Land of the Lost -- Far Out!

So 30+ years ago, I used to watch Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings. I remember it from then as just a show with kids, dinosaurs, and some other things. On a whim, I got the complete first season on DVD from the library the other day... It is FAR OUT.

Now the acting and effects were silly, but the ideas were really interesting, considering the time and target audience. Some of the same folks who worked on Star Trek (such as David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana, and Walter Koenig) wrote and edited LOTL scripts.

If you need a refresher, a scientist/explorer/archaeologist/whatever (intellectual outdoorsy type) and his teenage son and 10-12-yr-old daughter were on an inflatable raft with minimal supplies when suddenly an earthquake propelled them into an alternate dimension with dinosaurs; at least two semi-intelligent races (one moderately benign, and one that wants to sacrifice them to their deity); mysterious, powerful crystals and Stonehengy pyramids; an ancient abandoned city; and English-language graffiti warning them to "Beware the Sleestaks."

It incorporated elements of Swiss Family Robinson, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Lost World, The Prisoner, and other stuff that I will think of later. Rather than being entirely self-contained, most episodes unfolded and referred back to things learned in previous episodes.

People may not realize that among the Sleestak extras... Future Detroit Piston Bill Laimbeer.

Among the ideas explored:

• If you are somewhere where time is fluid and unstable anyway (i.e., you meet a guy from the Confederate Army who thinks the Civil War is still going on*) and you are a child whose mother died when you were little, and you miss your mother very much, why is it unreasonable to want to have her time travel from when she was healthy to come be with you now?
• If time is fluid and unstable, why wouldn't the adult version of you visit you as a child? Would you-child listen to you-adult?
  
• If you are in a pocket universe and you want to go somewhere else by making a raft and floating down the river, you will eventually come back to where you started. Also, if you stand on a high enough mountain and look off into the distance with binoculars, you will see the back of yourself standing on that same mountain.
• (SPOILER): OK, so try this out (kind of Möbius strippy) -- You learn from an alien ally that in order for the three of you to leave, you must be replaced by three others at exactly the same time, otherwise the imbalance that brought you here in the first place will nver be resolved. So, why not bring in the past versions of the three of you from immediately prior to your falling through the hole in the earth that took you to the waterfall. Therefore, you save your past selves (and thus your current selves) from falling to their deaths, and you get to go back to Earth. However, you sentence your past selves to having to come to the Lost dimension in the first place.

Also -- Sleestak photoshopping.

*Actually, I know some people from the South who think this same thing in 2007 (they also think that Lincoln was a Sleestak) but you know what I mean.

Workin' Hard to Get My Phil

So I've been deconstructing the last episode of The Sopranos this whole week. Some people at work got all worked up over it. I didn't have a problem with it at all... I liked loved it! And I've been listening to Don't Stop Believin' every morning this week on the way to work. Was Tony killed? Did things just go on? Did Paulie rat him out? Is life fascinating? Boring? Terrifying? Looks like The Sopranos and Philosophy was written too early. (Note -- I also liked the last Seinfeld quite a bit, despite derision from others.) (Note - Various updates below over the course of Saturday morning.)

Lots of unfulfilled spoilers at Planck's Constant. Here's their recap of what actually happened.

Here's Amba on Blogcritics: That's David Chase's idea of what happens when you get your brains blown out: Nothing. (So much for Tony's "There's something beyond all this.") Tony has earlier looked into Uncle Junior's empty eyes and seen that our one shot at quasi-immortality — memory — ain't shit either. Paulie was the double-dealer. Working with Little Carmine, probably.

What if Sopranos had been on one of the broadcast networks?

The guys at Slate have been watching it all season: I thought the last episode was perfect. I'm not disappointed at all. We were privileged, over the past eight years, to receive an all-access pass to David Chase's brain. The pass has been revoked, but I think we were lucky to have been let inside in the first place. Sure, he played a trick on us, and it was even a pitiless trick (the final sound we heard after 86 hours of modern-day Shakespeare, after all, was Steve Perry's voice), but so what? When the screen went black, I laughed. Note - I neither agree nor disagree with whomever it was in the Slate exchange who said that Chase should have stuck with the courage of his convictions and kept Phil Leotardo in one piece, but think about this -- Had Phil survived the hit but been toppled from his position as head of the NY mob by his own lieutenants, it would have added yet another layer of ambiguity and real-life lack of resolution. Would Phil (in an al-Qaedaesque manner) have bided his time and waited another 20 years to get revenge on Tony? Or would he have sucked up his own big talk ("You never talk about This Thing of Ours. Never.") and cut a deal with the Feds, thus getting revenge on both Tony and his own guys, who (in his mind) betrayed him. (Mind you, I don't at all fault the New York middle management for firing their out-of-control boss.)

Occam's Razor and The Sopranos Finale: Since screen's across America went black on Sunday night there has been nonstop conjecture on what really happened in the Sopranos final episode. While there have been countless takes on what the events of the evening really added up to, there have been two consistent overall themes. Depending on which camp you are in, you either think David Chase (the creator of The Sopranos and writer of the final episode) was absolutely genius for leaving the ending open to the viewer's interpretation or you think he was lazy, shortchanged you and really left the ending open for a possible future movie. Interestingly, most of those in the first camp believe they are the 'true' Sopranos fans and are also way smarter than everyone else who just don't get it.

Tim Goodman from SFGate (with audio!): Now, quickly to the idea that Chase may be telling you it's all there. If you watch again, and put all Big Ideas and Murky Mythology aside, you'll see an episode that has Carlo flip to the Feds, Tony's lawyer concede that the process is in motion and Tony, at the end in the diner, tell Carmela that Carlo is going to testify. If you believe Tony is alive and life goes on for the Sopranos - the window shuts on their world - then the biggest of the myriad unanswered questions is, "Does Tony get indicted and found guilty and go to jail?" We'll never know. And we don't need to know. Closure is for broadcast television and tiny minds.

Emily Nussbaum, New York Magazine: But the moment that really wrenched the show off its axis was a brief, almost throwaway scene in the third season, in an episode titled “Second Opinion.” I remember the first time I watched it, the way it seemed to invert everything that came before. Carmela goes to a psychiatrist we’ve never met before, a Dr. Krakower. She is eager to make the session a referendum on personal growth: She wants to “define my boundaries more clearly”—from her perspective, the issue is that she’s unhappily married. She’s toying with divorce. But Krakower cuts her off. With riveting bluntness, he addresses Carmela not as a seeker but as a sinner. She is not Tony’s wife, he informs her; she’s his accomplice. She needs to leave now, reject Tony’s “blood money,” and save her children (“or what’s left of them”). And he adds a remark that might serve as a punch line for the series: “One thing you can never say, that you haven’t been told.” Of course, it doesn’t work. How could it? Carmela does leave Tony, but she goes back, and when she does, she has become something far worse than she was before, a woman who has consciously decided to become unconscious. To me, Krakower is Chase, and we are Carmela. He told us who Tony is, and each episode, he became crueler in delivering that message.

William F. Buckley: The sophistication of the Mephistophelian creator of The Sopranos was never underrated. The language is purely instrumental, even when the dialogue is between Tony and his resourceful shrink. What the language itself doesn’t communicate, facial muscles eloquently tell us. There is no face in Madame Tussaud’s that combines better than Tony Soprano’s the acceptance of irony, the grit of resolution, the trivialization of theft and murder. There is true underworld humor, and you are free to liberate yourself from the drag of orthodoxy as one more pistol shot explodes into the face of a character whose time is up, and who falls under the wheels of a car on the move. If one of the burly men had opened up in the restaurant with an Uzi, ending the lives of all four of the Sopranos, you’d have felt a quiver of moral relief. Instead, you were reminded by that blank screen that that kind of thing goes on and on, and reminded, also, of its bewitching power to entertain a spellbound, onanistic audience.

Update, Sunday night 6-17-07: Of course! Why didn't I think of this before?

Journey "anyway you want"
Uploaded by miklo

Jim Henson Pimping for Wilson's Meats

Ever wonder how Jim Henson made his living pre-Sesame Street? Wonder no more:

Batgirl Becomes a Feminist

For a while in 1967, they were thinking about giving Batgirl her own program. Narrator: "Gotham City, like any other large metropolis, abounds in girls of all shapes and sizes -- debutantes, nurses, stenogaphers, and librarians."

Now check her out just a few years later in this Department of Labor PSA! (Same narrator, btw.)

Survivor: Fiji -- Liveblogging -- Epilogue

Caution! Do not buy a used car from this man. And don't give him a new truck, either.

Also: Lisi and Janice Soprano -- Separated at birth:

Survivor: Fiji -- Liveblogging -- Earl!

Earl wins with 9 of 9 votes!

Additionally, here's something from the Wikipedia history page for Survivor: Fiji.

01:24, 14 May 2007 68.85.48.171 (Talk) (37 bytes) (←Replaced page with 'DREAMS IS A LITTLE BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!')

Survivor: Fiji -- Liveblogging -- Yau-Man Got Screwed!

Well, looks like the predictions below are shot to hell. We think that Yau should have released Dreamz from his promise and just told him to keep the immunity necklace, on the condition that he vote for Cassandra. But, I was right that Earl would betray Yau in the final four.

I bet Dreamz comes up with all these rationales for why he welched on his end of the deal during the balance of the show and on the live aftershow -- He's one of these ones that makes a BFD out of honor, his word, etc. I'd rather see guys like Boston Rob do stuff like that, because he comes right out and says that he takes strategies straight from The Godfather.

Predictions for ultimate winner:

The ♥G♥: Dreamz.

Me: Earl.

Survivor: Fiji -- Liveblogging

Our predictions as the show starts.

The ♥G♥: Yau-Man 1st place; Boo 2nd place.

Me: Yau-Man 1st place; Cassandra 2nd place; If Earl is still there, he will try to betray Yau at the final four.

Yau-Man = Awesome!

I just have to mention that The ♥G♥ and I think that Yau-Man is among the best Survivor players we have ever seen! This guy is so logical, sneaky, and clever (and yet w/o being threatening to the dumber, more testosterone-laden players) that he can work the whole thing to his advantage almost every time. (He's a computer programmer at UC-Berkley.) He and Earl have the maturity and are the team to beat, no doubt.

Sopranos in Seven Minutes

Good Movies and TV I've Been Watching Over the Last Couple of Weeks

Some videos I've enjoyed in the past couple of weeks, all of which I strongly recommend:

• Hill Street Blues: Season One -- This may be my favorite TV show of all time. If not, it's certainly in the top five. HSB is discussed at length in Steven Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good for You, specifically regarding the revolutionary way in which it demanded that viewers keep up with an ensemble cast and multiple plotlines strung out along many episodes, without the "benefit" of exposition every ten minutes. Here's my exposition: I LOVE THIS SHOW. There are varied opinions as to when it jumped the shark, and it definitely did jump at some point in the mid-to-late 80s ("Let's do it to them before they do it to us..."), but the first season really stands the test of time and then some. And Howard Hunter is awesome! He gets into an argument with Henry Goldblume in which Goldblume accuses him of wanting to use napalm on criminals. Hunter's response: "You don't know the first thing about Napalm!" Goldblume: "I know enough to know that..." Hunter (interrupting, seeing this as an argument-ender): "What are the three principles of napalm?" (For juxtaposition, I watched a couple of episodes from the first season of Adam-12. Good show for what it is, and it also started out with a roll call, but at this roll call the sergeant spent most of his time cautioning the men about keeping their uniforms creased and their badges shined. The vignettes were basically self-contained and wrapped up in seven minutes or less. Quaint.)


• This Film Is Not Yet Rated -- I mentioned this the other day. If you are at all interested in independent, non-formulaic films, see this movie! I have previously commented on my distaste for MPAA godfather Jack Valenti. This film only cemented my views. There were three different things going on in this documentary: 1) Filmmakers and actors (Kevin Smith, Maria Bello, Kimberly Peirce, John Waters, et al.) philosophizing about why certain things (mostly having to do with sex) are verboten and certain things are allowed (mostly having to do with violence) and how mass-market blockbusters usually have potentially offensive material custom-tweaked so as to juuuuuust slip through the inconsistent standards of the ratings board; 2) A pair of middle-aged lesbian P.I.s tracking down the identities, phone extensions, and lunch preferences of the super-secretive MPAA Ratings Board; and 3) A self-referential meta segment in which director Kirby Dick submits the very film we are watching to the MPAA for a rating. The three parts all worked in different ways, and didn't always mesh perfectly, but that's only a minor criticism, and there's nothing else like this movie out there. One other criticism, though: The film "reveals" that there are two representatives of the clergy who are involved with (Members of? Advisors to?) the MPAA Appeals Board. It didn't come right out and say that they were members of the religious right, but it kinda sorta implied it. One of the two was a guy named James Wall, who has authored some articles that I have read. Mr. Wall seems to me like he would fit in just fine at any Upper-West-Side intellectual salon that you would see in any Woody Allen movie. (Note: This is meant as a compliment.) Not only that, but as for the whole secrecy thing, here's a short profile of him from a seminar he gave in 2001 that clearly states he is a member of the Appeals Board.

• Aguirre, The Wrath of God -- This is a Werner Herzog film that I first saw 12 years ago or so, and I'm pretty sure it was my first Herzog. It's a similar theme to that of Fitzcarraldo, and also was kind of Apocalypse Now-ish (or else Apocalypse was Aguirre-ish). It's a fictionalized account of an ambitious middle-management type from Pizarro's conquistadorization of Peru named Lope de Aguirre. Pizarro comes to a difficult river and sends a small party on ahead to scout for the legendary El Dorado, which is a great idea except for the fact that he has the lapse in judgment to make Aguirre second in command of this party. As soon as they get far enough out in the middle of nowhere, Aguirre rebels against the officer in charge of the scouting party, and Pizarro, and the King of Spain. He shoots the only guy dumb loyal enough to stand up for the senior officer, and acts batshit crazy enough to keep everyone else in line. Kind of like if Col. Kurtz had been the one on the boat looking for a place to call home, rather than having Willard on the boat looking for him. At one point Aguirre installs a dumb fat guy as emperor, though there is no illusion as to who is running the show. In the course of the installation, he writes a document laying out his rebellion against the Spanish Crown. Here's a translation of a similar document written by the real Aguirre. Excerpt: I demand of you, King, that you do justice and right by the good vassals you have in this land, even though I and my companions (whose names I will give later), unable to suffer further the cruelties of your judges, viceroy, and governors, have resolved to obey you no longer. Denaturalizing ourselves from our land, Spain, we make the most cruel war against you that our power can sustain and endure. Believe, King and lord, we have done this because we can no longer tolerate the great oppression and unjust punishments of your ministers who, to make places for their sons and dependents have usurped and robbed our fame, life, and honor. It is a pity, King, the bad treatment you have given us. I am lame in the right leg from the arquebus wounds I received in the battle of Chuquinga, fighting with marshal Alonzo de Alvarado, answering your call against Francisco Hernandez Giron, rebel from your service as I and my companions are presently and will be until death, because we in this land now know how cruel you are, how you break your faith and your word, and thus we in this land give your promises less credence than to the books of Martin Luther. How did things turn out? Let's put it this way. Lots of tourists visit Spain. None visit Aguirresylvannia.



• The Thin Blue Line -- This is another film I saw 10 or 12 years ago. It's directed by documentarian Errol Morris, and looks into the unfortunate case of a man named Randall Adams who was convicted of killing a Dallas police officer. All sorts of holes emerged in the prosecution's case, not the least of which was that there was this punk 16-year-old kid with a stolen car and a bunch of stolen guns named David Harris who went back home (to the hometown of the Texas KKK) and bragged about getting away with the killing. Long story short, Adams is now an anti-death penalty activist, and Harris ended up as a punk 25-year old who, by virtue of inclusion on this list is no longer on this list. Now with just that brief synopsis, I might be making it sound like a very special episode of CSI: Dallas, but this is a film that unfolds like a Rashomonic philosophical inquiry. (Maybe because Morris had a background as a P.I. and a degree in philosophy.)

Ozzy! Ozzy!

The ♥G♥ and I are watching the Survivor finale. As of the 7:40 PM commercial, we are both rooting for and confident in the ultimate victory of Ozzy. Time will tell. If he doesn't win, honor system -- no blog revisions.

Update, 9:10 P.M.: Meh. Yul was OK too. At least it wasn't that numbskull Adam. (Don't feel bad for Adam -- maybe he'll have Parvati to entertain him.)

Sesame Street Old School

The ♥G♥ got me two neat things for my birthday -- A new leather briefcase, and the new Sesame Street Old School DVD set, which features the premiere episodes for each season from 1969-1974. Interesting opener: It starts w/a cartoon character ready a statement that "...these early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child." I did a research paper on the Sesame Street/CTW phenomenon in college, and as part of my research (blogged about here) I watched the full first episode at the Museum of Broadcast Communication, the same one I am watching now. Detailed analysis here.

Vietnamese Game Shows

Clearing through some stacks of stuff on my desk, including an interesting L.A. Times article from a couple weeks ago about the popularity of quiz shows in Vietnam.

Excerpt: Vietnam is awash in television game shows. Its eight major TV stations air more than 50 of them, many in prime time. There are programs geared toward children, or teens, or seniors. Some cater to niche audiences, such as the show that tests soldiers on military life — still revered in this nominally communist nation. The game shows reflect Vietnam's rapid economic development. In the last decade, a middle class has emerged. Pit toilets are giving way to modern conveniences, cars are replacing motorcycles, and 90% of Vietnamese households have television sets. Game shows are helping to influence Vietnam's first TV generation just as television transformed American culture in the 1950s. In a society where education is seen as the way to economic freedom, Vietnamese say these TV programs serve as mass education. They are teaching people about world history, healthful living and modern lifestyles.

I think we all know that when it really comes down to it, whoever the Bob Barker of Vietnam is is going to be the emblem of that which toppled communism. Go television!

Items

Several things:

• Check out the BoingBoingBoing podcast with "Ghost Map" author Steve Johnson.
• We watched a real good documentary the other night, The World According to Sesame Street, which showed how the Children's Television Workshop developed Sesame programs in Bangladesh, South Africa, and the former Yugoslavia. I did my senior research project in college on the Sesame Street phenomenon; Maybe I'll post some stuff from it here at some point.
• Take a look at the cool retro snapshots at Square America.
• The ♥G♥ pointed me towards a cool site where you can do jigsaw puzzles online.
• Enough TV to make your eyeballs melt -- Get it while it lasts!
• New York Times Magazine article by James Gleick about the Oxford English Dictionary in the age of the Internet. Excerpt: The version now under way is only the third edition. The first, containing 414,825 words in 10 weighty volumes, was presented to King George V and President Coolidge in 1928. Several “supplements” followed, but not till 1989 did the second edition appear: 20 volumes, totaling 21,730 pages. It weighed 138 pounds. The third edition is a mutation. It is weightless, taking its shape in the digital realm. To keyboard it, Oxford hired a team of 150 typists in Florida for 18 months. (That was before the verb keyboard had even found its way in, as Simpson points out, not to mention the verb outsource.) No one can say for sure whether O.E.D.3 will ever be published in paper and ink. By the point of decision, not before 20 years or so, it will have doubled in size yet again. In the meantime, it is materializing before the world’s eyes, bit by bit, online. It is a thoroughgoing revision of the entire text. Whereas the second edition just added new words and new usages to the original entries, the current project is researching and revising from scratch — preserving the history but aiming at a more coherent whole.

Office Coming Along; 101MIPWNL Updates; TV Streaming; GooTube; Spike Lee Movie; Dilbert Creator Fixes Own Brain

Hmmm... Haven't posted for a few days. Been busy with some sweet home-office reorganization. The ♥G♥ painted my office a couple weekends ago (she's a better neat painter than I am) and last week we got a couple of new office chairs which I assembled the other day, and today we moved a comfy chair from the living room in here. So, I'm going to finish the Deweyfication process on my books (finally) so that the 900s will still be in the living room and hallway, the fiction and 000s-600s (and either 700s or 800s) will be in the book room (aka her office) and the balance will be in my office. I can't decide whether I want the 700s (art, music, etc.) in here, or the 800s (literature and stuff).

A few things:

• I've been updating my post on the 101MIPWNL with some links and comments. Before I'm done, I also intend (for those listees of mine also listed by Karlan, Lazar, and Salter) to parenthesize their rankings of each overlapped listee. Interesting Google find while doing a little research about this -- It's already been done. The Fictional 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Characters in World Literature and Legend by Lucy Pollard-Gott bcame out back in 1998. Here's the official site. Among her other work: Finding fractal patterns in poetry.
• Get it while it lasts... Episodes of TV shows coming out the yingyang -- Not always everything from a given series, but tons of X-Files, Band of Brothers, Seinfeld, 24, Batman Beyond, and many many more.
• Annalee Newitz says that GooTube is dead. She says this in an article called "GooTube is Dead," in which the "I" in "Is" should be capped but is not. Excerpt: Another possible reason why Google bought YouTube is because it fits with the company's copyright reformist agenda. Google has already been testing the limits of corporate activism in the copy wars with its frankly awesome Google Book Search. This controversial project, which led to a lot of legal chest-thumping in the publishing industry, allows people to search the full text of thousands of books. Maybe YouTube will be a kind of Google Book for movies, with fully-searchable videos that allow artists, students, and film geeks to appreciate the motion picture in a whole new way.
• We watched the Spike Lee Joint Inside Man tonight. Not bad! Somewhat implausible, but it kept you thinking the whole time. I'm probably going to listen to the director's commentary tomorrow.
• Dilbert creator Scott Adams has successfully rewired his own brain!