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Jul252007

TV Title Sequences: The New Adventures of Flash Gordon

In yesterday’s blatheration about the new Flash Gordon series, I made several references to previous versions of the story. The best known of these are, of course, the 1930s-vintage movie serials starring Buster Crabbe, and the 1980 feature film with the so-cheesy-it’s-awesome soundtrack by the rock group Queen. However, there have also been a number of Flash television shows over the years, including an animated version that debuted in 1979. Known variously as The New Adventures of Flash Gordon, The Adventures of Flash Gordon, or just plain Flash Gordon, this series was a weekly Saturday-morning must-see for me:

This series is available on DVD, but honestly, I’m half-afraid to watch it again, because it might not hold up to my adult scrutiny and I don’t want to ruin a fond memory. Even so, there are a lot of things in that clip above that still look good to me: rocketships, robots, ray guns, alien creatures, exotic landscapes, giant drilling machines tunneling beneath the ground, and scantily clad women with swords in hand… ah, now that’s Flash Gordon, in all its pulpy, comic-strippy glory! Somehow, I doubt the Sci-Fi Channel’s take on the material will quite live up to this standard…

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Jul242007

All We Have to Do is Save the Universe…

Arg! I have several longer entries that I’d like to finish and get posted up here, but naturally my days have been too hectic recently to allow that. So, in lieu of writing anything genuinely interesting, allow me to direct you to this preview of the Sci-Fi Channel’s upcoming Flash Gordon series.

The trailer doesn’t show you very much, but my first impression is that it looks promising. I’m getting a definite sense of cliffhanger-style derring-do, although that could just be an artifact of fast editing and the proper choice of music. (I must admit, I started grinning like an idiot when I noticed the “dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-Flash!-Ah-aaaahhh!” in the background. I hope they actually use some of the old Queen theme song in this new show, and that it’s not just a tease to get us thirtysomething fanboys all hyped up.)

I have heard some rumors that I’m not happy about, namely that Flash and his sidekicks reach the planet Mongo via some kind of stargate, rather than aboard a rocketship as in every previous version of Alex Raymond‘s venerable tale. Also, the new series will apparently lack many of the familiar supporting characters from the earlier versions — no Barin, Aura, Fria, Thun, or Vultan, and probably no hawkmen or floating city in the sky either. In short, many of the elements that distinguish Flash Gordon in the first place. I find myself wondering yet again, as I did when I first saw the new Battlestar Galactica, exactly how much you can get away with changing before a remake should more properly be allowed to develop into a whole new (if somewhat similar) property, with a different title and different characters.

On the positive side, however, a glance through Sci-Fi’s gallery of publicity stills turns up a number of Flash Gordon-y images, including some good, old-fashioned female pulchritude and our hero in pulpy peril. Oh, and I’ve heard that the producers have approached Sam J. Jones, the 1980 Flash, about doing a cameo or longer guest appearance. That sort of thing makes me happy; it’s like when the 1979 Buck Rogers series included a role for Buster Crabbe, the original Buck and Flash. While some may dismiss these inclusions as stunts calculated to draw fans of the older version, I think they demonstrate that the producers of the new version respect what came before them. It’s a decent thing to do for the older actors, and for fanboys like me who still revere the originals, it’s fun and heartwarming.

The new Flash is set to premiere on August 10.

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Jul232007

No More Bat Boy

Damn it! I just heard that the Weekly World News — that most outrageous of supermarket tabloids, the one which brings us vital updates on the impending end of the world as well as the latest adventures of Bat Boy — is ceasing publication in only a few short weeks.

The WWN is utterly ridiculous, of course — is there anyone, even in the farthest reaches of the Ozarks, who actually believes anything they read in its pages? — but it’s always brought me some much-needed amusement as I stood in line at the checkout stand with the Muzak boring into my skull and my eyeballs burning from the flourescent overheads. I’m going to miss seeing which politicians are meeting with the aliens this month…

One note of interest: the article I linked to above says that WWN “…was also known as a reliable source of paychecks for science fiction and fantasy writers looking to make a few extra bucks.” I always wondered where that stuff came from.

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Jul232007

Expelliarmus!

Even Vader needs to know who dies!

I think I must be the last person in the Northern Hemisphere to jump on the Harry Potter bandwagon. (Or should I say the Hogwart’s Express? Nah, that would be way too clever and precious, and may even induce vomiting in some of my more sensitive readers…) I simply haven’t had much interest in reading children’s books, nor have I been able to quite fathom all the grown-ups I’ve seen on the train who seem utterly engrossed by them.

However, I’m a sucker for a good pop-cultural groundswell, and with the final book and fifth movie in the series debuting in the last few days, and the constant buzz of excitement coming from practically everybody I meet, well, I’ve finally given in. I started reading the series for the first time a few weeks back (I just began Book 5 today), and yes, I did attend one of the midnight release events on Friday. I’ll be writing more about my experiences with Harry soon.

In the meantime, I was really amused to see that not even Sith Lords are immune from hype. No matter what one may think of J.K. Rowling’s writing style or the stories themselves — Harold Bloom, I’m thinking of you, you sour-pussed old killjoy snob — you cannot deny that this weekend was a remarkable, watershed event. Millions of copies of the same book were distributed all around the world in a single weekend, a good percentage of them in a single night, and a significant number of those books were read cover-to-cover before Monday morning. That’s almost unbelievable. Has there ever been any other mass entertainment that has come so close to being a ubiquitous experience, i.e., something that everyone was doing? Maybe the mini-series Roots back in the ’70s, or the initial surge of Star Wars‘s popularity (although both of those played out across longer timeframes than this single, three-day orgy of reading…), but I’m not sure even those things were so big. It’s truly mind-boggling, and I doubt it will ever be repeated.

(Credit where it’s due: the photo came from here — I also like the one of Vader in the shower — and there’s an explanation of that photo set here.)

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Jul232007

The Latest Book Meme

Scalzi is feeling testy today, as you can see in this book meme he’s cooked up:

1. Open the book you’re currently reading to page 133.
2. Read the fourth line on the page.
3. Put the book back where it had been resting.
4. Tell no one of what it was you just did.
5. Think of five friends to tag with this meme.
6. Do not actually tag them. They are busy and have lives.
7. Go about your life as if nothing has happened.
8. Carry the secret of this meme to your grave.

So did I perform this particular meme? No one will ever know…

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Jul212007

What’s in Your Faucet?

Well, here’s a small feather in my home town’s cap: a pair of wine tasters have declared that Salt Lake’s tap water tastes best out of the 12 cities whose water they tested for a recent segment on The Today Show. The other cities they considered include Portland (Oregon, I assume, since this list seems to work its way east), San Francisco, Dallas, St. Louis, Phoenix, Chicago, Cleveland, Memphis, Boston, Miami and Columbia, South Carolina.

While I’m not about to dispute any positive press that comes this way — we Utahns have to put up with a whole lot of jokes and snide remarks about our fair state and our, ahem, unique local culture — I would like to know specifically where in the Salt Lake area the sample came from. It certainly wasn’t from my neighborhood, where the water is so hard that you can watch the mineral deposits swirl in a freshly drawn glass. Mmmmm, tasty! And chewy!

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Jul182007

Something That Bugs Me: “Loose” vs. “Lose”

Here’s another of those trivial things that no one else seems to mind, but which drive me certifiably bats: people writing the word “loose” when they really mean “lose.”

I don’t know if this is just a Utah thing, or if people from other parts of the country do it, too, but it certainly seems to be endemic in these parts. I see it all over the place: in comments on the Salt Lake Tribune‘s web site (which is actually what inspired this post today), in e-mails from friends (no offense, kids), and in letters and diaries written years ago by dead relatives. I could understand it if folks were simply spelling the word the way it sounded when spoken, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Utahns pronounce “lose” with the proper “z” sound (i.e., “looz” ) in conversation, but when they write it down, they frequently use “loose” (i.e., “looce”), and I gotta tell you, as somebody who spends all day correcting written mistakes for a living, it’s maddening.

So, let’s have a little remedial lesson, shall we? “Lose” is a verb, as in “to lose,” as in “I hope the Utah Jazz don’t lose the big game.” (Don’t worry, they probably will.) “Loose,” on the other hand, is an adjective, a descriptor of something else, as in “That screw is loose,” or “She’s a loose woman.” Now, what’s so tough about that?

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Jul172007

Panhandler Tactic of the Week

Walking down Main this afternoon during my lunchtime constitutional, I was accosted by the usual crew of vagabonds hoping for a hand-out: the crazy, filthy guy who wears insulated ski pants year-round, regardless of the temperature (which is in the high 90s today; needless to say, it isn’t always your sense of sight that first detects Ski-Pants Dude); the pair of young buskers who manage to play their violins well enough to avoid giving passers-by the nails-on-chalkboard squirmies; and the overweight, greasy-haired woman who’s been claiming to be homeless and pregnant for about 18 months now.
But I also saw a new face along “panhandler’s row,” a youngish guy with no shirt, probably about college age, who looked fairly clean aside from a goatee that more closely resembled a shubbery than an actual beard. He sat on one of the large, decorative planters that line the street in this area, totally at ease in the shade of the tree overhead. Like so many others, he held a scrap of cardboard with an entreaty for cash scribbled on it in Magic Marker. But this guy, unlike so many others, went for humor instead of pathos. His sign read:

Running 4 Mayor. Campaign contributions welcome.

I had no change to give him, but I made eye contact and said, “That’s a good sign, at least.” He smiled back and nodded, like he was letting me in on some kind of secret…

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Jul162007

Profile of Melvin

If you, like me, are interested in the strange, sad tale of Melvin Dummar, Howard Hughes, and the so-called “Mormon Will,” check out this profile of Melvin in today’s Salt Lake Tribune. I think it provides a reasonably balanced overview of Melvin’s life and his claims about meeting Hughes, neither supporting nor denouncing him but simply presenting the evidence — which, at this point in time, is mostly hearsay — for both points of view. As I’ve said before, I personally think he’s on the level about giving Hughes a ride, and I also think it’s plausible that the Mormon Will was the real thing. That said, I highly doubt he’s going to see any of the money he’s now trying to so desperately to sue out of Howard’s surviving heirs. Even though Melvin’s experience with Howard sounds like something out of a movie, in real life the little guys almost never win the fight and earn their reward in the end. The odds are too much against them. But I do love them for trying…

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Jul152007

Cross-Blogination

Just finishing up a little business here with a couple of fellow bloggers.

First of all, it looks like Brian Greenberg actually took me up on my challenge to do the Meme of Five; his answers are here, and they are both revealing and amusing… A navy blue tuxedo with light blue ruffles indeed!

I’d also like to note that Brian wrote a few words about that fire at Este Pizza, and he pledged to send a little cash to Dave Heiblim, Este’s owner. I’m sure Dave much appreciates your help, Brian, and I’d like to say thanks myself. That’s a damn decent thing for you to do for someone you’ve never met and who lives three-quarters of a continent away.

Moving right along, Jaquandor recently did an interesting meme in which somebody emailed him five interview questions tailored specifically to him. Jaquador then offered to return the favor to anyone who was interested. I, of course, said sure, shoot me five. Just one thing, though: I think he actually had some other Jason in mind when he formulated his questions for me. Still, I’m always game to give these things a try. My efforts to respond to some oddly inappropriate questions follow the break:

Continue Reading…

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