NOTE: Ignore the email address in the column graphic to the left. MY email address is thesavorytench@yahoo.com . Don't ask me why. I think it has something to do with fish, or maybe the drummer for the group that did that 'Damn The Torpedoes' album I like so much, but honestly, a man's mind is a forest at night.

Thursday (early) April 22 2004

Taking the fifth

I just wrote several thousand words about this week at Pridemark, but honestly, it was so boring that even I couldn't reread it, so I'm not going to post it here. My job sucks, ten and a half hour days are very long, my team leader is pretty cool at times, as are a few others there, while other team leaders still are total pills. I'm now into my 'weekend', so let's just blow all that off, other than to mention that I seem to be the only one who works at that call center who knows how to spell 'queue'.

I bought myself BUFFY Season 5 last Sunday, and am slowly making my way through it. I'm distressed to see that there are fewer good eps than I recall in it, and of course I'm painfully aware just how dreadfully bad it gets over its last five installments or so. Still, there are a couple of episodes I treasure in this particular season, particularly one called Checkpoint, in which the Council of Watchers shows up to make Buffy jump through hoops, and she ends up turning the tables on them when she realizes that without her, they're nothing. It contains that wonderful moment where Buffy demands that they reinstate Giles as her Watcher at full pay, and Giles coughs into his hand while saying "retroACTively", which just cracks me up.

It's also the last season before Nicholas Brendan starts to spend most of his down time at the Sizzler's Super Bar. I'm mostly indifferent to male beauty, but I like my fantasy projection figures to be shapely rather than portly. I can see portly any time I walk by a full length mirror.

Actually, the season takes a nose dive over the last six episodes, starting with Episode 17, "Forever", in which writer/director Marti Noxon serves up a dreadfully one dimensional rehash of the old "Monkey's Paw" plotline. After this, things just get worse as Warren builds a Buffybot for Spike (don't get me started on how idiotic the idea of lifelike androids that humans can have sex with is, because then I'll have to start screaming about how idiotic the whole idea of vampires having sex with humans or humanoid robots is, and there's just no end to that). You'd think that would be stupid enough, but from there we get into the secret of the Glory/Ben relationship, what Dawn really is, the notion that Glory's greatest enemies are a bunch of whackos who ride around on horses and weild medieval weapons that cannot possibly hurt her, that Dawn has somehow been 'built out of Buffy', and, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make... or something else equally inane, if not quite so musical, that I myself simply can't make sense of.

There are lousy episodes prior to the final six, as well. "Triangle", in which Jerry the enormous counter clerk fromER gets to put on troll make up and go on a rampage, is pretty stupid. "I Was Made To Love You", in which we get introduced to the totally humanoid sex bot (once more, Don't Get Me Started) would be dumb enough just for that, but it also expects us to accept that someone as shallow as Warren can not only BUILD this (literal) fucking thing (in his basement, yet) but that, having built something that gorgeous and utterly biddable, he'd just dump her in favor of a really bitchy, utterly high maintenance chick who is actually kind of homely. Yeah, right.

"Crush", the Valentine's Day episode in which Drusilla, Harmony, and Buffy all fight over Spike (well, not really) is mostly insipid, but what I hate about it is the fact that when Buffy breaks into Spike's lair to search it for signs that he's got a crush on her, it is conveniently lit by torches on the wall. In fact, Spike's underground lairs are always conveniently lit by torches on the walls. This is flatly nonsensical for many reasons. (A) vampires can see in the dark and DON'T NEED LIGHTING. (B) Open flame is one of the few things that will kill a vampire, and it does it very quickly, from what we've seen. Spike illuminating his home with torches is rather like Clark Kent lighting his Fortress of Solitude with some nice bright shiny kryptonite. (C) Slayers should be able to see in the dark as well, and (D) if they can't, Buffy should be smart enough to bring a flashlight when she's planning to search an underground tomb.

One other episode from the fifth season I truly dislike: "Family", in which we discover that Tara has an actual family (dispelling the fascinating idea that she might well have simply been a magical manifestation of Willow's subconscious desires, and not 'real' at all, which I'd kind of been hoping for up to that point) and, as you'd expect, they're creeps. This episode could have been used well to support the "Tara isn't real" idea had the writers wanted to go that way, since Tara's oafish relatives could later have been revealed to have also been dreamed up by the increasingly powerful Willow to bolster everyone's belief in Tara's reality. That would have been nice, since otherwise, they were just a little too cartoonishly nasty. It would also have explained Buffy's stirring but utterly baffling "She's family" speech regarding Tara, as she confronted said oafish relatives. Buffy had never demonstrated any actual knowledge of, or concern over, Tara's existence prior to this ep. Had it turned out Buffy was being mind controlled unwittingly by Willow, it would have made a lot of sense.

But, no... Tara was real, as was her unpleasant family, and therefore, this particular ep was just an exercise in vapid cliche, and nothing particularly clever. Pity about that.

Still, that's nine bad eps out of a season of 22... the franchise's worst score up until that point, but absolutely nothing compared to the horrors that awaited us in Season Six, and the only slightly less intense ugliness that would round out the series in Season Seven. All that being true, I'm pleased I have Season Five, and will happily stop collecting the series here.

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Not a river in Egypt

Angel seems to have dealt with the dangling Connor plot thread in this week's episode, perhaps for good. It wasn't a bad ep. My plan for dealing with the whole 'rearrange everyone's memories to make Connor an All American Boy' scheme was somewhat different, though.

See, my idea was that, well, evil is lazy, and Wolfram & Hart would never make any more effort than absolutely necessary to close a deal. So, yes, they did a spell to erase everyone but Angel's recollections of Connor's real origins and actions, and to make everyone think that Connor was a normal kid with a normal family off somewhere in some wealthy white suburb of LA.

That, however, was ALL they did. And a thin veneer of false memory isn't going to change the fact that Connor is, essentially, a dangerously unstable psychotic with super powers and a murderously short temper. The first time Connor walked into his idyllic family home and saw anything that wasn't straight out of a Leave It To Beaver rerun... his adorable little sister huffing Magic Marker fumes in her favorite bean bag chair, his mom getting tongue kissed by the Hispanic guy who does the lawn, his dad whacking off over some gay porn on the computer... well, there would be pieces of furniture and All American Family body parts flying everywhere.

In my storyline, Angel would have gotten word, probably from the news, that some idyllic family had been slaughtered by their own son, a well liked, popular star athlete and scholar who was now holed up in the local high school with hostages, screaming maniacally about how everything was ruined, and people had to do things right, or he'd kill them all. Angel would have been forced to confront the fact that allowing Wolfram and Hart to 'solve' his son's problems by enacting a colossal, magically induced deception was, in fact, a catastrophically stupid error in judgement, and worse, all he had really done was put an innocent family in peril by essentially shoving a ticking bomb into their midst while mind controlling them into liking it.

Personally, I always thought the whole idea was morally questionable, if not outright monstrous. Of course, that's the sort of thing that Angel does; he's that kind of ethically complex character. He's all about the guilt, and trying to make up for the disastrous consequences of his own self indulgent and irresponsible actions. With my story, we'd have gotten a very powerful statement on how you can never solve a problem through lies and denial, all you do is make it worse... and Angel would have had even more guilt and recrimination to wallow around in. Plus, you know, he finally would have had to just bite the bullet and kill that rotter Connor, which I personally would pay five or six dollars cash money to see.

My way would have been better, but, well, my explanation for all the inconsistencies in Buffy is a lot better than anything Whedon has ever given us, too, so that doesn't surprise me.

This episode wasn't bad. In fact, it was interesting. I enjoyed watching Wesley put the pieces together, and actually finding out the process Wolfram & Hart had gone through to create Connor's happy fantasy life was kind of fascinating. There was no underlying lesson about the futility of trying to do good by manipulating people's very identities, nor was there any indication that, in point of fact, simply giving Connor a headful of fake memories wouldn't fundamentally change his essentially damaged nature. Actually, if the episode had a point (and Angel rarely seems to, any more) I'd have to guess it was something like "all you are is what you remember", because fake memory, All American Boy Connor sure seemed well adjusted and stable to me.

Me, I'd like to think there is some essential part of a person's identity that would remain, even if several layers of false recollections were pasted on over it... but you can call me a starry eyed optimist, I won't kick.

The scene where Gunn refused to even listen to Wolfram & Hart's offer was awesome, though. "This heart isn't gonna cut itself out" indeed. I've never even remotely found Gunn cool before, but I enjoyed him in that scene... they should have tortured the asshole long ago.

Similarly, I could watch Fred bounce Spike off walls all day long. If they could just bring Riley back and let her stand on his neck while insulting him for a few expository dialogue exchanges as well, I'd be in heaven.

Oh, my tape of this week's ep of NYPD Blue ran out about a third of the way through, so that was frustrating.

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King of wishful thinking

And to think, you could have read several thousand words of me bitching about my job here, instead.

I'm rereading Stephen King's THE STAND right now. I have a book club edition of the novel in exactly the form that the very first hardcover copy appeared in back in 1978, when Harold was still eating Paydays (despite the fact that they have no chocolate in them) and all the dates were set in 1980, allowing Frannie's father to have had a career as a soldier in World War II. I prefer that particular version of the story. I am, occasionally, digging into my copy of the Uncut Edition, though, as I get to passages in which King's original, expanded text was superior to the cut down, often rewritten and condensed text in the original edition. Stuff like Harold, Stu, Glen, and Frannie's first meeting with Dana and Sue, being held captive by a gang of rapists, and the ensuing gunfight, is great material. In this passage King gives us what has to be one of the most realistic post apocalyptic gun battles ever, in which nearly every one misses most of their shots, one of our heroes screams and throws down his guns when one of the bad guys threatens to kill him, and generally, people act like real people rather than action heroes.

There are other passages in the Uncut Edition, however, that I find completely unnecessary. Early on, for example, there's this long idiotic interaction between Frannie and her mom that nobody needs. There's some stuff with a soldier character who is in charge of the original secret compound that releases the superflu that is nice enough, I guess, but completely extraneous to the story. By far the worst 'addition' the Uncut Edition gives us, though, is the one King relishes the most... a very long sequence featuring a character called The Kid, whom I won't describe in any more detail except to say I found him thoroughly revolting and think the original text, in which The Kid was entirely excised, to be far superior.

What annoys me most about the Uncut Edition is what annoyed me (to a lesser extent) about previous editions of The Stand. When the first paperback edition came out, in 1979, the text had been modified slightly... Harold now ate Milky Ways (this was sensible; an important plot twist hinges on Harold leaving a chocolate fingerprint somewhere, and Paydays have no chocolate in them) and, more annoyingly, the book now took place in 1985 rather than 1980. (I still find this aggravating. It's a fantasy story. We know it didn't take place, and moving it up five years is pointless; it buys you very little. Leave it in 1980.)

Now, by the time the Uncut Edition came out, King has changed it again. Harold is now eating chocolate Paydays (because, I guess, enough people like me bitched about the change in candy bars, even though it was a sensible change) and, worse, the book is now set in 1995, and King has gone through the 'uncut' text with a chainsaw, hacking all the topical references out and replacing them with more appropriate ones. Thus, when Stu and Tom winter in a hotel and Stu sets up a movie projector so they can watch films he's stolen from the local movie house in the lobby, it makes no sense. In 1980, sure, VCRs were all but unknown and there were no video stores. In 1995, however, Stu would just break into Blockbuster and get all the movies he wanted.

Stuff like that just aggravates me, as does the fact that in the Uncut Edition, Larry no longer invites an invisible audience to cram the 60s up their ass and give him the 70s, he instead professes disdain for the 70s and an enormous love for 80s pop music. This is necessary, of course, since Larry is a pop musician in the early 1990s in the new book, but having him trade in a love of great 70s bands like Three Dog Night and Creem on an adoration of Air Supply and Paula Abdul really doesn't enhance my affection for the character. Frannie's father also loses his WWII career, which I just find irksome, as it's a nice bit of character background that's simply removed without being replaced.

If I could somehow get hold of electronic copies of both versions of the book, I would happily edit my own definitive version of The Stand... one with all the best stuff from both, carefully reset in 1980, and if I had to rewrite some of King's passages to make them work within that context, well, that's what editors do. I'm not sure what I'd do about Harold's goddam candy bars, though, except maybe have his fingerprint in Frannie's diary show up in caramel, or something. Still, it would be nice to have a hard cover copy of one of my favorite fantasy stories that had all the good parts of all its various different published editions in it, and none of the really shitty ones.

While I'm writing about The Stand, it nearly goes without saying that if anyone comments on the book at all, someone will have to bring up what someone always brings up... that The Stand is a celebration of superstition, and basically says that science and technology both suck, and everyone should believe in magic and worship trolls.

Those who bring this up do it in thoughtful, pensive tones, in much the same way such folk tend to point out (with carefully hidden inner glee, I often think) that Star Wars is an essentially immoral film, because, you know, all those people on the Death Star that Luke blew up were Just Following Orders, and It Wasn't Their Fault.

Now, I don't think Star Wars is an essentially immoral film, because whether the Death Star was loaded down with 'innocents' or not is moot (and I don't think it was; other than prisoners of war, everyone there was there willingly, and they were all cooperating in an essentially evil enterprise, and have to take responsibility for it). More importantly, the Death Star was about to blow up a moon full of living creatures for purely political purposes. Luke, and the rest of the Alliance, were acting in self defense. (Star Wars, mind you, is a moronic film in this regard. The Death Star is capable of moving through hyperspace at speeds much faster than light, and yet, we are supposed to accept that for some reason, it is constrained by orbital ballistics and cannot fire on its chosen target until said target comes out from behind an intervening planetary body. This is frankly ridiculous. If the Death Star can mooch right up to Lea's home world and blow it into shards and flinders any damn time it feels like it, it can certainly do the same thing to some lousy retarded jungle moon in orbit around some pretty much stationary gas giant.)

While I don't think Star Wars is immoral, I would agree that, in fact, The Stand is a book that seems to say that technology and science, and even reason itself, are Bad Things That Lead To No Good End, while irration and gut instinct and superstition and primitive emotion are, apparently, the Way Humans Ought To Live. This does, indeed, seem to be an almost inevitable conclusion... although King is inconsistent even here, since his good guys spend a lot of time trying to get the electrical grid in Boulder working again, and everyone likes to drive around in abandoned cars.

Nonetheless, yes, I'd agree, the underlying theme is certainly there, and equally certainly, it's a theme I not only disagree with, but find kind of obnoxious. Science has its drawbacks, but I'm not gonna go live in a cave to please ANYbody. I like my electrical appliances, thank you very much.

However, this theme doesn't make me dislike The Stand, because, well, The Stand is a fantasy. It didn't happen, and I very much doubt it will. I don't have to buy into King's half assed and obviously insincere Luddite 'message' to enjoy the book, and I don't.

Mind you, I'd enjoy it a lot more if that laconic idiot Stu and his bitchy girlfriend Frannie died in the end, instead of Nick and Larry, and if I ever do my own definitive version of it, I will have to sternly resist the temptation to do a little judicious rewriting to that effect.

Okay, I need to get some sack time. Hey, I have two days off in a row! How cool is that?

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RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(c) be a better writer than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they’re not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that’s all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I’m in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people’s blogs, so this probably doesn’t matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don’t care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that’s just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say I don’t care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it’s just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what’s left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it’s a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

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THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

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