Dollhouse Gets Demolished

My good buddy Newman dropped me a line the other day to inform me of the recent cancellation of Joss Whedon's latest TV show, Dollhouse. No doubt there are many, many Whedonites out there that are utterly grief-stricken at this decision, and I do understand their devotion. I share it, to some degree. I was frankly obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and to only a slightly lesser extent, Angel. Firefly was fantastic and was treated absolutely abysmally by Fox, which resulted in it being cancelled long before its time. I was then stunned that they successfully brought such a failed series to the big screen, and I thought the result was great.

Having said all that, I hated Dollhouse. Look, to succeed a TV series needs at least one of three qualities. It either needs viewers or it needs someone at the network with faith in the show. I think it's fair to say that Dollhouse never had enough viewers to support it, but it did have load of network support. Fox didn't want to be wrong on Whedon twice. So, what was missing? Well, it needed the ever elusive third quality; it had to be good.

From the first second I began watching it, I could never really get behind the ridiculous concept at the show's heart. The idea of brainwashed operatives made sense, but the injection of the prostitution angle fucked it all up. First off, all these clients are gazillionaires, right? Getting laid would not be difficult, nor would paying a woman to do whatever kinky-ass shit you're into. Yeah, yeah, I get that it's a luxury service, but I just thought that wouldn't it be cheaper and less risky to use an actual hooker rather than some brainwashed girl that has apparently been sold into slavery?

Remember the episode where a rich client's kid gets kidnapped? And he has them load up Echo to be the best hostage negotiator in the world? This guy, as shady as he is, is rich, right? Couldn't he HIRE the best negotiator, rather than letting a shady criminal enterprise turn a hooker into one? There was another ep where she was loaded up as a master thief to help rob a bank. So, let's get this straight: a group of thieves evidently paid a massive fee to obtain their own master thief to.....steal.....more...money. Completely illogical. By the time she was solving crime as a backup singer to a diva I was convinced that the show was actually trying to make me fed up.

Then there was the lead. Look, I get why Dushku is a fan fave. She played a cool supporting character on a much better show. But, let's be honest, the role of Echo was a challenging role. I can say she surprised me in that she wasn't unwatchable, but a stronger actor should have made that into an incredible showcase, and Dushku was quite often the least interesting performer on the show. Not good.

So, Dollhouse goes the way of the dodo, and I have to say that it's no bad thing. It frees Whedon up to create something that really deserves the devotion he's earned.

Comic Observations: A Sgt. Rock and a Hard place (HA-HA!......pun)

For about as long as I can remember, there has been talk of a movie adaptation of the Sgt. Rock comic book. It's odd, because, aside from the justly legendary artwork by seminal Rock artist and comic book god Joe Kubert, I cannot recall a single solitary story detail from the series.

It's one of those series that everyone has a ton of nostalgia for, and has a great central character, but almost no one can recall any great story lines or really any sort of definitive take on the character. Sure, Kubert's art was incredible, and it was popular enough to debut in 1959, and continue regular appearances and his own series until 1989.

But, for some reason, he's always been a hot property in Hollywood. They've never been able to crack that particular nut, though, even with countless writers, producers and stars like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger attached (back in the day when a freakishly muscled Austrian could realistically be expected to play an average American Joe in WWII - don't know if you recall, but the US Army wasn't exactly wild for Austrians during that time period).

Well, now they think they've solved it; take the whole thing into the future! Yep, apparently the one thing missing from their previous attempts were lasers (pew-pew)! Only Hollywood would attempt to adapt a popular property from another medium by changing almost everything that made it popular in the first place. Case in point:

A Halloween Treat - Zombie vs. Shark

Halloween is upon us, and I for one recommend spending it with a good scary movie!!!

If you like creepy-crawly gross outs, I recommend The Thing (the John Carpenter version). If it's high-art scares you like, may I recommend The Shining or The Exorcist? And if you like low-budget under the radar spookiness I have always been a big fan of a little flick called Session 9.

But if Zombies are your thing and you haven't seen Fulci's Zombi 2 (or under it's one of many other titles) then you are missing one of the greatest scenes ever:

Happy Halloween!

Sci-Fi Tech that Will Kill Us All (9) : Petman

God damn you, Boston Dynamics. As you may recall, I called this robotics company out as my nemesis not too long ago, and they have responded to my taunts with a whole new level of escalation. Take a look at the Petman:

Oh, you bastards, you're halfway to a Terminator. Here's what this seemingly "innocent" company has to say about the Petman:

PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the US Army. Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically and had a limited repertoire of motion, PETMAN will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents. PETMAN will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating when necessary, all to provide realistic test conditions.

Natural, agile movement is essential for PETMAN to simulate how a soldier stresses protective clothing under realistic conditions. The robot will have the shape and size of a standard human, making it the first anthropomorphic robot that moves dynamically like a real person.

I love how they refuse to admit that it's this realistic movement that utterly creeps the hell out of people. And please, for the love of god, stop kicking these things! Machines don't forget!

But, I've been assured by the president of Boston Dynamics that there is no sinister intent in their robotic designs, and that my fears are simple, treatable, neuroses.

Boston Dynamics President Lex Luthor

This Is A Man

There is a man in Portland, Oregon who stands tall and mighty as a shining example of true badass manliness. He is a man who, unlike the Marlboro Man or James Bond or Batman, is not fictional. He is a man of mystery, and I can only assume he has either been sent to our time from some post-apocalyptic future in an effort to save the human race, or he is waging a war on crime throughout the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

I am speaking of the legend known only as the Samurai Biker.

No one seems to know exactly who the Samurai Biker is, aside from some vague comments about him possibly being involved in medieval reenactments, but I maintain this is simply a cover story for his true, ball-bursting manly activities.

He is real, I assure you, and not some figment of your most fevered imaginations of what the ultimate Mad Max style superhero would be. Here's some links to some news stories about the Biker, and he has also been included in article on Cracked, that stand tribute to how he is filled to the helm with pure awesome.

I salute you, Samurai Biker, for you are making the world a more kick-ass place to be.

Take Your Protein Pills and Put Your Helmet On

So, big news in the space exploration scene in the last week or so. The Ad Astra Rocket Company of Houston, Texas has announced that it has successfully tested VASIMR, a new engine that utilizes ion propulsion.

Why is that such a big deal? Well, here's a phrase for you: manned mission to Mars. Below you'll find a sciencey explanation of what ion propulsion is.

From a website that seems to be related to NASA in some way:

Ion propulsion is a technology that involves ionizing a gas to propel a craft. Instead of a spacecraft being propelled with standard chemicals, the gas xenon (which is like neon or helium, but heavier) is given an electrical charge, or ionized. It is then electrically accelerated to a speed of about 30 km/second. When xenon ions are emitted at such high speed as exhaust from a spacecraft, they push the spacecraft in the opposite direction.

See with our conventional rockets, the trip to Mars would take so long that we could only attempt it when Earth and Mars are closest together, which happens every two years. so, yeah, the astronauts would travel there (which would take about six months), get out and do their thing (which based on moon missions would involve driving a bitching set of wheels, stuffing rocks in their pockets, and playing golf), and then wait a year for the orbit to get close enough for them to attempt a return trip. One. Year.

But, with ion propulsion, the trip would get cut down to just 39 days, meaning that they could make the trip pretty much any time in Mars' orbit. So, yeah, it's a big deal for space-type people. Here's what Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield had to say to CTV:

If you can cut that voyage down to just a matter of seven or eight weeks then of course you can carry way less stuff. And if you don't have to carry so much fuel to slow down when you get there or to bring you back, it just scopes the whole thing down to where it becomes maybe a practical problem to solve rather than an almost an impossibility.

On the national pride side, a Halifax company makes the power generators for the engine, which is pretty cool. While the engine's been successfully ground tested, it hasn't been tested in space, so that's one hurdle. The other is that NASA has yet to come up with an effective suit for astronauts to wear on Mars that can handle its punishing conditions (a -60 degree average temperature, for instance).

Some might complain that we have more pressing problems here on Earth that take priority, such as homelessness and poverty and crime and education and health care. To which I respond, it's fucking Mars, lighten up. Seriously, humanity has always been on a timeline of exploration ever since a caveman left his cave, looked over the hill and thought, "I wonder if I go over there I'll find someone who'll bang me? Because I'm getting no love from these Cro-Magnon chicks."

My bet? They'll be setting off for Mars by 2019, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing.

These pretzels are making me thirsty.

And now, for your viewing pleasure (it is slightly hypnotic) someone with far too much time on their hands has compiled every Kramer entrance from Seinfeld. God, I love that show.



At no point does he accuse anyone of being an N-word. But you can feel that he might want to.