Robin Williams dead of an apparent suicide at age 63.
Williams, along with Richard Pryor, was one of the true authentic comic geniuses of my lifetime. As a stand-up comic, his mind was so quick and his work was so manically innovative that his basic appeal actually survived transition to the straitjacket confines of a prime-time sitcom. He was a solid dramatic supporting actor, but it’s a shame that (unlike Pryor) he never found a movie that served the true essence of his comic genius.
Someone needs to do a reality TV show featuring all the people claiming their father was the Zodiac killer living together in the same house. It would be like The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, except, you know, sleazy.
For the season finale they could battle the people who claim their fathers were the Black Dahlia killer in some sort of trash sports obstacle course…
Fox has evidently cancelled the science fiction police drama Almost Human. Which is a damned shame, since it was the first attempt to do a serious post-cyberpunk drama on American TV. (The true first was Japan’s animated Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.) While it wasn’t a great show (it had too much 1970s cop dram patina to it, including the requisite Climatic Gunfight at the end of every episode), it was a pretty good one and had a lot of potential.
Well, so much for that. Unless another network picks it up, or the DVD sales convince Fox to pick it up again. I’m not holding my breath.
Every now and then you see an item outside your sphere of collecting interests at a good price and go “I want that!” This is one of those times.
Bought in a lot with:
Among the areas I occasionally contemplate starting book collections in are the early history of Apple Computer and the original cast of Saturday Night Live. (Warning: Get off my lawn ahead.) I know that Saturday Night Live is about as edgy as a bowling ball these days, but the original SNL was groundbreaking, daring and funny as hell. So when I saw this in that 70% off sale I bought so many SF books in, I snapped it up. Bought for $40.49.
Though Radner was the best female cast member in the original cast, the Roseanne Roseannadanna character was far from her best bit (see the Judy Miller Show, where she plays a hyperactive girl for that), but she died young enough that books signed by her are not particularly common.
Two tidbits on Alan Zweibel:
The creator of Office Space, Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill has a new (live action) TV show on HBO called Silicon Valley.
The first episode is up free:
I’ve seen about half of it. It’s reasonably funny, but some of the geek characters are a bit too cliched…
Because a lot of people have been searching for this on St. Patrick’s day, and the old video appears to have died, here’s a new version.
In case you hadn’t heard, Monty Python’s Flying Circus is reuniting for a live show at London’s 02 Arena next July 1st.
Because I like Monty Python, and because I’m not above blatant click-bait, here’s a video of the entire press conference announcing the reunion.
Random Notes:
By accident I tuned into Fox just as Almost Human was premiering, expecting to watch The Simpsons, and actually got sucked in, almost against my will, since I had zero initial interest in a cop/robot buddy series.
But what what the show is actually doing is broadcast American TV’s first serious attempt to rip-off Blade Runner and much of the entire cyberpunk canon for a cop show, and it actually does (considering the constraints of the form) a halfway decent job of it. The cop/robot interaction is (thus far) only a subplot to the main story of an injured cop returning to the force just as the powerful criminal syndicate that killed his partner and blew off his leg has returned to the scene. Surprisingly, none of the science fiction elements struck me as egregiously stupid, and they actually seem to have put some thought into the near-future setting of the show. Michael Ealy (Dorian the robot partner) hits the underplayed robot cop part very well, Mackenzie Crook brings brings some Whovian British Geek charm to the department’s robot specialist, and Karl Urban is pretty good as the lead; he needs to dial back his Gruff Stoic setting about 15%, but is otherwise fine. I could do without the “look, here’s a flying whatsit at the edge of the scene-bump just to say it’s SF” trope, but it’s not annoying.
Actually, the most problematic bits are on the police procedural end rather than the SF end. The building they work in looks entirely too clean, sparse and modern to be a real police office (like everything else, Blade Runner did it better with a real lived-in look); it’s too clean even for the already too clean CSI look. Ditto the “look at my spacious, open city apartment on a cop’s salary.” And you can already tell which characters (“Hi there, I’m the love interest!”) are going to be doing which buddy cop cliches. You have bits of The Dark Knight and (I’m guessing) Saw in the “over-complicated villain plotting” device. And it has the “lots of shoot-outs” modern cop/action show trope going on, which may or may not be a problem, depending on the direction they take.
I’m actually planning on watching this, which may be my first regular non-animated US broadcast series since, geeze, maybe Homicide: Life on the Streets. (I’m not much of a TV watcher, what with all the writing and book buying and Internetting and the Glavin!)
But despite that, it blends the cyberpunk and police procedural bits pretty (plus obvious dollops of The Caves of Steel and Starsky & Hutch). It’s obviously got money behind the production, which goes pretty far in TV. J.J. Abrams is the executive producer, so it’s possible the characters will turn into idiots further down the line. And it’s not as a good a cyberpunk police procedural as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. But for now I actually think it may be worth your attention.
Putting this up because I’m sure that John DeNardo will want to know about it for SF Signal, and in no way because it has lots of attractive, scantly clad women in it…
Silly me. I didn’t even know the U.S. had a cosplay expo.
Also: Oh my…
Ever now and then you come across something interesting, but you wonder “What the hell do I say about this?”
I was looking for some scary gifs when I came across this. There are a few in the, but it seems to be mostly depressing black and white gifs for suicidal teenage girls.
Like this:
Or this:
Interestingly enough, more than half seem to be of stunningly beautiful actresses from popular culture. And, naturally, there’s a lot of Nine Inch Nails references.
And this is pretty striking:
Anyway, if you find yourself making or posting these gifs, maybe you should read this.
Consider this more an act of reportage than commentary…