This Shit Is Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

Did I Suddenly Become Catholic or Something?
Why Can’t I Shut Up about the New Pope?

This just in: New Pope Gives God the Finger.

I dunno, is his intent for us to feel sympathy for him? I’m sure being pope is a pain in the ass (especially for a guy well beyond the retirement age) but surely it’s better than lots of other jobs—and hardly akin to a beheading. C’mon, Benedict! Suck it up!

(Though I must say, he sure does have that whole “papal hand gestures” thing down already. Kudos to him!)

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Something I Forgot to Mention about the Star Wars Holiday Special
in Last Friday’s Entry

In the cantina scene with the flawless Bea Arthur, there was a guy with a hole in the top of his skull, and that’s where he poured all his drinks. It was supposed to be played for laughs I guess (he was played by Harvey Korman, after all), but watching it as a 5-year-old I was traumatized in ways I don’t even want to recount here. Suffice it to say that, among other problems, I had nightmares on the theme of cranium holes for years afterwards. What a fucked-up thing to put in a show aimed at kids....

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And While We’re on the Subject...

This doesn’t have anything to do with the Holiday Special specifically, but when I was younger I thought that “the Force” was Star Wars-speak for “gravity.” I think this erroneous assumption sprang from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s initial description of the Force: “It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” Needless to say, I was not into Eastern philosophy as a kid. (But apparently I knew a shitload about physics.)

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For the Record, He Also Couldn’t Make Purple Tights Work

Last night I saw this “hipster” kid on campus wearing a pair of cardboard 3-D glasses. Two things went through my head. First, what a dumbass! Second, remember how Billy Zane wore 3-D glasses in Back to the Future? They didn’t look cool on him either—but that was kind of the point, which brings me back to my first thought: what a dumbass! Here’s a tip for all the self-consciously “cool” folks out there: if something makes Billy Zane look like an idiot, chances are you won’t have much more success with it yourself.

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Maybe It’s Her Hair

I think I’m in love with the girl in that Volkswagen Jetta commercial. You know, the one who pisses off her grumpy downstairs neighbor by dancing around in her apartment? When I mentioned this to someone (who shall remain nameless) earlier today, he said she looks like Ashlee Simpson.

I made him take it back.

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Startling Revelation or Statement of the Obvious?

I don’t particularly care for Gwen Stefani’s music, but I could watch her videos aaallllll day long. Well, except for the one where she and Eve pretend they’re pirates. That one's just ridiculous.

In Which He Blathers on Way Too Long about Star Trek. When Will He Stop?!?

If you’re not a big fan of science fiction (or even more specifically, a fan of Star Trek), you may want to skip this entry. Otherwise you will probably find yourself saying, “Huh?” and “Oh my god, this guy is a geek!” a lot....

A Brief Account of My Opinion of Star Trek and Its Various Spin-offs (as a Way of Leading Up to a Discussion of Last Night’s Episode of Enterprise, which, for Once, Was Actually Pretty Good)

Star Trek: Good show. Not a great show, but mainly because it suffered from the problems that plagued most science fiction shows pre-Star Wars (which, as far as I can tell, is the movie that made TV and film producers realize that spending lots of money on sci-fi wasn’t necessarily a bad idea). Nonetheless, though the show itself suffered from some dumb plots, some bad characterizations, and other random silliness, it still created a cohesive universe that has lasted 40 years and spawned numerous successful TV shows, movies, books, etc.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: The best science fiction TV show ever made. Ever! My friend Tara claims Babylon 5 is the best science fiction TV show ever made, but I’ve never seen it and she hates ST:TNG, so I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Everything about this show rocks. Well okay, not everything. Riker was a complete tool and sometimes it did get a bit preachy, but other than that I loved nearly everything about it. Especially Ensign Lefler.

Deep Space Nine: In the midst of my übergeek love for ST:TNG, Paramount announced that they would be launching another Star Trek spinoff. I just about peed myself with excitement. Until I saw the first episode. Thus was marked the beginning of the end of my unadulterated giddiness when it came to all things Trek. This was particularly disappointing because one of my favorite characters on ST:TNG, Chief O’Brien (played by the excellent Colm Meaney), jumped ship and joined the DS9 cast. Then, to make matters worse, my all-time favorite Star Trek character from any show anywhere, Worf, joined the DS9 cast shortly after ST:TNG went off the air. I tried watching DS9 again at that point—I really did—but even my boy Worf couldn’t make that show palatable to me. And honestly, that’s saying quite a bit. Because Worf’s hilarious.

Voyager: More of the same. Once again I watched the first episode only to wonder how they could’ve gone so wrong. When Seven of Nine (or however you’re supposed to spell that character’s name) was introduced, I realized why these new Trek shows weren’t appealing to me: because I’m not a sheltered 12-year-old boy whose only access to spank material is the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and whatever hot girls appear on TV in skin-hugging body gloves.

Then came the rumors surrounding Enterprise. Despite my strong skepticism, I really liked what I was hearing. Instead of taking place in the increasingly crowded and confusing post-TNG timeline (i.e., a time in the future that relies on lots of shit like the Dominion and other things of which I had no knowledge), it would take place 100 years before the first Star Trek series. To me, this signified that the producers realized that the last few shows did indeed suck, and that Star Trek needed to get back to its roots: exploring the galaxy, shooting at aliens, reinserting a sense of wonder, etc. Then I heard Scott Bakula would be the captain. Whoa! Scott Bakula, as in the star of Quantum Leap? I loved that show! Sign me up!

So I watched it. And the first episode wasn’t that great. But whatever trigger in my brain that had previously urged me to cease watching DS9 and Voyager didn’t click on this time.

I really wish it had. As we all know, history is doomed to repeat itself and Enterprise has proven to be a textbook case of why the Star Trek franchise needs to take a long, long nap.

So when I heard that Enterprise had been canceled I was almost as excited as I’d (naïvely) been back when I heard that Paramount was spinning off a new show from ST:TNG in the first place. Why? Because I am one loyal bastard. You see, once I’d gotten half a season into Enterprise I couldn’t stop watching. I kept thinking, “It’ll get better. They’re just finding their way. Give them time.” Four years later they’re still dicking around. So UPN has put both Enterprise and me out of our collective misery. Yay!

I haven’t been so excited about the cancellation of a show since The X-Files, and that’s a show I was actually able to stop watching the moment David Duchovney left!

But as luck would have it, things have started to look up on Enterprise. A little bit, anyway. I’m still largely unimpressed by the show, but at least they’ve finally started moving in the direction I thought they were going to explore way back in, like, the first season. Which is to say the founding of the Federation. Why they didn’t start working on this almost immediately is beyond me. I thought that had been the whole point of the show: to take the prehistory of the original Trek show and flesh it out. But instead, Enterprise spent three years goofing around as if it were just another low budget Sci-Fi Channel knockoff, with no sense of history or purpose.

Anyway, as I was saying, a few episodes this year have been okay. Then, this morning I watched the episode that aired last night (because I usually tape Enterprise on Fridays, as I generally have better things to do with the start of my weekend).

And I loved it.

Don’t get me wrong; the fundamental problems with this show can’t be fixed, and they were all present in last night’s episode. But it was still pretty enjoyable. This is the kind of backhanded compliment I’ve been reduced to giving a show for which I had such high hopes....

See, last night’s episode took place in the mirror universe set up by an original Star Trek episode called “Mirror, Mirror.” If you don’t know anything about Star Trek (and if that’s the case, why are you torturing yourself by continuing to read this?), the mirror universe is an alternate universe in which earth has formed a brutal empire of galactic conquest. Instead of exploring new life and new civilizations, the Enterprise crew spends its time conquering new life and new civilizations. It’s pretty awesome.

I don’t mean to imply I’m all for fascism and imperialism and the subjugation of other races. I’m just happy to see Starfleet not run by a bunch of pussies for once. One of the main problems with Enterprise is that it’s a timid show. The underlying P.C. nature of the Star Trek franchise (excluding the occasional moments of rampant male chauvinism that crop up, but more on that later) has finally caught up with itself and as a result the show has no bite. But in last night’s episode all these normally goody-goody characters were stabbing each other in the back and generally acting like dicks. It was kinda cool.

Also, T’Pol (the gorgeous Vulcan played by Jolene Blalock) and Hoshi (the vastly underused Linda Park) finally got to sex it up a bit. I would imagine that actresses stuck in a Star Trek show have it pretty rough. You automatically become an object of lust for thousands of overweight dudes living in their moms’ basements and are occasionally forced into these virgins’ wildest fantasies by your show’s producers. Example: In the first season there was an episode in which T’Pol went into heat. Yes, that’s right, Vulcan women go into heat just like an animal, every seven years or so (I think that’s the duration, anyway). This particular episode was one of the most degrading things I’ve ever seen. Jolene had to strip down to her underwear a couple times, pant like an animal, get all glisteny, and generally humiliate herself for the satisfaction of the men who watch the show and who enjoy imagining a beautiful Vulcan woman pouncing on them with uncontrollable lust in her eyes. (It is my understanding that the actress who played Seven of Nine had to suffer similar indignities on Voyager. As a ex-member of the Borg collective she went through a spawning cycle or some shit like that. So you see, this is a recurring theme in the Star Trek universe.)

Another example: In last week’s episode of Enterprise we learned that the Orion slave women (you know, those green-skinned beauties who tempted the boys in the original Star Trek show a couple times) are actually the rulers of the Orion men, not the other way around. Now, aside from the fact that this screws with 40 years of continuity and doesn’t make much sense in the context of the show, it also implies that the women choose to be treated like slaves. This is an appalling assertion that practically verges on misogyny.

The reason why the sexiness of last night’s episode is different is because the women were in control of it. In the first season episode, while she was in heat, T’Pol was at the mercy of things she couldn’t control. That was a pretty sexist episode.

But last night, while Commander Archer was staging a mutiny, T’Pol remained loyal to the captain and helped him retake control of the Enterprise (using a little sex appeal along the way). I should mention that in the mirror universe the Vulcans are just as domineering and expansionist as the humans, so this wasn’t just her logical Vulcan blood working on autopilot; she was a strong woman making a dangerous decision.

Meanwhile, Hoshi took the opposite approach (seducing whoever happened to be in power at the moment so that she remained in a beneficial position), but still doing it in a strong rather than subservient way.

And yes, both T’Pol and Hoshi wore these absurd, midriff-exposing uniforms that I absolutely adored. However, because they were each playing against the “helpless female” stereotype I didn’t feel so bad about loving the fact that they were showing some skin. Perhaps I’m just splitting hairs in an effort to avoid being labeled as one of those aforementioned dudes living in their moms' basements, but what can I say? They both looked gorgeous. And frankly, I’m sure Linda was happy to finally get out of that dumpy jumpsuit she’s been wearing since the show debuted four years ago. (Jolene has been more lucky; her uniforms have been much more flattering for the past two seasons at least.)

Most importantly, though, this episode was interesting, everyone got to fire their phasers a couple of times (normally a rare occurrence, oddly enough), and it was not (entirely) derivative the way most of the rest of the episodes in this series have been.

It ended on a cliffhanger and I’m kind of wishing that the four remaining episodes of Enterprise take place in the mirror universe. It’s a long shot, but at least the show would go out on a high note. Heck, if I were in charge of Star Trek I’d make a new series that took place entirely in the mirror universe. Now that would be something different....

The Dutch Knew Vader Was Luke’s Father Long Before We Did

Last night I saw Darth Vader use the Force to choke a giant red talking M&M.

I have seen some stupid shit in my time, but...

Look at me, I’m so confounded I can’t even complete a thought.

Am I the only one who wishes George Lucas would just stop being George Lucas?

There’s this thing called the Star Wars Holiday Special. Back before the Internet was accessible to every late-20s/early-30s sci-fi geek in the world, this Holiday Special seemed more myth than reality. Those of us who were only 5 years old when it aired on TV (in 1978) might have had vague recollections of Bea Arthur hanging around in the cantina and a coked-up Princess Leia singing a horrendous song while the rest of the Star Wars cast stood around looking uncomfortable, but by and large it felt like a false memory implanted by one’s own subconscious desire for more things Star Wars-related (since back in the ’80s we had only the three movies, the mostly bad Marvel comic book series co-starring a big green space rabbit, a couple lame cartoon spin-offs, two godawful Ewok TV specials starring Wilford "Bad Ass" Brimley and a Drew Barrymore circa 1982 look-a-like, and that was it).

But I was at a comic book convention, oh, probably 10 years ago now, and I found a bootleg copy of this Holiday Special for sale (since that’s the only way you can—and will ever be able to—get ahold of this thing) and just had to buy it.

It was even worse than I remembered. Forget all the scenes featuring Bea Arthur, et al. Harrison Ford, future star of a dozen blockbuster movies, is frighteningly bad in this thing. Two things are immediately obvious: First, there didn’t appear to be any written dialogue for him to memorize, because everything he says sounds improvised in the worst way (and, as we learned from his time on the set of Blade Runner, Harrison Ford does not even believe in good improvisation). When he sees Chewbacca’s son, Lumpy (I shit you not—that’s his name), he keeps saying, over and over again, “Lumpy, wow, you’ve gotten so big!” [Harrison hugs midget in wookie costume] “Wow... Lumpy. You’ve gotten so big!” [Harrison tussles fake hair on top of wookie costume worn by midget] “...” [there is a pause; no one seems to have told Harrison what he should do next] which brings me to obvious thing number two: It appears that no director was present on the set. I’ve seen elementary school theater productions better organized than this thing.

[Ooo! Someone has helpfully compiled a few screen shots of Harrison Ford’s worst performance in the history of cinema! Now you can see that I’m not exaggerating.]

Wait, what was my point?

Oh yeah, my point is that George Lucas—for obvious reasons—completely disowned the Holiday Special not long after it aired. Yet last night I saw Darth Vader use the Force to choke a big talking M&M.

The man is already worth 8.4 kazillionwilliondillion dollars. What the hell is he doing?

Oh, right. He’s lost his mind. I forgot.

Zamboni Love

The following story serves as proof that my ex-girlfriends can be total sweethearts even after we break up:

This past weekend (which is a lot further away now than this upcoming weekend is; how did that happen?) Emma, my last girlfriend, came back to New Jersey to visit a bunch of old friends, myself included. We spent most of Saturday walking around campus, getting sushi for lunch, stopping by her favorite ice cream joint, and just generally hanging out.

Way back when Ice Princess came out in theaters, Emma joked that it was too bad Disney hadn’t postponed it a month, because then we could’ve gone to see it together. (Because, as I’ve mentioned previously, I was dying to see it but feared being driven out of the theater by enraged mothers who mistook me for a potential child molester.) Well, the subject of figure skating came up (because there was a competition airing on ABC that day, and Sasha Cohen lost to Michelle Kwan again) and Emma said we should go see Ice Princess if it was still playing. I said “Sure,” because honestly, what were the chances?

Well, guess what? It was still playing.

When I found this out I immediately started backtracking. Emma and I are still good friends, but going with someone to see a movie in which you have no interest, just so the other person can see it without getting arrested strikes me as Girlfriend Duty. And not the good kind of Girlfriend Duty. I didn’t want to exploit Emma in that way so I was sincerely trying to talk her out of it, but she insisted (I swear!). So we went. And the theater was more than half full of mothers and their 12-year-old daughters. Plus Emma and me. (Actually, I’m exaggerating for the sake of the story. In reality there were a few other couples of Emma’s and my age—though I suspect in every other case it was the female who’d dragged the male there, not the other way around.) Anyway, now I know why Disney movies play for so long. I bet the cumulative number of audience members in the three theaters dedicated to Sin City didn’t match up to the number of people in our theater....

Anyway, here’s the scoop. Yes, I enjoyed the movie, and no, it wasn’t good at all. But even if you eliminated the figure skating (which wasn’t as exciting to watch as, say, watching the actors play basketball in Hoosiers—and despite my Indiana background please keep in mind that I don’t like watching basketball) I still would’ve enjoyed this movie, because it was cheesy as all hell. And if there’s one thing I appreciate, it’s cheesy movies.

My favorite moment? Casey (Michelle Trachtenberg) has just returned from her first competition at which her coach, Tina (Kim Cattrall), sabotaged her by buying her a brand new pair of skates for her final event. (FYI, you’d want to break in new skates before using them in a competition—otherwise you’ll fall down a lot, as Casey did.) Tina sabotaged Casey because she suddenly realized Casey’s better than she thought she was, and Tina’s daughter, Gen (also a skater), was in danger of losing her spot in the regional competition to Casey. Blah blah blah. Anyway, so Casey leaves her coach—who happens to own the local skating rink—and therefore has to resort to practicing on the frozen pond in her backyard. But it is bumpy. Because, y’know, it’s a fucking pond. So she keeps falling down, and frustration mounts. But then, over the hill comes this Zamboni driven by Teddy, the kid Casey has a crush on and who drives the Zamboni at Tina’s rink (he is also, coincidentally, Tina’s son). He had come to smooth out Casey’s bumpy pond so that she can pursue her dream (cue triumphant music). It was so cheesy I practically fell out of my chair. Emma couldn’t stop laughing. Her laughter was so hysterical, in fact, that I started to worry that she was in as much danger of being run out of the theater as I would’ve been had I come alone.

But we had a great time and talked about it incessantly afterwards. But get this: Michelle Kwan got to play a judge (or I should say Michelle Kwan’s cleavage got to play a judge) in the movie, whereas Sasha Cohen merely appeared for five seconds in a performance that Casey was watching on TV—and it showed Sasha falling on her ass.

Uncool.

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While Emma and I were walking through campus again later that day, we walked by two girls who were talking about a fashion show that was going to take place on campus. The blonde girl was trying to convince the blonder girl to participate with her. Phrases like “You’d look so hot!” and “You should totally do it!” were followed by this gem: “You know what’s fun? Getting hammered? And then modeling.”

It almost beat the Zamboni scene for the most ridiculous thing we’d witnessed all day.

"Tell Us of Your Sun's Physical Spectrum!"

There are certain things I love so, so much I’m sometimes afraid I’ll squeeze them apart like one of Lenny’s doomed woodland creatures. The Future Sound of London is one of these things. Marilyn Monroe is another.

Then there’s Platinum Grit.

I dunno, maybe no one else gives a rat’s ass, but I am psychotically in love with Platinum Grit and therefore want to share it with everyone on the planet.

It’s a comic book, see, and you can read the whole thing (thus far) on the Internet. For free! I knew this computer of mine was good for something....

Platinum Grit is written and illustrated by the amazing Australian, Trudy Cooper (with script and/or plot assists by Danny Murphy). I discovered it in 1995 (about a year after it began) while flipping through a copy of Diamond Previews. This is the image that caught my eye, and it was only the size of a postage stamp. I immediately ordered it, read it when it arrived, and nearly swooned as a result of its unadulterated awesomeness.

Then I met a guy named Doug Bayne a few years later at the San Diego Comic Con, and I think he was a bit taken aback by how much I started instantly fawning over him. You see, I recognized the name on his nametag from the credits page in Platinum Grit (though I still, to this day, have not discerned what his level of involvement in the book was—-he kept it kinda secretive). Lucky for me he didn’t run away screaming and we talked about Platinum Grit as well as all kinds of pointless shit that day. (The one bit of our non-PG-related conversation I remember most vividly was his disappointment in being unable to tell the difference between the way the water drained from toilets in the States versus how it drained from toilets in his native Australia. I have yet to be presented with an opportunity to check this first-hand myself.) Because I’d toned down my hyperventilating about halfway through our first conversation, Doug even swung back by the booth I was manning in order to chat a couple more times during the subsequent days of the show, and he gave me his card before he left. So we struck up a correspondence, a few weeks later he sent me some awesome T-shirts with all these great images on them (one of which I still wear on a regular basis), and he kept me in Platinum Grit comics until things stalled out after issue 10. I can only assume, knowing how difficult it is to publish a comic book if your numbers are anywhere below the already-rock-bottom sum of 3000 copies, that they just didn’t have the funds to continue.

I am nothing if not a terrible corresponder, so I fell out of touch with Doug eventually. Years passed, and I often wondered if Platinum Grit #11 had ever been printed. Then last night I stumbled upon Trudy’s website and whatta ya know? Issues 11, 12, and 13 are all available online!

Sadly, there aren’t a lot of women working in comic books today (Jill Thompson, Carla Speed McNeil, Jessica Abel, and Linda Medley are among my favorites), but Trudy is hands down one of the most talented cartoonists working in the medium—-male or female.

I’m not saying Platinum Grit is the greatest comic book ever made, but if I could save only ten comic book series from nuclear annihilation, Platinum Grit would be among them. Future generations crawling from the ashes, possibly with access to information on the “great” comic book series of the twentieth century, might wonder why the dumbass in charge of saving ten comics had chosen Platinum Grit instead of, say, The Fantastic Four. My response to them would be “Because it rocks, motherfuckers. Deal with it!”

(I do feel compelled to mention here that Platinum Grit owes quite a bit to Jaime Hewlett’s Tank Girl, and I love Tank Girl dearly—-but I love Platinum Grit even more. Maybe because Tank Girl, for all its charm and humor, was a bit too anarchic for me. I like a little story with my comic—-even if it doesn’t make much sense. Platinum Grit’s story is goofy as hell, but it’s still the kind of thing that makes you long desperately for the next installment. Ahem. Clock’s ticking, Trudy!)

Anyway, as I mentioned on Tuesday, I don’t push things on people. Besides, if this image doesn’t make you want to read Platinum Grit, nothing will. So I’ll leave it at that.