Author: thad

Tooms

2012-09-25, 8:28 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, TV

Tooms is a great example of how an episode can be fucking brilliant even if it's riddled with plotholes.

First, there's Tooms himself. Last we saw him he was preparing himself a new nest. No reference to that, and indeed his psychologist doesn't even know about the nest thing and is legitimately curious when he sees him making strips of newspaper late in the episode.

Now look, I can totally see the shrink dismissing Mulder's accusations out of hand. I get that. But he should at least be aware of them. His reaction at the end of the episode shouldn't be "Oh, I didn't know you were interested in art"; it should be the slow and horrible realization that all that crazy shit Mulder was saying is actually true and this guy is about to eat his liver.

(Why Tooms is finally unable to resist the urge any longer at this moment? Plot convenience; no other reason.)

Plenty of other things like that throughout. Tooms travels through a sewer but then he hides in a closet and nobody notices the smell. The key to the mystery is a body he hid because it could prove his identity, which they ultimately do based on dental X-rays. So does he not ordinarily use his teeth when he rips people's livers out? Does he ordinarily use a knife or his fingernails or something and he just used his teeth on this guy for some unexplained reason? Was he in a hurry? If he was in a hurry, how did he manage to hide him in concrete? Were dental records even a typical crime investigation tool in the 1930's when this murder is said to have taken place? None of it makes a lick of sense.

And that he gets let out in the first place -- look, I don't care how fucking crazy Mulder's "he's 100 years old and can elongate his body" story sounds, the dude has a room full of serial killer trophies and tried to murder an FBI agent. Guys like that don't just get discharged after a few months.

I could go on -- his frameup of Mulder's pretty half-assed too, and there are any number of other false notes. But all of that? Fuck it. Because this is still a great episode. Tooms continues to be one of the greatest monsters in the entire run of X-Files. He, Mulder, Scully, and the supporting cast are all in truly fine form here. And the direction -- wonderful, creepy stuff, building toward a claustrophobic climax and brilliantly creative, satisfyingly violent resolution.

As far as mythology, this is the episode that introduces Assistant Director Walter Skinner -- essentially another government bureaucrat standing in Mulder and Scully's way and trying to shut down the X-Files, but played so ably by Mitch Pilleggi that he would later become a major character. Really, you can tell that by watching -- this guy is a one-off but Pilleggi is just so damn good that he turned into something else entirely.

And the Cigarette Smoking Man is back, hanging around Skinner's office, being sinister and not saying a word until he gets a single line at the end of the episode, Silent Bob-like. I think my favorite part is that Mulder and Scully never even acknowledge that he's there. There is no "Excuse me, but who the hell is that guy, anyway?" Hell, if you just saw this episode you could easily believe that he was a figment of Skinner's imagination.

So, in conclusion: Tooms is awesome, even if the script is really kind of a damn mess.

TV Computers are Stupid

2012-09-24, 5:17 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, Tech, TV

Last night I watched the first episode of Alphas. It's a decent enough setup; there's potential there despite its heavy reliance on an Idiot Plot.

But there was this one scene -- okay, they're watching a video. And then it cuts out. And the autistic computer expert kid goes and fiddles with some stuff behind the TV and fixes it, and then explains "It was the VGA display port."

Okay, first of all: nobody computer-savvy, least of all somebody with autism, would use the phrase "VGA display port". Because while VGA is technically a port for a display, DisplayPort is the name of a completely different interface.

Second: How the fuck could it be a problem with the VGA port if the video was working fine and then cut out? Did somebody step on the cable and accidentally yank it out of the TV? If so, how the hell come we don't see that happen and nobody makes any reference to it?

Third: VGA is only video. If the VGA cable got unhooked, why did it cut off the audio, too?

(The one thing that is perfectly plausible: a room full of people who are so dumb that they need a computer genius to check whether a cable is unplugged. That, sadly, is perfectly true to life.)

It's a little thing, and not really important to the story. But it's just so damn weird. Why is it in there? And why is it nonsense? Why couldn't it have been something that actually made sense? "You changed the channel instead of turning up the volume; you have to switch it back to VGA In." Something like that. Easy.

Here's the thing: fact checker is an actual profession. There are dudes whose whole job is to make sure that the physics on Big Bang Theory or the biology on Bones is more-or-less plausible.

And yet Bones clearly straight-up does not give a fuck whether its computers behave plausibly.

Last year had an episode where the new Moriarty character booby-trapped a skeleton so that when Angela scanned it into her computer it would load a virus onto it and make it catch on fire. (In last week's episode, Angela could not even pronounce "parameterized" correctly.)

Now, I get that, for a variety of reasons, TV shows and movies may not want to actually show Mac or Windows interfaces, and instead do some kind of MofOS mockup. That's fine and understandable. My complaint isn't "That's a fictional computer interface", it's "That computer interface does not seem to operate on any kind of rules or logic." Indeed, it's entirely possible to design a fictional computer interface that looks and behaves more or less like a real computer should; my recollection of last season of Dexter is that they did a pretty solid job of this, with only a couple weird moments.

Another thing I don't get is how they still get away with this nonsense in an age where everyone has a computer.

It was one thing in the '80's and '90's when you could pretty much bullshit computers doing absolutely anything and most of your audience would be none the wiser. But in this day and age even your most out-of-touch viewer most likely owns a computer and has used Facebook.

And knows that when you look for a person, your computer does not say "SEARCHING ..." in a giant stupid angular font that takes up half the screen, then start cycling through black-and-white photos at a rate of several per second while making stupid deet-deet-deet noises until it finally finds the person you're looking for, then make more stupid beeps in time to the giant red flashing "MATCH FOUND" text across the screen, then pull up a page with white all-caps text in the Spider-Man font against a black background.

People own computers. They know what computers do and how they behave, at least on a basic, cursory level. So how come TV shows still depict computers as these flashy magic boxes?

I'd kinda like to write an episode of some TV show where a guy comes into one of these offices and then starts turning around with a quizzical look on his face every time a computer makes a stupid noise. And eventually starts asking people what the hell is wrong with their computers. "Why does it keep making that noise? Ugh, how can you stand being in a room with that all day? Jesus Christ, how can you read that all-caps, weirdly-spaced font?"

Happy Chuck Jones Day!

2012-09-21, 9:37 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Music, TV

Bending the rules on tonight's Frank Zappa post, but probably not as much as that time I used it to talk about Manos.

Per ComicsAlliance, today would have been Chuck Jones's 100th birthday. Click on over there to watch Duck Amuck. As for me, I'm going with Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa performing You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch with the Max Weinberg 7 on Conan O'Brien in 2000:

As Conan notes, that song's featured on Dweezil's excellent album, Automatic.

Putting the "Turd" in "Turducken"

2012-09-21, 6:36 pm
Categories: Announcements

Well, not really, it came out okay.

But I finally decided to try my hand at beer battering, and a word of advice:

If you find a recipe that suggests equal amounts of flour and beer, it should be labeled pancake batter, not the kind of batter you put on vegetables to fry them in.

You Are What You Is

2012-09-20, 10:25 pm
Categories: Music

An a capella rendition by the Persuasions.

Pretty fucking cool, if you ask me.

Per Wikipedia, Zappa funded the Persuasions' first LP. One more thing I love about Frank: he loved good music in all genres, and was generous with his money when it came to helping talented artists. (Could be bullshit, of course, given that it (1) is Wikipedia and (2) has a "[citation needed]" next to it, but even if this story's apocryphal, we know he helped guys like Alice Cooper get started.)

This is from the album Frankly a Capella, released in 2000 and still available. I'm a big advocate of supporting your local record store, but if you don't have one anymore, well, here's a damn Amazon link.

Independent

2012-09-20, 9:07 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

Well, I did it. I filed the paperwork and I'm not going to be a Democrat anymore.

I've swung back and forth from Democrat to Green to Democrat, but I've always considered myself an independent and any time anyone's ever asked me what my political affiliation that's what I've always said. Sometimes I've qualified it -- "liberal independent", something like that.

I never really wanted to be a Democrat; I only ever registered as one to vote in primaries. (Arizona passed a ballot measure in 1998 allowing independents and people registered to third parties with no primary to choose a major-party primary to vote in, but due to a technicality it was interpreted to mean "any primary except a Presidential primary". Which is stupid, because obviously everybody who voted in favor of the initiative intended for it to apply to Presidential primaries because it's not as if independents and third parties were really champing at the bit to vote in the primary for sheriff or Congressman, but that's what we wound up with.)

It's a technicality and I don't suppose it really matters. In four years maybe I'll switch back to (D) to vote in another primary. Or maybe I'll go (R) for a change and try to get the least-crazy Republican candidate nominated -- I may not be wild about guys like Huntsman or Johnson, but I think everybody would be a lot better off if the Republican Party went back to being helmed by candidates who weren't completely fucking nuts.

But, truth is, I was never really comfortable calling myself a Democrat, because I really cannot stand the Democratic Party. The Republicans are odious but they're doing what they're supposed to do; it's the Democrats who talk a good game about reining in special interests and respecting civil liberties and then turn around and piss all over those promises.

I knew Obama was going to disappoint me in some cases, but I never expected him to disappoint me so much. I thought worst-case scenario was that he'd be another Clinton. Instead, he's like Clinton without the political acumen.

His signature achievement has been the passage of a healthcare bill designed by the Heritage Foundation -- without a single Republican vote. I'll grant it's better than what we had, but that's a pretty piss-poor campaign slogan.

He backed off his support for due process before he was even elected President; in '08 he said he'd filibuster any attempt to grant immunity to the telecoms who aided the Bush Administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program, then he turned around and voted for telecom immunity -- and when the liberal base that had gotten him nominated complained, he affected that condescending air of his and said we had misunderstood and he had never said he would oppose telecom immunity.

He's certainly proven, since becoming President, that he's not so concerned with due process after all. Indeed, as the EFF's Trevor Timm recently observed, the Democratic Party Platform of 2008 explicitly condemned warrantless surveillance, and the 2012 platform dropped that language entirely. I guess worrying about due process makes it harder to order drone strikes against American citizens and soak cancer survivors in urine while searching for nefarious objects like 4-ounce bottles of liquid.

So I've been wrestling with myself for months about whether I'd grit my teeth and vote for Obama a second time. (Third, counting the '08 primary -- though I'd have probably voted Edwards if he'd still be in the race. Now there's a politician who's become a massive disappointment for reasons that have nothing to do with policy.) And I think the last straw was the Justice Department's recent announcement that it wouldn't be filing charges against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Not only did they announce they wouldn't charge him, they announced it before the November election. Polls are showing a tight race between Arpaio and challenger Paul Penzone (with independent Mike Stauffer polling around 5%) -- it is entirely possible that the Obama Justice Department just got Sheriff Joe reelected.

Maybe if I were in a swing state I'd grit my teeth and vote Obama anyway -- I have to admit he's better than Romney and, under the circumstances, I hope he wins.

But my state's votes are going to Romney, period -- even the pundit class has pretty much given up the "maybe Arizona will be a swing state!" nonsense they pulled the last three elections.

Absolutely any vote I make is going to be a protest vote. And under the circumstances, I'd rather my protest vote go to someone who I actually like.

If only I could figure out who that is.

Penn Says

2012-09-19, 10:20 pm
Categories: Music, Politics

Penn Jillette discussing Zappa Plays Zappa and Dweezil's technical proficiency. Kinda cuts off weirdly at the end, which is odd because it's from the official Penn Says account.

I don't think I'd say that Dweezil is a better player than Frank, but I think Frank probably would. Frank was a phenomenal guitar player but he was a composer first. Dweezil is most definitely a guitar player first.

You know what I wish I could see? Penn and Frank yammering about politics. I imagine they'd have a lot to agree on but Frank would be less kind to Corporate America. That's just my guess as Some Guy With a Website, though.

"Some Guy With a Website" is a phrase coined by August J Pollak, of someguywithawebsite.com.