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Music

Album anticipation – fall ’06

It doesn’t happen too often anymore, but maybe once a year there’s a confluence of musical talent, old favorites, and stuff I’m Just Curious About all hitting at roughly the same time. (There was a time, long ago, when this was more of a quarterly thing.) Some stuff I’ve already ordered, some stuff I’m still slobbering over, and other stuff I’m just thinking about. Here’s a rough rundown of this fall’s candidates for curing my mystery melody malady. … Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

This is what the Super Adventure Club actually believes!

The Return Of Chef!It’s been hard to escape the news that Isaac Hayes quit South Park in the wake of last fall’s controversial episode lampooning Scientology, or that in the wake of that news, how Comedy Central scheduled and then suddenly pulled a repeat of said episode. Tonight, on the show’s season premiere, Matt and Trey struck back with both a brilliant white-hot anger and compassion, attempting to draw fire away from Hayes and toward Scientology itself instead. Throughout the episode, Chef spoke in disjointed, cut-and-pasted phrases pieced together from the nine years worth of dialogue he has recorded for previous episodes, leading the boys to realize – gasp! – Chef has been brainwashed by that “fruity little club.” Their attempts to rescue him only lead to tragedy for Chef himself, though he is resurrected at the end of the episode in a less-than-subtle (and yet knee-slappingly funny) homage to the closing scenes of Star Wars Episode III. At several points during the episode, the folks responsible for brainwashing Chef threaten to take drastic action – namely, asking Kyle, Stan, Cartman and Kenny to leave – a clear indication that it’s not over by a long shot, and Matt and Trey don’t intend to let this drop.
Chef VaderAgain, not South Park’s finest hour, but one of its most heartfelt. I almost hope we get a running thread about this throughout the season. Heck, I even hope that Isaac Hayes might come around and show up to redeem Chef again (and that way, we can get a Return Of The Jedi spoof outta the deal too!).
In other news, I’m still almost speechless about the phrase that’s been running through my head all day: “Doctor Who has been nominated for multiple Hugo Awards.” I’ll be quite honest, I’ve loved the show for most of my life, and I never envisioned it being nominated for a Hugo Award either on TV or in print. The episodes Dalek, Father’s Day, and the combined two-parter of The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances were all nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), up against a Galactica episode (Pegasus), a Pixar short, and one or two other things I don’t recall haven’t heard of before. I’m torn between wanting Dalek and Father’s Day to win – from my own fleeting correspondences with them, writers Rob Shearman and Paul Cornell, respectively, are just damned nice guys. However, I’ve got to root for Cornell’s script hear; Dalek was a watered-down version of Shearman’s 2003 Doctor Who audio story Jubilee, but Father’s Day was pure Cornell, thought-provoking and heart-tuggingly emotional. My best wishes go to all the nominees – because from the ones I have seen, they’re all A-list stuff. (Truthfully, I’m surprised that [A] more Galactica episodes weren’t nominated, and [B] that Pegasus was the one that did get the nod; it’s worth remembering that multiple episodes of Babylon 5 were on the ballot for the ’96 Hugos, but JMS asked to have all but The Coming Of Shadows removed from consideration so there wouldn’t be a split of votes that would actually keep B5 from winning at all.)
As much as I love Doctor Who, I’m still reeling at the thought that it might soon share the same Hugo-winning stratosphere as some of the finest episodes of Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone. Wow. Promote the hell out of that, Sci-Fi. You’re showing two Hugo-nominated shows. (Granted, Galactica’s already a Hugo winner, but still…)… Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

Joining the pod people.

I’ve been sidelined by a bit of mild food poisoning for a couple of days, so when I wasn’t stuck in the bathroom for hours, I’ve tried my hand at podcasting for the first time. (Don’t worry, none of this was done in the bathroom itself – that would be a poocast. Not that I might not do one of those in the future…) My first podcasting experiments will be revealed on Friday the 17th, as I launch a series – or maybe I should say a tentative series – of Doctor Who podcasts to accompany Sci-Fi Channel’s broadcasts of the new series in the U.S.; the idea here is to help draw continuity connections between the old series and the new for casual fans or new fans. (If you’re a longtime dedicated fan, well, probably nothing new for you here.)
I wound up talking almost non-stop through Rose, though there were a couple of significant pauses for The End Of The World. I quickly discovered the value of keeping an ample supply of beverages on hand for this activity, and lived in fear of the weather alert radio behind me going off during yet another stormy day. (Not long after I finished End Of The World, I was getting things set up to record The Unquiet Dead when the first alarm sounded, followed about ten minutes later by the second one, and I figured “well, that’s about it for today.”)
I also discovered that I’m really not too well equipped for this whole endeavour of casting from my particular pod. I still don’t have a microphone (which certainly would’ve helped when I was trying to record the Voice of Odyssey a few weeks ago), so it’s currently a convoluted process of recording my voice with my camcorder (with the lens cover closed) for 45-odd minutes, and then spending another 45-odd minutes dumping that audio to CD, and then more time to finalize that disc, rip it to my hard drive, and edit the top and tails (I’m assuming you don’t want to hear me do a TV-style 3-2-1 count-in here.) A microphone would let me just do my damage straight to the CD-RW and cut something like an hour out of the process.
Ah well. It’s really strange how multimedia this whole thing is becoming. Oh, to quit my day job and do this all day. Assuming anyone likes these, I’ll be looking for other podcasting opportunities in the future…I just have no idea what they’d be. If anyone’s got any ideas, I’m all ears.… Read more