Yet Another Death in the Hundred Acre Wood

Well, blast. The IMDB is reporting, confirmed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, that the voice actor for Tigger has died.

Mr. Paul Winchell was 82.

Last month, the voice of Eeyore, Mr. Thurl Ravenscroft, died at the age of 81.

As Winnie-the-Pooh himself would put it, "Bother!"

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The Morning Report

The delivery of the morning report for the Pennsylvania Railroad, at its headquarters in Philadelphia, was always an Important Thing. Well, I'm not the PRR, this ain't Philadelphia, and what I'm about to say ain't important, but here goes:

-Sheila O'Malley provides advance notice that Bewitched is not a good film.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil. Accentuate the positive---Nicole Kidman---and eliminate the negative, i.e. Will Ferrell. It can't be as bad as The Stepford Wives.

Sheila's also got a nice article on Harriet the Spy, another one of those "books from your youth" that probably would stand up to reading as an adult. Careful when you read Ms. O'Malley's description of Rosie O'Donnell; I nearly choked on Corn Pops when I read it.

-Does anyone play Star Wars Galaxies? I've been debating upon whether to take the plunge into that, and had a few questions that I can't seem to get answered.

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Curse You, Glen A. Larson!

It now appears that perhaps I watched too much Battlestar Galactica when I was in my more impressionable years. All blame, of course, is to be heaped upon the local UHF broadcaster that made such a bespoiling event possible. Y'all do remember UHF, don't you?

The Llamabutchers and John of TexasBestGrok have been taking a bunch of religious selectors and posting their results.

Anyways, here's what I've gotten from the two noted tests:

From SelectSmart:

1: Congregational/United Church of Christ (100%)
2: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (100%)
3: Presbyterian/Reformed (96%)
4: Lutheran (90%)
5: Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England (85%)
6: Eastern Orthodox (85%)
7: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (77%)
8: Church of Christ/Campbellite (74%)
9: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (73%)
10: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (66%)
11: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (66%)
12: Roman Catholic (63%)
13: Seventh-Day Adventist (49%)

I don't know a blessed thing about Congregationalists or the UCC (be it religious or legal, as my grades in contracts, sales, and secured transactions would suggest) but I am a United Methodist, so that's nifty that I scored 100% there. I suppose Theodore Roosevelt's quote about Woodrow Wilson---"[D]amned Presbyterian hypocrite!"---must be applicable. After all, Wilson was a Virginian, born in Staunton. I keep meaning to stop there when I'm traveling Interstate 81, but I never do.

Up next is BeliefNet:
1. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (100%)
2. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (97%)
3. Jehovah's Witness (88%)
4. Eastern Orthodox (84%)
5. Roman Catholic (84%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (74%)
7. Seventh Day Adventist (73%)
8. Orthodox Judaism (73%)
9. Orthodox Quaker (71%)
10. Baha'i Faith (69%)
11. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (63%)
12. Sikhism (61%)
13. Islam (60%)
14. Hinduism (48%)
15. Liberal Quakers (48%)
16. Reform Judaism (44%)
17. New Thought (37%)
18. Mahayana Buddhism (35%)
19. Unitarian Universalism (35%)
20. Jainism (33%)
21. Scientology (33%)
22. Theravada Buddhism (33%)
23. Neo-Pagan (29%)
24. New Age (19%)
25. Nontheist (17%)
26. Secular Humanism (15%)
27. Taoism (10%)

I've never even heard of some of these (Jainism? Is that the worship of English TV actress par excellence Jane Seymour?) and it's nice to know that I'd be like Khan Noonien Singh---Sikhism---before I'd be akin to Osama bin Laden.

Similarly, I take great pride in finding that I'd be a Roman Catholic or an Orthodox before I'd subscribe to limp-wristed liberal Protestantism. I am, however, dumbfounded at the appearance of both the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. I knew a Mormon or so in high school, but the last time I was in close proximity to one of Joseph Smith's disciples, the experience did not go well. To put it delicately, there was no ecumenical accord reached, and it wasn't due to lack of pleasant effort on my part.¹

I do suppose that an entire lifetime within the confines of the UMC has paid off, because I manage to score rather highly with their doctrines on these quizzes. As for the rest of it, I blame Glen A. Larson. Thank God for small miracles; it's a good thing that I waited until the last couple of years to read Battlefield Earth or else I might've wound up in Uncle Elron's Money-Making Machine.²

Yee haw.

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¹ If I'm not a Mormon, then in the current Galactica reality, I must be one of the Cylons. Well, if that means I get my very own copy of Number Six for fun and profit, I could learn the whole "By...your...command" shtick. Gaius Baltar, you've got nothing on me. Except more hair, an insatiable blond in your mind, Lieutenant Kara Thrace in the sack, and a hot reporter in a bathroom stall. You greasy-looking Eurotrash loser. Blast it, Biggs!

As for the Mormon guys, there may have been a cultural clash there. I was dressed in my usual faded polo shirt, unshaven with a baseball hat---looking something like this---covering an unruly mop of hair, whereas these guys looked like they'd just stepped out of Cape Canaveral, circa 1960. Short hair, white short-sleeve shirts, black ties, black pants, black shoes, and embossed tags detailing their name and rank, or something. They not only knew a lot about my home, they knew who I'd gone to high school with, and spoke in eerie turn. It took conscious mental effort for me not to ask if Agent Smith had finished with Morpheus yet.

² On the other hand, if it meant I could pinch Kelly Preston off from John Travolta, then perhaps a bit of auditing wouldn't be such a bad thing. "If you don't give me your wife, then Xenu will win. Ain't it cool?"

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Interview with John Milius

In the course of hunting through some articles on the death of Lane Smith, I came across this 2003 interview with John Milius.

I recommend reading it, even though it's a little strange and certainly long for IGN's style. I recommend taking a fair dose of 'tongue-in-cheek' with you when/if you read it, or else you'll close the browser tab and swear off of Milius forever.

A brief recap of Mr. Milius' work that's caught my attention:

The Wind and the Lion
Apocalypse Now
1941
Red Dawn
Flight of the Intruder

Mr. Milius' current project has as its subject the Son Tay raid of 1970. Put briefly, the United States decided to go and rescue some of our POWs from those bestial savages, the North Vietnamese. If Milius can get this made, then it'll be an excellent film, because the story is compelling. Jen Martinez has an anniversary post on the raid; check that out for further details. An additional site that liked was here.

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RIP Lane Smith

Blast it.

One of my more favorite Hollywood character actors, Lane Smith, is dead. People in my demographic generally remember him as Perry White on the ABC program Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. As for my own part, Mr. Smith won permanent recognition as President Richard M. Nixon in the television version of The Final Days. I think it was the scene where Leonid Brezhnev was barrelling around in a Lincoln at Camp David that sealed the deal.¹ Sublime humor, if you will.

Additional roles by Mr. Smith that scored points with the judge from the Western District of Virginia:
-"Nathan Bates" in V: The Series

-"Mayor Bates" of Calumet in Red Dawn

Red Dawn is a fundamentally disturbing movie overall, but Mr. Smith's character manages to be more memorable than not. It isn't every day that you get to see an actor have to react to the simulated slaughter of the residents of his town, and he does a pretty unforgettable job in one of the most wrenching sequences from Mr. Milius' picture. At the same time, Mr. Smith manages to provide some comic relief as he stammers around about the nature of the Boy Scouts in order to protect his son from arrest.

Mr. Smith's gravelly voice and expressive face often served him well, in my opinion. He will be missed. He was sixty-nine years old.

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¹ Mea culpa, Mr. President; I understand from the IMDB that you didn't like this movie.

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14 June 2005 - TBG Sci-Fi Babe Voter Guide

You've got to love TexasBestGrok. Here I was sitting next to an empty bowl of stroganoff, watching Greg the Bunny on DVD, with a fan puttering overhead whilst trying to beat that famous Virginia heat. I'd just dropped to 1-3 on the election recommendations, and life looked miserable.

That is, until I checked TexasBestGrok. Y'see, JohnL had been posting his infamous sci-fi babe quizzes throughout the earlier part of the year, and despite his patent refusal to support women in uniform---neener, neener, Wilma still won---I enjoyed taking part in 'em. But, as is the way of such things, the polls went on hiatus for perfectly understandable reasons.

It's back. And so is the ever-so-annoying voter guide, wherein your correspondent makes half-baked observations on the candidates, in a feeble attempt to sway the voting. Here goes, on The Women of The Incredibles

A. I recommend a vote for Mirage.
If this were Starship Troopers, the instructor would demand that I prove this in symbolic logic over the course of 150 pages due next morning. Luckily for me, since I don't know what symbolic logic is, this isn't a Robert A. Heinlein novel. This recommendation, much like many of my other ones, is based solely upon what I've been able to gather off a quick search of the World Wide Web.¹

Positive factors:
-She's ambitious. This can be used to one's benefit.
-She's blond. Your correspondent is easily distracted by blonds. Go figure.
-She's got green eyes. Er, right.
-She's evil. Someone's got to er, show her the error of her ways, and steer her back to the Light Side. Ahem.
-She's repetitively described as "Syndrome's girl Friday". Inasmuch as this sort of description is probably guaranteed to drive perenially indignant feminists stark raving mad (as if they weren't already) I wholeheartedly approve. The only problem is that her name's Mirage, not Friday. Never actually figured that out.

Negative factors:
-None known.

B. I do not recommend a vote for Elastigirl.
What little bit of this picture that I caught at K-Mart one day involved Elastigirl's flight to the Evil Island of Doom, and her desperate attempts to talk a SAM emplacement into not firing upon her. Now, far be it from me to correct anyone on proper radio procedure for civil aviation, but her dialogue didn't impress. Moreover, she sounds suspiciously like Holly Hunter. Now, I don't begrudge (most) actors & actresses their political views, so it's not about what Holly Hunter thinks. It's about what her voice sounds like, and I'm still trying to figure out how that whole "I've said my piece and I've counted to three" bit was supposed to be conclusive in O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Giving the thumbs down to Holly Hunter's alter ego is somewhat painful because she did star in Always, which had the Douglas A-26 Invader and the Consolidated PBY Catalina in starring roles. Nevertheless, I've said my piece, and I've counted to three.

Sayeth Mirage, "I'm attracted to power."

Aren't we all honey, aren't we all. Thumbs up to the platinum blond with the French name and the luscious green eyes. Who says we can't reach across the Atlantic for some friendship? See here and here for a few more illustrations of this week's recommended candidate.

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¹ I've never actually seen this picture. The one time I had a chance to do so was either "Watch Underworld or The Incredibles". An accurate reproduction of my thought process: "Copious gunplay, Kate Beckinsale, black leather, and vampires or a Pixar movie. Pause. Goth is good."

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Weekend Sci-Fi

If you're like me and care to delve into the production details of some of your favorite entertainment franchises, you've probably run across various names that may or may not stick out. This weekend's installment of random sci-fi goes to a man who's worked on several of my more favorite memories from the late 1970s forward: Andrew Probert

His first contribution of note to my eyes was the final design for the Cylon centurions in Battlestar Galactica. He's also responsible for the second-best looking vessel ever designed for Star Trek, the overhauled Enterprise first seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.¹

Probert also contributed to the design of the modified Bell 222B helicopter seen as the star component of the CBS television series Airwolf. This of course recommends him as well; suffice to say that a lot of his work meandered across my personal viewing habits from 1979 forward. Hats off to Mr. Probert!

I'll start saving for the book he's promising to release some time in 2006; should be good.

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¹ The most beautiful class ever established for Star Trek was first seen in 1984, namely the Excelsior. It's kind of like Elle McPherson: Long-legged (er, nacelled, but whatever), exotic, and big enough to be a drop-dead knockout whether on the silver screen or the cover of Sports Illustrated. Yee haw.

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The Future Is Flux

First things first: Viacom's MTV has never managed to rise above anything other than a channel that was after CBS and in front of the USA Network on my cable system, a station where this particular train did not and would not stop. This has always been the case, since its inception in the early 1980s.¹ But hey, this is Virginia, and we always have an exception. ("My Lord Your Honor, the rule in Queen Elizabeth's Case is more accurately applied here, rather than the more modern rule adopted in 1700...")

For a brief moment, in the mid-to-late 1990s, MTV managed to catch my attention for a short while. What monumentous occasion produced this? Three things, House of Style, Beavis and Butt-head, and Aeon Flux. The first was, of course, for Cindy Crawford, first introduced to me by way of Denis Leary. The second was simple appeal to the more base, coarse, and downright malevolent humor lurking beneath the surface of all young men. The disruptive effect of screaming, "I am the great Cornholio" in what's supposed to be a serious setting cannot be overstated.

That leaves us with, as it was once put, Frau Flux.² I vaguely remember Liquid Television, on which a variety of Aeon Flux shorts by Peter Chung aired. Thinking back on it, I was probably drawn into the fact that they were animated, involved copious amounts of gunplay and random violence, plus (usually) a skyrocketing body count. It didn't hurt that Frau Flux wasn't so bad looking, but more on that later.

The program was later extended into its own series, with a more or less coherent plot, detailing the adventures of Aeon Flux, a combination assassin/spy. Getting any deeper into would require a lot more space, which I don't intend to do. Keeping track of the plot on any other level than Aeon versus Trevor Goodchild (head of the more-or-less enemy state and Aeon's occasional, er, companion) would require a degree in the inner working of Stanley Kubrick's mind. Like I said, difficult to follow from episode to episode. Strange and off-the-wall themes pervaded every episode, along with some fetishistic behavior that I didn't much care for at the time. Tongues in the ear are not my forte, you see.

Anyways. The program suffered the fate of every program that I like, and was not renewed. A few years intervened, and then I managed to get the more-or-less complete series on VHS from something called 'Amazon.com'.³ I coughed up for a copy of the MTV-produced book tie-in, and then eventually law school intervened, disconnecting me from the world of Aeon Flux forever. Or so I thought.

Fast forward to 2005. I've heard vague rumors of an Aeon Flux movie in production, but I shrug them off. Comes now a copy of that dreadful rag Entertainment Weekly in a trial subscription someone signed me up for.⁴ I'm idly flipping through the thing when something approximately like this shows up. Lo, it was Charlize Theron as Aeon Flux herself.

Charlize Theron is an actress of which I've maintained a slight interest since seeing her in Mighty Joe Young and Men of Honor.⁵ On the other hand, I would never have considered her for the part of Aeon Flux. In fact, about the only actress I'd consider for it is Lara Flynn Boyle.

However, you go into production with the actress that you have, not the actress that you want, to paraphrase Donald H. Rumsfeld. That leaves us with Miss Theron and a movie in post-production. Therefore, I suggest that if you've got an interest in the property, point your browser over to aeonflux.com, where there are a few things to do courtesy of Flash. Me, I got the wallpaper. For better or for worse, I'll probably be ambling into the theaters on this one, if only to perhaps relive part of the pre-war era, where I didn't have a care in the world other than the next race or the next paper that was due. Heck, the movie couldn't possibly be any worse than Stealth.⁶

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Swanky Conservative.

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¹ Cyndi Lauper & Captain Lou Albano fail when measured against the General Lee, Airwolf, and the Knight Industries Two Thousand, you see. In the more modern era, vintage Liz Phair, Sheryl Crow, and Lisa Gerrard might manage to win out. However, much like the number of Frenchmen required to defend Paris, who knows? It's never been tried. Ha ha.

² Yes, I own a copy of The Herodotus File. I hope nobody ever finds it; that's arguably one of the things I'd rather not have to explain. Nobody would believe that it wasn't some sort of pseudo-fetish mag. Meanwhile, a continuing injustice in the world is that Jessica Simpson's reality series is on DVD, and nobody's compiled all the Aeon Flux episodes for DVD. Perhaps MTV will pull its collective cranium out of its ventral cavity and do that to coincide with the theatrical release. That is, if they can do something other than drag down the culture, for once.

³ Either Das Boot on VHS or the Aeon Flux set were among the first purchases I ever made from Mr. Bezos' little kiosk. Go figure.

⁴ In the words of Wolverine from an ad for Damage Control, "Somebody dies!"

⁵ Hey, she's blond haired, blue eyed, and is a product of the ruins of the British Empire. What's not to like? She also did well in a turn as Britt Ekland in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, one of the most depressing movies that I think I've ever watched. Geoffrey Rush, however, managed to cement his place as one of my more favorite actors with this production. "Walsinghaaaaam!"

⁶ Since this picture is almost certain to have a political angle, I expect several juvenile and poorly-veiled jabs at either George W. Bush and/or the Republican Party in general, courtesy of those political sophisticates at MTV. I never thought I'd long for the days of that annoying Tabitha Soren or that creepy-looking Kurt Loder. At the same time, it would mean the return of Serena Altschul, who wasn't all that bad looking.

In other news, I want the ninety seconds or so of my life back that the trailer for Stealth attached to Revenge of the Sith has stolen.

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Putting the 'Country' in 'Country Pundit'

Friends and neighbors, your humble correspondent is a life-long fan of the old television program, The Dukes of Hazzard. Heck, who wouldn't be? Fast car, good hearts, "two modern-day Robin Hoods", and a fight against a corrupt local bureaucrat who has his pudgy little fingers in everything.

Why do we care, you ask. Put shortly, I'm going to be out of town and on the road this weekend, 'cause I'm headed to DukesFest at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee. Yep, that's right. Your correspondent, a man of (desired) wealth and (questionable) taste is going to be surrounded by a lot of people from Flyover Country, and he will love every minute of it. It's not every day that I get the opportunity to revel in something like this, so I'm rather happy to be going.

I'm hopin' to get an autograph of John Schneider---that's all the budget's going to allow--and probably some pictures of various General Lee-configured Dodge Chargers, along with soakin' up the atmosphere provided by lots of fans of this delightful series from the early 1980s. As Hunter Thompson wouldn't have put it, those folks are good people.

In honor of this nifty occasion, I've gone and taken a ubiquitous Quizilla quiz, yielding the following result:

You are Bo Duke. You are caring and carefree. You
suffer from the "Peter Pan Syndrome"
and it doesn't look like you'll be growing up
anytime soon.


What Dukes of Hazzard Character are you?

Y'all have a good weekend; I can't guarantee any sort of weekend schedule. If all goes well, perhaps I'll have a report or two for public consumption in the near future.

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Narnia Fun

A chap named Colossus has compiled the "Top Ten Signs that Disney is Involved in the New "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe Movie"

Sample quote: "9. Instead of turning dissenting animals to stone, The White Witch turns them into little barrels of oil for her monstrous white SUV."

Read the whole thing.

Tip of the Executor hat to the Llama Butchers.

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J-Pod Strikes Back Out

The loathsome John Podhoretz writes:

In its second week at the boxoffice, ROTS's take fell 50 percent from the first week. This is significant because it indicates word of mouth on the movie is lousy and that those who went to see it the first week aren't making a return trip (second and third viewings are the reasons a movie takes the leap from success to blockbuster).

Bah. I may be the only refutation of Mr. Podhoretz, but I can say with confidence that I've seen The Movie three times so far, and I intend to go several more times. Three viewings either surpasses or ties my record for Attack of the Clones, and stands second in the overall personal record of "Number of Times Seeing a Movie in Theaters".¹

Maybe Podhoretz is just trying to be the contrarian. I don't know for sure, despite reading most of his annoying verbiage on the subject. Enh, who cares? Not every contributor to the National Review is on the order of John Derbyshire, who himself is not faultless.

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¹ The holder of the all-time record is The Phantom Menace, with between seven and ten viewings, all at the same theater. I saw it numerous times hoping that a good movie would somehow emerge. Much like the kid shoveling manure in hopes of finding a pony, I too was disappointed in the end.

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