Fun With Headlines

It's a big world we live in. Scientists have confirmed this, but only after measuring it, and then soaking their feet and taking a long nap. And being a big world, there's a lot going on in it. Let's take a look at what's going on today, shall we? Your headlines are next:

Madonna, in Malawi, Refuses to Talk About Adoption.
Michael, in Sacramento, refuses to talk about Madonna. Moving on.

U.S. to Push for UN Climate Deal But No "Magic Wand".
What?! There's a magic wand on the table and we're not going to push for it? Are we mad? We could not only fix our economy with one of those babies, but turn North Korea's missiles into pudding!

Violent Video Games Can Improve Vision.
Excellent. Now tomorrow's gun-toting psychos won't be forced to wear glasses. I'll sleep more soundly knowing that their aim will be better.

Erratic Black Hole Regulates Itself.
Can't quite put my finger on it, but something about that headline sounds vaguely dirty.

Panel Passes Park, Beach Smoking Ban Bill.
What?! They're banning parks, beaches AND smoking? Big government is out of control!

Nude Alpine Man Who Jumped Through Windows Tasered.
Apparently something was distracting police enough to have not heard his "don't tase me, bro!" plea. Dr. Manhattan, please report to the ER...

Rumor: Text Messages Can Kill.
Next time you get a text message that says, "bang"? Duck.

Space Smells Funny, Astronauts Say.
And I'm to believe that an astronaut opened up a window at some point and took a whiff?

Woman Arrested After Shackling Self To Husband.
Um, sweetheart? That whole ball-and-chain joke was SARCASM.

Brains or Beauty? Women Still Conflicted.
I wasn't aware there was some point where women had to choose. That would explain a lot, actually.

"Pink Panther" Jewel Thief Suspect Held in Cyprus.
Police request he find some way to stop the saxophone music as it's keeping the other prisoners awake.

NJ Officials Find 80 Cats in Feces-Filled Home.
Hate to break it to you, folks, but where do you think all those cats go at night after the "Lolcats" photo shoots are done?

NY Company to Launch Mexican-Made Kosher Tequila.
Oy! No mas!

Driver Begs Cops to Shoot Him After 130 MPH Chase.
After a 130 MPH chase, I'm guessing he didn't have to beg them all that hard.

Man Puts Finger in Gas Tank, Gets Stuck for Hours.
There's a Polack joke buried in there somewhere. I just have to find it.

HIV Transmission Captured On Video.
Yes, we know. It's called "porn".

California May Reduce Carbon Emissions by Banning Black Cars.
Racist!!!

New Lossless MP3 Format Explained.
It doesn't lose. Next question?

Smart Grid Computers Susceptible To Worm Attacks.
Keep your computers away from dirt. Problem solved.

Diners Can 'Have a Ball' at Testicle Festival.
Leaving me with no punchline whatsoever. Well-played, Associated Press. Well-played.

Your Sunday Break From Wordiness

Today we're going to take a break from my yammering and give your eyes and brains a rest. Let's just take a look at some fun graphics off the web, shall we? If you need to see one larger, click on it to make it so. Thanks to our friends over at failblog.org for these Sunday funnies.

The Weird Fat Kid

I spend a lot of time on my patio, working at my laptop, or sometimes just listening to a podcast on my iPod. As such, I get to observe, sometimes just out of the corner of my eye or in the reflection of my glass door or laptop screen, the goings-on in the apartment complex around me.

Neighbors come and go with the seasons. For the most part, my fellow residents are older. This is a slightly upscale complex (definitely upscale compared to the place across the street), and it costs a little more than your average college student or just-getting-started career person prefers to pay. There are occasional exceptions. I've been fortunate enough to have the occasional attractive college girls move in. Not that I have any intentions for, or illusions about, attractive college girls, but something about having them around just makes a man feel better about the place he's living in. When other guys drop by and spot the nubile things sunning themselves by the pool, a man can bask in the warmth of dude envy, despite the fact that he's only used the pool once since he's lived here and has maybe said hello three times to any such girls in passing. If he, himself, is not a swinging cat, at least he can feel like he lives in a fairly swinging joint.

There's currently a couple of college-aged folks living across the way and upstairs, and the loudness of their social gatherings, with people coming out to smoke on their patio, is a sometimes annoying but mostly welcome change of pace. Being surrounded by nothing but old people all the time can make you start to feel like an old person. Nothing wrong with a little injection of extroverted youth. But they won't be here long. Experience has taught me this. You tend to change apartments a lot when you're young, not hunker down and stay in the same place for five years, like I have. With age comes a need for stability and familiarity.

So in my time here, plenty of neighbors have come and gone, both young and old. The cool hairdresser. The guitar-playing stoner guy. The hot girl next door who left to go join the FBI (that's a whole other story). The Asian family with the hilarious twin boys that tired me out just watching them run around the complex. But through all those cast changes, there's been one constant in my view from the patio.

The weird fat kid.

I never consciously chose to call him that. It's an unkind title to tack on a kid. The designation just sort of formed in my head over time. I started seeing this kid, maybe nine or so years old, off and on. I'd see him walking around the complex, following its sidewalks, very slowly. He never appeared to be walking to get to any destination. He was just walking for to sake of walking. And by "fat" I don't mean he was obese. Just overweight for a kid his age, the kind of state that makes you realize its in his genes, not caused by any overwhelming ice cream ingestion. He always wore baggy clothes, his tee shirts (when the weather was warm) always untucked, but his pre-teen gut still showed through.

It didn't take long for me to notice that his walks were not random. There was a pattern to them. A pattern to the path, and a pattern to the time of day. I'd always see him, first, when he came into view coming ploddingly around the rental office. Often he'd be carrying a stick. He would always stop there in front of the office, and would lean down and look at the same plant - the exact same plant, every time. Sometimes he would whack or poke it with his stick, sometimes he would just stare. Then he'd rotate, and stare out across the small parking lot, just standing there for a few moments. Then he'd start walking again, methodically slow, and stroll past my patio. He'd then disappear beyond my building, following the walkway around another one of the buildings in the back.

Sometimes when I'd get home from work, I'd park my van and get out, and would see him on his rounds. Often he'd just be standing there, swinging at an overhead branch, lazily, with a stick, or looking at the mailboxes. Then he'd move on. During the summer months, when my upstairs neighbor kept his sliding door and living room window open, I'd avoid smoking his place out by having my cigars elsewhere in the complex. I'd wheel to the front or the rear of my building, iPod turned on, listening to music or a podcast or some kind of motivational book-on-tape, maybe just thinking over something I was writing and working out story or character problems. Often, this would happen during the kid's rounds. His turtle-like stroll would bring him around the corner, and he'd pass me. He wouldn't turn the other way, seeing someone in his path (as your average person would be more apt to do when that person in the way is in a wheelchair). He go around me, and would pass too close for social comfort - must people have an innate sense of personal space and give others a wide berth, but not this kid. It was like he felt unable to deviate from his pattern of travel. Like if I was directly in it, he might have just crawled right over me.

Maybe it was these too-close walk-bys or just the repetition of his movements, spied from my patio, but something about this kid started to annoy me. I didn't WANT to be annoyed. It wasn't a conscious thing I thought about. But something in my head, when he'd appear, would make me think - and not necessarily in clear words - "Oh, great - it's the weird fat kid again". His predictability grated on me. His fascination with the same plant, his need to look at the mailboxes as though they were going to do something unexpected like stand up and start singing a show tune, made me want to shake him and tell him to go play a videogame or something like a normal kid, or watch TV. Read a book. Anything! Something normal! Someone needed to tell this kid that he was acting weird, and that "weird" is a one-way street to no friends, Dr. Who and eventually dying alone surrounded by your collection of Pokemon figures. He'd appear and I'd think, "Isn't Wopner on at three? Definitely. Definitely three."

Over time, though, I inevitably started thinking deeper about this kid. One day it finally occurred to me that I'd never once seen him with his parent or parents. He lives on the other side of the complex, but it's not a big place. I'm sure I must have seen whoever his guardian is. And though I probably had, I had no way of knowing if he/she/they was connected to him, because he/she/they was never WITH him. For all observation told me, he might well have been living here alone. I wondered what kind of home life he must have. There were two possibilities - either his parents worked or were gone so much that he was always on his own, or he was so invisible to them that they didn't even notice he was out wandering around by himself. Or a third possibility was that his living situation was such that he needed these regimented, meandering walks just to get away from it a couple of times a day.

I got to thinking of something my ex-girlfriend had told me once. She was in a psychology class at the time, and the professor was asking people about habits that they had. She'd volunteered her own, one that I hadn't even noticed - that she always tended to do things three times. If she were to scrape her shoe on a step to get mud off it, for example, she'd do so three times. Or if she scratched an itch, she'd do so two extra times. Her professor suggested to her that she did that habit from feeling a lack of control in her life - perhaps from growing up a military brat and having to move so much as a kid as she had. That was her way of having some control. This kid made me think of that. Was this routine his way of having some control, some certainty in his life? I grew less annoyed with him, and began feeling sad for him. There were a lot of possibilities to explain his behavior, and none of them sounded good.

Seasons would pass, and I'd continue to see him, and slowly see him grow. He'd put in a little more weight, he'd get taller, his hair would get longer (or later disappear in a buzz cut, only to grow out again later). For a while, I saw him start walking with another kid, a skinny kid who looked a couple of years his younger. This made me feel good. He had a friend, someone else from the complex, obviously. I'd see them hang out, sometimes at the pool in the summer. Some time after, though, I noticed they were hanging out with an older kid. And this kid genuinely bugged me. Loud, obnoxious, had a mouth like Lenny Bruce. Swore constantly, seemed to pride himself on his vulgarity and sexual humor, though he couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen. While never having kids, I suddenly felt like a parent, and knew that fear parents have of their kids hanging out with the WRONG kids. This was clearly one that would have been my nightmare as a father. I felt an urge to find WFK's apartment, talk to his folks (if they existed, and he wasn't living alone in some kind of pre-teen witness relocation situation) and ask them why they weren't keeping a closer eye on their son and the company he was keeping.

Eventually, both his associates stopped making appearances, and it was back to business as normal again. Five years I've lived here, and, as recently as this afternoon, the kid - now into his teendom - is still making the rounds. He walks sentry around the complex, a touchstone to my life here, a presence I could set my watch by, if I wore a watch. It's not something he's outgrown. And I've still never seen an adult walking with him, or getting into a family car with him, or out looking for him to call him into dinner. WFK walks alone. I no longer resent his presence, no longer harbor any irrational annoyance when he takes his daily slow march. I hope for him. I hope that something - a good high school experience, a cherished hobby, or, heaven forbid, a girl - comes into his life and replaces his walks. I hope that whatever seems to be missing from his life is finally found, and that he'll grow into a happy, well-adjusted adult, one who goes out and explores the world outside this little complex and makes his mark there.

And not one who, say, buys the same three frozen dinners over and over again, ends up listening to the same selection of familiar songs on his iPod (despite having many more to choose from), tends to watch the same movies time and time again, and ends up on the patio at roughly the same time each day, smoking the same brand of cigars year after year...

Man, I need to lose a few pounds...

NOTE: I meant to point out that the photo used above is NOT the kid in question. That's a random Google image search photo I plucked off the net. No, I am NOT taking photos of my neighbors. And now, my lawyers feel better about this post.

Six Degrees of Charles Bronson

You ever have one of those spit-take moments when you're flipping around cable and find an old movie, and you spot a well-known actor in a very early, and sometimes very embarrassing, role?

Last night I ended up on "Death Wish II", the Charles Bronson vengeance-fest from 1982. And out nowhere I was like, "Holy crap! That's Laurence Fishburne!" Yes, heralded thespian Fishburne was playing one of the members of the sensitively multi-racial gang that ended up raping Bronson's housekeeper and his daughter. Guess you have to start SOMEWHERE, right? While this wasn't his actual start (he was in "Fast Break" with Gabe Kaplan and in "Apocalypse Now", both in '79), he still wasn't a known actor by any stretch.

This took me back to, many years ago, catching the original "Death Wish" on cable with a few of the guys. We were all shocked and tremendously amused to find Jeff Goldblum playing one of THAT film's raping gang members. Not that rape is amusing, but how can you not laugh at Jeff Goldblum, over-playing crazy to cartoonish levels, spouting out the line, "I"ll show you how to paint! I'm gonna paint her mouth!" Ironically, the rape victim was also Bronson's daughter. A lot of rape in Bronson's films. I assume that's so we'll hate the bad guys enough to where we'll have no problem when Bronson methodically guns them down. Note that the other laughter in this film with the appearance of Freddy "Boom Boom" Washington, from "Welcome Back Kotter" fame, as a street hood trying to rob vigilante Bronson with the famous line, "Give me the money, honey!".

Interesting that both Goldblum and Fishburne had early starts in Bronson crapfests. In 1992, when both their careers had started taking off, they ended up in the same film, playing the lead roles in the Bill Duke-directed film "Deep Cover". Both would later go on to success in major box office smash franchises ("Jurassic Park" and "The Matrix"). And, ironically, both Hollywood icons are currently playing roles in television crime dramas ("Law and Order: CI" for Goldblum, "CSI" for Fishburne). They've each followed similar and successful career paths, and both somehow overcame their gangta rape-a personae from "Death Wish" films - both films that now, for me, will be very useful when playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Hey, wait a minute - Freddy Washington was in "Welcome Back Kotter" with Gabe Kaplan, and Fishburne was in "Fast Break" with Kaplan. And after that, Kaplan was in...

Oh. Never mind.

Like A Boss

(Based on the The Lonely Island song, "Like A Boss". You can enjoy this tune on iTunes. However, please do not download it if you don't want to deal with the language used in it.)

Mr. O'Connell, thank you for coming to your performance review.

No problem.

So now that you're technically your own employer, it's fair to say that you, in fact, are now the one in charge?

Absolutely. I'm the boss.

Okay, so take us through a day in the life of "the boss".

Well, the first thing I do is...

Sleep 'til lunchtime! (like a boss)
Avoid shaving! (like a boss)
Take a shower! (like a boss)
Watch some cable news! (like a boss)
Put some pants on! (like a boss)
Read some email! (like a boss)
Drink some Slimfast! (like a boss)
Take some heart pills! (like a boss)
Hit the laptop! (like a boss)
Do some writing! (like a boss)
Get the writer's block! (like a boss)
Get distracted! (like a boss)
Flirt with neighbors! (like a boss)
Give massages! (like a boss)
Make out by the pool! (like a boss)
Do soap sculpture! (like a boss)
Deliver babies! (like a boss)
Learn karate! (like a boss)
Talk to squirrels! (like a boss)
Teach geometry! (like a boss)
Rubik's cube! (like a boss)
Try to solve it! (like a boss)

(Damnit, no one's ever going to figure this $#@% thing out it's no use I SUCK!!)

Break the cube! (like a boss!)
Hack the White House! (like a boss)
Steal some intell! (like a boss)
Catch Osama! (like a boss)
Get a medal! (like a boss)
Go on Oprah! (like a boss)
Raise an Army! (like a boss)
Conquer Finland! (like a boss)
Fight a monkey! (like a boss)
Stop global warming! (like a boss)
Date both Jessicas! (like a boss)
Alba and Simpson! (like a boss)
Build a spaceship! (like a boss)
Fly it to the Moon! (like a boss)
Play some golf there! (like a boss)
Take a nap! (like a boss)

Uh huh. So that's an average day for you, then?

No doubt.

You...make out by the pool, catch Osama, go on Oprah, play golf on the Moon and then take a nap?

HELL yeah.

And I think at one point there you mentioned not being able to solve the Rubik's Cube?

Nope.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you did.

Nah, that ain't me.

Okay. Well, this has been eye-opening for me.

I'm the boss.

Yeah, no, got that. You said it about four-hundred times.

I'm the boss.

Yeah, yeah, I got it!

I'm the boss.

No, I heard you, see you later.

(And if you're not a The Lonely Island fan, none of that made any sense. I shouldn't write these things this late at night. Thank you for your time).

In case of bad economy...break glass!

Ah, leave it to a Sacramentan to shatter the notion that a business can't thrive in a tough economy.

From KCRA's news site:

SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. -- A glass repairman in suburban Sacramento County broke windows to drum up business, sheriff's investigators said.

Andrew Krogh, who runs AA Glass and Mirror from his home on Watt Avenue, was arrested Monday night and booked on six felony counts of vandalism.

It started with a simple broken window at Quality Business Machines. Office manager Pam Lassiter said a glass repairman quickly approached her with help.

"'Here's my card, I can make you a deal, get it boarded up for you,' so on and so forth. We took him up on it, because we'd never had a glass problem," Lassiter said.

But at least 15 broken windows later, it had become a frustrating and expensive mystery.

"It was driving us crazy, and I felt like -- we even added cameras to the side of the building, in areas by the street, to see if we could catch these guys doing it," said Mike Hogan, video services manager.

Last Thursday, another window break turned out to be a breakthrough. Hogan matched surveillance video to the times of the glass break alarms, "and sure enough, I saw the white van," he said.

Sheriff's detectives traced the van to Krogh, who was arrested after students at a martial arts studio spotted the van cruising past.

"Times are tough, people are pretty much willing to do anything to get money these days," Lassiter said.

And let's give it up for Sacramento's martial arts students, for helping foil the crime! He would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling kung-fu kids!

So Say We All

Battlestar Galactica is now over.

The new one. I'm assuming you knew there was a new one.

Friday night was the final episode of the five-year series. When the final script was written, it was meant to be a two-hour event. But there was too much. It ended up three hours and twelve minutes, and was split over two nights. But the final two hours (and twelve minutes - and note that fifteen to twenty minutes were cut from that and will be added back in when the DVD set is released) was Friday, and the faithful gathered around their TV sets - or computer screens - and watched the end of a most amazing journey.

Television did NOT see this show coming. No one expected anything from a remake of a gloriously campy sci-fi show of the 70s but kibble for nerds. They had no idea that soon, against all expectation, TV Guide would be calling it (and I quote...as you'll be able to tell by the quotation marks), "The Best Show on Television". It sidelined everyone. It wasn't campy. It was gritty. It was dark. It was heartbreaking. It was challenging. It was controversial. It was, at times, uncomfortably sexy. And it was nothing anyone had imagined it would be.

One of my favorite writers, Joss Whedon, gave this as a piece of advice to anyone trying to tell a story: have something to say. Even if you're writing a Die Hard ripoff, he says, have something to SAY about Die Hard ripoffs. Battlestar Galactica had something to say. A lot of things to say, actually. About human beings. About religion. About racism. About 9/11. About the war in Iraq. About torture. About history. About Bob Dylan (?!). And yet, I'm sure there were some who casually watched the show to see the shiny spaceships and didn't even realize it was saying all those things. Science fiction, at its best, has always been philosophy masquerading as candy. It's held up a mirror to humanity, and if humanity didn't always like what it saw, then it was doing its job right. Galactica carried that standard high, and waved it proudly. It reminded us of what genre television can be if we're willing to let it.

If you're one of the people who missed Galactica - and I'm going to assume that you are, which is why I'm not discussing the finale's content at all - then I'm going to challenge you to seek it out. Even if you don't find some grander meaning behind it all, I can at least guarantee you a journey you'll never forget - gripping stories, mind-blowing twists, wrenching drama that will haunt you long after the credits roll, performances that will stun you (from actors like Edward James Olmos, who referred to BSG as the "best frakking job I ever had")...and, yes, shiny spaceships, and some of the best special effects you've ever seen on television. And if watching it makes your head hurt? That just means you're watching it right.

Thank you, Ron Moore and David Eick, for giving us this show. Thank you, cast and crew, for bringing it to life. Thank you, Katee Sackhoff, for that smile you gave me in San Diego - I'm sure it meant as much to you as it did to me (it could happen...). We'll miss you, Battlestar Gallactica.

Nothing but the rain, sir.

Nothing but the rain.

Can we get back...to the future?

One of the first things I learned in screenwriting class was about backstory. The metaphor used was that of an iceberg. Imagine an iceberg in the water. The ten percent that you can see, above the water, represents what shows up in your screenplay - the story, characters, etc, that the audience experiences. The other ninety percent is below the surface, unseen, left in the depths. That ninety percent of all the history you put into the tale and its heroes never gets used. However, the leap of faith you have to take is that by you having come up with that other ninety percent, and the knowledge you gained from it shaped those characters, and your story, in such a way that a greater depth and realism is there, one the audience can feel, one that brings the story to life and makes the viewers sense that history, even if it's not spelled out for them.

But there are reasons why all that backstory you spent your time on can't be in your screenplay. One, you could never fit it all in to a two-hour movie. There's not a lot of time in a murder mystery tale to chronicle the high school experiences of the lead detective. But more importantly, it doesn't belong there. Storytelling is about the here and now. Even if you're telling a story set in the past, that story is, for the viewers/readers, NOW. Backstory, as fascinating as it might be, is there to serve your story, not to be your story. Stories are about immediacy, and they're about moving forward.

This is why the prequel movement of the last couple of decades is really starting to grate on me. They make sense - if there's a particular world or character(s) that we ended up loving, then it follows that we'd want to know more about it/them. If the writer did their job right, we could feel all that delicious history buried in the story, and it made us hungry for more. The thing is, I can love chocolate cake, and after finishing a piece can be so pleased with the experience that my mind (and stomach) tell me that I want more, more, more! However, if I follow that impulse and start devouring more and more pieces, the experience is going to change to something completely different, and one not so pleasing. I'll get so bloated and miserable that I may completely forget why I loved that first piece so much, and may decide I never want another piece again.

Not all prequels are bad, or are a bad idea. They can be quite a treat, if done right. Stepping out of the realm of film and into novels, an example that comes to mind is Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series. In the first three books, we got teased with bits and pieces of what the world of the Gunslinger was like before "the world moved on", and it was a fascinating place that just screamed for more exploration and explanation. In the fourth book, the bulk of the tale was a novel-length flashback into that world, and it was fantastic. It could have been done wrong, but it in this case, it became the best part of the series.

But Hollywood and television have taken the prequel, and the flashback, to ridiculous heights (or depths). They've become obsessed with milking more money out of us by looking backward in popular properties, to the point where the word "prequel" causes me to roll my eyes. The most painful example of this is the Star Wars prequel trilogy. We ALL wanted more Star Wars, and we obviously weren't going to get all those actors back to make more sequels. They were all (or at least most of them) so sick of Star Wars themselves by the end of the first trilogy that they were relieved to move on (though not all of them did. Seen a Mark Hamill film that didn't go straight to video lately?). So this seemed like a good idea. It ended up, however, souring many fans on Star Wars forever, leaving them bitter and feeling betrayed. And why? Because it committed many of the sins of the prequel/flashback method.

1) BAD RET-CON. "Ret-con" is a term common to TV/movie nerds like myself. It stands for "retroactive continuity". This is where a writer creates the backstory after the fact, inventing a history and forcing it to fit into the original "present" story. This method is filled with possibilities for lazy, cliched storytelling. Darth Vader built C3PO! Huh? Darth Vader grew up on Tatooine, like Luke! And yet never thought to look for Luke there later? Obi-Wan Kenobi was a young Jedi Knight in the prequel era! Uh...why was he in his sixties twenty years later in the first Star Wars film? Square pegs get jammed into round holes because the ideas seem "neat". Which leads right to problem #2:

2) CRAPPY RESEARCH. Come on, there were only three Star Wars movies. That's six hours, at most, of research to do. Yet writers of prequel material seem unwilling to take the time, coming off like they read plot summaries only. How does Leia have memories of her mother when her mother died at birth? How did all knowledge of the Jedi - when there were thousands of them - disappear from the galaxy after only two decades? Why doesn't R2D2 ever tell the mind-wiped C3PO that they used to be buddies in the old days? Why does Obi-Wan say he was trained by Yoda when he was trained by the never-before-mentioned Qui-Gon? Why is there a beach on Kashyyyk when the whole planet is one big forest (okay, that fact came out in the novels, I guess, so that could slide). Why did the first Death Star take twenty years to complete, but the second one seemed to be nearly done in like a month? If you're going to go back and build a history for an established property, continuity is your first a most sacred responsibility. Everything has to fit. Why, then, do so few writers seem to pay it any mind? This happens in TV show flashbacks as well as film. I remember an episode of "Angel" that flashed back to Angel and Spike running into each other on a submarine during World War II. Uh...no one saw the Buffy episode where Spike first appeared, and said that he and Angel hadn't seen each other in a couple hundred years? These are things the fans all know...so why are the writers so oblivious to them? Errors like this pull the viewer right out of the story, and make the story lose all its credibility. Don't even get me started on Highlander 2.

3) RIDICULOUS OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF CHARACTER ORIGINS. Human beings are very complex, with a lifetime of experiences and lessons shaping the people that they become. Prequels and flashbacks boil these down to simple, and often silly, shortcuts. The best example of this for me comes from another Lucas property - Indiana Jones. In the opening flashback of The Last Crusade, most of all the character quirks of Indy are explained in events of the course of one day. In one sequence, he learns how to use a whip, learns to hate snakes, gets his fetish for the fedora and jacket look and develops a bromance with a roguish carbon-copy of his future self, defining the persona he'll later take. Oh, and he was named after the dog! Ha ha! Ugh. In Star Wars, the mysterious, mystical means of Jedi fading away lost all its intrigue when it was boiled down to a quick scene of Yoda telling Obi-Wan, "Oh, by the way - Qui-Gon found a way to come back from the dead. Why don't you study that method for the next twenty years so you can pull the disappearing act in the next film? Don't worry - I'll learn it, too. I'll have plenty of time to do so, as I'll be abandoning the fight against the Emperor and the dark side and going to hide in a swamp like a little bitch."

4) NO SUSPENSE. The greatest problem with the prequel is that, assuming we saw the "original" story, we know how it's going to end. We know what's going to happen to the characters we know. We know Vader's going to become evil, we know the Emperor wins, we know Yoda's going to move to a cabin in the swamp, we know that all these other Jedi are going to die. There are no surprises (except Jar Jar, which was quite a surprise for everyone...). While it's interesting to see these histories play out, there's no "what will happen?", no drama, no suspense. This makes them, by definition, less engaging. There's no forward movement. These tales are stuck in the past with their endings already written.

The movement has grown, and continues, and is there to create profit instead of serving the viewer. We got an unnecessary remake of "Manhunter" in the film "Red Dragon", just so a new "prequel" to the infinitely more popular "Silence of the Lambs" could cash in. We then got the don't-know-anyone-who-saw-it pre-prequel called "Hannibal Rising". We've gotten "Halloween" prequels. "Exorcist" prequels. By and large, these have been crap, as will most endeavors motivated by money and not by passion.

One of the biggest franchises, like Star Wars, to fall victim to this is Star Trek. Time has stopped in Star Trek. This began when the last Trek series, "Enterprise", was set in the past. Now there's a new prequel film coming out in about a month, tracing the origins of the original cast. I'll admit, this is one, after seeing the trailer, that I'm very excited about, but my first response to the idea was to sigh. There's no reason why the Star Trek universe can't continue on in "real time". It's really big universe they've created, one that doesn't rely on a set collection of characters played by existing actors. There are limitless stories than can be told there, but the studios seem convinced that it's all over, and that the past is the only fertile ground for new adventures. Star Wars, too, has many places to go. One could easily jump into the future and do an ongoing story of, say, the children of Han and Leia, or other characters. Yet, the current animated series out there is stuck in the Clone Wars era (telling us of a war that we know the outcome of already - and one that's a prequel TO a prequel, for crying out loud), and the forthcoming live action Star Wars TV series is set between the two trilogies. Why not look ahead? Why not give us something new?

Battlestar Galactica just ended a few nights ago. There's a story with a (very) definite end. A sequel would be impossibly silly. A new series is coming, though - "Caprica". You guessed it - a prequel series. While there's the part of me hungry for more Galactica tales, the other parts has that same sinking prequel feeling of knowing nothing "new" will come of it. Galactica, at least, has the excuse of a completed tale. Things like Star Wars and Trek do not. There are places to go in both cases - but the men behind the curtain refuse to take us there.

Perhaps the solution to all of this is to simply to stop going over old ground - stop with sequels, and stop, too, with sequels (yeah, THAT's going to happen), and with remakes. There's a whole new generation of writers out there inspired by these past properties, with exciting new ideas of their own. Maybe our love for these worlds has blinded us to the idea of demanding new stories, new characters, new ideas. We, as fans, are as much to blame for the beating of dead franchise horses as the studios. Maybe instead of demanding more of the same, we need to be exploring the new, creations that take us out of our comfort zones and treat us to new epic journeys of imagination. Maybe we, too, need to force ourselves to look forward (and outward) instead of always looking back. Maybe the web revolution, which is starting to give modern storytellers a voice outside of the established studio/publishing system, will open those doors for both them and for us.

Or maybe "Breakin' 3: The Beginning", will soon be coming to a theater near you.

Mental Health Check on America

This weekend, four police officers were shot in Oakland, California. At a traffic stop, a wanted parolee with a long criminal history opened fire, killing one officer and effectively killing another (while technically brain dead, he's only being kept alive pending decisions on organ donation). The suspect fled the scene, and was later found and surrounded, where he killed two more police officers before being shot and killed himself.

At the scene of the first killing, a crowd of about twenty hung around after the dead and wounded were taken away...and "taunted" police officers there. This is allegedly a reaction to a police shooting in Oakland back in January. Anger at this has caused mocking celebration over four police officers dying in a single day.

Everyone's heard of the "Octo-Mom". When news started getting out about this woman, already with many children and on government assistance, had eight more children on purpose, public sentiment started turning quickly against her. She hired a publicist. This publicist quickly dropped her as a client, however, due to the many death threats coming into his office. Yes, death threats.

AIG is all over the news, and the nation is now outraged to find out about the millions in bonuses being paid to management there, using government bailout money. Many of those managers who received the bonuses now have private security stationed outside their homes - guards and dogs. Why? Because they have started receiving death threats to them and their families.

After the controversial passing of Proposition 8 in California, which banned gay marriage in the state, someone created a web page that not only listed the names of all the people who contributed to the campaign to pass this proposition, but provided maps to these people's homes. On a message board where I was posting about this, I expressed concerns that this page - effectively a "hit list" - could be very bad for public sentiment for the movement to repeal this proposition. How would a news story about children of these donors being scared to leave their homes because of angry protesters outside help things...or, heaven forbid, if something happened to one of these kids? The response I got? "**** those kids. They get what they deserve."

Am I the only one that's noticed that America is becoming more and more unbalanced? Notice that the issues above aren't all right wing or left wing issues. There's a mix of both, with reactors being from both ends of the spectrum. I can remember a time when people got fired up over issues and heatedly discussed them and maybe arranged protests or business boycotts. Now, Americans have reached a place where they feel justified, if they're angry about an issue, in calling for the deaths of those involved. Death threats themselves used to be big news. Now, they're just the expected response to just about any sensational news story. There's no longer any concern for keeping the moral high ground. Two wrongs make a right. People not only have no problem with such extreme measures, but feel they're entitled to them.

Maybe I was foolish to believe that the increasing levels of national instability I saw during the far-too-prolonged presidential campaign were going to resolve themselves once the election was over. But the fever is still burning, no longer restricted to issues of politics and war. Every new headline brings the rage, the bloodlust, the calls for people's heads...even on issues that don't even directly involve the enraged. We're increasingly becoming a nation of pitchforks and torches, and with each new scandal, the disturbing trend grows. A mob mentality is permeating every part of our society, and it's become almost a requirement to have a screaming, spittle-spraying opinion on every topic our cable news, message boards and blogs present us.

This disturbs me more and more each day. Reasoning and contemplation are becoming signs of weakness. Scorching email forwards wrapped in bumper-sticker slogans and hearsay are filling inboxes daily. A psychosis is spreading, claiming new victims by the hour. I don't want to live in a nation of witch trials, where tar and feather are the tools of expression. Is it too late to come back from this brink, or are death threats soon to become death sentences, and reactions to them become nods of approval?

America needs a mental health day. And soon.

Pantalones en Fuego

I was still in San Diego, working for GEICO insurance. A few months before, the Cameron Crowe film "Almost Famous" had come out. I saw it in the theater - it was one of my birthday movies. I have this annual tradition where, on my birthday, I take the day off and spend it in the theater, seeing a minimum of three movies, sometimes four. This particular year, "Famous" was one of them, and I completely fell in love with it. Sadly, I was in the minority. It didn't do great box office. I think the whole concept confused people - it was set in the mid-70s, an era that popular culture doesn't realize existed. To them, and to much of the public, because of this, American history skipped right from hippies to disco. The arena rock era of music has been erased for lack of popularity. For me, someone who started on music early and remembers music like Frampton, Seger and the Allman Brothers, this was a hell of a treat, and a nice flashback. Though the music was secondary to the great story, fantastic characters and signature Crowe movie magic.

It had just come out on DVD, and I hadn't gotten my copy yet. I happened to bump into a co-worker, who knew of my interest in the film. He let me know that he'd already gotten his copy. And, he pointed out proudly, he'd gotten the director's cut. What?! I had read nothing about there being a director's cut! I'd have killed for one! Again, with pride, he stated that there was one, that it said "director's cut" right on the box, and, his his words, there were some "really nice extra scenes with all those ladies". His voice became purposefully sleazy when he added this tidbit.

Back at my desk, I got on the phone. I was going to head right to Target after work and get my director's cut of my beloved film, and couldn't wait to get home and check it out. The doofus (affirmative action has required chains like Target to hire a large sampling of the doofus community to meet the doofus quota) was confused, used the word "Uh..." repeatedly (if you speak Doofus, you know that this word has several meanings in their language, kind of like a Hawaiian thing), put me on hold several times, and came back and told me he could find nothing but the standard version they carried. Maybe Target just wasn't stocking the special edition. Or, maybe he was just a doofus. Either way, I didn't feel like wasting a trip to Target to find out.

I left work and stopped at Blockbuster on the way home. There, in the window, was the "Almost Famous" poster. I headed in, and they had copies for sale. But no director's cut. I asked the guy behind the counter about it. He, too, spoke fluent Doofus. He got into his computer, scratching his head (a common doofus non-verbal affectation) and said he could find no listing of a director's cut. I insisted to him that it existed - after all, I knew someone who had a copy. This ended up going nowhere, and led to him looking at me like the wheelchair I was in probably meant I had mental limitations as well, so I called it quits on that before he started asking me if there was someone I could call to come pick me up.

I headed home and hit the internet. Amazon. Google. Every vendor that I could find that sold movies. DVD release news as well. Nowhere was there any mention of a director's cut of the film. And it was during this long search that it finally dawned on me.

My friend had lied.

And he had. While there would eventually be a director's cut (the "Bootleg Edition", which I bought the day it was released, and one I hear is now out of print), there was none that day. I sat there, confused and increasingly annoyed. Why would this guy have told me that there was one? And not just that, but that he had it, and he gave me specific details about it? Why would he send me on this really frustrating fool's errand on the basis of a blatant, verifiable lie?

I suppose it wasn't the first time I'd experienced this personality type before, but it was the first time it was connected to something important to me, and affected my life, in its own small way. The world is filled with people who tell tall tales, exaggerate details, and even make up events to make themselves appears cooler, or more interesting, or more attractive to another person. But this usually involved things like tales of hookups with girls from the Niagara Falls area that there's no way to trace. How could someone be so thick as to pull something like this and not know that they were going to get found out?

Well, MY personality type being what it is, I didn't confront him about it, but did stop hanging around with him after that. I've got no time in my life for people who would purposely mislead me for their own sociopathic, self-serving reasons. Trust is something important in any relationship, no matter how casual. And if you violate that trust, then you've broken an unspoken contact, and the consequences are that the deal is off. Friends don't tell friends that director's cuts of cool-ass movies exist when they in fact do not. Made me kind of sad for the guy, though. It made me wonder how many other instances like this there have been in his life, and how his apparent desperation to make himself more appealing to potential friends has likely left few friends in his life. The fabled self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hope he eventually got a clue and took the leap of faith on the idea that people, believe it or not, can sometimes accept you just the way you are.

A Toast - to Walking-Out-Early Movie Guy

Here's to you, Walking-Out-Early Movie Guy.

We've all seen your work, and marveled at what you do. When we're in the theater, and the film is coming to a climax, we're befuddled when you, suddenly, get up and walk out of the theater, right after the bad guy's gone down, right when the music changes and the crane shot rolls by of the police cars and ambulances surrounding our hero as he's savoring his hard-fought victory. Somehow - though your methods are beyond us - you know that the movie's about to end, and, proud and confident, you rise up from your seat, suppressing a knowing, slightly smug grin (though, we know, humble about your intellectual superiority over the rest of us unobservant simpletons), and stride toward the nearest door, avoiding, with ease and grace, the exiting tangle of humanity that we'll be trapped in two minutes after your departure.

As far as we know, lost in our gape-mouthed viewing as we are, the film could still be hours from ending. But you - you understand things more deeply, read the signs and divine the portents. While we're slaves to the screenwriter, helplessly trapped until the story has completely finished and the credits begin to roll, you cast aside the shackles and rise above the preordained. You are your own man, a free-thinking maverick who lives by his own rules. You're a bold libertarian, a vanguard of cinematic freedom.

We're not bothered by the fact that your brave actions draw our attention away from the hypnotic screen, pulling us out of the story as our eyes reflexively catch on you standing up and crossing in front of us. No, our enjoyment of the movie pales in comparison with your need to prove, and justifiably so, that your wisdom dwarfs our own, and the lessons we learn from your actions far outweigh the money we laid down to view an entire film, start to finish.

And what does it matter that you never see the end of the celluloid play? That you've lived the last quarter century thinking that the original Terminator ended when the big rig exploded? That Aliens, to you, climaxed when Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop arrived back on the ship? That you think Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is only about an hour long? Or, even less importantly, that you've never had Ferris Bueller speak directly to you after the credits? Or discovered the true fate of Neil Patrick Harris in Harold and Kumar 2? Or found out about the Samuel L. Jackson moment in Iron Man? None of these things can measure up to that feeling of self-validation when you step from the dark theater, pointless final dialogue still rolling somewhere behind you, and feel that surge of pride in your well-honed forethought, knowing that you'll be in your car and driving away while your peers are, like media puppets, reading the soundtrack list in the credits. You're the captain of your own destiny, standing above the masses, always looking forward. Those who dare complain about your actions will find themselves shamed when, after you've saved up all that time, those precious one to two minutes each film, you use it to cure cancer, or design the alternate fuel vehicle we all desire, or write the opera that brings the world to tears and enriches the nations that have suffered for its absense in silence. We know what you do is for the greater good, for all mankind. And words cannot express our gratitude for it.

So a toast - to you, Walking-Out-Early Movie guy. You have our undying thanks, and our eternal respect. Stand fast, friend, and carry on. May your days know no end - or, at least, may they end a couple of minutes before they're supposed to.

A Good Thursday.

76 degrees outside in the city of Sacramento.

I'm wearing a tee shirt - no jacket or hoodie - outside for the first time in 2009, I think...cold wuss that I am. No need for either today.

I've got a couple of cigars left.

My first unemployment check finally showed, and my California tax refund finally deposited in my account (I did my taxes back in January - but that was before I realized my state didn't have any money left).

As of today, it has been exactly one month since I took my last bitchy, whining insurance claim call, and it's possible that may have been the last one ever. And one month after losing my job, the world still hasn't ended yet.

I don't have to shave.

I'm creating again. I can almost feel doors opening in my mind, more and more each day, that I didn't even realize had closed.

Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies only cost $1.59 a box.

It's a good Thursday.

The Most Fun You'll Have Today

You ever find yourself at a web site and think, boy, I'd love to see cows pooping all over this site. Or see bombs drop on it. Or have the chance to point a gun at it and shoot holes in it!

I know...who HASN'T, right?

Well, now you can do all this and more. Thanks to our friends over at Netdisaster, you can punch in any URL address, and choose which special effect you want to unleash on that page. As you can see here, I vandalized my blog. But you may prefer to watch ants crawl all over the CNN site (here's a tip - start that ant thing on any web site, step away from your computer, and let someone else walk into the room and see it. And hear them scream), or have wasps sting the DNC or RNC's home page. I just used the "flood" effect to drown my blog! But more importantly, I just went to Michaeloconnell.com and totally shot holes in my own face! It was soooo boss!

So drop on by the site and try it yourself. I promise you literally MINUTES of amazing fun. I only hope you have a web page for the company you work for available - so you can make a cartoon guy take a pee on your boss.

You Stay Classy, Sacramento!

Congratulations, Sac-Town!

In 2007, I know you were disappointed to find yourself only ranked 16th in the nation for auto theft. Well, you can shake THAT shame off! According to current statistics, Sacramento ranks 4TH in the United States for stolen cars! Woo hoo!

This new report shows that Sacramento has roughly twice the auto theft rate of other cities its size. And as a big shocker to citizens of Sacramento, the majority of Sac car thefts happen around the Arden area. Who would have thought?!

Interestingly, police authorities in Sacramento state that only about 7% of the stolen cars in the capitol city are stripped and sold for parts. They say that most of these cars are stolen because the thief "needs a ride". Specifically, to drive from crime scene to crime scene - that is, to go commit burglaries, go to deal drugs, or to go acquire more drugs. For whatever reason, these enterprising scamps are helping move Sacramento up the ranks, so hats off, crank fiends! We salute you!

And cheer up, Sacramento citizens, if you're disappointed in only making it to fourth place. At least we've still got the worst-ranked basketball team in the NBA! Keep the pride alive!

Happy St. Paddy's!

I was going to say "top o' the mornin to ya", but to be accurate, it's "middle o' the night to ya". Figured since it's now a couple of hours into St. Paddy's Day, it was safe to get the early greeting out. Hope you have a great and green one, wherever you are!

2:17am where I am, out on my patio. And you know what? It's 55 degrees out. Beautiful! We were supposed to get a little rain today (technically, yesterday), but I never noticed any - not that I left the apartment much. But the next two days are supposed to be gorgeous and in the low 70s. I'll take it! Moments like this one, right now, are my favorite. Not really cold outside...serenely quiet...very peaceful. The car traffic is at a minimum so it's so quiet I can hear the hum of my laptop's hard drive. Glad I decided not to use the iPod out here tonight. I prefer the sound of the near-silence right now.

Hey, you know what's hard? Trying to find an artist. I spent a lot of time today online, trying to find someone to work on my graphic novel script. This is a pain. And no, for those of you thinking the question, this is not a job for Tim. Tim's working the Nice Guy, and it's a miracle he has any time to work on that book. He's a married man! No, Tim's got that and another little possible project of ours, so he'd have no time to crank out a hundred pages of graphic novel. So I'm looking for another artist for that.

It's a tricky business. Your first option is to post up an ad on a board. There are several good sites for this. But I've been down that road before, back when I was first taking a stab at comic writing. The results can be...kind of scary. You get a lot of responses, but the problem is, the majority of people responding...? Well, there's a reason why they're not currently working on anything else. I'm not trying to be mean, here. I'm just saying when I'd get the samples, they were nowhere near publishable quality. God bless 'em for trying, though. Hey, they're out there working it, trying to hook up with a writer, following their dream. I'm just looking at publication as my goal, and I have to be realistic about the artist I work with. Nobody looks at a comic or graphic novel on the shelf and picks it up for the snappy dialogue. People buy for the art. If it's not there, no one's going to care about my story. So I'm putting off the ad until the next step to avoid that depressing (but necessary) email flood.

So I've been hitting artist sites. The best-known one right now is deviantart.com. Sounds dirty, but it's not, I swear. This is a very cool site for artists. They get their own page, a place to post up their art, a journal they can write in, and a comments section where other members can post notes about each piece. It's a great network place for artist. And also a great spot to browse around in to find artists you like and might want to work with. This, too, however, has been depressing today. I haven't had much luck finding a middle ground. The majority of it, today at least, was embarrassingly bad. Much of it looked like it was drawn by school children. And it occurred to me - maybe some of it was. And that's pretty cool, if there's a kid out there with a love of drawing who's gone as far as to create a page to showcase his vampire drawings. He/she is taking steps early. Rock on. But I think the bulk is just people who want to draw, but really can't. Hey...I'm not the one to take the illusion away from them. I can't even draw at ALL. If they want to cling to the "I'm an artist" persona, that's all good. Just doesn't do me a lot of good. Lots of bad anime, bad big booby bad girl art, bad macho guys with guns art, bad "furry" art (don't ask...there's a group of folks out there that believe Disney and porn should be combined...), bad "Twilight" fan worship art, bad elf art... A veritable sea of cringe-inducing scribblings. It can be a bit overwhelming. But you push on, because somewhere in all that, there's a gem waiting to be found. One hopes.

The other end of the spectrum is finding AMAZING artists. I found one guy in England whose stuff is remarkable - and almost as important, there's a LOT of it. This is one of the three things I look for. Quality (which I tend to define as an understanding of basic anatomy and a lack of obvious artistic laziness) is first, of course. Then you look for quantity. Any artist can get lucky with a good shot once in a while. The trick is, can they do it regularly? If someone has five or six shots max on their gallery, that either means they only put up their best stuff, and it's likely the rest of it ain't that great, or it means they don't draw that often and only have a few pieces to put up. This means that chances are good they're not going to be able to draw page after page of comic story, and definitely not with any workable speed. Which leads us to #3 - this is, actual comic pages. Not all artists can tell a comic story. Some don't want to, frankly - it's not their thing, and they love to do pinup shots and portraits. I look for someone's comic pages to see 1) if they do it at all, and 2) if they do it well. Some artists admit that storytelling is just a mystery to them and they don't do it. And these artists can do really well doing commissioned shots and comic covers and all manner of commercial art without any need to be a storyteller. I've known a lot of awesome artists like that. They're just not what I'm needing right now.

So this British guy had amazing talent, over twenty pages of gallery (with about 24 shots per page), and comic pages. Clearly, he was a pro. Aha - there's my next problem. At that end of the spectrum, *I* become the weak link. These guys don't NEED me. They're professionals, and expect to get paid. They're looking at me like I'm looking at artists, asking "So what have YOU done and why should I waste my time with you?" Few of them are going to want to do what I'm looking for, which is work together and put together a pitch to sell to a publisher, putting off payment until the book sells. These guys are artists for a living, and have to put food on the table, and don't have time to jerk around. So I go back and forth between "Ugh, what's up with all these amateurs?" to "Oh, wait...I AM the amateur." The dream is to find that budding, hungry artist that shows some talent and hasn't hit it yet, and is looking for some way to show their work, something that will allow them to move on to other, better paying work. That guy or gal is out there. I just need to keep looking. At this rate, though, I'd better move on to the ad soon.

Though I'm not giving up on the British guy. He's actually not right for my graphic novel (he's not a very "real people" artist, more into the fantastical), but I'm already trying to come up with some kind of project that would fit his style and his likes (you can tell from an artist's gallery, if it's big enough, what kind of stuff they most like to draw). We'll see...

Speaking of which, back to a little more searching, and then it's time to call it a night. Or, in this case, a morning. Yeah, my days and nights are starting to get turned around. Figured that might happen. I've always been a night person, but my career turned that around quite some time ago. Though I was trying to avoid this and keep on a day schedule, circumstances (illness) have been keeping me up, so I may end up a night owl again. I'm cool with that. Long as I stay productive.

On to more bad goth art!

Have a great St. Paddy's, all.

Welcome Home, Jackie Earle Haley.

I missed the big "Watchmen" panel summer before last at Comic-Con in San Diego. It was going to be wall-to-wall crowded - in the biggest venue at the convention center - and it was up against a Joss Whedon panel, which I can't ever miss. I ended up not going, but a buddy of mine there got out of it, called my cell, and told me about the casting news - this was either the official announcement of them or close to it, because no one had heard anything at this point.

He didn't have much to tell, as clearly, they weren't grabbing any big names for the film. Billy Crudup I knew (from my obsession with the film "Almost Famous") and found myself really interested in how he'd handle Dr. Manhattan.

But the big news that floored me was the casting of Rorschach. If you read Watchmen, the graphic novel, then you know that this casting is pivotal to the whole thing. Watchmen nerds have, for a couple decades, debated over who should play that role. And when my friend told me who'd they'd gotten, that rare word came to mind when it comes to Hollywood casting - "perfect".

If you're part of my generation, you remember Jackie Earle Haley. But not by name. You'd know him immediately when someone mentioned who he played in the original "Bad News Bears" or "Breaking Away". Both were career-making films for him. Unfortunately, Hollywood had had a different career in mind for him - based on "Bears", it was supposed to be as a teen idol, something his bad boy, motorcycle-riding character was fast turning him into. Unfortunately, puberty changed that. The Next Big Thing he was supposed to be turned into a short, skinny young man with a serious acne problem. The roles became fewer - so much so that, like most of us, you probably never saw him again after "Breaking Away" (unless you caught the "Breaking Away" TV series on ABC, which was cancelled after six episodes, where he reprised his memorable role as "Moocher", and was the only one of the four male leads who jumped from the film to the show). Hollywood didn't want him anymore - a story as old as Hollywood itself. His acting days appeared to be over.

And then came a call from Sean Penn - in the 21st century. Sean was the lead in the upcoming "All the King's Men", and when discussions came around about who should play the part of the character Sugar Boy, Sean immediately wanted Jackie Earle Haley. Jackie had been out of Hollywood for years. He was finally tracked down - on his honeymoon, no less - and was told there was interest in him for a film. A film with notable small actors in it - you know, like Sean...and Anthony Hopkins...and Kate Winslet...and Jude Law...and James Gandolfini. He sent them his audition tape, landed the role, and suddenly, Jackie was an actor again.

Right after, there was a role available in the film "Little Children". Director Todd Field got an audition tape of Jackie's, and was blown away. When he asked Kate Winslet about working with him, she couldn't stop raving, and insisted that, if he was auditioned, that she be allowed to fly in and do the reading with him. He got the audition, and Kate did it with him as promised. And at the end of that audition, Todd Field turned to Jackie and asked "Do you want the part?". Jackie did, and in 2007 was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor oscar for it.

And now, Jackie's back again, in his first ever big-budget Hollywood blockbuster - stealing the show and delighting fans with his dead-on adaption of Rorschach in a film that purists have been waiting for for almost twenty years - almost a long as Jackie's been waiting to get his career back. And just like with "Watchmen", I feel that the wait has been worth every minute.

Welcome back, Jackie. We missed you. Here's to making up for lost time.

So Long, "ER"

I watched the very first episode of ER when it aired, back in September of 1994. I was still living in Arizona at the time. When the buzz was first going around about it, the big news was that it was a TV series created by Jurassic Park writer Michael Crichton. That was creating excitement for some. For me, as a big-time fan (as a kid, even) of St. Elsewhere, this was a promise of the return of medical drama to NBC.

Loved the pilot, had my mind blown by it. This had zero cheese in it! It felt completely real. The characters were all very non-network, believable and identifiable. The medical parts were clearly very, very well-researched with great attention paid to every detail. And the drama was so compelling you couldn't take your eyes off this thing. I had definitely found a new show.

It was an obsession of mine for quite some time, too, one that followed me back to Sacramento. One of my roommates (soon after to become my only roommate), Aaron, started watching it with me, and once he and I left the house we shared with the other guys and got an apartment, it was a major part of our joint TV-watching schedule - particularly since it was part of the line-up that comprised the golden age of NBC's "Must-See Thursdays" (with Friends and Seinfeld in there, both at the height of their popularity).

It also went with us when we moved to San Diego. But things started to wane there. With original cast members leaving and new ones coming in, Aaron started to lose interest, and I'd end up watching it myself. At some point, circumstances caused me to walk away, too - can't remember exactly why, but it probably had something to do with having too much other TV to watch, plus all the basketball (I was in my certified NBA junkie period back then). I think it was around season seven when I let it go. I was sad to, but it was starting to look less and less like the show I'd started out with, and I figured with it having gone on so long, it wouldn't be around the much longer anyway.

Oops.

We're coming up on the end of the fifteenth and final season of ER. Fifteen years. No too shabby. I still haven't watched the show since I walked away, with the exception of the big event that was the final Mark Greene episode in season eight, but have occasionally glimpsed its progression through promos for upcoming episodes - watching as the entire main cast was replaced with newbies (played by some actors that I really like, though, from their other work) and getting that sort of sad feeling of knowing that something I was so close to moved on without me, and now belongs others, not to me.

It was one of those promos this past week that made me set the DVR for last night's episode. With the show finally closing up shop for good, they decided to take an episode to have some of the former cast ("All your favorites", the commercial promised) return one last time. Noah Wyle's Dr. Carter had (from what I gather) already come back this season (he was the last of the original doctors to leave the show - I think that was about four years ago?), and for some reason, he's about to have a kidney transplant. The ad showed me my old pals Carol Hathaway (played by Julianna Margulies) and Dr. Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle), and that was good enough for me. George Clooney was not shown, leaving an obvious impression of "Right, like they could afford HIM for something like this". Still, though, I remembered the final Carol episode, way back in season six - she was having to choose to stay or to go be with Doug (Clooney) in Seattle. In the end, she leaves and gets on a plane. We see her going around the back of his house to find him, and we see a figure out on the boat dock, his back to us, and quite a ways away. I was thinking, then, how I felt kind of ripped off, since they were obviously just using some actor in a sweater to represent him, since Clooney had already left the show and gotten too big for TV. But, low and behold - he turned around, and there was Clooney. It would have been such an insult to the fans to not be given that moment, and I think Clooney knew that. So while setting up the DVR for this, I started wondering if maybe they might be pulling something like that again...

Well, it would have been a nice surprise, but unlike the last time this happened, there's the internet. Oh, we had the internet in 1999, sure (where else were we going to spread Y2K doomsday predictions?), but it wasn't anything like it is now. So last night, just as I was about to go start some dinner and watch the ER ep, I stopped off at my My Yahoo page to check something, and spotted the entertainment news headline - "Clooney Returns to ER". Spoilers! Arg! Ah, well. Would have been a fun surprise, but I wasn't going to let that ruin my enjoyment.

Watching this big reunion ep was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. This is likely because I have the first three seasons on DVD, and just recently finished up season three, so the memories and the impressions of these characters are close, not something ten years in my past. Just as watching those seasons again brought back all my feelings about the show and these characters and reminded me how much I loved them, seeing them like this, not as ghosts from reruns but their characters in present day, having aged and moved on with their lives as I have, made me feel like I, myself, was reunited with them, catching up with old times.

I was very pleased with how the story got put together. Once I saw the "Carter needs a transplant" plot on the commercial, I just assumed that was the dramatic catalyst to get all these characters to fly back to Chicago and be there for him. Not so. "ER" has always been about capturing real life, and real life doesn't always work that way. So Carter wasn't even reunited with Carol and Doug. Our look at them came with cutting to the hospital in Seattle where they, now married and with kids, both work, with Doug as chief of surgery (or something...I can't recall) there. A pair of the new ER cast members from back in Chicago were there waiting to pick up and fly back a heart for transplant, and Carol and Doug were having to try to convince a grandmother (guest star Susan Sarandon) that her brain-dead grandson is really gone and that his organs can save the lives of others. Very old-school "ER" situation, and seeing Doug and Carol back in one like it was fantastic. A favorite moment of that sequence is when Doug goes into the break room for coffee and talks with the new cast members, finding out they're from County back in Chicago. He asks about different doctors, all names familiar to ER fans, only to find that none of them are there anymore (except Dr. Anspaugh. Hey, Donald's still in the house!) and that the newbies haven't even heard of them. That moment rung to true to anyone who's ever found someone who works at a place where they, themselves, used to. I've done that. Just did that recently when I called a former insurance company I worked at and asked the adjuster there about some names. No one still around. People move on. Life moves on. And co-workers rarely keep in touch once they're no longer together every day.

What was great about the Seattle part was that a kidney was now available too, and Carter was the next one on the list. Doug and Carol ask the County docs if they can transport the kidney back with them, too, having no idea that it's for Carter. And they never know. In their final scene, with them in bed, Carol gets a call that lets them know the heart made it in time and saved the woman. And that the kidney made it, too, and went to "some doctor". Bravo. They play a major role in saving their (and our) old friend and don't even know it. That's "ER". Great reappearance by them, and a big thumbs-up for Clooney for once again showing that he remembers well, and respects, where he came from.

As much as I liked Carol and Doug, I was always about the John Carter / Peter Benton dynamic. Carter was our "eyes" when the show first began, an intern just starting out, and we followed him from the beginning of his career. And his resident was the very intimidating type-A doc known as Dr. Benton (I don't believe Carter ever called him by his first name throughout the run of the show, and thankfully did not in this ep either, as it would have felt wrong). Their up-and-down, often tense and often hilarious (but painfully so) professional relationship was one of the best parts of the early seasons. So seeing Benton (a surgeon there are Northwestern, where Carter was getting his transplant - another detail that I loved, because why would he have it done at the lower-rent County Hospital, realistically?) walk into Carter's room and surprise him was an amazing treat, as was seeing how they reacted to each other after all the history between them. It felt really right, a huge relief to me (as one of the old-schoolers suspicious of new writers who might not "understand" the characters as I, myself, of course do). What an awesome moment when Carter shows Peter a picture of his wife, and Benton's amused and surprised reaction - "You? YOU married a sister?". Awesome. I really soaked up the weight of these characters and all the many things they've been through - much of it that I went through with them - and felt heavy pangs of nostalgia...and my own age. Loved seeing their reunion, and also Benton's choice to want to be in the operating room as an observer, where we got treated to some old-school Benton as he schooled the cocky surgeon performing the operation. A great moment, as was their final one in the recovery room, where Peter talks Carter into calling his estranged wife to try to fix things. These characters, fifteen years later, are still saving each other as much as they're saving the patients.

As my expectations were low for this, not believing that it was going to "feel" right, I was pleasantly and gratefully surprised at how much it moved me. I also found myself smiling at finding out that several of the supporting cast are still hanging around, right up to the end - Chuny, Jerry, Haleh...all old friends of mine too, and as important to the run of this remarkable show as the big names. I'm really glad I decided to step back into this world, even if only for an evening. Once I can justify the spending, I plan to keep picking up these seasons, first reliving all my favorite eps from the past, then moving on to the new tales and new characters to find out if they'll click with me like the old ones did. Looking back on all the shows I've watched over the years, and all the ones I've come to call my favorites, "ER" still stands out as #1. It raised the bar for TV drama so much higher, and challenged network television to live up to its example. Like so many other people in these final days of it, I'm thankful for "ER", wish it a very warm and fond good-bye, and will miss it. Thanks for the memories, guys. Thanks for everything.

Now get me a CBC, Chem 7 and chest x-ray. Stat.

MOVE, people!