I am le wrong

Well, okay technically, I was right, the phrase was in the episode. But let's face it, that's not what I mean. Then again, the only time I was able to accurately predict what insane plot twist Joss Whedon was throwing my way was, ironically, when Mal said "they're not gonna see this coming" in Serenity.

Whedonist ramblings, part 1

Dollhouse, that show about sex slaves that nobody watches and is thus never going to get another season, returns briefly to our screens for the next two months. Given what I know about who's going to be in these episodes (and who's not going to be in episodes after the ones airing tonight), I won't be at all surprised if we hear the line "there are three flowers in a vase" come up tonight. Just sayin'.

That was going to be the extent of my post until I read yet another cracked.com article making fun of Twilight. The fact that it threw Spike in there as an example of an anti-Edward at first didn't gel; as any Buffy fan can tell you, Spike was the most whipped former badass of all time until Edward came along. Then it occured to me that mid-Season Five Spike (I'm thinking specifically the episode "Triangle," where he wants credit for not feeding on bleeding disaster victims, but that just shows you how much of an unforgivable geek I am) is still more badass than Edward. When your main vampire is more pathetic than a chipped, whipped whiner, you're not doing anyone any favors. To round off my descent into unforgivable nerdhood: Spike may be love's bitch, but he's man enough to admit it.

Also? Football good. No beat scrawny geek up, cavemen. Please?

New Market Enterprises Product #807353076260

What follows is a work of fiction.

We here at New Market Enterprises have been working on a new sort of gun. It's part disintegrator, part mind-control ray, and its intended use is 1) to play inappropriate jokes on college drunkards and 2) to publicly embarass our enemies.

What Product #807353076260 does is remove the target's clothing, while inducing the target to think, no matter what evidence to the contrary, that they are still fully clothed. We're calling it the Emperor's New Gun.

Now some of you, our corporate financers, might be wondering why we've made such an immature piece of technology. Surely, you say, we're just going to go around zapping every hot girl we see. We would like to assure you that we are professional scientists and take our work very seriously. We would never use our science for nefarious purposes. Any e-mails you might have read to the contrary are blatant lies foisted on you by a vast right-wing conspiracy.

And at any rate, we've had some problems in the testing stage, so even if we wanted to (and we don't), we couldn't make the 6 o'clock news by turning innocent girls into indecent exposure criminals. Maybe that would be on late night news instead, because of the risque content. Anyway, that's not happening.

What happened was this: the blast radius is too big. Scientists could detect no change in the clothing of our (totally willing) test subject. Ethan Sanderson, after a minute of staring intently at the subject, abruptly stood up and ran to a supply closet. After a muffled discussion it was revealed that Doctor Sanderson was convinced that everyone had been hit by the ray, and that everyone was now naked an unaware of it.

It soon became evident, as personell not present during the initial test entered the testing area, that only the subject was no longer clothed. All of the scientists were hit merely by the mind-control ray and forced to believe, as the subject did, that she was still wearing clothes.

Doctor Lawrence Vaughan has suggested that we implement the device on a global scale, for no better reason than "it will make an excellent literary allegory." The Science Division was reminded that Doctor Vaughan's doctorate is in Literary Studies, and therefore "not real." His suggestion was ignored and he was sent back to the library.

We'd just like to point out again that we will not do as Doctor Vaughan suggests, nor will we employ the device at all outside of laboratory conditions in the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, it has been twenty-six hours and we have not been able to coax Doctor Sanderson out of the supply closet.

-Doctor Foster

Waters of Mars

What I didn't like about Waters of Mars:

1 - "I'm (person)." Boom "Person's name. Died 2059." Repeat about ten times in three minutes. This is my single biggest complaint about the episode. It got annoying the second time it happened.

2 - Doctor, this isn't Pompeii. There aren't going to be petrified bodies for people to find centuries later. All you have to the instant you know it's doomsday for Bowie Base is park the TARDIS inside the base, shepherd everyone in, set the auto-destruct, and drop the crew off somewhen else, well before or after their impact on history would be largely negated.

3 - RTD continuing his slide into the delusion that he can write a season finale like Joss Whedon.

4 - "Gadget gadget."

5 - Is this episode supposed to be a silly jab at the water-fearing aliens in Signs? Cuz that's what it feels like.

What I liked about Waters of Mars:

1 - The fact that the actors were all able to pull off being afraid of water. Bravo.

2 - "Name, Rank, Intention." "Doctor. Doctor. Fun."

3 - The last five minutes. I do not mind a bit of megalomania in my Doctor. And David Tennant is now officially giving Troughton a run for his money for the second-best slot behind Tom Baker.

4 - Gadget.

5 - It wasn't about a bus in the desert. The minor characters are all so brilliantly written and played that as they die off, you really wish you'd gotten to see more of them. I especially like the guy who blows himself up in the shuttle.


Now, I've heard the DWO Whocast about the episode, and they spend a bit of time ranting about the "it's just a theory" line re: fixed points in time. This didn't bother me. A) at the time, I thought the Doctor was just dumbing it all down for his would-be companion. B) it's a nice bit of foreshadowing for what he tries to do at the end of the episode.

And I'd also like to say that it's about damn time we got a "fixed point in time" after the present day. Nice touch.

4 sonic screwdrivers out of 5.

-James

Halloween playlist

"Fear of the Dark" Fear of the Dark Iron Maiden

"The Call of Ktulu" Ride the Lightning Metallica
(Turn up the bass frequencies for the first 2 1/2 minutes to hear Cliff Burton at his absolute best.)

"Highway to Hell" Highway to Hell AC/DC

"Dazed and Confused" Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin

"Black Sabbath" Black Sabbath Black Sabbath

"Hells Bells" Back in Black AC/DC

"The Right to Go Insane" Endgame Megadeth
(Okay, actually half the songs off Peace Sells would work as well, but I'm addicted to this one.)

"Children of the Damned" The Number of the Beast Iron Maiden

"Welcome to the Machine" Wish You Were Here Pink Floyd
(Odd man out? Just a bit. Tough.)

"The Thing That Should Not Be" Master of Puppets Metallica

"Still Life" Piece of Mind Iron Maiden

"Brain Damage/Eclipse" The Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd
(Because songs about going crazy are always good.)

I also understand that the original version of the Doctor Who theme frightened young children.

-James

(Edit: I'm listening to Megadeth Radio's Halloween mix. "Fear of the Dark" just came up. Nya ha.)

(Edit #2: It just came on again. There's a reason it's at the top of the list.)

Barry Letts 26 March 1925 – 9 October 2009

As you might have guesses by my last post, I am behind the times. News takes a while to reach my delicate ears. I found out that Barry Letts died only by reading Paul Cornell's blog, which I was only reading because a link from Whedonesque told me to go there for something completely unrelated.

So, this means that, to the best of my knowledge, the only living producer from Classic Who is Phillip Hinchcliffe. Derrick Sherwin might be, but he was the producer for exactly one serial (Spearhead from Space) before resigning from the post and letting Barry get a shot at it.

Now, the pacing of the show wasn't exactly stellar whem Mr. Letts was producing, and the switch to color meant that it really didn't hold up as well as it used to. The political subtext, as I stated in an older post, I tended to disagree with but didn't dislike. But still, Barry served as producer for 5 years and managed to not get the show cancelled, and nobody else can stake a similar claim (except RTD, if you count this year's specials as an actual season). On top of that, his last important act as producer was to cast Tom Baker. Of course, for most of his tenure, he was producing a show that really doesn't resemble the show that came before or after his term. The Doctor was for the most part stuck on Earth with a solid base of support and can't fly the TARDIS at all, as opposed to barely being able to fly it.

And yet it's easy to look back on those, the dandy-Doctor days, with considerable nostalgia, and we have Mr. Letts primarily to thank for that.

In other news, please please please tell me that this is not the title that's actually going to appear on-screen for the new series.

Fall Break or: Sometimes I Wonder If My Brain Is Doing Drugs Behind My Back

If I could remember a single thing about the drive home, I'd relate it.

Moving on: the average age of the items I purchased at Best Buy: 13.333333. Yikes. This is what happens when you're naturally behind the times, and also short on cash thanks to a speeding ticket. They were, in order of age:

Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here (1975)
I'll never tire of this band. Even though I don't own anything from before Meddle, but hey, I'm missing out on the one with the guy who went crazy from the drugs and the several that are meandering experimental wrecks. (I jest. Piper, at the very least, I intend to pick up one of these days, and the band themselves have pretty much disowned everything between Piper and Meddle.) Anyway, the album's only 5 songs long, but damn. These boys could write music. Or, more probably, these boys could jam flawlessly for hours on end and then edit it down to stick it on vinyl.

Serenity (even though the collector's edition came out in 07, I'm crediting this one as 2005, otherwise I have to go back and do the math again.)
It's one of those movies I honestly wish I hadn't known who was going to die beforehand. Oh, by the way, for anyone who hasn't seen it (and you're seriously depriving yourselves), spoiler alert: people die. Well, it's Joss Whedon. I won't claim to be surprised. Anyway, it's good. Really, really good. And for someone who grew up on Star Wars and felt badly cheated by the prequels, really really good is good enough for me.

Super Mario Galaxy (it says (C)2007 on the title screen, so I'll assume that's accurate).
Finally, I got a Wii game that requires the use of the Wii-mote and did not cause me to throw said Wii-mote down in frustration within two minutes. I'm considerably less apprehensive about the sequel now. Having said that, I hope they iron out the difficulty curve; the levels alternate between "I could have done that in my sleep" and "screw this, let's watch Serenity again." And back again. There is no middle ground. The Deep Dark Galaxy, for example, there's a trick you can use with the cannon to make levels one and two (and possibly three; I can't remember it) much easier. Otherwise in level two you're supposed to do this... you know what? I'm not even sure what you're supposed to do in level two. Oh, and they're not "galaxies;" they're star systems at best. Then again, "Super" Mario Sunshine proved that the developers never passed a 200-level Physics course, so I'm not really surprised that they got the nomenclature wrong here.

Okay, what else did I do? I did not do what I'd intended to do, which is get my guitar serviced. I decided to save that for Thanxgiving/Xmas instead. Good luck... I probably learned a new song, but at this point I don't remember what is and isn't in my repertoire. This may have something to do with the fact that I automatically assume that I can work out anything in my iTunes library that's lighter than Iron Maiden in less than three minutes. But enough about me; let's talk about me for a while.

On the way back the three noteworthy things were the three police cars pulling three people over in the construction zone on I-90. Rockford's getting a fat paycheck...

Also I did the bare minimum of homework.

-James

Who Review! The Deadly Assasin

The Deadly Assassin begins with a Star Wars-esque caption scroll providing a general background, segues into a Manchurian Candidate-esque political thriller, and then goes into a virtual reality world called the Matrix. It was first broadcast in 1976, meaning that it pre-dates both Star Wars and The Matrix.

Blah blah Time Lords blah blah boring MP soundalikes blah blah. The serial came under fire at the time for two reasons: 1) the third episode, which I'll get to later, and 2) the fact that it turned the Time Lords from the mystical all powerful race that they'd been ever since their introduction in 1969, into a bunch of doddering old men. This revision certainly goes a long way towards explaining why the Doctor left their society, but it left a lot of viewers upset that the great and powerful Time Lords had been reduced to a bigger version of Parliament.

The setup is excellent: the Doctor's coming back to Gallifrey because the President (not the Prime Minister! odd for a British show) of Gallifrey is resigning. En route he gets a vision of the assassination, and the astute viewer will note that in this vision, the Doctor is the one holding the gun. He gets to Gallifrey, sneaks past the guards for no adequately explained reason beyond the fact that the Doctor sneaks past the guards on every planet he ever goes to, and arrives in what appears to be the only large room on the planet. This is where the President will resign, but the Doctor notices a rifle protruding from the shadows up above. He goes to investigate, picks up the rifle, aims, fires, and the President drops dead, and the credits roll on Episode One. Brilliant! Did the Doctor just assassinate the President of Gallifrey? Tune in next week and find out!

Episode two: no. No he didn't. In fact, in a shot added to the reprise from the previous episode, we find that he was actually aiming at the real assassin. After being arrested and using a legal loophole to wriggle his way out of being vaporized on the spot, he enlists the security chief who arrested him to help prove his innocence, which he does by entering the Matrix. It's right about here that all the credibility of this serial begins to wash away.

Episode three is a big filler episode set in the Matrix, with the assassin hunting the Doctor. It ends with a "violent" fight and a freeze-frame of the Doctor's head being held underwater. This drew fire from some people who thought that children couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Episode four contains a revelation that the New Who writers must by now be desperately wondering how to wriggle out of: Time Lords have a total of 13 lives. Also, the Master, who is the villain of the piece (this isn't a spoiler - he's called "Master" in the first episode and they find a trademark shrunken doll in episode two), holds a gun on the Doctor, says something along the lines of "No more delays, now you die," and stuns him. Stuns. Him. After saying he wouldn't delay the Doctor's execution any further. Then he returns to the aforementioned only big room on the planet where he raises a monolith that nobody noticed before, ever. He and the Doctor fight while the camera shakes a lot and styrofoam falls from on high, and then he falls down a big crack in the floor. End of story.

Rrrrgh.

Long story short, if he were still alive, Robert Holmes could probably sue the Wachowskis for $zillions, and the story goes all wonky about halfway through episode two and never really recovers.

I'm trying to figure out why this story is held in such high regard. It derailed the Time Lords forever, featured Tom Baker talking to himself because he didn't have a companion, and reintroduced the Master in his most absurd plot ever (I'm going to lure the one man who knows I exist to Gallifrey, frame him for a murder he can easily prove he didn't commit, and then while nobody's looking, steal stuff from the dead President, enter the grand chamber and blow up the planet).

Okay, the Master's mask is good by 1976 standards. Hell, if they could have just made the jaw move a bit more when he spoke, it might have even been good by 1977 (read: Star Wars) standards. It had tubes for pumping blood over the face and everything, but this wasn't used because of the poor lighting. It's the "the regeneration limit is capped at 12" story, the continuity fans' favorite story. I kinda like the sets on this verison of Gallifrey better than all the subsequent ones (espcially Arc of Infinity). And it's a story of political intrigue first broadcast in a time of political intrigue. We got a companion-less story, and the first story set mostly on the Doctor's home planet. And the acting, which is usually fairly good on Doctor Who, is better than average here. Is The Deadly Assassin well-remembered for the sum of these perks?

Bottom line: it's a good story, but it's no Talons of Weng-Chiang, which was broadcast only a few months later. I'm not entirely sure Deadly Assassin deserves to be on the top 10 list. Top 20, absolutely. Top 15, probably. Top 10 intact stories, maybe.

Me and my music tastes

A friend of mine on Facebook recently published a status update that featured 26 bands in alphabetical order, one for each letter of the alphabet.

Let's see how I do with that:

AC/DC, Black Sabbath... dammit.
And every band on his list was, I presume, heavier than either band I just mentioned.

It's just a fact that pretty much every music act (with a few exceptions) that started after 1980 is more or less crap.

Now for the exceptions. Metallica (80s only), Megadeth (Peace Sells, Rust in Peace, and another album of your choice), Stevie Ray Vaughan... that is about it. No, really it is, and if you disagree with me then I'm glad you're not my neighbor and I don't have to listen to your aural bleach all day.

Again, it has to do with the change in emphasis from talent to... I'm not sure what. Radio-friendliness? Maybe. Whenever someone asks me to name the five best guitarists of all time, I have to separate that question and name the five greatest metal guitarists and the five greatest non-metal guitarists (in no particular order: David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and insert-other-guitarist-here). Notice that three of those four are predominantly associated with Fender Stratocasters?

Anyway, I'm off topic. Disregarding punk as the hideous untalented freak show that it was, music followed a simple progression from the Beatles to Metallica, getting heavier and more complex, with better solos. Production values increased as well. As did the average bpm of the songs on an album. Unfortunately, there's only so fast you can play,* and instrumentals are fairly boring.**

*please no-one tell Chris Broderick this.

**please someone tell Satch and Vai this.

Speaking of singing and the lack thereof, thrash metal (I'm looking predominantly at Slayer here) helped to disabuse people of the notion that frontmen should actually be able to sing. Thus, despite the fact that it produced a lot of music that I like (most of it coming from American bands whose names begin with "M"), the thrash movement also, sadly, helped kill off good music forever. Wah.

Because when the concept of singing came back, it did so in the form of mass-produced pop. And despite what the top 40 says, nobody actually likes that crap.

There's a reason Led Zeppelin are often considered to be the greatest band of all time.*** It's not that Jimmy Page was an awesome guitarist (though he was/still kinda is). It's not that John Bonham was the greatest drummer ever (though he was). This was a band that went out of its way to do things differently. Punks take notice: I did not say that this was a band that went out of its way to be crap, no matter how sloppy the "Heartbreaker" solo is. This band would gleefully throw time signatures around. 5/4? Can any of you even think in 5/4?

***yeah, I said it, Beatles fans. Deal.

They straddled styles and did it with brilliance. I defy you to find a great album by another band that has blues, folk and metal (well, hard rock anyway) on it. Hell, I defy you to find a great album by anybody whose career started after 1990.

Thoughts

1) Who came up with rap "music?" No, really. Who decided "hey, I can't sing at all and I'm going to make a career out of it?"

2) In a similar vein, who came up with punk music? Who decided "hey, I can't play my instrument at all and I'm going to make a career out of it?"

3) Stop listening to what he says. Look at the people he's appointed. Look at the world leaders he's supported. Look at the allies he's stabbed in the back. Obama's the most left-wing President the country's ever had, and he's earned that position in months. What's this country going to look like in 2012?

4) 2009 deaths I give a crap about: Patrick McGoohan, Andy Hallet, Les Paul. End of list.

5) If everybody chose not to drive for 24 hours, people would die. Food wouldn't get to where it was needed.

6) You can have "clean" energy, or you can have your plains and deserts unmolested and your view unobscured. You can't have both.

7) You can't have only clean energy. It's just not viable.

8) If no band/artist that hadn't released an album by 1980 were allowed to release an album after 1980, we'd a) miss out on a couple of awesome bands and b) live in a much saner world.

9) ACORN should be dismantled and every politician with ties to them should be thrown out of office. We wouldn't have a viable government anymore, but we'd be better off.

10) If the government really wants to lower the cost of anything, they should get the hell out of it.

The top ten Iron Maiden songs

(according to me)

10. Aces High - Powerslave
9. Fear of the Dark - Fear of the Dark
8. Wasted Years - Somewhere in Time
7. The Trooper - Piece of Mind
6. 2 Minutes to Midnight - Powerslave
5. The Wicker Man - Brave New World
4. The Number of the Beast - The Number of the Beast
3. Phantom of the Opera - Iron Maiden (Yes, I am going with the version sung by Paul Di'Anno, with Dennis Stratton's Queen-esque backing vocals.)
2. Revelations - Piece of Mind (The live version from Flight 666 is also quite awesome.)
1. Hallowed be Thy Name - The Number of the Beast (Not just the greatest Iron Maiden song, but the greatest metal song. Ever.)

Songs that just didn't quite make the cut include Powerslave, Remember Tomorrow and Can I Play With Madness. Also Drifter and Die With Your Boots On are way, way underrated, but there was no way I could actually put them in a top 10 list. And no, Run To The Hills was never in the running, because it is overrated.