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Dec112006

The Origins of Frasier, and WKRP is Coming!

There aren’t many television spin-offs that even manage to stay on the air, let alone surpass their source material in quality. Frasier is the exception that proves the rule. I enjoyed Cheers, but I loved Frasier. You may recall that I gushed at length about this series when the show wrapped production; briefly, however, I thought it was a near-perfect mixture of sophisticated wit, lowbrow farce, and genuine human emotion (as opposed to the ersatz variety displayed by the sarcasm-bots on most sitcoms), specifically the complex emotions that exist between grown men and their fathers. In the end, it was a very different series from its parent show, and that was a big part of what made it great.

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Dec112006

Relativity

When I left the house this morning, it was about 8:15 AM on December 11, 2006. Twenty minutes later — at least according to my subjective experiences — the digital clock on the train platform informed me that it was now 10:05 AM, January 2, 2094. I can only assume that my car somehow approached the speed of light as I drove from my house to the park-n-ride lot.

I always thought the future would be much shinier than this. How disappointing.

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Dec082006

Thundaar

I know what you’re thinking: “My god, another entry? What is this, five or six today? Doesn’t this guy have anything better to do?” Well, actually, I probably do, but I don’t feel like doing it. It’s a pretty dull afternoon here in the Comma Mines. Much more fun to post silly blog entries about silly things… like, say, one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid, a bizarre and violent mash-up of Star Wars, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and Alex Raymond-style background art called Thundaar the Barbarian. Author Chris Roberson (who credits this show as the [subconscious] inspiration for his excellent novel Paragaea: A Planetary Romance) reminded me of Thundaar this afternoon by posting a video clip of the opening credits. Here it is:

A shattered moon hanging in the sky over the ruins of our world? A hot babe with magical powers? A giant cat-man sidekick? A hero who wields a lightsaber rip-off? Tell me how a ten- or twelve-year-old boy could not be enthralled with this stuff. I understand the show is on DVD now. I might have to throw it into my ever-lengthening Netflix queue…

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Dec082006

Quote of the Day

I love space exploration because it takes energy that could be spent destroying the planet or hurting people, and uses it to expand what we understand and what we can see in our lifetimes.

–Wil Wheaton

For various reasons that I won’t get into right now, I’ve been trying lately to articulate exactly why I find “space stuff” so interesting and exciting. I’m not sure Wil’s thinking on the matter exactly matches my own, but it’s probably a big component. And it’s nicely stated. The rest of his entry from which that line comes is worth a click, too…

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Dec082006

Mary Really is Scary, and The Fonz is a God!

So, if that trailer the other day wasn’t enough to convince you that there’s something deeply disturbing about Mary Poppins, perhaps this will do the trick: it’s a lengthy essay that details all the ways in which the 1964 “children’s” film fulfills all three dynamics that typically characterize horror films. (The average horror film is usually predicated on only one of these dynamics, so Mary must be extra horrific!) Consider:

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Dec082006

The Return of an Old Favorite

Although most of my all-time favorite movies are natural choices for someone of my generation — i.e., they were made during my childhood and adolescence in the ’70s and ’80 — I also have a great deal of affection for movies that pre-date me, often by decades. I guess I’m kind of unusual in that regard; I’ve met a lot of people who have no tolerance for old movies, “old” being a highly subjective definition, of course. (I know of one guy who flatly refuses to watch anything that was made more than five years ago, even if it’s something he saw and enjoyed a mere ten years ago. Yeah, I don’t get it either.) Personally, though, I’ve never seen much difference between “old” and “new” movies, aside from the obvious stylistic and technological details. Movies are movies, in my book, and they’re either effective and enjoyable or they’re not.

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Dec062006

Scary Mary

Remember that fake movie trailer that was all the rage a year or so back, the one that made The Shining look like a romantic comedy? If you enjoyed that one, check out Mary Poppins re-done as a horror film:

Just more evidence of how powerful editing and music can be…

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Dec062006

The Carl Sagan Memorial Blog-a-Thon

[Update: If you’ve come here from Joel Schlosberg’s big meta-post, please see my contribution to the Carl Sagan Memorial Blog-a-Thon here.]

This is kind of cool… Nick Sagan, the son of the late astronomer Carl Sagan, reports on a plan to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his father’s passing:

The goal here is to make December 20th a blogosphere-wide celebration of the life and works of Carl Sagan. So if you’re a Carl Sagan fan with a blog, or you know someone who is, I hope you’ll join in and take some time on that day to share your thoughts, memories, opinions and feelings about my dad. And if you could help spread the word, it would mean a lot to me.

The Internet-spanning celebration was actually the idea of a blogger named Joel Schlosberg:

Read or reread a Sagan book and review it; discuss cool things that you’ve done that’s been influenced by him; pontificate on one of the many topics he treated (SETI, astronomy, critical thinking, the history of science, human intelligence….), or post about something completely surprising. Contact me by email or by leaving a comment, and then when the date approaches, I will create a meta-post that links to all the stuff people are doing, providing a network of the participating bloggers.

To kick things off, Joel provides a collection of Sagan-related stuff out there on the Web.

I’ve written before about Carl Sagan’s impact on me, and I’m not sure I can come up with much more than what I’ve already said. But I’m going to give it a go. If anybody reading this has their own blog or journal and something to say about Carl, consider yourself tagged. Stay tuned, everybody…

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Dec062006

Birth Con-poles

It was on a somewhat, ahem, hazy morning in Cambridge, England that the redoubtable Cranky Robert and myself first beheld the wonder we came to call “birth con-poles.” (The morning was actually beautiful and sunny, as best as I can recall; it was Robert and me that were hazy. You can draw your own conclusions as to why.)

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Dec052006

Quote for the Day

My Internet wanderings this morning somehow carried me past the official site of Will Rogers. Best known for saying he never met a man he didn’t like, Rogers was a beloved humorist, commentator, and media personality of the 1920s and ’30s. Here is one of his observations, which I think I’m going to adopt as a motto:

“I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”

And here’s a bonus Rogers quote, which has a somewhat darker edge in light of current circumstances:

“If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, ‘America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership.'”

The amazing thing, of course, is that these remarks (while admittedly taken out of context) still have relevance some 60 years after Rogers first said them…

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