Chrome OS

Google announced that they will produce an operating system called Chrome OS to go with their Chrome web browser. The OS will come out sometime in the second half of 2010 and be targeted at netbooks. The PC pundits have gone crazy over this. Some think it is the most significant announcement in years and signals that Microsoft's dominance in operating systems is at an end. Others think that it will crash and burn. Let's take a closer look.

First, this announcement does not affect Microsoft's core business in any meaningful way. Netbooks are the hottest part of the market right now, but they are still a tiny portion. By definition, they are not gaming machines or business workstations. That leaves the majority of the market to Microsoft. In fact, the netbook market is one that Microsoft is still trying to figure out. Currently they are selling Windows XP for netbooks and only charging a few dollars (the rumor is $15). They floated the idea of having a stripped-down version of Windows 7 for netbooks then relented. Either way, this is not their taditional market and they do not make much money on it. Losing it would not affect them except in a pyrrhic way.

So, Google is not a real threat to Microsoft. What about the other way - can Google establish itself on the netbook?

The first generation of netbook was based on the Linux operating system which is what Chrome OS will use. As netbooks matured, the market switched to Windows XP. There are several reasons for this and Google can learn from them.

The first netbooks were based on the ARM chip which Microsoft does not support. That made Linux the only choice. Intel introduced the Atom chip for low-powered applications and most netbook makers switched over. At the same time, Microsoft made several concessions, allowing netbooks to run Windows XP instead of Vista and reducing the licensing fee. This made Windows a viable choice.

The Linux that was being offered on the netbooks was not that attractive. since it is a new operating system, the makers wrapped it in a gui that tries to simply everything. This reenforced the fact that Linux is not Windows. When presented with an alien gui or the familiar Windows, most customers went with Microsoft.

Google's lesson here is that it is possible to make an operating system too friendly. The transition from Windows XP to a full-featured version of Linux such as Ubuntu is no worse than the transition from XP to Vista. More important, once you fire up your browser, there is virtually no difference. Google seems to have figured this out. They are promising that the operating system will not get in your way.

Google is promising an operating system that will boot fast and be virus-free (good luch with that part) and that will mainly exist to run the browser. Everything that you really need will be web-based.

There are skeptics:

But it's not just Office that will keep Microsoft's hold on the PC market. Can you replace Active Directory with a web app? Is there a site I can visit to connect to my office's shared printer? What do you mean World of Warcraft doesn't run in the browser? How do I play a DVD in Google Chrome?

This argument misses a big point - people do nto buy netbooks to connect with active directory or an office's shared printer. You cannot play World of Warcraft on a netbook and they do not come with a DVD player. Netbooks are used by people who want small, light PCs that are easy to carry around.

I will add that I have an Aspire One netbook. I installed Ubuntu Linux on it with a dual boot. I can switch between the two operating systems and do about everything I need in either. I can even play DVDs on an external drive in Linux.

This brings me to a final point. With Ubuntu I had to load several drivers and plug-ins. Some of these are deliberately kept out of the distribution because of licensing restrictions - you have to pay a license fee to distribute them. Presumably Google is big enough that they can cut a deal on these packages so that Chrome OS will come with everything that you need, out of the box.

If they manage that then they could capture a significant portion of the netbook market. If they can convince some of the makers to switch back to the ARM chip for extended battery life then they will have that portion of the market to themselves.

None of this is a threat to Microsoft but it could affect Apple by offering a second alternative to Windows.

Flash Gordon

On the 4th of July Spike TV showed Star Wars and G4 showed Flash Gordon. What a contrast.

Flash Gordon was one of a spate of science fiction movies produced after Star Wars in the hope of attracting the same audience. There were several others including Start Trek, the Motion Picture, but Flash Gordon manages to distinguish itself in its look and feel.

Ironically, the two movies share the same background. Star Wars was meant to recapture the excitement of the serials - movies released one reel at a time over several weeks. The Star Wars movies (and the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies) each break down into three distinct chapters per movie. The capsule description at the beginning of the movies comes straight from the serials.

While the serials were one influence on George Lucas, there were several others. The serials mainly influenced the form of Star Wars, not the content.

On this other hand, Flash Gordon was essentially a remake of a serial and took all of its inspiration from them. The result is visually stunning but very campy. A good bit of the dialog is tongue-in-cheek. The special effects manage to look expensive and cheesy at the same time. They capture the look of the old serials when spaceships were hung from wires but with state of the art (1980) effects. For example, the cloud of hawk men is impressive but their tiny wings could never support them.

The musical score deserves mention. It was done by Queen not long after their classic hit Bohemian Rhapsody. I think that this and Highlander were the only two scores that they did (It is hard to tell for sure. IMDB lists every movie that used a clip from Queen which is a very long list).

The cast includes Max Von Syndow as the Emperor Ming, Topol, Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin, and Brian Blessed as the bombastic ruler of the hawkmen.

The plot is too fast-moving and superficial to describe. The movie is best enjoyed by ignoring the plot twists and holes and listening to the over-the-top dialog. Just a few examples from IMDB:

Dale Arden: Flash, Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!

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Flash Gordon: Prince Barin! I'm not your enemy, Ming is! Let's all team up and fight him.

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Zarkov: We are only interested in friendship. Why do you attack us?
The Emperor Ming: Why not?

---

Zogi, the High Priest: Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take this Earthling Dale Arden, to be your Empress of the Hour?
The Emperor Ming: Of the hour, yes.
Zogi, the High Priest: Do you promise to use her as you will?
The Emperor Ming: Certainly!
Zogi, the High Priest: Not to blast her into space?
[Ming glares at Zogi]
Zogi, the High Priest: Uh, until such time as you grow weary of her.
The Emperor Ming: I do.
Dale Arden: I do NOT!

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Dale Arden: I'm a New York City girl. It's a little too quiet around here for me.

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Princess Aura: But my father has never kept a vow in his life!
Dale Arden: I can't help that, Aura. Keeping our word is one of the things that make us... better than you.

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Prince Barin: [to Flash] Welcome back from the grave.
[to Princess Aura]
Prince Barin: I knew you were up to something, though I'll confess I hadn't thought of necrophilia?

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Klytus: No one - but NO ONE - dies in the Palace without a command from the Emperor.

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Doctor Hans Zarkov: Look at them! The poor wretches are just waiting for someone to lead them in revolt...!
Flash Gordon: [annoyed] Oh, are you looking at ME, Zarkov?

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Kala: We're going to empty your memory as we might empty your pockets... Doctor.
Doctor Hans Zarkov: Don't empty my mind! I've spent my whole life filling it!

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The Emperor Ming: Klytus! Are your men on the right pills? Maybe you should execute their trainer!

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Robot: Long live Flash! You've saved your Earth. Have a nice day.
Flash Gordon: YEAH!

---

Prince Barin: I've changed.
Princess Aura: I've changed, too.
Zarkov: [Successfully picks the electronic door lock] A-ha! I knew it was one of the prime numbers of the Zenith series. I haven't changed.

---

Goodbye Michael

On reflecting on the career of the late Michael Jackson, I have to start by saying that I hate child singers. Their voices grate on my nerves. The Osmonds and the Jackson Five are at the top of this list. That colors my views of the rest of Michael Jackson's career.

Something else, he was always a little creepy. His first number 1 solo hit was Ben which was a love song sung to a rat from the movie of the same name. I didn't pay much attention when he released his album, Off the Wall.

Then came Thriller with its first two releases, Billie Jean and Beat It. I didn't mind Billie Jean and I kind of liked Beat It, especially the video (although these days I can't watch it without thinking of Weird Al's version). The rest of the world went crazy over Michael. Everything he touched turned to gold. MTV devoted huge chunks of time to Thriller and the Making of Thriller (which was longer). Just signing background for an unknown like Rockwell (Somebody's Watching Me) guaranteed a huge hit. All of his siblings released records, even the ones who had never recorded before or who had retired from singing.

Michael began to get seriously weird. It is impossible to say at this point just how strange Jackson actually was. Some of the original stories were planed by Jackson and his publicists. He didn't really sleep in a hyperbaric tube. He just posed in one for a fake story. The same was true about his wanting to buy the Elephant Man's skeleton.

Other stories were true. He underwent a lot of plastic surgery. Between his first and second solo albums he changed his nose and straightened his hair. Later he added a cleft chin. His face kept changing over the years until he began to resemble Morbius the Living Vampire. At the same time his skin got paler and paler. Officially he was under treatment for a skin condition. There were rumors that he had taken drugs that totally removed all skin color. This is possible. He stopped going out in the sun and even when he moved between a car and a building his handlers held up umbrellas to shield him from the sun (another Morbius similarity).

Pop psychiatrists say that he was so busy performing that he missed his childhood causing him to fixate on it as an adult. He was said to be fond of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. This was the inspiration for his home/theme park, Neverland.

This might be charming in a 20-something but it starts to get strange in a 20-something and outright disturbing in a 40-something.

As Michael was to find out, once you start planting stories about a celebrity being strange, they develop a life of their own and can never be taken back.

By the end of the 1980s, pop music had moved on. Michael still managed some hits into the 1990s but his production costs were so high that even his best-sellers didn't make money.

Michael married Elvis's daughter. They broke up and he married the mother of his first two children. That also broke up.

Questions remain. Did he actually sleep with either of his wives? Did he really give his second son the same name as the first? And did he actually call him Blanket? How did a black man produce blond children? Did he die a wealthy man or one heavily in debt?

FF blogging - the Inhumans

Continuing my blogging on old issues of the Fantastic Four...

I left off with the defeat of the Frightful Four. This was followed by an annual where Reed and Sue were married with nearly everyone in the Marvel Universe making a cameo. The monthly comic continued from there with a four and a half issue story. It started with a domestic scene - Reed turning his inventing skills to making a dishwasher for Sue.

The issue introduced Gorgon who could shake the entire city or cause a building to collapse with a stomp of his foot. He was chasing Medusa, the only member of the Frightful Four still at large. She carjacked the Torch and had him drive her to someplace secluded. Gorgon stole the FF's helicopter and followed.

As it turned out, Johnny drove Medusa to an area near Empire State University which had figured in one of the last single-issue stories the previous year. Gorgon found them there but the ruckus disturbed the Dragon Man, an artificial creation from that same issue. Sue had made an impression on Dragon Man in kind of a King Kong/Fay Wray way. Remembering Sue, Dragon Man took Medusa to safety.

The FF and Gorgon caught up with them on an abandoned sky scraper. Dragon Man grabbed Sue, Gorgon grabbed Medusa and caused the building to collapse.

In the following issue Reed, Johnny, and the Thing survived the building's collapse, recovered Sue, and sort of adopted Dragon Man as a pet. This caused problems since he had the mind of a child, could breath fire, and was stronger than the Thing. They finally sedated him.

Cut to the remnants of Johnny's love life. While he had his own comic he had been dating Doris Evans but she dumped him. He was wandering around a bad part of town when he saw a lovely red head. She called up a wind storm and vanished. He managed to find her again. She caused a fire but he flamed on and absorbed the flames.

It turned out that she was an inhuman and mistook him for one also. She started introducing him to her family. Things went well enough until she got to Gorgon and Medusa. The Torch summoned the rest of the FF and Black Bolt, the head of the Inhumans returned. Cut to the next issue.

The Inhumans attacked the FF. Black Bolt took on the Thing fighting him to a tie. The Inhumans were mainly trying to hide from someone called the Seeker who managed to capture the Inhuman Triton during the fight. The rest of the Inhumans escaped with the help of Lockjaw, the Inhuman's giant dog. Lockjaw could open time/space portals.

Next the Seeker invaded the FF's headquarters and took Dragon Man, thinking that he was an Inhuman.

When they returned, Reed checked his survelance tapes to see what happened to Dragon Man then used one of his gadgets to track the Seeker. The Seeker turned out to be quite reasonable. His job was to rund up Inhumans and return them to the Great Refuge where they belonged. He offered to return Dragon Man with appologies. Unfortunately, the sedative wore off and Dragon Man woke up, tore loose of his restraints, and left.

The next issue started with Reed and Sue saving Triton after Dragon Man shattered his water tank. Johnny and Ben pursued Dragon Man. In an amazing coincidence (that would be repeated two months later), they caught up with Dragon Man right outside Alicia's window (Alicia was the Thing's girlfriend). Johnny eventually subdued Dragon Man and the army took him to a deserted island off-panel.

The Seeker escorted Reed and Sue out and returned to the Great Refuge, but not before Reed planted a homing device.

The FF chartered a jetliner and followed. Johnny was obsessed with Crystal, the red haired Inhuman.

In the meantime, Lockjaw trasported the Inhumans royal family back to the Great Refuge and we found out a little more about the politics. Black Bolt was the rightful ruler but lost his voice in an accident caused by his brother Maximus. Maximus was the current ruler and dreamed of killing humanity so that the Inhumans would be the only race on the planet.

Things got a little confused. Maximus wanted to marry Medusa. She, in turn, was in love with Black Bolt which is why she left the Great Refuge in the first place. There was an implication that Gorgon had been sent by Maximus to retreive her which does not explain why he took her to Black Bolt, instead. Possiblt Stan gave Gorgon a line that he meant to give the Seeker.

Regardless, Black Bolt reclaimed his crown with Medusa speaking for him. Maximus went along with this since he intended to activate his human-killing device and reclaim the crown.

The FF finally made it to the Great Refuge as maximus activated his device.

Cut to next issue - the device was a dud. Humans and Inhumans are genetically identical. The only difference is their artificially-induced powers. This knowledge drove Maximus mad and used his machice to create a negative zone cutting it off from the rest of the world. The FF escaped with the help pf Sue's force field but the Inhumans, including Johnny's new girlfriend, Crystal, were trapped.

And that was just the first half of the issue.

These issue were interesting for several reasons. It introduced the Inhumans who continue to be supporting characters in the Marvel Universe. At four and a half issues, this was the longest continued story that Lee and Kirby did. It also marked the start of Joe Sinnott as the FF's regular inker. He gave Kirby's art an updated look.

This story arc marked the beginning of Reed and Sue's marriage, one of very few super hero marriages in the 1960s. Implied, Johnny Storm graduated from high school and moved into the Baxter Building along with Sue (they previously lived in the house she inherited from her parents). Johnny and Crystal's infatuation marked Johnny's transition to adulthood. Their romance lasted through the Lee/Kirby years.

The only problem was what to do for an encore? With issue 50 coming up fast, Stan and Jack had something special planned.

Land of the Lost II

I haven't seen the Land of the Lost movie and I don't intend to so I can't offer a review of it. What I can do is review why I don't want to see it. I'm not alone in this. The movie is a major flop. It cost something like $200 million to produce and promote (IMDB gives $100 million but does not include marketing) but it only took in $18 million on its opening weekend.

Some movie ideas are so stupid that you wonder how anyone ever thought that people would watch them. The Jack Black/Green Lantern is one of these. Mercifully, it never got beyond the talking phase.

Land of the Lost can best be described as a Bizarro-world version of the TV show. The TV show was a serious drama aimed at kids (although adults could appreciate the science-fiction concepts). It was centered around a family of a father and his two kids. It was produced on a shoe-string budget. Top science fiction writers worked on it. The kids acted like kids and the animals acted like animals.

In contrast, the movie is a crude PG-13 comedy. It revolves around three unrelated adults. According to several review, the plot is mainly a bunch of comedy sketches strung together. There are no kids and the animals act like whatever the comedy bit requires.

So who was the audience for this thing? Fans of the original will not find much to like. Will Farrell fans who were not into the show are probably wondering why he did this?

This is not Farrell's first problem with translating 1960s and 1970s material. Bewitched and The Producers both bombed. The Producers was actually pretty good but Bewitched wasted both Farrell and Nichole Kidman in a script that couldn't make up its mind what it wanted to be.

Futurama Returns

Futurama was created as a companion piece to the Simpsons. Originally Fox showed it immediately after the Simpsons but the later player with the schedule, showing it at 7:00. In addition, once they started carrying football, the games always lasted until 8:00 or later so Futurama was only seen for the second half of the season. Between the earlier time and reduced exposure, it's audience averaged half that of the Simpsons. Since Fox ordered full seasons worth of episodes but only showed half-seasons, Futurama continued for a season after Fox stopped ordering new episodes.

This was a shame. The show started out amusing and got progressively better as time passed. Its best episodes were in its final season and it went out on a high note with Fry, the main character, exchanging his hands with the Robot Devil in order to gain the musical ability needed to make Lela love him (the Robot Devil got his hands back at the end leaving the show on an ambiguous note).

Cartoon Central bought the rights to the show and it quickly became a staple. When the rights expired Comedy Central picked it up and commissioned four made-for-DVD movies that could be cut into four episodes each. These in turn were popular enough that Comedy Central just announced that they are ordering 26 new episodes.

Land of the Lost

During the 1960s and 1970s, Hanna-Barbera ruled Saturday morning with limited-animation cartoons. In the late-60s and early 70s they had some competition from a couple of puppeteers named Sid and Marty Kroft. The Krofts produced several live-action shows that made a splash. The Krofts' first several shows were light-weight entertainment aimed at kids. In 1974 they did a serious show called Land of the Lost.

As originally promoted (and as implied in the theme song), a family was on rafting trip when an earthquake dropped them into a valley where dinosaurs still existed. What was actually produced was a science-fiction cult classic.

From the first few lines of the first episode it was established that the Marshall family was no longer on Earth. The world that they ended up in had dinosaurs but it also had ape-men called Pakuni and lizard-men called Sleestak.

Several of the best known science fiction writers were involved with the show as well as some Star Trek alumni. The story editor was David Gerrold, best known for the Trouble With Tribbles episode of Star Trek. Trek's story editor, D. C Fontaina contributed a script as did Walter Koenig.

As revealed over the first season, the Land of the Lost was a tiny pocket universe created by a lizard-like race called the Altrusians. This universe contained glowing crystals with special properties according to their color. If several crystals were combined into a matrix then they could control aspects of time and space. A number of pylons containing these matrixes maintained the Land of the Lost, controlling things such as the  weather and the movement of the sun and moons.

At some point the Altrusian race fell and devolved into the Sleestak. One of the Altrusians named Enik was stranded in his people's future and was trying to return to his own time to warn his people. Enik was a frequent ally but his degenerate descendants, the Sleestak were mainly interested in sacrificing the Marshals to their god.

A few times the closed nature of the pocket universe was demonstrated. The Marshalls tried to escape by following a river only to end up back where they came from. On a high cliff the Marshalls used binoculars to look at the next cliff only to see their own backs.

A young pakuni named Cha-ka was a regular. A consistent language was created for the pakuni.

All of this was at odds with the production values. Saturday morning shows were produced on a shoe-string budget. The Krofts typically spent most of their budget up-front on sets and costumes. Even that didn't go far. The show only had three sleestak costumes and three pakuni. In order to show a jungle-universe on a budget, many sets were constructed in miniature with the live-action cast added through chromakey. This was never very convincing.

The dinosaurs were animated through stop-motion supplimented by puppets. The models used were poor, even by 1970s standards.

While science fiction was part of the show, the episodes centered on the relationship of the Marshall family and their efforts to return home.

The show's cult status comes from this mix of ambitious science fiction and shoe-string budget. Watching it requires a major suspension of disbelief, much like the 1960s Dark Shadows.

The first season ended with a clever twist. Rather than leave the Marshals stranded in case the show was cancelled or precluding the possibility of other seasons, the last episode of the first season managed to do both. Enik managed to create a time doorway but it was stuck on the Marshall family plunging down a waterfall (as shown in the opening credits). The Marshalls couldn't leave the Land of the Lost until three people entered and the earlier version falling down the waterfall couldn't enter until three people left. The solution was for the two sets of Marshalls to exchange places. The current version went home and the earlier version came to the Land of the Lost, bringing the series in a full circle.

Presumably the second season was events that happened to the Marshalls before they left but had not been shown earlier.

For the third season the show changed studios and everything changed. Spencer Milligan who played the father, Rick Marshall, left the show and was replaced by his "brother", Uncle Jack Marshall. The family moved from the cave they had been living in to an abandoned Sleestak city.

The quality of the scripts declined. Many of the rules established in the first two seasons were dropped. The show was cancelled after this season.

A new version of Land of the Lost was created in the 1990s. It had a revised setting and improved production values but the scripts were uninspired.

A theatrical version will be released this week. The previews make it look like nothing more than a framework for Will Farrell jokes.

Lost & Heroes

Now that Lost and Heroes have wrapped up their 2009 seasons, how did they do?

Heroes divided the year into two "books". The first one "Book 3 - Heroes and Villains" shown during the Fall of 2008 was a mess. The concept was to offer complex questions about what makes someone a hero or a villain and shake up our concepts. It sounded good but it got tiresome fast. Worse, the writer threw in a number of elements from the first season in an effort to recapture its feel. This didn't work at all. The visions of the future and quests to prevent a coming Apocalypse have been done too often.

NBC agreed and brought in a new writing staff. The result was a fresh approach with no time travel or visions. Book 4's best moments were the first few episodes with groups of agents taking down the heroes and taking them away to some sort of holding facility. It bogged down a bit at the end as Sylar changed sides a couple of times and went through an identity crisis. His argument with his "mother" was a classic bit that made Norman Bates seem normal. The conclusion set up for the next book and Sylar's eventual return.

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Lost recovered from its slump a couple of years ago and had a season that seemed far too short. Where Heroes dropped time travel, it was the major point of Lost with half of the cast stuck in the 1970s.

Structurally, Lost's season was divided into two parts. The first part was the return to the Island for the ones on the mainland. Meanwhile, the ones who were left behind went through a number of time shifts and cast reductions. By the end of this arc, the survivors of the original crash were down to the core cast (plus Rose and Bernard who retired).

Once the time jumps stopped then we were back to something like the original format with an over-all plot plus flashbacks for a specific character showing how he came to the island.

Several questions were resolved or at least explored in more detail. We now know what the huge statue looked like. We saw the plane crash and got a glimpse of Daniel's group before she shot them. We also got to know the Dharma Initiative. We found out why the original hatch was built. Most important, we found out that the mysterious Jacob is a real person and has been near when ever important events happened to the core cast.

The last two season have been dominated by the fight between Ben and Widmore. The last few minutes of the season finale set up for a larger conflict between Jacob and his unnamed rival.

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A couple of other shows are worth mentioning. In its first season, Chuck was fun but seemed like it could have been better. In its second season it was better, finally living up to its promise. After keeping fans in suspense for weeks, NBC renewed Chuck, at least for 13 episodes.

Dollhouse has an interesting premise. The star is a different person every episode. The first season was interesting but it will be difficult to keep it up. The first season featured two plot arcs. The first was a detective searching for the Dollhouse. This was wrapped up by the season finale. The second arc concerned "Alpha", one of the dolls who went crazy after being given multiple personalities simultaneously. Alpha escaped se we probably will see him again. Dollhouse was renewed but with a reduced budget.

Star Trek's view of the future

If you didn't live in the 1960s then it is hard to imagine the impact of the space race. When Star Trek premiered in 1966, we had gone from sub-orbital space flights to reaching for the moon in five years. It seemed obvious that this rush to space would continue. Star Trek offered an optimistic view of the future. Just as technology had progressed over the last couple of centuries, it would continue to progress. The world of star Trek was the world of the 1960s advanced into the future.

First, there was Star Fleet. Like the modern (in 1966) Navy, some of the most important ships were years or decades old. The name the Enterprise was a nod at the nuclear aircraft carrier, one of the most advanced and powerful ships ever built.

In 1966, the United Nations was a lot newer and there was a lot more optimism about it. It seemed like an obvious progression - individual states to United States to United Nations to a Federation of Planets. Star Fleet and the Federation of Planets seemed like the United States and/or the UN writ on an interplanetary scale. Unfortunately the Cold War still existed too with the Klingons and Romulans standing in for the USSR and China.

In 1966 we had American exceptionalism. In Star Trek we had Human exceptionalism. Every few months some ancient, wise alien would tell us that we were better than other species, especially Klingons.

Most people discovered the show after it was cancelled. It got poor ratings but it was popular in syndication. By the  early 1970s, it was the most-watched program in the country, possibly the world. One of its attractions was its 1960s optimism. In-between we had constant predictions of environmental meltdowns that make the global warming forecasts seem like happy talk. A future in which humanity not only survived but prospered had a lot of appeal.

Strangely, a lot of the sophisticated technology was done for budgetary reasons. It was cheaper to teleport people than to put them on a shuttle craft. Space suits were also expensive and hard to move in so only a couple of episodes required them. Warp drive was a necessity in order to drive the plot.

I've seen several rundowns of the show's technology and how modern technology has advanced to match it but there is one piece that no one even mentions - the doors. In 1966, the only automatic doors had pressure pads in the floor. The doors in Star Trek had stage hands opening them off-screen (the blooper reel shows them not opening). Doors that use sonic motion detectors are so common today that no one even thinks about them.

Wolverine

Back when Wolverine first appeared in the Incredible Hulk, I doubt that anyone would have predicted that he could headline his own movie. During the 1970s, someone at Marvel decided that there were too many heroes concentrated in the USA so they introduced some new national heroes.

The Hulk strayed north of his usual haunts in the American South-West and was fighting a rematch with the Wendigo. The Canadian authorities didn't care for this and sent in "Weapon X" to break up the fight. Weapon X turned out to be Wolverine.

As originally conceived, the character didn't resemble the current incarnation. He had strength and speed similar to Spider-Man and his costume included retractable claws.

The following year (1975) Marvel decided to resurrect the canceled X-Men as a new, multi-national team. The original team, with the exception of Cyclops, had disappeared on a mission so Cyclops and Professor X recruited a new team to save them. Wolverine was one of the recruits.

He didn't have much personality in the early X-Men. Usually he attacked using the "fastball special" - Colossus would hurl him, claws first (this made it into the 3rd X-Men movie). That was about it for characterization. In the second issue of the new X-Men, a character named Thunderbird was killed. It was felt that his powers were redundant. Co-writer, Len Wein could have as easily chosen Wolverine to die instead and no one would have noticed.

Things got a little more interesting when the X-Men were captured by Sentinels (big, anti-mutant robots) in issues 98-100. A scan said that he wasn't exactly a mutant. Shortly after that it was revealed that his claws were part of him, not part of his costume. Even his fellow team-mates didn't know that. After that the character got a lot more interesting.

We finally learned his name was Logan in an issue of Iron Fist. We also found out that he was stalking Jean Grey. While Chris Claremont had been writing the X-Men since the second issue. this was the first time that teamed up with John Byrne on the X-Men.

Not long after that Byrne became the X-Men artist. Like Wolverine, Byrne was Canadian so he decided to make Logan his own personal project. Wolverine's profile jumped as did his acceptance.

In the next year Wolverine's two big secrets were revealed. First a dinosaur bit his arm up to the elbow. You heard the "snict" of his claws popping out and the dinosaur fell. Wolverine's arm wasn't scratched. "I heal fast," he explained.

A few issues later a character who possessed bodies but had an aversion to metal attacked Wolverine and was repelled by his metal skeleton.

At that point it was understood that Wolverine's entire skeleton had been replaced with adamantium. In interviews, Byrne described the horrific process of replacing Wolverine's skeleton, one bone at a time. A couple of alternate timelines showed Wolverine's skeleton as man-made.

Later Claremont revised this, referring to his bones as "laced with adamantium" instead of being replaced.

Slowly it was revealed that Wolverine's healing ability also slowed his aging and that he was at least a generation older than he looked.

The Canadian government decided that they wanted Weapon X back. First they sent Weapon Alpha (later renamed Vindicator) to retrieve him. Later the X-Men fought a Canadian team of superheroes, Alpha Flight. Their goal was to retrieve Wolverine. Along the way we learned that Wolverine had anger issues.

In 1982, Frank Miller and Chris Claremont did a Wolverine mini-series that was the defining version of the character including the line, "I'm the best there is at what I do but what I do isn't very nice."

Marvel 1965

My last post left Reed and Sue escaping from the Frightful Four, towing a brainwashed Thing who had an anti-gravity disk glued to him. The Wizard and a brainwashed Human Torch tried to stop their escape. The rest of the EFF (Evil FF) team also had anti-gravity disks glued to them and were hanging on to the ground for their lives.

Reed and Sue made good their escape and Sue revealed that she had disabled the Wizard's ID machine so the Torch was only playing at being brainwashed. They managed to get the Thing to the Baxter Building and gave him a dose of sleeping gas.

The Wizard rescued his team-mates, figured out that the Torch was faking and captured him. Reed improvised an anti-brainwashing devise which half-killed the Thing before they shut off the main power.

The EFF broke into the Baxter Building and confronted Reed and Sue. The Wizard showed them the Torch, stuck to a large anti-gravity disk the Wizard controlled. The only way to save the Torch was for the three of them to submit to the Wizard's ID machine.

Just then the Thing woke up long enough to crush the Wizard's chest piece. This freed the Torch. Reed took advantage of the confusion and disarmed the Trapster. Medusa fled and the other three surrendered.

In a bit of 1960s humor, Reed called the police to collect the EFF but the desk sergeant thought it was a crank call. The Torch had to escort the three personally.

The Thing woke up again, back to normal and over his hard feelings from two issues earlier. The story ended with a promo for the FF annual featuring Reed and Sue's wedding.

This ended the FF's first three-issue continued story and a six-issue story arc on the Frightful Four. It marked a new style of story-telling. Single-issue plots would be the exception instead of the rule and the comic would never return to the formulaic stories of just a few months earlier. (It was also the last time the Frightful Four were a credible threat).

The same thing was happening across the Marvel line-up. The other Lee/Kirby comic, Thor, was into a lengthy plot arc that included a two-part fight with the Absorbing Man, the Trial of the Gods, a side-trip to Viet Nam, a two-part fight with the Destroyer, and another two-part fight with the Absorbing Man.

Several other titles had been revamped. The Sub-Mariner replaced Giant Man and the Wasp in Tales to Astonish and starting with a multi-issue quest. The Hulk in the backup-strip stopped changing into Banner for the next few years. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD replaced the Torch and the Thing as the lead in Strange Tales with an epic fight against Hydra. Doctor Strange in the backup strip had a multi-part fight with Baren Mordo and the Dread Dormammu.

The X-Men graduated from high school and finally defeated Magneto (with the help of the Stranger).

The original Avengers quit and Captain America led a new team made up of reformed villains - Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

Spider-Man also graduated from high school. In the next year or so his book would have major changes as he switched girl friends and artists.

This was an exciting time at Marvel but the fantastic Four continued to be ground zero. The next year would see a major expansion of the Marvel Universe as the FF met the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, and the Black Panther. Lee and Kirby also introduced Ka-Zar and the Savage Land in the X-Men and the High Evolutionary in Thor. The 1965 Thor annual featured a Thor/Hercules fight that intruduced other pantheons besides the Norse. With the introduction of the Kree Empire in the FF in 1967, the Marvel Universe as we know it was pretty much established.

Along with scope, the depth of the stories changed. The single-issue format only left enough room for a page or two of characterization. Continued stories meant that most of an issue could be spent on a single character as long as it led to the promise of action in the next issue.

1965 was the big dividing point for all of this. a sea change like this could never happen today. Back then the Marvel bullpen was a myth. The office consisted of Stan, the editor and main writer, a small office staff, and a bunch of free-lancers who only came by once or twice a month. Now each comic book has its own staff of assistant editors and major changes come from the board room.

Fantastic Four - 1965

I happened to start looking at issues of the FF in 1965 a few weeks. I chose an issue (#36, the Frightful Four's first appearance) which someone swiped from me not long after I bought it. I've been reading issues forward and back from there and it turns out that this year was a watershed for Marvel. I realized at the time that the comics seemed to be getting better but I was only ten at the time. With lots more years or perspective I can see how this year changed comic books.

Several elements of Marvel were in place from the beginning. Stan Lee placed the characters in real cities and had them interact with the real world in ways that other superheros didn't do. For example, in issue #35, the Yancy Street Gang sent the Thing a Beatles wig. After brawling with the Torch over it, he admitted that he liked it and tried it on. The plot involved a billionaire who bet his rivals that he could destroy the Fantastic Four. His plot fell apart because his son was a fan (at one point he showed his father his Fantastic Four "magazines") and got caught in the trap that was supposed to eliminate the FF. The Billionaire repented while the Thing wondered how he would look in the Thing's Beatles wig. Between being self-referential and pop-culture references, it was the sort of story that gave Marvel its initial splash.

On the other hand, issues had a certain sameness. A typical FF comic started with a couple of pages of the FF then introduced (or reintroduced) the villain and set up for the fight. The fight itself was rather fast with a quick resolution in the last page or two.

This wasn't a formula as much as a convention. The assumption was that each issue should stand on its own in order to attract new readers. Accordingly, the heroes and villains were reintroduced every issue and plots seldom took more than a single comic.

I recently wrote about the Return of the Frightful Four. This is when things changed. This issue itself was typical enough except it ended on a cliffhanger - the FF were caught in a Q-bomb explosion and left floating in the open ocean.

The next issue picked up from there. A US navy sub rescued the FF. after a couple of pages of dancing around it, the four admitted that they had lost their powers (radiation giveth, radiation taketh away). Worried that they would be unable to defend themselves, Reed started trying to duplicate their powers with special suits. He also consulted with their attorney to be sure that his will was in order.

In the Marvel universe, every one's attorney is Matt Murdock who is also Daredevil.

In the meantime, Doctor Doom realized that he had been tricked in his last encounter with the FF and attacked the Baxter Building. It was empty but he took over Richards' equipment and located the FF in a warehouse. He then used Richards' own weapons to attack the powerless FF. They were aided by Daredevil.

This story took two issues with the FF finally reaching the Baxter Building in the second issue. While Daredevil distracted Doom, Richards retrieved an energy gun that he had used three issues earlier and used it to restore their powers (he explained that he had been letting it recharge and the suits were a stop-gap).

This is where it gets interesting. It is a cliche that the cursed hero will become normal then heroically become cursed again. This was in the Fantastic Four movie. It was in last night's season finale of Chuck. But that wasn't how it happened here. Beg Grimm was normal and didn't want to change back but Reed changed him anyway. They the rest let the Thing take on Doom alone.

This was an epic battle. Doom was pulling powers out of a hat and the Thing took everything that Doom threw at him and smashed up his suit, forcing him to flee.

Then the Thing quit the group. He had been normal and he was a monster again. He didn't like it one bit.

Cut to the next issue. The battle with Doom hurt the Thing more than he admitted. He snuck onto a pickup truck and fell asleep. Even falling out of the truck on a rough road didn't wake him.

The Wizard located him there and brought him to the Frightful Four's headquarters. He had a new device that would brainwash the Thing and put him under the Wizard's control. In the meantime we got a look at the team dynamic. Medusa was really in charge, using a combination of flirting and power to keep the others in line. The Wizard was too busy to notice. Sandman liked women who played rough, and the Trapster whined but tended to do whatever Medusa said.

The rest of the FF eventually tried to track down the Thing after his girlfriend, Alicia, shamed them into it. With the Thing's help, the other three were quickly overpowered and captured. The Torch and Sue were secured. Reed was glued to a board. Then the Wizard reminded the Thing that Reed had made him ugly and ordered him to kill Reed. End of issue.

The next issue took up directly from there. It was almost all fight. Reed got free of the board he was glued to but the Thing stuffed him into a metal bottle. Sue escaped with the bottle while the Wizard used him mind-control machine on the Torch. During a lull, Medusa flirted with the Thing and Sandman got jealous. Sue freed Reed and they counter-attacked using the Trapster's paste and the Wizard's flying disks to throw the EFF off balance. Reed and Sue fled, taking a floating Thing while the Torch and the Wizard tried to stop them.

It was an adrenaline rush of an issue. No introduction, no introducing the characters, just cover to cover action. Without the usual 3-6 pages of set-up there was a lot more room for action and characterization. The continued story was now the preferred way of telling a story.

My next post will discuss how other Marvel comics were changing at the same time and cover the wrap-up to the Frightful Four.

The Return of the Frightful Four

Several days ago I wrote about the issue of the Fantastic Four that introduced the evil FF - the Frightful Four. It was an unusual issue. Panels were missing backgrounds and the comic book ended before the plot. The book looks like it was rushed out.

Two issues later the Frightful Four returned in what amounts to a do-over issue.

In the issue in between, the FF had gone to the Skrull homeworld to avenge the death of Sue's father.

The return of the EFF (Evil FF) starts with Reed examining some huge blowups of photographs he had taken the previous issue. Jack Kirby liked to incorporate unusual photographs into his artwork and used real photos.

This quickly degenerated into horseplay between Reed and Sue. The Torch left and spotted a flying man who quickly vanished.

This turned out to the the Wizard. He returned to the EFF's current hideout in upstate New York but was subdued by the Sandman then the Trapster (Paste-Pot Pete renamed himself and upgraded his weapons). The Wizard retaliated by using his anti-gravity powers to throw the other three around the cabin. This introduced the EFF to readers who missed their first appearance.

Cut to Sue who was looking at dress designs by a new designer. This turned out to be Madam Medusa. Sue was rendered unconscious and taken to a remote island where the Wizard had hidden a "Q" bomb (some sort of nuclear device).

Reed was frantic at this and used his technology to search the world. He found the EFF's ship right above the Baxter Building. The Torch flew up to investigate it but got too close and was also taken prisoner. The EFF led Reed and Ben to the island where their Pogo Plane was destroyed. The Torch was released and the two groups had a short battle.

In the meantime, Sue woke up and freed herself from the Trapster's paste bonds. The Thing heard her moving around underground and broke off the fight. While the FF was distracted the EFF left in the Wizard's ship. This left the FF trapped on an island as a nuclear device went off.

Sue's force field protected them as they were blown off of the island. The last panel showed them floating in the force field, unconscious, with the Thing turning back into Ben Grimm.

Structurally this was very similar to the earlier issue but the content was different. A lot happened here but nothing seemed rushed or glossed over. All of the panels had backgrounds, some of them ambitious. Kirby was expanding his scope, setting up for future "cosmic" issues.

This also started the era of multi-issue story arcs. The issue was self-contained but the story continued through the next two issues with a different villain (Doctor Doom).

This is an intersting structure - a three-issue arc where a villain defeats the hero in one issue followed by two issues where the hero fights a different villain. This structure had already appeared in Spider-Man. During a battle with the Green Goblin, Spider-Man heard that his aunt was sick and left the fight. In the next issue he met the Sandman but was afraid to fight him out of fear that Aunt May would be left without anyone to care for her. At the end of the second issue May gave a speech to Peter about not giving up. In the third issue he returned to crime fighting, defeating the Sandman and freeing the Human Torch who had been taken captive.

Both examples resolved the story arc but left things hanging with the original villain. This was a deft touch since it made the eventual rematch that much more exciting.

Minimalist Comics

I was re-reading an old issue of the Fantastic Four recently. Someone stole my copy of that issue shortly after I bought it so it has been over 40 years since I last saw it. Looking at it again was an interesting experience.

The plot:
The comic begins with Reed and Sue announcing their engagement and being surrounded by reporters. This takes up a couple of pages. It cuts to the Torch who is experimenting with a contraption that lets him change the color of his fireballs. He expands his test to full-blown fireworks.

Nearby the Sandman and Paste-Pot Pete are watching the display. They reminisce about how they came to be together - they escaped from jail, hijacked a small plane, then rescued the Wizard who was floating uncontrollably. They decided to form an evil counterpart to the Fantastic Four, the Frightful Four. The Wizard recruited Madam Medusa as their fourth member.

The Frightful Four landed on the Baxter Building in the Wizard's anti-gravity ship. Medusa used her prehensile hair and Pete's paste gun to immobilize the Thing. They quickly subdued Reed and Sue, rendering them unconscious with a spray. The Thing's girlfriend, Alicia managed to fire an emergency flare before she was captured. The Wizard attached anti-gravity disks to the four and let them drift into the upper atmosphere where they would die from lack of oxygen.

The Torch saw the flare and flew to the rescue. He grabbed the Wizard and forced him to fly his anti-gravity craft to rescue the others. The remaining Frightful Four stole the FF's Pogo plane and pursued. The Sandman tried to force the Wizard's craft down but could not. The Wizard landed. The Torch and the Thing faced off against the Wizard. Off-panel, the others escaped, blew up the Wizard's craft, and vanished.

I was surprised by the artwork, or the lack of it. Several panels were missing backgrounds completely. I don't know if this was done by Jack Kirby or the inker but.

That's a lot of plot to stuff into a single issue and it didn't quite fit. The confrontation between the two FFs never quite happened. The event that ended the fight happened off-panel. Someone from off-panel yelled a warning but we don't even know if it was Reed or Sue.

The pacing was also off. The story just trailed off as if Kirby miscounted his pages and had to wrap it up a page or two early.

I suspect that Stan and Jack felt constrained by the single-issue format. Two issues later the Frightful Four reappeared in a three-issue arc that saw the FF fighting Dr. Doom without their powers. From that point on multi-issue stories were the rule. Often a page or two would be spent setting up for future stories. This allowed much greater depth of storytelling and characterization.

A note on the villains:
The Sandman was a Spider-Man villain who had also fought the Torch. Paste-Pot Pete was a Torch villain who had a paste gun that could shoot quick-setting, unbreakable paste. He was later renamed the Trapster. The Wizard was a genius inventor who turned to crime until he was caught by the Torch. His specialty was anti-gravity. These villains appeared in the Torch's short-lived solo strip in Strange Tales. The Thing joined the Torch for a year or so before the feature was replaced by Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. The Frightful Four was probably Stan Lee's way of reusing some perfectly good villains now that the Torch's strip was gone. Medusa was a new character. Originally she was the coldest and most calculating of the Frightful Four but she quickly reformed once she was reunited with the Inhumans.

Monsters vs Aliens - Observations

I love a tightly constructed plot and Monsters vs Aliens does a good job of this. Here are some observations about the plot and other points. Stop reading if you don't want to see any spoilers.

The movie is mainly about Susan/Ginormica's transformation from shallow bride to world defender. At the opening all she can think about is that she is about to go to Paris. The marriage and her future husband are incidentals.

Early on Susan is repulsed by her future mother-in-law's deformed thumb and the prediction that kids that she has with Derek will have the same trait. Shortly after that she is transformed into a monster and learns to appreciate he fellow monsters.

We never see what happens to the meteor but it apparently is actually a ball of energy which Susan absorbs entirely (twice). We do see the energy as it is sucked from her body by Gallaxhar.

Susan maintains that she isn't really a monster, she's just large. In fact, her actions in the outside world show that there is no place for her there. She is just too big. She has a much harder time fitting in than the other monsters (since she doesn't actually fit into anything).

What sort of fabric was that wedding dress made out of that it could stretch (in all directions)? Too bad her garter wasn't made of the same stuff.

No one even comments on Susan's hair changing color.

Susan wakes up in a uniform provided by the military. It has the number "005" on the breast. She is the fifth monster added to the collection (not counting the late Invisible Man).

Susan has a stroke of luck. The other monsters have been imprisoned for years or decades. She is only locked up for three weeks before the military needs them to fight a giant robot.

The robot has been sent to retrieve the energy that Susan absorbed. If the government had realized this they would probably have simply handed Susan over, end of movie. Instead she and the other monsters got to save the world from a menace directly related to Susan. No wonder they are locking up people with abilities on Heroes.

Susan thinks of herself as an ordinary person who happens to be large. When confronted with a robot that dwarfs her, she acts like an ordinary person and runs. It isn't until she is on the Golden Gate Bridge that she sees people in danger and starts acting like a hero.

General Monger's briefing on Ginormica mentioned that the energy she absorbed gave her size and incredible power. This set up her fight with the robot when she discovered that she is disproportionately strong (she is even stronger than you would expect from someone her size).

Science factoid - strength goes up according to the square of the cross-section but mass goes up according to the cube of the volume. This means that really big people have trouble supporting their own weight. A fifty foot woman could not stand up. Ginormica has extra strength which compensates for this.

Watch Gallaxhar's eyes. The middle ones behave normally. The outer ones seem to have a mind of their own.

Apparently Ginormica has to concentrait to use all of her strength. When Gallaxhar tells her that it is too bad that she doesn't know how to harness the power she replies that she knows how to use it. She then breaks a force field and tears through several steel blast doors.

It is almost a cliche that a monstrous hero will be given a chance at a normal life and have to give it up to save the world. Susan never even thinks about the choice. By the time she is returned to normal she has accepted her life as Ginormica. She seems more concerned about losing her powers than her chance at resuming her life.

The clones don't seem to be very smart. This is probably on purpose. An army of exact replicas of Gallaxhar would probably kill each other arguing about who should be in charge.

Stealing a uniform as a disguise is another cliche. Loony Toons characters did it all the time. They also did it in the Wizard of Oz. Indianna Jones and the Rocketeer both did it. I could go on. The results are usually as unlikely as the monsters.

The suit that Gallaxhar put in Susan was handy since her government issue outfit would not have shrunk. Either he was concerned about her modesty or repelled by human physiology. Either way, it was convenient.

Someone changed Susan's clothing twice while she was unconscious. Will there pictures of a naked, sleeping Ginormica appearing on the Internet in future movies?

Will Arnet (Missing Link) and Jeffery Tambor (Susan's father) were regulars on Arrested Development. Arnet's wife, Amy Poehler (computer voice), was also in a few episodes of Arrested Development.

Most Americans know Hugh Laurie from House. He is actually a British actor and the Dr. Cockroach character is much closer to the rest of his career than Dr. House.

An in-joke was that Susan was only 49 feet, 11 inches. This must have been in a press packet since several reviewers mentioned it but no one gave her height in the movie. She may have grown after one of Dr. Cockroach's experiments.

The Missing Link was inspired by The Creature from the Back Lagoon. B.O.B. was the Blob. Dr. Cockroach was from the Fly.

Insectasurus was obviously a take-off of Mothra. Mothra went from giant caterpillar to moth.

The idea of using earth monsters to fight aliens/alien robots was a staple of Japanese monster movies in the 1960s.

Saving San Francisco wasn't enough to give the monsters acceptance. They had to save all of humanity instead.

General Monger first used his parachute in the war room.

Only by becoming Ginormica did Susan finally get to go to Paris.

Monsters vs Aliens vs Incredibles

I've seen various reviewers compare Pixar and Dreamworks as Disney and Warner Brothers. This comparison sells Dreamworks short. Their movies usually have more laughs than Pixar's but there is more substance than Warner Brothers cartoons (since Warner Brothers only did shorts, they never had enough screen time for anything more).

Dreamworks Monsters vs Aliens just came out. The Incredibles is the closest thing to it that Pixar has produced (and still one of their best) so I'm going to compare the two.

Warning - I'm not going to go into the plots in detail but this will contain minor spoilers.

The basic set-up of both movies has similar elements. In one, the government has outlawed costumed heroes and placed them in safe, boring everyday jobs. In the other, the government decided to keep the existence of monsters secret and has rounded them up and is holding them in a secret facility.

The Incredibles focuses mainly on Bob, Mr. Incredible, as he goes from superhero and newlywed to insurance adjuster in a soul-crushing job and his return as a superhero. Along the way he learns to depend on others instead of acting solo.

Monsters vs Aliens is about Susan, Ginormica, as she goes from her wedding day to being locked up for being 50 feet tall (give or take an inch) and her transformation into hero. Along the way she learns self-reliance and that geeks may embarrass you but they will not desert you.

There are a few scenes in common between the two movies. They both have five heroes facing off against a giant robot to save a city. In both movies, the main characters finally receive acceptance through conspicious acts of heroism.

What about the Warner Brothers comaprison?

The Incredibles is pretty much deadpan. There are a few scenes put in for comic relief - a neighborhood child who keeps watching Bob to see what will happen next, Frozone asking for his super suit. Monsters plays the main plot straight but a lot of humor comes from Susan's fellow monsters, especially BOB the Blob who is a natural clown. The scenes with the President are all for comic relief, similar to Scrat's appearances in the Ice Age movies. Monsters ends up having a lot more humor than Incredibles but compartmentalizes it. Except for some pratfalls caused by her size, Susan is never a humorous character. She is also more sympathetic than Mr. Incredible who borders on being a jerk at times.

Susan's character is handled deftly. At the beginning she is rather shallow, obsessed with going to Paris on her honeymoon. She is also repelled by minor physical deformities. The movie's focus is almost exclusively on her rather than being split between the four members of the Incredibles family so there is more screen time for her to grow as a character (no pun intended). By the end of the movie she has accepted her role as monster/defender of humanity and has the audience rooting for her.

Now that I've said all of that, I will admit that the way the monsters disguise themselves in the alien ship is right out of Warner Brothers. There are a lot of in-jokes about other monster movies. The President and his advisors are outright silly (with perfect casting of Stephen Colbert as the President).

Monsters has a lot more laughs but it still makes an emotional connection - a difficult combination.

Pixar's Up comes out later this year. It will be interesting to see which movie takes the best animation for 2009. Dreamworks has a real shot at beating Pixar.

Car Clocks

Last weekend began Daylight Savings Time. My car has a an analog clock with a simple mechanism for resetting the clock. You put a pen into a small button on the dashboard and the clock runs fast. You release the button at the right time. My wife's digital clock is a bit harder. Either way, we can set the clock and trust it to keep correct time until Daylight Savings Time ends in November. It didn't used to be like that.

When they first started putting clocks in cars they used a simple electric motor. These ran at a consistent rate depending of the voltage applied. The problem is that cars have different voltages. When the motor is turned off the battery puts out 12 volts. When it is running, it is recharging the battery and the voltage is more like 14.5 volts. This can drop if you are running power-hungry things like the rear window defroster. Combine that with headlights, radio, windshield wipers, and the fan and the voltage drops nearly back to 12 volts.

Every time the voltage changes, the old car clocks ran at a different speed. Engineers tried to estimate how much driving the average person would do and adjust the clock so that it would average out. This never seemed to work in real life. Car clocks could gain or lose as much as five or ten minutes in a week. You either constantly adjusted your clock or you gave up and never looked at it.

Sometime in the 1980s they started using quartz movements in car clocks. A quartz crystal vibrates if you apply current to it and it is fairly forgiving about variations in voltage. Problem solved.

The PT Cruiser

A change of subject, instead of talking about media, I'm going to talk about cars - at least one model, the PT Cruiser.

In the mid-1990s, Volkswagen introduced the New Beetle. This was basically a Jetta with a new body made to resemble the iconic Beetle from the 1960s. A few years later Chrysler announced their own retro car - the PT Cruiser. The Cruiser looked like a cross between a Beetle and a classic hot-rod. The Beetle had a lot of trade-offs for its look. It is only a two-door with a small trunk and a difficult-to-service engine. The Cruiser solved most of those problems. It was four-door and had a huge amount of usable space for its size. It was also fairly inexpensive, starting below $20,000.

During its first few years the Cruiser was a halo car for Chrysler. People stopped just to look at it. Merely having it in their lineup made Chrysler seem cool. It was at least two years before production caught up to demand. Prior to that you had to get on a long waiting line or pay a premium to get a Cruiser.

Other companies tried to produce a retro car. Ford launched its revived T-Bird which started off hot but cooled quickly. GM came out with their SSR and HHR. The SSR, a cross between a pickup and a hot-rod was heavy, slow, and overpriced. The HHR was a better try but when you parked it next to a full-sized pick-up it looked like a scale model of a larger car. That never happened with the Cruiser.

Sales eventually dropped. Chrysler made a half-hearted attempt at freshening its looks but mainly managed to dilute them. The original Cruiser had a triangular grill that went past the bumper. This was responsible for a lot of its distinctive look. The new Cruiser lopped off the grill at the bumper, making it look more like a Pacifica. This was probably deliberate. According to one of the Cruiser's designers, Chrysler's German owners never liked or understood the Cruiser.

I owned two of them. I loved the first one but it was totalled in a wreck. I replaced it with a slightly newer one that had more options. When that wore out I considered getting a new one but the new design just didn't excite me the way that the original did.

Rare comics

An issue of Action Comics #1 is coming up for sale. It could possibly top $1,000,000. So, what is your collection likely to be worth?

Probably not much.

This comic book is special because it was the first appearance of Superman, the first costumed superhero. It is also very, very rare for several reasons.

One is that it was aimed at kids. Kids are hard on their possessions. They wear them out and throw them away. 

It was meant to be a disposable medium. Comic books are printed on cheap paper which doesn't last long. The publishers didn't want you to save your comic books. They wanted you to read it, throw it away, then buy the next issue.

There was no collectible market when this was printed. Comic books were saved almost by accident. The collector's market didn't really take off until the 1960s. In between there were several paper drives during World War II. Most comic books and pulp magazines were donated to those to help the war effort.

Nowadays comic books are printed on better paper and they are sold to adults who know about the collectible market and hope to cash in on it some day.

In one of his books (I'm too lazy to look it up right now), Stan Lee admits that they pumped the collectibles market in order to sell more comic books. They would print issues with two different covers and the hard-core collectors would buy both because they didn't know which would be more valuable in the future. They would use any excuse to start a comic over with a new #1 issue because collectors guaranteed that these would be sellouts.

The result is that none of these have any collectible value because there is no shortage.

Oscar Ratings

Once again the organizers of Oscar night are expecting low ratings and wondering why. This is an easy question to answer. Currently popular movies are disqualified from even being nominated because they considered are too commercial. Look at this year's crop. Most of the major nominees were only in limited release during 2008 in order to qualify for a nomination. They went into wide release the same weekend that the nominations were announced in order to take advantage of the publicity. Of all the nominees in major categories, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the only one that actually did well at the box office.

What happened to Dark Knight? During most of the Summer it was considered a lock on best picture. It was also the most popular movie in years. But it suddenly lost Oscar momentum and only got a nomination for supporting actor. This is an example of what is wrong with the whole nominating process.

Rumor is that the people doing the nominations considered Dark Knight too dark and too Bush-era. There is no place for a movie about a sociopath in the Age of Obama. So, in order to get a nomination a movie has to pass a political test as well as an artistic one. You can see the same effect in reverse in Milk. Both the subject matter and the star are on the right (left) side of politics.

In the end, people tune in to the Oscars to root for their favorite movie to win. The show itself is long and boring in a self-indulgent way. If you haven't seen any of the top movies then there are better things you can do with your time.

Deadman

I've been meaning to write this for a few weeks - ever since Deadman made an appearance in the new Brave and the Bold cartoon series.

Deadman was a unique character, even in the Silver Age of comics. He wasn't a superhero at all. He was a ghost who was looking for his killer. Normally invisible and intangible, his only power was that he could possess people.

Despite his name and costume, both of which were suitable for a super-powered ghost, he had both when he was alive. Deadman was really a trapeze artist named Boston Brand with a morbid streak. He figured that the crowd really came to watch him die so he took the name Deadman and wore a death mask as part of his act. One night during his act he was shot by someone with a hook. He materialized as a ghost looking like he did when he died. The spirit Rama Kushna apppeard to him and explained that he had been given a "gift" - the power to walk among men until his killer was brought to justice.

The character was created by Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino but it was quickly turned over to Jack Miller and a newcomer, Neal Adams.

The comic was much closer to a TV show like the Fugitive with a bit of Quantum Leap thrown in rather than a traditional comic book. Except for another costumed trapeze artist called the eagle, Deadman dealt with regular people and regular problems. Neal Adams's art was a perfect match for this. He had been doing syndicated newspaper comics and had a hyper-realistic style that matched the tone of the comic.

At first Deadman simply thought of people who might want him dead (there was a long list) and checked them out. Some of them were involved in other crimes. Others had problems of their own. Inevitably Deadman would posses someone and use his acrobatic and street-fighting skills to clear things up. Then he would move on to another dead end (pardon the pun).

The comic had a strong supporting cast from the circus but Deadman never revealed himself to them. Presumably he intended to solve his murder and move on to the next world. The exception to this was in an issue of Brave and the Bold. Deadman decided to ask Batman for help with his murder. This turned into another false lead, this time to the brother of the man who had killed Bruce Wayne's parents.

Around half-way through its run, the pace of Deadman stories picked up. It started with Boston seeing what the police were doing about his murder. This led to several near encounters with Hook and a reunion of sorts with his twin brother Cleveland. At one point Cleveland tried to flush Hook out of hiding by pretending that Boston had survived. Hook shot Deadman again, although this time it turned out to be the circus strongman Tiny in Deadman's costume. Tiny survived.

Despairing of ever finding Hook, Deadman chose someone at random and decided to take over that man's life. In an amazing coincidence, he chose an assassin named Willie Smith. In a bigger coincidence, the assassins next job was to capture Hook.

It turned out that Hook was training to enter a society of assassins. He final test was to pick someone at random and kill him. Hook chose Deadman from a circus poster. Cleveland's impersonation of Boston and Tiny's survival convinced the society that Hook has failed his test. He was allowed to fight for his life against the Sensei, an aged, frail oriental who quickly bests Hook. Hook's body is dumped in the ocean leaving Deadman to wonder what next?

In the following issue, Deadman follows Smith and the Sensei on a mission to destroy the city of Nanda Parbat (sort of a Shangri La). Deadman stops them and discovers that, while in Nanda Parbat, he is alive again. Further, this is where Rama Rushna is. He and Rama come to an understanding - Boston will continue to fight evil as he is for an unspecified time.

This was supposed to be the jumping off point for a new direction. Deadman would move from trying to find Hook to fighting Sensei and his assassins. Unfortunately it was Deadman's last issue. What was supposed to be a two-part story was continued in Brave and the Bold with Batman helping Deadman save Nanda Parbat.

The Sensei and his assassins merged with an on-going Batman plotline involving Ras al-Ghul and elements of this were in Batman Begins.

There have been several attempts to revive the character since then. Deadman also had a short run as a backup strip in Aquaman. This was written and drawn by Neil Adams. The only other story worth mentioning was Deadman's third appearance in Brave and the Bold. Batman needed someone to infiltrate a criminal organization. Deadman was perfect for this until he fell for a woman at the top. The artwork was by Jim Aparo who matched Neil Adams' realistic style.

Other attempts were not as successful. Jack Kirby's Forever people had a Deadman guest shot. In this, he merged with an android that looked just like him (including his ghostly costume) and started a new search for the Hook. Kirby had noticed an inconsistency in which hand Boston's assassin had lost. This was mercifully forgotten.

Deadman was revived (so to speak) in 1986 but it never captured the spirit (so to speak) of the original strip. Rama Kushna was demoted from an asexual aspect of God (or something) to a goddess who damaged spirits in order to keep them earthbound. The supporting cast was killed off.

The biggest problem with subsequent attempts to revive Deadman is that they all involve the supernatural, often on a cosmic scale. Deadman doesn't work well in these stories. He is at his best when dealing in small, human stories.

Ultimate Joker?

There is a movement to force Warner from ever using the Joker in any movie - ever. Called the Ultimate Joker, this movement says that Heath Ledger was so good in the role that it should be retired.

I disagree.

I do think that the current franchise should drop using the Joker again, even though he appeared to survive Dark Knight. His story has been told. Even if Ledger was still alive, they could not top what they already did. All they could do is up the body count and dilute the character.

But, was this the defining performance which was so good that no one should ever try again? Come on. A generation ago they said the same thing about Jack Nicholson's performance. Each appealed to the current audience by tapping into current culture.

Ledger's version was a dead serious anarchist. He loved destruction for its own sake. This tapped into our current fears of terrorists. We never learned where he came from. He gave a few different stories about his scars. Presumably both were lies.

Nicholson's version was crazier. He also tapped into current fears. His method was product tampering - something that had killed several people in the 1980s. He also used the trick of luring people to a big event so that he could kill them (and presumably loot their bodies). Plus he had more fun.

Then there was the 1960s version with Cesar Romero. The serious version of Batman wouldn't have worked back then. The only way that people accepted a man dressed like a bat who fought similarly bizarre criminals was to play it as over-the-top. Romero's Joker fit in with this premise but gave it enough of an edge to stand out. Of all of Batman's foes in the 1960s, Joker was the most deadly. At one point he poisoned a possibly disloyal assistant  (Batman revived her with universal bat-antidote).

The comic book versions have also reflected the various versions of the Joker. Starting out as simply a colorful criminal, he became deadly and vengeful after the Comics Code was loosened around 1970. In one memorable appearance in the mid-1970s, he used chemicals to make fish look like himself. He then demanded that he be able to patent the Joker Fish and collect royalties and killed the patent clerk who told him that this couldn't be done. So far no screen version has been quite that cunning or deranged.

In another decade or two, after the current version has run its course, Warner will probably want to reboot the franchise again. The fans will want to see the newest version of the Joker. Why should they be denied?

Heroes and Lost

Lost returned a couple of weeks ago. Heroes returns tonight. The big question for both is how well they will keep up their energy.

Lost started strong. They explained some of mysteries such as why the Others were present at Locke's birth and early childhood. The episodes are strong on plot instead of being a framing device for the flashback as it was during the worst of the 3rd season.

Heroes faces a difficult challenge. The second season lost some momentum. The producers thought that what was needed was to bring back all of the elements from the first season but mix them differently. Thus we got an apocalyptic vision of the future that had to be averted, Hiro's excitement as he learned to use his powers for the first time, an artist who paints the future and Hiro buying a comic book to see what he should do next. They also decided to play with the concept of hero and villain and make us reevaluate our standards - or so they said. The execution of this was spotty and prroly thought-out. We might like one ambiguous anti-hero but not a series of them.

NBC got the message and replaced the writers. Now we will see if it helps. They are promising a completely different story arc this time with the heroes being hunted. This worked pretty well for the X-Men so it might work here, also. As Lost has shown, it is possible for a show to return after a slump.

Lost 1-4

It has been almost seven months since the last new episode of Lost aired but it seems less. The show has been syndicated since the Fall and ABC showed the last three hours of the last season a week ago (for good measure Sci-Fi showed the same episodes Monday). That gives a good overview of the series in general and gives me a chance to look over the entire series to this point.

No question about it, the first season was the best. The novelty of the flashbacks hadn't worn off and we were still meeting the characters. the structure of the show was different, also. More characters were featured in each episode and the episode wasn't totally centered on the character getting the flashbacks. At least 2/3s of an episode was taking place on the island instead of in flashback.

Also, the show's options were still open. It was still about a large group of castaways, most of them anonymous, stranded on an island where strange things happened. They acted like you would expect - they set up housekeeping, they argued, they formed romances, and they tried to get rescued.

The second season got off to a good start. We knew that other people lived on the island and they gave us some hints about them. The mysterious hatch was interesting. And at least a couple of the tail-enders were interesting (until they were killed off). On the other hand, the flashbacks got longer and repetitive.

The third season was divided in two with three of the cast being held by the Others. This was a low point for the series. The episodes blur together. The show was on the decline until a couple of episodes into the second half of season three (3.5?). Once Locke made contact with Ben things started happening. The feel of the show changed. It gained a new urgency that carried into season four.

Having the episodes in syndication, you can pick and choose which one you want to see again and which ones you want to skip. This is different from watching on DVD where you already decided to watch the show and it is a good measure of how good an episode is.

I noticed that I am much more likely to watch anything from season one and I am likely to turn off episodes from season two and three where Jack gets the flashbacks.

All of season four is worth watching except possibly the Desmond episode (too much flashback, and it feels like a filler episode). Some of the episodes are flashbacks. Some are flash forwards. We find out what happens to the Oceanic Six after they leave the island Ben predicted this at the end of season three when he pointed out that none of them were happy in the outside world. Sure enough, Kate is the only one whose life isn't a total disaster. Back in island time, something happens every episode. They are no longer trying to keep the show going as long as possible. Now they have a goal in sight.

Going into season five we will find out what happened after the six left and watch them going back to fix things.

I do have a couple of complaints about season four. The body count was too high. With both Alex and her mother dead, will we ever find out their backstory? I assume that the Others are from the Black Rock so at some point we will get their backstory. Do they stay on the island in order to keep their immortality? How did some of them get off after the island moved?

The producers have promised that they will have a satisfying wrap-up. We will see.

Art or Illustration?

It seemed like every obituary of the late Andrew Wyeth included a mention that some critics dismissed his works as being illustration rather than art. Here's an example. Maybe it is because I grew up with comic books but I think that this is an insult to both Wyeth and some of the great artists of all time.

The argument goes that photography freed the artist from having to slavishly follow reality. Since cameras can produce a much more realistic picture than an artist, true artists should forsake realism and immerse themselves in abstract art.

This is a load of crap (which some modern artists have been known to dry, varnish, and sell as art). Several generations of artist-wannabees with no technical talent convinced themselves and the world that they are the real artists. The critics are pleased to go along with this. It elevates the critics. Since it takes special training to tell good art from random blotches of paint thrown on a wall, abstract art keeps the critics in business.

My personal view is that anyone should be able to tell if an artist is good. If it isn't obvious to an untrained eye then it isn't fine art.

Also, simply because an artist uses a realistic style does not mean that he has slavishly copied reality.

The Dutch artist Vermeer is a great example. Some of his paintings were based on a device known as a camera obscura. This was a set of lenses that would project a view onto a flat surface. Vermeer used this to reproduce buildings. But the cityscapes he painted did not exist. He moved buildings around. He changed or added details.

An art class could spend an entire day studying how Vermeer painted pearls (this changed during his career). Then they could spend another week studying the meaning of the different symbols he put in his paintings. There is a lot more there than you see at first glance.

Try that with Brushstrokes in Flight by Roy Lichtenstein. Everything that this sculpture has to say can be covered in five minutes.

Back to Wyeth, his art speaks to people and his technical ability shamed the other artists and critics who could not match him so the degraded him, instead.

The Empire Strikes Back

It is generally acknowledged that The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the six Star Wars movies. I was watching it over the weekend and examining why it is better.

The cheap shot answer is that George Lucas let someone else write and direct it. That isn't fair to Lucas since he was co-writer and was looking over the shoulder of director Irvin Kershner.

One thing that really stands out every time I see this movie - it is gorgeous. set design, lighting, and cinematography combined to make a really good looking movie. All of the Star Wars movies use different pallets for different worlds but this goes a step further. Several of the rooms of the floating city have their own feel - the diffuse sunset-like lighting outside, the red lighting in the freezing chamber.

A big factor in the movie's success is the simplicity of the climax. The first two movies, this one and the original Star Wars (later renamed A New Hope) have very simple climaxes. Star Wars has the space fight to destroy the Death Star. Two groups of fighter pilots are making passes at a small target while being fired on. They go one at a time, each failing until Luke Skywalker (with cover from Han Solo) succeeds.

In The Empire Strikes Back, the climax is the lightsaber fight between Luke and Darth Vader. It is divided into three parts, each with its own feel. The first part in the freezing chamber establishes that Luke can hold his own. In the second part he finds that he is outclassed after all and in the third part he is disarmed (literally) and defeated.

Compare this with the other four movies. Starting with Return of the Jedi, Lucas decided to top a space fight and a lightsaber fight by doing both at once along with a third fight involving Ewoks. More is not always better and having three fights going on at once keeps the viewer from getting as involved with any single fight. This works against the movies. The other three movies follow this format instead of that from the earlier movies.

Similarly, Lucas no longer had to worry much about budget constraints so he could throw anything on the screen that he could imagine. Often this was too much. Attack of the Clones featured a fight between Count Dooku and Yoda. While impressive, the two moved so fast that it was difficult to see what was happening. The slower fight between Vader and Luke was more engaging even if it was technically inferior.

Finally, Empire featured Vader as the classic villain he is. He was one of the most memorable characters in Star Wars but in the original movie was was subordinate to Admiral Tarkin. In Jedi he was subordinate to the Emperor. Empire was the only movie where Vader acted alone.

This was also Vader at his most merciless. He strangles anyone who fails him. He tortures Han. He cuts Luke's hand off. He deflects blaster fire with his hand. The first movie left audiences wanting to see more of Vader and this movie delivered.

In the Return of the Jedi, Lucas was setting up for Vader's eventual reformation so Vader was much more subdued. He didn't kill anyone. The Emperor filled in as lead villain but was not as compelling as Vader had been.

In the second set of movies, Senator (later Emperor) Palpatine was a presence but he could never replace Vader. The mostly silent Darth Maul was more energetic than threatening. Count Dooku, Count Grievous, and the Trade Federation never approached Vader's level of villainy.

Frost/Nixon

We managed to see Frost/Nixon over the weekend. The movie is still in limited release.

This is a great movie. It deserves a best picture nomination and possibly some best actor nominations.

In 1977, talk show host David Frost did a no-holds-bared, three-part interview of Richard Nixon. The movie is the back-story about how the interview came about. As portrayed in the movie, the interviews became a contest between Frost and Nixon. Frost needed to get Nixon to make some new admissions in order to sell the interviews. Nixon on the other hand was trying to salvage his reputation. There was no way that both could succeed.

In addition, Frost's two researchers wanted the interviews to be a substitute for the trial that Nixon never had.

 I was expecting the movie to concentrate on the interviews. Instead director Ron Howard only has bits and pieces of them - just enough to give a taste for how Nixon was handling Frost.

Frank Langella gives the performance of his life. Previously his most memorable role was as Dracula, 30 years ago. In Frost/Nixon, he avoids an outright impersonation of Nixon, but uses just enough of Nixon's voice and mannerisms to be believable. He manages to make Nixon both interesting and convincing.

I'm not as familiar with Michael Sheen. Like Langella, he made his mark previously playing a vampire - Lucian in the Underworld series. I don't remember much about David Frost but Sheen's version is spot on with my memories.

The movie takes a few liberties with history. The movie shows Frost as being a light-weight personality who slowly realizes that he is in over his head. The real Frost was more highly regarded. On his short-lived talk show, he had the reputation for being too smart for the American audience.

A few lines were changed between the real interview and the movie. The movie has Nixon making an admission that did not happen in real life. In the real interviews Frost tried to get Nixon to admit that he had approved the original break in at the Watergate but he refused.

Regardless, it is a riveting movie and sheds much more light on Nixon than Oliver Stone ever did.

Immortality through Christmas Specials

While watching some classic Christmas specials last night I was struck by how they have altered our perception of several actors. Take Darren McGavin. IMDB has 180 entries for his work. This includes a couple of TV series that he starred in and at least two cult movies from the 1970s (Tribes about a hippy drafted into the Marines and Night Stalker about a vampire in Las Vegas). However, to most people he was the unnamed "old man" in Christmas Story.

Jimmy Stewart was one of the most celebrated actors of his generation with one Oscar and four other nominations (plus one for lifetime achievment) but It's A Wonderful Life is the only movie he made that is regularly played.

For several generations, Boris Karloff was the most famous horror movie actor ever. A victim of type casting, he seldom played anything but a villain and usually was cast as a mad scientist. However, the last few generations mainly know him as the voice of the Grinch. He also won a Grammy for narrating this story.

There are worse ways to be remembered. These are classics for a reason and it is likely that these would not have reached classic status without these actors.

I suspect that Jimmy Stewart would prefer to be remembered for some of his meatier roles. McGavin spent most of his career playing an "everyman" so he would probably be ok with being remembered for Christmas Story. Karloff would probably be gratified to be remembered for doing a children's story. He was a gentle, cultured man, very unlike the characters he usually played.

Heroes Book 3

Looking back on Book 3 of Heroes, I'm not impressed. The season started out with an interesting premise - exploring the dividing line between heroes and villains. Unfortunately, the execution was lacking. Most of the characters crossed the dividing line multiple times - so often that I became numb to it.

A major subplot was Sylar's attempt to reform. While this had its moments, it conflicted with earlier depictions of Sylar. He is at his best when he accepts what he is. He finally got back to this in the last couple of episodes.

I think that the point of the season was to save the world. An image of the Earth splitting apart was constantly shown. The trouble is that this happened in the future but we have seen so many alternate futures that it is hard to take one seriously. They need to drop this quest to stop a future menace. It was good in the first season and tiresome in the second and third seasons.

Too many elements were retreads from the first season. Hiro lost most of his memory and recreated his character development from the first few weeks of the first season. They even brought back the comic book and Hiro's cheer, "I did it!".

The eclipse was a stunt that added little or nothing. It was also the longest and widest total eclipse in history.

Aurthur didn't add much. He spent most of the season lurking instead of actually doing something. When you are that powerful you should take a more active hand.

They wrapped things up too quickly. Doesn't anyone on the show understand pacing? Last sason I could understand the rush to wrap up a slow season in a couple of episodes but there is no writers strike going on now. Why limp along and then cram too much in at the end.

That's the second time they had a character killed when a fiery bulding collapses.

Book 4 looks promising. They at least have the heroes in a different situation. It looks like they come out of the shadows.

What happened to the holiday movies?

This is something like the fourth weekend of the holiday movie season and I'm still waiting for something I want to see to come out. Past years have brought such releases as the three Lord of the Rings, the first Harry Potter movies, Titanic, and several Trek movies. We were supposed to get both Harry Potter and Trek but they were moved to the summer in the hope of making more money.

In the meantime we have things that I just don't want to see. I burned out on James Bond after the first Roger Moore release. I am not in the target audience for Twilight. Most of the other releases are Oscar-bait - critically acclaimed but not of interest to the average audience-member.

This week we get a remake of The Day the earth Stood Still. The ads make it look like a boring message movie. The reviews confirm this.

What happened to Hollywood?

Boston Legal

Boston Legal is about to end. Unlike most cancellations, this one is voluntary.

The show has had a strange run. Most of the cast is recycled from other shows. At one point two cast members were from different incarnations of Star Trek with a third (Candice Bergen) having been in a different Gene Roddenberry show. Younger cast members came and went without a ripple, replaced by more colorful actors.

Originally the premise of the show was that nothing is illegal. Whatever you did or wanted, they would plead it in court, with passion. James Spader's character was an example of the world's shadiest lawyer. He didn't win cases. He intimidated people. In one case he hired someone to break into a plaintiff's house and tie him up. Spader then informed that person that this would happen weekly.

A few years ago things changed. Spades's character started pleading cases. He also started pontificating. The show started including a weekly anti-Bush rant. It was also horribly unbalanced. Characters who were supposed to disagree usually said something like, "Yes, everything you say is true but..."

Spader's character also engaged in enough hijinks to get an entire law firm disbarred. He had affairs with the presiding judge. He bet on his own cases.

The real fun in the show was watching Shatner's character, Denny Crane. He shot people. In one episode he was on trial for shooting his doctor. The doctor pulled out his own gun and threatened the court whereupon Crane shot him again. It seems that they both knew how to bypass the metal detector.

The show took a different turn this season. In one case a teenager wanted to have an abortion. Candice Bergen's character was all for this until she realized that it was for the wrong reason. The girl who was of Chinese ancestry, wanted an abortion because the child was a girl. Bergen's character objected to the procedure, earning a lecture from the judge. In a surprising bit of nuance, Spader's character admitted that he was in favor of abortion because he was looking for justification for his own actions. He had impregnated two women and paid for their abortions and he worried about the morality of it.

The show wraps up next week with a two-hour finale. They will plead before the Supreme Court that someone who might benefit from a drug should be allowed to bypass FDA approval. This is surprising from them since this has been a conservative/libertarian position for years.

Unintentional Irony

New this year - a plastic reproduction of the Christmas tree from A Charlie Brown Christmas. You can also get an entire kit with both book and tree. The tree with the kit is much smaller.

There is a cruel irony about this. The Peanuts special was all about the over-commercialization of Christmas. In an effort to get the Christmas spirit, Charlie Brown goes to buy a Christmas tree to go with a play about the nativity. He and Linus find a lot full of search lights and artificial trees. Charlie Brown finds the last natural tree - a spindly branch nailed to crossed boards that sheds needles when touched. The other kids are outraged that he didn't get a proper plastic tree but, after a Bible quote from Linus, they relent, decorate the tree, and wish Charlie Brown a Merry Christmas. The special is a gentle rebuke to the commercialization of Christmas already underway in the 1960s.

Over the years there has been a lot of Peanuts merchandise. Charles Shultz, the creator of Peanuts, became quite wealthy from this and used some of his money for public works. Given this, I normally don't have any problems with Peanuts merchandise.

This one is a bit different since it is exactly what the special was complaining about - plastic trees and over commercialization.