- 2002-05-18 14:21:18 Hooo boy! Lookit all the people I pissed off....
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Assassin, Love-Slave, Idiot.
2002-05-18 03:57:26
Today was hell. A special kind of hell. The kind of hell where you spend three hours trapped in an auto repair shop. The kind of hell where what you were hoping would be a thirty dollar fixer-upper to remedy that high-pitched metal-on-metal grinding noise that was showing up with worrying but random frequency turns out, instead, to be a complete brake replacement and brake job for your front end costing eleven times that much. The kind of hell where you had the foresight to bring along some work (a stack of exceedingly boring papers on SCD) but can't concentrate on them because they have a TV blaring in the room, and the programming quickly switches from the end of Jaws 2 to a marathon of "Mama's Family" and "Full House" episodes. The kind of hell where the guy sitting next to you starts loudly complaining about the amount of time it's taking for him to get his car back (despite the fact he came in after you) and looks to you to back him up. Ooooooohh yeah. I hadn't had that much fun since I was 13 and traveling alone (read, with stewardess escort) and I got stuck in the pilot's lounge for a four-hour layover in Chicago when all the pilots were gathered around watching the Brady bunch marathon.
Then, after that, I came back to my room and found a note saying to call work "about the incubator." This is the same device I had to completely rewire two days ago after a spectacular short scorched up the front of it (fire and bangs and smoke!). Went to investigate and managed to pour about three tablespoons worth of water in the front control panel. (Don't ask.) Took another two hours to fix.
On the other hand, "They Live Again" just came on the Turner South "Swamp Cinema". A SEQUEL to a movie about killer babies. Hoo-dogies. Later on, I plan on watching "Hawk the Slayer" to see if it really lives up to it's reputation.
In retrospect, on my comments on the new Star Wars, I should've mentioned one really big caveat.
I'm not a Star Wars fan.
The reasons are rather elaborate and have to do with an overload of the first movie when I was a kid (saw the blasted thing over sixty times with the neighbor kid). I don't hate them exactly, I'm just phenomenally tired of them and the manner in which they tend to saturate sci-fi fandom. It was only three movies people! Geeking out over "The Force", Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader etc. etc. etc. thus strikes me as the lowest, most pathetic end of nerditude, and the end with which I least want to associate. I readily acknowledge that it's entirely my problem and no real reflection on SW fans in general. Hell, considering the crap I review here, I hardly have room to talk, but still it's how I feel. This distaste hadn't really been unearthed in years until the hullaballoo over Episode I brought it all rushing back. The lines assembling for weeks to pick up tickets, the fustercluck that was the midnight showings the day before, the absolute obsession with being among the first group to see the very FIRST showings (be they only minutes apart). Frankly, the widespread disappointment and anger that followed the appearance of Jar-Jar and the awful acting of little Vader I found hilarious. Pissing off one of the most self-righteous fanbases in the world with their own material by the original creator was a great big "the original WASN'T that great" to everyone. Yeah, yeah, vindictive and sadistic, I know, and probably undeserved, but still...
Anyway, despite all of that, I still ended up liking Episode II. That should be commendation enough. Other than some of the tech effects that Bowler mentioned and the shortcomings of Annekin's acting (plus the habit of every major character referring to Darth Vader as "Annie"), the film succeeded in many ways that the first didn't.
{---interlude---}
Boy, that felt good. If any of you are interested in reading MORE of my drivel, bop on over to the forum and look up the current "smoking advertizing" debate. Frankly, it contains more conviction and vitrol than I really feel, but after today I just really needed to vent, and some of those comments were directed straight at me. The current idiocy in advertizing concerning tobacco just strikes me as downright insulting. Even more insulting is the number of people buying into it who are unable to see through the transparent manipulation of symbology and outright LYING present in the statistics of places like thetruth.com. Yes cigarets, when smoked over long periods of time, significantly increase your risk of getting any number of cancers. ALL SMOKERS KNOW THIS. Secondhand smoke issues came up originally in airliners where stewardesses on transatlantic flights were exposed over and over again to the same smoke virtually nonstop for every hour of their jobs. Of COURSE that was an issue. Rather a specialized case, though, wouldn't you say?
Whoop, almost went on another rant there. Anyway, I'm certain I pissed off half a dozen people who will be howling for my blood. More interesting will be anyone who bothers to come up with an intelligent answer to any of my questions.
For the record, I don't smoke, never have, never will. I have an 87 year old great uncle who was a plastic surgeon (acting as a doctor and surgeon on an Indian reservation) who has smoked like a chimney for the last 69 years or so. His wife, my aunt Kitty, died about four years ago of heart trouble related to her smoking. Yes, I have experience with losing a relation to smoking. Doesn't change my stance any.
Anyway, time for a review. As promised last time, I'm going to try to cover that most odd of series, that show which, unique in this day and age, appeared to be trying only for cult show status, Lexx.
Lexx is weird. Not just in conception, conduction, or even the manner of it's release in the states (though it is all of that) but primarily in what it appears to be trying to do. This is even harder to explain than when I reviewed Niea_7, so stay with me here.
Lexx panders. It panders to a sci-fi audience. It panders to a fantasy audience. It panders to the entire crowd who want nothing more than to see a shower-scene with Zev Bellringer (or possibly Kai). But it KNOWS it's pandering. And it ACKNOWLEDGES that it's pandering. And it even EXAMINES, PARODIES and MAKES FUN of the fact that it is pandering to it's audience, without ever really stopping the pandering and rarely ever stopping to laugh at its own hyperbolized world. The only thing I can think of on a similar level would be the old British sci-fi comedy "Red Dwarf" although with better jokes, no telegraphed punch lines, and no laugh-track. Lexx is also possibly the be-all end-all of acquired tastes. The vast majority of people you encounter who've heard of the series HATE it. No, REALLY HATE it, or possibly just can't figure it out. If they hate it, it's not because they don't understand it. The concepts are simple and straightforward, and easily understood in an episode or two. What they don't "get" is how ANYONE can consider it entertaining. That takes a bit more watching. If you just watch a few episodes or so, you will come away with the impression that you have just seen the stupidest show ever made. If you watch a half dozen, you'll realize that it's actually one of the smartest, in a sort of off-kilter manner.
Enough bloviating. On to an actual description. Lexx spanned roughly four and a half seasons (from 1997-2002), if you count the initial set of movies as season ½. The story of its production is actually a tale on its own, but I'm not certain I've got all the details right. Something about being a joint Canadian-German production (the German producers requiring the placement of one of the main characters with their own darling) with support money for the later seasons coming in by way of Sci-Fi channel.
The initial four movies formed a mini-series for Canadian television and were never released in the US (well, after two seasons the Sci-Fi channel consented to show them all once). This is exceedingly unfortunate, as all of the required background to even understand what was happening in the series proper. Instead, it was all compiled into a short introductory "episode" (that looked a lot more like a "behind the scenes" shoot) called "Lexxposure" or "Rated Lexx" or something like that. (Man, this is stretching my powers of recall. Guinness give me strength!) Even with that, the first episodes made very little sense. It didn't help that the entire first season was shown vastly out of order (so much so that I thought the beginning of each episode had a precognitive device predicting the end of the next episode) and the first thing that happened was the killing-off of one of the main characters in a convoluted, unexplained plot device. I was absolutely lost. Here are the more compiled notes for the rest of you;
The titular leader (by accident, not by competence) of the group is Stanley H. Tweedle (Brian Downey). He lives in a place called the "light" universe, a universe that is, essentially, good and filled with good things. However, a being from the "dark" universe known as "his shadow" (and later, the "gigashadow") is attempting to rule the light universe with an iron fist. Stanley works for the resistance against this evil, insectile force. Is he the leader? Greatest warrior? No. He's the lowest possible level supporter. During a little "recreation" at a "pleasure asteroid" the secret coordinates to the location of the resistance stronghold are pickpocketed from him, and His Shadow's largest battleship (get this, "The Foreshadow") follows him back to the base, where the entire resistance (excepting Stanley) is wiped out in a single volley. When Stanley is captured, he is regarded as too incompetent to bother killing and is made a security guard (class 4) on a prison asteroid. After screwing up at THAT job, Stanley flees the punishment (involuntary donation of a kidney, lung, and testicle) and trips over the other members of the cast. We'll come back to him.
The second character is Kai(Michael McManus). I've never seen the original movies, so my history at this point is a little sketchy. Essentially, Kai, member of a warrior class called the "Bruhnen Ji" (sp? anyone?), led a hopeless suicide assault on His Shadow after the "insect wars". When Kai failed utterly, His Shadow killed him and put him to work. Kai became a living-dead assassin without peer. Practically indestructible and blindly loyal, Kai served His Shadow for 3,000 years, infinitely renewable with a supply of his "proto-blood". In the movies, Kai somehow moves free of His Shadow's power and eventually regains his own (rather stoic) mind by skooshing the brains of his controller and takes up with Stanley and co. Whereas Stanley's outfit remains the "level 4" security jumpsuit throughout the entire series, Kai is dressed in utter goth black with a killing "brace" (imagine a toy beetle with enormous jaws) mounted in one arm and an enormous bouffant hairdo.
The third and fourth characters are Zev Bellringer (of B-3-K, pronounced bee-three-kay) and 790. Zev Bellringer (say it out loud...) was placed in a box at her birth and raised for 18 years to be the absolute perfect wife through strict interaction with learning machines. When she was finally presented to her husband-to-be, he turned out to be a 12-year-old snot with a whiny voice who was constantly bitching at her and his parents. Forgetting everything she learned in the box, Zev belted the little twerp on their wedding day. As punishment, Zev was condemned to become a love-slave for use at orbital miner colonies, but something went wrong. See, there are two steps to the love-slave transformation. The first was a re-engineering of the subject on the genetic level to something more....umm....street-walker-ish with an additional increase in libido, followed by a mental-engineering step to instill utter loyalty to her master. Just as the somewhat corpulent Zev was being positioned for the first step in the procedure, someone down the hall let something loose. A "cluster lizard" is an enormous, vicious, meat-eating pillbug that travels by rolling around while coiled in a hoop. One broke loose elsewhere and wandered into Zev's conditioning chamber. After summarily decapitating 790, the robot in charge of running the procedure (imagine a "Mr. Universe" bodybuilder with a toaster for a head), it moved in to eat Zev, right as the press slammed down on her. As a result, the cluster-lizard genetics were mixed up with Zev's during the transformation, and she came out as a German model and actress dressed in lizard-skin. (Wait...remember what I said about them knowing that they were pandering...) Breaking free of the restraints with her new-found strength, Zev sticks 790's head in her place, and he receives the love+loyalty reprogramming instead of her. Thus, Zev has the body of a lingerie model, the libido of a love slave, and the strength and voracity of a predatory desert lizard (are we pandering yet?). 790, after commandeering a little wheeled cart, chases after her as a hyper intelligent disembodied robot head.
The three characters, purely by accident, run into one another just as Stanley encounters a last member of the resistance. This last member is in the process of stealing the Lexx, the most powerful weapon in the two universes, which coincidentally looks like a dragonfly (sans wings) the size of Texas. When the resistance member is suddenly eaten, he passes on the control device of the Lexx to Stanley. (The "key" is a glowing light thingy that diffuses into the captain and is sort-of non-revokable.)
The five (Lexx is sentient, although on a child-like level), with a whole lot of luck and a little aid from an unlikely source, end up destroying His Shadow and the resultant planet-sized pillbug "Gigashadow".
Afterwards they set off to explore the universe, in search of a place to settle down.
This was the SETUP. The stuff the US audience NEVER SAW!
So what's so great about this situation? All these trends have been seen before, in one form or another, right? Yes and no. Take Kai. Utter total be-all end-all of badass assassins, right? He just doesn't care. He's not morbid, he's not dark and mysterious, he's not romantic, he's DEAD. As he constantly reminds us. "The dead do not have opinions." "The dead do not feel worried." "The dead do not have problems." He gets out of nearly every conversation with these little statements. (I want a poster that says "everything I learned about being dead I learned from Kai.) Imagine having the most kickass character on your team just...not...care. Further, and of especial interest to Zev, we find out that nothing below Kai's belt-line....uh....works anymore.
How about Zev? Coy and demure female officer on the starship, right? Hell no. She has one and ONLY one reason for "seeking out new life and new civilizations." She's looking to get LAID. This is pretty much true even after the first actress (Eva Habermann) is written out and another actress (Xenia Seeberg...both actress/models with thick German accents) is written in, changing the character's name to "Xev". What about Stanley? Won't he do? Hell no. She's not gonna lower her standards THAT far. Stanley is just pathetic. The key is essentially non-revocable (actually it is, but those turn into plot threads) or no one would listen to ANYTHING he has to say. He's a pathetic, incompetent, cowardly excuse for a captain who manages to do the WRONG thing much more often than the right one. He ALSO has one and only one reason for exploring the universe, although the qualities he's looking for are a little different than those Zev seeks.
790? He fulfills the station of "science officer" on this ship, despite the fact that he's usually half-heartedly trying to kill off Kai and Stan with misinformation or manipulation (as they might steal Xev away from him), and the rest of the time he's composing highly obscene poetry to Zev. (In the galley there is fruit / Plump and ripe for plucking / In her boudoir lies beautiful Xev / Succulent and ready for....)
And the Lexx? Lexx likes blowing up things. Like planets. Fortunately, he gets a lot of practice. The only problem is that he has to eat. Things like planets. Planets with organic matter on them. Luckily Stan has very few qualms about selecting said planets.
That said, the particular mechanism set up here is used throughout the first season or two to parody the HELL out of just about everything. In the manner of Star Trek, numerous planets are encountered with kind of idealized social situations for the exploration of social mores and assumptions. Except that the situations follows the track taken by the loudly commenting 'bots from MST3K. Remember the old 50's Sci-Fi wish-fulfillment chestnut about the "planet of women" and the way that the spaceship of men had to "teach them the ways of love?" Well, the Lexx encounters a similar situation. Except it's a planet of men. And they're all interested in Stanley.
Sex really is a central theme of the show, to a gratuitous (but self-acknowledged and highly parodied) degree. There really are only a few episodes where something had to be blurred out (apparently whatever venue this was originally created for didn't forbid above-the-waist shower scenes), but the subject is always present. Whether it's Xev pining away and ALMOST settling for Stanley, Stanley's desperate attempts at persuading Xev or attempting to find a planet of beautiful women with low standards, the particular skill Xev has for coaxing food from the Lexx's processors (I didn't think they could show that on TV), or 790's constant lewd suggestions (which are only encouraged by the fact that 790 gets carted around under Xev's arm all the time), sex is a major plot device for every season in one form or another. At one point, another character is introduced and it appears that Stanley, at least, has found satisfaction, only to be disappointed again. Laika, you see, is a plant which roosted in the Lexx and takes on human form. Laika chose her particular form from Stanley's dreams, and thus came out as a Swedish ski-bunny dressed in very little indeed. She is very much attached to Stanley but it turns out that she is "smooth 'round the bend" as they put it, ending in frustration for Stanley again. (Yeah, Barbie doll. This series doesn't pull any punches.) The funny thing is, and the reason that she is my favorite character, is that she is an incarnate plot device. About every other episode she is in hibernation, but when she wakes up, she is "hungry" and must entirely consume three people before she can go back to sleep. What this does is mop up plot threads. "Well, we got away from that planet just before it blew up. I'm glad that we were able to save these three, the last survivors of their civilization, and ......oh! Hi Laika!" In one of my favorite episodes, "Night of the Living Dead" was parodied as the crew visited a "funeral planet" where strange radiation brought the dead back to life to feed on the living (Kai went nuts and spent the episode stoned while dancing and reciting poetry). In the final tally, the living dead only managed to eat a scouting ship (just the ship, no people), whereas Laika ate three people and Xev ate one. The simple fact that they just LET Laika munch on whoever happened to be visiting the ship should tell you the difference between this show and others.
Other parodies which I can think of off the top of my head include Aliens (where Stanley is chased by an...uh...altered 790 with intentions on his posterior), Dracula (where Kai meets up with the only undead stupid-hairdo badass bigger than him), Idaho for some reason (which they refer to as "Potato-hoe"), Friday the 13th (they encounter a space-winnebago on it's way to the "camping planet", and...you know...I heard some kids got killed there once...) and Deliverance (where a degenerate set of backwoods cannibals living in the bowels of the Lexx perform a shotgun wedding with Stanley. Perhaps the funniest episode is during the fourth season where they encounter Oberon and Titania, with Oberon looking to "trade up". He tries for Xev first but after rebuff redirects towards Stanley (notice a trend here?). Well, he is the King of the "fairies."
Despite all of this rampant sillyness, there were general plots running throughout all of the seasons. The first few seasons were really rather episodic, (Laika saw to the cleanup so there was little sign of continuity) but halfway through, the "essence" of His Shadow got passed on to "The Grand Bio-Vizier" Mantred (who has, perhaps, the weirdest accent in the whole series) who began creating an "arm"y of self-assembling drones that started taking out planets. Thus, whereas before the Lexx blew up the planets they visited (an action commanded surprisingly frequently by Stanley), now the planets were entirely disassembled five minutes after they left. Mantred decided to go after the Lexx last of all, but ended up accidentally destroying the entire light universe in the process (think about it. If the entire universe closes in on you...), killing Laika, and booting the Lexx through into the Dark Universe in the process. Unfortunately, the Lexx ended up in the middle of nowhere and was entirely out of power. The cast froze itself down while the Lexx drifted towards the nearest "good thing to eat." 3,000 years later it arrived, but 790, who was supposed to wake everyone up, fell off the edge of the command area and shattered. (There's a 600 foot drop surrounding the command chair, and NO GUARDRAIL. When 790 was reassembled by Kai it reset his loyalty circuit, and thus he became sexually obsessed with KAI...adding a whole new level of weird.) The planets they arrived at were Fire and Water, two entirely opposite planets orbiting one another while their mutual orbits carried them around the sun. The ruler of Fire (a world of harsh temperatures and harsher inhabitants, all of whom seem either intent on treachery or the victim of it) is "Prince" (watchers of the Highlander TV series might recognize the excellent Nigel Bennett) and, on the way to wage war on Water, he manages to snag on to the Lexx as it passes through the atmosphere bridge and investigates the ship. Waking up Xev, he forms an instant bond with her, and....well....let the machinations and Machiavellian manipulations begin. Prince wants the Lexx to finally destroy Water. Water is really too caught up in their own daily games (there's a town for every sport and pastime, including "Boomtown" where Stanley finally gets what he's been after) to do more than defend itself. In the end, massive revelations as to the nature of the two planets are revealed, and then rendered moot with two subsequent shots from Lexx's weapon. Remember, an entire SEASON is spent orbiting these planets and dealing with the strangely unkillable Prince, as well as his counterparts Duke, Queen, Priest, and Bunny.
After Lexx leaves this orbit, it spends it's final season orbiting the planet it found on the other side of the sun. Yup, Earth. This one really is the culmination of all the series. Everything they can get their hands on is parodied here, including American politics, angsty artists, Las Vegas, Country music, sinister government plots, scientific progress, the Vietnam War, Survivor, Mummy-flicks, the Catholic Church, Drugs, Texas, Buddhist enlightenment, militant groups, gun control, morticians, Canadians, and Vampires. They can't really decide if they should let Lexx eat the planet or not, as it's fully populated with a mix of good and bad people, but it's also a "type 13 planet in its final stage of development" (about to be destroyed by its attempt to calculate the mass of the Hick's bozon), and the reappearance of most of their "friends" from Fire and Water (including Prince, who heads up the most evil organization in the world...the ATF) tends to muddle the issue greatly.
As if THAT weren't enough, the planet is presently under attack/investigation by a strange invasion of robotic alien "carrots" who take the second most intuitive route into the human host bodies. Their investigation eventually leads to the presence of an 800 foot-tall Bjork stomping around Tokyo in platform heels. Well, not literally Bjork, but pretty damn close. (That should give you an idea of how silly this series gets) The final ending of the series involves so many threads coming together at once that I'm not even gonna try to describe it. I'll just tally up the totals: Denmark eaten by the Lexx ("...they're Danish! They're used to suffering!"), Orlando Florida blown up by the Lexx, Newfoundland and Cuba nuked by the US, and Japan hit by a walking asteroid. Then there's Prince on board a space-ship of Catholic schoolgirls with the president and first lady, Kai killed by quantum mechanics, and the Earth and Lexx destroyed. Wow. If I hadn't loyally watched this series all the way through, I wouldn't believe it either.
In conclusion: Perhaps the greatest, grandest, most elaborate inside joke ever conceived by man. Beautiful on initial viewing, but would likely not hold up under repeat viewing.
Whew that took a while. Let's go see how much hate mail I've generated by now. - 2002-05-17 13:11:44 Bowler: Just the bit where Yoda pulls back his cloak and the lightsaber flies out to his hand. I was half expecting Yoda to start spoutin' smack at Dooku.
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"If any man should come between a husband and his wife / We find out which one she prefers by letting her decide / If she prefers the other man, the husband steps outside / We line him up against the wall and POP goes the weasel..."
2002-05-16 22:47:53
Just got back from Attack of the Clones. (You know, I actually like that title now...)
OH MY GOD there are gonna be some cool toys coming out of this film. I've no intention of doing a proper review of the flick as it would serve no purpose (If you're gonna see it, you're gonna see it, if you're not, nothing I'm gonna say will change your mind) but I have to say the following:
Yoda vs. Dracula.....with LIGHTSABERS!
There is no level of geekery higher than this....
Whatever it was that was missing from episode one (I have theories...most having to do with that extended pod race...but I'm not gonna bother enumerating them), Lucas hauled it outta cold storage for this film. Starts out fairly slowish, but ends on a phenomenal high note. There is a scene in the film where one character makes a single motion (you'll know it when you see it...because the entire audience will simultaneoulsly explode with laughter, applause, and "oh shit!s") that instantly made me the eight year old who wanted to buy the toys RIGHT THERE in the theater. 'Course, "Paed"me's dressing in an extrememly tight sweater for the last half didn't hurt either.
Unfortunately, it is a little hard not to see large portions of the film as political lectures what with the present situations on several fronts, especially as concerns human cloning. 'Couple of other annoying things popped up, like noting that none of the main characters eat meat and the "death sticks" crack. (Yeah, it was funny, but it resembled "the truth.com"'s pandering a bit too much for my taste. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.)
Hmm.. Said I wasn't gonna do a review of AotC so I better stop there.
Kusoyaro: Saw it by myself as well. Long ago I got sick and tired of the eternal bouts of phone calls that had to be cycled around before you could go see a movie. On one occasion, I wanted to see "H20" and called up all my friends to go see it, only to arrive at the theater and discover that they had, en-route, decided we were going to see something else. This happened THREE TIMES IN A ROW for THE SAME FILM, the LAST of which made me see "There's Something About Mary" which is the single worst film I have ever seen in the theater. (It'd been a long time since a comedy made me physically sick to my stomache.) Frankly, I prefer going alone at this point, since you never have to worry if your suggestion bored everyone else to tears.
My review of Lexx (which has just recently ended its entire run) will have to wait a while. Not feeling particularly inspired again. -
"Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.
2002-05-14 23:43:29
Not sure I'm up for a review tonight, so I'll just rattle around for a while and see if I build up enough steam.
First, everyone go here: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/SiliconInsider/SiliconInsider_020514.html
They peg me down pretty well in the "top 25 books on existentialism" (who here actually cares about my opinions on crap horror flicks?) but the comment on the "blog" rule has some relation to my reply to EK below. In the future, I pledge to be more like the "rational reviewer," if only to the degree that I try a bit harder to truncate my reviews. (Frankly, I mostly write them for the clever comments. Eh.)
Belatedly...EK: I wish I made a habit of posting more often, but friends (specifically Quu's anime club and AWA business) tend to steal Monday and Tuesday nights away from me and work grabs either wed. or Thursday. So, anyway, on Lilek's latest screed piece. (Incidentally, you might want to provide backup links for when the piece in question gets moved off the index page. Had a hell of a time finding it. He seems to have removed the direct page-index to it, although the page is still present if you type in the appropriate address at More on that later)
His screed was actually rather disappointingly incoherent, and, IMHO, missed the mark almost entirely. It may just be that instapundit is sinking in to him, but that particular piece came off as utterly mis-directingly snarky due to an absolute conviction that he was preaching to the choir. It may have served as an excellent vent for him, but it didn't make any real points, and attacked non-issues that had nothing to do with the topic of discussion.
Which, of course, may have been the point.
I think his main issue, and the reason he launched into the screed in the first place, was the utterly ludicrous nature of regarding as an expert on international politics and warfare conduction the founder of an institute who's life story was re-enacted by Robin Williams. Patch Adams might possibly have some credentials qualifying him to speak on the subject of the current conflicts above and beyond your everyday individual, but I sincerely doubt it. Robin Williams has granted him a disproportionate spotlight, and he now appears to be using it to advance his own political goals having nothing to do with medicine. What you see is Lileks getting all "red-faced and incoherent" over what he regards as the ultimate in celebrity pandering, much as I can't talk coherently about censorship for very long. Just get too pissed off to think clearly and stick to the salient points.
Further, he attacks the Gesundheit institute on a purely facile and uninformed level, something I wouldn't have thought he'd do. NO the institute does not promote laughter INSTEAD of traditional therapies. They're more concerned with bedside manner as it AIDS the healing process of modern medicine. I thought he was smarter than this.
As to the rest of his stuff.....welll.....I really think the instapundit-ry is having a profound effect on his own personal views. Not changing them, but sharpening them. Personally, I prefer more lengthy, spelled out reasoning that appeals less to emotion until the conclusion is reached (oh hell, I LOVE having self righteous, opinionated, uninformed little bastards receive another orifice forcibly invented upon them...but I base my actions and opinions on the reasoned arguments, not the emotional ones), but he's moving much more towards the "foregone conclusion" department and preaching to the choir, both of which involve a kind of political shorthand to follow along, or you just get lost. Hitler invocations are an excellent touchstone. At a simplified level, any Hitler invocation from the left is the signal of a siege against a (perceivedly) entrenched personality of unjustly earned public repute, whereas the invocation from the right is usually a snarky sarcastic rant on the idiocy of parallelism outside of context. (To quote somethingawful.com "Cigarettes contain urea. Urine contains urea. Tobacco contains carbon. Hitler contained carbon...")
Eh. I usually find myself agreeing with his eventual conclusion...but the conclusions aren't usually terribly useful as far as definitive action is concerned.
'Course, I'm assuming we're talking about the same topics here...
kyburg: That's a bad situation to be placed in, but don't be too harsh on her after-the-fact. Something that frightening, when it's happening to you, can throw everything out of reasoned perspective. I have an aunt that's inherited an analogous condition but refused to recognize it for a long time and didn't seek medical help until her family realized and insisted. My Grandmother put off getting a mysterious pain investigated for a long time as well, and she was a nurse for forty years. (Turns out she's got lupus, which couldn't have been treated anyway, but still.)
Uncle Milo: Ignore it. He's just flame-baiting. The simple fact that he hates gays because they're effeminate reveals either his trolling nature, his youth or his complete ignorance. I wonder what he would think of Ahhh-nold's first film appearance. No, not Terminator. "Pumping Iron." (Forest for the trees?) I was gonna go into a lengthy rant here, but, to be honest, I can't seem to find this sentiment running around the forums, having dropped regular visits to them as of late (no time). Where are all these hate-filled conversations going on? Direct me to a topic line or two, please.
Either my roommates are having exceedingly violent sex in the other room, or they're still watching Hockey. Hmmmm. Either way, I have no interest in investigating.
Just watched the latest episode of Buffy. I don't know about the rest of you, but it's starting to become something of a parody of itself. For those of you who haven't been keeping up (Spoilers, duh)...let's see. Spike tried to rape Buffy but she let him get away anyway, so he left town. The trio dropped down to an uno after the last failed plan when two of them were captured, and the remaining member (Warren, the psychotic one)shot Buffy in the chest during a fit of impotent rage. A stray bullet flew through a window of the house and instantly killed Tara. Buffy was rescued and healed, Tara wasn't. Willow went nuts, powered up to a major degree, turned to the dark side, and, after hunting down Warren (following an extremely lengthy talk talk talk scene) stripped all of his skin off and burned him alive. (I think. Could have been some kind of transport spell.) She even used the "bored now" line from the alternate-universe "Leather Willow". Anya is a vengeance daemon again (after Xander left her at the alter) and was helping the remainder of the Buff crew track down their wayward member. According to the preview, there's gonna be a big heart-breaking battle between Willow and Buffy.
OK, it may have been hitting everyone else before now and my fanboy status was keeping me from seeing it, but Buffy has just gone over the edge from drama to angst-porn here. (Angst-porn: sells teenage angst and emotional suffering like porn films sell sex. Irrelevant, extraneous plot lead-up to the money-shot of characters in pain. See also: Enviro-porn, gore-porn, and "weepies") A friend pointed out that this has become a series that punishes happy relationships. All of the humor and the fun horror that I used to watch for on this show has almost entirely disappeared, and the plot-threads have become so terribly overwrought that my emotional attachment to the characters has become minimalized. I liked the nature of the plot twist that killed off Buffy's mom, but to pull the stunt twice is just in poor taste.
I'm also kinda sorry that they killed Tara off. Well, no. That's not really true. I'm kinda sorry that their killing Tara off resulted in the release of a long-pent-up sigh from most of the fan base. As much as we tried to like her, there was never anything there to really like. She was a complete non-entity through her own tentative nature and on-again off-again appearances throughout the series.
As far as Willow goes, the only way the series can maintain any of my attention at all now is if they actually kill off Willow. They really should. If they bring her back from the brink that she just threw herself off of, it could only result through the cheesiest, most boy-scouting, moral-spouting, diatribe-inciting aspect of the show we've seen yet. Think about it. We just finished watching this character try and rebuild her moral base over the past season after losing Tara the first time. Is there any way we're going to stand for going through it AGAIN?
Plus, she did just torture someone to death. I call it the "Jean Grey Dilemma." Jean Grey (from the original X-men) was, at one point, infused with a power to shatter worlds through a melding with an interstellar force called "the Phoenix". After a few run-ins with a mentally manipulative member of the Hellfire club called "Mastermind", Jean, to put it simply, was awakened to the "dark side" and became enamored with destruction and death. At one point she teleported across the galaxy and consumed a sun. Problem was, there were life-bearing planets orbiting the sun, and the process of eating the sun fried all living things on those planets to a nice, powdery ash. Subsequent to that, Jean killed herself on the moon after a return to lucidity. The comic couldn't allow her to live on after killing an entire planet of fuzzy, cute, sentient critters. (Oh, how'd she come back? Do you know what the word "retcon" means? No? Count yourself lucky. And don't ask the comic old-timers about this one. You couldn't get far enough out of range.) Willow's just crossed the Rubicon of the series. They really can't let her live after this. (Well.....she could end up in jail like Faith....but I don't see them using that cop-out twice.) My bet is that Willow somehow destroys herself as a final redeeming act.
In other news...it's finally happened. Mount DVD has just been topped-off with the first DVD lent to me by someone recommending it with the phrase "you review bad movies, right?" And the award is....Hawk the Slayer. Quu finally managed to excise this particular flawed piece of kryptonite out of the LD format into something I can view. (He meant to get it to me a month ago, but it was slightly too long to fit on a standard disc.)
Hmm. That's all the momentum I have for tonight. Next time: "Assassin, love-slave, idiot."
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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