WordWolf

Ok, NOW it's officially his birthday! We hope he has a good one...

STOP THE PRESSES!!!! Man, I was all set to leave that message just after midnight, the morning of 8/4, too. Yeah, have fun.

Well, it's either very easy or very hard to understand. The most important aspects of my life are summed up in 2 syllables. I've a strong indentification with wolves. The "Word" part, I presume, needs no explanation.

And here I thought no 1 was going to notice. Note to self: remember to post a new message in a few weeks. Actually, things have been looking up this week. Even my internet stalker hasn't been making any noise lately. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was a respite as a birthday present. Now, where did I leave that beef chow mein? WordWolf.

I was fascinated with the idea, on & off, when I was very young. However, since I KEPT reading, I discarded my original ideas of aliens in space. ---------- BTW, the crop cirles have pretty well been documented as the work of a bunch of pranksters. I don't have their web address handy. --------- I think Dennis Miller said it best.... "We imagine a race so advanced, so blase, that they don't even have windows on their spaceships to look out at the wonder of space as the pass. Yet, as soon as they arrive on earth, the first thing they do is grab some yokel & give him an anal probe. What deep mystery of the universe could they possibly expect to find there? Imagine THEIR disappointment..." ------------ On a lark, I picked up a Weekly World News that featured a story about an upcoming et Second Coming of Christ by spaceship. Before I started to read, I said to myself "self, if I'm right, somewhere in this story will be an account where someone's freewill will get discarded. I read the article. This woman saw lights in the sky. So, she did as a "friend" had instructed her, once...She cleared her mind, dropped its defenses, & deliberately tried to be receptive to "any message" they should try to give. The very next thing she knew, it was hours later, & she has no memory of the experience. But,hey, guys, whatever makes you happy.

If my trivia holds up, in Star Trek (the Original Series), the empath in "the Empath" was named "Gem". (Who's Who in Star Trek, DC Comics.) --------- One episode of ST:TNG I will always love is "the Ensigns of Command." That's the episode where the Sheliak Corporate tells the Federation to clear the humans off the planet or they will be destroyed, under their rights under their treaty with the Federation. The episode proceeds in 2 parts. A) Data goes down to the planet to convince the very stubborn colonists that to refuse to evacuate is a death sentence for the colonists. B) Picard desperately tries to negotiate for enough time to bring in transports to remove all the colonists. The scene where he finally figures out how is one of my favourite of all time. Steve remembered the perfect quote to sum up the Sheliak's attitudes. I just figured out who the Sheliak reminded me of-the Excalbians. Those were the rock people from the original series that made the copies of Abraham Lincoln & the others, & had good duke it out with evil in a free-for-all. ------ Actually, ST:TOS did have some good moments. I think "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was a GREAT episode. Frank Gorshon as that constable, with the two guys-both white on one side, black on the other-fight a genocidal race war that's continued on for centuries. It threw a whole new light in racism. Also, the idea of an interracial crew working together worked well. You all know that tv's first interracial (white/black interracial) kiss was between Kirk & Uhuru, right? (American tv, anyway.) -------- WHO didn't like Fantasy Island? I didn't watch it as often as I'd like, & I liked the new series w/ Malcolm Mc Dowall better, but the old series had a certain charm. Of course, it also had Ricardo Montalban. My favourite scene from Fantasy Island never happened on Fantasy Island. The old Bloom County comic strip. Opus is watching Fantasy Island on tv. Tatoo: Who is our guest this week, bahs? Mr Roarke: No one, Tattoo. This week is special. This week, we will talk about MY fantasy. Tattoo: Your fantasy, bahs? Mr R: Yes. My fantasy is to see you drive a 1978 Chrysler Cordoba off that cliff on the other side of the island.... Tattoo: Oh, bahs, I don't think I LAHK that fantasy... Opus: WE DO!!!! WE DO!!!!! ---- Someone, somewhere, thought Normal, Ohio would actually work as a series. Why? ---------- The original Black Scorpion was played by Joan Severance, but I'm blanking on the actress who replaced her. I never did see the episode where Adam West plays a villain on that show. ---------- Rottie Grrrl, thanks for filling in the ending to that twilight zone episode. I saw the beginning, but never saw the end.... ---------- Until they make "A Very Brady Chainsaw Massacre", my life is incomplete. WordWolf.

Hm. In defense of a few shows on that list.... -AfterMASH wasn't awful. Not great, but not terrible. -Unhappily Ever After featured Nikki Cox. I think it should not make the list for that reason alone. -Manimal runs on the SciFi Channel from time to time. I finally got to see it a few months ago. It was fine. I've seen worse. If they wanted to dump on a 70's SciFi show, they should have picked "Automan". (Also on SciFi Channel, but not nearly as often.) -Woops! had an original concept. It actually worked, kinda. It was a little like Gilligan's Island, except there were no plans to get them off the island. -I don't think Hogan's Heroes was necessarily that bad, but the concept is very strange. To quote Gilbert Gottfried, "I'd like to meet the guy who came up with the idea for 'Hogan's Heroes'. He goes into a meeting with the big studio heads. he says 'I have an idea for a new TV show. It's about American POW's in a Nazi war camp. IT'S A COMEDY!' " ------------- To address ideas proposed by others... "Top of the Heap" wasn't a great show, but the opening minutes had a great scene. Matt Le Blanc's at home, with some airheaded "chicks". His dad walks in, dressed with protective gear from work. He's in coveralls with a mask covering his face. (His entire body is covered.) The "chicks" scream "Freddy!" & scamper out. (You're thinking one thing-Matt Le Blanc says it.) *looks over at Dad* "You don't look like Freddy, you look like Jason." Ok, that wasn't enough for a series, but I thought it was a fair joke. ------------------ I finally found out why "Galactica 1980" sucked so badly. Turns out the Battlestar Galactica series was expensive to make. (In a nutshell, the concept for the original show was "Wagon Train" in space. It was about the journey.) The studio tells Larson "ok-have them reach earth." "And THEN what?" "Who cares-everyone will watch!" The big problem came when they said "we'll let you keep doing Galactica. However, we're only giving a shoestring budget. So, you can't bring back any of the regular actors (he DID get to keep Lorne Greene), & you can't shoot any new special effects scenes. So, we had a version of Battlestar Galactica, with NONE of the elements that people liked. There was no hopeful journey (heck, what they found at the end was a crushing of all their hope that earth could mount a defense.) The beloved regular characters were all gone. There were no space scenes that weren't spliced in from the old series. That's why, when discussing the Galactica timeline, everybody considers the "1980" series non-canonical -they ignore it completely. ---------- My pick for worst tv shows ever to be released is one entry from Saturday morning tv. "Uncle Croc's Block." This tv show featured a man in a crocodile suit, played by Charles Nelson Reilly, & who's foil, Basil Bitterbottom, was played by-who was the professor in the old Lost in Space series? Then again, just about anything the "Kroft Superstars" showed would make the list, in my book-Far Out Space Nuts, the Bugaboos, HR Pufenstuf, & let us not forget Land of the Lost, or Sigmund & the Sea Monster. Then again, I don't get why people are still watching "Big Brother" or "the Mole".....

I felt much the same way about Episode II-Attack of the Clones. My biggest disappointment of the movie was simple. This is the movie where we are supposed to see the beginnings of a relationship between Anakin Skywalker & Amidala. However, when they get scenes alone, what's Anakin's favourite topic of conversation? "Oh, Obi-Wan's jealous of me, he doesn't understand me, he's holding me back, yadda yadda yadda." I've been taking an informal straw poll since the movie came out. We all pretty much agree that whining is NOT an effective method to get a chick interested in you-let alone being in the same ROOM with you. What in the world attracted Amidala to him when that was his main topic? Granted, it didn't take up a LOT of movie time, but it was so dissonant I "fell" out of the "willfull suspension of disbelief" needed to enjoy the movie. I liked the other jedis, & would have liked to see more of them, especially Sam Jackson's Jedi Master. ("Pass me my lightsaber-it's the one that has 'bad m*-f*er' engraved on it.") I also didn't like R2-D2's little jet-system. Overall, though, I liked the movie. (Christopher Lee might have done a few situps before trying to pass as his character, though.) I liked the subtle touch used with Jango & his "son". Now THAT'S the kind of deft handling I would have liked MORE of. I hope they establish that the star destroyers we see are the earlier "Victory-class" type, & not the later, "Imperial-class" type, which would mess up the continuity. ------------------- Men in Black II was funny. Not great, but entertaining. I mostly went to try to recognize a haunt of mine which was used for filming. Apparently, it was unrecognizable in the film. ---------------------- I haven't seen the profound movies yet. Apparently, I've really missed something. ------------------- In LotR:FotR, I REALLY missed the characters that were dropped. Tom Bombadil & Glorfindel had scenes which I felt added to the story. (Obviously, the director disagreed.) I also would have liked the references to the "missing" wizard left in. Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White (racist) both appear in the trilogy (& the first movie). They're both members of the Council of Wizards. So's Radagast the Brown. (Rhadagast? I might have the spelling wrong.) Radaghast's specialty is communication with animals. He had met with Saruman before the first movie gets rolling, & was fooled into thinking he was still good. Anyway, Radaghast sends out an animal APB on Gandalf. That's why the King of the Eagles was looking for Gandalf in the first place. Radaghast & Glorfindel help remind the reader that the events we see aren't the only ones going on- other peoples are taking action off-camera. I also missed Aragorn's comments in the council at Rivendell. He points out that, as a Ranger, he's been busy slaying goblins & things a stones' throw from towns like Bree, where they make fun of him & call him names like "Longshanks" (for all the walking he does.) Bilbo makes an aside a little later to Frodo about this. Bilbo explains that all the rangers are really nobility in exile. Finally, I would have liked the lines about Bilbo's mail-jacket to have stayed in. (He had retreived the armour from where it was warehoused, & gave it to Frodo at Rivendell.) At Moria, Gimli & Gandalf speak about it. "..Where is it?" "Still at the Michael Delving mathom-house, I suppose." "WHAT???" "I didn't have the heart to tell him that armour was worth the combined cost of the shire & everything in it." (Frodo, wearing it under his shirt secretly at that moment, winces.) Ok, not earth-shaking, but I felt they added to the story. I hope that when Return of the King rolls in, the director makes his cuts where I skimmed, saving us about 1 hour of hobbits on a forced march.

Actually, I would have liked to have talked to whoever wrote the lines for the Professor. There was this one episode, see.... (Warning: Star Trek nitpicker on-duty) they found a "map" on how to get off the island.. The Professor studied it for the ocean current info. At the end of the episode, the Professor explained how he had misinterpreted the map. Professor, to Gilligan & the Skipper.... Prof: "..cuneiform, which was the oldest form of writing, was invented by the Assyrians. But I read it as though it were buoustrophedon, you see?" Gilligan: "Yeah, I see. I also hear pretty good, too...But I didn't understand a word you said." Skipper:"I have to admit, Professor, some of those words went over my head, too." Prof: "Well, basically, all ancient forms of writing went from right to left. I read from left to right....." --------------------------------------- It was when I was reading thru FF Bruce's "The Scrolls & the Parchments", some years after I saw that, that I next saw the word "boustrophedon". Boustrophedon neither "goes" from right to left nor left to right. It keeps on going from whichever side you stopped. For example, say you wrote one line left-to-right, like we do. At the end of the line-if you were writing like boustrophedon-you would end at the far right of the page, then begin the next line of writing below that, on the far right, & write across to the far left. The next line would go beneath that, & go back from left (where the last line ended) to the far right. I don't remember if the word "boustrophedon" translates into "turning" or a related word. ------- I imagine that whoever wrote that line in the script had no idea the show would reair enough for someone to actually catch that line, & realize it was wrong. ---------------------------------- Daffy Duck: "...leaning back on their balalaikas, playing their samovars...." (Really, Daffy? They leaned on their guitars while playing their big teakettles? Shouldn't they "lean back on their samovars, playing their balalaikas"?) -------------------------------------------- So, what's the current standings? Will the winner face off against the winner from another show? (like that old commercial?)

Comedian Paul Rodriguez, re: Gilligan's Island: "What's wrong with Gilligan AND the skipper? Why has no 1 nailed Maryanne yet? If there was a chicano on that island, we would have overpopulated it... 'yeah, Mary Ann! Yeah, Ginger!.. what the heck-bring Mrs Howell over...' and this professor can make a radio out of a coconut, but can't get their *** off the island...."