Last Words of 2008!

OK so here we are at the very tail end of the year 2008. Two-Thousand and Eight Years since the last transition of how man keeps track of his own made concept Time. Well really something like 2053 years the calendar has been used (See Julian lendar). If your Jewish it's still 5769 So Party On! You've got plenty of the year left! This past year has been pretty good to me for the most part. I'll have some of the boring details on my website Nesredna's Knook on my Year In Review page(s) there. I should have it updated in a few days or so.

RANDOM PICTURE:

So Happy New Year all 4 or 5 (if that many) of you who read this silly Blog. I've been in shows with some of you, I've laughed with some of you, I may have cried with one or two of you, and one of you I might have... well never mind that I'll just edit this bit later. LOL!

Womanizer Baby?

BRITNEY SPEARS
WOMANIZER!

OK so the latest Bright-knees Speared hit is called Womanizer. It is a pretty catchy tune, but I have noticed that it is a little contradictory or maybe ironic. Especially when she sings "Womanizer OH, You're a Womanizer Baby". Then again what do you expect from a Pop-Tart who is trying to make a comeback and become Madonna Jr. Did I just type that out loud in a blog? Silly me.

Have you seen the video for this song?

It starts off with Britney making breakfast (scantily clad in lingerie) for her "Womanizer Baby" and switches between that and her buck naked in a sauna. I would love to know how to make those square eggs she makes.

It then breezes through some scenarios of Britney in various roles in the day of the life of her Womanizing Man, her "Womanizer Baby". She goes from a sexually harassed co-worker to a redhot suductress waitress, to sexy pantsless chauffeur back to the quiet stay at home wiffie. Man how does she drive like that?


I'm not sure which character I like best the waitress or the co-worker? I'm leaning toward the co-worker because of her smooth moves. Then again it could just be the glasses and tight skirt.

New Threads

In 2009 my two local MLB Teams: The Washington Nationals and The Baltimore Orioles will be wearing new uniforms.


For the Orioles they are only changing their road jerseys back to the old "Baltimore" script like they had back in the 60s-70s. To be honest I hadn't noticed since I rarely see any O's games. I really hate it when they wear the hats with the "O's" I prefer the ones that have either the character Oriole's "face" or the ones with the full body oriole.


The Nats will have a more noticeable change or two. The left arm patch will be the interlocking DC logo instead of the commemorative stadium patch they have had. The "Washington" on the Road jersey's will be in script instead of the block letters it had been. An alternate jersey will be a blue top with the "DC" logo on the front.

Do those models come with the uniforms?
I think they should, and Lastings Milledge thinks they should too.

Here is the initial story on the Nats official site:
http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081106&content_id=3668093&vkey=news_was&fext=.jsp&c_id=was

And a good take on the new uniforms on the Blog NATS320
http://nats320.blogspot.com/2008/11/2009-new-uniform-unveiling-espn-zone.html

And an update:http://nats320.blogspot.com/2008/11/more-on-new-uniforms.html

The Baltimore Sun on the O's New Uniforms:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/baseball/bal-sp.os5023jan23,1,7145811.story?coll=bal-baseball-storyutil

Dancing With The Candidates?

Take this lovely Dancing With The Stars photo of Pop-Singer Mario (Who? What is his full name? Is that it?) and Karina Smirnoff. Again Who?

I don't watch the show so I didn't see any of their moves on the dance floor/ stage/ TV studio. I first saw a parody of this photo Monday Night on a blog or a chat board, and I of course got some emails that had it as an attachment. It is a nice photoshop parody and here it is.


Wow uncanny, so why is Barack Obama dancing with Tina Fey? OK I know it's Sarah Palin. At any rate it is a very good photoshop job. Congrats to whoever did it. By the way I had a Dickens of a time trying to Google the parody. Maybe I was checking with the wrong words or maybe it has been deleted from some places. I don't know, but I ended up using a copy from an email attachment. Speaking of Dancing with the Stars, I still don't watch it. Even when they had:


Marie Osmond, or Lisa Rinna, I was tempted to watch it then. I was also tempted to watch it some other time but I forget who the stars were that I wanted to see .

Personally I'd rather dance with Lisa if I could dance (I'd have to get by Harry Hamlin on that score, the lucky dog) than Karina even though she has slightly nicer looking legs. Yeah I know, Paula Abdul says she can teach anybody how to dance. Hey maybe I should take her up on that. Teach me to dance Paula!

Facebook Fun or Princess Bride Classic Stuff

I found a humorous picture on Facebook.com.


Ah a famous quote immortalized in it's literal sense. For those of you who have been under a rock for about 20-25 years or don't get to the cinema much. The quote "Hello my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!" is from the movie The Princess Bride uttered by the character of the same name Inigo Montoya portrayed by Mandy Patinkin who starred in the TV shows Dead Like Me and Criminal Minds.



Hmm must be a popular idea. OH Well. Hey I like this red version.

Fusion Man or Ace Mccloud?

Wow! Did you hear about the Swiss guy who is the first man to fly across the English Channel using a homemade single engine jet-powered wing? His name is Yves Rossy AKA: Fusion Man.



A cool site that gives more info can be found at http://www.jet-man.com/prod/index_en.html. More sites can be found by google searching Fusion Man some of them have videos of some of his flights. When I first heard about the historical flight I thought Cool then I saw a brief video clip and a photo and it reminded me of a Cartoon Show from the 1980s called The Centurions.



The seires launched a line of toys from Kenner and a comic book series by DC. I'm not sure which came first the toys or the cartoon. The Centurions was set in the soon to happen future. It was about a government type force that had a trio of super service men, one who was in charge of land operations, one sea operations and one air operations. Each had a super power battle suit that was very hi-tech. Ace McCloud was the Air man. I don't recall watching the series but I did sell the toys as I was working retail from the mid 1980s (around the time this franchise started) to the early '90s. I was pretty familiar with them and many other lines of toys/cartoon series that [Ninja Turtles] were very [He-Man] popular at the time.



While trying to find some info and pics of Fusion Man I cam across this website http://www.geekologie.com/2008/04/post_11.php which had a similar type contraption, called the Gryphon Glider. The GG looks cooler and looks like it's military connected. Maybe it's not but with it being stelth, it sure looks sweet.



I gotta get me one of those.

Cote de Pablo AKA: Agent Ziva David on NCIS

Man OH Man. it is hard to get Cote de Pablo off of my mind.


That didn't help.



That didn't either. Man what a gorgeous smile she has. That is as far as I will go on that for now. OH Well I guess I'll have a babeworm in my head the rest of the night.

NCIS got back.

Before I get to the meat of this post I noticed something in the first two episodes of Season 6 of NCIS in relation to some factual errors, which I think are intentional for military safety and or legal mumbo jumbo. First in the closing of season 5 they announced the team would be broken up and Tony would be assigned to the Ronald Reagan an Aircraft Carrier (which is number CVN 76). In the season 6 opener, which is some 4 months later, they mention he was transferred to anothercarrier "The Seahawk" (which is a fictional ship for the purpose of the series). In one scene in Abby's lab she is looking at a post card from Tony. I had to pause my tape (as I was out that night at auditions) to check out what the postcard said, she flips it over to show the picture of a ship which is labeled "USS SEAHAWK CVN 65" OK but there really is a CVN 65 and it is The Enterprise. I got a kick out of that.Well now this week they have Tony still on the "Seahawk" and in some cool shots of showing the ship, including the flight deck showing the fan tail where the huge ship number is. This one is 74, upon checking CVN 74 is the USS John C. Stennis. Now they have used the name Skyhawk before, but you can't always see the identifying marks. Oh well before I go to far and forget my original intention for this post I have noticed they show plenty of bare backs in this show.

From an earlier episode in season 4? when McGee goes down to Abby's lab and sees Abby (Pauley Perrette) changing into her Goth clothes, here is what he sees.



And on the Season 6 Opener Ziva (Cote de Pablo) did a lounge act number in this nice slinky number.



Yup Ziva has a real nice rear end.

Getting Psyched for NCIS Night.

I decided I needed to get psyched for NCIS on Tuesday, since the DVDSpot.com news was sooooo horrible. But the Refugee site is building up fast. As one of the posts on the old site said something to the effect "Rome was destoryed in a day" (or"Fell in one day"). So I thought I'd cheer myself up by looking for a babe to post a pic of. So How about a pic of Pauley Perrette who Plays Abby Sciuto on NCIS. I found this one with a google search. It came from a myspace page that claims to be Pauley herself. Well I'm not 100% sold on that since many people try to impersonate celebs on myspace. Some celebs are there but I'm not sure if this one is the real McCoy. I'm almost tempted to try to "friend" her to find out, but how would I know? I know she used to have a personal blog, and then an official blog on CBS.com well about a year ago, both were abandoned due to wacko stalker type people. She might think I was one, oh well, I guess I'll never know. Now I'm not even sure if it is her in the pic, if it is her maybe she'll see this and let me know? Ha! RIGHT!Here is "Pauley" with Hugh Hefner. As a Playboy Bunny? Whaaaaaah? Hubba Hubba!

Why CNET Why?

It was a sad Monday today 29 September, 2008. A beloved website designed to keep track of DVD collections was given the old heave-ho by the corporate weasels that had bought it about a year or so ago. I am talking about one of the best, if not the best, DVD collection tracking websites. DVDSpot.com was an excellent resource of DVDs that are available world-wide. Each entry for a particular title had just about any and all information you would want to have for a DVD release (so long as it was a legitimate release, no bootlegs or pirated copies were allowed). I have yet to find a compatible collection website for other hobbies, or even for DVDs. There are a few that come close, but I really loved the feel of The DVDSpot.

Well during the day on Monday 29 September, the following message was posted on the main home page of my beloved DVD tracking website from the current corporate owners of the site CNET.com. Red text on a bright yellow background.


"On Wednesday October 15th DVDSpot will be closed permanently. This decision was made to allow us to focus on other great web properties. We sincerely appreciate everyone's contribution to the DVDSpot community and hope you enjoyed the free services it provided. We understand many people will not want to lose their personal collection data, so we remind you that you can export that data to file by going to Membership Tools while logged in and clicking the Export to File button. This will create a file with all movies in your Owned and Watched lists. Also keep in mind the editor system for approving DVD additions and edits has been disabled, so no new or edited DVDs will be added."

To say that this angered many of the regular users would be an understatement. The site also has a forum board, that I visit and participate in on a daily (when I can) basis. It has many people who share a common interest, the collection and watching of movies and TV shows on DVD.


Similar sites and forum boards have come and gone. One that stood out was called Guzzlefish.com (a petstore website occupies that domain name now), even though it had a neometal/punk type feel to it, the GF site was a useful site. Unfortunately I didn't take full advantage of it when it was around. It had categories for music and the VHS format in addition to DVDs. I took a break from it for a year or so, returned (never completely filled out my music collection or videos) and then 6 months to a year or so later it was gone. For a while there was a forum board website called Guzzlefish Forums Refugee which was an attempt to give former members a nostalgic feel on a different site. Well the traffic on that site died down and so did the site. Now the url to that site, which was somebodies personal ID name from the old GuzzleFish site, is some sort of personal website of some guy (I guess the same guy) and his hobbies which I think include hunting and para-military groups or something. DVDSpot.com has followed in the website death march.

Good news is that some of the die hard moderators who helped on the DVDSpot have started a new Refugee Forum for DVDSpot members at bulletpointreview.com. Many of the regular DVDSpot folks had been old GuzzleFish folks so a lot of them have tried all sorts of sites. Most agree that The Spot was the best. Others have said that DVDProfiler is better, well it does have the offline aspect to it, in addition to the online database. There is also DVDAFicianado.com (DVDAF.com) which not as many like, mostly because it is slow to get updates, hard to make additions (or wait for approval to make the additions) and it looks awful. A semi-recent update made it even more unbareable to use.

Well I guess it's back to the slide rule, colored construction paper and paste.

Primeval: A reason or two to watch it

Lately on Saturday evenings on BBC America (in the 9:00 hour when TORCHWOOD used to show) I've been watching PRIMEVAL which is similar in the fact that there is a temporal portal nearby. The big difference is the rift in Primeval is actually many portals and they appear and disappear randomly, where as Torchwood there is just one time rift and it isn't the only plot devise. The ads for Primeval describe it as TORCHWOOD meets JURASSIC PARK and they are sort of right. Anyway it is a show I really enjoy and will have to get the DVD of it soon. The region 1 version of Series 1 & 2 comes out soon.

After I started seeing promos for Primeval I felt I had to watch it. One of the many reasons to watch is Hannah Spearritt.



Well worth the admission price I'd say.

Oh and in case you weren't convinced that chasing dinosaurs and fictional predatory creatures from the future was worth watching the show. Early on they showed us this;


Sorry guys Hannah doesn't run around half naked every week. They haven't shown her like that much any more and BBC America is now into Season (Series as they say in the UK) 2. In the UK they are gearing up for Series 3, which means it will be next fall when we see it in the states I suppose. Meanwhile over at TORCHWOOD they have started filimg series 3 which BBC will start in the spring of 09 and I would guess BBC America would start a few weeks to about a month later.

Monster Ark on Sci-Fi Channel

Where do I start with this? I watched the movie Monster Ark on the Sci-Fi Channel. It sounded a little better than it ended up. It was OK but it could be considered a modern B-Movie about ancient history and archaeology ala Raiders of the Lost Ark. One of the selling features is it stars Renée O'Connor of Xena: Warrior Princess fame (she will join her Hercules/ Xena co-stars in an up coming movie for next year called Bitch Slap)


WARNING: This Review contains Spoilers!

OK in a nutshell after discovering an ancient Biblical scroll (which turns out to be the "Original" copy of the book of Genesis) in the same area the Dead Sea Scrolls were found an archaeology professor teams up with his ex-wife (O'Connor) to find Noah's First Ark that's right according to the text before the famous flood adventure Noah was sent on a mission from God. This first ark of Noah's was to transport and destroy (or eternally imprison) an evil creature. Well guess what? These archaeology folks unleash this evil creature back into the world, and have to track it down.

I thought Renée O'Connor was OK in this, but I don't think she really fit the part. At first I thought it should have been played by a slightly older actress. She is mid to late 30s and I thought the character should have been late 40s.


This film would have been a little better if they had cut out some blatant Raiders of the Lost Ark ideas. I won't give the exact details but what do the words: Map Room/ use a staff to find hidden room, topple a giant statue to knock a hole in a wall and crate up an ancient power source and put into storage, make you think of?

To make the young guys drool the movie also has Amanda Crew in it as one of the professor's graduate students. Normally I wouldn't mind what she was wearing, usually shorts and a t-shirt or sleeveless shirt, however, in many of the areas of the world where they were supposed to be - Iraq for one - she was dressed way to skimpy.


Even with ripping off Raiders I liked this film. It was OK, but it is a B-Grade film. You also have to do some big suspending of your disbelief, even though the film is a little preachy about personal beliefs. Things like being able to just up and go to the next area you want from an ancient map, even within areas of Iraq the US military has problems patrolling, deciphering an ancient text that is slightly different from previous similar documets, being able to decipher more of the document overnight when it took 3 weeks to figure out only about 1/2 of it previously, being escorted by a military detachment and being able to tell the commanding officer "lets go here" with no problems,

I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

NOTE: The Renée O'Connor pics are from Xena: Warrior Princess episodes. Yes the Indiana Jones like one too. Oh The Amanda Crew pic? That came from IMDB.com.

100th UGH!

A couple of days ago it was the Seattle Mariners who got the dubious dishonor of getting their 100th loss of the season. Well after last night's rained-out "Fan Appreciation" game (in DC which was to be vs. The Florida Marlins) was canceled before it had a chance to start, the Washington Nationals went to Philli and got their 100th loss of the season. Last season all the naysayers were saying the Nats would lose 100 games that season well last year they only lost 89 and were in 4th not 5th place. Well this season they are still in last (5th place) and will finish with a minimum of 100 losses with 102 maximum loses (Last night's rained out game means they will only have 161 games played not 162)


Rigth now the Mariners have 101 loses with 2 more games to play I guess, I know the nationals play the PITA Phillies two more times. Hopefully the Nats can pull one or two wins this weekend. The only other team in danger of losing 100 games is the San Diego Padres, at 97 loses but with just 2 more games they squeak under 100.

September Gone?

Holy "Bleep" Batman September is almost over and I didn't do diddly squat with this. OK I did update my "CDs" Listened to sidebar, and I think a blog link or two. other than that Mrs. Lincoln...

Moving ON, IN or OUT?

Wow almost the end of August and I haven't updated here. That is mostly because of my move at the beginning of the month. All my time has been devoted to unpacking, well and also some rehearsing and performances of My Emperor's New Clothes. Did I mention that here? Well if not I guess I will someday in reminiscing about it. Anywho, due to scheduling errors and my cell phone being packed away in the moving truck I still don't have my cable/internet hooked up. Technically my cable should have been transferred to my apartment as a simple move, but I think the Comcast boneheads screwed it up. I know the guy I was going to have do the work, that my apartment complex uses was going to have me cancel my older cable and then start fresh. I ended up calling Comcast directly to get a clearer idea of what my new service would be, even though it will cost me slightly more than what the other guy was quoting. Why can't they offer the price he was offering? Anyway it is supposed to be just a simple transfer the cable and add the internet and now add a landline phone (apparently the 3-in-1 package costs the same as just having the twofer of cable and internet, weird).

Well next Tuesday (26 August) is when Comcast is supposed to come by and install the internet and phone line and transfer the cable. Hopefully things will be OK then and I can forget about all these problems. Good thing I have credit on my Comcast account, but unfortunately I have the credit because I overpaid last time. UGH! Another weird thing is when I try to check things online it seems that my old account was plain canceled not transferred so if that is really the case I am more steamed, but since things should be fixed on Tuesday I should be fine after that.

Left Turns, Alternate Realities and Stuff

Last week I watched the Doctor Who episode Left Turn on Sci-Fi Channel. Without giving too much away and without giving a full blown review I will just say it was about alternate realities. The episode had sort of a Sliding Doors feel to it, taking a left turn instead of a right turn. See what happens when you do that? I really should get around to doing more reviewing here when I get the chance. I really haven't of late due to equal parts apartment hunting and sheer laziness. I have succeeded in both. I am super lazy and found an apartment.

This weeks episode of Doctor Who is part one of the season 4 finale. From what I've seen and heard it is a recent past companionsfest. As with many episodes of this latest incarnation of the good doctor I am both looking forward to it and dreading it. Looking forward to it because I'm a Whovian (or Wholigan) and dreading it because they are bound to have overdone something and not done enough of something else.

Books, Books, Books And More Books!

Recently I had been having problems with one of the book tracking sites I use, bibliophil.org. First I was having problems logging in, it turns out I was trying to use what I thought was my password except I had an extra character. UGH all these passwords for every single little website. Then their forums go down, well actually it has been taken down now due to problems with hackers and spammers. No problem I rarely use the forum anyway, but the list I tend to refer to now and then, although not very often.

Anyway I had intended to use listal.com as an alternate several months back, but haven't gotten around to populating it too much. There you can also track Movies, TV Shows, CDs and I think make lists of stuff. Then the realization that I didn't have a reliable back-up to my collection as listed on bibliophil sort of sucked. To complicate matters some (besides the fact that I don't have ALL my books listed on any site) the bibliophil site was down for at least a day, maybe it was down for longer, I'm not sure.

Well the time came to search for another reliable book tracking site (similar to my fave DVD site DVDSpot.com, and the long gone GuzzleFish.com Multi-media site) I found an article or two and a blog post or three for possible sites and of course kept running into my longtime book site enemy LibraryThing.com but I don't like that site. The main reason I don't like it is, it is only free if you have less than 200 books to list. If you have more than 200 books you need to upgrade to a paid membership ($10 yearly or $20 Lifetime I think). I also kept running into some of these book community trading/book club sites that would be cool if I wanted to trade books around, but I'm a selfish bastard and want to keep my books. I suppose for some of my books I may sometime trade, give away or sell them, but I don't want that as my main focus.

Long story short I found a site that suits my needs and is similar in someways to bibliophil.org, except it seems to be more reliable and probably gets updated faster. It is called Goodreads.com and it seems to be pretty user friendly. The community aspect of it reminds me of the early days of amazon.com when they had a forums/community section. You can explore the world of books, browse other members collections, contact them, make friends socialize or do whatever bookwise. I LIKE IT! I think I will still keep my bibliophil list active as long as they are still around, or I grow tired of them. LOL.

So in short some collecting sites.

BOOKS:
Goodreads.com - Very Good site for collectors.
bibliophil.org - OK site for collectors.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site. Seems to cater to those who want a community atmosphere.
LibraryThing.com - OK book site for people with small collections or those who trade their books often.

CDS/Music:
rateyourmusic.com - OK site for tracking CD and Record collections. Mostly alternative and specialized genres, but good for overall. Sometimes the moderators are picky about what gets added or how to do it.
CDComplete.com - Barebones CD tracking site, not updated very often, needs major improvements and needs to become more user-friendly.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site.

DVDS:
DVDSpot.com - Excellent collection tracking site for DVD collections. This is the creme of the crop in my opinion. The moderators have some strange attitudes, but then you don't have to visit the forums if you don't want. LOL! This site is my litmus/acid test for all other collection tracking sites. Very user friendly and the people there are very helpful.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site.
DVDAficionado - Was a decent DVD collection tracking site, but is slow to update. A fairly recent update to the site has made it super ridiculous. It isn't as user-friendly as it once was (it was never really great in that department). The front index page doesn't look like a site that would be for DVD collecting, I don't know what to expect from it. Well that is what happens to sites that are run by huge mega corporations.
GuzzleFish.com - Dead and Gone but not forgotten. This site was a great CD,DVD,Record,Video Game collection tracking site, it might have done comics too I forget.

Tragedy For Comedy

This past Sunday (22 June, 2008) the world of comedy lost one of it's true geniuses to a heart attack.

George Carlin

(1937-2008)

Best known for his offbeat very politically incorrect cerebral humor, and clever use of words. One of his best known routines was "The 7 words you can't say on television" those words still can't be said on regular broadcast television but they run wild on cable television. Although mostly known for his stand-up and frequent HBO specials, he appeared in several movies including: Dogma, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure along with it's sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. He also had his own short-live sitcom "The George Carlin Show" and was the very first guest host on NBC's Saturday Night Live back in 1975.

His comedy covered every area of life, from the personal observations to the things in peoples everyday life (the little world) to politics, religion, world events (the big world). He also wrote 3 books were were big sellers; Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty and When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops? Funny Stuff. (OK I've only read Brain Droppings, but I want to get and read the other two sometime.)

On The Move

I haven't posted lately because I have been doing a lot of packing for moving, and still have a ton of more packing to do. I'm posting this message to get my May posting quota in. I fell behind in my posting my reviews about the sci-fi television episodes of my fave shows I've seen. Torchwood finished up their season 2 a couple of weeks ago (I'm jonesin' for a new episode already), and Doctor Who Season 4 has begun being shown on the Sci-Fi Channel, and the other spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures has been shown on Sci-Fi. In fact this last friday I totally forgot about the shows and missed The SJA episodes, Sci-Fi only shows them once they don't rerun them, I did catch the Doctor Who episode for friday though, they rerun that at least. Comcast Cable doesn't put it on demand but the Sci-Fi Channel at least shows it several times. It was OK, a little better than I thought it would be, but I still don't like the Ood Aliens. They remind me of the Mind-Flayers monsters in Dungeons and Dragons.

TORCHWOOD Episode 2.11 "Adrift"

Eve Myles and John Barrowman

TORCHWOOD
Episode 2.11
"Adrift"

**WARNING - This Episode Review contains SPOILERS!**

This episode was a middle excitement level episode. This one concentrated on yet another mystery within the bowels of Torchwood. Gwen (Eve Myles) learns of the mysterious disappearance of a teenager she soon learns that it is just one of many unexplained disappearances. During her investigation, which she starts unofficially but with help from her former Police partner, she discovers that the disappearances are related to negative power spikes to the Cardiff Rift. Instead of aliens coming to Earth, people from Earth are going somewhere else. She asks Jack (John Barrowman) to launch an official Torchwood investigation into it, but he refuses on the grounds that it is too big a problem in scope for them to do anything about it without exposing publicly all of what Torchwood is. She also learns a Torchwood secret, some of the victims have returned and Torchwood is keeping them in a secret location for many obvious reasons.

As usual I enjoyed this episode, even though as I said it was a middle of the road episode. There was a homo erotic Eww moment between Jack and Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) when Gwen catches them naked together. Moving on. The way this plot was there was no real conclusion, just knew knowledge of a problem that can't be fixed but needs to be dealt with in some way.

Viewed on 07April2008 at 20:00 on BBC America (On Demand)
Promo Picture by BCC - ***

A Recent Read Number 10

"Just because it's not ours doesn't mean it it's the wrong one! We could be from the 'wrong reality'!"

**WARNING THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!**

Doctor Who: Reckless Engineering by Nick Walters Wow another mind-boggling Doctor Who story. This Doctor Who story takes place during the Eighth Doctor's Incarnation. The Doctor is traveling with his novel only companions Fitz and Anji. I'm not sure which story they started with, but since they are from different times, Fitz from the 1960s and Anji from the 1990s or early 2000s they joined at separate times. Any who in this story the Doctor and his companions find themselves dealing with an alternate reality. It is 2003 to them, but in this reality a temporal disturbance called "The Cleansing" occurred in 1843 and to the people in this reality it is the year 160. The industrial revolution never happened in this reality of year 160 and it is against the law to speak of the The Cleansing. Nobody knows what caused the Cleansing, many think it was an act of God so they don't question it. The truth of the matter is that under the influence of an alien from the distant future a young engineer creates a machine called the Utopian Engine he is told will save the alien's race from dying by bringing them back to the past and in return they will help man with all sorts of technical and medical advancements. Well of course it was a lie (in part) true the alien race was dying, but they didn't care about mankind at all typical. The Utopian machine was flawed and instead of bringing the aliens back, it created a temporal jump of forty years to occur within a minute. Children suddenly found themselves in grown up bodies with long hair and fingernails and all the adults and animals were suddenly rotting corpses. The Doctor is faced with trying to figure out what this Cleansing thing is, which he doesn't like from the very beginning, and then finding a way to corrected the damage it has done. The problem is more complicated than it appears and it appears to be impossible to solve.

I'm not a huge fan of Doc number eight so this story dragged for me in some areas. Also the companions Anji and Fitz get boring fast. Fitz is a typical cocky fight first companion who tends to act without thinking things through first, and Anji (who I think is of middle eastern origins from India I think) has to deal with racism and sexism. Even though these characters have appeared in many other Doctor Who books, I think it is only the second one that I have read with them in it. I should try to track down the books where they first appear to get a better grasp of who these characters are. In the meantime I find them sort of dull. By the way this particular book I didn't initially pick up by choice, it was packaged with an issue of a Doctor Who magazine as a "Freebie" but with the price of the magazine and the added cost of it being an import from the UK I don't really think I got much of a bargain with the combo.

Doctor Who: Reckless Engineering by Nick Walters 2003 BBC Worldwide LTD 270 pages - ***

A Recent Read Number 9

"When I woke up that morning, it didn't take me long to realize there were dogs in my nose."

Cruel Shoes by Steve Martin. Before becoming a big box office movie star Steve Martin rose to the top of the stand-up comic ranks. He was a frequent guest host for the original cast Saturday Night Live, often he would be the first host of a new season, which is why some people mistakenly think he was the first to ever host SNL. That honor my friends goes to George Carlin. Anyway it was during this time (late 1970s) that Steve wrote this book, which is just a hodge podge collection of strange, weird and often funny stories and ideas. Some of them are quick one-liners while others run a page or two very few are more than two pages long. Some of the bits, all of which have titles and are listed under the table of contents, get to the point of the joke right away, while some take sometime and make you scratch your head and wonder what the point is. Then there are the totally absurd bits like "How To Fold Soup".

It is a quick and easy read as there are only 120 some pages with many of those having black and white photos from Steve on stage doing his stand up. The humor ranges from slightly humorous and only worth a slight smile to outrageously hilarious. I took about a week to read this as I would read one or two bits and then put it down, but it can be read in a very short period of time depending on your reading speed and length of laugh breaks. Fun and very silly book.

Cruel Shoes by Steve Martin 1977 G.P. Putnam's Sons 128 pages - ****.5

TORCHWOOD Episode 2.10 "From Out Of The Rain"

Pearl (Camilla Power) and The Ghostmaker ( Julian Bleach)

TORCHWOOD

Episode 2.10
"From Out Of The Rain"

This episode started sort of slow, but was quite enjoyable. It wasn't as action packed as last weeks episode but it still held it's own. There was one bit that made me scratch my head thinking they will explain it later on in the episode but they didn't really, I guess I'll have to watch it again to try and find the answer I am seeking. Since I've procrastinated on this review, I peaked at a couple of other reviews of this episode, and found that others seem to be disappointed by this episode. Some call it the worst written episode of the entire series. They seem to do what many do with films and DVDs they take it too seriously. I'm not saying to turn your brain off, all I am saying is don't over-analyze it. I mean come on the whole concept of the series takes a major suspension of disbelief to begin with. The Torchwood team's headquarters is in an abandoned subway excuse me tube station that sits above a major rift in the "time/Space" continuum, and their leader is from some unknown future and is apparently immortal.

Without giving too much away this episode dealt with some beings of unknown origins, maybe alien, that literally take your breath away. They steal the last breath of their victims and keep them contained in a metal flask. Known as the "Night Travelers" from legends, these creatures came from out of an old film of a traveling side-show. A part of Capt. Jack's (John Barrowman) past was partly reviled, but not fully explained. Even thought the Night Travelers threat was stopped, the door was left wide open for them to return someday.

I found it interesting that Gwen (Eve Myles) was in this episode as she is supposed to be on her honeymoon. I guess the Gwen/Rhys homeymoon episodes come later in the series? OK so the series continity is slightly off, since Gwen appears prominently in next weeks episode.

Viewed on 29Mar2008 at 21:00 BBC America ***.5
Image by BBC via The Institute website http://torchwood.time-and-space.co.uk/v1/index.php

TORCHWOOD Episode 2.9 "Something Borrowed"

Eve Myles and John Barrowman

TORCHWOOD
Episode 2.9
"Something Borrowed"

WARNING! This review contains SPOILERS!

Wow! What an exciting episode. When I saw the "next Week" teaser previews for this episode I thought [sarcasm] OH! Great a vampire/shape-shifter episode that will really suck[/sarcasm] (pardon the pun), but I was pleasantly surprised (No Vampires). Even with the heavy concentration on the reoccurring plot element of Gwen and Rhys' relationship, which I'm not too thrilled about. Strange since Gwen is a hottie she would obviously have a relationship with someone, or not. At times their relationship bores me. It must be that I don't like the Rhys character, he's too normal.

The story concentrates on the wedding day of the happy couple of Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Rhys Williams (Kai Owen). The day is anything but ordinary as they find out that Gwen is now pregnant with an alien egg, having been bitten by a shape-shifting alien on the night just before their wedding. This alien species hunts in pairs and mates for life. After fertilization the female passes the egg to the male who then bites a humanoid surrogate mother/victim transfers the egg to the victim and then the female hunts down the victim and when the egg is ready to hatch tears the host apart to free the egg. What fun. The Male is killed by Jack (John Barrowman) just after Gwen has been bitten. During the autopsy of the male the team discovers what type of alien they are dealing with and realize that the female "mom" would start tracking down Gwen. Gwen insists that no matter what, alien pregnancy or not she is going to marry Rhys and become Mrs. Williams, no more postponements, the job won't interfere with her wedding day. She made up her mind don't mess with her shape-shifting scumbags of the universe.

The X-Files like story keeps flowing and is fast paced action and drama. This is one of those episodes that I wouldn't have minded if they made it a two-parter, but would be slightly annoyed at having to wait the the conclusion. Good thing it was contained in one action packed episode. In the end the crisis is aborted, as is the alien pregnancy, and the love birds get on with their I Do's.

This episode as I said concentrated on the action and the X-Files-ness of the series. The homo-erotic tones were quiet with the exception of one moment, which actually gave me a good laugh.

Viewed on 22Mar2008 at 21:00 BBC America ****

TORCHWOOD Episode 2.8 "A Day In The Death"

Burn Gorman as Dr. Owen Harper

TORCHWOOD
Episode 2.8
"A Day In The Death"

---SPOILERS------SPOILERS------SPOILERS------------SPOILERS-----------
This review contains plot spoilers for this episode and somewhat the two previous episodes.

This episode was rather enjoyable, although seeing the two previous episodes help keep you up with what has been going on. I suppose this is why some fans are thinking Torchwood is turning into a soap opera. Anyway if you don't like spoilers, there is no avoiding some of them with this episode. If you haven't seen the two previous episodes, then you may want to skip this mini-review.

OK so to bring you up to speed, Owen was shot two episodes ago and died. He was brought back last episode by Jack using a second resurrection glove, similar to the one used in the pilot episode. As Ianto plainly said "They often come in pairs". I am not a big fan of the style of story telling in this episode, you come in with a character (Owen in this case) telling another character (a young lady who is about to jump off a rooftop for the aniversary of her husband's death, who died in a car accident on their wedding day) recent events that have led them to this particular moment in time. In small ways this episode was similar to the Bill Murray movie Ground Hog Day. Since Owen is dead, he can do somethings he normally wouldn't since the fear of death originally would keep him from doing them. The rest of the Torchwood team adjusts their roles slightly and since Martha Jones is around she takes his duties as the team's doctor/medical staff, at least until the end of this episode, when she goes back to U.N.I.T. In the long run I think the whole kill a main character, bring them back and keep them undead can get very tiring. They are kind of stuck now, unless they find a way to bring Owen back to life, for good, or kill him off for good. I don't think Burn Gorman (the actor who plays Owen Harper) would like the latter. So that will leave the series more or less with two characters that can't be killed, one (Jack) will just get resurrected, and the other (Owen) will just keep coming at you since he's already dead. I fear that after a while the producers and writers will conveniently forget about Owen being Undead, I hope I am wrong about that though.

Doctor Who Spin-Off # 2: The Sarah Jane Adventures

Can I get a big WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH WWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOO!

The second successful BBC Doctor Who Spin-Off Series The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007) is coming to America but on Sci-Fi channel. (Sarah Jane Adventures on Sci-Fi) Starting April 11 this year. Yeah buddy. I'm psyched for this series only not too much because I have heard mixed things about it, and also have a few mixed feelings about it. For one I almost feel it was about 20-25 years too late, wait BBC did try a Doctor Who Spin-off series with Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elizabeth Sladen) back in 1981 that resulted in K9 and Company. I hear tell of a second season starting up soon (of SJA) if it hasn't already. On the downside I feel I won't really like episodes two and three, they deal with one of my least favorite aliens from the new Doctor Who series the Slitheen. Oh Well . I'm not sure of all the details of this new series, but with the publicity pics I found googliing around she hangs with a group of kids and gets caught up in adventures. I'm guessing from some descriptions I've read the neighbor kids. They still seem to keep Doctor Who a children's show over there in the UK this new show seems to be made for the CBBC (Children's British Broadcasting Corporation). I'll find out in about a month or so. Cool.

Flashback News: 1968? Or 2008?

In a celeb news story that sounds like it belongs back in 1968. From the AP actress Dawn Wells, who gained fame by portraying the sweet and innocent lovable Mary Ann on Gilligan's sland (1964-1967), was busted for possession of 'Mary Jane'.

Reminds me of the out-takes from some commercials with Florence Henderson I think in the 1980s for Wesson Oil where she goes up on her line and cusses like a sailor and then makes a remark that kids will be saying "Mrs. Brady Swears!"

But this "pot in the car" story sounds a little fishy, she may have initially been unaware that the pot was in her car, and the swerving she was doing that the arresting police officer noticed was her trying to find the heater controls for her new car.

For the full story, and a not so flattering mugshot (they never are flattering) follow this link ap.google.com/article/... In that mugshot she looks like that little old lady that gets caught stealing an apple from the grocery story or hitting someone in the behind with a broom.

BTW I got the photo from a google search from a blog devoted to Miss Wells. (dawn-wells.blogspot.com/)

Torchwood Episode 2.7 "Dead Man Walking"

Episode 2.7
"Dead Man Walking"

OK this latest episode of Torchwood was a slightly above middlin episode. It continues from where the last episode left off so you need to have seen that one, or at least the end of the last one to be a little up to speed as to the condition of one of the team members (Heck I don't want to give too many spoilers here) Overall I found it to be an exciting episode, but there was one bit near the end concerning Martha Jones that didn't explain itself well. All in all season two has been much improved over season one in my opinion. The characters are better developed, well D'uh that will happen given time, and a good cast with good writing. The stories are getting more interesting for the most part. I am glad that they are not overusing the weevils (the weird looking aliens that live underground and feed on human flesh.)

Oh and in this episode the team dealt with the manifestation of death, The Grim Reaper if you will, it was a CGI character but it was pretty cool looking. It was mostly a cloud of black smoke that walked around. The smoke (which was shaped sort of like the classical robes of the Grim Reaper) would swirl around a bit and in and underneath the swirling smoke was a skeletal figure. Pretty cool effects.