My SKULLLLL!

Here’s the first movie that should be in the next MST3K boxed set.

My votes for the other three:

And for the box set after that one:

Here’s one of my favorite moments:

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Family Guy: Easily Summarized

Family Guy: Then and Now.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Scenes from the lost Babylon 5 Combat Simulator

Check out these videos of a Babylon 5 space combat simulator video game that, sadly, was canceled only a month or two before it was set to be released in 1999/2000. The special effects still look great.

Rats.

Since no official video game has ever been made, you can make do with an unofficial free game, “I’ve Found Her.”  There’s also a full mod of “Star Trek: Armada 2″ which converts it all to the Babylon 5 universe.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

comic book super-heroes tv themes

This was rescued from the ancient vintage ComicBookResources’ Apr 20, 1999 TV Themes website. Incredibly a lot of the sound-files are now on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine servers and are not just dead links so they are available for download. Read the rest of this entry »

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

The Monarch and I

Something Horrible
Imagine what she can do with ‘Sound of Music’ or ‘My Fair Lady’

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

…because suing South Park is always effective

EA Sports is going to sue over the Tiger Woods game on last week’s South Park.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

At Last! The Holy (Or WHO-ly Grail!)

I found a site that claims to have EVERY Doctor Who episode produced!

Click and enjoy!

I’m not sure if this site has the ones that were ‘bulk erased’ by the BBC, but I’m watching some of the Patrick Troughton episodes, including the VERY first appearance of the good Doctor and the Tardis, followed by the VERY first appearance of those mechanical mutants we love to hate, The Daleks!

While watching, It’s interesting to note how little the Tardis interior, and theme music has changed, at least until the Colin Baker years. Otherwise, a good find.

Also, I plan on continuing my review of Champions Online. I want to wait for the next patch (the current one messed some features, plus they are supposedly introducing new zones)

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Well, that’s one metatag shot to heck

NBC’s Conan Farewell: Scrubbed From The Web, Studio Torn Apart | Online | Mediaite.

Jeez, I did a lot of work getting the embed URLs for all of those Twitter Tracker segments and other materials I’ve linked to, and now NBC yanks them all.  Now my Conan O’Brien tags in the tag cloud are needless.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Jay and Oprah Interview

Dissecting the O-Jay interview, lie by lie | TV Barn

As you all know, I’m in Conan’s camp.  Jay may have gotten some unfair squeezing out by NBC back in 2004, but he did agree to step down from the Tonight Show.

Blaming it all on Conan’s ratings is a bit unfair for two reasons: he was doing well with the key demographic, and he had an awful lead-in that was driving viewers away from NBC completely for the night.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

The one saving element of Red Dwarf USA

There was an attempt to bring the British Sci-Fi Sitcom Red Dwarf to the United States. Certainly, that should have been easy to adapt. It could have been big. Unfortunately, there was a lot of interference from the network, and the cast is relatively lifeless.

One change they made was that they not only kept Robert Llewellyn as Kryten, but they introduced him in the pilot as an official member of Red Dwarf. Sadly, this negates his hilarious background as the caretaker for three hot women who’ve survived an accident, but when the Dwarfers arrive they find three skeletons that Kryten has been maintaining for eons. However, his altered history makes for the one truly hilarious moment in the US pilot. (It’s at the very end of this clip.)

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

the Darker Seid of Life

By all means we at Monitor Duty should have written dozens of histories and recaps and essays about DC Comics’ vile Kirby demon, the evil New God Darkseid.  By now there should be hundreds of references and odes of love.  If kicked we might see it happen in the future, but I do not care to do that now.

Recently when I should have been working I googled for Grant Morrison interviews about Darkseid.  To tell you the truth I do not think that Mr. Morrison has anything profound  or unusual to say about the character but I like the way he puts together words and descriptions.   He puts together ideas that are not necessarily new or great in ways that are interesting and entertaining.  Honestly that is a good thing.  It does not matter whether the ideas are his or not.  His 52 co-writers claim that his virtue is not his creativity but his fearlessness.  He will go where his fellows will not and that seems like a strength to me (and a burden to editors and marketing staff).

Grant Morrison successfully delivers upon the marketing and communication of old ideas mixed together in way that editors would not let less experienced writers attempt.  That is the only reason I bother looking for his interviews.  I like his words; Ienjoy good poetry.  I do not care to give him credit for new meanings or new ideas.

Here is a quick Darkseid link dump.  It might be nice if, in the future, Monitor Duty has the greatest and most authoritative Darkseid link directory.  Let us leave that for the future.

• Marc Singer, who is not the Beastmaster, writes a defense of Darkseid against the Howling Curmudgeon, in that he declares why the character is a good one, but insists the biggest injury upon the character is its overuse.  They agree on the character’s three best stories but alos there are moe good stories with the character.  The most profound note is that the character is used best in stories where he seems to die a permanent death.  I think that the character is not made better by having no inner conflict, but to have the character have an inner conflict is to write him out of character.  Most good characters have inner struggles; to an extent it easier to see the super-villain in this case as a plot device.  In this light most villains are plot devices more than characters.  I can think of exceptions like Lex Luthor (depending on the writer, of course) and Doctor Doom, both of whom are self-realized as Darkseid is.  Yet Luthor (again depending on the writer) has a character arc involving his own jealousy, need for attention, his place in the world, and possibly friendship with Superman.  Doom struggles with vanity above all.  Darkseid has not issues.  He merely is.  He will never grow and he will never learn.  He will simply act, conquer, enslave, and at the end of the story arc in question he will die.  Occasionally he gets trapped in the Source Wall or something.
• A lot of this comes from a September calling for Darkseid essays.  Who has the time?  The point is that Darkseid “is a person” and I cannot say it is wrong because I sadly have read less Kirby New Gods material than I should, due to cost constraints.  As it is, what I declared in the point above is that recently Darkseid is a more a plot device, an abstract menace (as Galactus has almost always been) because while he may have been a person with a personality most writers simply treat him as an abstract personification of a dark ethos.
• The best response is this: by Keith Giffen in his Ambush Bug mini-series.
• Andrew Hickey insists that Darkseid’s desire to seize control of all life, the universe, and the entirety of creation and existence is borne out of fear of death.  Mr. Miracle is the logical counterpoint and the arch-enemy of Darkseid because as an escapological archetype he is positioned outside of the constraints of control.  Yet Scott Free himself is still not a direct and successful contrast because Darkseid name him and set his purpose.  That is Mr. Hickey’s point anyway and I am not certain I buy into it.  This plays all into ideas of “degrees of freedom” but as a Liberal Democrat (in the UK political sense) Mr Hickey’s views about what is acceptable as a definition or execution, application of freedom is suspect.
• The first Darkseid story I ever read was not the entire story but the final chapter of a JLA/JSA team-up story.  As was the the fashion at the time the occasional/formal meeting between the League and the Society finds it self linked to a third super-team, in this instance the New Gods.  I remember Justice League of American #184 (and here is the cover) because the New Gods were not only definitely super-heroes in this incarnation (and there is nothing wrong with that) but Darkseid has a personality, he is a villain with motivations and relationships.  In point of fact the bulk of the story is about relationships as well as a rise to power.  Upon his return from his most recent death in the New Gods strip from Adventure Comics, Darkseid punishes the Injustice Society for accosting his son Orion, clearly with a view of propreitry and seeing Orion as a creature, a prince, someone whose fate is more tied to Darkseid’s whim than mere encounters with bad guys.  Orion’s group consists of a Leaguer and a Society member.  All the split-groups  (I love how they follow the Gardner Fox tradition) consist of such a configuration.  For isntance Batman’s group has Mr. Miracle and the Huntress because both are versions of him in the different worlds of the different teams.  At this point each team resides in a different dimension of the DC Comics storytelling.   Because Darkseid has his relationship with the New Gods he seeks to teleport Apokolips to the spot where Earth-2 resides, destroying Earth-2 and thus landing his domain inside a universe where there would be no heroes, and no heroic New Gods.
• OAFE assesses/contrasts two Darkseid action figures making his size and sculpt major emphasis.  The Mattel version, which is the one really looked at, comes with a Mother Box as his accessory, and despite being smaller than the DC Direct Darkseid figure, is apparently just better.  Of course there is a brief history asserting that Darkseid only recently became a Superman villain despite that his first appearance was in a Superman comic.  He also discusses Grant Morrison’s formulation of the Anti-Life Equation.

I think there is something to be said that properly written the villain is a character but this applies to every character.  It is also important to note that the ending of the story as well as how often the character appears has serious impact for story quality.

(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

And that’s the way it was…

Walter Cronkite, Reporter, Anchorman, Legend, has passed away
Also known as the most trusted man in America, he founded and set the standard for reporting the news which very few have matched.

Rest in peace Mr. Cronkite

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Farewell, Mr. Jefferson

Mr. Jefferson has ended his 50-year childhood.

Here is perhaps the best obituary I’ve seen on him.

Mark Steyn, a great obituarist, talked with Hugh Hewitt about Michael Jackson showing us the price paid for our exploitation of child stars, noting how “Lindsay Lohan is about 22 now. She’s got etched into her face that kind of hardness of a 48 year old woman sitting in a sports bar somewhere in some broken-down loser town in upstate New York who’s been around the town once too often. “

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Don’t Skeet The Tweet!

Why would a bird turn into popcorn?

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

More fun with Conan (O’Brien, not Barbarian)

Yes, Spinal Tap’s new album has just dropped:

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Tonight Show Twitter Tracker

Conan’s new Tonight Show looks to be one of the funniest things in years. It looks like they’re launching a lot of new material instead of rehashing all of his Late Night stuff. (I swear to God, every time I ever tuned in to Conan’s late Night he’d be talking to a photograph with moving lips on a big screen.)

Their new set looks cool:

I love their Twitter Tracker, introduced on 6/2:

From 6/9: You can’t beat the tweet!

Of course, some old bits are worth resurrecting.

(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Where are the Star Trek crews now?

AOL has a piece on the Star Trek casts then and now.

Levar Burton is podcasting and you can follow him on Twitter? I don’t know if that’s cool or sad.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Crazy week

Big Lost finale was tonight.  I just knew they’d leave us hanging on something for another year.

SPOILERS

One odd bit.  The Comicon Season 6 teaser video  of Dr. Chang acknowledging President Bush and the Internet in 1977 did not get addressed this year.  In fact, I don’t even see how it can have happened in Season 6, given that the person recording the video is dead but Dr. Chang didn’t acknowledge the truth about time travel until after that person had died.

Here is that video:

Oh, weird! I just hopped on Seth Is Lost to find that video…and Seth just answered the very question I’d posed!

Apparently budget problems caused them to change their storyline for Faraday. So…how can it be, exactly, that these writers have thought out everything from beginning to finale but then they can completely change their plans?

(2 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

It’s a Wonderful Life lost ending

Presented by William Shatner

Saturday Night Live – “Its a Wonderful Life” Lost Ending from Season 12

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

this is hilarious…

I wish I saw it years ago.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...