19 September 2015

Birthdays
Taylor Geare b. 2001 (Flashforward, Inception)
Katrina Bowden b. 1988 (Piranha 3DD, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil)
Danielle Panabaker b. 1987 (The Flash, Time Lapse, Arrow, Piranha 3DD, Grimm, The Crazies, Sky High)
Kevin Zegers b. 1985 (The Colony, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Vampire, Zoon, Dawn of the Dead, Smallville, Twice in a Lifetime, It Came from the Sky, Nico the Unicorn, Specimen, The X Files)
Lydia Hearst b. 1984 (Cabin Fever: Patient Zero)
Columbus Short b. 1982 (Quarantine, War of the Worlds)
Tanja Reichert b. 1980 (Relic Hunter, Poltergeist: The Legacy)
Adam Dunnells b. 1980 (Mega Shark vs. Kolossus, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., No Ordinary Family)
Jeremy Jordan b. 1973 (Storm of the Century)
Sanaa Lathan b. 1971 (Alien vs. Predator, Blade)
Kim Richards b. 1964 (Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No, Race to Witch Mountain, Project U.F.O., Return from Witch Mountain, The Car, Escape to Witch Mountain, The Picture of Dorian Gray)
Paul McGuigan b. 1963 (director, Victor Frankenstein, Push)
Cheri Oteri b. 1962 (Southland Tales, Inspector Gadget)
Carolyn McCormick b. 1959 (Spectropia, The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Enemy Mine)
Richard Ridings b. 1958 (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Merlin, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Relic Hunter, Highlander [TV], Red Dwarf, Erik the Viking, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire)
Kevin Hooks b. 1958 (director, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Supernatural, Alphas, Lost, Alien Nation [TV], V; actor, Innerspace )
Rex Smith b. 1955 (The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, Transformations, Faeries Tale Theatre)
David Bamber b. 1954 (Doctor Who)
Allan Havey b. 1954 (The Man in the High Castle, Hancock)
Ernie Sabella b. 1949 (Quantum Leap, Fright Night Part 2)
Jeremy Irons b. 1948 (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Color of Magic, Eragon, The Time Machine)
Tanith Lee b. 1947 died 24 May 2015 (writer, Tales of the Flat Earth, Animal Castle)
Randolph Mantooth b. 1945 (Battlestar Galactica, Project U.F.O.)
Mariangela Melato b. 1941 died 11 January 2013 (Flash Gordon)
Lloyd Haynes b. 1934 died 31 December 1986 (The Green Hornet, Batman, Star Trek)
David McCallum b. 1933 (Jeremiah, Team Knight Rider, VR.5, Babylon 5, SeaQuest 2032, The Watcher in the Woods, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein: The True Story, The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women and War, The Outer Limits)
Antonio Margheriti b. 1930 died 4 Novmeber 2002 (director, Alien from the Deep, Treasure Island in Outer Space, Yor, the Hunter from the Future, Flesh for Frankenstein, Mr. Superinvisible, War of the Planets, Wild, Wild Planet, Assignment: Outer Space)
Kathie Browne b. 1930 died 8 April 2003 (Star Trek, Mr. Terrific, The Brass Bottle, My Favorite Martian)
Mel Stewart b. 1929 died 24 February 2002 (Bride of Re-Animator, Martians Go Home, Dead Heat, The Invisible Woman, Mr. Merlin, The Greatest American Hero, Tabitha)
Adam West b. 1928 (Monster Island, Black Scorpion, An American Vampire Story, Weird Science [TV], The Flash, Doin’ Time on Planet Earth, Zombie Nightmare, Time Warp, Warp Speed, Batman, Bewitched, The Outer Limits, Robinson Crusoe on Mars)
William Hickey b. 1927 died 29 June 1997 (Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, Tales from the Crypt, Between Time and Timbuktu)
Rosemary Harris b. 1927 (Radio Free Albemuth, Spider-Man, The Boys from Brazil)
Damon Knight b. 1922 died 15 April 2002 (writer, To Serve Man)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. Previous Picture Slotters were Adam West and Kathie Brown, and this year's winner is Carolyn McCormick as Minuet, a character that proved the old phrase "Riker will chase anything in a skirt with a pulse" gave him way too much credit, since she was just a holodeck character.

2. Spot the Canadian! Kevin Zegers has the kind of career the Canadian government hoped they would be able to produce when they required a quota of Canadian born on the shows produced in their country.

3. Nepotism FTW. Lydia Hearst is the daughter of Patty Hearst.

4. MST3K. Adam West was in Zombie Nightmare.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

The Weekly Soapbox: The Swan Song

This will be the last post on this blog. I have enjoyed myself for the past thirty three months putting the lists and predictions together and making my little comments, but my interest has been waning for some time now. I had hoped to make it through the end of the year or at least to make a month long tribute to Back to the Future II, but I just can't find the time right now. I'm teaching more classes than I have for a while, which is very good for my bank account, but a little bit of a challenge in terms of time management. Not doing the blog will save me about an hour a day in research and writing.

I want to thank all the people who read the blog over the past few years and especially those who took the time to leave comments. We all know the standard Internet warning "Don't read the comments!", but in the successful blogs I've written, the main reason I continued them was because I wanted to read what my commenters would have to say. You guys (and gals) have been great.

I also enjoyed learning new things in my research, like today when I read that Patty Hearst's daughter is a supermodel (who knew?), but as much as I enjoy a good Fun Fact to Know and Tell, time constraints mean our little party is coming to an end.
  
Wishing all my readers safe and happy journeys... IN THE FUTURE!

13 September 2015

Birthdays
Robbie Kay b. 1995 (Heroes Reborn, Once Upon a Time, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Pinocchio)
Erin Way b. 1987 (Warehouse 13, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Grimm, Alphas, I (Heart) Vampires)
Carol Anne Watts b. 1987 (Ant-Man, Frankenstein [2015])
Trevor Duke-Moretz b. 1986 (Big Bad Wolf)
Sean Brosnan b. 1983 (U.F.O.)
Robin Chalk b. 1981 (Moon)
Ben Savage b. 1980 (Aliens for Breakfast, Little Monsters)
Elizabeth Weinstein b. 1979 (Supernatural, Arrow, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Smallville, Goblin, Stargate SG-1)
Colin Trevorrow b. 1976 (director, Jurassic World, Safety Not Guaranteed)
Louise Lombard b. 1970 (Grimm, SGU Stargate Universe, Tale of the Mummy)
Jonathan Walker b. 1967 (Continuum, Supernatural, Fringe, The Thing [2011], V [2011], Smallville, Flash Gordon, Stargate SG-1, Land of the Dead, Tracker, The X Files, Cyberjack)
Louis Mandylor b. 1966 (616: Paranormal Incident, The Prometheus Project, Charmed)
Joel Beeson b. 1966 (Death Becomes Her)
Laura Stepp b. 1966 (Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Voyager, Spawn)
Alfonso Freeman b. 1959 (Bad Blood I and II)
Isiah Whitlock Jr. b. 1954 (Europa Report, Enchanted, Gremlins 2: The New Batch)
Ann Dusenberry b. 1953 (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Six Million Dollar Man)
Taryn Power b. 1953 (The Sea Serpent, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger)
Christine Estabrook b. 1952 (American Horror Story, Spider-Man 2, The X Files)
Raymond O’Connor b. 1952 (Buffy, Babylon 5, Breakfast of Champions, Hard Time on Planet Earth, Dr. Alien, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers)
Jean Smart b. 1951 (Project X)
Bruce Phillips b. 1951 (Legend of the Seeker, Power Rangers R.P.M., Lord of the Rings, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys)
Clyde Kusatsu b. 1948 (Dollhouse, Charmed, Babylon 5: Thirdspace, Godzilla [1998], Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lois & Clark, ALF, The Powers of Matthew Star, Meteor, Dr. Strange)
Kathleen Lloyd b. 1948 (Babylon 5, Amazing Stories, Twilight Zone [1986], The Incredible Hulk, It Lives Again, The Car, The Sixth Sense)
Frank Marshall b, 1946 (producer, Jurassic World, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, The Sixth Sense, The Indian in the Cupboard, Amazing Stories, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Land Before Time, Arachnophobia, Hook, *batteries not included, Innerspace, Gremlins, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Poltergeist)
Dolly Read b. 1944 (The Kiss of the Vampire)
Richard Kiel b. 1939 died 10 September 2014 (Inspector Gadget, The Princess and the Dwarf, Superboy, Out of this World, Phoenix, Hysterical, Moonraker, The Humanoid, The Incredible Hulk, Land of the Lost, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, My Mother the Car, I Dream of Jeannie, The Human Duplicators, The Twilight Zone, Eegah, The Phantom Planet)
Don Bluth b. 1937 (director, Titan A.E., The Land Before Time, The Secret of NIMH)
Joe E. Tata b. 1936 (Charmed, Wonder Woman, Batman, Batgirl, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, The Outer Limits)
Barbara Bain b. 1931 (Millennium, The Visitor, Space: 1999, My Mother the Car)
Norman Alden b. 1924 died 27 July 2012 (K-PAX, They Live, Small Wonder, Back to the Future, The Greatest American Hero, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Planet of the Apes [TV], Batman, My Favorite Martian)
Scott Brady b. 1924 died 16 April 1985 (Gremlins, The Invisible Man [1975], The Mighty Gorga, Journey to the Center of Time, Destination Inner Space)
Maurice Jarre b. 1924 died 29 March 2009 (composer, Solar Crisis, Ghost, Solarbabies, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Dreamscape, Firefox, The Island at the Top of the World)
Roald Dahl b. 1916 died 23 November 1990 (author, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches)
Roy Engel b. 1913 died 29 December 1980 (Kingdom of the Spiders, The Invaders, My Favorite Martian, The Colossus of New York, Not of This Earth, Indestructible Man, It Came From Beneath the Sea, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Zombies of the Stratosphere, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Man from Planet X)
Reta Shaw b. 1912 died 8 January 1982 (Escape to Witch Mountain, Bewitched, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, I Dream of Jeannie, Lost in Space, Mary Poppins)
Mae Questel b. 1908 died 4 January 1998 (Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
Ruth McDevitt b. 1895 died 27 May 1976 (Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Birds)
Daniel Defoe b.1660 died24 April 1731 (Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World of the Moon)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. In previous years, the Picture Slot belonged to fabulous babe Barbara Bain and Oh That Guy Clyde Kusatsu. I think Richard Kiel may be more iconic than either, but he died just before his birthday last year, so  didn't want to use his picture twice in so short a span.

2. Spot the Canadian! Usually, the Supernatural/Smallville Daily Double is a good sign someone was born north of the border, but it doesn't work perfectly. Elizabeth Weinstein is Canadian, but Jonathan Walker is British.

3. Nepotism FTW. Taryn Power is the daughter of Tyrone. Alonzo Freeman is the son of Morgan. Sean Brosnan is the son of Pierce.

4. MST3K. Picture Slotter Richard Kiel is in two films, The Human Duplicators and Eegah. We also have Roy Engel in The Indestructible Man. There may be others, I'm not sure.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

The Weekly Soapbox: Global Warming

Just to be clear, I "believe" in global warming and mankind's part in it, much in the same way I "believe" in gravity. The effect of greenhouse gases is settled science and humans burning fossil fuels creates more greenhouse gases.

We've only had a few predictions on the blog about climate change and many of them have been about rising ocean levels, including a crazy high number from Paul Ehrlich, one of the most inaccurate regular predictors this blog has ever published. (Don't worry, I haven't forgotten Ray Kurzweil and FM-2030. I did write "one of the most", after all.) I wish we could fix the problem, but I'm not optimistic, and here are the reasons why.

1. Rising ocean levels are the least of our worries. There are some places on earth that now have to deal with rising waters, but they are currently far away from where the majority of people live. I expect the first thing we will notice effecting the lives of millions will be ecosystem changes that have nothing to do with the sea levels. We don't live close enough to nature to feel it when it goes bad - it's going bad in California right now, and all we are asked to do is take shorter showers and not water our lawns - but longer droughts and bigger wildfires in some areas, contrasted with heavier rains in other and temperatures not getting cold enough to put pests into their natural hibernation stage, are likely going to change how we live long before low level islands with lots of people flood. More than that, when these things happen, there will be people around to say it has nothing to do with a changing climate.

2. An enormous industry to pay for bullshit, which has already bought an entire political party. Do I need to name names? Okay, the petroleum industry and the Republicans. We've had scientific evidence that forced the government to limit the use of profitable products like aerosols, DDT and  asbestos, but those industries decided to change the way they did business. Petroleum is acting more like the tobacco industry, probably because their best scientists are telling them in private that there is no clean way to stay in business at the current level. The people lying about global warming are not just using the same tactics as the folks who lied for decades about the health risks of tobacco, in some cases they are the exact same people.

3. Humankind. Even a guy like me with no car is still sucking up energy keeping my computer and refrigerator on, and while I am consciously trying to improve the way I live, I'm not interested in going off the grid and only using the electricity I can create with solar panels and a bicycle generator. I think we can scale back, but I don't know if it will be enough. I'm turning 60 this year, so I will likely miss the worst of it. The generation of my grand-nieces and grand-nephews are probably going to have it very bad indeed.

Cheerful bastid, ain't I?

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Taking a look at the predictions for the NFL playoffs from the website fivethirtyeight.com.
  
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
 

6 September 2015

Birthdays
Rhys Ward b. 1989 (The Strain, The 100, My Babysitter’s a Vampire)
Lauren Lapkus b. 1985 (Jurassic World)
Tehmina Sunny b. 1980 (Extant, Heroes, Children of Men)
Blaze Berdahl b. 1980 (Aliens in the Family, Pet Sematary)
Matthew Horne b. 1978 (Sinbad, Vampire Killers, Fairy Tales)
Naomie Harris b. 1976 (National Theatre Live: Frankenstien, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Dinotopia, 28 Days Later…, The Tomorrow People)
Sarah Strange b. 1974 (ReGenesis, Stargate SG-1, Jeremiah, Dark Angel, First Wave, Poltergeist: The Legacy, Millennium, Sliders, The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space, The X Files, Neon Rider)
Idris Elba b. 1972 (Avengers: Age of Ultron, Prometheus, Thor, Pacific Rim, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, 28 Weeks Later, Ultraviolet, Space Precinct)
China Miéville b. 1972 (won 2010 Hugo for The City & the City)
Justina Machado b. 1972 (The Purge: Anarchy, Dragonfly, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Angel)
Dylan Bruno b. 1972 (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Dead Zone, The Rage: Carrie 2)
Betsy Russell b, 1963 (Saw III throught VI, Superboy, The Powers of Matthew Star)
Michael Winslow b. 1958 (Lavalantula, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, Robodoc, Lycanthrope, Harry and the Hendersons, Spaceballs, Gremlins)
Patti Yasutake b. 1953 (FlashForward, Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Katherine Cannon b. 1953 (Seven Days, Hard Time on Planet Earth, The Hidden, The Incredible Hulk, Battlestar Galactica, Future Cop)
Anne Lockhart b. 1953 (Surrogates, Bug Buster, Bionic Ever After, Quantum Leap, Freddy's Nightmares, Troll, AutoMan, Knight Rider, Voyagers!, E.T., The Incredible Hulk, Earthbound, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Battlestar Galactica, Project U.F.O., The Sixth Sense [1972])
Tommy Lee Wallace b. 1949 (director, Vampires: Los Muertos, It, Fright Night Part 2, Max Headroom, Twilight Zone [1985], Halloween III: Season of the Witch)
Keone Young b. 1947 (True Blood, Men in Black 3, Star Trek: Enterprise, The Invisible Man, Dude, Where’s My Car?, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids [TV], Deep Space Nine, Small Wonder )
Jane Curtin b. 1947 (The Librarians, Cyberchase, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Coneheads)
Swoosie Kurtz b. 1944 (Heroes, Category 7: The End of the World, Lost, Harvey [TV movie])
Carol Wayne b. 1942 died 13 January 1985 (The Girl with Something Extra, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie)
Jo Anne Worley b. 1937 (Wizards of Waverly Place, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, The Six Million Dollar Man, Captain Nice)
Sergio Aragones b. 1937 (writer/artist, Groo the Wanderer)
Jody McCrea b. 1934 died 4 April 2009 (The Monster That Challenged the World)
Paul Naschy b. 1934 died 30 November 2009 (A Werewolf in the Amazon, Night of the Werewolf, Mystery on Monster Island, Night of the Howling Beast, The Mummy’s Revenge, Vengeance of the Zombies, Count Dracula’s Great Love, Curse of the Devil, La Furia del Hombre Lobo, The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman, Las Noches del Hombre Lobo, Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror)
Max Schreck b. 1879 died 20 February 1936 (Nosferatu)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. In previous years, I used pictures of Max Schreck and Idris Elba. This year, I had several options, including Sergio Aragones and Naomie Harris, but I decided to go all Star Trek nerd and use Patti Yasutake from her regular role as Nurse Ogawa.

2. Spot the Canadian! Sarah Strange was born north of the border.

3. Nepotism FTW. Anne Lockhart is the daughter of June Lockhart and grand-daughter of Gene Lockhart. Jody McCrea is Joel McCrea's son.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

The Weekly Soapbox: Computers and Artificial Intelligence

Science fiction is often given credit for being prophetic, but the truth is not quite as flattering. Sci-fi is about telling stories, exciting adventures of imagination. Long before rockets were good enough to get us into orbit, science fiction stories had us traveling to other star systems, ignoring the problems of time and distance involved. On the other hand, the trajectory of computers and how quickly they would change, getting smaller, faster, cheaper and more practical, is a major technological advance of the past fifty years that sci-fi didn't quite get. An argument against my major theme might point to Asimov's robots or Frank Herbert's idea of mentats, people who can do what computers did after letting a computer think is made illegal, on the idea that we reached the Singularity and decided to walk away from it. But most of Asimov's robot stories as well as Herbert's Dune universe are set thousands or even tens of thousands of years in the future. Computers are a major part of our lives right now.

Here are my awards in different categories for the predictions about computer we have had on the blog.

Most paranoid
Arthur C. Clarke gets points for seeing how fast the computerized future would come, but nearly everything he wrote is a warning against it. Here I would single out the short story Dial F for Frankenstein and his screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Besides Clarke, the most paranoid depictions of computers come from movies like Colossus: The Forbin Project, the Terminator series and WarGames.

Most accurate or most prescient
Regular readers will know how I love to mock Robert A. Heinlein, but he got a few things right out of many, many speculations in his story The Door Into Summer, serialized in 1956 and turned into a novel in 1957. Most notable is Computer Aided Design or CAD, which he assumed would exist by the early 1970s.

Another very good prediction is from Lee De Forest in 1960, who forecast the development of computers used as medical diagnostic aides. OMNI Future Almanac will get a few mentions in overly-optimistic section, but one of their predictions published a few weeks ago about the computers of writer being connected by some wire over telephone lines to publishers was a very good guess in 1982.

But I give the last spot in this most complimentary category to T. Baron Russell in 1905, who predicted a combined typewriter/calculating machine that could create completely accurate ledgers. I'm sure Russell must have seen it a deluxe calculator, unable to envision computers or screens or spreadsheets or laser jet printers, but no one else from his era has an idea anything quite like this.

Most overly-optimistic
OMNI Future Almanac really went off the deep end sometimes with their computer predictions, falling in love with a fad like bio-rhythms to assume we might well have chips inside out heads by now. At a TED talk last decade, Bill Joy said high end computers would cost $10 in 2020, and while I can't say with complete confidence there won't be some crazy advances in the next five years, I don't hear anyone talking about what a wonderful prophet Bill Joy was these days.

As for the top spot in overly optimistic, Ray Kurzweil is the easy winner with his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines, which made a number of very specific advances that would come to pass by 2009. Kurzweil is tech-savvy enough that almost nothing he predicted is actually impossible, though we are still very far away from reverse engineering the brain, his boldest prediction by far. His best calls are about "worn technology", self-driving cars and voice recognition technology, his worst are reverse engineering the brain and the popularity of 3-D chips, which are hard to build and have bad error rates.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Speaking of OMNI Future Almanac, Monday is their regular turn for predictions.

Join is then... IN THE FUTURE!

29 August 2015

Birthdays
Nicole Gale Anderson b. 1990 (Beauty and the Beast)
Laura Ashley Samuels b. 1990 (April Apocalypse, In Time, Monster Heroes, Wizards of Waverly Place)
Jay Ryan b. 1981 (Beauty and the Beast, Terra Nova, Legend of the Seeker, Xena, Young Hercules)
Emily Hampshire b. 1981 (12 Monkeys [TV], The Returned, Earthsea, Mutant X, MythQuest, PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, Earth: Final Conflict)
Jovanna Huguet b. 1980 (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Alice, Fringe, Smallville, Blade: The Series, Supernatural)
Dan Harris b. 1979 (writer, Superman Returns, X-Men 2)
John Hensley b. 1977 (Teeth, Witchblade)
Dante Basco b. 1975 (The Chronicle, Sinbad: The Battle of the Dark Knights, Alien Nation: Body and Soul, Hook)
Carla Gugino b. 1971 (San Andreas, Sucker Punch, Race to Witch Mountain, Watchmen, Night at the Museum, Threshold, Sin City, Spy Kids, The One, Mermaid Chronicles Part 1: She Creature, Quantum Leap, ALF)
Rebecca De Mornay b. 1959 (The Shining [1997 TV], Beauty and the Beast [1987], Testament)
Michael Jackson b. 1958 died 25 June 2009 (Men in Black II, The Wiz)
Lenny Henry b. 1958 (MirrorMask, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Bernard and the Genie)
Deborah Van Valkenburgh b. 1952 (The Messengers, Touch, The Event, Firestarter 2: Rekindled, Sorcerers, Deep Space Nine, Quantum Leap)
Gottfried John b. 1942 died 1 September 2014 (Millennium, Space Rangers)
Ellen Geer b. 1941 (Supernatural, Charmed, Carnivale, Practical Magic, Phenomenon, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Beauty and the Beast, Creator, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Bionic Woman)
Joel Schumacher b. 1939 (director, Batman & Robin, Batman Forever, Flatliners, The Lost Boys, The Incredible Shrinking Woman)
Elliot Gould b. 1938 (Contagion, The Shining [1997 TV], Lois & Clark, Frogs!, Frog, The Twilight Zone [1986], Faerie Tale Theatre, The Devil and Max Devlin)
William Friedkin b. 1935 (director, Bug, Twilight Zone [1985], The Exorcist)
Susan Shaw b. 1929 died 27 November 1978 (Fire Maidens from Outer Space)
Charles Gray b. 1928 died 7 March 2000 (Firestar: First Contact, Tall Tales & Legends, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Beast Must Die, H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man)
Dick O’Neill b. 1928 died 17 November 1998 (Timecop, The Incredible Hulk, Wolfen, Wonder Woman, The UFO Incident, Gammera the Invincible)
Richard Attenborough b. 1923 died 24 August 2014 (Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story, Jurassic Park, Doctor Doolittle)
Lane Bradford b. 1922 died 7 June 1973 (Land of the Giants, Batman, Lost in Space, My Favorite Martian, The Adventures of Superman, Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, Zombies of the Stratosphere)
Isobel Sanford b. 1917 died 9 July 2004 (Lois & Clark, Love at First Bite, Bewitched)
Ingrid Bergman b. 1915 died 29 August 1982 (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
Barry Sullivan b. 1912 died 6 June 1994 (The Bionic Woman, The Invisible Man [1975], The Sixth Sense, The Immortal, Planet of the Vampires, Pyro… The Thing Without a Face)Lurene Tuttle b. 1907 died 28 May 1986 (Amazing Stories, Testament, The Clonus Horror, I Dream of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian, My Living Doll, The Munsters, Twilight Zone)
George Macready b. 1899 died 2 July 1973 (The Return of Count Yorga, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, The Alligator People, The Monster and the Ape)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. The previous Picture Slot actors were Carla Gugino from Watchmen and Charles Gray from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This year it's Richard Attenborough from Jurassic Park. On a personal note, when Attenborough was this age and wore the beard, he looked incredibly like both my father and my father's brother.

2. Spot the Canadians. Only two today, Emily Hampshire and Jovanna Huguet.

3. Nepotism, not so much. Rebecca De Mornay is the biological daughter of talk radio host Wally George, but her parents divorced and she took the name of her step-father. I doubt the relationship opened any doors for her when she was young.

4. Stuff I didn't know. When I go on imdb.com, I'll sometimes click on the page of a very familiar name without knowing if they had any credits I would count. That's how I found that both Isobel Sanford and Ingrid Bergman had genre credits.

5. MST3K. There are a lot today. The ones I know for sure are The Clonus Horror, Rocky Jones, Gammera the Invincible and Fire Maidens from Outer Space.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

The Weekly Soapbox: Brave New World vs Nineteen Eighty-Four

Over the past few years, I've been reading fiction for pleasure more than I had through most of my adult life. Occasionally, I will pick up a book that is recognized as a classic that I haven't read. Some have been very pleasant discoveries - The Man in the High Castle is probably the best in a while - but more than a few have been bitter disappointments. I can't say I liked either A Wrinkle in Time or Frankenstein, and the most recent classic that does not live up to its reputation for me is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I bought a trade paperback that had extra features at the end, including the reviews at the time - most of them pretty bad - and a letter from Huxley to Orwell congratulating the latter on publishing Nineteen Eighty-Four in a somewhat condescending way, finishing the letter with Huxley's opinion that his book's future was much more likely than Orwell's.

Here's a little spoiler for the rest of this essay: Aldous Huxley was not fit to change George Orwell's typewriter ribbon.

Contest #1: Which book is the better prediction? This is not a fair battle, because Orwell set his future in the 20th Century, while Huxley's is hundreds of years away. More than that, sci-fi sometimes predicts some particular invention or trend, but more often should be viewed as from a more general level, ignoring exact specifics.

Huxley's future: Sex is for recreation and not procreation, all civilized people are grown in jars, given nutrients that either help them grow or stunt their growth and development, producing different classes of workers. There is one part of this future that has come to pass a little bit and that is in vitro fertilization. After the egg is fertilized, it is implanted in a woman's uterus. There is no one grown from fertilized egg to newborn in a bottle and no one is working on the technology. If anything, motherhood is every bit as revered in today's culture as it has ever been and there is no movement to replace it with some other method.

Huxley seems to hate children, which is not uncommon among British writers. Children in Orwell's world are nasty snitches and John Wyndam's The Midwich Cuckoos also present children as a horrifying threat. Outside of genre, there is P.G. Wodehouse, from whom children only exist to be the bane of his protagonists' existence, most especially Bertie Wooster's.

There are sub-themes where Huxley did better: drugs to tranquilize, the glorification of youth culture, the complete triumph of consumerism, but the major underlying theme will only come true in a future I cannot foresee in any way.

Orwell's future: The government is spying on its own citizens incessantly, using technology that everyone is forced to use. Huxley got one tiny part of his prediction right, where Orwell got one detail wrong. We aren't forced to have computers and cell phones, we use them voluntarily.

Let's say that the contest is over here and Orwell has won in a rout. That said, we don't really have Newspeak, though it is a powerful metaphor, and Newspeak is as central to Orwell's story as the method of producing children is to Brave New World. Our governmental agencies aren't as horribly named as the Ministry of Love or the Ministry of Truth, though there are examples that make the Department of Justice, the Department of Education and the National Security Agency look sinister indeed.

Contest #2: Which book is better written? Of course, this is subjective, but I can't be swayed from my opinion that Huxley is a clumsy writer, both terrible as a story teller and pedantic as a user of the language. Brave New World is a slim volume and it should be much slimmer. The first fifth of the book is all exposition about the process from fertilization to "decanting", better known as birth. It's another fifth of the way through before we meet the actual protagonist, known as John or The Savage. There is a character who is supposed to be a talented writer, but when we see his work, it is presented as tired and completely inferior to Shakespeare. Huxley is one of those people that thinks using obscure words will make him look clever. For me, it was just another way I found him annoying.

Yet again, Orwell runs circles around Huxley as a writer. Nineteen Eighty-Four from the beginning is about Winston Smith and his struggle against his society, finding a little corner of his apartment where he can hide from the telescreen. Smith is said to be competent as a writer, and we see the fictional story of a war hero he concocts that is presented in the newspaper as fact.

Without question Nineteen Eighty-Four is grim, but I still found some humor in it. The idea that pop songs and pornography are produced entirely by machines is a clever little turn. As for exposition, Orwell does have his Newspeak expert Syme go on for pages and pages about the structure and future of Newspeak, but even here the long explanation becomes a plot point, as Winston sees Syme's name erased from the Chess Club list after he disappears, becoming an unperson, not for being unorthodox, but for being too intelligent and seeing through the methods used.

Contest #3: Which writer is given more honor in current culture? Is there another 20th Century writer whose name has become an adjective? It is possible I have just forgotten it, but Orwellian is as much a part of the language as Dickensian or Shakespearean. (EDIT: I did forget it. Kafkaesque.) In most ways, Huxley has faded from view, and I think he's earned the obscurity. Brave New World is still a phrase people use, but Huxley lifted that from Shakespeare. I would say the pop culture reference that is still Huxley's claim is that the rock group The Doors took the name from Huxley's drug book The Door of Perception.

In conclusion, if you find yourself hankering to read Brave New World, you are a free agent and have every right to do so. Bit don't say I didn't warn you.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

In previous years, the Picture Slot went to Mary Shelley and Frank Conniff. Who will be iconic enough to join them tomorrow?
  
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

22 August 2015

Birthdays
Dakota Goyo b. 1999 (Dark Skies, Real Steel, Thor, Ultra)
Dannielle Lozeau b. 1987 (Werewolf Rising, The Bell Witch Haunting, The Devil Girl of Devonshire, Legion, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Pretty Dead Things)
Jorge Diaz b. 1983 (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, True Blood)
Jennifer Finnigan b. 1979 (Stephen King’s Dead Zone, Big Wolf on Campus)
Brandon Quintin Adams b. 1979 (The Burning Zone, Ghost in the Machine, Quantum Leap)
James Corden b. 1978 (Into the Woods, Doctor Who, Gulliver’s Travels, Vampire Killers, Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story)
Rodrigo Santoro b. 1975 (Westworld, Lost)
Cindy Valentine Leone b. 1975 (Teen Witch)
Kristen Wiig b. 1973 (Ghostbusters, The Martian, Paul)
Heidi Lenhart b. 1973 (Crocodile 2: Death Swamp, The Burning Zone)
Richard Armitage b. 1971 (The Hobbit, Captain America: The First Avenger, Star Wars: Episode I – Yes, Yes That One Again)
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje b. 1967 (Game of Thrones, Thor: The Dark World, The Thing [2011], G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Lost, The Mummy Returns, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea [2001])
Ty Burrell b. 1967 (The Incredible Hulk [2008], National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Dawn of the Dead, Evolution)
Pamella D’Pella b. 1967 (Alien Nation: Millennium, Beauty and the Beast, ALF)
Alfred Gough b. 1967 (writer, Smallville, I Am Number Four, Spider-Man 2, Timecop)
Courtney Gains b. 1965 (Mimesis, Alien Encounter, Halloween [2007], Charmed, Superboy, Starman [TV], Misfits of Science, Back to the Future, Children of the Corn)
Andrew Wilson b. 1964 (Idiocracy, Merlin: The Return)
Lara Harris b. 1962 (American Horror Story, Demolition Man, Monsters)
Mark Williams b. 1959 (Doctor Who, Being Human, Harry Potter, Frankenstein’s Wedding… Live in Leeds, Stardust, The Borrowers, Red Dwarf)
Holly Hawkins b. 1959 (True Blood, Alice in Wonderland)
Colm Feore b. 1958 (Gotham, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Beauty and the Beast [2014 TV], Revolution, Thor, Battlestar Galactica, The Chronicles of Riddick, Storm of the Century, Creature [1998 TV], Forever Knight, Beyond Reality, War of the Worlds [TV])
Cindy Williams b. 1947 (Lois & Clark, UFOria, The Creature Wasn’t Nice, Beware! The Blob)
Valerie Harper b. 1939 (My Future Boyfriend)
Sylva Koscina b. 1933 died 26 December 1994 (The House of Exorcism, Uncle Was a Vampire, Hercules Unchained, Hercules)
John Lupton b. 1928 died 3 November 1993 (Shazam!, The Invaders, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Time Tunnel, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter)
Honor Blackman b. 1925 (Cockneys vs Zombies, Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story, Tale of the Mummy, Doctor Who, Jason and the Argonauts, H. G. Wells’ Invisible Man)
Ray Bradbury b. 1920 died 5 June 2012 (author, Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles)
Alma Beltran b. 1919 died 9 June 2007 (Ghost, Knight Rider, Kolchak: The Night Stalker)
Cecil Kellaway b. 1893 died 28 February 1973 (Bewitched, My Favorite Martian, Twilight Zone, Zotz!, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Harvey, The Luck of the Irish, I Married a Witch, The Invisible Man Returns)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. Honor Blackman and Ray Bradbury, the previous two Picture Slotters, certainly count as iconic, but I could be accused of going old school, since they are both older than I am and their fame is from the 20th Century. This year, I go with Mark Williams, who is younger than I am and his fame is mostly from Harry Potter, a 21st Century product. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Richard Armitrage were other considered options.

2. Spot the Canadians! Dakota Goyo, Jennifer Finnigan and Cindy Valentine Leone.

3. I'm bad at guessing women's ages. As I wrote in my Yvonne Craig tribute, I thought she was a few years older than my older brother when she was just five years younger than my mom. Going the other direction, Melody Patterson, who also died this week but had no genre roles, was on F Troop and she was still in high school; I would have thought she was five to ten years older. And then we have Honor Blackman, still alive thank goodness, who was just shy of 40 when she had her two most famous roles here in the states in Jason and the Argonauts and Goldfinger. I would have guessed all those incorrectly.

4. MST3K. The lovely Sylva Koscina played Iole opposite the hunky Steve Reeves in both Hercules and Hercules Unchained.

5. Hey... no Star Trek! This was a long streak between Star Trek free days, the last one being on July 24.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

Movie released
1990: The Bronx Warriors released, 1982

The Weekly Soapbox: Nuclear war

It's a very good time to note that the last time a nuclear bomb was used against an enemy was 70 years ago as of this month. Back then, the United States was involved in a costly and deadly war and we were the only ones with the bomb. We dropped two and the Japanese surrendered.

A few years later, we weren't the only ones with the bomb and the great fear of the second half of the Twentieth Century was born. If you read Command and Control, you'll see there were several accidents that might have resulted in nuclear explosions, but I must admit as I read it I thought it showed the multiple safeguards actually worked pretty well. There was also the Cuban missile crisis and several false alarms on both sides, but the scorecard is still clear: since nuclear weapons have been the property of more than one nation, they haven't been used.

Predictions of nuclear war are extremely common in movies and literature and even today, the spectre of nuclear terrorism is used to keep us afraid enough to keep up our truly insane defense spending. I for one, don't think the world is quite that dangerous, but I fully admit I could be suffering from confirmation bias. If something awful happens and I'm still alive, I will admit my error, but it would likely mean that I am wrong and Glenn Beck is right, and I really do seriously think that is awfully damned unlikely.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Another lazy Sunday with just a birthday list. Could we have a Canadian (gasp!) in the Picture Slot? Signs point to yes.
  
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

15 August 2015

Birthdays
Jennifer Lawrence b. 1990 (X-Men, Hunger Games)
Emily Kinney b. 1985 (The Flash, Forever, The Walking Dead)
Clinton Aaron b. 1984 (Left Behind, The Appearing)
Natasha Henstridge b. 1974 (Beauty and the Beast [2015], The Secret Circle, Impact, Ghosts of Mars, Jason and the Argonauts [TV 2000], Species I, II & III, Homeboys from Outer Space)
Ben Affleck b. 1972 (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Paycheck, Daredevil, Dogma, Armageddon, Phantoms, Buffy the Vampire Slayer [movie])
Anthony Anderson b. 1970 (Transformers, Alien Avengers)
Debra Messing b. 1968 (The Mothman Prophecies, Prey)
Michael Berresse b. 1964 (Meet Dave, A.I. Artificial Intelligence)
Andy Forrest b. 1963 (The Future, Carnivale)
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu b. 1963 (writer, Birdman)
David Zayas b. 1962 (Gotham, Grimm, Skyline, Angel)
Zeljko Ivanek b. 1957 (12 Monkeys [TV], True Blood, Revolution, The Event, Heroes, Lost, From the Earth to the Moon, The X-Files)
Tess Harper b. 1950 (Early Edition, The Hidden Room, Twilight Zone [1986], Amityville 3-D, Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land)
Ann Ryerson b. 1949 (Constantine [2005], Minority Report, Friday the 13th Part VI)
Jill Haworth b. 1945 died 3 January 2011 (The Mutations, Horror on Snape Island, Horror House, It!, The Outer Limits)
Nigel Terry b. 1945 died 20 April 2015 (Doctor Who, Highlander [TV], Excalibur)
Barbara Bouchet b. 1943 (Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)
Lou Perryman b. 1941 died 1 April 2009 (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Poltergeist)
Michael J. Reynolds b. 1939 (Moonshot, Lexx, Earth: Final Conflict, The Lifeforce Experiment, Twilight Zone [1989], Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, Plague, The Neptune Factor)
Pat Priest b. 1936 (The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, Bewitched, The Munsters, My Favorite Martian, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)
Mike Henry b. 1936 (The Six Million Dollar Man, Soylent Green)
Abby Dalton b. 1935 (Cyber Tracker, Viking Women vs. the Sea Serpent)
Jim Dale b. 1935 (Unidentified Flying Oddball, Pete’s Dragon)
Lori Nelson b. 1933 (The Naked Monster, Day the World Ended, Revenge of the Creature)
Janice Rule b. 1931 died 17 October 2003 (The Ray Bradbury Theatre, Twilight Zone, Bell, Book and Candle)
Nicolas Roeg b. 1928 (director, The Witches, The Man Who Fell to Earth)
Mike Connors b. 1925 (Earthlings, Voodoo Woman, The Day the World Ended)
Vincent Beck b. 1924 died 24 July 1984 (The Invisible Man [1975], The Bamboo Saucer, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians)
Elizabeth Kerr b. 1912 died 13 January 2000 (Mork & Mindy, The Six Million Dollar Man)
Signe Hasso b. 1910 died 7 June 2002 (The Green Hornet, The Outer Limits)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. In previous years, I went fabulous (and iconic) with Jennifer Lawrence from The Hunger Games and Natasha Henstridge from Species. If I were going to choose a guy instead this year, I could choose Nigel Terry from Excalibur, but he got a picture when he died a few months back. Using Ben Affleck from Daredevil or Vincent Beck from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians would just be cruel, so the best choices for continuing the fabulosity theme are Abby Dalton from Viking Women vs. the Sea Serpent, Pat Priest as Marilyn Munster, Barbara Bouchet as one of the legion of babes Kirk seduced on Star Trek and today's winner, Emily Kinney from The Walking Dead.

2. Wait... he's alive? Years ago, I did a blog on the headlines from the supermarket tabloids and they put a lot of celebrities from the 1960s on the cover with warnings they would be dead soon. They predicted Mike Connors was not long for this world five years ago. This is in keeping with their usual accuracy, which is pretty damned awful. Mike Connors turns 90 and best wishes to him. On a non-genre note, Rose Marie turns 92, though I didn't find a credit for her.

3. MST3K. We've got a mess o' stuff today. I've already mentioned the movies that Abby Dalton and Vincent Beck were in, but there's also Revenge of the Creature with Lori Nelson.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

Movie released
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension released, 1984

The Weekly Soapbox: Overpopulation

We have had a lot of predictions about population and the majority of them are really about overpopulation or methods that will be used to stop overpopulation.

There are a lot of scary ways to present the numbers. For example, if we start at 1925 and move by 30 year increments, it looks like this.

1925: Just under 2 billion
1955: Just under 3 billion
1985: Just under 5 billion
2015: Just over 7 billion

It may be hard to see any hope in these numbers, but the rate of increase slowed down in the 1960s and is still decreasing. Guys like Paul Ehrlich made their reputation predicting mass starvation as the third world norm, but the percentage of people living in danger of food scarcity has decreased dramatically in the past fifty years.

The true cost of massive number of humans is environmental degradation, which includes our contribution to climate change. Like with overpopulation, we are showing only a minor political will to try to solve the problem. Will climate change be "not as bad as predicted"? Or is it a problem so big, we can't even see the events that will impact us before rising sea levels make a significant change in where humans can live and work?

In something of an ironic twist, the Catholic Church - which made efforts to control overpopulation difficult - is now one of the strongest voices to speak out about capitalism's degradation of the environment, most notably since Pope Francis has been installed.

I usually don't make exact predictions, but when my students are my age in the second half of this century, I think things will be significantly worse than they are now for the majority of people unless serious action is taken soon by governments around the globe.
 
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Sunday's are birthday list only. It's Julie Newmar's special day, but I've already used her in The Picture Slot. Oh, how I rue the "no repeats" rule. Who will it be instead?
  
Fin out one day from now... IN THE FUTURE!

8 August 2014

Birthdays
Shavon Kirksey b. 1989 (Dragonball: Evolution)
Laura Wiggins b. 1988 (The Tomorrow People, Dance of the Dead)
Jake Goldsbie b. 1988 (Prince Charming, Jacob Two Two and the Hooded Fang)
Katie Leung b. 1987 (Harry Potter)
Jenn Proske b. 1987 (Beauty and the Beast [TV], Vampires Suck)
Peyton List b. 1986 (The Flash, The Tomorrow People, Smallville, FlashForward)
Meagan Good b. 1981 (Minority Report [2015])
Tobias Santelmann b. 1980 (Hercules)
Lindsay Sloane b. 1977 (Strange Frequency, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch)
Enzo Cilenti b. 1974 (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Fourth Kind)
Anne Wheaton b. 1969 (Sharknado 2: The Second One, Big Bang Theory)
Jon Turtletaub b. 1963 (director, National Treasure I, II and III, Jericho, From the Earth to the Moon, Phenomenon)
Suzee Pai b. 1962 (Big Trouble in Little China)
Harry Crosby b. 1958 (Friday the 13th)
Branscombe Richmond b. 1955 (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Charmed, Tremors [TV], Power Rangers Wild Force, Batman Returns, Alien Nation, Beauty and the Beast [TV], The Greatest American Hero, Misfits of Science, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Automan, The Bionic Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man)
Don Most b. 1953 (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Star Trek: Voyager, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, Dark Skies, Sliders, The Munsters Today)
Martin Brest b. 1951 (director, Meet Joe Black)
Keith Carradine b. 1949 (Cowboys & Aliens, The Big Bang Theory, Dollhouse, Star Trek: Enterprise, Perversions of Science, Special Report: Journey to Mars)
Connie Stevens b. 1938 (Way, Way Out)
Dustin Hoffman b. 1937 (The Cobbler, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Sphere, Outbreak, Hook)
Adam Roarke b. 1937 died 27 April 1996 (Star Trek, Return from Witch Mountain, The Six Million Dollar Man, Frogs, Women of the Prehistoric Planet)
Roger Penrose b. 1931 (Physicist, author, White Mars, or, The Mind Set Free)
Terry Nation b. 1930 died 9 March 1977 (writer, Doctor Who, Blake’s 7)
Nina Talbot b. 1930 (Bewitched)
Tom Reese b. 1928 (Wonder Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Land of the Giants, Twilight Zone)
Richard Anderson b. 1926 (The Stepford Children, Automan, Knight Rider, The Bionic Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Astronaut, Land of the Giants, The Invaders, The Green Hornet, Forbidden Planet, Captain Midnight)
Rory Calhoun b. 1922 died 28 April 1999 (Tales from the Crypt, Hell Comes to Frogtown, The Revenge of Bigfoot, Night of the Lepus)
William Asher b. 1921 died 16 July 2012 (director, I Dream of Jeannie… Fifteen Years Later, Tabitha, Bewitched, Twilight Zone)
Harry Turner b. 1920 died 11 January 2009 (artist)
Dino De Laurentiis b. 1919 died 10 Nov 2010 (producer, Army of Darkness, King Kong Lives, Maximum Overdrive, Silver Bullet, Cat’s Eye, Dune, Conan the Destroyer, The Dead Zone, Halloween I, II and III, Amityville II, Conan the Barbarian, Flash Gordon, King Kong)
Earl Cameron b. 1917 (Inception, Neverwhere, The Prisoner, Battle Beneath the Earth, Doctor Who, The Andromeda Breakthrough)
Sylvia Sidney b. 1910 died 1 July 1999 (Mars Attacks!, Beetlejuice, Damien: Omen II)
Ford Rainey b. 1908 died 25 July 2005 (Amerika, Halloween II, The Bionic Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Invaders, The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Outer Limits)
Robert Siodmak b. 1900 died 10 March 1973 (director, Son of Dracula)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. In previous years, the picture slot went to Terry Nation and to Alfre Woodard because i got her birthday wrong. (Oops.) I had several choices today and very nearly went with Enzo Cilenti as Childermass from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but as much as I wish the show was popular enough to be iconic, I have to say Richard Anderson as Oscar Goldman from the bionic shows actually is iconic.

2. Spot the Canadians! We have two young Canadians today, Jake Goldsbie and Jenn Proskie.

3. Nepotism FTW. Keith Carradine has a long and successful career, but I would have to say his last name opened doors at the beginning. Anne Wheaton doesn't do much acting, but she is often in project her husband Wil works on. Harry Crosby was Bing Crosby's kid, just did a little acting.

4. And a happy 98th birthday to...  Earl Cameron, the British actor born in Bermuda. He started working in the 1950s and his most recent credit is 2013. He's not a household name on this side of the Atlantic, but he has had a long and honourable Oh That Guy career in Britain. Many happy returns, Mr. Cameron.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

The Weekly Soapbox: Pneumatic tubes

There are a lot of predicted things from sci-fi that never quite took off, some of them literally: we don't have personal jetpacks or flying cars, moving sidewalks are rare outside of airports and food in pill form hasn't become the standard, thank goodness. But if I could make a decree to bring one paleo-futuristic thing back into common usage, it would be the pneumatic tube.

There are two times in my life I thought "OMG, this is the future!" One was in the 1970s when I was typing on a computer screen as part of a network that connected state colleges all over California - and score one point for me, I was right about that - and the other was when I was a kid visiting my dad's office and he got a message through a pneumatic tube.

I don't know how expensive pneumatic tube systems are to install or maintain, but I wish more buildings had them. I am resigned to the fact that the modern "futuristic" way to move small packages are drones, but they creep me out. I still love pneumatic tubes and I wish there were more around.

Okay, I am now off the soapbox for another week.
 
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Sundays are just birthdays now, but we will get a slew of fabulous babes, including one of my favorite Cinderellas.
  
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

1 August 2015

Birthdays
Alakina Mann b. 1990 (The Others)
Sasha Jackson b. 1988 (Dominion, Attack of the 50ft Cheerleader, The Witches of Oz)
Max Carver b. 1988 (The Leftovers, Teen Wolf, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn)
Monserrat Lombard b. 1982 (The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Hyperdrive)
Miracle Laurie b. 1981 (100,000 Zombie Heads, Dollhouse)
Jason Momoa b. 1979 (Aquaman, Game of Thrones, Conan the Barbarian [2011], Stargate: Atlantis)
Burton Perez b. 1977 (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra)
Annett Culp b. 1975 (BloodRayne: The Third Reich, Blubberella, Babylon 5: In the Beginning)
Kris Holden-Ried b. 1973 (The Listener, Lost Girl, Underworld: Awakening, Habitat)
Charles Malik Whitfield b. 1972 (Sleepy Hollow, Warehouse 13, Supernatural, Seven Days)
Jennifer Gareis b. 1970 (The 6th Day)
Cameron Rhodes b. 1967 (Power Rangers, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Xena)
Sam Mendes b. 1965 (producer, Penny Dreadful)
Melanie Shatner b. 1964 (Perversions of Science, TekWar, La Mansion de los Cthulhu, The Alien Within, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek)
John Carroll Lynch b. 1963 (Ted 2, American Horror Story, Paul, Carnivale, Star Trek: Voyager, From the Earth to the Moon)
Thomas Jay Ryan b. 1962 (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Teknolust)
Mark McCracken b. 1960 (Where the Wild Things Are, Matinee, Swamp Thing)
Adrian Dunbar b. 1958 (The Quatermass Experiment [2005 TV])
Taylor Negron b. 1957 died 10 January 2015 (Vamps, Wizards of Waverly Place, Good vs Evil, Faerie Tale Theatre)
Lewis Smith b. 1956 (Avalon: Beyond the Abyss, Beauty and the Beast, Badlands 2005, The Man Who Fell to Earth [TV], Buckaroo Banzai)
Annabel Jankel b. 1955 (director, Super Mario Bros., Max Headroom)
Suze Lanier-Bramlett b. 1947 (The Hills Have Eyes, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl)
David Calder b. 1946 (Utopia, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The Mists of Avalon, Jason and the Argonauts [2000 TV], Star Cops, Superman)
Andrew G. Vajna b. 1944 (producer, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Judge Dredd, Jacob’s Ladder, Total Recall)
Giancarlo Giannini b. 1942 (Dracula [2002], Dune [2000 TV], Mimic)
Terry Kiser b. 1939 (The Huntress, Lois & Clark, Tammi and the T-Rex, Incredi-Girl, Mannequin: On the Move, Hard Time on Planet Earth, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, Automan, Manimal, Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land, Looker, Gemini Man, The Invisible Man)
Ian Hogg b. 1937 (Doctor Who)
Dom DeLuise b. 1933 died 4 May 2009 (Stargate SG-1, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, 3rd Rock from the Sun, SeaQuest 2032, Spaceballs, Haunted Honeymoon, Amazing Stories, The Munsters)
Geoffrey Holder b. 1930 died 5 October 2014 (Ghost of a Chance, John Grin’s Christmas, Alice in Wonderland [1983], Doctor Dolittle [1967])
Michael Sinelnikoff b. 1928 (The Lost World, TekWar)
Paul Lambert b. 1922 died 27 April 1997 (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Automan, Planet of the Apes, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Men Into Space)
Arthur Hill b. 1922 died 22 October 2006 (Tales of the Unexpected, Prototype, Tomorrow’s Child, Revenge of the Stepford Wives [TV], Futureworld, The Andromeda Strain, The Invaders, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)
J. Lee Thompson b. 1914 died 30 August 2002 (director, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes)
Henry Jones b. 1912 died 17 May 1999 (Arachnophobia, Project U.F.O., The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Girl with Something Extra, Project X, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, Bewitched, Twilight Zone)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot. In previous years, I went with my fabulous babe/Whedonverse nerd instincts with Miracle Laurie and showed my Oh That Guy street cred with Henry Jones, who has 206 credits on imdb.com, but it seems like so many more. This year, it's Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo, definitely iconic.

2. Spot the Canadians. Kris Holden-Ried had a featured role on Lost Girl and yes, he is also Canadian. Arthur Hill was born in 1922, so he worked most of his career before the Canadian production boom.

3. Nepotism, obvs. Melanie Shatner. I've already written too much.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

Movies released
Guardians of the Galaxy released, 2014
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor released, 2008
The Omega Man released 1971

I'm not sure if Marvel knew it had a hit with Guardians of the Galaxy. Releasing a movie in the beginning of August is very late for a summer blockbuster, the biggest of which often open in the spring, from early May to mid-June.

The Weekly Soapbox: Jetpacks
I started this blog because I'm old enough to think of the 21st Century as the future. If you look back forty or fifty years, the changes are really quite stunning, but the cliche complaints are "Hey, where's my flying car?" or "Hey, where's my jetpack?"

In 2011, Neil Gaiman wrote a silly little short story titled And Weep, Like Alexander about a fellow who was an uninventor, looking at the world and realizing some technology didn't make our lives any better, so he would go backwards in time and make sure some gadgets were not invented. The personal jetpack certainly deserves to be uninvented.

Let us stipulate that jetpacks look cool as hell.  There was a guy with the jetpack at Disneyland, there's James Bond, for pity's sake. Both of those very enticing examples give away the problem.

Jetpacks are for show. They are a special effect, not an actual practical mode of transportation. They are loud, they are expensive to buy, to fuel and to maintain, they have numerous safety issues that range in significance from hazardous to fatal. Even more than a flying car, it looks like the ultimate expression of freedom - personal flight - but where you could go is actually very limited, mainly because how how much fuel it burns. More than that, even if it could get you from Point A to Point B and those two places were more than a few hundred yards apart. where it lands it has to be stored, fueled and maintained.

Flying cars have almost all the same problems, but personal jetpacks are in fact much, much worse.
  

This month's splash illustration: BBC produced a seven-part series of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, based on the 2004 novel by Susanna Clarke. I liked both the book and the TV show very much and was sorry to see it get so little attention in the nerd circles I am in. A generally positive review in The New York Times stated that seven hours is not quite enough for a 1,000 page novel, which is certainly true, and because they left so much out the show didn't quite hold together, which I disagree with completely.

If you like long novels, pick up the book. If you like British period pieces, give the TV show a chance. It deserves more recognition than it got.

Never to be Forgotten: Roddy Piper 1954-2015 Canadian born Roddy Piper was a remarkable set of contradictions. He was always the bad guy in his wrestling career - they are known as "heels" - but every story about him was that he was a nice guy and the outpouring of love for him upon his death from a heart attack at 61 is nothing short of remarkable. His time in wrestling is well-known as The Steroid Era, but Piper didn't look the part. Barely six foot and built like a normal, in shape person, he was the foil for a lot of huge over-inflated opponents, most notably Hulk Hogan. He is remembered on this blog for his starring role in John Carpenter's very strange They Live, a low-budget sci-fi film that is a scathing indictment of consumerist culture. Carpenter verifies that Piper's most famous line in the film is an ad-lib, his statement before a massive gunfight, "I came to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum." He also starred in Hell Comes to Frogtown - thanks to Zombie Rotten McDonald for jogging my memory on this - and apeared in a few Canadian production genre shows, including Alien Opponent, RoboCop, Highlander and Superboy.

Best wishes to the family and friends of Roddy Piper, from a fan. He is never to be forgotten.
 
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Another lazy Sunday with just a birthday list.
  
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

25 July 2015

Birthdays
Mason Cook b. 2000 (Mockingbird Lane, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D)
Preston Bailey b. 2000 (Children of the Corn [2009])
Andrew Caldwell b. 1989 (Transformers)
Linsey Godfrey b. 1988 (Altergeist, Wizards of Waverly Place, Surface)
Michael Welch b. 1987 (Z Nation, Twilight, Grimm, Day of the Dead, Stargate SG-1, Birds of Prey, The Invisible Man, The X-Files, Star Trek: Insurrection)
Kevin Buttimer b. 1987 (Ant-Man)
Shantel VanSanten b. 1985 (The Messengers, The Flash, Something Wicked, Beauty and the Beast [2013])
James Lafferty b. 1985 (Oculus, S. Darko)
Jay R. Ferguson b. 1974 (No Ordinary Family, Surface)
Jason Marin b. 1974 (Back to the Future)
Aaron Craven b. 1974 (The Flash, The Age of Adaline, 100,000 Zombie Heads, Supernatural, Continuum, Fringe, Smallville, Alien Trespass, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Stargate: Atlantis, Kyle XY, The 4400, Stephen King’s Dead Zone)
Michael C. Williams b. 1973 (The Objective, Altered, The Blair Witch Project)
David Denman b. 1973 (After Earth, Angel, The X-Files)
Miriam Shor b. 1971 (Bedazzled)
D.B. Woodside b. 1969 (Buffy)
Matt LeBlanc b. 1967 (Lost in Space [1998])
Elke Jeinsen b. 1966 (Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV)
Illeana Douglas b. 1965 (Mega Shark vs. Kolossus, The Coven, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Strange Frequency)
Iman b. 1955 (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)
Lynne Frederick b. 1954 died 27 April 1994 (Space: 1999, The Canterville Ghost, Phase IV, Vampire Circus, No Blade of Grass)
Nina Thomas b. 1952 (Doctor Who)
Janet Margolin b. 1943 died 17 December 1993 (Ghostbusters II, Planet Earth)
Pilar Seurat b. 1938 died 2 June 2001 (Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)
Todd Armstrong b. 1937 died 17 November 1992 (The Greatest American Hero, Jason and the Argonauts)
Paul Collins b. 1937 (The Breed, The Invisible Man [2000], Dead man on Campus, Deep Space Nine, Quantum Leap)
August Schellenberg b. 1936 died 15 August 2013 (SGU Stargate Universe, Mysterious Ways, So Weird, Friday’s Curse, Deadly Nightmares)
Barbara Harris b. 1935 (Nice Girls Don’t Explode)
Ken Swofford b. 1933 (Max Headroom, Knight Rider, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America II: Death Too Soon, Battlestar Galactica, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Girl with Something Extra, The Andromeda Strain, The Intruders, Shadow on the Land)
Al Adamson b. 1929 died 2 August 1995 (Death Dimension, Doctor Dracula, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Brain of Blood, Horror of the Blood Monsters, Blood of Dracula’s Castle)
Jerry Paris b. 1925 died 31 March 1986 (director, The Munsters)
Estelle Getty b. 1923 died 22 July 2008 (Mannequin)
Woody Strode b. 1914 died 31 December 1994 (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Kingdom of the Spiders, Batman)
Jack Gilford b. 1908 died 2 June 1990 (Cocoon, Anna to the Infinite Power, Caveman)

Notes from the birthday list.
1. The Picture Slot, with extra "Wait... he's dead?" goodness. This is not a list weighed down with A-List stars. In previous years, I went full Whedonverse nerd with David Denman (the demon Skip from Angel) and D.B. Woodside, the hunky last principal of Sunnydale High on Buffy. This year, I go with Todd Armstrong, the star of Jason and the Argonauts, a movie I still love dearly. Starring in this movie did nothing for his career and he was upset that his voice was dubbed over after the fact. I don't blame him. I just found his name on imdb.com this year and I had not been cc:ed on the memo that he was dead.

This makes me sad.


2. Spot the Canadians! We have two Canucks today, both somewhat spottable. Most folks who benefit form the Canadian genre production boom are born after 1970, which is true of Aaron Craven, but we also see some of those credits on First Nations actor August Schellenberg, who died a couple years back.

3. My favorite actors on the list, or Welcome to Geezers Anonymous. Jack Gilford was a great comic actor, Woody Strode was probably the best known African-American actor in the Westerns. Strode worked with both John Ford and Sergio Leone, and that is plenty good enough for me.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

Movie released
Lucy released, 2014

The Weekly Soapbox: The End of Oil.

Instead of predictions on Saturday, because I am running low, instead I will write a little opinion piece on things that have have been predicted. The End of Oil has only shown up a few times on the blog, once from OMNI Future Almanac, once from Utopia 1976 and John Elfreth Watkins foresaw the end of coal. All the dates have come and gone - 2010, 1976 and 2000 - and we still have petroleum based fuel running the world.

OMNI Future Almanac's call wasn't a surprise. It was published in 1982 and Peak Oil was already an idea people were batting about. Utopia 1976 was written in 1955 and Watkins made his predictions in 1900, so they are more surprising. Why hasn't the sky fallen yet?

I found many graphs similar to the one shown here that credit "natural gas liquids" and "unconventional oil" as the main stop-gap, and both of those rely heavily on fracking.

You might assume from my generally leftist leanings that I will now say "Boo! Fracking!", but I honestly haven't made up my mind. I know there are bad things that have happened at fracking sites, but I don't know how common they are. I'd like to find a neutral site where I could find good data, but I haven't found that yet.

This is the real world. There are always trade-offs. It's important to understand what they are. 

I could just see who is lined up on both sides and decide to go with the folks I like, but I got suckered into the anti-vax point of view by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on The Daily Show last decade, so I no longer think that is good enough.

The pro-fracking types think of themselves as The Sensible People - and yes, I'm looking at you Joe Nocera - but they are keen on writing "if there is environmental damage, the companies should be made to clean it up."

Yes, they should. Also, people should not cheat on their spouses or taxes, shouldn't litter or have their phones on at the movies or the theatre.

But people do those things. And what's worse, polluting companies pay a shitload of money to lawyers to make sure they don't have to clean up their messes.

There are things getting better in the world, usually slowly, but there are also things getting slowly worse. If the people getting screwed finally realize they can afford pitchforks and torches, I will likely sympathize with their cause. The Sensible People will likely complain of their burns or their pitchfork wounds and I will listen politely, but then I will say "Perhaps this is a good time to look at what both sides have done wrong."

Okay, I'm off the soapbox for a week.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

The first slow Sunday, with only a birthday list. In previous years, the 26th of July Picture Slot has belonged to fabulous babes. Will the streak continue?

Signs point to yes.
  
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!