Category Archives: pop culture

Robot Dogs, the return

Last night we watched the pilot ep of the new Bionic Woman. A review I read (Tom Shales?) reminded me of what was missing – and by “missing” I mean “not there,” I certainly don’t mean “lacking.”

In the original series, Jaime Sommers had a bionic dog named Max.

I searched my archives because I was pretty sure I posted about bionic dogs a couple of years ago. I found the post, “In the future we will all have…robot dogs,” but notice I forgot (repressed?) Max.

70’s television writers always seemed to pull the robotic dog out of the Big Bag of Hackneyed Plot Devices when their show started to go to ground, didn’t they? I’d try to answer the question of which came first, a show’s implosion or the addition of a robotic dog, but it seems a rather “chicken or the egg” proposition. Plus, much like the last time, I’ve gotten distracted thinking about zombie dogs and already lost interest in the subject.

Ponch and John on the Planet of the Apes

If we don’t go to the movies tonight, maybe I’ll get out my pixelvision camera and make my own movie. We bought a lot of Chips action figures from a clearance bin so we can create a world of Ponch and John clones.

I think the Ponch and John might be fixing Georgetown University Barbie up on a blind date with the Charleton Heston/Planet of the Apes doll. Later, maybe the Cornelius and the Ozzie Osborn dolls can crucify her!

[there were two versions of this post in the archives. I think the one I’d previously restored was a draft, so I’m replacing it with this one].

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

People like to tell me their problems, and that’s okay. However, I’ve come to the realization that people (women, specifically) also like to tell me about their undergarments.

About a half an hour ago I was in the ladies room, trying to get the automatic sink to let me wash my hands. The woman standing next to me – who I have never ever seen in my entire life – turned to me and stage-whispered “My panties have been inside out all day, do you think that’s okay?” Being an expert on these things, I assured her it was fine and then ran like hell.

The whole exchange got me to thinking. The Sex and the City underwear query, the inside-out-underwear woman, what does it all mean? I remembered an incident back in October where the waitress at the Waffle House in Staunton Virginia chose to inform the cook that she wasn’t wearing any underwear while she was refreshing my coffee. So many weird panty-related incidents, clearly increasing in frequency. I wish I could figure out what it all means.

No, I take that back. I have zero desire to know what this all means. Zip. None. Nada. Forget I even mentioned it.

If they make it, I will watch

I enjoyed the Jaws reissue on DVD so much the other night that I felt compelled to watch the Jaws 2 reissue. I rented this one, I did not buy it. Let’s be clear – I may be crazy but I’m not stupid.

Jaws 2 was pretty awful. I knew it was bad going in, but I really didn’t remember it being this, well, awful.

There’s a fine line between bad and awful. But if you can transcend mere awfulness, you can reach the sublime state of Bad, which is more good than bad, really.

I believe I’ve explained all this to you before. My problem was that I had 4 mixed up with Jaws 3/3-D (the one at Sea World) which was was a bad/good interlude bordering on Bad before the franchise descended into bad/awful territory in Jaws 4D, wherein our hero pursues Brody’s widow and a drunk pilot played by Michael Caine to the ends of the earth.

You think the shark isn’t our hero? Oh baby, you haven’t seen all 4 of these in a row in a while have you? Yikes.

This took a deeper toll on me than the time we watched all of the Planet of the Apes movies – in their entirety – more than once over the course of one weekend. I thought I was made of stronger stuff but clearly I was mistaken. How do I know this? Because after I finished viewing Jaws 2 I got it into my head that watching a series of inferior sequels in one stretch was a good idea.

I not only watched Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, but I laughed. I didn’t laugh nearly as hard at Ace as I did at my next selection, the unintentionally hilarious Halloween 2.

I swear to you Donald Pleasance is method acting and has apparently been given the instruction to feel the pain of Cornelius in Escape from the Planet the Apes. He delivers a line and then shuffles off in this lurching way I can’t describe. Why does he walk that way? We never see his feet, maybe he’s wearing McDowell’s Ape-suit feet, necessitating the otherwise illogical loping/shuffling gait but still not explaining why he swings his arms that way. I simply don’t get it. Neither does Jamie Lee Curtis, which may be why her character spends the whole film hiding not only from her brother, but everyone else in the cast.

Do not try this at home, that’s all I have to say.

The Ivory Tower

I just passed by a pair of colleagues deep in conversation. They weren’t discussing a dangerous and complex scientific experiment or a social research project that could change the face of welfare. Oh, heaven’s no! Their intense discussion amounted to one man trying to explain the concept of the TV show survivor to the other. This was all the more entertaining because neither one of them seemed to have the foggiest notion of what they were talking about. God bless academia!

While I’m on the topic of survivor…
I was deeply disappointed by the outcome of survivor 2. I mean, I wanted Tina to win, but I really didn’t find all of the shenanigans leading up to the big announcement compelling. Or even interesting.

Make a totem and throw it over a cliff as a gesture, as a way to give back to the land? They were right, they were giving back to the land. Littering is – technically – giving back to the land. But it’s still littering. Was I the only one deeply scarred by that Indian in the “Keep America Beautiful” commercials from the 70s? I didn’t expect a great environmental message from a show that allowed goofy Colby to pillage the Great Barrier Reef for coral souvenirs, but still….

And what was up with that walk past the torches where they remembered their fallen comrades in cheesy slow-mo video montages? It’s not like Mad Dog and company died or something – they just did Letterman and Good Morning America, for pete’s sake.

My big question is, if that final vote count was live, why was it dark as night in LA? According to my watch it was 6:40 p.m. and the sun has not set by then. Did this not strike anyone as odd?