I have two loves that intersect beautifully: A love of big band music and a love of old recordings. This is especially helpful, since all the best big band recordings are old.
I'm fascinated with old things from the 20th century. Everything from the First World War through the end of the Second fascinates me.
The oldest movie I have is the Thomas Edison produced "Frankenstein", which dates back to 1910. This movie, therefore, will be celebrating its centennial...that's one hundred years...next year, and I couldn't be happier to watch it. For one thing, it's super short...just around 12 minutes. I posted it here on the page once, browse around the archives. For another thing, it's such an old, old look at the world in motion that I find it unbelievably fascinating. Although the plot strays wildly from the original story, the creature design is fantastic...bizarre and a little eerie. Add to the fact that it is one of the first special effects films and almost certainly the first horror film and you've got a very special piece of footage.
But old sound recordings fascinate me equally. Again, obviously, Edison plays into this, as I've heard recordings of his voice as he tinkered with his recording devices. The very first recording, sadly, is lost to history, although he did do a reproduction of it some time later. I find it interesting to hear the slight differences in American English in just 80 to 100 years...Edison, although born in Ohio, was a New Jersey resident, yet his voice bears none of the accent now associated with New Jersey. I also once heard a very rare recording of the voice of Virginia Woolf, a very proper and, frankly, rather pleasant British voice.
But, of course, much of the point of recording was to preserve musical performances. We are fortunate that Enrico Caruso came along just exactly when he did so that his singing voice, paralleled only by that of Luciano Pavarotti (if even him), could be preserved for posterity. Caruso died in 1921, essentially putting his recorded works in the very infancy of the medium. I suggest you find his recordings, as virtually all of them fall into the public domain; his voice is astonishing, regardless of whether or not you like classical music.
One of the earliest big band men was Paul Whiteman, followed closely by Fletcher Henderson. The form owes much to these men. There were others in the '20s, but as far as bandleaders went, these guys were the tops.
But there were some great jazz musicians too that worked in what would become the swing genre. Most famously is Bix Beiderbecke, a cornetist who died in 1931, exactly when his skills would become their most marketable. He worked with Whiteman and also with saxophonist Frankie Trambauer. His only true competition on the cornet was Louis Armstrong; as Armstrong is the better-known man these days, you can see what sort of realm that puts Beiderbecke in.
But anyway. My favorite jazz man, of any form of jazz, is Benny Goodman. My first introduction to jazz was through Goodman's popular big band work, and I later branched out into his later-era small ensemble jazz works. Goodman, a clarinetist, was "the King of Swing" and, accordingly, one of the most popular band leaders of the big band era. The guy could play a clarinet like nobody's business, although he had stiff competition in the great Woody Herman, who was so good that he had pieces composed for him by classical master Igor Stravinsky, and the enduringly popular Artie Shaw, one of the very greatest of the big band leaders. So Benny Goodman was something special, to say the least. Others may argue that one of the others was better, but I stand staunchly behind Benny.
Other big band greats include the similarly enduring Glenn Miller (trombone, but better known simply as a brilliant bandleader), Tommy Dorsey (also trombone, and the man who gave Frank Sinatra his start), Harry James (trumpet master), and Charlie Barnet (saxophone). Other great bandleaders included Sammy Kaye, Kay Kyser, Charlie Spivak, and Guy Lombardo (well-known for his recording of "Auld Lang Syne" which is still played to this day on New Year's).
This brings me to my very favorite Old Hollywood story, told by George Burns in one of his books. Lawrence Welk, well known even to today's PBS viewers, was also a bandleader, known for his light and bubbly music. Talking to notorious cheapskate Jack Benny (a comedy legend), Groucho Marx asked the following question: "What do Lawrence Welk and a five-cent cigar have in common?" The answer was "They're both pieces of shit with a band around them". I still miss George Burns, even though it was Groucho who came up with that particular sick burn.
How's that for a digression?
Anyway, I was browsing through Amazon's formidable MP3 selection today for big band music, starting with Benny Goodman (the amount of recordings the man put out is just tremendous). I found some wonderfully inexpensive collections of recordings with Goodman; one featuring all his recordings from 1928-1931 and another featuring his 1935 output. Very old recordings, and happily of my favorite jazz man. So I decided to do a search under the record label that put these out and found them to be a heaven of big band, jazz, and old recordings.
I found music by Jack Teagarden (trombone) from 1930-1934; and...get this...Fletcher Henderson recordings from 1921-1923. Old stuff! I love it. I'm listening to it now. I also found, at a similarly reasonable price, a collection of the complete Bix Beiderbecke/Frankie Trumbauer recordings. I'm having the time of my life listening to this stuff. I'm on the 1935 Goodman stuff right now, the very last track, which is a swing recording of "Jingle Bells" that is definitely going on my yearly Christmas compilation this year.
I've been immersing myself in big band lately because I find it extremely comforting. I listened to big band and jazz heavily during my high school years, when the other guys were all listening to that awesome '90s rock that we had, but big band was my thing. I was a bit of dork, sure, but even though I wasn't alive in the real big band era, big band music still manages to take my back to a simpler, happier time. I've been falling asleep with XM's "40s on 4" station playing because of that comforting effect the music has on me, and being an inconsolable insomniac you can imagine how good that is for me, to find something that helps me sleep. And it's not because the music's boring, it's precisely because it is comforting to me that I'm able to fall asleep listening to it.
So there you go, a look into my obsession with old big band music. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Fletcher Henderson track from 1921, complete with all the glorious hisses and crackles and pops, to listen to. Good night out there, wherever you are.
Now reading: Odyssey of the Gods by Erich von Daniken
Now listening: Fletcher Henderson, 1921-1923
Last movie watched: Godzilla: Tokyo SOS
Michael Jackson
posted June 27 2009
So Michael Jackson has died.
What to say? Everybody's saying everything. What could I possibly say that would be any more insightful?
And then I realized I should say something because while I wasn't a lover of his, I wasn't a hater, either.
I'm well aware of the things that Michael Jackson was accused of in his lifetime, and I'm equally aware that in a court of law he was found innocent. Were the allegations true? Even were he to have lived to 100, we'd have never known. The truth to a situation requires a third observer and the acts to which he was accused consisted merely of the two principal players, himself and the alleged wronged parties.
So we'll set that aside. Let's talk about the public Michael Jackson who sold countless millions of records for just a moment.
I was never a fan.
I don't go in for dance pop, it's just not my thing. I listen to a lot of stuff but dance pop very rarely ever seeps its way in. There were songs of his I liked well enough..."Smooth Criminal" comes to mind...and songs of his I didn't like, and that was that. I guess, on the whole, I was apathetic to Michael Jackson.
I suppose when the allegations first came out, I hated him. But I was a kid then, not quite a teenager, and I'm an adult now. I should, perhaps, be more outraged, but on the other hand, I've never put it out of my head that those allegations were just a smash-and-grab operation for some of his then ample cash supply. And like I said, we'll never, ever know.
But there was one thing that Michael Jackson was that I can't deny.
People often talk about "the soundtrack of their lives" and most often those amount to the significant favorite songs that have appeared and reappeared throughout a person's life. I have one of those in my mind, too.
But there's another soundtrack...a "volume 2", as some movies have. There's the soundtrack of songs you may not have liked yourself but were no less an indelible part of your past.
And that is where Michael Jackson falls for me. His music weaves inextricably through my life. I was born and little more than two years later, Thriller became the biggest thing that ever happened, and it stayed that way long enough for me to remember it being so. And then he came out with more stuff, and those songs, too, weaved their way in and out. And it went on until his career hit the oft-remarked-upon wall that it, perhaps inevitably, hit.
I have a vague memory. I don't know where I was or why I was there, but whoever I was with had a Megatron action figure, which I never had, and a copy of Thriller on the top of their record stack. I wish to hell I could remember more about this, but I just can't. But it's so quintessentially '80s that I treasure this vague half-memory. My memory probably doesn't go back very much further, actually. I must have been four years old.
Regardless, that was how Michael Jackson was for me. He was always there. I may not have put him there, but he was there, undeniably, irrevocably. I remember his video premiering on Fox, remember the annual trucking out of Thriller every Halloween (and I still love the zombie makeup in that video, and that I can now safely say as a connoisseur of zombie makeup), remember his songs popping up on MTV or on the radio. Michael Jackson's music seeped into my youth, whether I wanted it to or not.
And he was, as far back as I could remember, famous. And now this big, huge, famous person with all the songs on the radio has gone, his life force dissipated into eternity, and I don't know what to think. It's weird, I think. That's all. It's weird to think of that. This world-famous man is dead and that's a very weird thought.
For the record, most of my favorite Michael Jackson music has always been the Jackson 5. A radio station I put on myself as a kid was 105.7 WQSR, here in Baltimore, back when it was an oldies station, and you couldn't go two or three hours without hearing, at the very least, "ABC". So while I may have never been a Michael Jackson fan, I've got plenty of fondness for his Jackson 5 work.
But if I had to pick a very favorite solo Michael Jackson song, it would be "Ben", which he recorded during his Jackson 5 years, except he did it alone. It was the theme to a movie of the same name, a sequel to the 1971 killer rat movie "Willard" (remade not all that long ago). Although I've never seen "Ben", I like the idea that this sweet, plucky song about true friendship is the theme to a movie about murder-rats. I find that oddly comforting. And the lyrics, even removed from that, are likable:
"Ben, the two of us need look no more
"We both found what we were looking for
"With a friend to call my own
"I'll never be alone
"And you, my friend, will see
"You've got a friend in me."
So we bid farewell to Michael Jackson. As with every death, the world goes on without him. And like I always say, that's not sad or depressing, that's the beauty of life. Whenever someone dies, they are no doubt more than happy to know that, as ever, life endures.
That'll do, Michael. That'll do.
The Subtle, Hidden Beauty of "Macarthur Park"
posted a little later on June 19 2009
Knowing full well that very few of you, if anyone at all, read my Doctor Who posts, I struck on an idea for a short little post while going through my random iTunes playlist.
"Macarthur Park" is a weird little tune sung by actor Richard Harris and covered and/or parodied numerous times (including a version called "Jurassic Park" by Weird Al Yankovic). It features a lot of strange non-sequitur lyrics about cake and things like that.
But it's actually a very beautiful love song, or a song about lost love, if you look past that. Being a fanatic for lyrics, I do so, and I've found some gems herein.
Consider this verse, which one presumes was about a cosmically moving sexual experience:
I recall the yellow cotton dress
Flowing like a wave
On the ground around your knees
An eye for detail. He could talk about something else...her skin, her breasts, or even parts south...but the lyrical memory in his mind is the sight of the cotton dress floating every so slowly down to the ground as his lover disrobes just for him.
There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
For I will bring it
He has lost the beloved girl in the yellow cotton dress, lost her so irreparably that he does not dare entertain the thought that she will ever return. But he knows that just because his first love is gone for good, love is not dead; there will be others for him.
And after all the loves of my life
Oh, after all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
And wondering why
But no matter what other love he finds, no matter how many lovers he takes, there will always be, in his perfect memory, the girl in the yellow cotton dress, and the thought will always haunt him...why did he let her slip away? How could he have possibly let someone so perfect leave his life?
So what's the cake which collapsed in the rain, and the recipe he'll never have again? Well, that's just first love, perfect, inescapable love that will elude him throughout his life, no matter what he does.
Of course, I always overanalyze songs. I once determined that the song "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was written from the perspective of a creator God looking down on the world he made and lamenting the creatures which live on it ("They don't love you like I love you"). So who knows. Maybe it's just a song about drugs.
Now reading: The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort
Now listening: "The Letter" by the Box Tops
Last DVD watched: CZW - Tournament of Death VII
I Have to Talk About Doctor Who
posted June 19 2009
Okay. First of all, for anyone (like my good friend Ian) who watches Doctor Who, there are spoilers...some of them potential, some of them definite...ahead for Doctor Who. For anyone else, please just read along and see if you can feel my enthusiasm bleeding through the computer screen.
Spoilers commence now.
There's a new picture from the set of the filming of the latest episodes of Doctor Who which features David Tennant, the actor currently playing the Doctor, alongside his two costars for the episode...
The costars being Timothy Dalton and John Simm.
Timothy Dalton, in the picture, seemingly dressed as a Time Lord in Gallifreyan regalia.
And John Simm, of course, plays the Master.
These are said to be from the filming of David Tennant's finale, in which his Tenth Doctor is slated to pass on, regenerating into the Eleventh Doctor, slated to be played by Matt Smith.
So the questions are begged: Have the Time Lords somehow survived the Time War, just as Davros did? How did the Master manage to avoid having to regenerate after seemingly being fatally wounded in his last appearance? And which of these two parties will cause our beloved Doctor to lose yet another life?
These are some of the things that keep my up at night, but it's a good kind of anxiety, like a kid on Christmas, not being able to wait those (seemingly endless) months until there's new Doctor Who to watch. The quality of the show has been such that I can't help but think it'll be worth it.
Until then, I have Torchwood to tide me over. Captain Jack and the gang (what's left of them) are coming back to TV in July for five episodes, which isn't much, but it's good enough.
Plus until then I've got some new DVDs to tide me over...including "The Brain of Morbius" and the I-can't-believe-I-haven't-seen-it-yet "Tomb of the Cybermen".
So there you go. There's my most recent Doctor Who tangent. Thank you for your patience.
Five Random Things On My Mind
posted June 15 2009
1. I don't know about all of you, but I'm ready for the new Transformers movie. I'm in need of some over-the-top giant robot action.
2. Bruce Springsteen and Phish. Why this wasn't a musical dream before I don't know, but it's already come true. I can't wait for the recording to be released!
3. I'm in the process of watching Dick Tracy Returns as I go through a bunch of Saturday matinee serials. This one's a standout, with lots of action featuring everybody's favorite cop against the evil "Pa Stark" (played by no less than Charles Middleton, who also played, indelibly, the conqueror of the universe Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon). Save us from the crime lords, Detective Tracy!
4. CZW. Combat Zone Wrestling doesn't offer the best technical wrestling in the world, nor does it offer, indeed, the best hardcore wrestling. But what it offers in spades is mind-blowing, blood-letting violent matches. If you want to see a dude get thrown through plate glass, you want to watch CZW. Want to see a dude's face ground against barbed wire? CZW. I've been watching a fair bit of CZW lately and while I have to go elsewhere for the technical style I love so much, CZW delivers when it comes to pure gore. It can't hope to be compared to the one true ECW, and it only wants to be FMW, but it's damned good violence.
5. Comics. I'm about ready to get back into comics. I think the time has come. What do you mean Dick Grayson is Batman? I can't have missed THAT much. Oh, wait, I did.
Now listening: Metallica, 6/8/06, Arnhem, the Netherlands
Now reading: The Book of the Damned, Charles Fort
Last movie watched: The Crimson Ghost
Wrestling: The Five Greatest Wrestlers to Never Be World Champion
posted June 3 2009
It's been a little while since I wrote about wrestling, but it's been a long while since I wrote about the business itself and not just the experience of loving wrestling (which was what my last wrestling post was). I've been batting around this idea for a while, and now I'm finally doing it. In my personal opinion, these are the five best wrestlers to never hold the world title.
Now, I define the world title as follows: the NWA world championship, both pre-, during, and post- WCW; the WWF/E championship; the ECW championship, post-1994 but pre-McMahon; the TNA world championship; the New Japan and All Japan world championships; the original AWA world championship. If this means nothing to you, what I'm basically saying is that I'm giving a lot of leeway for what can be called the world title, but I'm not just letting any old promotion through. Most of these titles derive or branch off of the original, undisputed "world heavyweight wrestling championship" back when the sport was completely legit; I could go into how and why but that's a different story.
Also, let me state for the record, for anyone who isn't familiar: I am well aware that pro wrestling is a scripted show, that winners are decided in advance and that everyone backstage knows how things are going to shake out. I know that, I've never had any delusions about that. But the titles say something about the performer who holds them, and a world title says that this guy is the best at his business. You can call it acting, and that's fine with me, but realize that these men bleed and break bones and, in a few cases, die to put on these shows. It's all entertainment, but it does come as a cost to the performers. Their reward is, hopefully, a world championship. Only the guy who is the best at what he does and receives the most love from the fans (and, therefore, the most money for his employers) gets to be world champion. These guys were loved by fans and put their bodies on the line and were able to do their jobs better than most anyone else, but they never quite managed to reach that plateau which, I feel, they deserved.
So here we go, in no particular order.
Lance Storm. In my wrestling heyday, from around '98-'02, Lance Storm was one of the best things going. He absolutely stood out in ECW with his innovative moves (his roll-through half-crab was a thing of beauty). When he went to WCW, it was an infusion of talent that company sorely needed in its dying days. Also, I used to read his website a lot back in the day, and the dude had a genuine love for the business that I appreciated. Although he held tag team gold in ECW, singles titles in WCW and WWF and tag titles in WWF, he never made it to the very top, which was a place that, based on skill alone, he deserved to be.
Dean Malenko. What an amazing wrestler. The guy probably knows every wrestling move that was ever conceived. And I mean the holds, the submission locks. Say what you will about pro wrestling, but there is no doubt in my mind that Dean Malenko could make you cry uncle if he got you in one of his holds, real or worked. Alas, Malenko was a smaller man in a business that favors large men, and he wasn't a fireball on the mic either, but his in-ring work was truly unparalleled. He held singles titles in ECW, WCW and WWF, and tag gold in ECW and WCW, but he never made it to the summit, which is a damned shame. He's now retired and, thankfully, is training and guiding other wrestlers, passing on his ample know-how.
Scott Hall. Scott Hall is highly-regarded and well-remembered, but if life had taken him another way he'd be one of the very best. In his early AWA days, he was remarkably agile for a guy over six and a half feet tall. Although he obviously veered more towards the heavyweight side of things, simply by his build, he could unleash a mean dropkick, and he was light and quick on his feet. In the WWF he was given a gimmick, but it wasn't a terrible one (odd for that era of the WWF) and earned well-deserved Intercontinental gold four times. When he jumped ship to WCW, he became one of the main heels in the company but was always eclipsed by his cohorts, Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash. A number of publicized personal issues, including repeated struggles with alcoholism, have pretty much ended his career with any major wrestling companies. He's a shining example of "coulda been".
William (Steven) Regal. The only fully active wrestler on my list, Regal is still known in WWE for his arrogant manner and his violent, cringe-inducing suplexes, as well as being the most recent King of the Ring (although, sadly, that title is not as prestigious as it once was). Regal also suffered some serious personal issues that have sidetracked his career, as well as a significant heart problem, but one thing he's always been is one of the most technically proficient wrestlers in the business for now over 15 years on a national level. He also has held numerous titles...2 Intercontinental titles, 5 Hardcore titles, 4 European titles, 4 WCW Television titles...but that very top spot has always eluded him.
Rowdy Roddy Piper. It's inconceivable that Roddy Piper isn't a multi-time world champion. One of the most popular and recognizable wrestlers of the 1980s, he still receives standing ovations whenever he makes a rare appearance in a wrestling ring (including this year's WrestleMania 25). Piper has held loads of singles titles in his time, throughout the NWA in the late '70s and early '80s (including the prestigious United States championship), but gold almost always alluded him in the WWF, where he made his greatest fame and became a pop culture fixture as a nemesis to Hulk Hogan and a main-eventer of the first WrestleMania. I believe Piper has said he didn't need a world title to prove he was one of the best around, and he's probably right, but it still would've been nice for his work and his contribution to the business to be recognized that way.
So there you go. I don't know how these oversights happened; in some cases, maybe the guy wasn't charismatic enough; in other cases, like Piper's, he might have been eclipsed by an even bigger draw (namely, Hulk Hogan).
As a wrestling fan I can tell you that it's a satisfying feeling when "your guy" does win a championship. It means you're going to see more of him on TV, more matches and more storylines for him to be involved in, and it means that you know that other people like the same guy, too, and when that happens, you know that you're part of something, which is always a good feeling.
Incidentally, I have to say that I only wrote this column because I watched the entire 3-hour DVD "Nevermore: The Best of Raven" from TNA wrestling today. Lots of blood in that one! No barbed wire, but that's okay, I can get that elsewhere.
Now listening: Journey, Greatest Hits
Now reading: Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken
Last DVD watched: Nevermore - The Best of Raven
Saturday Matinee Serials
posted May 28 2009
I think a part of me has always thought that I was born a little late for same of the stuff I'm in too. Most everything I like is some kind of old, be it classic rock or whatever else. But one era I've always loved for a number of reasons is the '30s-'40s era.
Granted, they weren't great times, necessarily. You had, of course, probably the worst war in the history of mankind going on, World War II. America was still reeling from the Great Depression and still getting reacquainted with alcohol after our absurd Prohibition period. But a lot of good things came out of that era (my parents amongst them, incidentally).
I've talked on this page before of my love of classic horror movies and old time radio shows. I've never made a secret of my love of Big Band music...I still love putting on some Benny Goodman and chilling with a drink or two...plus I love the old pulp magazines (akin to dime novels...magazines that presented a nearly book-length feature novel each month along with a few short stories). But there's one thing I haven't really covered, and that are the Saturday matinee serials.
For those who don't know, in those old days your movie experience was usually more than just a few trailers and a feature film. There was often a cartoon, a comedy short, and a newsreel. You really got your money's worth. And often included, particularly on Saturdays, would be the cliffhanger serials.
Basically, they were chapter plays, episodic stories of adventure shown week by week on the silver screen. They ran, most commonly, for about twelve to fifteen episodes, shown week by week on the movie screen.
They were generally geared towards younger people, but that included the young at heart. Some of these things were almost comically violent, actually. They were wild adventure stories where each episode always ended in a precarious situation for the hero, but the last one always culminated in a final battle between good and evil.
A lot of comic book characters made their first big screen appearances in serials. Although Superman first made the big screen in cartoons, characters such as Batman, the original Captain Marvel, Captain America, Spy Smasher, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, Buck Rogers, The Phantom and more first appeared in these serials. Dick Tracy and Superman also wound up appearing in serials. Fu Manchu, almost inevitably, popped up in a serial, as did Tarzan. From the pulps came The Spider, serials I'd love to see. Close my heart, The Shadow featured in his own popular serial, a visual adaptation of the character not equaled until the Alec Baldwin version.
And there were a lot of original series, featuring characters as varied as the Masked Marvel, Copperhead, and the Crimson Ghost. The Crimson Ghost, iconic in his skeletal appearance, would go on to become the mascot of the seminal punk rock band The Misfits. Another serial, The Phantom Creeps starring Bela Lugosi, would go on to inspire Rob Zombie.
If you remember the movie The Rocketeer as fondly as I do (Timothy Dalton, James Bond himself, as a villain? Gasp!) then you need look no further than the old time serials for the inspiration for that character. Three serials introduced the "rocket man" concept...Radar Men from the Moon, King of the Rocket Men and Zombies of the Stratosphere all featured characters that directly inspired the look and concept of The Rocketeer.
And George Lucas has made it no secret that it was the Flash Gordon serials, three wonderful classics of the form, that inspired the Star Wars trilogy.
Serials are very special, a truly unique and sadly lost form of movie making. I love watching them, and still seek them out, although they're often pretty hard to find.
My first introduction to the serials came in the way of the epic Dick Tracy starring Ralph Byrd, an actor who I only know as Dick Tracy, and what a fine Dick Tracy he was. It was an epic, 15 full chapters in length, seeing Dick face all kinds of crazy stuff, including a "flying wing" which presaged the B-2 bomber, and a villain known (oh so politically incorrectly) as "The Lame One". But it was great, and I remember buzzing through it as fast as I could.
And then I got my hands on Captain America. Related only to the comics in terms of the character's name and costume, the good Captain fights the menace of the mysterious Scarab, who was even able to bring his henchmen back from the dead! And from there I got The Masked Marvel, which I particularly liked. It was a full-on wartime story which finds the mysterious masked hero battling an evil Japanese plot. Again, about the furthest thing you can get from politically correct, but loads of fun.
I have a few more in my collection. I had to snap up The Shadow, in which the mysterious Shadow battles the organized crime menace known as the Black Tiger; and I later got some of the Flash Gordon serials, The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and, of course, Radar Men from the Moon.
So now I'm searching for more. I always wind up going back to the serials, every few years, because even though they very much were before my childhood, they still remind me of my childhood. That, and they're just fun, a lot of fun. I suggest you try one some time. I think you'll wind up enjoying yourself more than you'd guess.
Link
posted May 20 2009
As you've almost certainly read on the news, scientists have uncovered a 47 million year old fossil of a small ("cat-sized") primate that looks to be a common ancestor of both humans and apes. The find indicates that the notion of shared ancestry between people and apes is, at long last, true.
But, sadly, this won't change anything as far as the debate (as if there should even be one) about the origins of mankind goes. No, people will still continue to look at the huge, blinking facts in front of them and continue to insist that one day we just sort of happened...or, at the very least, that we have nothing in common with "monkeys".
But oh well. At least the rest of us will know, from here on out, where things got started. And that's a nice thing. It always figured that some small, insignificant little creature was what we came from, but at least now we know what our dear, precious grandmother looked like. You could be related to her, so look closely on her and wonder at the strange, chaotic beauty of nature.
Look at her and think of how close we all came to not even existing, how with just an ounce of effort and a pound of perseverance these little things, barely more than rodents, would produce children who'd keep producing children, always changing, always adapting, children who would one day become Shakespeare or Beethoven. Think about it. And think, if you dare,
on how easily a turn of events would have made it that it never happened at all, how easily it would've been for something bigger and stronger to hunt these things into oblivion and never give us so much as a chance to exist. Think about it. Think about how easily it could have been a different creature that persevered, how easily it could be that some other creature would be the planet's high intelligence.
To me, that's the beauty of life. There really aren't any miracles in life, as such, but there are a series of bizarre, beautiful events that make up our lives and our greater history. And this creature they've nicknamed Ida...the little primate from 47,000,000 years ago...is one of those wonderful little moments in time.
BBC America's Primeval Returns
posted May 14 2009
The fantastic sci-fi show Primeval, dealing with all kinds of fun stuff like dinosaurs and time travel anomalies, returns to the air for a new season on Saturday night (I think at 9). Good times. Check out some video from the series and maybe you'll get hooked like I am.
You should definitely watch the preview, but to give you an idea of what you'll see, it involves predators from the far-flung future, giant insects, and (something I've been hoping they'd do) a f'ing Tyrannosaurus Rex!
Sorry, But More Shakespeare; or, Three Posts in One Night
posted April 30 2009
Okay, I don't know why the flurry of activity all of the sudden, but it is what it is. I hope you all liked the "Hardcore" column, by the way, because I'm quite fond of it.
Anyway, I'm still on my "Shakespeare kick" and I've been reading some of the Apocrypha (that is, works that Shakespeare may or may not have written or co-written, and there's no scholarly consensus that he did or did not) as well as finishing up the history plays. I've read the entirety of the Hundred Years War/Wars of the Roses, um, octology (I just made up that word to mean "eight-parter") and I've also read the apocryphal plays Edward III, Sir John Oldcastle, Thomas of Woodstock, and Sir Thomas More. It's been a very interesting journey. Take it from me, that general era of British history is nothing short of fascinating. All that war and all that betrayal...it's really something.
The play that I'm reading now, Shakespeare's Henry VIII, is kind of a logical epilogue to the "octology". The eight plays end with Richard III, namely when Henry Tudor becomes Henry VII. VII's son was the famous (or infamous) Henry VIII, whom Shakespeare wrote a play about. It's not war-centric the way the "octology" is, but it's within the same span of history, so it makes for a nice epilogue. It deals with two of Henry VIII's six wifes, namely Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, as well as the treachery of Cardinal Wolsey and other events during Henry VIII's reign. Said king is treated with some respect due to the historical nearness of Shakespeare's time; the play was probably written during the reign of King James I, who was Henry VIII's grandson; and Shakespeare also lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry VIII's daughter.
Anyway. I'm presently fascinated by all this stuff. I have imminent plans to read the works of Shakespeare's contemporary, Christopher Marlowe (most famous for Doctor Faustus but he also wrote the history play Edward II) and then I may explore some of the more legendary aspects of England's history, namely the Arthurian legends.
But anyway, that's a little update. I've bored you enough, I won't ask any more of you.
Now reading: Henry VIII by William Shakespeare
Now listening: The Beatles (The White Album) by The Beatles
Last movie watched: Probably The Grateful Dead Movie
Boogidy Boogidy
posted April 30 2009
Remember a while ago, in my post about historical perspective, when I was talking about humanity's propensity towards believing that the present generation is the final generation? The prevalence of failed end-times prophecies throughout the ages attest to that. At least one religion is based on that, in fact. Anyway, end-times prophecies. People have a tendency towards them.
Now.
Swine flu.
Just saying.
Test Drive
posted April 30 2009
So I'm doing this post on Apple's Safari web browser. I have just installed it for shits and giggles, largely because it's been a while since I got to try a new browser. I tired Opera a while back, and to be honest I don't even know if that's a going concern any longer. But mostly I'm a Firefox guy. Every single time I tried to declare my allegiance to Internet Explorer I've been rewarded with a hijacked browser, so Explorer and I aren't on speaking terms anymore.
For a while I was a Netscape guy, but that is something I know isn't a going concern, and the Firefox I use know has everything I liked about Netscape those several years ago, so no loss there.
But this is something new. I don't know how I like it yet, and I imagine that I'll remain a Firefox guy. But I figure it can't hurt to have a whopping third web browser on my computer and it sure can't hurt to try to be hip and use an Apple product. But honestly, it just feels alien to me.
Anyway, this post was done on Apple Safari. Think temporarily different.
Hardcore
posted April 25 2009
Most of you probably remember when this site hadn't yet gotten the whynotuniverse.com address and was still a free Angelfire site. I'm still hosted by Angelfire but now I've got one of the premium service packages which includes our beloved dotcom address. But back in the day, right around the inception of the Why Not Dynasty itself, in the time before time called 1999, this was a page about pro wrestling.
I know. I spent two weeks or so on here talking about Shakespeare and have written articles featuring philosophical musings, book reviews and all kinds of things. But let's not forget the focus on monster movies and television. So pro wrestling is a natural fit.
I love wrestling. I went away from it for a little while, becoming a casual fan rather than a fanatical follower, but for the last two years or so I've been into it just as much as ever, and right now my interest is at a peak. With 6 hours of WWE programming a week, 2 hours of TNA wrestling, and an additional 2 to 3 hours of AAA Mexican wrestling on Galavision, there's wrestling everywhere. Not to mention ESPN Classic's regular reruns of vintage AWA wrestling from the late '80s and very early '90s. And if I had hi-def TV I could also watch Ring of Honor.
I have bucketloads of wrestling tapes. I have all sorts of WCW and WWF/WWE (the company changed names in 2002 following a legal clash with the World Wildlife Fund, and lost due to some infractions on their part of the agreement that allowed both parties to use the initials) shows that I taped as they aired, hours of WCW Monday Nitro and WWF Monday Night Raw, and of course dozens of pay-per-view shows. Well-represented, but not as well as I would like, is ECW, although I have plenty of their pay-per-views and their short-lived national show on TNN (which later became Spike). I have many of the commercially-released tapes from all those major companies and some of the ECW wannabe brand XPW. I also have a lot of grainy copies-of-copies of international tapes. I got into this market to explore the world of lucha libre, the high-flying Mexican style of wrestling, and followed with Japanese wrestling, particularly the gruesome stepbrother of hardcore wrestling known as the death match.
And while I love a good death match, I guess the more conventional hardcore style of wrestling has always been my favorite. That is to say, ECW. While in my wrestling heyday I favored WCW above all (and still remember WCW very, very fondly), ECW had a magical way of encompassing all of my favorite styles of wrestling on one show. WCW excelled at showcasing the smaller in stature, high-flying wrestlers. At the time, both WCW and WWF had highly skilled technical wrestlers well-versed in submission holds and various suplexes (that is to say, throws) and, slowly but surely, some "hardcore" style matches began seeping in. These were matches that involved the use of weapons...chairs, ladders, trash cans, street signs, and kendo sticks (also sometimes known as Singapore canes).
But ECW had all of that. While the WWF/WWE has always, by and large, ignored smaller wrestlers with a few notable exceptions and a brief period of time, ECW really brought a lot of these smaller but highly-skilled wrestlers to the fore. WCW snatched many of them and created their cruiserweight division, what once would have been known as the light heavyweight division. It was, ostensibly, for wrestlers 220 pounds and under (whereas in boxing the weight class meant 190 and under).
A brief aside, I have just this moment learned that there is a weight class in boxing called the Light Flyweight division, for fighters 108 pounds and lighter. Some boxing organizations have a group called Minimumweight (or Strawweight in England wherein the upper limit is 105. I am amazed and quite curious to see a Light Flyweight fight. But, as usual, I digress.
Anyway, a lot of the cruiserweights were Mexican wrestlers, known as luchadors. As mentioned above, AAA is one major lucha promotion; another is CMLL, formerly known as EMLL and the longest-running wrestling promotion in the world today (the WWE, by comparison, dates back to 1952, under the short-lived name of Capitol Wrestling and soon after as the better-known name of the World Wide Wrestling Federation). I went out of my way to get a lot of Mexican wrestling tapes; I love the lucha style and still catch AAA on Galavision from time to time. Not to be offensive, but it really is especially fun to watch lucha while drinking a Tecate, a Modelo or even a Corona.
Anyway, some of the notable names of lucha who were brought to America by ECW and then to WCW were Juventud Guerrera, Eddie Guerrero and Rey Misterio Jr. All three would hold the WCW Cruiserweight Championship; the latter two would also wind up as WWE Champion. Eddie Guerrero, of course, passed away in 2005. Another notable ECW luchador who won fame in America was Super Crazy, who worked for WWE until recently although he never held a title there (he was, however, an ECW Television Champion).
ECW also made stars out of other companies' cast-offs. Had it not been for ECW, Steve Austin may have never risen to great heights as Stone Cold Steve Austin, a 6-time WWF Champion. Cactus Jack (the in-ring alias of Mick Foley) might have never gained fame in America and gone on to the WWF as Mankind where he became a 3-time WWF Champion, as well as being the current TNA World Heavyweight Champion. Terry Funk, a fomer NWA World Heavyweight Champion, also returned to national prominence thanks to ECW (and he was active in the Japanese death match scene, too).
And then there were the wrestlers who made their fame in ECW and went on to become nationally known sensations and, in some cases, legends. ECW World Champions included four-time champ Shane Douglas (who famously threw down the NWA World Heavyweight championship right after winning it, as well as being a WCW United States champion and a WWF Intercontinental champion), two-time champ Sabu (who, years later, became the NWA World Heavyweight champion), two-time champ Raven (also an NWA Heavyweight champion during the title's TNA days as well as a WCW US champion), five-time champ The Sandman, two-time champ Taz (who became a WWF Hardcore champion and a WWF Tag Team champion), one-time champ Tommy Dreamer (who is also a 14-time WWF Hardcore champ and is still active in WWE), and the final original ECW champion, one-time champ Rhino (who has also held the WCW US title and the NWA World title during that title's time in TNA, the company for which he still works).
Anyhow, I can tell this post is rambling, so let me get back to my point. I still love wrestling, and I watch WWE and TNA every week. Like I said, I catch AAA lucha libre on Galavision once in a while, and I'll watch those classic AWA shows from time to time, too. But I was definitely, with my brother Dan and with Jason and John, part of a specific and wonderful era in pro wrestling...an era in which the WWF may have reigned supreme, but there was always WCW and, thankfully, ECW there to give them a run for their money. They were good times, some of the best of my life. The guys and I would have wrestling matches right in the family room in my parent's house while wrestling was on the TV behind us. I fancied myself the hardcore one of the bunch...I crashed through any number of cardboard boxes and was hurled off the couch to the barely-covered floor below any number of times, and to this day have a creaky right shoulder because of how I would always land.
We had two kinds of matches...the "shoot" matches, in which we'd actually wrestle until somebody gave up, and the "booked" matches, in which we'd plan out what we were going to do and would finish up with a predetermined pinfall. Dan vastly preferred the shoot matches and was virtually unbeatable in them due to a bizarre natural skill at submission wrestling and his superior strength. His shoot finisher was a crucifix-armbar lock which was virtually inescapable and quite painful. Jason preferred the Walls of Jericho and I liked the anklelock, while John kept us on our toes by never settling for just one hold. In booked matches, Dan never had a set finisher because he usually sat those out (preferring to kick our asses for real), while John finished with an off-the-couch swinging DDT, Jason with a very cool hammerlock jawbreaker, and me, personally, with the Vader Bomb...a backwards splash off the couch right on to my prone opponent. That being the era of Stone Cold Steve Austin, there was liberal usage of the Stone Cold Stunner, and alsxo there were DDTs a-plenty.
Like I said, those were good times, some of the very best of my life. I wouldn't trade them for anything.
Wrestling was something I got into largely to pass the time in the rental home that my family wound up living in after our house caught fire mere days after my high school graduation. Dan and I would watch Monday Nitro and in time we pulled Jason and John, both childhood fans of wrestling, back into the game. We played all the video games, watched all the shows, bought all the pay-per-views and attended a number of shows at the Baltimore Arena, including the WCW Great American Bash 1999 in which my voice screaming "Siiiiiid!" (for returning wrestler Sid Vicious) from the upper section could be heard on the pay-per-view broadcast, an event which I still have on tape and recently converted to DVD. That was the day I wrecked my very first car, a 1986 Buick Century, but it didn't matter...I was at a wrestling show, and a pay-per-view to boot.
I guess when I started this column a while ago I had an endgame in mind, a point I wanted to make, but I think I've just done that. Wrestling has been a very important part of my life and I love it. Although "my" era may have passed, I'm still a wrestling fan and I probably always will be. Look down on it if you want, mock it if you want, but wrestling's been with me for more than a decade now and I wouldn't trade a minute of it.
Conspiracy Theory'd
posted April 3 2009
So, you know, I enjoy a good conspiracy theory, always have. I love reading about the whole JFK thing and even the supposed death-and-replacement of Paul McCartney. I love them. They entertain me greatly, and only once in a while do you find one that even comes anywhere close to smacking of truth.
But sometimes, sometimes, when you find one that you can't possibly believe, somebody goes ahead and does something that totally makes it hard not to believe.
Take, for instance, the notion of the Illuminati. This would be an elite group of people running a single global government, which would no doubt be a totalitarian one. Sounds fun, right?
Well, the buzzword in Illuminati theory, or rather the buzz-phrase, is "New World Order". As in, "we will institute a New World Order", which would be the aforementioned global totalitarian government. One of the usages of the phrase that set off the most alarms was when the elder George Bush used the phrase in a speech while he was President in 1990. Which, incidentally, he gave exactly 11 years to the day before the World Trade Center towers were destroyed.
Anyway, it was especially "alarming" to conspiracy theorists because Bush is considered to be on the "right" side of things, and it is usually the "left" that are seen as attempting to implement the Global Totalitarian Government. So it set a lot of people off. Anyway.
This week, there was a meeting of an elite group of people from nations scattered across the globe who came together as one, nominally to solve the present economic crisis which affects the entire planet. This was the G-20 summit held in London.
Involved were 24 different heads of state acting in different capacities, including the US's own President Barack Obama, Great Britian's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and China's President Hu Jintao. Also present was Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon as well as heads of the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund.
Well, whatever. It's all perfectly harmless. They're just trying to fix the economy, and that's only going to help everybody, right? Get the money flowing again, help people out. We all need it right now, we all know that. No harm here, seriously.
But then Gordon Brown goes and whips this one out: "I think a New World Order is emerging with the foundation of a new progressive era of international co-operation."
Now I'm not saying anything. I still don't necessarily buy the whole thing. My main issue here is, do you really need to give people who are uneasy with the idea of this much globalization more reason to sweat it? Couldn't he have just skipped to the new "new progressive era" part? I mean, it's just bad PR.
It's like when the government always keeps trucking out "weather balloons" for UFOs or when Bigfoot is "just a bear on its hind legs"...you're just giving people a reason to be suspicious by coming up with a lamebrained answer. I mean, seriously, how many weather balloons can there be? And why use that phrase?
So thanks, Gordo. My frantic libertarian mind will be sleeping well tonight.
All's Well That Ends Well: The Shakespeare Finale
posted April 2 2009
So here we are, the fourth and final part of trhe chronicles of my Shakespeare reading experience. I think it'll be brief, but I do have a few notes to sum the whole thing up.
I'm not done on my "Shakespeare kick" by any means; there are lots of things I want to read yet. But, of course, I have other things I'll be wanting to talk about on the page here, so I'm going to sum it all up for now.
Reading Shakespeare can be a very rewarding experience. I know most everybody had to read Shakespeare at some point (or several points) in their schooling, but I think reading Shakespeare merely for the pleasure of it is way more enjoyable, for obvious reasons. For one, of course, in high school you're either being forced to follow your teacher's view of the play or the view of the play that your teacher got from another source; you don't really get to take away what you want from it, or you're so pressed into doing it that you don't bother to.
Something I've gotten out of talking about Shakespeare here and on the board has been that I've started reading the comedies. I took recommendations from the board and read both The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night and, I have to say, enjoyed them both. I think the tragedies are still my favorite, but from now on I'm going to make room for the comedies.
And, finally, I'm reading Edward III now. As a reminder, this is the play that may or may not actually be Shakespeare's; nobody knows for sure. But it's a history play and I enjoy it for that reason. As a result, I'm going to seek out some other history plays...the maybe-Shakespeare of Thomas of Woodstock and Edmund Ironside as well as George Peele's Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First and Christopher Marlowe's Edward II, both written around Shakespeare's era and relating to the overall history of England. I find it all very interesting.
So, anyway, that's that for my Shakespeare saga, at least for now. I suppose if something really floors me I'll write about it, but I think the next time the page gets updated you'll be reading about a whole new topic. So, until then.
Now reading: Edward III, maybe by William Shakespeare
Now listening: Midnight Spookshow by Calabrese
Last movie watched: Not sure, maybe Daimajin
Steve's Shakespeare Obsession (Part 3 of 4)
posted for thine perusal on the 28th day of March in the year of our redemption 2009
Oooookay.
Anyway, here's the thing. I decided tonight to continue talking about Shakespeare, and then I decided, in one of my usual strokes of I-just-drank-a-Samuel-Adams-too-quickly inspiration, that I was going to make my Shakespeare Saga run no longer than four parts. What I present to you now is part three.
So here's the thing. I know I'm a cheeseball, but my favorite Shakespeare work by far is Hamlet. I know, way to go with the daring choice, right? But it seriously is a magnificent piece of work.
I may have said it here before, but I think that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is one of the reasons that mankind exists in the first place. Hamlet is another.
(God, this place is getting so highbrow, I'm going to have to talk about monster trucks or something to get it back to normal.)
Oh, shit, I just wrote an aside. Goddamn it!
Anyway, Hamlet. Awesome. I actually have three copies of it. One is contained in my "complete works" book, one is the fantastic New Folger Library paperback edition from the mid-90s, and one is a textbook version I had to use in my senior year of high school (my beloved paperback was apparently not sufficient). When I'm rereading it, though, I'm going for that wonderful Folger paperback. I'm not rereading it yet; I'm saving that for last on my "Shakespeare kick"...when I think I've finally had enough of Shakespeare, I'll read Hamlet again and then take a good, long break.
Anyway, one thing I need to own someday, when I have money for these things again, is the DVD of the 1996 Kenneth Branagh film of the play. The only film thus far that uses the entirety of the text (to Olivier's immortal detriment, sadly), it's also one of the last films (if not THE last) to date to be filmed entirely in 70mm film, a gloriously wide film stock that provides a fantastic picture but is, naturally, prohibitively expensive for most productions.
It's hard to imagine now but this was one of those movies that just NEVER seemed to come out on DVD. There were a few movies that I wanted to see on DVD, even if I don't own them; I'm thinking right this second of Once Upon a Time in America. But that finally came out...and still no Branagh Hamlet! But, finally, it happened. And I still don't have it. But see above for that.
I also have Branagh's Henry V on VHS, which I need to rewatch because that was the play I last read. But I digress (as usual).
Anyway, Branagh's Hamlet is literally gorgeous, a visual feast with great performances (some criticize Branagh's performance as Hamlet himself to not be "crazy" enough, but I thought it was plenty crazy) and lots of fun big-name stars in minor roles (Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Jack Lemmon hop right to mind). I think I saw this after Titanic but this was the movie where I, unlike the rest of the world, fell in love with Kate Winslet...I even wrote a shitty play in high school with a character named Ophelia in it, specifically thinking of her.
Anyway, great movie, I kinda just felt like talking about it. I'm trying to keep the Shakespeare thread on the board rocking along, it hasn't exactly been burning with interest but it's the only thread that's alive right at the moment so, hey, whatever. Feel free to chime in.
Before I go, some further updates on my reading endeavors. Between Henry IV Part Two and Henry V I read The Comedy of Errors, which I mentioned in part two, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was also very enjoyable. These may have been enough to encourage my reading of Shakespeare's comedies, along with my high school-era reading of The Merchant of Venice, although the latter is, of course, a lot less comedic than most of the comedy plays because of the complex and sometimes uncomfortable-to-read character of Shylock, but it is still counted amongst the "comedies" as it lacks a tragic and/or historic aspect.
Also, and I mention this on the board, but I am overjoyed because BBC Video (their American arm, I have to assume) is releasing An Age of Kings, which was a series they did in 1960 that did all of the "Wars of the Roses" history plays (the 8 plays about the two Richards and the three Henrys). As you can imagine, I would dearly love to see these.
Anyway, that's it for part three. Expect part four, the very last part before things go back to being about other stuff, fairly soon.
Further Adventures With Shakespeare
posted on March 22 2009
I promise this isn't turning into a "Steve reads Shakespeare" blog, but as I'm still on the whole Shakespeare kick I'm going for some updates on where I stand now.
After finishing Richard II and both parts of Henry IV I fully intended to read Henry V, which completes that particular sequence of English history. However, I decided to sidetrack myself one play sooner than my initial plan. I decided to read some of the comedies.
I started with The Comedy of Errors, which I have to say was an entirely enjoyable and quick read. I highly recommend it. You'll see a lot of fundamental elements of comedy beginning in that play. It's very interesting.
I've started reading A Midsummer Night's Dream but I am thus far only through the first act, as I decided to get some computer time in before any further reading. So no spoilers, ha ha ha.
Whilst on said computer break, I decided to look up more about the maybe-it's-Shakespeare-maybe-it's-not Edward III. As I said last time this is a history play and it would precede Richard II in the sequence if, indeed, it is by Shakespeare. Attempts to find Thomas of Woodstock hit the snag that the play isn't complete; the last page or so are missing. I couldn't find a reasonably good version of it to print out anywhere online, although I did find one version which, for better or worse, tacked on its own ending. I could always just read up to that and exclude the 21st century ending.
Anyway, I downloaded from the aforementioned Project Gutenberg the text of Edward III and, after rearranging it for my own personal use into a suitable reading format (it's in dual column format now, similar to my "complete works of Shakespeare" book) I have access to it. I still plan on buying a copy of it in paperback because I'd like to read some insight on why or why not it might be Shakespeare's; for now, though, I want to read the play itself. After A Midsummer's Night Dream I'll do that, and then I plan to get back to Henry V. From there, who knows.
Anyway, that is what's (bwah ha ha) shaking on that front. Until next time, then, I'll be reading Shakespeare and dealing with an annoying and slightly painful cough and, no doubt, the cold that will shortly accompany it.
Talkin' Shakespeare Blues
posted on March 16 2009
So I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately, revisiting the Bard after many years away from him (I read the works quite avidly in high school, although I've far from read them all) and I've decided to use a resource I really didn't have in high school to enrich the experience: The Internet.
I guess we had the Internet back then, of course. I had my trust 14.4 modem and my limited number of available minutes (ha ha, remember that?), but the Internet was a disorganized, Wild West sort of place back then and I mainly spent my time on these things called "chat rooms" which I'm not even sure that people use anymore. They might, I guess, but I haven't used one since Clinton was in office. Anyway. This is all beside the point. It took lots of valuable time and aimless searching to do a concerted bit of research back then, and hey, why not wait 20 minutes for a small, lo-res pic of a hot chick to load instead? Am I right?
Anyway. The point is that I wasn't using the Internet to enhance my Shakespeare experience. I used, well, encyclopedias and the end notes in the various Shakespeare paperbacks I would pick up.
So when I decided, after all this time, to return to these great works I decided I wanted to use the Internet to enhance my experience. This begins on Wikipedia; while you have to be careful what you pick up there, you can certainly get some good links and maybe a helpful bibliography. It's not so bad.
For instance, I've been reading Shakespeare's historical plays; that is to say the plays that are based on things that were already history when he was around. These are split into two tetralogies (four-parters); I'm reading what, in terms of the real historical timeline of events, would be the earlier part: Richard II, Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two and Henry V, which is the only one of these I had read previous to this undertaking. Well, there's no better way to follow up reading what is basically historical fiction than by looking up historical fact. So after reading Richard II, I looked up the actual man on which it was based, and so on. I'm about to complete the cycle by reading Henry V, which I may further enrich by whipping out my old VHS copy of the Kenneth Branagh film version.
Before moving on to the other historical tetralogy - the three parts of Henry VI and the well-known Richard III...I plan on bouncing around a little. I'm not particularly well-versed in Shakespeare's comedies on account of the fact that they don't really make the modern man laugh all that much; still, the bit I have read make for good stories, so that's certainly worth doing. I'm thinking of starting with The Merry Wives of Windsor as it features Sir John Falstaff, a character in the two Henry IV plays, this time in a purely fictional setting (Falstaff himself is a largely fictional character anyway). After that, who knows. I may move back to the tragedies, which is probably where I'm most familiar with the Shakespearean canon.
But let me get to the point. Researching on the Internet, I've found out more about the so-called Shakespeare apocrypha...plays, upwards of about 16 of them, which are sometimes attributed, either spuriously or with some basis, to Shakespeare but which can't be substantiated. One of these, The Two Noble Kinsmen, is apparently fairly well accepted as having been co-written by Shakespeare, although it does not appear in my volume of "complete" Shakespeare (despite the fact that the co-written Pericles, Prince of Tyre is); and one, Edward III, which I had heard of because it would be, in real-world chronology, be the play that comes right before Richard II, being that the historical Edward III was Richard II's grandfather and his immediate predecessor as king of England.
Anyway, what I've seen makes me tend to believe that most of these are plays that were popular around the time Shakespeare was a going concern, but weren't really his work. Some of them he may have been aware of, or even been passingly involved in their creation (some were performed by the theatrical troupe Shakespeare belonged to), but he doesn't seem to have written them. So, of course, the question is, what of these to track down and read?
Well, honestly, nothing stops me from reading all of them, except for the fact that I'd rather read the established Shakespeare works first. Being a fan of the histories I want to read Edward III; even if it's not pure Shakespeare, it's kinda like when everybody goes to see Terminator Salvation this summer; a related work not by the original creator but still likely to be enjoyable and in the same spirit. As for The Two Noble Kinsmen, I undoubtedly want to get and read it, being that Shakespeare worked heavily on it (or so it seems). Another apocryphal work, Thomas of Woodstock, also takes place prior to the opening of Richard II; I may try to track it down for the same reason as I would Edward III. As for the rest, time will tell.
Some of them are available at Project Gutenberg although, sadly, Thomas of Woodstock is not one of them. But if I do opt to print one out and read it, I can say that if nothing else a play takes only a little longer to read than it does to perform, so it's not as though I'll regret the time spent later on.
Anyway, there you go, some thoughts on the Bard. I suggest you treat yourself to one of the plays...Henry IV Part One not only stands alone just fine without the somewhat less interesting second part, but is a great story to boot. So there you go!
Top Seven Things That Always Make Me Cry
posted on March 14 2009
Because I have been drinking, and I get quite emotional when I have been drinking, here is a list of the top five things that make me cry every goddamn time.
7. The Easter episode of Quiet, Please. You probably don't know, unless you've paid attention to this site in the past, of this amazing late '40s radio show. It was really something, written by the amazing Wyllis Cooper, somebody who should be studied by all writers. It was an anthology show and each week it starred the show's announcer, Ernest Chappell. The Easter show, entitled "Shadow of the Wings", tells the story of when the Angel of Death (played by Chappell) came for a little girl who was ill. The girl's mother begs the Angel of Death for clemency, and he reveals that only once has he granted it, and that was to Christ. Then the Angel realizes that the day he was coming for the girl is Easter, the day of the resurrection, and he relents, allowing the girl to live and proclaiming (here Ernest Chappell audibly breaks into tears) "Michael! Raphael! Gabriel! My angel brothers! Death himself is conquered!" A beautiful story and a jaw-dropping performance.
6. When the Doctor begs for a good day on Doctor Who. In the story The Doctor Dances, the Doctor is trying to find a way to make it so that nobody, for once, gets hurt in the end. And he begs for it. A man with no god, a man with no reason to believe there is something better in the universe, prays that he gets this one good day. And when he does, he rejoices. "Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!"
5. The ending of Godzilla: 1985. Yes, I know, it's an unutterably horrible movie. I know this. I accept this. But when the Big G falls into the volcano and the music hits its absolutely heartrending crescendo, I can't take it. I fall apart. Probably because the first time I ever saw the movie I thought it was the last Godzilla movie and that Godzilla was really, truly, totally dead. I can't handle it to this day. I know it's awful. Whatever. I love you, Godzilla, and I always will.
4. The last song, "Fawn", on Tom Waits' album Alice. It's played on an out-of-tune violin. It should be dissonant but, instead, it is the very sound of a broken heart recorded for the first and only time. It is gut-wrenching. It is more than I can take.
3. Emotional wrestling moments. I watch a lot of wrestling, and two of the hardest things I've ever watched are the Owen Hart memorial show and the Ric Flair farewell moment. Ouch. When Stone Cold Steve Austin raised the beer to Owen's picture and left it sitting open in the ring, I just died inside. When Harley Race, barely able to walk on his own, came out to bid Flair adieu, I turned into a pathetic, blubbering mess. It's just too much for me. Never mind the actual show during which Owen died and Jim Ross comes on and says, "It is my sad duty to inform you that Owen Hart has died." I'm crying now, you bastards.
2. When the brachiosaur stands on its hind legs in Jurassic Park and the music swells. I swear to you that it is the single most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I cannot tell you how much I wish that dinosaur was real. I cannot tell you how I would weep if I saw a living dinosaur in real life. Hell, the fossils might be too much for me.
1. When Peter loses his mask on the train in Spider-Man 2. Like a fucking baby. I can't handle it. When the little kid says "We won't tell anyone, mister," I weep like a child. I'm worthless. Just can't handle it. I actually almost cried with another grown man merely talking about this scene.
So there you go. Pathetic, but it's true. Enjoy!
Now listening: Phish, live on March 6 2009 from Hampton, VA
Now reading: Henry IV Part II by William Shakespeare
Last movie watched: Monster from a Preshistoric Planet
Go, Go...Gamera?
posted raaarr on February 28 2009
I think I've made my love of giant monster movies clear on this site before. I've rhapsodized at length about Godzilla and his pals, about the zany glory that is Space Amoeba, and so on. But there's somebody I haven't really paid a lot of attention to here, and after becoming a "fan" of his on Facebook, I decided it was time to alter that.
I'm talking, of course, about Gamera. No, he doesn't have a song about him and he's never been remade for American audiences, and you're much less likely to elicit a reaction with his name than you are with Godzilla's, but he's an indelible part of the giant monster scene.
I pause here to state that, although I am quite definitely a giant monster geek, I do not use the Japanese term "kaiju" on a regular basis, as many fans of the genre do. I have always referred to these movies as "giant monster movies" and, although I have since learned the Japanese word for said movies, I feel it'd be an affectation to suddenly start using the word. Sometimes it happens, but more than likely I will call these movies "giant monster" movies. So there.
Gamera first appeared in 1965 in the aptly titled Gamera, which is widely available here as (shudder) Gammera the Invincible. While Gamera is, indeed, invincible, he has only one "m" in his name. Somewhere along the line an American distributor popped that extra "m" in there and almost forty-five years later we're stuck with it. Apparently it was also released here with the proper spelling, but good luck finding it. Anyway, this movie follows the basic giant monster template: Creature appears, rampages through city, authorities fret over how to stop it, authorities stop it. We find, however, a big difference that is to eventually define Gamera's "career"...Gamera has a soft spot for kids, and saves one from being crushed when Gamera plies his trade by knocking down a building. This is to come back into play later on.
Here we find the big distinction between Gamera and Godzilla. While Godzilla did eventually soften up, leading us inexorably to the dreaded Godzilla's Revenge (known in Japan, and now available on DVD here as, All Monsters Attack), in which Godzilla helps out a little boy. Well, Godzilla may have strayed from the ass-kicking path on occasion, but Gamera, boy, that was always his deal. Godzilla, really, was a bastard a lot of the time, even when actively saving the Earth; Gamera's a pretty nice guy when you get down to it.
Gamera was back for more the following year when he faced his first foe in Gamera vs. Barugon, alias War of the Monsters, a title under which it is readily available. Barugon (not to be confused with the Godzilla-universe characters Baragon) is a quadripedal, spiky-backed beast with a big horn on his mouth. Gamera and Barugon do battle, as monsters are wont to do, and Gamera saves the day. There's no kids to speak of this time out, a unique spot in the early series.
Next up was 1967's Gamera vs. Gyaos, alias Return of the Giant Montsters, alias Gamera vs. Gaos. Gyaos would actually prove to be Gamera's enduring villain, the King Ghidorah to his Godzilla. Gyaos was a triangle-headed flying beast that emitted a deadly sonic ray which could slice through anything. A tough adversary, to say the least, but we all know who gets top billing.
1968 brought Gamera vs. Viras, way better known as Destroy All Planets (a name which purposely apes the Godzilla-and-company outing Destroy All Monsters). Gamera finds himself under alien control and is smashing up the place, but with the help of two plucky Earth boys he's able to get free in time to fight the alien's giant kahuna, Viras, a big, nasty space-squid.
The next year, 1969, brought the Gamera film I've seen most recently, Gamera vs. Guiron, alias Attack of the Monsters. Two...wait for it...plucky school boys stumble onto an alien plot to, well, eat people. Gamera comes along and stops an asteroid from destroying the alien craft. He faces another Gyaos...a Space Gyaos!...before meeting the true villain of the piece, Guiron...a menacing, blade-headed beast that actually can shoot ninja throwing stars. It's an epic battle, and Gamera takes his lumps as always, but the day is eventually saved.
It's now 1970, and Gamera is spoiling for a fight. He gets one in Gamera vs. Jiger, which has more aliases than a public enemy: Gamera vs. Monster X and War of the Monsters, and according to Wikipedia it was even released somewhere as Monsters Invade Expo '70. I'm pretty sure the "Monster X" iteration is the most readily available. Set against the backdrop of the World's Fair, we have a beast named Jiger being brought to life when a statue is moved from its place...an event Gamera attempts to prevent. A volcano eruption moves the statue and Jiger emerges. Jiger sports three large horns, a big spinal plate down his back, and is able to shoot darts at Gamera. It also shoots an egg into Gamera, leading one to believe that our pal Jiger is a she. Some plucky school boys help scientists remove the Jiger egg and some plucky scientists help Japan bide its time until our injured hero can return to the fight and save another day.
Although times were getting tough, Gamera was back for more in 1971's Gamera vs. Zigra which, miraculously, does not have an alternate title. Zigra is another pointy-headed menace, this time resembling a shark with a thick and sleek layer of natural armor. He also has a number of razor-sharp fins that he uses as weapons. An amphibious creature, Zigra prefers the water, being that he hails from an aquatic planet. A plucky schoolboy and his plucky schoolgirl chum go with their fathers to investigate his mysterious craft that has landed in the water. A number of bizarre alien hijinks go on, but eventually the kids see the magnitude of the threat and call on Gamera, who attacks the alien craft, which responds by turning into Zigra. A series of vicious undersea battles ensues.
The Gamera series kind of sputtered to a stop here, but one more, basically a "greatest hits" affair, was released in 1980, called Gamera: Super Monster. Consisting largely of repurposed footage, with a new plot cobbled together, Gamera has to face all his old enemies as part of a devious alien plan. Knowing that this was the end of his film series...I mean, in order to destroy the aliens and save the Earth, Gamera goes on a suicide run and dies destroying the alien spaceship. I've never seen this, and from what I can tell, nobody likes it. I think it did, however, recently become available on DVD.
Gamera lay dormant for a full 15 years until a whole new trilogy was released in the 1990s. Good old Gyaos first returns to menace this new and improved Gamera in Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. Next up was Gamera 2: Attack of Legion, in which Gamera fights a mysterious alien menace called Legion, but Gamera's awesome power saves the day. Finally, Gamera faces a new and improved "Hyper" Gyaos and then the awful tentacled mutant known as Iris, and then a whole horde of Hyper Gyaos, in Gamera 3: The Awakening of Iris. Another break followed.
Most recently came Gamera the Brave, which went back to the family-friendly concept that the '90s trilogy had set aside. Here, we see an alternative death for the original Gamera (who dies fighting Gyaos in this version), and a young boy finds a Gamera egg which he takes home and raises as his own. This young Gamera, nicknamed "Toto" by the boy, begins to grow into a giant monster like his father, and is forced to face the menace of a monster named Zedus. But is the young Gamera capable of withstanding the power of a full-fledged monster?
So there you go, that's the Gamera series. For years people have wanted to see Godzilla and Gamera face off or team-up (or, no doubt, both), but as they are made by two separate film companies and are more or less competitors, this may never happen. Then again, a long time ago some wonderful person actually managed to have Godzilla and King Kong face off, so you never know. I, for one, can fairly see in my head Godzilla and Gamera, side by side, facing down King Ghidorah and Gyaos in an all-out monster war. But, alas, such things are sometimes never meant to be.
My next giant monster column, which won't be any time soon I promise, will hopefully be one I've meant to write for a while, about what I consider to be Godzilla's "forgotten" villains; those characters never invited back for a return appearance. Included amongst these are perfectly well-designed monsters like Megalon (who was in, let's say, a really terribly movie), Titanosaurus and Biollante. I'd have to go back and rewatch all the movies so it doesn't turn out half-assed like this one did, though. Oops.
The Roar
posted on February 20 2009 (original post sometime right after midnight; updated around 10:20 am for clarity's sake...haven't slept in between)
I know the "rapid-fire" posts are unusual, but hey, I told you I wanted to post more often.
Anyway, I've been sitting on this link from Space.com for over a month now...the story was posted January 7...because I haven't really known what to make of it.
Allow me to summarize, if I may. Everything in the universe emits a little bit of noise in the form of radio waves (not sound waves, as sound does not travel in the vacuum of space), something the article describes as a "static hiss"...our own galaxy does, as do others.
Now researchers have picked up a new radio wave that's incredibly surprising. It's so "loud" that it's described as a veritable "roar" in terms of cosmic radio waves. It's really, really loud, in other words.
It's not a true "roar", of course, again because true sound doesn't carry. But it is an abnormally loud radio wave. It's loud enough that it's blocking out the waves the scientists actually were looking for, waves from the earliest stars in the universe.
Nobody knows what the "roar" is. Whatever it is, it's SIX times louder than all the known radio wave sources in the universe...combined. And all sources we could possibly be aware of were ruled out prior to the find being announced.
So what it is? What is out there creating this loud and strong signal?
Now, granted, they're very early in the stages of examining this thing, so it could turn out to be almost anything...a fluke, a spike, something. But it could legitimately turn out to be a new celestial body that we don't know anything about yet. This could lead to something incredibly exciting.
Now (warning: political commentary alert), any civilization ACTUALLY concerned with advancing itself would definitely devote time and resources to finding the answer. But, oh, look, we're not that civilization. My bad.
Sorry about that last part. I just had to get that off my chest.
Danny Go(To Hell)Key, or American Idol Contestants I Have Hated
posted hatefully on February 19 2009
American Idol. Bah. A pox on thee.
I've been watching American Idol since season 3, so I missed such exciting contests as Kelly Clarkson, the one-two punch of Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, and whoever the hell else was on in those two seasons. I picked it up in season 3 and, despite often wanting to do otherwise, have continued to watch it faithfully ever since.
Every season I have watched there is a contestant that I just despise. Naturally, that person winds up being insanely popular.
I already know, after learning only the first 3 of the final 12 for 2009, who my most hated is. That would be Danny Gokey, who never met an inspirational song he wouldn't love to beat you over the head with.
BORING. The guy is just...gah. Sappy and crappy. It's awful. What makes it worse is that he's one of this season's "hard luck story" contestants. And, I have to say in all fairness, he does have a terrible story: Only in his 20s, Mr. Gokey is a widower, his wife taken from him at a tragically young age.
For this unimaginable tragedy, my heart goes out to him, it really does. However, my feeling of sympathy for a fellow human being's loss does not go into that person's career as an entertainer.
No, Mr. Gokey would like to sing every smarmy, crummy, reach-for-the-skies piece of inspirational tripe that has ever been written. I do not foresee him EVER straying from this inexplicable and thus far successful formula if he can help it. For this, I hate him and what he will do to my TV for the next few months.
But I have many weeks to hate on Danny Gokey. For now, let me take you back to my past Most Hateds.
Season Three was a rough one for me, because there were a triumvirate of people I hated. These were "the three divas": Latoya London, Jennifer Hudson, and Fantasia Barrino. All three of them sang until their songs were beaten into the ground, gasping for mercy. But, oh no, there was no mercy to be had. They would just keep on oversinging. Fantasia Barrino could have made "Run to the Hills" sound like it belonged in a Baptist church; that was her formula, make everything sound like gospel. It proved to be a winning one. While I'm often noted amongst my friends for the vitriol which Latoya London inspired in me, the truth is that I actually hated Jennifer Hudson the most. It's just that Latoya was so damned arrogant, so absolutely sure that she was the best thing ever. Fortunately, nothing of any note has been heard from her since. Fantasia went on to have some success which has pretty much been limited in recent years. Jennifer Hudson, however, inexplicably won an Oscar after being inexplicably cast in Dreamgirls, a movie which was, inexplicably, released in 2006.
Season Four brought us Anthony Fedorov. Honestly, I don't remember a lot about him now, except that for being a weedy piece of crap he was awful goddamn sure of himself. He didn't amount to anything worth talking about, though.
Season Four, on a more positive note, also gave us Lindsay Cardinale, my beloved "Queen of the Fish People", whom I was attracted to despite the fact that I didn't find her particularly attractive, and whom I would often have bizarre Flash Gordon-inspired daydreams about (ask Jason on the board, he'll tell you). Fuck you, it's my website.
There were a few people in Season Five I wasn't particularly keen on, although I have to say its probably to date my favorite season. However, towards the end of the season an archnemesis did, at last, emerge, and his name was Elliot Yamin. It wasn't that Elliot was a bad singer, and I can't blame him for taking himself too seriously since everybody on the show does (except for that year's winner, Taylor Hicks), but there was just some indefinable something about him that I grew to loathe. It was even worse when he was in the final three and had the potential, however briefly, of unseating my beloved Katharine McPhee or the awesome Captain of the Soul Patrol, Taylor Hicks. I have since forgiven Mr. Yamin, although my long-ago article in which I postulated that he got so far with the assistance of a Cosmic Cube remains valid.
And, oh, Season 6. I wasn't really wild about ANYONE on Season 6, it was a really rough year, but it did give us the never-ending piece of humor that is Sanjaya Malakar. It also gave us, however briefly, Haley Scarnato in delightfully (and yet absurdly) short skirts. It gave us "Jesus, Take the Whale" Lakisha Jones (no real hate there, I just loved that clever, if horribly offensive, little nickname). But...oh, did I ever hate Melinda Doolittle. Why? Well, the only thing I hate more than full-foward arrogance on this show was her own uniquely abrasive form of false modesty. Every fucking week acting as if it were the first goddamn time she had ever, ever, ever gotten a compliment. It got old after her audition, and she went well into the proceedings (and at one point I thought she was a lock to win, too) so you can see how it got to me. Bah, I tell you, bah.
And Season 7, last year, well, that's still fresh enough in my memory and my Most Hated...well, let me run it down while we're here. My favorite joke of the year was Carly Smithson, not only because she was a ringer but because I simultaneously loved and hated her accent (I hated, mainly, the way it slipped out from under her, as she has clearly spent a lot of time in America). I melt for UK accents, I can't help it. Anyway, there were all kinds of unforgivably offensive jokes about leprechauns and hand grenades (again, ask Jason). Anyway. There was also Michael Johns, who was just nowhere near as good as he clearly thought he was. Both of them, you will have noticed, made return appearances on yesterday's show. I hated Amanda Overmyer, the first to be eliminated, because every song sounded the same and her voice was such that I nicknamed her "The Beast", but she wasn't around long enough for that to matter. But anyway, my most hated was EASILY the runner-up and currently successful David Archuleta. Now I'm sure David is a fine young lady in person, but I just couldn't take it. From the unmitigated gall of altering (however slightly) the lyrics to "Imagine" to his unrelenting wimpiness to the fact that he always sounded out of breath to just how fawned over he was...it just got to me. I couldn't take it.
And yet, I continue to watch. Why? I don't know why. Some part of me does enjoy the show, even though the singing styles featured tend not to be the type I like, and often the songs performed aren't ones I like, and the show is horribly padded out to an excruciating level. I did enjoy this week's "bloodbath" style elimination...NINE eliminations! Boo-yah! But...but...Danny Gokey got through. And that...that is just NOT cool with me.
The vicious circle continues apace.
Historical Perspective
posted on February 10 2009
I have to say that I love ancient history. I'm fascinated by what earlier humans did and how. My brother Dan, who is way better at this stuff than me because he actually studied and has a degree in history, likes to point out that a lot of history that predates widespread literacy is mainly conjecture or just hopelessly biased. He's absolutely right. That's partly why it fascinates me. There's a whole "what if" aspect to it that I enjoy.
One thing I really like about history are those shady characters who are kinda-maybe historical. These are characters we largely accept as fictional, characters like King Arthur and Robin Hood. It's generally accepted that while those people as we perceive them never really existed, they are certainly patterned after somebody. And those guys, lost to history, are just from the Common Era (or, if you prefer, the "AD" era). Imagine what kind of knowledge is lost from times even further back!
Hell, it's even possible that Beowulf is based on an actual guy. You just have to factor in centuries upon centuries of inflating. Suddenly a guy who killed a really big bear is a mighty warrior who slew a monster from the depths. Think about it.
Fun, but entirely tangential, historical fact: The first appearance in the historical record of a Loch Ness Monster sighting occurs in the biography of a sixth-century Catholic saint, Saint Columba, who was said to have driven the creature back into the depths by invoking Christ. Similarly, there are said to be UFO encounters recorded in the Book of Ezekiel, although they can also be perceived as angelic encounters.
Perception again. Anyway, before I get too far off track, let me get you to where I started on this line of thinking tonight. I was reading about a recent archaeological discovery in Greece, where they found an altar on Mount Lykaion that was apparently the earliest place yet found dedicated to the worship of Zeus. It dates to around around 3400 years ago.
This is what got me to thinking. I looked up what happened 3400 years ago. This puts us in roughly 1600 BCE. And what do we know about that century?
Not a whole hell of a lot, really. It's estimated that the last of the mammoths died at some point in the century. We have a pretty decent grasp of the rulers of Assyria during the century. And that's really about all there is.
So what I was thinking was, what of our era is going to be remembered in 5409? Will we have progressed or backslid? Will our attempts to preserve our cultures and our heritages succeed, or will subsequent wars and disasters wipe them out like so many other things?
What I've come to believe now is that what we do here ultimately doesn't matter much to future centuries. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter in the here and now, because it does, but one of the most distressing tendencies that we as humans have is the thought that somehow our era is far more special than any before. That somehow what we do now will reverberate through the centuries more powerfully than anything else.
I think of how many times in humanity's past we've considered ourselves at the pinnacle of human achievement. I think about how many times we've thought we were at the "end times". We're doing both of those things right here and now, and yet this time we think we're right, that this is IT.
We think our wars will matter, that the blood we shed now will matter to people in three thousand years. But how many wars do you know of from 3000 years ago? How many political leaders?
And you may be thinking, but we really are way more advanced. We'll have computers and recordings and all kinds of stuff to testify to the things we're doing now. All these things will retain their immediacy because it's all so well documented. It's not like it was in the infancy of human civilization.
But I'll say it again. What happens if something comes along and wipes that all out? Call it global warming, call it a freak of nature, call it a war. Whatever happens, something could do away with it in a heartbeat. And we can't prevent that. And we're not special, not in the massive run of world history. Ours are not the end times. It's just...our time.
And, you know, this isn't to say that we do doesn't matter, because we have the immediate future to consider. What we do does shape things for the civilization that presently exists. But I think its arrogance to assume that it's going to exist forever. Everything ends, right? Everything. Species die, civilizations fall, peoples' names are forgotten. Gravestones fall and nobody tends to the dead and its all lost to history.
This isn't sad. This is just life. This is just the world. And I love her for it. Because the world doesn't discriminate. The world treats everyone with the same indifference. Time ran its course for the dinosaurs. Time ran its course for the Neanderthal. Time ran its course for the kings of Assyria and for the forgotten war chiefs of Britain (one of whom may have been "King" Arthur!) and the Romans who invaded them. And in good time, our course will be run, too. When events dictate, our civilization will either evolve into something we wouldn't recognize or it will fall altogether. And in due time, when the world's done with us, she'll do away with us like she did with the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals. And when the universe is done with the world, the sun will do away with her. And then the sun will run out, and everything will return to darkness. And that's nature. That's life...brilliant, beautiful, wonderful life.
This may seem bleak to you as you're reading this. But I don't see it that way. Because I look at both the near and the far, and I realize that what I do now matters NOW, but I am humble enough to realize it won't matter LATER. But that doesn't change anything, because it's all still worth doing. The enormity of history and the endless expanse of the universe doesn't intimidate me because I've figured out where I rate in the whole run of things. To me, it's not a negative at all. It's a privilege to be a part of it all, no matter how tiny.
And I always think of Carl Sagan and his "Pale Blue Dot" speech, which I think shaped my thinking on this. He was talking about a photograph, also called "The Pale Blue Dot", taken by the Voyager 1 space probe. When the Voyager's original mission was completed, NASA commanded the probe to turn back towards our solar system and take some photographs. These ultimately comprised what is known as the "Family Portrait"...a series of 60 photographs which make up a kind of collage that shows Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, the Sun, Venus, Earth and Jupiter (Mercury, Mars and Pluto were too tiny to show up). It was taken about four billion miles away from us. These were the last photographs the probe took. The image of Earth became known as the "Pale Blue Dot". In the picture, earth is just a little tiny dot in a band of reflected sunlight...it's just a pale blue dot, smaller than a pixel (this is all according to the Wikipedia page). And it's just...as you can guess...a tiny little speck. It's nothing. If you weren't looking for it you probably wouldn't think a whole hell of a lot of it.
And here is what Sagan said. The whole thing's on that same page, but this is the part pertinent to what I'm saying:
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there...on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
Bringing it back around, you'll also see on the page that Al Gore paraphrased this very statement in his end-times prophecy An Inconvenient Truth. Sagan was very mindful of environmental concerns, this much is true, but he wasn't the alarmist that Gore is. Even as a "global warming denier", I remain concerned with the state of our environment, after all.
Sagan also saw things as I do, that the future of humanity has to ultimately lie beyond this planet, beyond our beloved mother, somewhere out there in space. This is something we're sadly not concerning ourselves with now, considering that we haven't even set foot on our little friend, the Moon, in almost 37 years.
But, then again, 37 years isn't even a speck in time, is it?
And I know it must seem funny that I say I love reading about history even as I say it "doesn't matter". It may not "matter" as we understand that word, but it's still fascinating, it's still important. But for how long? That's all I'm asking.
But, for now, never mind the question of "what's the point of life" and "what does it all mean". You're probably wondering what's the point of this article. And it's just me saying something that comes to my mind every time I hear that our people in this time and this place are doing something that is the most important thing in history. Because, frankly, it is not. And that's okay, because (perhaps paradoxically) it still matters.
I know, I know. Talking in circles. To me, though, that kind of thing is philosophy. Circular thinking...or, rather, thinking spirally.
As a final note, Voyager 1 took the Pale Blue Dot photo on my 10th birthday...February 14, 1990. Saturday is my 29th birthday. Voyager 1 is set to expire sometime around 2025, its power finally spent after (what will then be) 48 years. I plan to outlive it. So there.
The Lovers Cried and the Poets Dreamed
posted on February 3 2009
Fifty years ago today is the day everybody calls "The Day the Music Died", immortalized in the song "American Pie." It was the day that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. "Big Bopper" Richardson were killed in a plane crash.
The story's well known. Two of three entertainers who died in the crash, Holly and Valens, have had movies made about their short lives, after all. It's one of the essential pieces of rock and roll legend.
Holly had chartered the plane to get to the Minnesota stop of the "Winter Dance Party" tour, which also included Dion and the Belmonts. Originally, Holly was to fly with two members of his band, Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings (who later went on to great success as a country musician). Jennings gave up his seat to the Big Bopper, who had come down with the flu; Valens won his seat from Allsup in a coin toss. The three entertainers boarded the plane, piloted by Roger Peterson, and took to the skies just after 1 am on the flight that would enter their names into eternity.
All four men died when the plane went down less than 10 miles into its trip. The pilot was 21 years old; the Big Bopper was 28; Buddy Holly was 22 and Ritchie Valens was only 17.
For some years there had been speculation that the Big Bopper, whose body was found a considerable distance from the crash site, had survived the initial impact and somehow moved to the spot where he was found, but when his body was recently exhumed at his son's request a forensic exam confirmed that he, too, suffered immediately fatal injuries and that his body had simply been thrown in the crash.
Of course, much is made of the legacy these three men have had. Valens remains an important figure in the history of Latino entertainers. The Big Bopper's biggest hit, "Chantilly Lace", is a fixture on oldies radio and his "Hellooooo baby" opening is virtually iconic. And Buddy Holly is one of the seminal figures of rock and roll and was one of the original group of entrants into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. A number of his songs, including "Peggy Sue", "That'll Be the Day", "Oh Boy", "Not Fade Away", "Everyday" and "Maybe Baby" are now standards.
Because Buddy Holly is probably my very favorite performer from the earliest days of rock and roll, I like to commemorate the day. I'm also fascinated that my father still recalls where he was when he heard the news that day 50 years ago; as he recounted just today, he was stationed in Hawaii with the Navy and was off-duty playing tennis with some buddies when the news came on the radio. He remembers this exactly. I guess it's one of those events.
So I like to listen to Buddy's music on this day, I guess as much as anything to confirm that the music didn't really die, and never will. It's still there, as good as it ever was, and people still remember. So this one's for old Buddy.
Finally! The Archives!
posted, uh, archaeologically?, on January 22 2009
Well, after something like 3 years of planning to do it, I've created the all new Why Not? Crypt! This is an archive of all the posts since the massive redesign of the site I did in 2005, which was when I actually started saving all my posts.
The archive pages are sorted much the way the main page is, most recent post first going backwards. You can find the archive over in the sidebar there where you can conveniently pick a year and enjoy.
You'll notice a hauntingly familiar page design on each page as well as a special message from your Why Not? Cryptkeeper, who will also be hauntingly familiar, that, no, I'm not clever enough to have change each time you go there, but goes along with the theme of it being a Crypt.
So, anyway, there you go. All that stuff is off this page and over there in the archives (I like to call it the Crypt, but whatever). Enjoy.
Learning'd! The Story Behind SNL's "Ras-Trent"
posted January 12 2008
I got really curious and decided to look up some of the Rastafari references in the hilarious "Ras-Trent" digital short from Saturday Night Live and here I am sharing my knowledge with you, in a handy compact form. This is the result of too much free time. Enjoy!
First, "Rastafarianism" is considered incorrect or offensive. You can call it Rastafari or Rasta, but not Rastafarianism. Moving on.
"Jah". Jah is the Rastafari rending of the Tetragrammaton...the name of God, YHWH, often rendered for Jews and Christians as "Yahweh" or "Jehovah". See, you're already learning.
"Ras" is a term meaning, depending on who you ask, "Head", "Prince" or "Duke". The usage...and, indeed, the name of the Rastafari movement...comes from Haile Selassie I's birth name, Tafari Makonnen. Selassie, during his early life, received the title of Ras, becoming Ras Tafarai Makonnen. More on him soon.
"Babylon". Babylon is the Rastafari term for the corrupt Western civilization we live in.
"Rudeboy". A common term for rebellious youth (or juvenile delinquents) in '60s Jamaica.
"The chalice I be made from a Sprite can". Marijuana is considered sacred to the Rastafari, and its usage is considered sacramental. The marijuana plant is considered the Tree of Life mentioned in the Bible, and its leaves are smoked from a pipe they refer to as a chalice, indicating the sacramental and meditative nature of the act.
"My roommate Nick is an ignorant baldhead" and "Have you ever noticed how baldheads suck?" The Rastafari allow their hair to grow unfettered, turning them into masses of dreadlocks. The removal of hair is considered taboo, and people who have haircuts are easily identified as not being Rastafari.
"I" instead of me. The word "me" is considered by the Rastafari to turn a person into an object, so they use "I" instead. For instance, "Excuse I."
"Last week I read a book about Selassie I". This is a reference to Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. Amongst the Rastafari, the "I" is pronounced as the letter and not as "the first" as would be in, say, an English monarch. Selassie was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He is seen by the Rastafari as the incarnation of Jah on Earth, a messianic figure, the second such figure after Jesus Christ. Selassie's role was to set straight the teachings of Christ that had, in the Rastafari view, been corrupted by Babylon. Selassie's bloodline is said to extend back to King Solomon, and one of the names given him at his coronation in 1930 was "Conquering Lion of Judah"...a name that appears in the Book of Revelations, which led the movement's founders to see Selassie as the prophesied return of God incarnate. The Rastafari believe that Selassie is not actually dead and that he will lead them to the Promised Land, or Zion. Otherwise, Selassie died in 1975 at the age of 83.
"Nyabinghi" is one of the branches, called Mansions, of Rastafari.
So there you have it. I figured I would share everything I learned and hopefully deepen your enjoyment. Or you could just hate me for ruining it. Either way.
A Beginner's Guide to Doctor Who
posted on January 6 2009
I've been debating doing this column for a long time, largely due to wondering if anybody would even bother to read it, but I'm doing it anyway. It's going to be fun for me, at least.
I decided to do it now, being extra enthusiastic about the subject matter, as the new star of Doctor Who was announced. He is 26 year old Matt Smith, a British actor (naturally) who becomes the eleventh man to play the character.
What follows is, in my own humble way, a guide for someone who knows absolutely nothing about Doctor Who. These should introduce you to all the incarnations of the Doctor and give you an overview of the adventures he has had.
I warn you now that if you are trying to watch DVDs of the past series or to pick up the present series on TV, there are things here that are pretty much spoilers, so proceed cautiously.
The First Doctor (played by William Hartnell)
When we first met the enigmatic Doctor, he is living in 1963 London with his granddaughter, Susan, who is attending a local school. When questions about Susan arise, two of her teachers find the Doctor and Susan in a junkyard, apparently living in a blue police box (which was, at the time, a fixture on English streets - a call box that you could step into, pick up a phone and summon the police). But this is all camouflage; when Susan's teacher step inside the box, they find it to be unimaginably huge on the inside. The Doctor reveals that this is the TARDIS...standing for "Time and relative dimension in space"...a ship capable of traveling through space and time. The Doctor, who reveals nothing of his background save that he and Susan are members of a far-off alien race, whisks the two teachers off towards adventure in, well, time and space.
The First Doctor is a grandfatherly old man, prone to being extremely stubborn and occasionally condescending, but ultimately being paternal (or grandpaternal, if you prefer) towards his companions, and with a strong sense of right and wrong.
The Doctor faces for the first time the insidious intergalactic menace of the fascistic Daleks, a decidedly nonhumanoid mechanical menace. The Daleks will plague him throughout the reaches of time and space as the Doctor fights their totalitarian ambitions. He travels to various times in Earth's past, including ancient Rome and South America in the time of the Aztecs, and to the furthest reaches of space. Along the way, his initial companions (including granddaughter Susan) eventually leave him for new lives that have been bettered by sharing adventures with him.
At last the Doctor finds himself on Earth in its future with two companions, Ben and Polly, facing the menace of the Cybermen. The Doctor narrowly averts the Cybermen's plan for invasion, but the effort proves to be too taxing for him, and he collapses...and dies. But right before Ben and Polly's eyes, his body undergoes a miraculous change.
The Second Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton)
The Doctor has undergone a process he calls "regeneration", a trait he has in common with all of his people, whom are revealed to be called the Time Lords. It is also revealed that the Doctor has two hearts rather than the one that humans have.
Reinvigorated, the Doctor undergoes some slight personality changes. Rather than the obstinate old man he had been, the Second Doctor is a slightly younger man, more apt to play the clown, dressing in shabby clothes and constantly playing tunes on a recorder.
The Second Doctor also finds himself up against the Daleks and the Cybermen, and faces new menaces along the way such as the Yeti and the Ice Warriors. The Doctor travels to medieval Scotland and meets one his longest-standing companions, highlander Jamie McCrimmon. Together, they travel to the farthest reaches of space facing these menaces together, as the clownish Doctor reveals that he is hiding the mind of a great genius and a surprisingly steely resolve to protect the innocent. It is with this resolve that the Doctor believes he has forever ended the menace of the Daleks.
The Doctor, traveling with Jamie and another companion, Zoe, finds himself on a strange alien planet where warriors from different time periods are being plucked out to forever reenact their battles in bizarre war games. The Doctor finds himself left with no choice in returning these warriors home than to contact his people, the Time Lords. He reveals for the first time that he is a fugitive from Time Lord law, but for the sake of preserving lives he submits to arrest by the Time Lords, who do indeed help him set things right. Separated from his companions, the Doctor's sentence is to be forcibly regenerated to a new body and banished to planet Earth in the 1970s.
The Third Doctor (played by Jon Pertwee)
The Doctor, stranded on Earth with his TARDIS rendered useless, joins up with the elite group UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Task Force, working alongside Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, the UNIT commander. Together, along with the Doctor's assistants, the two battle various threats facing the Earth, including invasion by the plastic Autons. The Doctor meets one of his greatest enemies: The Master, a sinister Time Lord who has his own TARDIS and uses his time/space ability to attempt to enslave planets and, indeed, the universe itself. Aided by his companion, Jo, the Doctor faced the Master in struggle after struggle, the Doctor sometimes barely coming out on top. The Doctor is also horrified to find that he has not, in fact, defeated the Daleks for good, as they reappear yet again.
The Third Doctor was brave and heroic, a man of action in contrast to his more thoughtful prior incarnations (although he is every bit the scientific genius). Equipped with a knowledge of self-defense martial arts, the Doctor is able to face his foes one-on-one, preferring as always to find nonlethal solutions whenever possible.
It is during the Third Doctor's life that the Doctor finds that he can sometimes cross paths with his previous incarnations. When the terrible menace of the mad Time Lord Omega threatens both the Earth and the Doctor's home planet, the Time Lords allow the Doctor to interact with his two previous versions. The Second and Third Doctor do most of the legwork, but it is revealed that the First Doctor is still the most cerebral of the three and that all subsequent variations have great respect for him. For his services, the Doctor's ability to travel in the TARDIS is restored.
We soon learn the Doctor's home planet is called Gallifrey. He faces still another new recurring menace, the martial race of the Sontarans. The Doctor has met up with one of his finest companions, investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith. With Sarah Jane he faces the menace of a race of monstrous psychic spiders. The Doctor must venture into a heavily irradiated cave in order to put their menace to an end, and when he returns to Earth and Sarah he is rapidly dying from acute radiation poisoning. Before Sarah Jane's eyes he begins to regenerate yet again!
The Fourth Doctor (played by Tom Baker)
The Fourth Doctor had arrived. The Doctor experiences quite a bit of uneasiness following his regeneration, but ultimately manages to get himself together in time to face a number of menaces, including the returns of the Sontarans and the Cybermen.
The Fourth Doctor, clad in his trademark floor-length, multicolored scarf, travels through time with Sarah Jane (and, for a time, Harry Sullivan). This Doctor is more aloof than he was in his previous lives, and yet in a way is the most compassionate. Yet now, more than ever, he is not a man to be trifled with. Still, he is kind and loving, once even referring to Sarah Jane as his best friend, and yet when he is faced with evil he can be truly merciless. A real eccentric, the Fourth Doctor has a fondness for jelly babies (a candy much like gummy bears)and is known to offer them to both friends and foes alike. He is almost always seen with some version of his incredible scarf.
The Doctor travels in time to the very beginning to the Dalek race and meets their creator, Davros. Tasked with the mission to destroy the Daleks before they even begin, thereby preventing all the evil they will ever commit, the Doctor refuses, as that would the same kind of genocide that the Daleks themselves advocate. However, he still manages to deliver a vital blow to their maniacal plans.
After being forced to leave Sarah behind to travel to his home of Gallifrey, the Doctor again faces the Master. Resuming his travels, he meets a new companion, Leela, and together they travel around the universe, along the way picking up a robotic dog named K-9. Leela soon leaves the Doctor and he is assigned a new companion by the Time Lords, a Time Lady by the name of Romana. Together, the Doctor and Romana are tasked with finding the immensely powerful Key to Time, a cosmic artifact that maintains the equilibrium of the very universe.
Romana chooses to regenerate after finding the Key to Time. The Doctor and Romana almost immediately find themselves up against the Daleks and Davros yet again. The Doctor travels to Paris with Romana and the two almost (but not quite!) seem to be developing a romantic relationship, or at the very least a flirtation. They continue to travel together for some time before winding up in a parallel dimension called E-Space. It is here that Romana and K-9, who has become her loyal assistant, opt to leave the Doctor. The Doctor is not alone, however, as in E-Space he has found a new sidekick, the teenage boy Adric.
Together, the Doctor and Adric wind up meeting Nyssa of the planet Traken and subsequently the flight attendant Tegan from Australia, all while in conflict with the Master, who himself has regenerated. In a last-ditch effort to stop the Master from destroying the universe, the Doctor plunges from the top of a tower to his death...
The Fifth Doctor (played by Peter Davison)
But the Doctor regenerates, this time into a much younger body, that of a man in his late 20s. Still reeling from his traumatic regeneration, the Doctor must keep it together and put an end to the Master's overarching scheme. With his three companions in tow, the Doctor begins to travel again. Before long he finds himself fighting against the Cybermen again, but this time the battle has a terrible cost, as Adric dies in the climactic struggle, leaving the Doctor riddled with grief and guilt.
Overall, the Fifth Doctor is unsure of himself. He almost seems at times disoriented by his physical age compared to the fact that he is a Time Lord who, in reality, is over 700 years old or more. He is a gentler soul than ever before, one who is as much outraged as he is enraged by the evil that he sees. This Doctor is extremely thoughtful and, like the First Doctor, sometimes is seen to don a pair of glasses in particularly intellectual moments.
The Doctor again faces the menace of the mad old Time Lord Omega as well as the Black Guardian he faced during the quest for the Key to Time. During this time, Nyssa leaves him and a new companion, Turlough, joins the Doctor and Tegan.
Another unthinkable menace leads to the Doctor once again being forced to interact with his past selves, as the First, Second, and Third Doctors all meet up with the Fifth. Soon, the Doctor also finds himself facing the Daleks and their evil creator Davros yet again, at which point Tegan, tired of the violence, opts to leave the Doctor.
The Doctor meets a new companion, Peri, and parts ways with Turlough after a new struggle with the Master. On the planet Androzani, the Doctor and Peri contract an illness stemming from that planet's valuable element, spectrox. The Doctor finds himself in a situation where there is only one dose of the antidote to the poisoining, and he gives that to Peri, who watches in sorrow as the Doctor begins to succumb to the poisoning...
The Sixth Doctor (played by Colin Baker)
The Doctor has regenerated again, but things are going horribly wrong as the Doctor finds himself mentally unstable, first attacking Peri and then deciding that he is going to spend a thousand years in seclusion as a monk. Peri is able to talk him out of this and he regains a measure of his wits, but his personality has fundamentally changed from his gentle predecessor.
The Sixth Doctor is exceedingly arrogant and brash. Although he is, naturally, protective of Peri, he is also condescending to her, although even more so to others he encounters. The Sixth Doctor is far less hesitant to use violence than his predecessor.
Together, the Doctor and Peri face the Cybermen and still another renegade from Gallifrey, the Time Lady known as the Rani. The Sixth Doctor meets the Second Doctor and his old companion Jamie as they come into conflict the dreaded Sontarans. The Doctor manages to meet legendary author H. G. Wells (who, of course, wrote The Time Machine). Soon, the Doctor and Peri find themselves facing down the latest diabolical plot of Davros and the Daleks.
The Doctor finds himself on trial by his fellow Time Lords, being prosecuted by a mysterious being called the Valeyard, on the charges that he has broken time and again the Time Lord law against interference. The Doctor defends his actions pointing out the innumerable lives he has saved, but the Valeyard still manages to twist events against the Doctor. The Doctor, who is missing a small portion of his memory, is led to believe that Peri has died, and some time later he has met up with a new companion, Melanie (called Mel). The Valeyard is getting close to getting the Doctor convicted when the Master appears and reveals that the Valeyard has tampered with all the evidence and changed events, revealing that Peri did not die but went off to live her life. The Doctor soon confronts the Valeyard, who reveals himself to be a potential future version of the Doctor who is truly evil and is trying to steal the Doctor's remaining lives. The Doctor defeats this potential future self and sets off with Mel to travel through space again. It is not long, however, before the TARDIS is attacked by the Rani's TARDIS and is involved in a terrible crash. Mel awakens to find the Doctor has regenerated!
The Seventh Doctor (played by Sylvester McCoy)
The Seventh Doctor has come into being, and at first he is hopelessly confused and slightly amnesiac owing to his regeneration, but manages to snap out of it and defeat the Rani. Going along into time and space with Mel, he has a number of strange adventures.
The Seventh Doctor begins his life as a whimsical, clownish figure almost like the Second. He plays the spoons, takes pratfalls, and often confuses his metaphors and cliches. Things slowly begin to change, though. Mel departs and the Doctor finds himself traveling with a young woman, Ace, who also has a mysterious past. As they travel, Ace finds there are untold depths to the Doctor, and hints mount up that the Doctor is something more than a normal Time Lord. As he progresses, the Doctor becomes a more mysterious figure, prone to manipulating both enemies and allies alike...even Ace, his dear friend and protege...and taking the most extreme measures to defeat his enemies. The Doctor again finds himself in conflict with the Daleks, and his solution this time is to utterly destroy the Dalek home planet of Skaro! When he next faces the Cybermen, his solution there is to wipe out their entire invasion fleet!
The Doctor and Ace travel back in time to 1883 to a mysterious house which Ace soon finds to be the very same building that she burned down 100 years later. There, they meet a mysterious being called Light whose mission is to catalog all life on Earth, but when he realizes that life keeps evolving, his solution is to destroy all life. The Doctor tricks Light into destroying himself, though. The Doctor and Ace jet off again, and before long find themselves in conflict with the Master.
(Here is where, in 1989, the original television series ended, with the Doctor and Ace still traveling. No new TV stories where made until 1996, when a television movie was made.)
In time, the Doctor is traveling alone, having parted ways with Ace. He has been tasked with carrying the remains of the Master, who has seemingly died at the hands of the Daleks. While traveling, the Doctor's TARDIS goes haywire and he finds himself landing on Earth on December 30, 1999, just a day before the turn of the millennium. Emerging from his TARDIS, the Doctor is accidentally caught in the crossfire of a gang battle, and is gunned down! Rushed to the hospital, the Doctor finds himself in the care of a medical staff that has no idea he has two hearts. Attempts to correct his heartbeats fail and the Doctor dies!
The Eighth Doctor (played by Paul McGann)
The Doctor does not regenerate immediately, but sits for hours in a drawer in the morgue, when he suddenly regenerates with no memory at all. Finding himself a costume that oddly mirrors that of his original incarnation, the amnesiac Doctor seeks out the cardiologist who was with him when he died in an attempt to find his memory. Meanwhile, the Master's remains have come to life and possessed a new body, and now the Master looks to take over the Doctor's body and steal his remaining regenerations...and in the process destroy Earth! It isn't long before the Doctor gets his memory back and confronts the Master as the very edge of the new century, stopping the diabolical plan and sending the Master hurtling to his death. The Doctor sets off to find new adventures in his new incarnation.
(This was the only appearance of the Eighth Doctor. The TV movie failed to drum up interest in a show revival. Time passed, and finally in 2005 the decision was made to revive the series).
The Ninth Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston)
When we next meet the Doctor, he has regenerated into his ninth incarnation. No specifics of how the Eighth Doctor met his end are explicitly revealed, but the Doctor tells of having been through a catastrophic event called the Time War, which seemingly saw the destruction of both the Time Lord and Dalek races (including Dalek creator Davros), leaving the Doctor as the only survivor (one can surmise the Eighth Doctor met his end during this conflict).
The Doctor finds himself facing down his long-ago foes, the Autons, and meets up with a new companion, the lovely Rose. The Doctor and Rose face the all-new threat of the Slitheen, gaseous roly-poly aliens infiltrating England's government. To his horror, the Doctor also finds that there is a living Dalek! Although his first instinct is to kill the Dalek and end the menace forever, Rose reminds him that only a Dalek would do such a thing, and so the Doctor spares the lone Dalek. The Doctor and Rose travel to London during World War II and meet up with the time-traveling rogue, Captain Jack Harkness, who joins them on their travels. Soon, the Doctor finds that the Daleks...and an evil Dalek Emperor...have somehow survived the Time War and are in Earth's future conspiring to rule the universe again! During this conflict, the Doctor and Rose think Captain Jack is killed. Rose, as a last ditch effort, goes into the TARDIS and absorbs the energy of the Time Vortex, giving her nearly godlike powers that allow her to destroy the Dalek threat. Although she is unaware of it, she also resurrects Captain Jack, who from this point on is immortal (and goes off to have his own adventures elsewhere, without the Doctor). The Doctor knows that the power of the Time Vortex will surely kill Rose, who he takes the energy into himself and returns it into the TARDIS, but the effort is too much for him. Gasping out a quick explanation of regeneration, the Doctor's features suddenly change...
The Tenth Doctor (played by David Tennant
And the Tenth Doctor has come into being. Immediately facing a threat as he attempts to get used to his new body, the Doctor soon takes off with Rose, traveling again through time and space. Rose and the Doctor grow especially close, and it is obvious that Rose has romantic feelings for the Doctor. Much to his surprise, the Doctor and Rose (and Rose's friend Mickey) meet up with the Doctor's old friend, Sarah Jane Smith! The Doctor explains to Sarah that the reason he goes through so many companions is that he cannot bear to watch them grow old and die while he continues to live, which is why he had to part from Sarah. The Doctor finds that K-9 is also there, in Sarah's possession. Properly saying farewell to Sarah, the Doctor, Rose and Mickey find themselves in an alternate dimension, facing the threat of the Cybermen. After facing this menace, Mickey stays behind in the other universe as the Doctor and Rose press onward. They find themselves on a distant planet facing a malevolent being which claims to be the Devil. Soon, the Doctor and Rose return to Earth to find it being invaded by the alternate-universe Cybermen...and soon the Doctor uncovers that it is the Daleks who have made this breach of universes possible! Faced with his two greatest enemies at once, the Doctor manages to turn them against each other. The Doctor begins to close the rift between universes, but Rose is sucked into the other universe. Separated from her, the Doctor manages to find one final breach that will soon close, and manages to speak to Rose one more time. Rose tells the Doctor that she loves him; before the Doctor can reply, the breach closes and the two universes are separated, leaving the Doctor's final words to Rose unspoken.
The Doctor, missing Rose, meets up with an irritating bride named Donna Noble on her wedding day. With Donna, he stops an invasion from an ancient race of insectoid beings. Donna declines the Doctor's offer to travel with him.
The Doctor finds a new companion in Martha, a young student Doctor. In Martha's present-day England, a mysterious named named Mr. Saxon is running for Prime Minister, but they are more occupied with their adventures elsewhere. Together, they meet William Shakespeare, face the Daleks in 1930s New York, and go into hiding with the Doctor posing as as a human. Afterward, they meet up with Captain Jack, who has been looking for the Doctor for some time and is, on present day Earth, the head of a government agency called Torchwood. A long story short, they wind up in the present day to find that Mr. Saxon is, in fact, the Master, who briefly manages to take over the world before the Doctor defeats him. The Master is shot by his wife, Mrs. Saxon, and spitefully chooses not to regenerate in order to truly make the Doctor the last of the Time Lords.
The Doctor briefly meets up with his Fifth self traveling through the Time Vortex. Shortly after, the Doctor finds himself on a space liner called the Titanic that has a problem very similar to the one our own Titanic had and nearly crashes into Earth.
The Doctor finds himself meeting up again with Donna Noble, and this time she agrees to follow him on his adventures. Together, they travel to Pompeii the day before the volcano erupts. They also face the Sontarans. They travel to a wartorn planet where the Doctor is partially cloned, resulting in a woman named Jenny whom is essentially the Doctor's daughter. Jenny goes her own way, however, and the Doctor and Donna carry on. They meet up in the past with Agatha Christie. The Doctor meets a woman who seems to be from his own future and also knows his still-unrevealed true name. Soon, a huge Dalek menace...including the return of Davros (whom the Doctor thought had died in the Time War) brings the Doctor's friends...Rose, Mickey, Captain Jack (and Torchwood), Martha, Sarah Jane and even K-9...together to defeat the arch villains. In the process, Donna loses her memory and the Doctor presses on, alone.
The Eleventh Doctor (played by Matt Smith)
Lying in the future is the end of the Tenth Doctor's tenure and the coming of the Eleventh Doctor. How these events will play out remains to be seen.
Whew! That took hours, but boy was that fun for me to write. I hope you managed to get through it, and maybe it even caught your interest! If not, I understand that, too. I still had a ball revisiting all that Doctor Who history. As I do after every Doctor Who column, I promise the next one won't be about Doctor Who.
Now reading: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
Now listening: Grim Reaper, Fear No Evil
Last movie watched: The Onion Movie
Save Rock and Roll for Everyone
posted January 4 2009
Everybody who has ever even once come to this website knows that my favorite band is the Grateful Dead. You probably also put together that I'm a Phish fan, too.
But what sometimes it's easy to forget is that I love metal. That's right! The hippie-dippy guy loves his heavy metal. And right now I feel like talking about THE METAL.
One might go so far as to call metal my first love. In my living space, sharing room with my Jerry Garcia action figure, my Jerry Garcia Wine bottles, and my prodigious stacks of Dead concerts, are banners of Iron Maiden album covers, an Iron Maiden mirror, and action figures of Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie. Next to the Grateful Dead, right next to them, Iron Maiden are my OTHER favorite band.
I'm going to stop here and say that the people who read this page and know me well already know this. Stay with me, though.
I'm a man of varied musical tastes. Despite the derision he used to take from time to time on Frasier (and in the world of academia), I am a strong devotee of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. I love folk music. I am a rabid Neil Diamond fan. And I think a world without the Ramones would be the very worst place in the universe, because I long for the day when Henry Rollins' dream of the "worldwide Ramones block party" comes to be.
You could almost...not quite, but almost...think that it's incongruous that I count the Grateful Dead as my favorite band, as my true love is the hardest of hard rock. I am, after all, a man who still swears that the best rock band in America today is Iced Earth. But wait...
I can say confidently the Dead will never, ever be pushed from their top spot. The epic jams, the glorious Robert Hunter poetry, all these things cannot be usurped in my opinion. The guitar mastery of Jerry Garcia is, in my heart, a thing unparalleled in all the annals of music. There are times when I need to hear Bobby Weir sing a song about heartbreak ("Looks Like Rain", for instance). There are times when the Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzmann drum solos are the only thing that will set my day right. The bass rumble of Phil Lesh is a reassuring reminder that I am standing on solid ground.
But, once in a while, I want to listen to Slayer and beat Satan in an arm wrestling match. I want to listen to Manowar and, in my head, become a beefy and brainless Viking warrior slaying all those who dare deny my might. I want to listen to Hammerfall and become a full-on Viking GOD lording my shit over the puny mortals who surround me. I want to listen to Helloween and just go ape shit and run around in the streets screaming "I want out!". I want to listen to Iced Earth and fist fight my way out of Hell itself. I want to listen to Maiden and their stunning guitar and bass assaults and go to strange times and strange worlds that only exist in my imagination. I want to listen to Metallica and Megadeth and Anthrax and bang my head until a migraine comes on and shake my fist until I get carpal tunnel.
You see, gentle friends, while the Grateful Dead, you could say, speak to my better angels and soothe my very soul, giving me peace in the worst times of strife my life has ever offered (and they truly have), it is metal that gives me an outlet, a healthy outlet, for my anger and my still-boyish imagination. While the Dead give my mind some absolutely essential peace, it is metal I turn to when I must destroy all within my path. The Dead give me peace; metal gives me release.
In a way, they are the two sides of my coin. And yet, you can see, the connective property is that, in the long run, it's all good old rock and roll. And it is rock and roll that lives in my soul, my friends. It is rock and roll that makes this bizarre life worth living.
And I know I become a cheeseball when I spout the virtues of rock and roll. I know this. And the reason I always say that I love you guys who read this page is that you can handle that. Or, at the very least, you put up with it.
So, anyway, tonight, I have already watched a Grateful Dead DVD. They have taken me to the pyramids of Egypt, to the vast recesses of space, and they have given me peace. And now I am back in space with Iron Savior, blasting my way out of yet another intergalactic scrap. But either way I have bathed in the glory of rock and roll. Because, as the late, great Joey Ramone said when he introduced the song Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio, "You know, some of us...some of us still fucking remember."
I do, Joey. I do.
Now listening: Iron Savior, Coming Home
Now reading: Mysterious America by Loren Coleman
Last movie watched: The Grateful Dead - Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978
TEN YEARS!
posted a decade older on January 1 2009
We made it! It's 2009, and that means we have just entered YEAR TEN, that's right, TEN of the Why Not? Universe Dynasty!
Yes, it was way back in another century, 1999, that this little page started up. It wasn't until around '05 that we (I) got the .com, but we've (I've) been sitting pretty at our (my) Angelfire site that whole entire time.
I've always liked using the royal plural as if multiple people ran this site.
In that time, this site has been a lot of things. It started as "Why Not Wrestling", a pro wrestling analysis and fan page. It started, and was for most of its existence, one of Angelfire's free pages, with banner ads and pop-up ads and all that. And it was a good way to go. But I wanted more, so if you scroll waaaay down to the bottom of the page, you can see when I did the extensive redesign that still stands today, when I upgraded my service to pro and when, of course, I started our beloved message board.
So what can you expect from Why Not? in 2009. Well, a lot of what I've always done. I'll tell some stories, share some thoughts, hopefully make you laugh a few times.
What I hope for all of you is a great and exciting 2009. Thanks for reading, and keep on coming back for more!
Some final thoughts to help write paid on 2008's check. My favorite movie of the year was The Dark Knight, followed very closely by Cloverfield. I don't really listen to a lot of new music, but I want to say that, sliding right in before the deadline, the Grateful Dead's Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 has to be the best I personally heard all year, probably followed by Metallica's Death Magnetic. I didn't get to read a lot of comics this past year because I haven't had the same resources to buy them as I've had in the past, but I have to say that I was interested as hell in Final Crisis and I can't wait to find out how it all turns out. My favorite TV show this past year was easily (and not surprisingly) Doctor Who, particularly for the season finale.
So that puts 2008 to bed. Things I'm looking forward to in 2009 include the Watchmen movie, which is sadly in legal entanglements right now but they'll hopefully settle that in short order. I guess that's the big thing, but we've also got a new Friday the 13th, Wolverine, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and of course the remake of The Wolf Man. It probably won't be good, but I want to see My Bloody Valentine 3D simply for it being in 3D. I don't really know right offhand of any exciting books or CDs coming up, but I'm sure there'll be plenty.
So happy New Year, one and all. Until next time, I remain, as ever, obediently yours. Look out 2009!
A rough estimate of visitors since '05, when the counter got reset:
The First Doctor (played by William Hartnell)
The Second Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton)
The Third Doctor (played by Jon Pertwee)
The Fourth Doctor (played by Tom Baker)
The Fifth Doctor (played by Peter Davison)
The Sixth Doctor (played by Colin Baker)
The Seventh Doctor (played by Sylvester McCoy)
The Eighth Doctor (played by Paul McGann)
The Ninth Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston)
The Tenth Doctor (played by David Tennant
The Eleventh Doctor (played by Matt Smith)