Pilot's Log

1) Plan 9. Based loosely on the notorious Ed Wood horror schlock spectacles, this series is about a duo of uniformed LA cops who are put on the Weirdo Beat to "keep them out of trouble". The scripts are written by a committee of Internet-forum dorks and Middle School Kids, with the lowest possible production budget and the worst actors who carry SAG cards.

2) Sucker Punch: the Virtual Reality Reality Show. Contestants are recruited from computer gamer conventions. After having their virtual reality characters codified by real-world physical tests, the contestants must run them through adventure worlds created by inmates in psychological asylums, who are strung out on medications of various kinds and babbling to voice-recognition computers equipped with AutoComplete.

Davan's friends are so awesome, aren't they?

I don't sing Paul Francis' praises enough, and I suppose it is impossible to do such a thing.

He is an artist who spent a good share of his career working on make-up and special effects in Hollywood, only to have his future shoved aside by the advance of computers in the filmmaking field. Didn't stop him, tho'. He came back to his Tennessee home, erected a pleasure dome of corrogated steel in the hills, and builds monsters, monster cars, and tiki gods.

His current projects include reproducing the Terror Dog puppet from the first Ghostbusters movie. Exact copies of the ones actually used by the effects studio. Today I watched as he and an assistant were in the process of assembling silicone molds. When he's finished, the completed molds will go to a factory and a horde of Terror Dogs will be cast.

But that isn't his only project. Or even his scariest or weirdest.

At the modeler's meeting a man showed up with diecast scale models that he wanted re-done in his racing team's paint livery. That said livery was DESIGNED by Paul about twenty years before...and Paul had forgotten it in the years since. Paul and the man had known each other back then, and Paul had even hung out at a few races.

Paul didn't want to do the job, but quoted him a price anyway in the hopes that the man would refuse to pay and go away. The man decided the price was reasonable and they shook hands.

Right now the models are sitting on a table in Paul's garage as components, the paint sandblasted off the bodies.

I tell Paul that Aleks would have loved to do the job for him, and that Aleks is probably laughing at him from Heaven--and cheering him on.

My favorite Leslie Nielsen memory was his episode of the TV series Night Gallery, called "The Phantom of What Opera?"--which was basically a mash-up of The Phantom of the Opera and The Twilight Zone's "Eye of the Beholder"--both of which are turned upside down for laughs.

I don't know if he did comedy before then, but I think it was a turning point in his career.

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We really aren't this time around. We have candy for any kids who may show up, but there haven't been these last several years. I'm wearing my Desert Storm-vintage "chocolate chip" battledress top and pants--as per FreeWill Astrology's advice to emulate a "peaceful warrior", but that's the extent of my cosplaying. We haven't done any decoration and we aren't going to any parties or anything like that.

Halloween is a lot more fun for kids than adults these days. I have to agree with the types who say that mass media horror has gotten so saturated in the culture that the joy is drained out of the holiday in these times.

Comparing current events in the War On Terror_TM against the Vietnam model for How America Loses Wars_TM:

* Tet Offensive √
* Linebacker II √
* "Peace Is At Hand" √ (Thank you Mr. Karzai!)

We have now gone past the point of even a stalemate to outright defeat. All that's left is to rename Kabul as Osama Bin Laden City and let the Taliban kill a few million infidel citizens.

Hey, which American city will suddenly spawn a new neighborhood called "Little Kabul"?

PS: I see that Little Kabul is in Fremont, California.

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1) An immense, formless, destructive force of wild psychic/karmic dread that kills indiscriminately and cannot be seen unless the viewer is afraid of it...but if you lose your fear you also lose your memory of what it really looks like.

2) Some forms of power are inherently evil and should be avoided.

I was more concerned with survival!

( It's Almost The Eighties All Over Again... )

...FWIW, to me Gremlins was "What If Spielberg Produced The Muppet Show?" It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.