The Diamond Island

The folks have been going through piles of old photos for organization, and I spotted one that reminded me of my attempts to raise a genuine, honest-to-goodness “dinosaur”.  My folks took a picture that is better left to the imagination.  But first, we must travel into the Wayback Machine.

I’m nine years old, hanging out with Pa at the local Seven-Eleven to pick up a newspaper.  I spot a clear plastic container with a nest and a large candy jawbreaker “egg” labeled as a “Pterodactyl Egg”.  I recall a small folded instructions sheet on how to raise your very own Pterodactyl, but I may be mis-remembering.  I convince Pa to buy me the thing, and back at home I read the instructions and get excited about raising my very own live Pterodactyl.  This is many, many years before the arrival of Jurassic Park on the mainstream.  But I’m nine years old, I don’t have to understand how on earth someone managed to mass produce real Pterodactyl eggs for home use.  I have to get busy raising my new pet!

My folks know better than to get in the way of my creative projects when I’m on a roll, so they let me make a nest of pillows and blankets in front of the televsion set.  Yup, I have to sit on that egg to warm it up and get that little Pterodactyl going.  Unfortunately, the instructions don’t say how long you have to sit on the egg for it to hatch.  But it shouldn’t take long, right?  In the meantime, I make myself a pair of Pterodactyl wings and a pointed headpiece so that my new pet will feel more at ease with his or her new family.  I can hardly wait!

The last of the late night programs finish up and the television programming goes off for the rest of the night.  For all you younger people out there, before the advent of “Borg Cable Boredom”, the half dozen local channels would go off the air around the late AMs to the National Anthem.  You would get static until they resumed operations several hours later.  If you’ve ever seen the movie Poltergeist, that’s where the scene with Carol Anne looking at a static television would come in.  Now it’s all shows all the time.  Anyway, it’s bedtime and I have to keep the egg warm, so I pile on the blankets and go to sleep right there, with my arms around the mound to keep the warmth coming.

Inevitably, I have to accompany the parental units on a grocery run or some other errand, so I worry about keeping the warmth up on the egg.  My folks assure me all will be well, so I leave the blanket pile on and when I come back I resume my “sitting” on the egg.  After a few days of this, I start to get impatient.  Where’s that darn dinosaur?*  What’s taking it so long.  I re-read the instructions and talk about it with my folks, who suggest it might not be a “real” egg, but a gag gift and just a hunk of candy.  Brain cells start to calculate, and I start questioning whether it’s actually possible for a candy egg to hatch a real live baby “dinosaur”.  Denial sets in, but my hopes are crumbling.

I decide I have to check the egg out.  While warm, the jawbreaker shell is still nice and tough.  I shake it and nothing rattles.  Okay, even though I might be killing my new pet, I’ve got to see if this thing is for real because I’m getting tired of sitting on the darn thing.  So I take Pa’s hammer and smash it open.  I figure if I come across the mangled remains of a “dinosaur” I can always go back to the store and get another.  Sure enough, hollow center, but no Pterodactyl.  I’m crushed.  All that time wasted trying to raise a unique pet for a crummy piece of candy.  And I hate jawbreakers too, so I’m not even going to get much in the way of sweets from the pieces.  What a rip-off!

Yup, that picture is of me sitting on my nest wearing my construction paper outfit.  Back to the present, I’m thinking about what the effect might have been on my brain stem, and I think about my fondness for Pterodactyls.  From the Japanese monster movie Rodan, to Pee Wee Herman’s puppet buddy, there’s an attraction there that runs very deep.  I’ve heard it said our failures motivate us, and in this case I believe the phrase applies.  When I think about that time, the memory of my matter-of-fact, childlike belief that I was really going to hatch a real live Pterodactyl from a piece of candy is still fresh.  It’s scary, because I have that feeling and the feeling of disappointment that came after to compare with.  Both feelings stare me in the face.  It’s like that time I saw the Batmobile in an earlier post.  There are moments in your life where reality as you know it threatens to take off into the fantastical and it’s only the disillusionment that brings you back to objective life.  We really are sometimes just a step away from other worlds where who knows what might happen.

I start thinking about that movie The Illusionist, where the young Eisenheim’s failure to disappear with his childhood love motivates him to master his gift and create a masterful trick.  The magician is the person who plays with those two worlds and brings forward magic.  Not necessarily magic in the sense of a power, such as the ability to fly or make a rainstorm, but a reminder of the vast mystery of life.  The kind of performance that kindles the imagination and makes you whole.  I’m thinking my misadventure with the Pterodactyl egg, while foolish, was also spontaneous and imaginative.  Coyote the trickster was sending a message to the future that day.

* I realize Pterodactyls are not considered true “dinosaurs” these days, but I’m not digging into that can of worms today.

I’m in a real slump right now when it comes to the television shows currently playing. The tube is going down the tubes, so to speak. It’s not that you can’t find something to watch. Just head off the main highway and drive the back roads until you encounter the fresh stuff sold at a fly-by-night farmer stand. Know what I mean, bean? But some days the mindless actions of the networks that ruin anything good, in all violation of the iron rule of making money, gets me down.

I cancelled my cable a few years back, because I’m sick of paying sixty bucks a month to watch two or three channels that sometimes have something entertaining on. Come on, TNT, I’ve got all the good James Bond movies on DVD and can watch them whenever I feel like. Are crummy “Bond marathons” the best you got? Cartoon network makes me ralph my cookies. I can get just about all my fave cartoons on DVD now (save for a few minor gems, like Marine Boy or Prince Planet), and adult swim can jump the shark already. All the good stuff will be there, eventually.

See, I’ve gotten into the habit of just waiting for the good stuff to come out on DVD. I don’t care about the television channels anymore because they don’t know how to manage good programming and they waste my time with 5 minutes of commercials for every 7 minutes of show. I remember when the big networks laughed at the idea that anyone would “pay” for television. Now you pay for television AND get commercials. That’s in addition to a general decline in quality of shows, with less risk taking and more franchises/re-imaginings. I can tune into my parent’s cable channel with the sound turned off and go, “oh, look, another cop show that rips off Hill Street Blues.”

I think the corporate seizing of “intellectual property” has choked off innovation. Networks are repeating themselves over and over, and nothing new is coming out. When a fresh idea comes about by accident, you get an instant glomming over to that new idea to exploit the show for cash and residual merchandizing. That’s why we get crummy programs that last two or three seasons way after the original idea was burned out.

Then there’s the Internet’s ability to grow a consensus rapidly about a show’s shortcomings. Maintaining a show’s image has become harder for networks because they can’t milk an audience as easily. The pressure on the actual creators of a show has only increased. The public relations of a show can reach ludicrous proportions, with outright lying and manipulation to keep people watching for that “one big twist” around the corner. Meanwhile, the show’s quality crumbles and crumbles.

The other day, my folks told me they’re canceling their cable. The cable company hiked the rates and they didn’t think it was worth what they are paying. I’m like, “Whoa, what are you going to watch late at night while you’re drifting off to bed?” They ask me about setting up a DVD/VCR upstairs and getting a Netflix account versus satellite versus Verizon Fi-OS. They want to watch the Best of Johnny Carson to start with, and then this list of other shows. I’m seriously doing a double take here. I don’t know what they’ll ultimately do, but I can’t help but feel it’s a sign that something is going on.

I’ve been hearing about ‘ala carte’ television for a while now, and it hasn’t happened yet. But I think the time for it can’t be far off. What happens when people can share ‘libraries’ of movies as easily as MP3s? Granted, I think that’s happening in some form or another now. I see it happening with younger folks on a limited basis. I certainly don’t mind loaning a friend, say my Buffy DVDs to watch their Star Trek DVDs. In other words, there’s a marketplace of entertainment taking shape where people exchange common interests and ideas and see what the best thing is for themselves. The television channels are all merging into a single experience – the preview channel.

Or look at this way. Most everybody I know in my various different social groups knows someone who has a tricked up home theater setup. You know, the Best Buy/Circuit City mega-destructoid system. How can you compete with people’s prime enjoyable experience of media being in their own living room, or the living room of their friend? Theaters can’t compete with the home ground advantage. It’s not that there won’t always be a place for neutral ground for dating purposes, for example. But it’s going to be a greatly reduced part of what people do to entertain themselves.

The networks are going to have to reinvent the way they do business, maybe actually generate some new material, because they are on the outskies. It’s going to be in production or nothing. You got fifty new shows? My friend has two hundred old ones in her library, and can tell me on a personal connection which ones are any good. Can your dullard entertainment reviewer on the payroll do that? Every social group will have like one or two people who watch what the “preview” companies put out, just to be able to tell us what’s going to be part of “must see” and what can go in the garbage compactor as “same old”.

So I’m glum that things right now are so boring and difficult and disappointing. But the times they are a-changin’. I’m not going to shed a tear over the cable companies or the networks. They had their chance, and, to quote Lord Summerisle, “Blew it.” I’ll be watching their demise on my friend’s super-system while we drink the beer I brought over.

Today is K’s birthday. Happy Birthday, K! Yesterday, K’s father and brother came by to pay tribute, and she raked in the goods. One of those goods was Season 2 of Babylon 5, which I ended up watching six episodes of while convalescing on the couch. Garden tomatoes and yummy sweet-basil pesto pasta with grapefruit juice to wash it down. Die cold germs, die!

If you haven’t ever watched the show, in a nutshell Babylon 5 (or B5 for short) is a science fiction show based around a space station, built in “neutral space” as a diplomatic meeting point for the star-faring “races” of the galaxy. The five major military powers, of which the human race is a member, and the numerous minor military powers, known as the “league of non-aligned worlds” (or pawns of the other imperialistic powers in diplomatic-speak) scheme and plot with or against one another in a series of intrigues and, occasionally, settle their differences with violent means. The show has an ensemble cast, made up of the usual assortment of military and governmental main characters, with a host of supporting characters drawn from the civilian side for variety. The main plot revolves around the reappearance of an old military power (called “the shadows”, also known as the generic “bad invaders”) and its attempts to dominate and subjugate everybody else.

Watching the show, I can’t help but analyze its particulars in light of where I’m at these days. K got Season 1 for Christmas, so we watched that right in the midst of the beginning of the year in a different mindset then we are in now. Crumbs, this year’s been pretty intense stuff, what with the move and both our work transformations. I’ll have to go back and watch the season again and see what my brain currents think of it now.

What struck me about Season 2, and the show in general, is what a mixed bag it is for me now. A lot of things still hold up for me, and a lot of the episodes are wonderful escapism. I never get tired of the attempt at a moral center, as ham-fisted as it sometimes. The dialogue moves me despite being obvious exposition-train (choo-choo!) in places. The special effects are at times poor, but I don’t care. They do what they’re supposed to do. There’s a lot the show gets right, and so I don’t mind the flaws so much. It delivers.

But two things bugged me, and I’m musing over how those things fit in with the rest of the show.

The first thing is the diversity meter. At times, the show gives me a variety of points of view and a good mix of characters from different backgrounds. But there are moments where I find myself looking at a disguised version of the all-white power bloc known as “the homo sapiens club”. You have all sorts of exotic and interesting aliens in outer space, but the majority of the action centers around the “human” team and their challenges. That’s when the diversity meter starts making a warbling noise and I go, “Now what’s all this then?”

That “human” team in B5 is the station general crew, and it’s a reasonably diverse bunch of characters. There’s the chief medical officer, Dr. Stephen Franklin, a black “foundationist” (a particular belief system in the B5 world) with a strong will. You have the chief of security, Michael Garibaldi, an ex-catholic and recovering alcoholic from an Italian background. There’s second-in-command Susan Ivanova, a strong female character from a Jewish and Russian background. And the commander of the station, John Sheridan, your generic hero white guy. It’s a reasonable mix of people with different points of view, both with strengths and weaknesses. Totally good to go.

The “human” team doesn’t exclude the aliens by any means, and as the series progresses the cooperation between humans and aliens increases (in response to the outside, overwhelming threat posed by “the shadows”). The aliens have their own impressive story lines and are necessary to the success of the “team”. But I can’t help but feel there’s something to the decision to make the “human” team the core of the series’ point-of-view. At the end, it’s clear that the aliens are all on the decline and it’s the humans who are going to be the dominant decision-makers in the future, now that the “bad” Earth government has been disposed of. The Minbari are going to throw their chips in with the humans, the Narn and Centauri are spent, the uppity Drazi have been foiled, and the Vorlons and “shadows” are out of the picture. That leaves the humans as the dominant military power, I’m sorry, “rangers”, watching over everyone with a blue gemstone brooch instead of a Nightwatch armband.

The second thing is a trait that’s starting to get on my nerves in science fiction shows, what I call the “authority privilege”. That’s where the majority of the important decision-making and story development is reserved for military and governmental characters. Civilians get a supporting role or a guest-star appearance as a plot enabler if they even show up at all. It’s okay, though, because these authorities are “the good people”, or they are “the effective people”. But I have to say, I found the secondary or supporting characters more interesting precisely because they were lower on the totem pole. They were more limited, and thus more “humanized”.

B5 is cool in that there are at least some characters that represent working class, ordinary people with no positions of authority. There’s even an episode devoted exclusively to a pair of maintenance guys and their everyday schedule keeping the station running. The show doesn’t shy away from real issues – the dockworker strike, the Mars independence rebellion, and the ongoing portrayal of the destitute downbelow of the station tackle a lot of things worth thinking about. I may be unfair to single out B5 in this post as a culprit, especially since other shows like the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica are much worse offenders, but it’s where I decided to meditate on the issue as it relates to my enjoyment of shows in general.

I realize it’s hard to have people like plumbers or checkout counter clerks have any kind of influence on a story involving interplanetary wars and imperial intrigue. There’s no way any “average person” is going to be able to command the resources of say, Head of Security, or Narn Ambassador. The fighter pilot Warren Keffer or security guard Zack Allan are probably as low on the scale as you could get and still have a viable connection to the main storyline. The fact that B5 did it at all is a good thing, but I’d like to see more. It can be done, and it should be done more. A true ensemble would have a majority of average people and a minority of power brokers, I think.

What I’d like shows in general, and SF shows in particular, to do is move away from a “the only people who get to matter are the elites and their butlers” syndrome. Yeah, I can easily envision class hierarchy existing way into the future. Even Star Trek was a pyramid system, for all the professions that they had “eliminated aggression, crime and want” (probably by subjugating everyone to “da uniform with a comlink” model of good citizenship). Just like I’m tired of seeing “whitey” get to be the guys who get the best rayguns and make all the cool decisions most of the time, I’m tired of seeing “the master” get to assign seats and make people walk the plank without any visible input or relationship to the people they supposedly are assuming the horrible burden of “real showers and ungrateful complaints” for.

The family gathering was pulled off with a minimum of fuss.  Charcoal-grilled Nature’s Promise hamburgers, homemade peach cobbler, and plenty of generic chips, freezer-thawed french fries, and garden vegetable salad with mom’s homemade dressing.  Nothing beats a fresh slice of garden grown tomato on your burger, whoo-eee!  Then, crack out the Labor Day punch and talk family business to candlelight in the backyard.  Yeah, the Slack bonus points were a-cumulatin’ in the Slor that day I can tell you.

The book revisions have reached the 55% mark, which is awesome.  I got more done this weekend than I did my week long vacation to sit and write, even though I am sick with a sore throat and a clogged ear.  I can’t explain the discrepancy in the space-time continuum, though I believe it has to do with hitting a stretch where the writing didn’t need as much work, and the fact that the revisions are gaining momentum on the remaining pages.  Still need to do that polish stage, and complete my artwork for the cover, but I’m happy.  The revised material is much better than the first draft stuff.

K has been watching the first season of the Highlander television series, and I keep getting drawn in to watch.  We finished the first season this weekend, and all I can say is Darius!  I still think the first movie is the only one that counts, the others being pretty lame.  Part of that is nostalgia, and part of that is revulsion at the franchising effect on the story.  If you forget the movies, the television series is actually pretty good action, with some nice camp and an attempt to tell a story in exploration of the alternate universe.

The tomatoes from the garden have totally defeated us; we’re just giving them away now.  The weeds have gotten out of control, and the groundhog roams at will.  The sunflowers have pretty much bitten the dust, but there isn’t a seed left on them, so at least they are dying satisfied, so to speak.  We planted some fresh basil, which ought to produce for us some nice pesto in the next few weeks before autumn forces our hand to garden mark two.  We have a lizard now!  About seven inches, black with brown and ochre markings, living in our pile of unused wood.  We threw him some baby tomatoes and the next day we were rewarded with a pile of skins.  Yea!  Feed the animal bonus points!

Just got through watching the first five episodes of Star Blazers again, courtesy of Netflix. Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that one. The music is varied, evocative, and suitably dramatic. The rich, watercolor-like palette of colors create a dreamy, organic quality. The animation, while spotty at times, is at others breathtaking. The characters are at times caricatures, and at other times they shine with moments of humanity and triumph. The premise is solid, and the story keeps to steady movement. Nothing is allowed to stagnate, and yet the new makes sense and keeps you watching. These artists show talent and devotion, taking chances under the shadow of the clock, and it pays off. I’m impressed at how well it holds up now.

To summarize, an alien empire begins bombing Earth with “planet bombs” that cover the planet in radiation and drive everyone underground. Earth’s spacefleet has been completely defeated, and in 1 year all life on the planet will be extinguished. An ancient battleship wreck, the Yamato, has been secretly turned into a space battleship with the intention of being a “space ark”, which will take a small number of people to some other place they might be able to colonize and thus preserve humanity.

Another alien planet takes pity on Earth and sends them a message of hope: Come to their world and they will give us the “Cosmo DNA”, a means to resurrect the Earth and defeat the evil aliens. With the message are plans for a new form of space engine and an ultimate weapon – the wave motion gun. The Yamato is fitted with this new technology, and the crew’s mission is changed: They will be known as the Star Force, and they will take humanity’s last chance in a go-for-broke-gamble to reach the planet and return with the Cosmo DNA instead of fleeing to another planet.

Every episode covers a step along the way to reach the good alien planet, with the evil aliens attempting to find and destroy them, and ending with a countdown number so you know exactly how many days are left before its too late. As the story progresses, the space battleship faces all manner of obstacles, from gravitational pulls while the engines are being repaired, to hostile, matter-consuming, semi-intelligent gas monsters. There’s usually some kind of attack by the forces of the evil aliens, requiring the Star Force to use their wits and survive long enough to blow the aliens away with the wave motion gun. Meanwhile, the crew members face personal struggles, both private and public. It’s pretty mature for a kids show.

It just got me thinking about the first anime I saw as a kid, one of several manufactured for the American market – Speed Racer, and later on down the line, Marine Boy – truly a lost classic deserving of DVD release! There were other shows, like Ultraman and Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot, that were live action, but they brought over an influence from Japan that is pretty much mainstream and taken for granted today. These shows were like precious secrets you were lucky to be able to see, back in the day when TV stations were more independent and diverse, unlike the monopolies we have today. It was a blast to catch these on television and be able to talk about it with your friends on the block about “the mammoth car” or “oxygum and electric boomerangs”.

Makes me wonder what kind of secret treasures are floating around out there now, mutating the brains of youngsters and creating new fountains of creative expression that take root now, only to flower many decades down the line. The culture broth out there holds uncounted mysteries brewing who-knows-what-is-to-come. The messages of these transmissions are coming to you from the good aliens, giving you the solution and the tools, but you’ve got to do that task yourself to save the planet, be the best racecar driver/human being you can be, protect the oceans, defeat the monsters, you name it – the final task you’ve got to do yourself.

An addendum to A Really Red Alert: The canning has been accomplished. 125 jars of delicious tomato goodness stored for the winter. We still had 14 from the last cycle, so looks like this will be a bumper pizza sauce year. Yeah!

Saturday morning cartoons! Ah, the good ol’ days of School House Rock and Sid and Marty Croft. Every time something gets re-released on DVD from the 70’s era of television, I get a warm feeling inside. A whole bunch of stuff has been put out over the last year, which it’s been hard to keep up with on Netflix. Some shows, like the Planet of the Apes cartoon or Scooby Doo* hold up pretty well. Others, such as the Flash Gordon** cartoon or Star Trek: The Animated Series***, not so much. The Mighty Isis show has just been released on DVD, and I can’t wait to see it. That show had to have about the coolest rhymes ever!

Basically, this archaeologist named Andrea goes exploring in an ancient pyramid and finds a magic amulet that when worn, allows her to change into the Mighty Isis when she says the words, “Oh Mighty Isis!” It’s a hoot, because her voice enters the echo chamber while spooky mist and sped up cloud footage goes everywhere. Never mind the Egyptian board of antiquities, that loot gets smuggled back home on the plane, because its finder’s keepers.

Andrea has a pet raven called “Tut”, and a host of bumbling sidekicks and always-getting-into-trouble students who need to learn the lesson of the week. Tut is smarter than any of the humans on the show, and Andrea understands whatever he says, though we the audience only hear “caw-caw!”. Nobody ever suspects she is the Mighty Isis, because of course Andrea wears glasses while Mighty Isis wears this sexy Egyptian mini-dress and high heeled knee boots and the sweet amulet of Goddess power on her forehead. Things like facial features or voice mean absolutely nothing, although to be fair Isis speaks with the power of authoritative command while Andrea is the typical Clark Kent wallflower. Don’t think too hard, it’s the way this alternate reality works. You’ll survive your Quantum Leaps better if you just go with it.

Episode spoiler follows.

At some point, bad guys come onto the scene, or the kids/sidekicks try to do something really stupid and dangerous. For example, there’s an episode where a teenager goes out on her uncle’s boat, even though the old guy has explicitly told her the engine needs to be repaired, or some such foreshadowing. The teenager doesn’t bother to do the local weather report, so of course she has no clue a major tropical storm is on the way. She goes off to have a joy ride in a boat all by herself, to prove how cool she is, because that’s what all well-adjusted teenagers do for fun in 70’s sunny California. She promptly gets jacked.

This episode was notable because of the special guest Captain Marvel, also known as SHAZAM. Mighty Isis was originally a guest on his show, but she proved so awesome that she got her own program. And then his show got cancelled, so he had to show up on her program as a guest star! What a world, what a world.

So, here’s how Mighty Isis’s powers work. She has complete command over all the elements; she just has to tell them what to do by busting out a phat rhyme. If she wants to fly, she says, “Oh mighty winds, that blow on high, lift me up so I can fly.” That’s her bonus rhyme. She can only do one rhyme at a time, which proves important in this episode.

The sidekicks can’t find the teenager for whatever reason, like she was late for the study break or something, so Andrea sends out Tut to look for her. Being a sharp bird, he finds the poor fool immediately, and Mighty Isis does her trippy transformation and flies over. Meanwhile, theteenager is totally panicking, because the engine blew up, the boat’s taking on water, the radio doesn’t work, and the storm is looking pretty scary as it comes in. You know its bad news, because the “people in trouble” music is playing.

Mighty Isis flies in, and sees the storm is looking pretty bad, so she busts out her rhyme: “Oh mighty winds now listen to me, hold back the waves, and calm the sea.”**** The storm is temporarily stopped, but the teenager is still on an express elevator to Davy Jone’s Locker, so Isis sends Tut to get some help, ta-ta! Captain Marvel! Luckily, he also understands raven-ese, and flies to her aid, and tows the boat back to safety using his super-strength.

Whoa, watch out, the double moralizing from both Mighty Isis and Captain Marvel! Teenager has learned her lesson, sidekicks tell her how much they love her. All is right with the world. No episode is complete, however, without the sidekicks noting how “Andrea missed all the fun.” Mr. Dumb-blockhead sidekick #1 says, “You know Isis, I’m beginning to think Andrea is afraid of you.” I forget what her comeback was, but I’m sure it was witty and kind.

Ahh, the late seventies, women’s lib era of superheroines. The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, and Mighty Isis. Lots of strong, independent, and effective women characters on television. Good times.

* The era after the goofy guest star formula like Batman and Robin or the Harlem Globetrotters, but before Scrappy Doo.
** The master of using the same footage over and over again. Need to kill an easy 30 seconds? Cue the long slow entry into Ming’s throne room.  Again.
*** Except for the “Yesteryear” episode and “More Trouble With Tribbles”, which every trekkie knows is authentic, bow down I am not worthy Trek lore.
**** Don’t hold me to this, it’s been 30 plus years since I heard this one.