Each one has a special meaning

[austin_dern]

The best part of being back in the U.S.? Watching all the shows that are far beneath me. Most of these can be seen in Singapore, but DirectTV makes them a lot easier. Observed:

1. Aladdin episode description: ``Evil spirit destroys Agrabah.'' Thanks for narrowing it down!
2. The police forces of the world are startlingly eager to join the Legion of Doom's oppression every time the Doomers take over the world.
3. In Superman: The Movie Supes goes back in time to save Lois, but he doesn't do it the most efficient way, stopping the second bomb from exploding. His past-self prop up the San Andreas Fault, but he lets the quake and aftermath go on while finding Lois and Jimmy. I remembered it wrong. Kind of a jerk to do it that way.
4. Dang, but John Wayne could act.
5. A World's Greatest Superfriends gives the best reason ever for a space station: it could be the only surviving bastion of modern technology with which superheroes build a second time machine to go back and destroy the Stupid Ray Generator a mad scientst sent back in time so he could retard human evolution and rule over a stone-age modern-day world. The Stupid Ray Generator one million years in the past is flanked by two angry ``brontosaurus rex'' dinosaurs, which would require advanced study to make more wrong.
6. I don't recognize any in-production TV shows anymore except Letterman and Conan O'Brien.

Trivia: The Teutonic Order sold its capital, Marienburg, to Poland in 1457. Source: A History of Poland, Oscar Halecki.

Currently Reading: Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life, Gaby Wood. Are the films of Georges Méliès on DVD? They read like fever dreams or the coolest muck sessions ever.

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

> Supes goes back in time to save Lois, but he doesn't do it the most efficient way

That's a longstanding peeve of mine with those sorts of plots. The hero never goes back in time and just kills the villain before he can even begin his career of evil - he always goes back to just before the culmination of the grand evil scheme, and tries to stop it at the last second.


> Are the films of Georges Méliès on DVD?

I've got "A Voyage to the Moon" on tape, if I can find it. I'll be happy to burn off a copy.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, I can understand the desire to go back in time as short a stretch as possible -- goodness knows how much you'd screw things up reworking forty years of history, but you can take a pretty good guess at forty minutes -- but, really, Superman should've stopped the second bomb, and Picard should've demanded the Generations crew think very carefully about the rules of their Nexus thing before they started committing anything to film.

As for Méliès it looks like some of the films (including those most fascinating me) are on DVD release, but several years old. I'm going to have to check out Facets and the like ... shame I didn't read this a few weeks ago; I'm using my time in the U.S. to get a lot of stuff shipped to me in short order.