More like The Buy Republic...

The Rise of Skywalker was both the end of the Skywalker Saga and the first time anyone called the Star Wars movies the Skywalker Saga. And since by law, Star Wars can only come in three series of three movies, many fans are asking what now? 

According to the rules the marketing department just made up, making a tenth numbered
Star Wars film would mean that Disney could no longer call it a saga. Their hands are tied.

No judgement here, but do stoners know 
the rest of us think these things are dumb? 

Go outside? Play a sport? Watch a movie that's not part of a long-running, interconnected franchise? Nonsense! Luckily for us, Disney is not going to miss an opportunity to milk one of their most important IP's just because we're totally sick of it. They are, first and foremost, storytellers. Enter Star Wars: The High Republic. An umbrella term under which new Star Wars tie-ins like books, comics, toys and-huh? Yeah, The High Republic, I know. I too predict an uptick in hackneyed and poorly photoshopped Star Wars stoner jokes.

So anyway, The High Republic is an era of the fictional Star Wars universe two hundred years before The Phantom Menace which, according to Starwars.com: "...will not overlap any of the filmed features or series currently planned for production, giving creators and partners a vast amount of room to tell Star Wars stories with new adventures and original characters."

The last thing anyone wants is a confusing story
that contradicts pervious entries in the series...

Pictured: not a committee. 

Ok, so the idea is to allow the writers some creative freedom without bumping into Star Wars canon which, despite the pruning of the Expanded Universe a few years ago, is still pretty damn dense. And the announcement trailer-books have trailers now-makes a lot about how Disney has gathered this big group of sci-fi writing talent together to collaborate on a shared narrative world in which the stories will all connect in a rich tapestry of-wait, does this sound like writing by committee to anyone else?

Sure, collaboration is great, but sometimes too many voices can muddy the waters (and mix the metaphors). Imagine if the people who write Star Wars listened to say, what people on the internet thought. Like, if they just took every crazed fan's suggestions and demands and threw them in a pot in some misguided attempt to try and please everyone. That'd be terrible.

Hmm? Oh, that's just J. J. Abrams at the premier of The Rise of Skywalk-huh?
No, I wasn't saying Episode IX was-ok you got me. I'm like a dog with a bone.

Pictured: concept art for The High Republic
featuring Jedi with lightsabers. Yes again,
but this time one of them is a Wookie. 

Am I being overly critical here? Probably. Definitely. I mean, don't listen to me. The High Republic hasn't even seen the light of day yet. But still, "new adventures with original characters?" I mean, it's still within the Star Wars universe, so it's not that original. And no matter how many writers you lock in a room with a whiteboard, the minute someone from corporate starts telling them they can and can't do things because it won't test well with the key demo or because it might not fit the brand, it ceases to be collaborative art and starts being product.

Who knows? Maybe these books and comics and whatever will be great. Maybe they're just just the thing to pull Star Wars out of its malaise. Still though, I can't help but roll my eyes at the idea that any new Disney Brand Star Wars Content™is going to be anything other than safe and derivative guaranteed money makers.

How dare they compromise the artistic
integrity of Star Wars with crass consumerism!

Hey, at least no nipples this time, right?

The Batsuit? No, I don't have strong feelings about the Batsuit. I'm a well adjusted adult with a job and-ok, fine. I'll talk about the new Batsuit. But only because you insisted.

New set photos? Quickly fellow nerds, to the internet! 
We have to let the world know what we would have done differently
and how much better it would have been if we were in charge!

I'm not saying internet rage is
always unjustified, just often.

So set photos of a stunt performer in costume as Batman leaked-is it leaking if it's done deliberately for marketing reasons? Anyway, obsessive Batman fans have taken to the internets to opine about whether it's the greatest interpretation of the character's look ever or whether the film should be shut down immediately and completely reshot with a different costume that better fits the expectations of the loudest (all caps) twitter users. There is no middle ground here.

That said, it's fine. The Batsuit I mean, not our culture of dogpiling on a design choice months or years before a movie is released based on out of context photos. I mean, it's Batman. His costume gets reinvented every time we see him. It's fine, I don't care. As long as the movie isn't a three hour, self-indulgent, grimdark method acting slog, I'll be good.

You heard me. Batman's about a guy in
tights fighting theme crime. It's not Hamlet.

Above: a gif of Micheal
Keaton, demonstrating his
range of motion in costume.

Anyway, Robert Pattinson's Batman costume kind of looks like Christian Bale's suit from the Christopher Nolan movies; all black and tactical-looking. It has no cape which is almost certainly because it's added later as a CG effect. And it's, well, you know, the Batsuit. Or at least a live action version of something that only exists in two-dimensions. And that's got to be tough. On paper, comic artists fudge the design to make it look right at any angle, but I suppose when your putting a person in a foam-rubber suit you don't have that flexibility-literally or figuratively. Batman is sort of famous for ninja flipping around and kicking the shit out of henchmen, which, great, lycra bodysuit. But in live action, whatever he's wearing has to look like it can take a bullet. So it needs to be simultaneously indestructible and lightweight, with total range of motion. Good luck.

Obviously they're all wrong and the 90's
Animated Batman is the best Batman.
But I say, to each their own, right?

Add on to these completely contradictory design parameters the inevitable fan reaction that comes with interpreting someone thing as recognizable as Batman, and it can't be easy. Some people like the more grounded Nolan-trilogy look, others prefer the 'roided out tank look from the Dark Knight Returns comic, while still others want the classic blue and grey from the 1970's. Everyone has a favorite veri-sorry, every obsessed fan has a favorite version of the character so there's no way you're going to make everyone happy.

Especially Robert Pattinson and all the unfortunate stunt performers who have to strap on ninety pounds of immobile rubber body armor for fourteen hours a day and pretend they're fighting the Penguin's goons. They're going to have a rough time no matter what you do.

Pictured: Inevitability. 

Icheb just got Phil Coulson'ed!

Yes, that is kind of gibberish, but don't worry, I'll explain. Did you watch Picard yet? Yes, the TV show. Oh, don't roll your eyes at me like that. You know what you were in for when you click on my blog. And if you haven't caught up with the show, I'm on episode five and am about to spoil the merde out of it.

I believe it's entitled Episode 5: The One Where Picard Wears a Beret.

"Fan service? Wait'll I show up..."

-Future guest stars, 

Riker and Riker's beard

Still with me? Super. I don't really have a lot to say (not that that's ever stopped me before) other than goddamn, this show really loves to service its fans. From the get go this episode was-what? Why...why are you laughing? It did include a lot of fan service, what did you think I-oh...I see. Get your mind out of the gutter. Now, where was I? Oh, right. So much fan service. Quark from DS9 and Mot the Barber from TNG get name dropped, Picard and Seven of Nine share a moment of ex-Borg bonding. 

Oh and in a total surprise, Icheb from Star Trek: Voyager shows up to be graphically vivisected for parts. Yikes. He was kind of that show's chirpy, overly eager Wesley Crusher type; a former Borg rescued and adopted by Seven of Nine. And tonight's episode brutally killed him off thirty seconds in just to give Seven someone to avenge. See? Phil Coulson'ed.

He was also brutally recast, possibly because original actor, Manu Intiraymi dismissed
 Discovery's Anthony Rapp's accusations against Kevin Spacey as "just life." So that's fun.

Pictured: Star Trek's dumbest moment.

And avenge him Seven does going so far as to straight up murder Icheb's murder, a black market Borg-parts dealer with whom she may have had a relationship. Speaking of straight-up murdering your ex, Allison Pill's Doctor Jurati murders Doctor Maddox whom everyone's been looking for since episode one. And look, I loved this episode. I'm just saying that's a lot of murder for Star Trek. It's not that trek doesn't get dark sometimes, but one time Picard and pals where turned into children and had to save the ship from bungling Ferengi.

Oh, and there's a B-plot about recovering drug addict Raffi's attempt to reconnect with her estranged son. Her plan goes off the rails when we find out her son wants nothing to do with her because she's a crazy Mars Attack truther. Which is even more tragic since we as the viewer know that there totally is a conspiracy at work. 

"Dilithium crystals can't melt tritanium beams. Think about it!"

-Raffi, seen here holding a vape
 pen that's not helping her case

Above: these jaunty hats really help
 lighten an otherwise murder-heavy story.

But it wasn't all Game of Thrones, we some comic relief from Sir Patrick Stewart's hilarious french accent and the Freecloud dress code which is maybe best described as Spirit Halloween Store pimp. Oh, and we also get some funny moments from Elnor, the Australian Romulan samurai raised by honest-to-a-fault warrior nuns, and his inability to grasp the concept of deceit. He's a little Drax the Destroyer, but whatever, it was a nice counter to the heaviness of the episode. 

Ok, other than people who cosplay
as Starfleet officers, who even cares?

Anyway, like I said before, I'm not sure I can be completely objective about this show having grown up watching TNG. The whole show could be Picard and his Romulan roomies drinking tea and running his vineyard and I'd still watch. I'm that into it. But tonight's episode felt like the point at which the slow burn of the first four installments is finally paying off. And speaking of paying off, while the surgeon is gutting Icheb, she asks him where his cortical node is. Which, just a one-off technobabble line and who even cares right?

I care, that's who. It's a call back to a twenty-year old episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which Icheb donates his cortical node to save Seven's life. It's an absurdly tiny detail and one only there for the most dogged of fans but they stuck it in and if you know what the hell they're talking about it gives Icheb's murder and Seven's reaction even more weight. Bravo writers, bravo. That's how you service your fans.

Pictured: The EMH from Voyager performing
a delicate MacGuffin transplant surgery. 

7.75% committed!

I think we can take him.

Look, I don't want to tell Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos how to spend his billions but I'm not sure he's as committed to his new climate initiative as he-wait, no, I tell a lie. I actually do want to tell him how to spend his billions. In fact, I don't think we, as the other billions of humans on the planet who are not Jeff Bezos should let him get away with having so much of the world's finite supply of money to begin with. What I'm saying is that there's one of him and 7,765,156,278 of us.

But let's talk about his climate change plan. On Monday, the CEO of the death of American retail, announced on Instagram that he is committing ten billion dollars to fighting climate change. Well, that's not true, he announced that he is thrilled to announce that he is launching the Bezos Earth Fund. which...did he just rename the Earth after himself?

Pictured: A screenshot of Bezos's Instagram announcement
which includes a shot of Bezos Earth (formerly just the Earth).

Yup, we can all relax about climate change now, Jeff Bezos is on the case. Anyway, According to his instant gram:

Pictured: Bezos' new $165,000,000 house.
You know, just in case you thought we might
 have something else in common with him

"Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet...It's going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations and individuals. I'm committing $10 billion to start and will begin issuing grants this summer. Earth is the one thing we all have in common-let's protect it, together.

-Jeff Bezos, on the one thing

we have in common with him

So couple of things. First of all, climate change is absolutely the biggest threat to our planet. The second biggest threat however is actually Jeff Bezos. Well, ok, that's not entirely fair. Not Bezos personally, but billionaires maybe. And he'll start issuing grants this summer? How will he choose who gets funding?

"I've constructed an exact replica of Thunderdome where
scientists will battle to the death for funding...and my amusement."

-The Amazon guy

Pictured: someone without a background
in science rolling back environmental
protections...holy shit we're screwed.

And bigger question: how come he gets to decide? Because it's his money? Well, sure, but is it though? Isn't his company like famous for not paying its fair share of taxes? I guess what I'm getting at is Bezos is really good at making absurd amounts of money, but does that qualify him to decide how to fight climate change? Don't we have a government for that? Ok, fine, I wouldn't trust the current administration with the money either, but my point is that Bezos isn't a scientist, he's a business person. Shouldn't someone with a background in science or something be making these kinds of decisions?

Witness retaliation is
totally in right now.

Or at least someone whose company isn't itself the focus of not only criticism for its environmental impact and climate change policies, but also for threatening to fire employees who call them out on it? And look, I think it's super that a rich finally noticed that something should be done about climate change. I also think it's great that he's going to try and help, even if it's mostly about making us forget Amazon's environmental record, threats and refusal to pay taxes. Action is action, right?

But if you do the math here, Jeff Bezos' net worth is something like a hundred and twenty nine billion-with a b-dollars. Ten billion is a lot of money, sure, but it's like 7.75% of $129 billion. He's 7.75 percent committed. Which seems a little lowball when it comes to the biggest threat to our planet, so I guess I'm wondering what he's planning to do with the other one hundred and nineteen billion dollars of tax-free wealth he's sitting on.

It's almost as if he has a plan B.

Scorsese's going to want to sit down for this...

Pictured: what blissful
disengagement feels like.

I mentioned a few days ago that I was rapidly spiraling into the cranky curmudgeon phase of my life, and quite a bit earlier than one would expect. Who can blame me though? Everything, and I mean everything, is terrible. The ice caps are melting, people have to GoFundMe for life-saving medications and crime is now straight up legal if you happen to be the President. Anyone not drowning on their own cynicism about the future is living in some kind of delusional fantasy world which...which actually sounds pretty great...

Ok, I exaggerate, not everything is terrible. I mean, uh...I can't think of any examples right now, but at least there's plenty to watch. Sure, we're sliding towards a Wall-E-esque dystopia, but did you see the last season of Bojack Horseman?

Pictured: the grim future in which we sit around slurping smoothies and
consuming content. But holy shit, that robot was cute though, right?

The only escape here would
be when it's over. Amiright?

I mention all this because I want to explain my reaction to the announcement by a Russian filmmaker that he will be shooting the first vertical movie. What the hell is a vertical movie? you may ask. Well, you know how people take videos with their phones without holding them sideways? It's like that. A entire movie like that. Skinny vision. Some people say it's the format of the future. Others, like me, say that skinny vision is for people who don't know how to take video with their phone. Like Timor Bekmambetov. He's the aforementioned director shooting a WWII epic called V2. Escape from Hell. It's touted as the "first vertical film" which. Ugh. Look, I warned you that I'm fueled almost entirely by premature old-man rage, so take my disgust in that context but we can not, repeat can not let this become a thing. Portrait orientation is fine if you're video chatting or whatever. People generally taller than they are wide. But it's terrible for any other kind of video because human vision is wide screen. It's like when your sister in law sends you video of your nieces and nephews doing adorable things and-yeah, you heard me Heather. I'm talking to you.

"I'm woke! I get the youths! Twitterbooks,
MySpace...here, I shall floss for you!"

-Bekmambetov

Bekmambetov, aged 61, has already made a career for himself with films trading on internet culture the most famous of which is the Unfriended series for which he invented (if you can be the fifth person to do something) a new genre he calls screen life. The idea is that the film unfolds on a single screen like on a computer or smartphone and footage should only replicate what actual smartphones. It sounds sort of like an outgrowth of the found footage genre like Blair Witch or Cloverfield but you know, but for kids who play Fortnite and know what Tik-Tok is.

Anyway, I get that experimentation is the only way to move something forward and I also admit that I'm ragging on something I have no experience with apart from a deeply held conviction that movies should be landscape format as God intended. I don't know if I'm ready for a world of skinny vision movies and TV series about people screwing around on Facebook. I guess I might as well just buy a cardigan, fill the pockets with butterscotches and settle in for forty or fifty years of NCIS reruns.

You...you tell him. I don't want to tell him...

It belongs in a museum!

It belongs in a museum is what I'm saying.

Alright video game nerds, get ready to bid on a legitimate piece of video game history because-sorry, did I say video game nerds? Because I should have said wealthy collectors with enough disposable cash to buy a super-rare game console, keep in in their homes, displaying it to their similarly wealthy friends only to turn around and auction it off in another few years to some other rich collector and so on. Yeah, can you tell I'm a little salty about these kind of things?

But salty or not, someone is likely to pay a preposterous sum of money for the only known Nintendo PlayStation, which has finally gone up for auction. Yeah, Nintendo PlayStation. Did I just blow your mind? No? Oh...that's probably because you don't know-or care-what I'm talking about. But trust me, it's mind blowing. Allow me to nerd'splain.

Gaze upon it and shrug indifferently!

Pictured: business.

Back in the late 80's Nintendo signed a deal with Sony to produce a CD-ROM add-on for the then yet to be released Super Nintendo. As part of the deal there would also be a stand alone console that would play CD-ROMs and SNES cartridges called the Nintendo PlayStation. It even got as far as the prototype stage, but then a day after Sony publicly announced it, Nintendo turned around and announced a similar deal with Philips, a rival electronics manufacturer.

Sony, having had their collective and figurative pants pulled down, turned around and developed their own console, the PlayStation (the one in your closet/attic) and spent the better part of the next thirty years eating Nintendo's lunch.

But not their breakfast, which if you'd ever actually
tasted Nintendo cereal, you'd understand.

Hurry, hurry step right up! See the
 amazing Play Station. You'll swear you
can feel Nintendo's knife in your back!

Through the magic of bankruptcy, a former employee of a defunct banking company got ahold of one of the prototypes as part of an auction for which he paid seventy five dollars. Yes, of money. The man, Terry Diebold and his son Dan, somehow managed to get the console up and running and get this: have been touring it around the world like an olde timey curiosity show taking it to retro game and comic conventions. Cool, but it turns out that's like super expensive and the father and son have decided to auction it off. Which brings us to why collecting is kind of icky.

"You don't know the things we've seen..."

-veterans of the Console Wars

I realize this isn't some lost cultural treasure or Oprah's Klimt. Like in one sense it's a weird, unreleased chimera of a game console and not a single game was ever published for the CD-ROM so it's basically a glorified Super NES. You can pick one of those up in a garage sale for fifty bucks. But as far as anyone knows it's the only surviving example of the most famous betrayal in the video game industry. A yellowed plastic artifact of the grim reality of the console wars.

And now, like the aforementioned Oprah's Klimt, the PlayStation too shall-not the PlayStation 2, the PlayStation also. Where was I? Right. It too may well end up in some rando's private collection, instead of in a museum where future generations can...you know...look at it I guess. Look, I don't know, it just seems like it should be in a museum, ok?

There is one you know, a video game museum? I've been there.
Anyone have a few hundred thousand dollars? I think it's a tax write off.

Today in political theatre:

Just when you though the American right couldn't become more of a parody of its own propagandist, persecution complex-having, thinks they're funny selves, they go and put on a play at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference about the FBI agents who talked shit about Trump via text.

"Move over Hadestown, there's a new voice in American Theatre!"

-Literally no one in the world,

like, not even ironically

Anyone else wish this dog with a bone
 were the President instead of Trump?

Conservatives, long left out by the arts owning to their being misogynistic shit merchants propping up a racist patriarchy, will finally take to the stage in a play based on Lisa Page's and Peter Strzok's text messages. They're the FBI agents whose anti-Trump text messages apparently now justify every shitty fascist move the Republican party have ever pulled. Remember? Of course you don't. But Republicans sure do, evidently Trump's been trotting out the FBI lovers at his rallies. He's like a dog with a bone.

Page and Strzok were on the Mueller investigation, but were pulled off of it when the texts came to light. It's not that there was any evidence of the anti-Trump conspiracy Republicans insist is out there, but because it was, let's say, indecorous. Mueller wanted the investigation to be above accusations of bias. And fortunately never happened (source: sarcasm).

If there was a conspiracy, wouldn't Hillary Clinton be President
right now-nevermind, sorry, these aren't reasonable people. 

It must be his charm.

Incidentally, Trump won the election (sort of), appointed two Supreme Court Justices, was acquitted in a party-line impeachment trial in which he openly threatened anyone who stepped out of line which itself is an impeachable offense. Oh, and just last week he retaliated against his political enemies for testifying against him in said impeachment trial-which is another impeachable offense. Any other President would have been led away in handcuffs, so what is it with this guy?

Well, they both have dumb hair, but I
was talking specifically about Romney.

Speaking of threats, Mitt Romney has been formally uninvited to the CPAC because he had the temerity to vote against the President getting carte blanch to commit crime, and the chairman in concerned about the Senator's safety. And while I'm not a fan of the guy and his dumb hair, but at what point can we finally admit that while half the Senate identifies as GOP, it's no longer a political party with ideals or a platform or anything, but more of a creepy cult of personality built around the former host of The Apprentice.

Hey they've got Rob Schneider...
Sorry, I'm just being mean now.

Anyway, the play (well, the thing we're going to generously describe as a play) is called FBI Lovebirds: Undercovers and in addition to the content of the texts will include reenactments of the agents' congressional hearings. It will also undoubtedly feature the kind of crisp, witty writing that gives us the title FBI Lovebirds colon Undercovers. See that? There's a double meaning there. They're having sex. Conservatives. They're just naturally funny people. Speaking of, guess who's in it? Go on, guess.

Here's Cain as Superman. Now imagine
he's mocking the disabled or railing against
hispanic people. Cool career move, Dean.

What's that? Nope, you're way off. Dean Cain and Kristy Swanson. You might remember Cain as Superman from Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and Swanson was Buffy in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. No, not the good one, the one from the movie with Luke Perry. They're apparently Trump people-Cain and Swanson, not Luke Perry, which is going to make going back to either one of those things kind of weird and gross. I know it shouldn't, but it does. I mean, one could argue that supporting Trump doesn't mean you support everything he does, but one would be wrong.

But back to the play. While it may sound like I'm judging this work of-well, not art...shitty world-view propaganda? Is there a word for that? Doesn't matter, while it may sound like I'm judging it, that's because I am. I'm not qualified to say what is and is not art. I don't think anyone is. But a bunch of right wing goons circle jerking to how they're the victims of left wing conspiracies is probably not art by any reasonable definition.

Finally, conservatives will have their Angels in America:
Superman and Buffy dry humping while they read a couple
of FBI agents' texts. Know your audience, right?

Today I old-ed.

I'm sure that the crushing realization of one's oldness comes at different times for different people. For some for it's the first grey hair, for others it's saying "oof" when they stand up. I've had these and more, but have thus far been able to pretend they weren't there.

For still others it's not until they
realize they've picked the wrong grail.

Remember it's quantity, not quality.

However, the while paying at the register of the coffee shop near my work I-what? Yeah, I'm talking about a personal experience this time instead of Star Trek or politics or something. After one thousand three hundred and eighteen of these of these posts I'm allowed to get a little self-indulgent every now and then. But I'll give you the same option to bail out I give you when I'm about to launch into spoilers for something or fall down a rabbit hole about video games or something.

Pictured: me now. I
might as well accept it.

Still with me? Super. Now, I believe I was about to transform right before your very eyes into Andy Rooney. I ordered a coffee and the barista asked me if I check in. Because I live in Santa Cruz California, this question has two contextually possible meanings. One, an emotional check in which would have been somewhat outside the parameters of a customer/barista relationship. Not impossible mind you, because again, this is Santa Cruz. Or two, he was asking me if I participated in the coffee shops rewards program.

Weirdly, an emotional check-in
might have seemed less intrusive.

It turned out to be the latter and this is where I old-ed. I said no, and when he pressed said something like "thanks, I don't do those things." I was polite, I am, after all a quarter Canadian. But the exchange kind of set me off. Not like a public outburst or anything, but in that internal stewing I and so many partially Canadian people are so good at. I mean, I'm not one of those off-the grid in a bunker kind of people, but there are limits to how deeply I want a coffee shop to be a part of my life. As far as I'm concerned the relationship ends when they hand over my latte. 

"Hey it's Dave from Peet's Coffee, I was
just calling to see how that latte worked out."

And I know they're not asking me to share deep, personal information, it's just an email address, but still it just feels kind of icky that I'd be doing a faceless corporation's marketing research for them. Yeah, it turns out they're not actually interested in giving us free coffee, they just want access to our buying habits, but I'm on to them. I don't know, maybe it was an overreaction (it definitely was), or maybe it was just a fundamental (but well-deserved) cynicism about the hyper-capitalist culture we live in.

Either way, it was a frustration that I am certain comes from the same place as complaints about loud music and how kids wear their dungarees too low.

Look at 'em, always on their cellular phones,
twittering at each other. Probably making
plans to hang out on my lawn later.