The Designer Monologues

""Dear Batman:
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in Bat-detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you're crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is an archer, and a speedster, and a swimmer, a princess, and an acrobat. Does that answer your question?
Sincerely yours, The Teen Titans."

Comic-Album remix image by the amazing Cliff Chiang -- click the link to check out a couple of other brilliant mash-ups. (My fave -- Batgirl in Purple Rain: "maybe im just like my father 2 bold.")

(and no, this isn't spoiler-blocked -- the show has aired in the UK, and it's aired in the US. Past tense.)

It's been confirmed in the audio commentary to the End of Time Part 2 that Russell Davies never intended to reveal who the "Woman in White" is -- she's apparently whomever you want her to be.

Russell Davies can Choke on My Fuck.

Comparisons are being made to classic McGuffins like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. If so, then Rusty needs to be taught what one is -- because they're supposed to be items which are meaningless outside of their role as an incidental plot focus. The classic example given is secret papers in a spy story -- what's on the paper is meaningless; the fact that the characters all want the papers is all that matters.

McGuffins are not characters who perform critical actions to the plot, as the "Woman in White" does. She appears to Wilf (outside of the Time Lock, so she's obviously more than just a Time Lord, despite appearing with them at the end), prompts him to go searching for the Doctor. She appears again, getting Wilf to get the gun which he will give to the Doctor, critical to the plot resolution. She appears to the Doctor at the end, and it's his recognition of her which leads him to make the decision to fire, as well as the decision of his target.

But she's "whomever you want her to be."

BULLSHIT. That's nothing more than lazy writing.


So, I guess the true identity of the "Woman in White" is actually RTD's deus-ex-machina bullshit, personified.

We headed out at Oh Dark Thirty this morning to get The Minion on her flight back to college -- almost didn't make it in time (she was in the last two or three folks to get on the plane), because we got EVEN MORE SNOW, and the goddamn highway was unplowed. Another 2-3 inches of the stuff, and it's still flurrying even now. (With more due on Wednesday this week, apparently).

My youngest headed back to Colorado yesterday -- and with The Minion now safely back in the Halls of Academia, the_themiscyran, Dotta Numba Two and I now segue from the holidays into the usual routine.

Looking forward to the opportunity to perhaps get some viewing of some of my holiday-received DVDs sometime soonish -- I got the complete FARSCAPE set (as many of you did, judging from postings I've read since XMas), as well as the Peacekeeper Wars sequel miniseries. I also got AFRO SAMURAI: RESURRECTION from The Minion, and Laura completed my collection of all seasons of BABYLON 5 with the 5th, so now a re-watching of that show can commence.

Recent viewing has been of the downloaded UK Television variety, including the final episodes of David Tennant's run on DOCTOR WHO.

Non-spoiler review -- don't expect a coherent story that even bothers to answer in Part Two any of the questions that it raises in Part One. Do expect an overdose of sentiment and schmaltz, which severely tested the tolerance of even fans of the 10th Doctor like us. Pure fanwank WriterWank, with plot holes the size of reality itself left gaping in favor of misty-eyed farewells.

Russell T. Davies deserves immense amounts of credit for bringing DOCTOR WHO back and making it a huge worldwide hit. He is also, bluntly, absolute shit as a crafter of stories. His works are essentially "tone poems" -- where the "Feel" is far more important to him than any sense of a tale being told. I am very, very relieved that he is being replaced as showrunner and head writer by the man responsible for the best, most award-winning episodes of the revived show.

Will Moffat disappoint? Of course -- I'm expecting the occasional clunker. But I at least expect clunkers that make an effort towards coherent drama, rather than the fuzzy sparkly magical incoherence of RTDs stuff.

Thinking about endings.

Yes, yes, I know -- there is no "year zero", so 2010 is technically the end of the decade, not 2009. Same argument that got trotted out in 1999. To which I say bullshit, for three reasons:

1) The whole Western dating system is arbitrary as fuck anyway. (I'm looking at you, Adoption of the Gregorian Calendar...)

2) No, there was no "year zero", but last I checked, we lived through 365 days in 2000, which makes 2009 the tenth year of the decade.

3) There's no way you're going to convince me that 1980 was part of the 70s.

Anyway -- I have to say that I'm extremely happy to see the ass-end of the "Aughts" or whatever-the-hell-we'll-end-up-calling-them. It was, all told, a fucking gallstone of a decade.

With some very notable personal exceptions (marriage to the_themiscyran, getting my business off the ground, The Minion's successful launch into college), it's been ten years of some pretty bad shit -- kicking off with a nasty custody fight, then Bush's election, 9/11, the all-too-rapid dismantling of my country into something nearly unrecognizable, moving away from NYC, the loss of my Grandmother, financial struggles, Cancer, a growing sense of personal and professional stagnation, the economy kneecapping family and friends, and finally the death of one of my closest friends.

Not exactly the best decade ever. Of the four I've had, it's easily been the worst. I'm very much hoping for better.

I feel like we've arrived at a turning point -- with the potential for either outcome, really. 2010-2019 could turn out to be the decade when the course was reversed and the promise of the 21st century began to be realized, or it could mark our descent into economic and political meltdown, rife with fanaticism and conflict -- the 1930s redux. Personally, despite my nature, I'm hopeful. I feel like things will get better -- we just need to shake off the dust of this first decade, and move ahead.

I leave you with the following musical tidbits to mark the day:


The first, I'm happy to report, represents one of my Holy Grails, finally found -- a track which some of you may recall I've been looking for, for AGES. I suspected that I'd finally find it as the year approached, and I was right. Here is the radio single from the soundtrack to the 1984 film, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, one of the only solo works by the Police guitarist to get radio play: Andy Summers - "2010."

...and, a track which I still think represents U2 at their very best: U2 - "New Year's Day."


Thanks for reading, folks, and have a great 2010.

This is a brilliant idea, so I'm passing it along: A movement underway trying to convince Americans to hold accountable the mega-banks that got us into this economic mess, and yet are supposedly "too big to fail" (which conveniently lets them off the hook for playing roulette with the world economy), by moving our money from accounts in those banks, to small, locally-owned banks that had no part in the meltdown (or the ridiculous bailout payments).

Watch the video:



...and then visit MoveYourMoney.info to find high-rated locally-owned banks near you.

Um, yeah.

Lawrence got "between 4 and 10 inches" -- nobody's quite sure, because 40 mph winds blew everything around, leading to areas like on our lawn where you can see patches of grass sticking up through the snow, sitting next to 4-foot-high snow drifts.

It's still snowing, and blowing. Expecting another 2 inches tonight, maybe another inch tomorrow before we're done.

Everybody here is snug and safe -- we're going to eat our WHO FEAST within an hour or so -- waiting for side dishes to finish -- Turkey(s) (not Roast Beast) are done. (We have 2 12-pounders, since the store was out of larger birds, and we have 5 hungry people here, a couple of which are teenagers.) Probably watch Doctor Who - The End of Time, Pt. 1 later this evening (Yes, I already have it -- this is me we're talking about).

Laura's family postponed Christmas gathering due to the roads -- although I'm not sure we're going to be able to dig out and go tomorrow, either (no plowing yet around us -- although Ian did a stalwart job of semi-clearing the driveway).

Anyway -- Loot summary over the next couple of days . I've got feasting to do. (Both turkey this evening, and footy tomorrow, during the Boxing Day matches!)

Gawrblezzus, evrywun.

I've been doing this since I started blogging, and this year is no exception.

A quote which sums up my feelings regarding the holiday, even as a non-Christian:

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,'' returned the nephew: "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!''
-- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol


In short, it's a holiday that often makes people treat one another just a bit BETTER. Even if only for a short time. There's surely something wonderous in that.

Merry Christmas, all.

The holiday travel joy has begun.

Kid 3 arrives this evening from Colorado -- and so far, things are looking OK there.

Kid 1, however, has been bumped to tomorrow. TOMORROW. Flights in and out of JFK are fine. Not a problem at all. No, the problem is the ridiculous puddle-jump from Hartford to JFK. No flight crew, massive cancellations. She can't fly out of Hartford AT ALL today. Ridiculous. The fucking airline could've hired a BUS to take people from Hartford to JFK and she would've made her connection on time. But no, the days of airline accountability are long since gone.

So tomorrow? More ridiculous. Hartford to Fort Meyers to Atlanta to KC. Yeah, Atlanta. Busiest airport, reputation for fuck-ups, 3 days before Christmas. To be honest, I'm expecting she'll get stuck there, and we'll see her on Wednesday.

Remember when we had an air travel system that worked?

I haven't been posting about the "progress" that's been made on Health Care reform efforts... Just sitting here, with each passing day, watching the hope I had during the last election bleed out onto the floor.

Here's a brilliant thought, though. A post from Cenk Uygur which advocates ignoring the current bill (letting it die), and instead simply using a reconciliation vote to pass a law that opens Medicare to anyone who wants to buy in, regardless of age.

*Bam* Problem solved.

The influx of people buying in to Medicare would immediately solve its solvency issues. The threat to their business model would force insurance companies to lower premiums, stop the whole "pre-existing conditions" nonsense, etc., to remain competitive with Medicare, and prevent people from abandoning them.

The Republicans (and Conservative Democrats) can't argue against Medicare, or they'll doom themselves to political oblivion.

A simple 51-vote majority, and it's done -- doing more than the current bill would do, without all of the byzantine loopholes and special-interest crap. A simple law -- remove the age restriction on Medicare, and allow anyone who wants it to buy in.

Now, how do we push this idea?

Click on the album cover (or this link) to download the album as a 60-something MB zip file from Rapidshare (if you don't have a rapidshare account, just click the "Free User" button).

The liner notes:

Track 1: "Gabriel's Message" - Sting. Not the version that you already know, from A Very Special Christmas, but rather a more traditional version from his newest exploration of "I'm a Serious Musician" pretention, If On A Winter's Night... A very pretty version of the song -- but I, for one, am ready for the man to return to recording pop songs.

Track 2: "I Believe in Father Christmas" by Greg Lake. Lake, of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Powell fame, recorded this amazing track in the early 70s. Hauntingly beautiful music, backed up with scathing lyrics like "they fed me a fairy story, 'till I believed in the Isrealite" and the final "Hallellujah Noel, be it Heaven or Hell -- the Christmas we get, we deserve."

Track 3: "O Come All Ye Faithful" by Pomplamoose. Internet darlings recording a Christmas classic in their own quirky style. (And for those of you who missed my Twitter/Facebook post -- they're currently giving away an mp3 of their brand new, original XMas song if you Give A Goat via World Vision )

Track 4: "Papa Ain't No Santa Claus (& Mama Ain't No Christmas Tree)" by Butterbeans & Susie. Bawdy, naughty bluesy argument between lovers in this 1930s vintage underground track.

Track 5: "A Christmas Duel" by The Hives & Cyndi Lauper. The same sort of sentiment, only with a 21st century vibe. Funny, sick and more than a little bit awesome.

Track 6: "The Coventry Carol" by Mediaeval Baebes. Traditional carol, performed acapella. Shivers.

Track 7: "What Do You Get A Wookie For Christmas" by Savanteous Q. Malmsteen. A cover of a track from the lauded Star Wars Christmas album. The answer, of course, is obvious: Wookies don't celebrate Christmas. They celebrate Life Day. Duh.

Track 8: "Santa Came Home Drunk" by Clyde Lasley & The Cadillac Baby Specials. Blues track, complete with backing soul girls. Hells, yeah.

Track 9: "Christmas Tree" by Lady Gaga. In the 80s, this sort of thing would be a 45 sent out to the fan club. Today, it's an mp3. Largely disposable bit of cotton-candy amusement from the Haus of Gaga, with the eternal Christmas lyric, "Light me up, put me on top, let's fa-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!"

Track 10: "Boogaloo Santa Claus" by J.D. McDonald. Early 70s classic funk, Christmas-style.

Track 11: "Holly, Ivy and Rose" by Tori Amos. Traditional (a version of the 15th century carol, "The Holly & The Ivy") sung as a duet between Tori Amos and her daughter, Natashya Hawley, from Amos' album Midwinter Graces.

Track 12: "Christmas in Washington" by Steve Earle. Earle laments the state of the nation, and calls out American socialist icons like Woodie Guthrie and Emma Goldman to rise up like Christ and redeem us, for the "unions have been busted, their proud red banners torn." Haunting and beautiful.

Tracks 13 & 14: "I Like Life (Reprise), Father Christmas (Reprise) and Thank You Very Much (Reprise)" from Scrooge (1970 musical). I finally got a copy of the soundtrack of my favorite musical version of A Christmas Carol, the 1970 film Scrooge with Albert Finney. These are the tracks that accompany Scrooge's rebirth, and seemed an appropriate close to this year's selection.


Thanks for reading, folks. Have a wonderful holiday.

For those of you with an interest in such things, jkahane has a breakdown of the contents of the new Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG, in a post complete with pictures.

...and yes, local folks. I'm going to be running a campaign, starting ASAP. It's been a bit over 20 years since my last Who RPG campaign, and I'm a bit eager to get started....

Fede Alvarez, a guy from Uruguay, uploaded a short SF video he created to YouTube a month ago. It cost him $300 to make.

Within days, he was being flooded with emails from Hollywood, and now he's been offered a $30,000,000 contract.

Not a bad return on investment.

The classic Beatles tune "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was inspired by a drawing that John Lennon's son Julian had done, featuring a girl in his nursery school.

Recently, Julian Lennon discovered that the same Lucy had passed away, from the chronic disease Lupus. He set out to record a tribute song and ended up working with fellow musician James Scott Cook, who coincidentally was also looking to record a tribute to his grandmother -- also named Lucy and also someone who had suffered from Lupus.

The result is "Lucy," a single now available on iTunes -- with all net proceeds going to the Lupus Foundation of America and St. Thomas' Lupus Trust.

No, not like that.

That's the name of my Amazon wish list.

I'm posting it here because a few kind folks have asked.


Presents are never mandatory, of course, and....

Wait. Who the hell am I kidding? Presents are always mandatory. Love Me With STUFF!

Paul Cornell, the writer of the most recent Captain Britain series, as well as the brilliant Doctor Who season three two-parter "Human Nature/Family of Blood", is doing a set of blog posts that he's calling "the 12 blogs of Christmas" -- and first up is this absolutely lovely Doctor Who story, melancholy yet hopeful in the manner of all good Christmas tales:

"The Last Doctor" by Paul Cornell.

A slice of my childhood, circa December 1977:



(Or, if you're reading this on Facebook, which continually fucks up my embeds when it brings these posts over, just click here.)

Alright, here goes...

Welcome to my favorite song, circa 1983. I got the Business As Usual Album for Christmas '82 and proceeded to play it daily for the next 8 months or so. Oddly enough, despite regular radio and MTV airplay, this song never charted in the US, because it was never released as a single -- which was the criteria at the time. Men At Work - "Be Good Johnny."

Apple has done it again -- found an obscure bit of music for their latest commercial (for the new iPod Nano) which is so damned infectious, I have to go hunting. A while back, it was "New Soul" by Yael Naim, an Israeli. This time around, the track is from a Swedish pop singer -- and ironically, it's a song that bashes the complacency of acquisition-minded suburbanites. Miss Li - "Bourgeois Shangri-La."

I'd never heard the band Metric before, but stumbled across this track. They were described as part of the whole Indie neo-New Wave thing, which is what drew me to listen. I was rewarded by some really tight instrumentation and brilliantly cutting lyrics: Metric - "Gold Guns Girls."

Another absolutely *brilliant* mashup by DJ Moule -- this time mixing "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith, "Give It Away" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and "Block Rockin' Beats" by the Chemical Brothers. My jaw, it drops. DJ Moule - "Give This Way."

Yesterday was Paul Hardcastle's 52nd birthday. Back in 1985 (when he was 28), he gave us one of the best electro tracks ever recorded (and a big part of my initiation into electronic and sample-based music): Paul Hardcastle - "19."

Was thinking a bit about Titan AE earlier in the week, wondering if it might have done better as a live-action film. Not sure -- but as a starship-nerd, I have to admit that I love the sequence of the main character piloting the ship through the gas clouds, accompanied by this track: The Urge - "It's My Time To Fly."

In honor of the ass-screaming drop in temperatures and the snow seen across large parts of the country this week, a track that I think is a better version than the original it covers: The Bangles - "Hazy Shade of Winter."


...and, speaking of winter: Next Friday, I'll be posting the annual Friday Music XMas Collection (complete, as usual, with cover art) for your holiday pleasure.

Enjoy, and see you then.

A special Christmas-and-Doctor-Who-themed channel ident from the BBC this year:



(Link for the embedding-challenged Facebook RSS feed...)

Also -- American fans won't have to wait long this year: Part One of The End of Time will air in the US only ONE DAY after the UK-- December 26th -- and Part Two will air on January 2nd, one day after the UK as well. Given download times, that's almost the same viewing schedule as getting it via Bittorrent... :)

The Human Adventure Was Just Beginning....


December 7th, 1979 --- Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened in theaters.



For all the crap people throw at this moving as "the boring one" -- it's still one of my favorites, mostly by virtue of my memories of being 10 years old and finally seeing my favorite TV show made into a movie that I was convinced was as cool as Star Wars. I remember sitting, absolutely thrilled by the nearly 8 minute long unveiling of the new Enterprise... and I remember coming out of the theater to the sight of the sunset behind some fairly ominous storm clouds, and my Dad pointing out "Look! V'Ger!"

30 years. Wow.