


[Your Name Here]

My (Two) Days As An MTV Toadie

Firstly, a disclaimer: I actually was working as a production assistant for a television production company that was making a show for MTV. I was not employed by Viacom in any capacity and, though most of the other people there will, I don't think I'm getting an IMDB credit out of this. (But if I find someone screwed up and included my name, it wouldn't necessarily not be the best day ever. Just saying.)


So Day 1, Hour 1:

• Fill out paperwork (time card, mileage form for driving)
• To Do List
• Drop off laundry for some guy
• Drive to New Jersey to pick up a package
• Exchange two boxes at Michaels Art Supply for ones that hold just two cupcakes
• Find very specific Dr. Scholl's inserts

Wait, what was that?

"Dr. Scholl's?"

No, no. Before that.

Oh, right. "Drive to New Jersey." Yeah, that happened. It was pretty sweet, actually, except for the hour of stop-and-go on the BQE in the middle of the day. Other than that I got to travel, belt out rockin' music on the way, call some friends, play Words With Friends in traffic jams (don't do that, kids) and–oh yeah–my destination? Asbury Park. Not just seaside, not just the eponymous "Jersey Shore."Asbury. Park.

"Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J."

Home of The Boss! Bruce and the recently late but always great Clarence Clemons! The Asbury Park sound! It's up there with all the best parks! Menlo! Central! The Place! Dorney and Wild Water Kingdom (if I choose to believe how great their New Jersey radio spots profess they are).

Of course, when I arrived after 3 hours we very quickly determined that the package I was sent for had been marked "RETURN TO SENDER" and no one bothered to call about this before sending me down. I was so upset by this I didn't even stop at Roy Rogers on the way back for food.…I was practically weened on Roy Rogers. No one has their pickles. No one. You can try Canes brand for flavor, but no one makes the flat-cut pickle chips just the same. I plan on one day discovering the supplier to the New Jersey Turnpike's last-stand of RR restaurants and buy a barrel. Then, like Bradley Cooper in the tail-end of Limitless, [SPOILER] I will try to reverse engineer my childhood.

If you think I'm joking, consider that I used to get as many pickles as parentally allowed into their little cups at the salad station, squeeze every last ounce of juice from them as I ate, and after my meal take shots off the warmed-over, vinegar brine swill left in the cups. And I fucking liked it.


After that, things were pretty boring, actually. While stuck in traffic on the way back, most of the other things I needed to pick up were either bought or made superfluous by others, and having learned my lesson in Jersey, I called about a dozen pharmacies to track down the right insole material. Once I got those I picked up the laundry I'd dropped off earlier and everybody was real cool about everything.

I slipped call sheets under doors before cleaning up and going home. Nothing too terrible, really. Had a minor incident slipping the list of rooms to get call sheets under a door instead of the call sheet itself, but the front desk fixed that with a spare key. (Honestly, it seems like you can get a spare key at any hotel if you say you're with a large party occupying that and other rooms. I might worry about this.)


Day 2:

• Mail out two boxes at the post office. (I think one was just some guy's Underarmor that didn't fit.)
• Return a dart board at Walmart.
• Food shopping
• Go pick up a camera at a sporting goods shop.

First part: no city on the return address, so the mail lady yelled at me. Then bitched because I didn't know what I was mailing out. Fuck you, it's returns to Underarmor and Amazon. I'm not mailing C4 or anything they couldn't have shipped in the first place. And don't give me snark about saying "Priority Mail" when I'm using Priority Mail boxes. I'm just being thorough. Geeze, if the girl ahead of me hadn't been a completely adorable hardcore chick with the most gorgeous sleeve tattoos I've ever seen on a person (and if there hadn't been central air), I'd swear this was a blown trip.

Second part: Kid wouldn't give me a receipt for the return, but I got half the groceries so call it a draw.

Third: stopped at a Stop & Shop, got everything else we needed except some obscure variant iced tea. Not a huge loss.

That last thing…

Yeah, torrential downpour, heavy traffic, guy didn't include the receipt, but saw fit to call ahead to let the boss' boss know about it, so had to drive back later, after stopping at a Dick's Sporting Goods nearby for jumbo golf umbrellas. Course, this time I took the back roads and had a lovely drive both ways. I found a bunch of cheap gas stations, couple Thai places, even a Hooters and an IHOP!

Exchanged another PA's receipt for an itemized version, got my own and I was back to base and let off early after some quick cleaning. Frankly, I thought it'd be far more abusive. Granted, first half of Day 1 wasn't too hot, but then they called me in the second day as I was on my way home and stopping for White Castle. Which they ended up paying for!

Comped meals, travel, Bruce Springsteen? Guy could get used to this!

But I had to get home to interview down at Barnes & Noble.



What the fuck am I doing?

Adventures in Television, Pt 2

So I got roped into working a second day for this production company in Long Island, so full details will be tomorrow. For now: more ridiculous photos!



"ICHEWAWA" This mam must have watched a lot of "Ren & Stimpy," and is a driver after my own heart.


Sleepies Sheep. Life sized too, not little. Like it was sheep sized. I don't know what number. Creepy.

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 Bathroom Reading

I found this book in a bar bathroom. Granted, it was a rather fancy bar, with a very fancy, clean bathroom (for a bar), but a bar bathroom nonetheless.

I have since looked up this "The Oatmeal Dot Com." And you know what? In their list of 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth?

Nowhere does it mention that whole 'separate a female from the pod and starve/sleep-deprive her until she has sex with all of you' dolphin gang-rape thing.

I feel like that'd be a very good reason to punch a dolphin.

That and Roy Scheider's show SeaQuest DSV. I loved it, but God, that was pretty awful.

Time Travel Without a DeLorean

I am a complete sucker for time travel/alternate reality plotlines. I'll watch damn-near anything if it's got those elements. It's how I ended up seeing pretty much every episode of a couple Star Trek shows over the years. It's just something about causality. I need to know that every event had its cause somewhere in the story. If it's not there, I'm pissed.

Which is why I end up avoiding a lot of time travel shows/movies. I find out how the time travel works and if it doesn't hold up, I bail. I save myself the mental acrobatics of trying to explain "science is magic."

When I first saw "Donnie Darko," I didn't read, watch, do, or really think of much of anything else for 18 hours. However, eventually I got a handle on it and it made sense. Even if the answer was "God said so," the logic worked.

I go back to other bits and I'm legitimately pissed, sometimes:

Terminator - perfect sense
Primer - perfect sense
Donnie Darko - insanely complex but deceptively simple and perfect
fucking Dragonball Z - almost makes sense
Star Trek - like 80% of the time, including the new movies

Back to the Future … internal logic error.

What? Back to the Future doesn't make sense? How is that even possible? They have Mr. Fusion. They have instant hydrating Pizza Hut. They have flux capacitors. Their time travel is so simple Christopher Lloyd drew it on a chalkboard with three intersecting lines. What has gone wrong here?

Here's my rant of nerd-logic:

There are only three types of functional cinematic time travel: Donnie Darko Time Travel, Terminator Time Travel and Dragonball Z Time Travel.

Everything you do to branch off from the
original timeline circles back to nullify
itself. Life continues as-is.

Donnie Darko Time Travel: Whatever it is you do that changes the timeline was always supposed to happen. Predetermination is the case, and the only times you can violate this is when "God" or something similar says you can. In fact, *SPOILERS* the way I understand the movie, the whole thing is God saying, "Man, I wish I could give this troubled boy some happiness before he dies." Then God gives him the ability to violate predetermination, creating a tangent universe in which he gets to be happy for about 3 weeks until this improper universe caves in on itself and the kid dies happy in bed, killed by the one thing to survive the tangent universe's brief existence and destruction.

Primer explained it much better: You decide to go back in time so you turn on the box (because it can only send you back as far as the box was turned on, since there wasn't working a time machine to exit from before that). You kill 3 hours doing whatever, researching how to change your world, perhaps. Then you get in the box and move backwards in time for 3 hours, exiting the box right after you turned it on. You go out in the world to change history, while your former self is sitting at home figuring out to do just that. After three hours, he goes back in time and becomes you from 3 hours ago and the box shuts off, closing a loop paradox-free.

Terminator Time Travel: You go back in time, you change something, but you don't really know until the thing you supposedly avoided doesn't happen. Terminator seems to indicate that some things have to happen, but that's likely more the "inevitable downfall of humanity do to the species' own hubris" than true predestination. You can totally alter the How and When of these things occurring. That doesn't preclude things in the future from causing events in the past via time-loop, but "No future but what we make," still can hold true at other times. There's one timeline, and you're in it, baby.

Interestingly, Terminator actually follows Donnie Darko logic, while T2-T4 and The Sarah Connor Chronicles follow Terminator logic proper. In T1 the very act of sending a robot back to kill John Connor's mom results in a future soldier being sent back to save Sarah Connor and (no *SPOILER* here unless you're maybe 14) father the future savior of humanity. In T2, they don't so much avert Judgement Day as they push it back. T3 keeps the timeline moving ahead without altering much history, however various support leaders to John's future resistance are killed as young adults, so the future is likely altered somewhat. T4 verifies this, as well as the idea that the future is drastically different from the one Kyle Reese originally came back from.

And Sarah Connor actually did a great job on the concept if they had only cycled back into the main continuity in the last 5 minutes of the last episode from season 2, but instead they borked everything by setting up a third season and getting canceled.

Star Trek follows the same rules. Something from the future can alter the past in such a way that it would never go back to alter the past, but that's okay because it's now in the "present" and untouchable by whatever temporal shitstorm rewrites history. Voyager ended with just such a 'paradox' and J.J. Abrams kicked off a whole rebooted franchise with that logic.

Dragonball Z Time Travel: Amusingly, Dragonball Z followed the same basic idea during one of the late-middle-ish story arcs, but with the twist that multiple timelines exist concurrently and there's not much you can really do about anything in yours. Here, time machines are also technically dimensional transports. Two of the characters' kid ("Trunks") comes back from a post-apocalyptic future to change history and does, however even after he theoretically fixes it, he returns to his timeline to find nothing has changed. This is actually a legitimate time travel theory: that you can do whatever you want in the past because you can only ever travel to an alternate reality past. Grandfather Paradox doesn't work if it's not technically your grandpa.

This is almost the same as Dr. Who, except the Doctor really doesn't give a shit about what he does to any particular timeline. Like Trunks's ship, the TARDIS keeps its occupants outside the timestream and thus immune to alteration.


Here's where Back to the Future pisses me off. Doc Brown clearly shows what's going on in Part II:

It's the alternate-concurrent-timeline again, except only from the perspective of someone from the original history. When they changed 1955, 1985 got tweaked and no one knew the difference because it was never any other way for them, except for Doc and Marty who only experienced the original timeline and were protected from being overwritten by being outside the rewritten era.

Except since he and Marty were not in the DeLorean when Old Biff went back to 1955 and changed history again, they shouldn't have been protected because they didn't time travel until after that. In fact, the entire universe should be written over, but it's not. Instead it's still in place because Marty and the Doc are going to reverse the changes in 1955, but they won't know to do it unless they try to go back to a time after 1955 first and see some changes.

So it's a predestination loop.

Except, in Part I Marty almost fades away because his parents don't get together, until they do and he doesn't. So clearly Marty can be erased, even if he was going to have fixed everything.

Add to that that the present is changed at the end of I and artifacts from the present and future erase in the past and present respectively when Marty changes events, and it looks like there isn't predetermined causality, even though there has to be for the rest of the story to work.

Basically, there's causality when they need special effects and plot twists, and there isn't when it would benefit the characters.

And if Marty tweaked 1985 so his family was better off and Biff was a tool, why would he befriend Doc and end up going back in time at all? Shouldn't there be an extra Marty? Did they just kill him to make sure? Unless Doc, guided by the fact that they did do all that, coerced that Marty into going back in that timeline as well, with the intent of preserving it exactly as it happened to him/in the movie. That would work, but then there would be an extra (third, really) Marty in 1955 who would arrive in the same place and time as Movie Marty, either merging with him or blowing up the universe in the exact paradox Doc always warned him about.If they merged, that'd alter the movie and screw with the timeline again in and infinitely recurring loop of subtle differences, or Original Marty takes precedence over all paradox Marties because he is "Original" and thus somehow more Universally valid than his accidental offshoots.If traveling outside your timestream makes you immune to all temporal anomalies save complete erasure, as long as you're not in your preferred chronological place, that's a pretty sweet superpower to have, especially since everybody ages while they're time traveling and then returning to the same day they left.

So yeah. "Magic."

The Gospel According to Lady Gaga

What the fook do ya need a dog-penis gun for?! Okay, Rambo.

I did a Second-By-Second Breakdown of "Bad Romance" about a year and a half ago and I'm not intending to go back to that any time soon. Nor do I plan on a long rant as I did when "Telephone" Was Blasted As Child Poison.

All I'm going to point out here is that Jesus is Rick Gonzalez, the dorky best friend from defunct sitcom "Reaper," while Judas is none other than Boondock Saint Murphy MacManus and The Walking Dead's most hold-me-back fan favorite Daryl, Norman Flipping Reedus.

NORMAN. REEDUS.

He's the Boondock Saint who isn't confused for Colin Ferrell. And Jesus is the Hispanic kid from Old School?

Yeah, I'd probably go with Gaga on this one. Judas is way more badass, though I suppose it must take a lot of courage and skull-breaking for a young Dominican boy to take over control of a predominantly white, redneck biker gang in what appears to be the American Southwest. He must get a lot of Mexican jokes.

But then again, I suppose he just turns the other cheek.

On Productivity and Particle Physics

A supposed internal note leaked a couple days ago, which upon examination appears to be a loose abstract for a technical paper to be published by four researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN outside Geneva, Switzerland. The paper outlines data which would indicate the detection of decay particles which would result from the brief creation of the long-sought Higgs boson, the theoretical particle (in the sense that all other forces with in the standard model of physics have their own bosons already) which would grant matter the quality of mass, thus conveying the gravitational force and making everything in the entire universe work. You know, at all.

This would be huge, if it's not an Easter-Fools Day prank. Or an error. Or anything else.

It's actually super-cool because if it's true, then the Higgs, or really one Higgs if there are different types, would be about 30 times heavier than it 'should' be. This completely screws over the whole standard model, but might actually help simplify everything Out There, since we've been getting crazier and crazier trying to figure out why what we see isn't antithetical to existence even though by all observations it really should be.

Maybe everything's heavier at certain scales and there's no such thing as dark matter. That'd be great, because dark matter's supposed to be it's own anti-particle, so if two pieces of it ever touched, despite trying everything possible to avoid doing so, both will instantly annihilate in an incredibly energetic reaction.

To put that in perspective, it'd be like when your normal productivity suddenly takes a nosedive right after you start watching all previous seasons of a new show on Netflix.

Or more precisely, it's like when I started re-watching Season 3 of 'Jersey Shore'
for my book and realized it was killing my desire to have anything more to do with 'Jersey Shore.'

Happy April Fool's Day!

I'm not doing anything funny today. I don't need to live up to your expectations. I tried that already.

Instead, enjoy this guy so bored on a two-hour drive that he impersonates a ton of Family Guy voice impressions. Most of them are pretty good.

Charlie Sheen Is Hiring An Intern

Last night I was informed that Charlie Sheen is hiring an intern. He's also performing a stand-up tour styled one-man show, featuring talk time, Q&A periods and excessive use of non sequiturs.

But the internship. Yes, "Team Sheen" is looking for a social media intern, presumably because Charlie Sheen cannot be trusted to type batshit crazy tweets that aren't actually so batshit crazy they scare off any of his 2.8 million Twitter followers. They received 74,000 applications for the first round.

The test? Fill out a form and tell Team Sheen why you should be their Media Intern in 75 characters or less (presumably so you can send it as a tweet).

Celebrities For Whom I Should Intern In And Why (In 75 Characters Or Less):

Charlie Sheen - "My mother was a tiger; I am of her blood. Previous job: Vatican assassin."

Jerry Seinfeld - "I'm a guy who's all about nothing."

Lorne Michaels - "There's no way I could make Saturday Night Live any worse."

George Lucas - "Star Wars already stole my childhood, why not my adulthood too?"

Dave Eggers - "I know what 'sardonic' means; I can properly use a semicolon."

Rebecca Black - "I know why it's called "Friday."

Lindsay Lohan - "I have lots of blood. For things."

The guy from Aphex Twin - … alright, there's nothing that can be said about Aphex Twin in less than four million characters, all looped and read back simultaneously.

On Law & Order: LA

I saw an article the other day called "How To Make Law & Order: LA Better."

Actually, I have no idea what the article was called, that was just the point of it. The title conveyed this, I just can't remember it verbatim at the moment.

Here's my list of Ways to Make Law & Order: LA Not Suck:

• Bring back Sam Waterson. He was killer in "The Great Gatsby" and he made L&O for 16 years.
  
  
• For that matter, bring back Jerry Orbach. Yes, I know he's dead. I don't care. If George Lucas can buy up the rights to dead actors to digitally insert into "Indiana Jones 5" or some other travesty, L&O can reanimate Lennie Briscoe for one snarky comment made over a fellow corpse each week.
  
  

  

  Dick Wolf already owns Jerry's soul, as far as I know. Briscoe retired in 2002, but returned two years later in Law & Order: Trial By Jury, which died a horrible death soon after Orbach passed peacefully.

• You know, just go ahead and set it back in New York. That's what we want to see.

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.