Erratica Reduex

Everyone of a certain generation has an idea of who Jim Fowler is, or at least would recognize him in the field. He was Marlin Perkin's assistant in Mutual of Omaha's wild Kingdom, the one who would do all the crazy, near suicidal stunts with animals, whenever a critter needed to be lassoed, tagged, diverted, oor given a human chew toy.  Jim undoubtedly inspired the Crocodile Hunter with his "hands on" naturalist style.  More importantly, my friends and I came up with any number of theories to explain his survival; multiple Jims was the easiest explanation, though theories ranged up to instant clones and terminator style cyborgs.

Oddly enough, he seems to have been human, and he's still around.  After doing a number of television nature specials, he's focused on wildlife preservation and the Center for Wildlife Education in New York, a mysterious place that has almost no web presence, but may involve wild animal parks.  Unless of course, that's merely a cover story to conceal the underground factory where vat after vat of bubbling, glowing green ichor is producing an army of nigh-invulnerable Jim clones to take over the world.  Or wrestle leopards or something.

I had no absolutely interest in "Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney...until I saw this.

HAS Halloween become too commercialized?  You decide!





Maybe, maybe not. I'm just going to go dig out my amulet to be sure.

This is a fascinating video, and a piece of classic on-site investigative journalism that's becoming increasingly rare in this day. Mariana van Zeller traveled to a war zone on the border of Turkey, Iraq and Iran, to investigate reports that the U.S. is funding anti-Iran terrorists, effectively engaging in a proxy war with Iran.

I don't think they actually gave good evidence that the U.S. is involved with these groups, but the opportunity to get a look at a guerrilla/terrorist group, one which has a large female contingent, is fascinating. It's a look at a part of the world and a conflict we see very little of in the U.S.

When you see this, quote Blackadder in your LJ.

"Yes Baldrick, let us not forget that you tried to solve the problem of your mother's low ceiling by cutting off her head."

Courtesy of Wonkette, we have a video where Batman Returns is updated to face current economic reality.  The mashup between the Joker and George Bush is amusing, but with Bush announcing his plan ahead of time in obfuscatory language, does this mean that GWB is really The Riddler?

So with the success of the revamped Balltestar Galactica and Batman franchises, there's been a lot of discussion of what properties could be made "dark and gritty". That is, what silly old concepts could have all the camp and humor surgically removed, and made as grim and serious as possible?

These are my actually serious suggestions.

Buck Rogers:
You don't even need to change that much. Have Buck as a fish out of water, desperately trying to be useful as something other than a weapon, and facing the contempt of the city dwellers. And look at the setting: 300 years after the nuclear war, 99% of the world is still a wasteland, with barbarian tribes roaming through the wreckage. Why is that? Obviously because the last city is an insular robot-ruled dystopia, and sees no reason to do anything but use the wastelands as a threat for exile. You have a society that's decaying and collapsing in on itself, class ridden and resource poor, even as they have spacecraft. And meanwhile, the colonists who fled Earth 300 years ago are back, and they want revenge- maybe. At least they have some sort of plan for Earth. Then again, what's the real agenda of the robots? And why was Buck [U]really[/U] rocketed off to space in "NASA's last mission"?



Ark II:
So leaving aside the obvious love triangle (you know there has to be one that involves the hot chick taking off her top), consider the actual mission: going around, making peace and stopping water empires from forming, backed by some serious high-tech firepower. Their mission is more than simply helping people, it's obviously to scout out and secure resources so the hidden base can grow and expand without competition. There are most likely other ARK teams that aren't so friendly, combat units designed to be the mailed fist of the project against the kingdoms or barbarian hordes forming outside. And then there's Adam: most likely an experiment to uplift chimps to the point where they can be a useful slave race...but the head of that department may have other ideas, like replacing humanity with a more peaceful hominid. And then there's the mysterious group of scientists; obviously they knew the collapse was coming, and they kept hidden for what seems like decades, maybe even a century before seeing fit to do anything. What's their real agenda? And how does it connect to the collapse?



Gilligan's Island:
Oh wait, never mind. We've got that already; it's called Lost.

Next week I take on Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, Emergency! and the A Team.

Can YOU tell their quotes apart?

I'm serious- this should really be titled "Seven Deadly Chambers of Awesome", though it's actually called "Knights of Cydonis", by the band muse.

So why is awesome? Because it's in the form of a movie (and at six minutes packs as much story as some two-hour movies I've seen), that has homages to every type cheesy Saturday-afternoon film I used to watch: bad chop-socky movies; Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns; Planet of the Apes; Buck Rogers...it's a stripped down Kill Bill with the volume turned up to 11.

It's also what any game of Feng Shui or Rifts I play in should look like. Seriously.