Tammin Sursok b. 1983 (Airship Dracula, Aquamarine)
Tania Nolan b. 1983 (Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Legend of the Seeker)
Michelle Borth b. 1978 (Timer, Supernatural, Komodo vs. Cobra)
Callum Blue b. 1977 (Smallville, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Dead Like Me)
Tracie Thomas b. 1975 (Looper, Wonder Woman [2011], Grindhouse, Wonderfalls)
Ahmed Best b. 1973 (The Star Wars prequels)
Kyra Sedgwick b. 1965 (Gamer, Phenomenon, Amazing Stories)
Kevin Dillon b. 1965 (The Blob [1988])
Martin Donovan b. 1957 (The Lottery, The Haunting in Connecticut, Stephen King’s Dead Zone, Dark Shadows [2005])
Adam Arkin b. 1956 (Lake Placid, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Perversions of Science, The Hidden Room, Hard Time on Planet Earth, The Twilight Zone [1985])
Peter Gallagher b. 1955 (The Gathering, House on Haunted Hill, High Spirits)
Jonathan Frakes b. 1952 (Star Trek, Roswell, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Lois & Clark, Twilight Zone [1985])
Jim Carter b. 1948 (The Golden Compass, The Wind in the Willows [TV], Ella Enchanted, Dinotopia, Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story, The Little Vampire, The Witches, The Company of Wolves, Flash Gordon)
Gerald McRaney b. 1947 (Jericho, Stephen King’s Dead Zone, Hansel & Gretel, The NeverEnding Story, The Incredible Hulk, The Aliens Are Coming, Logan’s Run [TV], The Brain Machine, The Fantastic Journey, The Six Million Dollar Man)
Christopher Malcolm b. 1946 died 15 February 2014 (Whoops Apocalypse, Labyrinth, Highlander, Superman III, The Empire Strikes Back)
Jill St. John b. 1940 (Batman, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Lost World)
Diana Muldaur b. 1938 (Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Incredible Hulk, Planet Earth, Star Trek, The Invaders)
L. Q. Jones b. 1927 (Timerider: The Adventures of Lyle Swann, The Incredible Hulk, A Boy and His Dog, My Favorite Martian)
Angus Scrimm b. 1926 (Phantasm, The Nightmare Room, FreakyLinks, Munchie, Mindwarp, Subspecies, Transylvania Twist, Chopping Mall, Salvage 1, Project U.F.O.)
William Marshall b. 1924 died 11 June 2003 (Dinosaur Valley Girls, Sorceress, Amazon Women on the Moon, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, Scream Blacula Scream, Blacula, Star Trek)
Gene Roddenberry b. 1921 died 24 October 1991 (creator, Star Trek, Andromeda, Planet Earth, The Questor Tapes, Genesis II)
There are several choices for The Picture Slot today. Last year it was Gene Roddenberry and I could have repeated the selection with a clear conscience. All the people I considered are older than 60, the only iconic genre role played by the young folks being poor Ahmed Best as J**-J** B****, the number one reason to hate the Star Wars prequels. That character will never be in the Picture Slot.
I thought about Angus Scrimm from Phantasm, but this is a very Star Trek day. I went with Jonathan Frakes this year, in part because he had so much more screen time than Diana Muldaur or William Marshall, and partly because I'm enjoying the new Twitter account Riker Googling, which is not being run by the actor, though it uses his likeness. My expectation is I will go with someone else in 2015.
Many happy returns to the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.
Movies released
Spy Kids: All The Time In The World In 4D released, 2011
Prediction: Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. We will translive all over this planet and the solar sphere-at home everywhere. We will be hyperfluid: skim on land-swim in the deep oceans-flash across the sky. Family will have given way to Universal life. People will linkup/linkout free of kinship and possessiveness. We will stream ahead propelled by a cornucopia of abundance.
Reality: Okay, here's our new Tuesday regular, FM-2030, who is in the running for the biggest narcissist of any of the futurists who have been our regular contributors. Regular readers will know the competition is formidable to say the least. Cough-cough Heinlein cough Kurzweil. Get used to made-up words like "translive", "hyperfluid" and "linkout".
He changed his name to FM-2030 because he was sure he would live to be 100 by simply refusing to die. In reality, he didn't even make it to the year 2010, the year he predicted in the article I'm going to be using. Nature gave him pancreatic cancer, effectively refusing his refusal to die. He's cryogenically frozen. I'm sure you are shocked by this.
Back to specific realities. We tend to live in one place and we are still pretty much stuck on this planet. Most people live in family units instead of acting like Hugh Hefner. The cornucopia of abundance is getting closer to possible, but the people making huge fortunes based on scarce resources are fighting like starving jackals to keep the status quo in place.
Our previous Tuesday regular Geoffrey Hoyle wasn't particularly accurate, but I still thought his world of 2010 had a certain charm to it. If FM-2030 had any charm, it is clearly lost on me.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
Oh wait, I made a short list of most narcissistic regular contributors and I forgot Herman Kahn!
My bad.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
God, Frakes was so hammy in the first couple of seasons. Once he grew the beard, he advanced to workmanlike.
ReplyDeleteCould I get a little Callum Blue up in the picture slot? Or even Kyra Sedgwick?
You can see I'm NOT in a Star Trek mood today...
simply refusing to die
GENIUS!! Why hadn't anyone ever thought of that!!!!
He's cryogenically frozen.
Let's chop chunks off of him and use him to cool our beverages; narcissistic whiskey stones.
For the picture slot, the best you can hope for next year is The Tall Man or Blacula.
DeleteFM-2030 is a piece of work. I'll probably only keep him around a month or two, but I will be pulling out The Big Ugly Stick on him pretty regularly.
This simply begs for an audiobook version, complete with crappy "ambient" background music and voiceovers by William Shatner. I'd include the notion of support from New Dimensions Radio, but FM-2030 was apparently too fruit-loopy for even that outfit.
ReplyDeleteA good choice for the picture slot. Frakes did get much better as the series wore on.
ReplyDeleteHe may not have done much in the genre above and beyond, but that was one of the best sci-fi shows ever. Strange, when you compare ST:TNG with Babylon 5...I cannot think of one main actor/actress in the former that has passed on, I can't say that about the latter. I'm telling ya, the gods haven't forgiven JMS for Murder She Wrote!
Ha! You are the first person I heard to blame the luck B5 has had on JMS working for Murder She Wrote. Interesting and amusing theory that Jessica Fletcher should look into. ;^)
DeleteYou shouldn't bother. She'd just pontificate for hours, conclude something incredibly unlikely, smile smugly at her ridiculous assertions and invite her neighbors, Orson Bean, Tom Bosley, Bo Svenson, Robert Foxworth and Carol Lawrence out for ice cream! It's as if the producers said "We need to do a show that combines The Love Boat and Hercule Poirot but we need to dumb it down for the mentally challenged!".
ReplyDeleteI think if you did a study on who comprised the core audience it would conclude that almost all wore a helmet while watching. Not without some redemption I suppose, they did have Anthony Zerbe on as a guest. (sigh)