NuWhoReVue... but first, rape

I forgot the actual reason for writing about Christmas until just now.

The reason was because I realize that a cherished holiday song from the past is actually kind-of a song about date rape.  Seriously.

Baby, It's Cold Outside has been a holiday classic forever, and everybody from Dean Martin to CeeLo Green have covered it.  Recently, we did what's called "flipping to Christmas" at my radio station, which basically means a fairly popular station in our cluster "flips" its format to all-Christmas, all the time.  The first song we played was BICO.  I got there early to listen to the "flip" live and fix any small glitches that might appear... luckily there was only one, easily fixed, which is surprising because I had to build the imaging for it from the ground up... usually it's been our Soft AC station to do it (think James Taylor and The Carpenters... basically Doctor's office background music.  However, earlier this year we flipped that station to New Country, so the only one in our cluster who we could viably flip was our Hot AC (Maroon 5, Pink, Lorde etc).  This is a huge risk, but I think we were right to do it, because all of our other stations either had week signals or were too grounded in their audience to do it.  (In my eyes, anyway... I have no actual insight into these decisions.)

So this was the first time I actually paid attention to the song, and it was just so unsettling.  I'd only heard it as I've heard most Christmas songs, kind of in the background.  Now that I paid attention it was fucking creepy.

First, I had thought the guy was the one wanting the girl to let him stay because of the weather.  It's the opposite--she's trying to leave, he's the one trying to talk her into staying because of the inclement weather.

It just gets creepier and creepier.  He talks her into staying for just half a drink more, but soon she's asking, "Say what's in this drink?"  HULLO ROOFIES.  And he's having none of her reasoning for why she doesn't want to stay... never mind that her family might get worried or she might be shamed by spending the night with somebody she's not married to, he's got a peen going and he's too lazy to just fap it himself at his laptop on Fleshbot.  He eventually guilts her into staying, with a dismissal of her reasons, "get over that holdout."  Then presumably he shame-screws her and high-fives all the guys in the office over his achievement, while the girls in the typing pool tut-tut the woman's lack of chastity.

Oh and... MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Anyway...

F*** you if you don't like Christmas

It's not that I don't like Christmas.  It's fine.  I remember plenty of great Christmases in my youth.  Like the one where I got the new re-vamped GI Joes, the SuperJoe line.  It was a sci-fi version of GI Joe, and since my older brother and cousin had moved on from GI Joe to titty mags, it was mine, all mine.  The Shield, the cyborg with a... well.  Shield.  Attached to one of his arms.  That he couldn't throw at Nazis like Captain America could.  But it had a tiny light in it to scare people!

Luminos, the see-through cyborgy looking thing that had light up eyes that, presumably, you could use your vast imagination to pretend were lasers cutting the enemy in twain, although I usually used him to pee at night.

Gor, King of the Terrons, who apparently were some kind of insect-lizards who fainted when you shone a light on them.

And of course there was SuperJoe with his1-2 Punch, his black friend because it was trendy in the 70s, and Darkon, the green-skinned version of SuperJoe who was also one of those almost naked villians.

That was a good Christmas for me.  As was the one where I got ROM.

What made me sour somewhat on Christmas was becoming one of The Poors.  Mom's mental breakdown when I was a kid happened at really a bad time for all of us, especially when Dad had to declare bankruptcy for the medical bills racking up.  (Badmouth Obamacare?  Of course I will.  It doesn't go far enough.)  After that, I got to see the real spirit of Christmas, which is, "What did you get?..."

Every year at school I'd be asked that, and when I gave an honest answer of "Nothing," I was treated to derision and ridicule, as if I was trying to engender sympathy for my situation.  What was I supposed to do, lie?  Say we got a Nintendo?  Everybody knew we were poor.  Why did they bother asking what we got, was it just to feel superior?  Whatever.

I don't hate Christmas, but I don't like what Christmas has become, some kind of tournament to see who got the best goodies.  Because we became poor for a while (strictly speaking we still are now), we stopped celebrating the holiday like that.  When possible we still gave gifts.

While both Kelly and I lived far from home, we would coordinate to visit all at once close to Thanksgiving to celebrate all the holidays and have (since Kelly's birthday was Dec. 8th and mine was Sept. 11th) what we called "BirthThankMas."

So now that Dad has passed, we will really appreciate the true meaning of this holiday.  It's about appreciating what you have and showing others you appreciate them, even when you don't know them.  It's not about what you get; it's about what you give.

I'd sure like that Absolute Top Ten collection though.

I am become Death, destroyer of worlds

I've noticed lately that I've been kind of obsessing over my death.

 

Notice that it's death, not suicide.  I don't remember ever having anything close to a suicidal thought.  I'm not that far gone, and I don't think I could be.

 

I've written before, somewhere, about the untimely death of a high school friend's younger brother.  It was the day after his birthday, they found him dead in bed.  The previous night he'd tried to do some fancy gymnastics into the swimming pool and cracked his head on the concrete side.  He went to bed that night complaining of a headache, and never woke up.

 

Later in life the memory of this would lead me to realize how close we almost accidentally kill ourselves all the time.  I had begun hanging out with Voldemort again, it was Christmastime, and we went shopping together at the Galleria, where he decided he wanted to go ice skating.  And wanted me to as well.

 

I should point out that I was probably sixty pounds heavier at the time and had never been ice skating.  My response should have been, "No, I don't want to snap both my ankles," but I'd been trying to be friends with V again because I didn't have any other friends in Dallas at the time.

 

V was not much better than me at skating.  Children routinely lapped him.  I myself clung with a white-knuckled fear-grip to the side, slowly inching my way around the rink.

 

When the fall happened, I immediately thought I was dead.  My head cracked on the ice and I actually felt what I assume was my brain bouncing around in my skull.  I was unable to speak and the only thing I could do is whisper "help" to the halo of faces looking down at me.

 

In the nurse's office I was told I should probably get some stitches, which I declined.  At the time I did not realize that my scalp actually ripped open a little, or that a small puddle of blood had pooled beneath my head.  All I could think of was how I was going to die like that kid did.  I did not sleep that night.  And ever since then, any headache, no matter how small, is met with the knowledge that I've probably blown a vein in my brain and if I go to sleep I will never wake up.

 

Since then I've been acutely aware of how close we all actually come to snuffing it all the time.  I think most people need that kind of experience before they also see it.  This past year has been a particularly busy one, as I've nearly died six times... or rather, came close to a life threatening injury, technically.

 

1.  Stroke-- It started with the stroke, of course.  In fact if Dale hadn't been there I probably would have died from it.  He convinced me to go to the hospital.  Nobody else in my life, aside from my little brother, could have done that.

 

The weirdest thing is, although something was obviously wrong, it didn't feel like it.  You expect something like a stroke to be painful:  it wasn't.  Aside from the fact that my arm and leg weren't obeying my commands, I didn't feel like there was anything wrong with me.  That's what I would tell potential stroke victims... yes, there are signs that can warn you you're having one, and it can also feel completely different or like nothing at all.  It's not a heart attack.  It seems most strokes are caused by lack of oxygen reaching the brain for some reason, which also happens to be why seizures often occur after a stroke as well... the brain knows something is wrong and is temporarily shutting down the system in hopes of getting more oxygen.

 

2.  Shower-- I've never been the most graceful person, but after the stroke I've had to remedy that and be more careful in my movements.  There are still the occasional hiccups.  One was, while still recovering, getting tangled up in the shower curtain and nearly plunging to the floor.  My bathroom, being tiny, affords me many ways to crack my skull open in such a scenario.  Luckily, my wet leg slipped free and I gained my balance.

 

3.  Shampoo-- I know they think it's clever marketing to give a shampoo bottle a distinctive shape, but if it's not shower caddy friendly it might as well be a land mine.  Luckily, the shower grip I grabbed onto after tripping on the bottle held. 

 

4.  Chuck Taylors-- My shoes slipped on a patch of ice after an ice storm.  Luckily I fell into a freshly plowed snowbank rather than the pavement, which otherwise would have split my skull open just as the ice rink tried to.

 

5.  720-- I really have no idea how I came out unscathed from this one.  I was making a sharp left off the on-ramp in Winchester when my little truck started hydroplaning.  I knew enough to let off the gas, but with my power steering out, my steering wheel couldn't right itself, and I continued hydroplaning in a doughnut WITH A LINE OF CARS BEHIND ME THAT DIDN'T REALIZE I WAS HYDROPLANING.  I have no idea how I  didn't plow into one.  I came to a stop after doing two full loops.  Jesus. 

 

The sixth one is frankly boring and another shower story.  Didn't have body wash, soap slips, I nearly slipped on the soap.  What a boring way to die that would have been.

Nightmare In Silver - DWreview

Well, I wouldn't have believed it if anybody had told me beforehand.  Even though Neil Gaiman wrote it, I was still down about being out of a relationship and thought very little chance of being entertained by this past Dr. Who, but damn if it wasn't awesome.

So awesome I'm going to skip talking about the rest of season 7.2 except to mention that the thing that is making this half of the season terrible is Clara.  The companion.  The companion is integral to The Doctor.  Sometimes they stand up to him, question his decisions and choices.  Sometimes they save his life.  Sometimes they run.  But always, always you like them in the end.  Even that screeching harpy Donna turned enjoyable towards her tragic end.  Every one of them likable, except Clara.

I can't give you a reason why.  Maybe it's because she feels like a mystery shoe-horned into the Doctor's life just to be a different type of companion.  Or, maybe she just sucks.  Or maybe what she's been given to do sucks.  But I haven't warmed up to her yet.

I've made predictions about the show before, none of which came true (but that I think were very clever).  So I'm hesitant to do this, but I think we'll find in the next 'sode that whatever is causing Clara's "condition" is either directly because of the Doctor, or because he chooses to do something that puts him in danger and Clara steps in to save the day by sacrificing herself.

If you think about it, that's kind of Moffat's whole schtick:  the Weeping Angels are practically unstoppable, as long as you're not looking at them, but if they look at each other, they can be immobilized for eternity.  You can't remember the Silence, but they can plant post-hypnotic suggestions in your head that you will (unknowingly) obey... even if it's about killing the Silence themselves.  Take the enemy's strength and make it their weakness as well.

A fine and time-honoured trope that appears again and again in the genre, so I don't mind it.  Still, like the TARDIS, I don't like Clara that much, yet.

GIRL, werq!

Still, this episode did to amazing things.  It let me not dislike Clara, and it also made the Cybermen actually seem kind of threatening.  It also managed to not feel like a typical Neil Gaiman story (unlike The Doctor's Wife, which absolutely did).  I should note that, while I am a huge Gaiman fan, I have not placed him on an unreachable pedestal.  He can write boring but award winning stories about teens realizing the chicks they're hitting on at a party are aliens or something, and then he can write things like "When the Saucers Came" which makes me hate him for being an actual talent and able to give a twist to a story that makes M. Night Shyamalan blush with jealousy.

I'm sure you can find the whole thing online somewhere.

Anyway.  Two incredible performances in this 'sode.  One from Matt Smith himself, playing the Doctor and the Cyber-infected Doctor at the same time.  I kind of love these schizophrenic kind of performances, but I really wish more people would follow Peter Jackson's idea of filming the two disparate characters separately and jump-cutting between their perspectives.  I just think that's cooler.

THIS IS TOTALLY NOT LIKE THE BORG!

The other incredible performance was from Warwick Davis.  Man, he would have been awesome in Game of Thrones.  As emperor of the galaxy, he was pretty fucking good.

Emperor Davis

So next up is Trenzalore and the question which must never be asked, and the explanation of Clara.  I hope it makes me trip balls.  Like this!

The Doctor Sucks

"You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful and you actually talk to them and five minutes later they are solid as a brick. Then there are other people then you meet them and think, not so bad for ok. Then you get to know them and their face just sort of becomes them, like their personality is written all over it... and it just... turns to something so beautiful"

At first, I was absolutely sure I knew what was wrong:  I wasn't enjoying it because my partner wasn't here with me, and I kind of knew he wouldn't be coming back.  I had always enjoyed the show before we got back together, but now I had to re-learn how to enjoy Dr. Who alone, again.  It wasn't coming along.

I thought, maybe, like the Doctor, I needed a companion, to enjoy the show.  Since my brother had built his dream house after moving back home, I elected him to be my surrogate Dr. Who companion.  I go home most weekends, and we try to watch it together, although he usually falls asleep on the couch.

But that wasn't the problem.  This season, particularly the second half, has just plain sucked.

Asylum of the Daleks

This 'sode was not a knock out of the park, but it was pretty good, especially for setting up the Doctor's new status quo as an unknown variable, as opposed to the most feared being in the universe.  Also, the perfect couple being on the rocks?  And then seeing them grow together again?  That was pretty good.  If you've ever given somebody up because you know you'll never be able to give them what they truly want, Amy's speech about children was probably pretty touching and effective.
 

I'm not a big fan of westerns, aside from Tombstone (of course), but this sci-fi take on the genre was good.  But again, it was a western... I'd watch it again, but not go out of my way, necessarily, to do so.
 

A fun romp.  This kind of sounds like somebody came up with the title before having any idea about a plot, but it was fun.  Rory's dad was a good addition.
 

Apparently the power of three is to bore the audience to tears.  Ugh, how boring this was.  That's when the cracks started appearing in the Doctor's facade for me.  But we still had the big,  bad Weeping Angels appearance to get through....
 

...and "getting through" it was exactly what you had to do with this one.  At best, a mediocore 'sode that should have been an excellent one, seeing as how it was a supposedly farewell ep for Rory and Amy.  It was one of the few times that I would agree with friends who point out the illogical in certain tropes.  "Well, why couldn't they just arrive in Jersey and take a cab if the fabric of space-time was preventing them?"  Normally I'd dismiss this with, "Yeah it's so illogical that this time-traveling immortal couldn't figure that out, it's so unrealistic..."  but they took way too many liberties with time travel, paradoxes, Angels (honestly the Statue should have been a huge shocker but it was yawn-apalooza)... Just not really all that great.

to be continued soon with reviews of the second half of season seven

A New Universe

In a few weeks the title for this post might have another, hidden meaning... but for now, it's just referring to Marvel's third revival of their New Universe line.

New Universe was a line of comic books put out by Marvel in 1986, in honor of their 25th anniversary.  It was pretty much a sputtering, gasping failure from the beginning, but for me it was really cool... something that wasn't your regular spandex-clad super-hero fare.  I especially enjoyed Star Brand, a book that seemed to have a story arc, but I'm guessing like most things back then they were just winging it.  In 2006, probably to keep the trademark alive, Marvel let Warren Ellis revive the concept with his newuniversal mini-series.  It has been said that a catastrophic hard drive failure left WE with none of his notes on the series, which smells suspicious to me, but it was a great mini anyway, updating a nostalgic concept for more modern and engaging story-telling.

And now this.  Jonathan Hickman has taken control of Avengers and New Avengers, and has brought the NU into 616, or at least the concept of it (meaning the concept Ellis had fleshed out), and I am fucking hooked.  It's like the Godfather, just when I thought I was getting out of comics, they pull me back in.  I don't know yet if they're planning on incorporating NU stuff into 616, and after today's issue of Avengers I think they might not. But still, it's pretty awesome.  

(I will always lament that Kickers Inc. never got a second chance... super-hero FOOTBALL players fore hire?  Awesome.) 

When The Tripods Came... for him

a.k.a. his proper name, Samuel Youd

John Christopher, one of my favorite authors of the apocalypse fiction, has died.

I'm not going to recap his life... there are plenty of resources on the internet for that (although not nearly enough, in my opinion). I'm just here to express my grief on the loss of this author.

The Tripods

I guess I should just start out with what most people will be familiar with, his Tripods Trilogy (+1). Fanboys a little older than me probably read the first three books in grade school... they were common in libraries across the country. The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire tell of a world thrown back into the pre-machine ages, ruled by aliens who strode across the land in thrice-footed titans known as Tripods, who are also worshipped and loved by the populace thanks to a "cap" they place on humans upon reaching an agreeable age of maturity. Naturally, there are people who eventually rise up against this... the Freemen... and this is the tale of three young boys who join their camp and the fight against the tyranny of the Tripods.

Most of us either read these books in the school library, or the public library, or watched the BBC adaptations of the books on PBS and THEN read the books. That's how it happened for me. It didn't help that I had a crush on the actor who played Will (who looks disconcertingly like a young Paul McCartney).

This is the cover art from our library's copy.

I remember discovering the series on our local PBS channel, a branch of Kentucky Educational Television (KET), one Sunday morning. My brothers and even my sister were pretty captivated by it. Science Fiction? British? Sunday morning? Sign us up. Later I would see one of the books serialised in comic form in Boy's Life, but it was not as engrossing as the series. I sought out the books and of course raced through them, lamenting Henry's fate in the third book and eagerly awaiting the second series to see the alien Masters on screen.

In the 80s, for some reason, Youd penned a forth book, When The Tripods Came, a prequel telling of how the Tripods took over. They apparently used viral programming on television to do so, which was a bit prescient of how the internet would eventually help spiral popular things to the top of popular culture. When the internet finally started doing this, I noticed this similarity and thought it very peculiar. I wonder who really put that Hamster Dance online... Anyway, the book was a good chapter in the story, but it did feel kind of tacked on.... good, but unnecessary.

I liked how the books played as a comedy in the strictest terms, because, after the Masters were defeated and driven from the planet, humanity started its in-squabbling again. Oh humanity, will you ever learn? Yes, I view The Tripods ultimate as a comedy, in the strictest sense, because my actual favorite trilogy from Youd is very definitely a tragedy...

Art in the style of the Tripods, above...

It wasn't until I was an adult that I would come across many more John Christopher works. One that sticks with me is the Sword of the Spirits trilogy. It's a tragedy, in that our hero does not meet the best of fates at the end. Youd also manages to do something remarkable... he takes a likable protagonist, and through the course of three books, turns him into an absolute asshole without you really noticing it until the very end. Christianity also gets a very cold shoulder at first in the trilogy, being something to be ridiculed, but in the end it overturns the now-tyrant protagonist, who had become the aforementioned asshole. An awesome trilogy, with a very depressing end, that I can read over and over again.

The Lotus Caves

Youd wrote other stories as well, some quite well received, still. Probably the most famous is The Lotus Caves. It takes place on a Moon base. Humans are living there, squee, so it's already pretty fun from the start. Two boys hijack a go-cart and have an adventure in the moon mountains, only to discover a hidden cave where a Hive mind lurks, wanting to soak them in. Pretty gripping stuff for youngsters, lemme tell you.

But I don't think anything compares to his apocalyptic novel, No Blade of Grass.



I came across this very edition in a used paperback store in Lexington, KY, for only two bucks. I was elated when I realized what I had found... a JC novel I'd never read and knew nothing about... I knew I'd eat it up in mere days.

Kind of ironic, because the book is about the world starving to death. All grain based plants... meaning, most of them, fall ill to a virus, and the story follows a group of survivors trying to make it to one of their relatives' farms to live off of potatoes. The depravity they have to endure along the way is astonishing, when you consider when the book was published. It's my favorite John Christopher book of all, I have a first edition in storage even.

Anyway, it's not like I thought that he was going to write another book, but it is sad that he is gone. I wish they'd finished the Tripods on BBC for him.

Doctor Who Preview, The Wedding of River Song

It could just be Dress Like a Pirate Day...

(clicky the pic to embiggen)

So the Doctor Who fandom is having shouting matches all over the internet (I must say, polite ones) about theories on the Season 6 finale, and some of the theories make sense and others make my Flesh-boot Doctor seem genius.

Take the above photo. many questions are raised, such as:

1.) Why do River, Amy, and Rory all have Madame Kovarian eye-patches? What are the eye-patches for?

eye-patches are cool, that's why.

2.) Why are the Greys (not sure what to call them now since the race isn't really called The Silence or Silents) submerged in a tank of (presumably) water while all the other ones are running around free?

I'm moisturizing AND I'm doing the dishes... at the same time!

3.) What's up with Rory's get up here? Is this like an alternate time-line version of Rory, like the Micky who worked for an alternate universe's Torchwood?

Super-Rory? UNIT Rory? G.I. Rory? Hot Role-Play Rory?

4.) Are you seriously trying to get us to believe that the Doctor doesn't know how to knit already? What's he need anyway, a cozy for his sonic?

OMG They have a Hello Kitty section!

5.) But I think the most exciting is this photo, which really seems to bring it home that the Doctor ain't messin' about this time...

Hmmm. Well I think after the last episode's finale, everybody's pretty much agreeing that the eye-patch thing must be a way to circumvent the effect the Grey Silents have on you. Other footage from the show seems to suggest a splintering of time, with lots of historical events happening at the same time... as if all of history is taking place in the present. Hence the pterodactyl, the future pyramid thingy, the Romans still being around, and it'd even explain (kinda) how Dorium the merchant returns after being decapitated, but I bet they're going to explain that away with something cuter, like his race doesn't keep anything important like a brain in their head.

All in all it looks to be a very curious episode and could be incredibly good or incredibly awful. Just so long as it's not incredibly average.

Doctor Who Review: Closing Time

Closing Time was a pretty good return to form.

Next week, the Doctor travels to Lake Silenci...

...mmm? Yes, I know it's not much of a review, but while the show was good, it wasn't really much of a show was it? It was... good. It's like when I gave up reading Ultimate Spider-Man. It's not that it was bad... it was just more Ultimate Spider-Man. This was more Doctor Who, more of the character of Craig Owens...

he has a profile on biggercity.

Oh okay. So in the previous Craig Owens episode, chubby chasers finger-banged their poop-holes for an hour over James Corden, who portrayed The Lodger mentioned in the title, with his slight fuzz and chubby cheeks and omghessocute... Well. I gotta admit he's a nice looking fellah, but I've never been one to understand getting your panties all bunched up about movie and TV stars. Well in Closing Time, all those fanfic slash people who wrote about Craig and the Doctor hooking up so that one of them could sonic the other right in his TARDIS probably lost control of their bowels during this scene:

their love is so pure.

...in which the Doctor and Craig have instantaneously been transported into the Cybermen's lair only Craig doesn't realize it yet so the Doctor tries to distract him by feigning a sexual and love interest in his friend and asking if he could kiss him and kind of being absolutely dirty about it. I imagine their bladders also emptied when Craig didn't really fight him all that much.

Personally, the thought of snogging Matt Smith kind of makes me gag, but whatever, I've had worse I guess.

their crotches are really close there.

So they beat the Cybermen and the Doctor gives Craig and his annoying girlfriend (who are NOT married and have a baby, living in SIN) a new living room suite as a goodbye gift.

And then we get to the really good part of the show: one word... spoilers.

River Song, i.e. Melody Pond, Amy's daughter. We did see her parents in this ep, as the Doctor hid from them as Amy signed an autograph for a small fan. Why is she famous? She's the model for a line of perfume, for the woman who's tired of waiting. Cute. Anyway, River's just received her doctorate in (presumably) archaeology, when Madame Kovarian (sp? who the fuck cares) pays a visit. And is it just me, or does Madame Kovarian look like Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager?

separated at birth?

Anyway, my thoughts that maybe it was really Future Amy from the Girl Who Waited ep who was really in the astronaut suit was shot out of the sky, as MK and the greys (I guess we can't really call them the Silents or the Silence anymore) put River in it to set up the next episode.

BUT. I still have a theory. It's not really the Doctor who gets killed.

WELL... it is, but it's not. It's a Flesh doppleganger.

I know, I know... this is not a new theory. But what is new about it is how the Doctor-ganger survived his fate. I know plenty of fans think it's this fake doctor from the Rebel Flesh two- parter earlier in the season:

bowties are cool.

So we all think that the Doctor Two (I think that's cuter than Doctor-ganger) sacrifices himself at Lake Silencio so the real Doctor can live. But why? And how did the Flesh Dr. get there when we saw him discombobulate? And where is the Doctor's TARDIS in the first ep? And why was he driving an Edsel? Here, dear Dr. Who fans, are the answers to all of those questions.

1.) The Edsel is the TARDIS. The Doctor fixed the chameleon circuit for just this adventure. After all, a police box was a very British thing... if he was going to "die" in America, he'd need an American icon, and the Edsel is as good as any other transport... distinctly American, a thing out of time. And pretty fucking good looking too.

2.) Why does Doctor Two sacrifice himself? Because of two reasons. A.) the Doctor would, for him, in his place, but B.) because the universe needs to believe the Doctor is dead. So his huge legend dies with him and he is no longer a being who can stop a fleet of attacking invaders with a little speakerphone like he did at Stonehenge with the Pandorica.

3.) How did the Flesh Doctor survive? His shoes.

Remember, they changed shoes so they could fuck with Amy Pond and figure out more about The Flesh and her signal to it. They never changed back, did they? And those shoes the real Doctor were wearing were part of Doctor Two, and each cell of the Flesh contained his whole structure and stuff... you know, like stem cells. That one captain of the humans in The Rebel Flesh said that the Flesh can grow, it's cells can divide. The Doctor kept the shoes, put them in a safe place in the TARDIS, and regrew Doctor Two.

BOOM. Did I freak you out? ARE YOU TRIPPING BALLS NOW?

Anyway, we'll all find out next week when The Wedding of River Song airs... I'll hopefully be watching it from Missouri with Dale.

Military precision camping

Don't Ask Don't Tell gets repealed and it's already started...

Doctor Who Review: The God Complex

The God Complex. Considering what happens at the end of the episode, this one was really, really disappointing.

The problem really isn't the episode in and of itself. It's a perfectly fine but mediocre episode. There's nothing wrong with mediocre episodes. They have to happen eventually, even in a show that's been hitting it out of the park as much as Doctor Who has. The problem is that a very, very seemingly important thing happens at the end of the episode, and given the story arc we're in, it really changes everything about the show... and you wind up not caring nearly as much as you should.

Let's just recap what's going on. There's this guy:

On the DVD edition, George Lucas is going to dub in the minotaur screaming "NOOOOOOO..."

He's a minotaur, kinda. Later we find out he's very old, way older than the Doctor. He's been in his Labyrinth a long time, his "labyrinth" being a kind of holodeck version of an 80's American hotel with a seemingly infinite amount of rooms, each one containing somebody's personal scariest fear, such as:

Yes, some people shit themselves over clowns. I can understand that. I personally never was bothered by clowns, until working for a cluster of radio stations in Dallas. We'd changed formats of one of the stations to a Regional Mexican music channel, which meant to celebrate, we had an authentic (right) Mariachi band wandering the halls of the station playing La Cucaracha or some such stuff as loud as they could, and also wandering... or rather, stumbling... along behind them was a drunken Mexican clown.

Seriously, I could smell the tequila on him when I got off the elevator. They joined the mid-day guy in the on-air studio (which was adjacent to mine... they shared a window between them), and he did absolutely nothing but stand there, swaying and half-asleep, seemingly only kept on his feet by his handful of helium balloons.

Anyway, so each room is filled with a personalized horror for a future or current guest. Long story short, the Doctor finds other guests, hey what, I'll rescue you, bally ho the TARDIS has gone missing, oh did we mention the corridors change and you can't find an exit, and soon everybody starts dying.

This is me watching the episode.

After one particularly frustrating death for the Doctor, a Muslim nurse/medical student/something (I've not watched the episode twice so I can't remember) who was potential Companion material, the Doctor realizes that the creature isn't feeding on fear, it's feeding on faith, oh dear, Amy has too much faith in the doctor so she falls under the creature's spell, which is eventually broken when the Doctor admits he's not all that and a plate of chips after all, boom the monster is dying, everybody goes home.

Including Rory and Amy. Seems the good Doctor is scared that Amy might die during one of his adventures and he's eager to shove her and her husband out the door so they can get on with their life together. As a going away present he seemingly has acquired a blue flat for them (with TARDIS-blue door even) and a red Jaguar for Rory, which he eagerly accepts. He explains himself to Amy and then takes off, alone.

First off... really? NOW? This is the adventure that makes him say, "Whoa, I better stop while they're still alive!" NOT losing Amy in an alternate time stream and then having to kill her future self? Not fucking up their chance at parenthood by losing their baby so that they grow up together instead of raise her? Not Amy being held prisoner for HOW long while PREGNANT and replaced by a replicate? He kicks them out after this one and they don't get all up in his grill about it?

And the whole Amy's stolen baby storyline isn't even resolved yet. Really? That's how they want to end it?

We know they'll at least be back in the final episode, to answer the question about who shoots the Doctor at Lake Silencio (I still think Amy does... maybe even Future Amy... we never really saw her die, after all). But even if they are back in the TARDIS after next week's comedy relief return of Craig Owen (the lodger from the episode The Lodger), I still think it was a weak point to kick them out.

Mediocore episode. Big ending whose emotional impact was kind of quelled by it. Too bad.

Next week:


Closing Time!

Right, stop that, this is all too silly...

I know what you're thinking. I'm such a big fan of John Cleese, he must be my favorite Monty Python member. I love A Fish Called Wanda as well as Fierce Creatures and even Clockwise is in my collection, never mind the Fawlty Towers box set I bought the day it was released, I must love John Cleese above all others.

I'd be lying if I said John Cleese wasn't one of the funniest minds on the planet. He is. Trained to be a lawyer, I believe, which helped him with delivering lines properly when he joined Footlights and met Graham Chapman, his brief writing partner for the duration of the Monty Python TV show. But no. While John Cleese is one of my favorites, the one who always made me laugh the most was the late Graham Chapman.

From his autobiography, which I was lucky enough to find on bittorrent recently in audio form (oh yes, I know I can get it on Audible and pay for it, but if they insist on giving me a lower bitrate just because it's spoken word, they can fuck right off):

Graham - The Homosexual by tabkendouglas

I don't care if it's Eric Idle's joke there, the way Graham recounts it is hysterical. And every time I hear it I still laugh out loud. Even recounting one of his first meetings with then-drummer for The Who, the now-late Keith Moon, is pretty funny:

Graham and keith by tabkendouglas

The thing is, the autobiography isn't that funny... it deals with Graham's battle with alcoholism, and it's actually kind of one of the things that convinced me there is a big difference between an alcoholic and a drunk. Chapman's descriptions of what he went through during withdrawal, at times funny (like in the beginning, when common furniture seems to be attempting to punch him as he tries to do simple things like making it down the staircase), wind up being more sad than funny very early on. And of course there's the whole story of his coming to terms with his sexuality, which is surprisingly unfunny and stark. He pretty much said to himself, "Fuck all them if they can't deal with it, I'm not going to live a lie anymore." You have to applaud that, if you can't laugh at it.

In the end, though, he inspired as much comedy as he created. In fact, one of the funniest pieces from John Cleese was a eulogy he gave for Chapman himself... I can't tell you how many times I've watched this, and how many times I've known Chapman himself would have nodded with approval at it, puffing on his pipe to make people think he was brighter than he was. (He was extremely bright too... a licensed doctor, you know.)



From time to time I wonder what would have become of him if he'd lived as old as the other Pythons.

Doctor Who Review: The Girl Who Waited

Well, Doctor Who tried really hard this week to make me cry again, but it fell just short of the mark.


"The Girl Who Waited" is another rehash... much like "Night Terrors" was a sort-of rehash of "Fear Her" from the Tennant era, "Waited" could be seen as a reworking of "The Girl In The Fireplace."

Look, I like Jim Steinman. So even when it's an obvious rehash, I can't get upset, so long as it's not just a blatant rip-off. And this one didn't feel like it. It deals with two time streams running at two different speeds, much like the ones in "Fireplace." Amy is trapped in a hospital in a room that compresses time, causing her to live out her life in a day, a facility which was built for people who contract a heinous virus that kills them in a day. The Doctor and Amy's husband, Rory, are in another time stream, this one running at normal universal time, but they can communicate with Amy through a type of magnifying glass... one side shows one time stream to the other.

Basically the upshot is the Doctor locks onto Amy's timestream but things go all wobbly and pear-shaped, and they wind up thirty-six years into their Amy's future when they finally arrive to rescue her.


Amy lives in the Two Streams facility all this time, learning how to hack the computers, the robots that want to give her a "kindness" (euthanize her), and she basically becomes a badass warrior by the time Rory and the good Doctor show up. And she is NOT happy.

Even if this ep didn't get weepy towards the end, it would have been one of the most emotionally charged episodes of recent memory. Amy's anger at the Doctor is tangible, and when she interacts with her past self, her love for Rory seems real as well. Karen Gillian gives an incredible performance as young Amy and old Amy, both with radically different worldviews of their best friend and their true love.

At the end, the Doctor has said that he can save both Amy's (Amies?) but in truth he can't. The TARDIS starts to lose its shit as they both get closer... the paradox can't be sustained. Rory is able to carry young Amy, his Amy, into the TARDIS, but as he tends to his unconscious wife... the Doctor shuts the door in the face of old Amy.

That, dude, was cold.


And THEN he tells Rory, who is adamant that they can save both versions of his wife, that he needs to decide himself which one to save. And here come the hankies. The tender moment they share is heartbreaking, as future Amy says her goodbye, so that Rory's Amy can have all the days of Stupid-Face that she never had. It's a tragic moment. And punctuated as the Doctor callously walks off in silence to let Rory tell his wife that he killed her future self.

Frankly I'm starting to wonder why Rory and Amy are still with the Doctor. He's always being a bit of a cunt donkey.

But it was a wonderful episode. Next week?

Oh I WISH it was another Weeping Angels ep. We'll see how much of a role they play this Saturday night in "The God Complex."

The Texas Chainsaw Masscara

Yes, that's Leatherface. In drag. Leatherface, the transvestite. Leatherface, the big screaming girly femme transvestite. The tagline for this hot mess was "If looks could kill, he wouldn't need the chainsaw." Sometime in the early to mid-nineties, some movie execs looked over their pile of franchises and decided that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre needed a third sequel.

"How are we gonna make Leatherface scarier? Kids today are used to hack and slash."

"How about we make him a nelly, fruity crossdresser who screams all the time like a monkey being raped?"

"Awesome. Green-light."

"Shouldn't we write a script first?"

"You're fired."

My brother saw this one night on Chiller, watched about three minutes of it and was bored. I can't blame him. Most of the beginning of this horror show (and I say "horror" in the saddest sense) is about bored teens out on prom night walking through spooky woods. So he turned it off. Then he was curious about it and looked it up online, and holy shit what a clusterfuck of a movie. We got it from Netflix and watched it together.

It's so awful. But it has some good points. For example, if you hate Renee Zellwegger as much as most people do, you get to see her smacked around, electric cattle-prodded, punched, and tied up and thrown in the trunk of a car while stuffed in a garbage bag. It's almost worth it at that point. And if you ever wondered what all that jazz about Matthew McConaughey yelling at the sky in Texas and acting crazy naked banging bongos on his porch with a stoned out friend of his, you can easily imagine it after seeing his performance in this, as the patriarch of the homicidal family of maniacs. He hoots, he hollers, he punches women. Oh, and he has a bionic leg.

No, they don't explain that.

Anyway, you don't even need to watch most of this movie. Just put it in and fast forward to til you see this:

Yes, that's Leatherface (or as my brother calls him now, Purdyface) wearing a woman's skin and putting on lipstick. Oh, and you should see the pretty blouse he puts on. To be honest, he kinda looks like he's dressing up to go to a Halloween party as Julia Sugarbaker. Oooh! Maybe he'll do the "night the lights went out in Georgia" speech!

I should mention that there's actually precedent for having the killer play Pretty Pretty Princess like this... after all, the original movie was inspired by the story of Ed Gein, the Wisconsin murderer and body thief. Besides making a woman-suit out of corpses, presumably for a fancy-dress ball, he had a shoebox with nine pussies in it. I think the guy might have potentially been a tranny.

From this point on, the film is still a mess, but at least you can make fun of it... we literally had nothing to work with up til that point.

The coup de grace came at the end, though, when McConaughey's character dies after being buzzed by a random passing prop plane (and no explanation is given for that, either) and Purdyface absolutely loses his/her shit, swinging the chainsaw around in circles and screeching like Fran Drescher on a bad acid trip. My brother made the above LOLcap from the movie, as well as the one below, for my birthday:


Wasn't that sweet?

Oh by the way, despite the title... well, let's hope Purdyface's looks CAN kill... because nobody dies via chainsaw in the movie. The end.

Flying the Coop

Okay. Look at that album cover. Is it any wonder I was nervous about this album? It looks like somebody tried to update the classic, wonderful cover to Welcome to my Nightmare with a bad Photoshop job and Heinz Ketchup. So seeing this a month ago didn't exactly stoke my fires. Neither did having Bob Ezrin (who produced the original WTMN) do much... after all, didn't he produce Brutal Planet? Not a bad album, but just not Alice. Or, not the Alice I like.

I have to say, after listening to the album, I'm satisfied. It's half-awesome. Even when it falters, like the ballad (all AC albums have to have a ballad, you know), it's not horrible. And when it shines it's more earworm than those slugs they stuck in Chekov's ear in The Wrath of Khan.

Welcome 2 My Nightmare starts off in a very worrying manner, with the piano riff from Steven, one of Alice's seminal classics. Will this simply be a rehash, Jim Steinman style? No, soon it deviates from the original. In a way it reminded me of that one ST:TNG ep where Captain Picard fell for some piano-playing astrophysicist, and she came buy to jam with him and her roll-up keyboard, and they played with the melody of whatever that classic song was, too lazy to look up all the details right now. It's interesting, and forgiveable, as it's a link to the original album... and then Alice Cooper starts singing.

And he's auto-tuned.

Yes, the song I Am Made of You has Alice auto-tuned. Like Cher's Believe. Alice. Cooper. Auto-tuned.

And it works.

It's a very powerful song, and I just realized that it's pretty much Alice talking blatantly and forthright about being a Christian and what it's meant to him all these years. I guess all the years of the spam email chains of "Praise Jeebus, Alice Cooper is saved!" finally got to him. You know, I'm an atheist, but if Alice's Christianity can make a song this powerful and good, I don't mind one bit.

Besides, if anybody needed help singing, it's Alice. I mean, come on!

The next song, Caffeine, at first listen, was irritating as fuck. But on subsequent listens, it becomes... well, this album's frenetic Under My Wheels track. Pretty good, really.

Next is a revisit to Steven with The Nightmare Returns... you could say that Alice ran out of speed to stay awake, and finally he fell asleep in his Steven personna... and it revisits that motif and builds on it. While I didn't like this when I heard it by itself, on the premiere special for radio stations, I liked it on the album as a whole.

Next is probably this album's Some Folks... a Tom Waits sounding song, The Last Man on Earth. To be honest, it reminds me of the Heat Miser/Snow Miser songs from the Rankin/Bass animated special, The Year Without a Santa Claus. It's pretty awesome.

The rest of the album? I still need to listen to. The song Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever, which includes Alice's attempt at (cough) rap music, was at first a real horror show. But now, it's kind of effing catchy. I've listened to it a few times. But I'm not sure I'd wanna see it live.

The album ends with an instrumental mashup of riffs from both the original WTMN and W2MN. An interesting piece, but only after you're familiar with the new album.

All in all... not as good as The Eyes of Alice Cooper. But still pretty damn good.