Ageism in the New Trek Era: Going Boldly into Maturity

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about this new season of “Picard” is that few viewers are griping about how old the cast is. The show doesn’t soft-focus anyone on the TNG cast or avoid extreme close-ups, even in 4K. Most of the TNG cast is either in or approaching their 70s. In 1984, when Star Trek III came out, there was already talk about Shatner’s belly and hairpiece. He was 53 years old at the time. By The Undiscovered Country in 1991, Shatner and Nimoy were 60 and the focus was how to retire these old folks with dignity. Shatner was getting the lion’s share of the criticism which sounded a lot like those who found Roger Moore’s later Bond outings as increasingly unbelievable just as his relationships with much younger “Bond Girls” cringeworthy even for the 1980s.

TOS Trek films have been obsessed with aging ever since 1982 when Kirk began thinking of himself as “old” even though this belief was based heavily on being a desk-tethered Admiral overseeing young cadets. By The Voyage Home, the film addressed Kirk’s waning romantic charm by having Dr. Gillian Taylor ultimately dismiss Kirk as a love interest to follow her own path in the 23rd century. After that, Trek became less about going boldly to strange, new worlds and more about the crew confronting their possible obsolescence in the face of a “next generation” – very meta for the time when a younger, hipper crew was burning up television on a weekly, not bi-annual, basis.

But the “New OG” cast is still kicking ass. Stewart still commands the screen at 80. Michael Dorn, at 70, is staging complex fight scenes and looks amazing. Frakes still possesses that youthful charm and swagger he had during the TNG years even though he is a decade older than when Kirk and Co. were ruminating about what it means to grow old and perhaps even obsolete.

While Hollywood is much more forgiving about men aging on the screen, I am even more surprised by how the lead actresses in Picard have been written.

Gates McFadden is currently 74 but no one would say she’s too old to fan dance in the desert (Nichelle Nichols was only 57 at the time she did this in The Final Frontier). Most of the other actresses on the show – Ryan (55), Hurd (56), [redacted guest from s3e5] (58), Sirtis* (67) – are beyond what Hollywood considers their “Last F*ckable Day” (see the Inside Amy Schumer sketch with Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Patricia Arquette) but are still strong women of agency with THINGS TO DO in the show beyond opening hailing frequencies and commenting on obvious things visible on the view screen. And if anyone tells me that Orla Brady is not objectively hot “despite” being 61 years old, I will challenge them to B’aht Qul to the death.

People seem genuinely happy to see the “new OG” cast back and working together and don’t care that they are well beyond the time the TOS cast was put out to pasture. So there is hope for us. People can remain useful, powerful, and – yes – even sexy into the years once reserved for matrons and crones or old statesmen representing times gone by.

Score one for New Trek!

*Yes, as of S3E5, she hasn’t done much more than play the loving, if exasperated, housewife, but even that’s better than her usual, “I feel something but cannot tell you anything useful” role on TNG.

F**K YOU, CANCER! BOOK TOUR UPDATE – 3/18/2023

Six States! Two Time Zones! Real AND Virtual Events. Books to Sell! People to Meet!

Heliosphere 2023 – 4/28/23 to 4/30/23

Holiday Inn, Piscataway NJ

FanExpo Philadelphia* – 6/2/23 to 6/4/23

Philadelphia Convention Center, Philly PA

AwesomeCon* – 6/2/23 to 6/4/23

Walter E Washington Comm College, Washington DC

Baltimore Comic-Con* – 9/9/23 to 9/10/23

Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore MD

Fright Reads Book Festival – 9/30/2023 to 10/1/2023

Benfield Sports Center, Baltimore MD

Spooky Empire – 10/26/2023 to 10/29/2023

DoubleTree by Hilton at Universal Studios, Orlando FL

One-Con 2023 – 11/11/2023 to 11/12/2023

Wyndham Lancaster Resort and Convention Center, Lancaster PA

TusCon 50 – 11/10/2023 to 11/12/2023

4855 East Broadway, Tucson, Arizona 85711

Summer 2023 – The Triumphant Return of the Ghostbusters Fancast “Radio Free Gozeria”

PLUS ONLINE PANELS AND PODCASTS TBD!

* Dates Tentative and Require Confirmation

Random Thoughts on Random Religion

“Has your situation changed how you think of God?”

It’s an interesting question from my last hospital visit. A volunteer asked me. I think it was a volunteer, though it was more likely a chaplain. Not the Charles variety, of course. He was one of those wonderful people who sat with me when I was alone. We chatted about life, literature, and how my situation changed my ideas about life, the universe…everything. Then he asked that question, slipping the record needle in a way.

I vaguely remember my answer.

“As we are so more complex than the smallest, simplest forms of life, and so young we are as a species, I can imagine that there are forms of life just as advanced beyond us, ancient beings that may even be part of the Earth. But we diminish what you describe as The Infinite by assigning a gender, giving it a face, and speaking for it as though a bedbug could decipher your simplest thoughts. You give us rule books, highly quotable tools that only select people can understand – so they say – to get us to act or not act a certain way. All that is the work of human beings. Perhaps they work through The Infinite, but no one – not even the craftiest, wisest scholar could really know what no one here can agree on.”

Of course, I’m paraphrasing. I was not exactly lucid at the time. I know I’ve gotten drunk and posted something similar in the past 30 years of BBSes, Usenet groups, AOL Message boards, Livejournal, MySpace, blogs, and Facebook. I don’t think my opinion has changed all that much.

But I see things this way. Just looking at Christianity, there are Eastern and Western belief systems. These can be broken down into six branches – Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian. That isn’t even agreed upon as there is often a seventh branch – Restorationism.

Within those divisions are between 30 and 40 THOUSAND Christian denominations. Of course, even this is up for debate as some Christians choose to call them “organizations” generally aligned with some larger church. Christianity Today claims there are 33,830 denominations, which is pretty specific. The Complete Pilgrim makes an astonishing claim that there are 300 thousand worldwide.

Another YouTube source points to an academic who wrote a book after traveling around a lot. That guy, David Barrett, produced the World Christian Encyclopedia in 1982 claiming 20 thousand denominations. A decade later, the book was revised to list over 35 thousand. In 2019, it claimed 45 thousand. It estimates that by 2050 there will be over 65 thousand different places that try to explain The Infinite. One of Barrett’s rules for defining a denomination was by nation. So a Baptist church in Nigeria is distinct from one that may preach the exact gospel as one in Kenya or Canada. The video then deconstructs the encyclopedia as contradictory and an exaggeration of a more united Christian church, perhaps implying there are only the six.

Or seven, depending on who you believe.

My feeling here is that if there is no one definition of “denomination” and some folks claim one number over another based on arbitrary rules, it’s just a silly word game attempting to sound like legitimate discourse.

The thing about faith is that proof is not required. While this is great when dealing with The Infinite, the sum of all Time and Space, the Creator of all things we understand, think we understand, and cannot remotely fathom — it means we can make up whatever we want and enforce what we FEEL to be true. A church based on the teachings of a character that probably existed but who has been mythologized by millions of people over 2000 years can’t get together on what is True(tm).

For example, the Anabaptists of central Europe were a product of Protestantism, which was the first big break-up from Catholicism. Protestants disagreed with the Papal version of Truth and established their own rules. When the Anabaptists decided that people should be allowed to grow up and experience the world before being baptized in faith (a totally reasonable idea) the larger church literally murdered them, forcing them to flee to more agnostic climes, including America.

Oh, and the Anabaptists split up into Amish, Hutterite, Mennonite, Bruderhod, Schwarzenau, Apostolic Christian, and other denominations. Note that these names refer to the mortal humans who convinced other mortals that their ideas about The Infinite were more accurate than the other mortal Anabaptists claiming to know it.

I grew up with a tenuous connection to a Methodist church. Methodism is a form of Wesleyism based on “a methodical approach to Christianity” which I witnessed as a dedication to mandatory bake sales and a very specific way of lighting and extinguishing candles during Sunday services.

My church was a Calvary United Methodist Church. What do those extra words mean when distinguishing them from the larger church? I had no idea as I was never a part of them. But, there is the United Methodist Church (as opposed to the Random Methodists, I guess), the Methodist Church of Great Britain, the Wesleyan Methodist Church, Primitive Methodists (who are old school/back to-basics Methodists inspired by John Wesley, but not enough to call themselves Wesleyan), the Methodist Church of Ireland, the Fellowship of Independent Methodist Churches, the Free Methodist Church, and many more across the world. All of these different organizations are fragments of fractions of a shattered whole.

There are churches that were either absorbed by larger denominations or just died out for lack of attendance (or bake sales, I don’t know). The United Methodist Church was formed through a hook-up with the Evangelical United Brethren in 1968. A quick check of the Holy Wiki reveals that the United States has a number of small Methodist denominations that split from the larger churches for whatever reasons, including the Free Methodist Church, Global Methodist Church, Evangelical Methodist Church, Congregational Methodist Church, Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection and Bible Methodist Connection of Churches, etc.

That’s a lot of Methodists with differing opinions of what being a Methodist means, so how am I to know which knows the mind of The Infinite? Spoiler alert: They Don’t.

In 2022, the United Methodist Church (which does not seem all that united given what I’ve written above) 1831 churches broke away over how the church handles LGBTQ+ issues. Granted, that’s out of 30 thousand Houses of God(tm) but it is a significant number and demonstrates how mortal humans love challenging other mortal humans over what The Infinite has to say about things. The UMC cannot even agree if this constitutes a “schism” in their larger body.

Personally, the ones who left the UMC were resisting change to a more progressive and inclusive attitude toward LGBTQ+ communities. Those more conservative and traditional churches have since joined the GLOBAL Methodist Church.

Again, my church was a Calvary United Methodist Church. Did we get it right? What is “right” when it comes to interpreting the morality and righteousness of The Infinite? And are those rules guidelines or are there real hellfire consequences? Your mileage may vary because some of those fire and brimstone concepts did not come directly from the source of Christianity but from self-proclaimed witnesses and prophets and especially by those who needed to keep the peasants in line so they could continue to rule in luxury.

We’ve ventured so deep into the weeds that this little bullshit narrative doesn’t even cover how other Protestant offshoots have split up over things as stupid as the color of the church carpet. Of course, the carpet schism is anecdotal, covering the true, probably political split in allegiance to one pastor/priest/minister/evangelist over another, but all this demonstrates – at least for Christianity – that nobody knows anything. This is about Earthly power converting people or people converting power.

We haven’t covered my other issues like how Americans used the Bible to “prove” that people of color are subhuman and should be treated as slaves. Documents declaring state secession before the American Civil War specify that slavery was not only an obligation of the white man but mandated by God as a just practice based on the book’s “care and feeding” of slaves in the Old Testament. Ephesians was very popular in the south, as were certain passages of Colossians (3:22-24), 1 Timothy (6:1-2), and elsewhere. It’s been used to justify intolerance, inspire fear, and fuel hate in order to exert control once over the once-illiterate and uneducated and now over those who cannot think critically and need someone to tell them what is “right” and “wrong” in a world that now treats faith like fast food. If your tastes are for wings, go here. Burgers? Go there. Believe gays must be murdered, go here. Think they should preach and be married, go there. Assemble among like-thinkers. Listen to the Word of God as you wish to hear it. If you don’t like it, you can even start your own and express your own personal Gospel.

Hell, I was ordained as a minister in the Universal Life Church back in 1997. I took the attitude that every human is a “church” and their life is a pilgrimage to find The Truth(tm) as much as we can about The Infinite. But your mileage may vary. I don’t expect you to follow that or even believe I’m right. That’s the point.

These are very flawed, mortal traits when you think these words were not the direct address of The Infinite, but the words of Kings, priests, and prophets trying hard to tie Earthy rules and laws into The Infinite, a logical fallacy from the get-go, folks.

If you believe that slavery is wrong, you must reject those elements clearly written into the book. Once you acknowledge that one Earthly mandate is wrong, you must question it all.

But you’ll always have someone to tell me that none of this matters because they have “faith”. Fine. You do you, folks.

My attitude for most of my life has been to respond to questions about my “faith” with a simple answer.

“When you all can get your shit together and figure out what the one entity at the center of your faith wants, text me and we’ll chat. Until then, I wish you joy, wellness, and peace.”

Unless you’re an asshole. You guys can just knock that shit the whole way off.

I believe that The Infinite is a body we seek to discover and understand. That small bit of it we understand falls under the purview of “science” and everything else in this scary, seemingly chaotic universe is The Infininte we like to call “God” and in between, there may well be advanced yet finite beings that look over us, maybe just one big one that happens to be ancient and nurturing. Perhaps it is the planet itself. Perhaps L Ron Hubbard wasn’t bullshitting rich rubes about aliens and midichlorians or whatever. Perhaps it’s some guy named Jeff who works a big machine that controls this great simulation.

It’s fun to make up stories to explain the unexplainable, isn’t it?

I am not an atheist. I think these ideas put me squarely in the camp of the agnostics – a group that doesn’t agree on anything because we don’t KNOW anything. And it’s cool to admit that while continuing to seek our own personal Truth(tm) and come to our own conclusions, likely when we expire today, next year, or a century from now.

Thanks for reading. If my memory returns and I can track down that wonderful, charitable person who spent their time comforting me (in a very Christlike way, I feel) I will share it with them over coffee and maybe I’ll learn something.

Maybe we both will.

A Moment of Change: A Resurrection Pact story. Part 3

Diane Walton has more scars than most people I know. She has more scars than tattoos and the woman has half her lower body dedicated to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Only her wife and business partner know the full extent of her body art and how she got all those scars. In business dress, she looks like Evangeline Lilly during the final season of Lost, down to the cute button nose and the eyes that seem to see everything.

She’s a bad-ass and a good friend. Since our first dungeon crawl together in 1996, she could always make me laugh. Smarter than most of my friends, I always wondered why we remained friends for so many years. She did not like Claire, at least as a wife for me. But she paid for the open bar at our wedding as a silent apology for not attending.

Since then, she and Colleen built their business together. Originally, it was to be called “Bad Bitches Bail Bonds” but there were problems with that so they just went with “C&D’s Bail Bonds and Private Investigations, LLC.” Colleen was 57 when she and Diane married. Diane was 39. I never had a problem with that because they clicked so well it made me jealous. And Colleen could not pass for someone over 40. She made sure that their offices on Carport Circle had a full gymnasium because Diane did not want to stink up their cozy 2-bedroom Cape Cod house in Colonial Park. They work out together every day and open their gym to a tae kwon do class once a week. They are still, as far as I can tell, living their dreams together.

“Oh,” Diane called across the empty office waiting room. “A mystery!”

“What?”

“Winston Casey visits my office in the middle of the day. His tie is off and his shirt untucked. I ask myself why is he here and why does he look like he just avoided being hit by a bus?“

“Well, I was hit by a bus – a metaphysical one but….”

“Don’t tell me. I am keen to guess!”

Diane crossed the waiting room staring at me, sashaying with her fingers stroking her child in a theatrical move inspired by a performance of Faust. Since marrying Colleen, Diane was what they call “shredded” and “swole” in the fitness lingo, making her a five-nine beast who could also “shoot the tits off a nit from 500 yards,” according to Colleen.

“I’m thinking,” she continued. “You have a problem I can solve.”

“I was actually coming to see Colleen to put an end to our secret affair.”

“Funny.” She froze a moment and her face went a whiter shade of pale. “Oh shit. The Beast isn’t back, is it?”

The Beast was her term for my cancer. “No. I’m good.”

She sighed and put a hand on my shoulder followed by a hug that I didn’t know I needed so badly until that moment.

“Thank God.” She took a step back just before the moment became uncomfortable. “So, then, what’s up?”

“I was fired. Fired from Dipswitches and Douchebags, Incorporated. I needed to see a smiling face.”

She wrinkled her nose and took another step back. “Ohhhh. Before you go home to ‘Clairebear’ and get your balls ripped off. I’m so sorry, man. What happened?”

I told her the short version and she listened intently in case there was something actionable she could deal with, which there obviously wasn’t. She invited me back to her office, which was modeled after Raymond Chandler’s novels with her name stenciled on the frosted glass window on the door “DIANE WALTON-HOROWITZ, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR”, an open transom above, and hard wood with wainscoting unseen in buildings since the Nazis were just a cute idea in the head of a madman. Her huge, antique desk filled half the room and her windows looked out over Carport Circle, which really killed the noir feel of things. But she had Venetian blinds to help block the mood-killing skyline.

She gestured me into a beautiful antique walnut chair opposite her.

“So, what’s your next move, Winnie?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“What’s your next move? You’ve got six months of severance and medical to the end of the year – pretty generous. You can’t exactly go back and sue them. I mean, you can, but…”

“They feed their lawyers raw meat only once a week to keep them hungry. Nah. I just need to figure it out. What’s next?”

“Open a gaming store. You’ve always wanted to.”

“But I hate people.”

“An awesome quality for an HR professional.”

“You know that I mean.” I took a breath. The downside of being close to Diane was that the trust was close to total. I felt safe enough that the feelings inside me wanted to come out. I wanted to cry in front of her. But I didn’t. I came just close enough that she knew. And I guess that was enough. I’d wait until I was back in my car, a few blocks from home and get out what I needed. UNtil then, it was time for rational thought and logical thinking. “One step at a time. I’ll tell Claire that I suddenly have six months of paid vacation with benefits, listen to her reasonable and rational response… and pack for Ebetha.”

“Oh shit, that’s right. The wedding. That’s a trap waiting to be sprung. But, it gets you away for a while. Tropical island. Open bar…”

“I still can’t drink. Can’t stand the smell of it.”

“Ganja, then. Whatever. Just relax and get your shit together, man. And stay the hell away from the bride when she starts drinking.”

“Lucy’s getting married. I doubt she’ll…”

“Dude. Pal. Brother: the bitch is toxic.

“Lucy is one of our oldest friends. Come on.”

“She’s… She’s a psychopath.”

“Come on, now.”

“Nope. She was certified in-SANE by the Council of Orlok in 2002 when she crashed your bachelor party and tried to dry hump you during our Pathfinders session. I only endorse your participation in her sham of a nuptial because it gets you the fuck away from a relatively hyper-toxic situation.” She moved a few items around on her desk blotter. “And has weed, drinks, and a quiet beach to ponder your life’s choices.”

“I guess.”

We sat there quietly for a few moments. I can’t remember what I was processing, but Diane was taking it all in before she finally spoke.

“It took nearly dying for you to realize you haven’t lived. Like, at all. Why don’t you want to ask for more than you have?”

“Because this is the life I was handed. I chose from the menu and got what I ordered. A shitty career, a dead marriage, no kids…though that’s kind of a blessing. The only real friend I had in HR fired me this morning. And… I wonder if all that work to put me back into the world wasn’t just a cosmic fucking joke.”

“You’re still a miserable bastard, you know?”

“It’s in my genes. A truckload of Xeloda can’t kill that part of me. So what?”

“Let’s day you die tomorrow.”

“Not an unreasonable fantasy given my day so far.”

“– you know what they’ll say about you in that two-week social media window where people react to the announcement and not seeing you in their scroll anymore? They’ll say what a tragedy it was for your wife that you died. They’ll say that it’s good that you never had kids because of how they wouldn’t have a daddy…for a few months, anyway. They will say you had ‘potential’ and were ‘a decent person’ in those stupid fucking eulogies people give that end up being about themselves. Then, you’ll be forgotten.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t find anything to argue about that. It hung in the air as Diane let it fall over us like ash.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I need a minute.”

“This is why you came to me, isn’t it? You know I can bust your balls with love.” She pointed to the hand-painted wood sign above her desk that read “Busting Your Balls. With Love.”

“Let me be your Jacob Marley. You hate your job with good reason. You are so much more than what you do to pay your bills. Your marriage sucks. Claire is…”

“Don’t say it.”

“I have to. Or I start charging for this hour.”

“You say it, it makes it real and the consequences of that…”

“Claire isn’t into the marriage anymore. There. Boom. Said. It’s out there. Let’s discuss.”

I fought the urge to get up and walk out. But I stayed. Out of trust. It’s like accepting that the poison they’re going to pump into you will suck beyond the ability to share but you brace yourself and surrender to the currents of pain and exhaustion… let’s just get this shit over with.

“She was done the moment she realized that she would have to wipe your ass and bathe you every day until she woke up one morning, looked into your little home hospice space and found you gnarled up under sheets looking like you died in Satan’s bosom. Those few things about you that she loved…died when you lost them to treatment.

“But she’s redecorating the house. We’ve got lawn guys there ‘scaping the back yard…”

“No woman without a passion for lawn work spends as much time with the landscapers as she does. Seriously. You are gonna come home one night and there will be a truck in your driveway with some asshole’s name on the door – the same guy who has been taking weeks building attractive hedges outside Claire’s office window.”

“So what do I do?”

“You need to get your shit together, my friend. How many people worked to put your literal shit back together? How many people don’t have the second chance you have?”

“I’m a ‘S’ with ‘C’ influences on the DISC spectrum. I love routine and consistency. Don’t get me started on my Briggs-Myers identity. I’m not Grant Parker, for chrissakes.”

“Honey, nobody’s Grant Parker, for chrissakes. But that’s not the point.”

“Look. I’m going on an adventure. Next week.”

“Go to the island and figure out WHO you are. Allow yourself that time to heal the one part of you that doctors can’t medicate. Confront your survivor’s guilt, get drunk, get laid, and maybe wander out into the ocean naked.”

“You sound like a Jimmy Buffett song.”

“Fuck it. Just try ONE of those things and see how it feels. At least then you can tell your buddies in the Old Gamer’s Home that you did something to tell the world you were here.”

“Well, I hope I won’t need your professional services in the future, detective.”

A Moment of Change: A Resurrection Pact story. Part 2

Tyrell kept his office neat and neutral. He had the walls painted “passive green and warm brown undertones” to maximize peaceful contemplation and reflection. His desk faced a wall covered in art, some he bought from local artists and others created by his family. He faced the wall so that his visitors could enjoy the view out of his window, which featured the well-tended lawn and fountain of our office’s main façade. Tyrell did not keep his awards behind his desk. He kept them on a side shelf between photos of his family and vacation pictures – one of which showed my wife and me off to one side getting ready to board a fishing boat in Baltimore.

Facing southeast, the morning sun gave the office a certain surreal air, like if the Council of Elrond had a human resources shop in Rivendell.

Tyrell also kept a small round table between his desk and the wall for team meet-ups. That day it was covered in comb-bound reports that I assumed were the annual turnover and performance numbers for the company with each department submitting its 100-page highlight document of how awesome they believed themselves to be.

A Moment of Change: A Resurrection Pact story. Part 1

“Let me tell you a little about my shop,” Paul began as if beginning a sermon. “I am the top seller here because I don’t compromise. I don’t bend the rules that I’ve cultivated over the years. Rules that WORK. Rules that brought this company a lot of greens, consistently, reliably, and with increasing success every year. I have a wall of glass teardrops behind my desk proving my success as top salesman of this and every branch of the company. Everyone who works for me knows that they need to bring their A-game every single day. I don’t care if they are junior salespeople or my administrative team. We show up, hit the ground running, and make the calls. They get people on the hook and send them to me to close the sale.”

I pretended to write all this down on my notepad and pretended to be impressed. “Six years in a row,” I said. “It is an solid run, Paul. Everyone knows you’re the king of sales.”

“Here’s a little insight into how I do it,” Paul continued, “My junior sales team sells them the problem, see? Then I get on the phone and offer them the miracle solution to it. I don’t have my team say ‘down the road you might…’ because they lose the sale. No. I tell my team to tell customers that their house is infested with rats and I’m the guy to give them a great deal on the catcher.”

“Yes,” I said while nodding a little bit too aggressively. “But we’re here to talk about Janine.”

Paul rolled his eyes behind a loose facepalm. “Right, Janine. What’s her problem now?”

My Wife is Perfect, My Life is Awesome, but Gary Coleman is Still Dead.

I am in the middle of writing up my Big Buck Rogers Rewatch for the episode “Cosmic Whiz Kid” guest starring the late, incorrigible child star Gary Coleman as a 500+ year-old President of some planet. I remember he gets kidnapped, trades snark with his captors, and waits for Fleet McChickynugz to rescue him.

But this is my last week on chemo drugs, so I had to take a knee before I puked all over my monitors.

It’s not that Gary Coleman is unwatchable. He was king of prime time back in the 1980s with Diff’rent Strokes and… I think that’s it. But Strokes was huge and it was the time before prevalent home video recording, so he was appointment television.

Holy shit, I just read that Strokes began in 1978. The seventies??? A year after A New Hope??? Christ, I am old.

Coleman worked all the way to his death in 2010. The jobs weren’t as flashy or lucrative as his sitcom hit, but IMDB.com has him in some film or series every year. He seemed to focus on Christmas movies which I hear are great for residuals because they are trotted out every year (if they don’t suck too bad) for people to ignore while arguing politics with relatives.

The Rewatch is really a parody of recap blogs, many of which I enjoy. But the show…oh my god this show…has not aged well at all. It wanted to be a kid show but ended up being a man-child fever dream with lots of pointless blinky lights and reused stock footage. Gary Coleman was just an attempt to boost ratings mid-season and, I guess it worked. To a degree.

Wait, why do I give a shit about Gary Coleman? Where has this blog gone?

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Farpoint 2023!

The Farpoint Convention schedule is up (and can you tell I am excited?) https://myconschedule.com/farpoint2023/#

So, You Want To Be A Podcaster…
Salon E, 10am – 11am (Sa)
We’ll discuss the dos and don’ts of podcasting, things to know and equipment you’ll need to start.

Resident Alien
Salon A, 11am – 12pm (Sa)
We’ll discuss Season 2 of this offbeat comedy, based on a Dark Horse comic.

Author Autograph Session
Hunt Valley Hallway, 2pm – 3pm (Sa)
Keith DeCandido, Glenn Hauman, Jay Smith

Author Role Models
Salon D, 11am – 12pm (Su)
Find out which authors our panels respect, admire, seek to emulate, both personally and professionally.

Toxic Fandom
Salon E, 1pm – 2pm (Su)
Used to be, fans proclaimed their devotion for TV shows, movies, books and the like with multiple viewings/readings, joining fan clubs, purchasing merchandise, even writing letters to protest cancellations. Now, fans feel entirely justified in trashing an actor’s performance or criticizing directors for their choices — even boasting that the fans could do better! Where did this sense of entitlement come from? Can we blame social media?

Author Autograph Session
Hunt Valley Hallway, 2pm – 3pm (Su)
Arroe J. Knight, Josh Pritchett, Jay Smith, Christopher D Abbott

This Wasn’t The Post-Apocalypse I Ordered!
Salon D, 3pm – 4pm (Su)
Now that we’ve lived through a few apocalypses, why doesn’t it feel like the world ended? Is it because there’s more reason for hope than we thought… or is it that the apocalypse is still ongoing? And why does everyone wear spikes in the PA, anyway?

The Big Buck Rogers Rewatch: Planet of the Amazon Women!

“Planet of the Amazon Women”

Directed by Philip Leacock
Written by D.C. Fontana (billed as Michael Richards) and Richard Fontana (billed as Clayton Richards), (characters created by) Robert C. Dille
Season 1, Episode 10 (Episode 8 in original run)
Original Air Date: November 8, 1979

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Sizzle Reel

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A girl on a horse says that a world without men would be invaded immediately.

Buck has his shirt torn off by Dr. Shrinker in the middle of what might be a Chippendales audition or a slave auction.  He is informed that his next stop is to meet his new “mate” and not the English drinking buddy kind.

Dr. Shrinker tells a nice lady that her slave has been delivered to her quarters.

Buck fights two women in disco attire as Dr. Shrinker warns them not to damage the merchandise.

Leather-clad Buck and the horse-riding lady escape explosions by jumping into a starfighter.

Wilma warns Buck she is going to shoot him if he doesn’t “deviate from this vector.”  Buck warns her not to try and stop him so she orders someone off screen to open fire.  They do and Buck and Horse-riding Lady suffer a near miss!

Oh noes!

Assemble All Pilots on the Flight Deck

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This week’s stellar guests:

Ariela Dyne:  Ann Dusenberry
Cassius Thorne:  Jay Robinson
Prime Minister:  Anne Jeffreys

Go for Launch!

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Buck is on patrol, headed back to Earth for a hot date with Wilma.  He’s checking in with her to say the Ruathans are honoring a truce and letting ships through a narrowly-defined blockade allowing Madrea to get much-needed supplies, or their monthly supply of soft drinks and apple sauce. I don’t know and don’t judge.  Captain Bunk Cheesesteak mentions that they (the Madreans, I assume) aren’t exporting much Barbarite.  Instantly, the 5-12 year old target audience is alert and engaged. A TRADE WAR?  With barricades and unequal materials exchange?  How exciting! 

The Big Buck Rogers Rewatch: Unchained Woman!

“Unchained Woman”

Directed by Dick Lowry
Written by Bill Taylor, (characters created by) Robert C. Dille
Season 1, Episode 9 (Episode 7 in original run)
Original Air Date: November 1, 1979

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Sizzle Reel

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It appears that preview videos have been restricted or removed from YouTube in my absence.

Captain Bulk Grinface is talking to Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in what appears to be the least imposing prison set ever constructed (see, when your guest stars eat all the drywall and lead paint…sorry, I’ll shut up about it now)..  He interrupts her to tell her to get down, and not in the funky way.  He pulls her down as we cut to an explosion in the desert!  In out next shot, Buck and Wanda Gerswitz wander down a sand dune and then pause to smile at each other before setting out across the desert where Linda Drysdale is caught by a subterranean tentacle puppet!

A murderous robot kills a townie on his way through the Universal backlot usually reserved for Mexican towns in western flicks.  You know he’s a robot because he has an open hatch in his belly revealing a bunch of circuits and wires.  I’m surprised Jim Cameron wasn’t sued for aping this plot, too.  The murderbot explodes through a wall like the Kool Aid Man in ninja garb, screaming at the poor, terrified people inside.

A shuttle pilot asks another ship to identify itself.  It’s a starfighter that introduces itself by firing on the shuttle.  Wilma Deering, copiloting the starfighter tells an off-screen lieutenant to break off an attack as Buck looks on with that expression that suggests he’d rather be looking at a rack of freshly-baked muffins.

Two dudes talk about a “she” that’s arriving in a tone that suggests she’s not there for funsies.  The one sinister dude says they will have to kill her.

Driving home the point, Wilma Deering tells someone off-camera that “they” are here to kill her, not rescue her.

Somewhere else, Buck emerges from a smoking hole, probably the writer’s room.  He helps this “she” out of the hole, too.  Sinister dude laments that the one person who managed to break out of this Space Stalag 13 was his once side-chick Kimberly Hammond. 

Elsewhere, “she” is really sorry for using a hangover ray on Buck, who falls to the ground like some tequila lightweight.