Why the New V is an Epic FAIL

Start here.

And my thoughts...

1) Universal health care can only be the product of an evil alien plot? FAIL.

Help! Everyone else on this show is absurdly white!
We're all alone!!!

2) Everyone in New York is white, except one black dude who is actually an alien? You have a mothership in every major city in the world. You could expand the scope of the show and have the plotting happen on an international scale (a la Heroes) and yet you keep it all in a version of New York where everyone is white. Squandered multicultural opportunity, treading dangerously close to white supremacy/racism... FAIL.

3) Teenagers in the'00's are way more sophisticated than those two idiotic, "Dude! Dude! Apples! Dude!" morons. Hell, teenagers in the '90's were more sophisticated. This is clearly V written by old people. The level of irony, cleverness, and skepticism in today's youth is markedly absent. Put MSCL, Freaks & Geeks, and Buffy on your queues, you old fogies. FAIL.

4) Storytelling 101: if the journalist already knows he's compromising his integrity and feels bad about it, then there's actually nothing interesting or ironic about his story. How about he's so glory hungry that he doesn't realize the compromises he's making until it's too late? How about he thinks the aliens are so amazingly good that he glorifies them even as it becomes more and more evident that they're evil? How about he thinks he using them, and then ends up being used? FAIL.

5) The original V -- for all the nostalgia with which even I remember it -- was actually not that good. I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved it as a kid, but it's kind of dumb. A major part of why I liked it is because people ate rats and ripped off their faces. You could have used this to your advantage. You could have smashed the original show into a million bits, only taken the good parts, and made something contemporary and topical. Instead you actually treated the source material with reverence, replicated it's Cold War plots, and remade the same kind of dumb show that, by the way, only lasted 24 episodes. Talk about a missed opportunity here. FAIL.

FAIL.

FAIL.

FAIL.

This show sucks balls.

Hi Again

I originally posted this to my Ashtanga diary, but there's a little bit about my playwriting process in it, too.

I don't know why I decided to start a whole new blog during one of the busiest periods of my entire life, especially since I wasn't even posting regularly on my main blog.

Anyway -- I'm back!

I still can't do Marichyasana D. The horrible truth it's making me face about myself is also something I can't do yet -- by which I mean it's a challenge I haven't figured out how to overcome in life. Basically, when getting the bind on my own was absolutely impossible, I kind of didn't care. I just thought it was fun that E could put my body into that position at all. It was all, "Whoa! Oh, my god! Wha...?!?!"

Now, though, I'm pretty damn close. I can wrap my arm, but not with enough openness in my shoulders that my forearm gets far enough around my knee that I can clasp fingers. Seriously, I am one inch away from getting my shoulder into a good position and wrapping my arm sufficiently.

AND NOW I'M FRUSTRATED AS HELL!

When it was hopeless, it didn't matter to me. But now that I'm so close, I've turned into this growling, tense, angry beast. I get nearly there and then I start pushing and pulling and grunting -- which I know probably just tightens me up -- but I can't let go. I need to learn to let go.

I find that this is true in everything I do in life. I can dabble or play around in all kinds of things, but when it approaches some tier related to accomplishment or whatnot my instinct is to just push through or give up. I never just steadily proceed and allow the breakthrough to happen whenever it will happen.

The only place this isn't really true is writing. But I feel like that's because you don't have to be linear about writing a play. You want to skip the end? Then skip to the end. Ta-da! Now fill in the part you skipped.

Unfortunately, there's no way to do that with yoga. At least, not one I can think of.

Burnt The F*ck Out

So after four months of go, Go, GO, GOOOOO! it's finally happened. I am totally out of it. All I do all day is watch TV and read comic books. I haven't written a word in two weeks. And I even know what I want to do with my new draft; I just don't want to do it.

I'm totally zonked.

Aren't you glad I started blogging again at this really unexciting juncture?

Sucked In

It's Peter Milligan's fault.

I heard that my favorite comic book writer of all time was getting a new monthly DC/Vertigo series called Greek Street. Great concept -- update Greek myths and set them in London's Soho on, naturally, Greek Street. It's been okay so far. Not yet as good as Human Target and not even close to the greatest ongoing comic series of all time ever in the history of the universe ever ever ever Shade, the Changing Man, but I have faith that it will get there. It has all the elements of a great Milligan book -- questions of identity and madness, in this case related to ideas of fate, prophecy, and predetermination. And there's a cute homo detective based on Daedalus!

Anyway, so Milligan gets me to enter a comic shop again. I steel myself, saying, "I'm just buying this one book. Just this one -- no more!" And for three months, I do really, really well.

And then I see this on the shelf.

See, here's the thing... The New Mutants were the first superhero book I ever picked up. They were the X-Men's junior team back when there was only one book called X-Men and an associated, though not intertwined title called X-Factor. The Muties were the same age as me, they didn't really go into battle so much as go on adventures, and they had pre-teen/teenage problems, like I did. They've been brought back in mini-series and other books since then, but it was never really the original team. Members would just be kind of peripherally involved.

So, I held off for two months, but then I Googled around. They brought Doug Ramsey a.k.a. Cypher back from the dead!!! CYPHER!!! The little nerd boy with the useless power who had a more than intimate relationship with his techno-organic (think living robot) teammate Warlock.

And now I'm totally back in the comic book thing. I picked up the New Mutants issues I missed, and I've been hunting around for the various storylines in which they brought Illyana Rasputin a.k.a. Magik back from the dead. Here's a little beefcake of both of those living, then dead, and now living again Muties.

It's a dangerous thing when you start down the road of collecting a superhero book. X-Books are especially periolous -- with all of their crossovers and one-shots and mini-series and marketing hoo-hah. It gets far too tempting to pick up a few issues of another book and another and another...

But that's it! SERIOUSLY! Greek Street and New Mutants -- no more. Please god, no more.

From a Talk Thread on Yelp!

Bill Thompson: Politics as Usual

Mike Bloomberg: Dictator For Life as Usual

Super-homos

I know I'm late coming to this party, but what can I say? I haven't been blogging.

OMG - RICTOR AND SHATTERSTAR KISSED! FINALLY!!!

I think it's kind of great that Marvel has really stepped up it's, ahem... gay agenda. It always did make more sense for there to be queers in the Marvel Universe (given the X-men and the outsider status of all superpowered individuals there). Plus, with the Friends of Humanity (Friends of the Family) and the genetic purity/cleansing metaphors in the X-books... let's just say all this queerness is long overdue.

That's all I really have to say except...

Marry. Fuck. Kill.

Marry: Vivisector.

Fuck: Northstar.

Kill: Shatterstar.

Don't Miss Dollhouse

Okay -- so I'll be the first to admit that the first several episodes of Dollhouse, Season 1 were rocky at best, and disgustingly awful television at worst. But in the middle of last year, the show did a complete turn around and became a mind-bending sci-fi romp about identity, existentialism, and social Darwinism. No, I'm not kidding. It really is one of the most creative and adventurous shows on TV right now, and it does what sci-fi always does best: uses preposterous fiction to help us examine our own lives.

And no one is watching the show.

It makes me really sad, so I'm begging you: please watch this episode from last Friday. You can do it right here, or click on over to Hulu. It's really amazing what they've done with the show, and I'd love for it to keep on chugging along.



Seriously, this season has been doing so well, I'm actually thinking about getting the Season 1 DVDs (despite those awful first 5 episodes) and watching it over again. Just give the show one more chance, and then tell your friends what fun it's become.