X Minus One: The Veldt

In the future automated houses do everything for you, including entertain your kids. A holodeck-style nursery takes over for a set of bridge playing parents until children's unrestrained imagination gets gruesome on the African veldt. Ryan didn't think the story stood up over time and Richard, while not his favorite and argues again that Ray Badbury isn't really a science fiction writer, argues that there is a poetry in Bradbury's writing that makes it all worth it.

X Minus One "The Embassy"

A strange man hires a private investigator to find the 'Martian Embassy,' but what are his strange motives? Not particularly hard to work out. Sort of a drier version of "The Parade," we couldn't decide if it was Lefferts being restrained by an adapted story (Lefferts wrote the Parade and adapted The Embassy) or if it was just a boring story. The best character just isn't in it enough. Both of us gave it a 4, and we established the curve of our ratings.

X Minus One: Doctor Grimshaws Sanitorium

A private detective discovers some strange goin's on at a mysterious sanitorium in a story told from the transcript of a tiny note found in a pen from the burnt down sanitorium...shrinking. It's a shrinking story. Sorry if that's a spoiler. It's a silly episode. Neither of us liked it.

X Minus One: Nightmare

The machines rise against us for some reason. A statistician figures it out only to become their puppet. Or, it's all in his head in Nightmare, an X-1 episode based on a sci fi poem. We were so not into it that we discussed other radio programs and tv shows and speculated wildly about X-1's main writers in a story that made less sense the more you paid attention. Richard gave it a 3 Ryan gave it a 4.

X Minus One: The Green Hills of Earth

A "Behind the Music" review of the life of the 'singer of the spaceways" Rhysling in Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth" where a Pete Seeger/Woody Guthrie style blind folk singer bounces around the space ways in an utterly charming episode complete with original folk songs about space labor. We both gave it our highest rating, 10.

X Minus One: Perigi's Wonderful Dolls

An Air Force Colonel's daughter gets a shockingly realistic doll that hides a terrible secret. And it's not the doll's annoying voice. Ryan's least favorite episode, and perhaps the least thought out invasion story. Richard gave it a 2.5, Ryan gave it a 2.

X Minus One: The Man in the Moon

A missing persons broadcaster starts receiving messages from what appears to be the Moon and then goes through the steps to figure out why. News men, weird bosses, a guy with a theory that uses the most logical conclusions first instead of jumping to the crazy one all feature in this story we both ultimately rated as 6.5.

X Minus One: Knock

The last man on Earth sits alone in a room, there is a knock at the door. The chillest apocalypse survivor ever meets mankind's destroyer and takes it all in stride in Knock. We were both charmed by the main character though a little squirmy over the sexual politics of the 1950s. We both gave it an 8

X Minus One: Universe

The crew of a generation ship lose track of the fact that they're on a ship or that there's anything else beyond the ship until the mutants try and remind them in Robert Heinlein's Universe. Ryan found it dry, Richard found it compelling. You'll have to listen for the ratings.

X Minus One: Mars is Heaven

Ray Bradbury's Mars is Heaven gets the X-1 treatment. Earth's first mission to Mars lands armed to the teeth only to find a town full of their dead relatives...is Mars Heaven? Probably not. Richard gave it a 6.5/7, Ryan gave it a 6.

X Minus One: The Parade

A Martian asks a publicity man to throw the Martians a parade, but why? We generally agreed that the characters were enjoyable but that the plan was lacking. For this one you'll have to listen for the ratings...

X Minus One: No Contact

Just because I've never really come across a complete list of summaries of X-1 episodes I thought I'd use this space to catalog them because while as of this writing there are only 9 episodes (edited post, you see) we've done like a third of them which would make this the most complete catalog I know of. So...here goes. The seventh expedition to the 'Galactic Barrier' between Earth and the mysterious Volta where the previous six missions have vanished. Is it radiation or something even more sinister? Establishing almost every trope of space travel science fiction this felt ultimately like the baseline episode, 5s all around.

Lunchy & the Punk: Season 3, Isle of the Forbidden Ritual Choose Your Own Adventure

It occurs to me that since this blog is back from the dead, I can put the Lunchy & the Punk season that I didn't because I couldn't access the blog.

So here it is, a 'choose your own adventure' staring monster trucks. What's not to love?

An Heroic and Epic Journey of Profound Historical Importance...

The past few weeks I've been working with my brother on 'season 2' of Lunchy and the Punk...which is of course a series of videos of us playing with his RC trucks and rally cars.

But wait, this isn't just bashing and upgrades, we've decided to tell a story of sorts with them. And, some hasty camerawork aside, I kind of think we're pulling it off.


Check out the Season 2 playlist here.

The Wheelbarrow Films

It occurs to me I never posted the films we did for the San Francisco Seven Day Film Festival. They are seven day films, but...you know...


My Life in Triplicate from Don Cabreana on Vimeo.

Fortune's Fool from Don Cabreana on Vimeo.

The Illusion of Productivity

First, let me get the fun stuff out of the way.

In the last post you'll notice I've taken to filming me, my brother, and my nephew playing with R/C trucks. Well, we made a bunch of them, all with original music and some even with a kind of story.

You can see the whole series here at my brother's YouTube page. Be sure to check out his actual songs as well. Worth it.

Now that we've dealt with that, on to other projects. I am knee deep in still born projects that never got off the ground. One of the ones that got closest, and I thought was the coolest, was a series of interviews with street performers in San Francisco.

I did actually manage to make a few of those recordings and now, years later, I've decided to put up what I have on the Albatross blog. You can read the full explanation here.
And the first interview is already up, which you can read here.

That should do it for now. So, to recap: Playing with trucks to original music, first link. Street performers, second and third link. Enjoy!

Time Well Spent

This might not even really be blog worthy, but surely that's a low bar.

Anyway, the suggestion to tear up my brother's rear lawn and turn it into R/C dirt track. I gathered my camera (Nikon D3100) and filmed the late afternoon session and my brother grabbed his Flip and got some cool angles for a night time race.

Enjoy.

Ghost Rider Comment for the Action Flick Chick

So, I tried to leave this as a comment on the Action Flick Chick's blog/website/thingy, but it wouldn't let me, kept asking for a password. But it was a lot of writing, so I'm putting it here because...well, because. I don't know. Here it is, what I wrote on the upcoming Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance -

Ghost Rider is the personification of the problem inherent in the desire to be a super hero, to be granted that power. All the colorful tights and rules and noble principles are dressing on the fact that it is the desire to right wrongs by beating the crap out of someone or something. It's that urge of the powerless to be powerful and then to use that power on those who would have otherwise had their way.

It is a desire, essentially, for vengeance. What Ghost Rider does, in a uniquely Silver Age Stan Lee kind of way (by taking what would otherwise be a ridiculous character, a flaming motorcyclist) does is confront that desire by granting it to Johnny Blaze. With Blaze and Ghost Rider more than most you have the villain and the hero as one, so much so that his heroic acts are equally villainous.

The real key to that character is what makes the best Faustian bargains, that the devil doesn't trick Blaze as much as Blaze tricks himself. He wants to save his foster father from cancer, so he dies in a stunt. He wants revenge, he becomes vengeance. While he starts out thinking that he can control the Ghost Rider, the reality is that the more he gives way to vengeance the more he loses control to it. And the thing is, he knows this and yet still finds excuses to succumb to the Rider, willing giving himself over piece by piece to vengeance and the demon within him.

But when they went to adapt the comic in the first film, Cage (who says he's a fan) describe the character as taking 'this curse from the devil and turning it on him.' And of course that's how it ends, with Blaze as Ghost Rider saying that to the Devil in his awkward Elvis pose.

But that's not Ghost Rider, that's Spawn.

Ghost Rider does not have what would normally be considered necessary for a good comic book franchise, a quality rogues gallery of villains. (you could argue that it's not Batman that makes Batman interesting, but the villains he's amassed) Ghost Rider's rivals are d-listers like The Orb, sort of the catch when your hero does not imprison or turn over to the authorities of his rivals but instead places their souls in a state of perpetual torture (again, keeping with the theme, the Penance Stare causes you to torture yourself by bringing to the surface the consequences of your unfettered desires realized). The drama in a Ghost Rider story is rarely against his foes, who for the most part he doesn't just best, but terrorizes, but in the continual struggle between Blaze and the demon within. In that respect, it is a comic book where the hero loses every issue, and every issue that defeat gets a little worse.

So I would say, absolutely a major part of Ghost Rider is the menacing and sometimes comically horrifying ways in which he destroys the people he deems are due his wrath. But the key, the thing that saves Ghost Rider from being a cheesy 70s comic book character capitalizing on the popularity of chopper motorcycles and Eveil Kaneviel, is that internal struggle.

I am encouraged that the monologue in the trailer seems to hint at that, it seems to indicate also that the answer to that is to use the demon against the devil (and in fact, he seems to be fighting the devil once again).

I'm not a purist (and good lord, how horrible would a Ghost Rider movie be fighting The Orb...), but I do think when you translate a character or story through a medium, you have to distil the element of that character and find a way for the medium to explore it. This is essentially what makes Nolan's Batman movies work. They are far from canonical but it takes a core element of Batman, that his own demons are reflected in the villains that he faces, and explores that with the tools of a new medium. I fear that in the case of Ghost Rider they have taken the exact element that works against Ghost Rider, that he's a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle, as the element that they needed to translate into the new medium.

All of this hemming and hawing would matter more if I wasn't going to see it, but I am. But instead of a philosophical conflict between the desire to do the right thing and vengeance and how to tell the difference I'll get fire pee.

Frames

So, a few years ago, Sous Rature and I wrote a Ten Minute Play called Frames. Since then it has been a little trooper of a play, being included in festivals and even winning awards I crowed about here recently.

I have wanted to turn this play into a movie since I graduated college. But that was six years ago and I have not been able to raise enough money to do much of anything, much less make this little film.

I started this a while ago and I don't know why I didn't link anything here, but I created an Indie Go Go page to help fund this film. I don't need a ton of money, I just happen to have none. If you read anything here and thought "Huh" please stop by and donate a few bucks (I know it suggests $100, it's being super optimistic. $5 is fine, wonderful in fact.)

Thanks whoever you are.

In Defense of Fred

So, I'm supposed to be writing something else right now. Of course that means that I can't get something completely unrelated out of my head so instead I'm going to do this, which furthers nothing and hardly anyone will read...

Of all of the childhood cartoons and entertainment, Scooby Do, Where Are You? gets a large amount of attention. Mostly, of course, it's on the recreational habits of Shaggy and his, lets face it, amazing talking dog. Any talk of Fred is to dismiss him as the square with the ascot and his 'thing' with Daphne.

But it occurs to me that we're being too hard on Fred. I've been thinking about the other clues we have about Fred beyond that ascot and maybe Fred is more of a free spirit that we give him credit for.

First of all, that van that they travel around in, the one with the swirly hippie paint job and giant 'Mystery Machine' painted on the side of it? That's Fred's van. Fred of the ascot and wide collar shirt. Put that together, loafer wearing Fred bought a van and painted it swirly green with flowers and a big bubbly "Mystery Machine" on the side. Not that pothead Shaggy, but Fred.

And on the subject of Shaggy...whose friend is he, anyway? Certainly not Daphne. you don't see many tights wearing, model posing cheerleader types with stoners who talk with their dogs. Sure, could be Thelma, booky chicks have hung out with wastoids before, but to the point where she invites him along on their aimless search across the country looking for mystery? No, Shaggy is clearly Fred's friend. They might even go back long enough that Fred bought a van so his buddy Shaggy could take that dog of his with him when they hung out. Maybe they were chilling in the front yard, feet in their kiddie pool one day when Shaggy suggested covering the thing in green hippie paint.

Not to mention this wild, rudderless trip in the first place. Ascot and loafer wearing people prepare for college, not seek out cranky caretakers in rubber masks.

So what's up? What happened to our man Fred? Is he the Dobbie Gillis to Shaggy's (clear inspiration) Manard G. Krebs? No, Dobbie joined the military and even talked his beatnick friend into going with him. Wally was always talking Eddie out of trouble, not loading him in a van to go looking for it. No, it's clear that in core mentality Fred is closer to Shaggy than the other way around.

No, the answer is clear. Daphne. Daphne is what happened. I imagine if we had picked up the Scooby Doo gang just a little earlier we would have seen a Fred with long hair and t-shirt and jeans not much different than Shaggy. But then he met Daphne who probably said something like, "You know what would look good on you? An ascot. And why don't you get a haircut?"

Now, I want to stop here and make sure I'm not painting Daphne as a ballbuster who has emasculated Fred. She went on the journey with everyone else and doesn't really seemed that bothered by Fred's hippie friend and dog tagging along. Maybe she's even the one who talked her brainy friend into joining them because she'd be able to help. She's on board and contributes.

But it's also clear that she contributes to Fred's fashion choices. Because, dudes, who amongst us hasn't donned something out of character because a pair of fluttering eyelashes suggested we might look good in it? This really isn't out of fealty, but rather because we've perhaps not really taken aesthetics into account as much as comfort. And while we won't admit it because it would make us sound like someone from Jersey Shore, we'd like to look good to the ladies, even if that means that we end up looking like that goofball square in the ascot and loafers driving a hippie van to abandoned amusement parks.

I imagine that there a few times that he'd like to get paired up with his old buddy Shaggy for some Scooby snacks of their own. For old times.