Barkerburgh

Over the last two nights, on Space (Rogers Cable 50, downtown) they showed a two-parter that took place entirely in the ‘Mirror, Mirror’ universe from the classic series.

There was the usual duplication of people in nearly identical capacities or roles (but working for the Empire not the Federation), and the link to our universe was the Defiant, which had been lured through a transverse spatio-temporal discontinuity (I made that term up) by the Tholians.  They captured the Defiant, killed the crew and began to dismantle the ship which was technologically advanced.

Mirror Archer (no evil Cartman beard) and his crew captured the ship from the Tholians (no beards), and so on.

Scott Bakula’s acting was horrendous, but the show was good.  Grim and sad, even the ending, but much more satisfying than the other episodes that I saw before I just stopped watching it.

Okay, score one (and only one) for Braga and Berman.  Lucky dummies.

Well, I finally saw the movie. I was expecting a lot of CG and battle scenes and that’s exactly what I got. It was great. It totally kicked ass, as the kids used to say.

[SEPT 10, 2007: REID HAS FIXED IT AS FAR AS I CAN TELL…THANKS, REID (THANK GOD THIS TERROR IS FINALLY OVER)]

[REID SAYS HE CAN SEE THE YOUTUBE LINK THAT’S SUPPOSED TO HERE, BUT I CAN’T SEE IT IN FIREFOX OR MSIE]

This guy, Kyle Garchar, is a genius.

This is the Canadian Press story via Yahoo News.

Below is Reid’s attempt to embed the YouTube video.

The other night on CITY there was an hour long documentary on Forrest J Ackerman, the creator and longtime purveyor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, one of my favourite magazines when I was a teen.

I came across the show by accident while surfing. I saw this old Ramses of a living man looking quite chipper and lively all things considered, and thought “I should know who that is…”, and then they id’d him.

Well, I spent the next hour having great flashbacks about the magazine itself, the movies I learned about from it - and often eventually saw, sometimes decades later - and the great ads for movie monster stuff, like rubber masks and costumes, posters, memorabilia and so on, et cetera.

Lotsa fun.

FJA: Did you hear about the new cafe on the Moon? No atmosphere.

The band is Crush Luther and this is their song ‘The Cools’.

Why do I like this song and the video?

1> I can understand the words.

2> It tells a nostalgic, bittersweet story of a high school boy, his band and his girlfriend.

3> It does not end well, but the boy gets through it. Bittersweetly.

<center><object width=”425″ height=”350″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/jvi-H5Y5L64″></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/jvi-H5Y5L64″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed></object></center>

The next day. Like it? Hell, I love it. I watched it five times last night. The more I watch, the more I see.

So today, my 50th birthday (thank you, I don’t moisturize or shit, I just don’t go out in the sun a lot and I quit smoking 26 years ago…) and I’m watching CNN this morning. An item comes on about a kid in Louisiana named Justin Barker getting beaten nearly to death at some high school. There but for the grace of dog, thinks I. Then they talk to his parents. His father’s name is - get ready - David Barker.

Now I can ego-google my name and find all sorts of cool names, and a lotta not. So this really doesn’t mean anything. However, I was raised to believe in all sorts of religious hooey and supernatural/ESP/space alien crap, but while you can get the kid outa the bullshit, the kid has to work really hard to get the bullshit outa the kid.

It was just a weird jolt on my birthday to hear that man’s name in that context.

Now, with all due respect, time to party.

Want to generate near-real but faux quotes from real movies using a word or phrase you input?

Try this for a laugh.

The phrase ‘naked cheerleaders’ was mine.

I also tried ‘dirty underpants’ and got this. “Gort! Klaatu barada dirty underpants!” Guess what movie that was from.

Now choose your own word or phrase.

(Try using dirty words…it’s funnier!)

30 Rock, Alien vs Predator and The Dresden Files?

I was watching all three at once last night, while editing PHP files for fun and now all three are mushed around in my head and I really need to know what the difference is.

But seriously.

Peter Cook got me into 30 Rock. The creator, executive producer and occasional writer is the brilliant Tina Fey, formerly of Saturday Night Live. It’s really funny with some of the most internally consistent characters in sit-com history, all delightfully eccentric and unique. No comparison to Corner Gas, though. (And definitely no comparison to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, contrary to what some dummies on imdb would have you believe.)

I wanted to see Alien vs Predator for the SFX ad the fights, which were cool but the initial premise just got sillier and sillier the more they set it up.

The Dresden Files is okay but pretty pedestrian and predictable even though I quite enjoyed last night’s episode.

Rogers moved CNN Headline News off Channel 37 and replaced it with BBC World. Which is great because now I can’t moan about what asswipes Nancy and Glen are.

I like BBC World but I’m not used to its rhythm yet. I don’t know when anything’s on or who the presenters, hosts, or newsreaders are.

Rogers has also added Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics (TCM and AMC) to Tier 3.

To make room, Rogers moved CNBC and Speed up to digital. Maybe Golf is missing too, I’m not sure. Haven’t noticed it for a while and I always thought it was dumb to have specialty channels like Speed and Golf in the lower channels.

I am quite happy about not being tempted to pop over to Headline News every now and then just to see what stupid crap is coming out of Glen Beck’s mouth or how rude Nancy Grace is being to a guest.

“The Day After Tomorrow”

In a word, ‘Stinkah’.

That is all.