Midnight Ramblings XX
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Haven't rambled in so long...I wonder if I've forgotten how? I imagine it's
like riding a bike, once you learn you never forget. So long.... Can I keep rambling? Can I still
ramble? I mean, the world has changed so much. Is it safe to start rambling again? I say, yes.
Hey Neelix!
Wow, has it been a long time since I've done this or what? What can I say? I got in a real
groove with my whole "Vancouver series" and just didn't feel like interrupting the flow. Good
thing I've been compiling a list of everything I want to ramble about.
Well, I just had a perfectly good waste of an afternoon. There I was, settling in, preparing to do
some work on the website, when I felt my stomach growling and went on up to the kitchen for a
snack. My Dad had some work stuff spread out all over the kitchen table, and, with his laptop
before him, was putting the finishing touches on a Power Point presentation. Then I looked to
see that Dad had covered one wall with a sheet. "What's up?" I asked him. And he showed me.
Turns out the laptop was hooked up to none other than...a video projector! Never show me
technology like that. After studying it for about three minutes, I came to a startling conclusion:
I could hook my DVD player up to it. So, when Dad was done his work, we moved the sheet
and projector into the living room, I hooked up my DVD player, and my afternoon was wasted
watching DVDs on the big screen.
So, now that I've found what channel it's on, I've started watching Smallville. You know, it's that
new teenage Superman show. Anyway, tonight was a good one for guys like me. When the evil
football coach gets the ability to start fires with his mind and starts using it to "motivate" his
players, it's up to scrawny geek Clark Kent to take him down. Take that, all you evil phys ed
teachers!
You know the premise of Smallville, right? Teenage Clark Kent, coming to terms with his
powers while going through all that high school angst. But that's not all. See, baby Kal-El's
rocket crashed in the middle of a meteor storm. The meteorites were all fragments of Krypton,
so the ground is littered with Kryptonite! The background radiation from all this Kryptonite has
created all kinds of freaks and weirdos for Clark Kent to try out his powers on. (Thusly,
Kryptonite is scattered heavily at the villain's lair, thus making Clark's powers unreliable at each
episode's climax.) That, and Lex Luthor has been sent to town by his father's company to try and
get LuthorCorp's Smallville plant running again. So, the young Clark Kent and Lex Luthor have
formed somewhat of a friendship, both feeling like outsiders in this town.
Oh, and trivia notes: - The actress who plays Martha Kent played Lana Lang (Clark Kent's high school sweetheart) in Superman: the Movie and Superman III. - The actor who plays Lex Luthor is actually an accomplished voice actor, who has done many guest voices on Batman Beyond. He'll soon be voicing the Flash on the JLA cartoon. - The actor who plays Lex Luthor's father voiced the Riddler on Batman: the Animated Series. - And, the actor playing Jonathon Kent is John Schneider, whom I grew up watching as Bo Duke
on The Dukes of Hazzard.
Brad Bird, director of my all time favorite film The Iron Giant, was also the director of the very
first Sideshow Bob episode on The Simpsons. From day 1, he's received a credit on the show as
an "executive consultant." That first Sideshow Bob episode is the only one he directed himself.
He once explained what he does on the show as an executive consultant. Essentially, he was
brought on to design shots and make the show look less like a Saturday morning cartoon and
more live-action-like. He even admitted that his involvement on the show has gotten to be less
than minimal in recent years.
Watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture on DVD. I'm just fascinated by the character of Ilia.
See, back when The Motion Picture was going to be the pilot for a new Star Trek show, Ilia was
created to be one of the new resident aliens. She was a Deltan, and I've always been intrigued by
the concept. Whereas the Vulcan culture is dominated by logic, the Deltan culture was going to
be dominated by sexuality. Sex was to have permeated every part of their culture. Sadly, the
only things we have to give us an idea of how this would have played out on a dramatic sci-fi
show are the handful of notes Gene Roddenberry made when he was hammering out the idea.
And, of course, in The Motion Picture, Ilia has a few comments about humans being a "sexually
immature species" and "[her] oath of celibacy being on record." It's just one of the great what
ifs? of Star Trek.
Speaking of Star Trek, it has recently occurred to me how many interesting tales can be told
from the fragments thrown out in the back story. For example, what's Jack Crusher's story? Dr.
Crusher's husband, Wesley Crusher's father, and friend of Capt. Picard, who died making the
ultimate sacrifice to save a crewmember. But how exactly did he die? How did he become the
exemplary officer he was reputed to be? Popular fan speculation says that he served under
Picard on Picard's first command, the Stargazer. He may even have been Picard's first officer.
There's a story there. And how about the tale of Tasha Yar's homeworld? This was a Federation
colony where everything that could go wrong went wrong. It renounced its Federation
membership, warring factions drew lines in the sand, and the planet was gripped in total war.
Yar would tell horrifying tales of running from rape gangs that roamed the deserted cities. How
did this colony get this way? How was Tasha Yar eventually rescued from it? There's another
good story in here.
So far, I've only found one instance of someone trying to tell the one of these interesting back
stories. On my last excursion to Chapters, I noticed that someone is trying to tell the story of
Kahn. According to Star Trek, for most of the 1990s, Earth was gripped in the Eugenics War. A
team of misguided scientists tried to produce genetically superior human beings. Of course,
these beings, with their absolute power, were corrupted absolutely, and set about conquering the
planet. The most successful of these was Kahn, who, from 1992-1996, ruled 1/4 of the planet.
Someone now has told the tale of how he was created, rose to power, and eventually fled the
planet with 80 of his fellow genetically superior beings to conquer the stars.
Well, with these new ReBoot TV movies on the horizon, I'm starting to get all obsessed with
ReBoot again. I remembered that some anime company had released all of season 3 on DVD a
year or so ago, so I've been searching my favorite online stores for it. Sadly, no one seems to
have it any more. So, I've tracked down the official website that put out the DVDs, and I can
buy them straight from the company. Only $25 US/disc. And guess what? They've also put out
on DVD another of my favorite Mainframe shows, Shadow Raiders. The entire run has been
released, resulting in 6 DVDs.
I've come to a weird realization about Enterprise. We have yet to meet the ship's cook, referred to only as Chef. So, I'm starting to think he's Chef from South Park. I can see it now. A scene in the mess hall of the Enterprise: Chef>> Hello, Captain!
I was putting up Christmas lights with my Dad today, and I had one of those ideas that could
make someone rich. How many of us, helping our fathers put up Christmas lights, ever ran into
this problem? You plug in the lights to check them out, and come across a bulb that's burnt out.
You wiggle it a bit, to see if it's loose, but it's not. It's burnt out. So, you put in another one.
This new bulb fails to light up. So, you try again. And again. And again. And finally, it dawns
on you. The bulb's are fine. It's the socket that's fried. So, you put up the lights, but you're all
depressed because, thanks to that one bad socket, there's one bulb that's always out. So, here's
my idea: glow in the dark light bulbs! You screw them into these bad sockets and, at night, they
glow, and thus there are no unsightly gaps in your sting of lights.
One of the biggest revelations I ever made in my life was that indoor Christmas lights and night
lights take the same bulbs. How is this cool? Well, for nightlight bulbs, they make these really
soft pastel pink and blue colours, and they just look cool on a Christmas tree. Especially those
blue ones.
Just an interesting observation I've made. It's a real testament to how mainstream DVD has
become. When DVD first came out in late 1997/1998, all the TV commercial would say, "Now
available on video. Also on DVD." Then, around 1999/2000, the TV commercials would say,
"Now available on video and DVD!" Now, with the ads for Pearl Harbor, they're saying, "Now
available on DVD and video!"
Actually, this reminds me of something I recently read about the state of bonus features for
DVDs. Apparently, some of Hollywood's major talent is now charging big bucks for their
involvement on DVDs. The one that every news source cited was that Arnold Schwarznegger
got $10,000 to do a running commentary on Total Recall: Special Edition. This is making
studios wonder if such star involvement is warranted for DVD. Adding to this is the fact that the
DVD for How The Grinch Stole Christmas did amazingly well, even though there is no running
commentary by director Ron Howard and next to nothing in the way of involvement from star
Jim Carrey. Or how about Pearl Harbor? It briefly held the record for fastest selling DVD of
all time, even though the super-stacked three disc special edition isn't coming out until May.
I just got Disney's big Davy Crockett DVD for Christmas. I have a certain nostalgia for Davy
Crockett, even though it was on TV 22 years before I was born. Remember the early days of
video? When you had to rent both movies AND the VCR? Well, I remember being a kid of
about 6 years old, and one of the first movies Dad brought home with a rented VCR was
Disney's Davy Crockett, and I went nuts for it. Even today, it's still a pretty cool show, even
though it's not quite PC anymore.
Actually, speaking of the early days of video, I have a story for you I read online. This is one of
the theories as to why George Lucas has given us about three dozen versions of the Star Wars
trilogy on video, but has yet to release it on DVD. Back in the early days of video, late 70s/early
80s, all the big studios were desperate to get big titles in their video libraries. So, 20th Century
Fox naturally begged George Lucas to let them release Star Wars. Lucas finally said yes, and
when he saw the first ever video version of Star Wars, he was horrified. The first film-to-video
transfer process wasn't very good, and Lucas was disgusted at how much the picture and sound
quality degraded in the transfer. So, as the years went by, the film-to-video transfer process was
improved, and with each improvement, Lucas re-released Star Wars. It has become Lucas'
obsession to get a theater-quality sound and picture on video for Star Wars, all because that first
version was so crappy.
So, flash forward to 1997, when DVD is first starting to hit the market. Again, all the big movie
studios were desperate to get big titles in their libraries, and fox again begged Lucas to let them
release Star Wars. This time, though, Lucas saw history repeating itself, so he put his foot down
and said, "NO! I'm not getting burned twice! I'm not putting it on DVD until the technology is
perfected." Fox persisted, though. They said, "Well, George, you're the expert on these things,
when do you think it'll be perfected?" Lucas blurted out the date that was most predominant on
his mind: "When I'm done the new trilogy; 2005." And that's why we've got to wait until 2005
to get Star Wars on DVD.
And speaking of Disney, remember for a while when Disney was on every day after school?
There was one Disney show I watched that I kinda liked called Swamp Fox, about a member of
the volunteer militia during the American Revolution. Only recently did I learn that Swamp Fox,
for a while, was the only Disney product banned in Canada! Here's the story. Naturally, the saga
of the Swamp Fox had to be Disney-fied, and Disney needed a really dastardly villain. So, the
villains were the Loyalists, those aristocrats loyal to England who fled to Canada when the
Revolution began. They were portrayed as being a secret society, almost, who ran things from
north of the border, trying to win back America for the crown. Now, as any Canadian who took
third grade history can tell you, that's just not true. The Loyalists came to Canada because
THEY WANTED NO PART OF THE FIGHTING, and wanted to stay British. They have
become quite an exalted part of Canadian history. So, when Disney first showed Swamp Fox in
the late 50s, early 60s, the Canadian government took offence to this portrayal of these early
Canadian settlers, and the House of Commons voted to ban Swamp Fox in Canada! The ban
must have eventually been lifted, because I saw it on Canadian TV in the late 80s. And do you
want to know the final irony? The Swamp Fox was played by the great Canadian actor, Leslie
Nielsen. That's how I learned of the ban, Nielsen and his brother were being interviewed on
CBC and it came up. Nielsen's brother, as it turns out, is a long-standing Member of Parliament,
and was even Mulroney's Deputy PM.
Finally, I followed a link on one of my movie gossip sites to the official website of Peter Laird.
This is the comic book artist who got his 15 minutes of fame in the late 80s/early 90s as a
co-creator of Ninja Turtles. Anyway, in it he was talking about how he recently met with Steven
Barron, director of the first Ninja Turtles movie, to talk about an upcoming movie project that
they're working on together. Barron said, "Hey! I've got a present for you," and he gave Laird an
original, rough cut of the first Ninja Turtles movie. Laird says that it's really rough; there's no
music yet, some scenes are longer, and it's the original puppeteers doing the Turtle's voices. But,
what amazed Laird was that the original ending was actually filmed, and was included in this
rough cut! I'm familiar with this original ending, as it made it into the comic adaption and
novelization, both of which I read 11 years ago. Anyway, you know how April was doing all
those sketches of the Turtles in the first film? This original ending was the payoff to that. The
original ending featured April in an office, and some kind of publisher guy looking at her
sketches. The publisher then turns to April and says, "Well, these sketches are good, and it's an
intriguing premise, but I'm afraid that, as a comic book, it's just too unbelievable." The camera
then pulls back, to out on the publisher's windowsill. We see the Turtles sitting there,
eavesdropping. Raphael turns to his brothers and says, "Too unbelievable?" and then the Turtles,
Batman style, jump to the street below.
And then, Laird ended his rough cut description with the statement that caught the eye of my
movie news site: "You know, we [himself, Ninja Turtles director Steve Barron, and Ninja Turtle
co-creator Kevin Eastman] have got to start bugging New Line (the studio who made the Ninja
Turtles films) about doing a special edition DVD."
Saw something on TV last night I thought you might like. It was the first teaser for Men In
Black 2. Here's the trailer as best as I can remember....
It opens in space. It's the final shot from the first movie, only running backwards. The narrator
talks about an evil force threatening our planet, and that there's only one organization that can
stop them. Not the FBI. Not the CIA. Only.... The camera zooms into Earth. It zooms closer
and closer until we're on the front steps of...the United States Postal Service! We go into the
building, where we see a "Kevin," played by Tommy Lee Jones, rejecting a package saying it
"violates section 12 of the US Postal Code." He tosses the package aside and says, "Next!" and
up walks J, again played by Will Smith. J looks at him, Kevin's name-tag, and says, "Wow. It
stood for Kevin. I would have never guessed that cuz you just don't look like a Kevin, ya know."
Kevin stares at J in an annoyed silence. J says, "OK. The whole story. You used to be the best
agent in a top secret organization that polices extraterrestrials on Earth." We then cut to the MiB
HQ, and it's a scene-for-scene recreation of J's first day on the job from the first film. As J takes
Kevin through the hall, with Kevin staring in awe at all the aliens, J's speech continues, and it's a
re-working of the "We are the best kept secret in the universe" speech that K gives in the first
teaser to the first film. J's speech is only interrupted once, when they bump into the coffee
drinking "worm guys." They look at J and Kevin, turn to Kevin and exclaim, "K! You're back!
They told us you were killed!"
J and Kevin then enter this room. J ends his speech and tour by saying, "And this is the
de-neuralizer. Soon, you will be flooded with (technobabble) radiation, old memories will be
unlocked, and you will hold the key to the fate of this planet." Kevin just says, "Cool." He then
points to the piece of equipment in the middle of the room and asks, "What's that thing?" J, with
a somewhat confused tone in his voice, says, "The...de-neuralizer."
It then flashes on the screen. "Next summer."
K rips off the postal worker uniform.
"The men are back..."
K throws on the black suit of the MiB.
"...in black."
J and K don their sunglasses. They cock their BFGs, and kick in a door. Like in the teaser for
the first movie, the door is the "i" in "MiB." Only this time, the "i" is a roman numeral "II." So,
yeah, it says, "M II B." the narrator says, "Same universe. New scum."
We then cut to a scene on a subway. J addresses the passengers, "Ladies and gentlemen, could
you please move to the front of the train. We have a bug in the electrical system." No one
moves. J shouts out, "DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME PEOPLE? WE HAVE A BUG!" Still, no one
moves. J hears a noise behind him, turns around, and sees the back half of the train being eaten,
and that he's staring down the throat of some mammoth alien. It cuts to the release date: July 3,
2002. In voice over, we hear J: "Oh, NOW you're moving to the front of the train."
It's no Spider-Man or Episode II, but I'll still be there.
And that's it! I have rambled long enough! I am back in the groove! So long Vancouver series!
Let's get back to whining about my job and complaining about being a 24-year old virgin living
in my parents basement!
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