AWESOME ENOUGH TO BE REBUILT IN THE 25TH CENTURY...

I have been out of the greater Chicagoland area for about two years and, save for the temperatures that will freeze your clothing solid around your body, I miss it.

I take no small amount of pride in the fact that Chicago is Gotham City. It was my pleasure to go downtown with an out-of-state friend or two or three a couple of summers ago and dine on the Chicago River and witness some filming for Batman Begins.

Bears in the playoffs is cool to me. I don't generally follow sports, but whenever a hometown team started doing well, I took a look. I didn't jump on the bandwagon, but I liked seeing the Bulls n-peat and watching the Cubs almost...eh.

I am, however, grateful for a couple of things.

One is the pervasiveness of WGN (albeit in SuperStation form) on the nation's cable systems which allows me to watch Chicago's Very Own News At Nine. DVR'd and ready for me at my leisure. Also, a newscaster with a name like Jackie Bange...heh. Doesn't quite beat WMAQ's Dick Johnson. I know. Juvenile. What of it?

Secondly, there is one exactly Portillo's outside of the greater Chicagoland area and it's just up the street from me. If you know Northeastern IL, you know Portillo's. If you don't, you're not paying any fucking attention. Dogs. chili cheeseburgers and prohibition era decor. It looks a lot like the one I used to frequent in Vernon Hills and tastes exactly the same (the food, not the...yeah).

All I need now is to pick myself up one of those stylin' Chicago Police jackets. They had them in The Alley last time I was there and I knew I should have gotten it then. That was getting close to some while ago now.

All of this has led me to my next spec pilot. It'll be a cop show. Yeah, there's never a shortage of cops shows, but I've always wanted to see one that uses the character of the city of Chicago as a...character. Homicide did it with Baltimore. I want to do it with Chicago.

I'm not in any rush to get to it. I'm always trying to keep a decent rotation going in the specs and so first up is to finish my Dexter spec. I've got another spec in mind after that, but Area Three is working itself out in the background.

INSERT "BILLIONS & BILLIONS" REFERENCE HERE

Cosmos Theme by Vangelis.

Carl Sagan was most assuredly one of the...awesomest motherfuckers ever to set foot on this planet (or this Pale Blue Dot). I am dead serious and I will fight to death (in the old Highland manner) anyone who dares suggest otherwise.

You simply couldn't play Astronauts Vs. Cavemen with him, because he'd consider it, answer and he'd be absolutely, irrefutably right.

December 20 marks the tenth anniversary of his death and if you look around the web you may find some others marking this date (at the suggestion of Joel Schlosberg).

As a wee lad, I was interested in space (as many wee lads tend to be). I was fascinated, of course, by astronauts and I was quite the little Star Trek fan. Then this Cornell professor dude had this multi-part series on PBS. Cosmos. It was about, well, the cosmos. Not just astronomy and astrophysics. He touched on a lot of things. Big numbers. The Rosetta Stone. Samurai crabs. Guys with metal noses. Brooklyn. The Library of Alexandria. Computer science. Big bangs. Little ones. UFOs. Brain parts. The cosmos and everything in it (that we knew of in 1980).

Cosmos made you feel smart. Cosmos, very likely, actually did make those who viewed it smarter. It was truly an education. And it lead me to read about a great many things. The lessons Carl Sagan taught me stick with me, quite clearly, to this day. More that any teacher I ever had in any classroom. In fact, he even armed me with the knowledge to take down one of those teachers who obviously didn't think much of the astro-sciences and didn't feel any particular need to teach it correctly to impressionable young minds. Carl Sagan helped build my contempt for authority.

I believe the knowledge that Sagan spread through his series (the most watched on PBS for a decade, until Ken Burns came along and rallied the civil war freaks like no others) influenced popular science fiction. People understood science a little better and perhaps you could no longer get away with stuff like " Logically, as we move faster and faster toward the sun, we'll begin to move backward in time." (Spock in Star Trek: "Tomorrow is Yesterday"). Writers had to be a little more plausible. I think, in that way, Sagan likely had a subtle impact on such things as Star Trek: The Next Generation and the science fiction that has followed in its footsteps. He even had the more distinct impact of having his offspring, Nick Sagan, writing several episodes of TNG and Voyager.

At one point, I had a job in a retail furniture and housewares type store working in the storeroom part-time in the evening. It was a pretty sweet gig, because people rarely came to pick up their furniture at night. As such, the bulk of my responsibilities revolved around changing light bulbs. There was a lot of downtime.

The store had purchased boxes and boxes of random books. Bought by the pound, they were used to dress up bookcases and set on coffee tables and what-not. One bored evening, I ventured out upon the floor and started scanning these books for something I might be able to waste a little time with. It was a metric ton of utter crap, save for one book I almost didn't notice because it was pushed back behind some other books. Contact by Carl Sagan.

I was rapidly enthralled. It had some fascinating ideas (like a private space program) and was pretty damn educational as it went along, outlining the protocols of the SETI program and explaining the ins and outs of mathematics as a universal language. I even liked the movie with Jodie Foster. The big "pay off" not being all that big didn't bother me so much because I knew exactly what was coming. I found it a reasonably faithful adaptation.

Sagan educated me. He made me smarter. Made me more objective about pretty much everything. Made me use logic and made me realize when to punt logic because it might be getting in the way. He made me realize there is always something you don't know and it's okay to not know those things. I wish I could have met him.

Cosmos is currently airing on The Science Channel. I think it's time for a refresher course in the universe.

WHEN YOU GO FROM A MINOR PROCEDURE TO BEING JOCELYN WILDENSTEIN AND HOW YOU GET BACK AGAIN...MAYBE

So I watched the Nip/Tuck season finale last night for...I don't know why, but I did. I used to enjoy this melodrama for its first couple of seasons. The third one got bogged down with The Carver which went on a bit long and was generally unsatisfying in the end.

With the one-two punch of Liz's kidney being stolen all urban-legend-like and the insufferable Rosie O'Donnell [no link!], I decided it was time to just bail. Oh, look. There's that shark that's been lingering about. And there's a ramp here now. Hmm.

So, the finale was interesting. I mean that in the Chinese proverb sense. Two things struck me about this and, yeah there's going to be some spoileryness about this, so if it's sitting on your TiVo either go watch it or don't, but do it now. One thing bad. One thing good.

The one thing bad was that they tried to pull of the Magnolia Trick. I somehow doubt that Paul Thomas Anderson originated the following idea (though maybe he did), but he was the one that got it in front of everybody so I'm giving him the credit. The Magnolia Trick is that, essentially, your ensemble cast basically speaks/sings the lyrics of the song ("Brighter Discontent" by The Submarines) lain over the montage they are in. Nip/Tuck didn't actually have them vocalize it themselves, but they mouthed all the lyrics of the whole song through these scenes of their lives, as if they just happened to be saying them (and in the case of a line referring to "hotel stationary / from the time we first met ," the character was using medical office stationary from Troy/Landau, quite plainly).

I didn't think it came off very well, and besides, I regard this as being like the opening arpeggio of "Every Breath You Take." It's kind of weird chord, I think it's got a ninth in it and maybe an eleventh. It a strange minor chord extension or something, I don't know. It's been a while. The thing is, you try arpeggiating that chord for some other song or in a different way (may be even just strumming it) and you think of "Every Breath You Take." Andy Summers and Gordon ruined that chord for everybody else that would come after him (not so much had the song just been a B-side and "Miss Gradenko" had somehow become the popular song of the decade). Anderson ruined that montage idea for those who would come after him. It's too unique an idea to just keep in the box of stuff you use again.

The good: Christian joining Sean in Hollywood to reestablish McNamara/Troy in the other plastic surgery capital of the country. There's no reason that next year can't be like a soft booting of the series. It can get less involved from its own built-up continuity and get back to its roots and also play with the movie star thing (though, I think Nip/Tuck has suffered from Will & Grace syndrome (too damn many high profile guest stars).

And this is Jocelyn Wildenstein.

If anybody can hook me up with a pdf or something of any Dexter script, it would be much appreciated. Drop me a line.

YE GAWDS, NOT ANOTHER BEST OF THE YEAR SORTA THINGY -- THOSE THINGS ARE SO FULL OF CRAP

Given the disruption of my recent move, I find myself not unlike the the four-year-old on the playground with a tenuous grasp on gravity and the same for the chain. In less complicated words, I'm a bit out of the swing. I hereby endeavor to get back into it with an innocuous and cliched trope. The end-of-year, best-of (well, favorites, I'm not going to be the arbiter of the thing) list. These are in no particular order, in categories of my own devise and for the sake of those tired of hearing about it, anything about Aaron Sorkin (West Wing DVDs, Studio 60, whatever) will be excluded from the list. I reserve the right to add to the list without notice.

Favorite New Drug
Berries & Cream Dr. Pepper
Cherry Vanilla is still the awesome sauce, but I dig this crazy concoction from my personal physician. Give it whirl, all you have to lose is a buck or so.


Favorite TV Series
Battlestar Galactica
Veronica Mars was seriously in the running for this, for me, and it came down to tenths of second and video replay. Ultimately, I liked the crafting of the mystery of the first nine, but I'd gotten used to the wollop of closing a 22-episode mystery. It's a little hiccupy, I suppose, but not near as bad as some critics I've seen in their savaging of one of the best shows on the air. Still in my top two or three and always eagerly awaited.

Battlestar, this season though, has given me the insurgent's eye view, Saul killing Ellen, the hot-drop of a jumbo aircraft carrier, ramming a basestar with another, secret trials, the call for Sharon's new callsign, the reinvention of Gaeta, Baltar living with Cyclons, the boxing episode, and Luanne Katraine, CAG. Jane, if you thought you were following the Beatles, then you are surely the Stones.

You know, Doctor Who's second year was in it too. So was The Wire, (Jim True-Frost was great this year) but geekly tendencies won out. This time.

This entry leads me to...

Favorite Podcast
Ron Moore
Commentaries on virtually every episode of Battlestar and even full-on recorded writer's meetings. Must-hear-TV-but-not-TV.

Favorite New Series
Smith
Admittedly, not for everybody. The main characters are bad people. That's why it was good. Screw the people who can only accept stories about good people doing good things. Fucking puritans, they are. Doesn't matter. CBS canned it right quick with ratings as good as some other shows (on other networks, though) that didn't get canned then replaced it with something else that got canned equally quickly. Maybe the problem isn't the shows.


Favorite New Comics Series
52
Edged out the prime weirdness of NextWave only by virtue of being quality entertainment ( by some of comics biggest and best names) that comes out every fucking week. It's not just just the perfect meld of quality and quantity, but as a DC geek I love all the little bits and pieces of the DC universe being pulled out to make this thing. All the mad scientists, Super-Chief (such as he was) and even, my gawd, Ambush Bug.


Favorite Flick
V for Vendetta
Another photo finish, against The Prestige. I've gone with V for Vendetta because I've always had a soft spot for violent revolution and fighting in the streets (Fight Club stands as my favorite film to date). I love the source material, and while among the comics cognoscenti it may be anathema to say this, but I think the film revitalized that material for a new generation and it some parts even improved upon the story. Ultimately they are two different things for two different mediums, but both are great and sometimes Alan Moore is a genius and other times he's just a grumpy ass.

I just have to say that The Prestige was masterful and a perfect example of playing against an audience that thinks they're too clever.


Favorite Meal
The Capitol Grille in Charleston, NC
A meal is not just the food. A damn fine steak (if my unsophisticated palate does say) and a glass of Stella Artois (not a fave, but good enough), good chums, and a discussion of television with noted comics author Warren Ellis. He spoke to me of Nighty Night, we disagreed over the second season of Doctor Who, we agreed on Deadwood. There was also some talk of politics and what it was like in San Francisco on election night in 2004. All in all, a good reason to be in North Carolina that day. All graciously hosted by this this assbag.


Favorite Book
Mountain Man Dance Moves by McSweeney's (Vintage Press)
The only book to come in 2006 that resulted in me getting paid. Funny stuff in there, too.


Favorite Drop (If you don't play World of Warcraft, don't even try to read this)
Manual of Eviscerate IX
Not because of what it is. As drops go, big fuckin' deal. After all, it's trainable after patch 2.0.1., but I liked that I got it early without paying 200+g for it. No. I liked this drop because five of us grouped up for a UBRS run and we were about to go looking for some PUGly types to fill out the raid and I said that this book will drop that night, so it was agreed that no rogues would be recruited for the run. Just me. Lo and behold, the book dropped and I was the only rogue in sight. Huzzah. WoW. A really good way to keep hanging out with folks that live half-a-country away.

Favorite Album
Ehn...
Album as collections of songs, not to be confused with record...made of vinyl. Nothing really rawked my world this year, as my peculiar and indefensible musical tastes go. I liked Gnarls Barkley, but it got way overplayed. The Dresden Dolls release was okay. First one was better. Tenacious D's Pick of Destiny was okay, but way too short. It was just stuff from the movie rather than a proper album. TV on the Radio was alright. Lily Allen's...amusing. Maybe I'll get some NIN in 2007.


Favorite TV on DVD Box Set
24 - Season Five
This choice reflects not just the quality of the program, but the quality of the extras and packaging and what not. Complete series sets are disqualified, because I'm a buy-by-the-season guy (it would have been The Complete M*A*S*H set with an unproduced script in the box).

Stylin' box, they finally ditched the fold-out box for the slimlines in a slip case. 12 commentaries, the customary made-for-DVD mini-episode to prequel the upcoming season, 23 deleted scenes and a full seventh disc of extra goodies (and at Best Buy, there was an eighth disc). And finally...after five years...PLAY ALL!!!!!!


Favorite Image
Shuttle Launch from the ISS
And I got to see this from the other side also.

Oh, our poor space program. Where did it all wrong?

Probably with the cutting of the Apollo budget and snowballing from there.

People can complain about the cost of the space program and get all upset when astronauts get killed, but the fact is, you don't go a day without depending on a dozen things that exist because of the space program. Astronauts know what they're getting in to and accept the risks.

/minirant


Click pic for make bigger.

IT'S WORTH NOTING THAT THOSE TWO GUYS ARE DEAD

It comes as no surprise to anyone, except perhaps to hermits that still live in the papered-up shack they were born in that reminds one just a little too much of the house in that one X-Files with the inbred brothers, that MOVING SUCKS.

Regular service (such as it was) shall be restored shortly.