Choose Your Own Blog!

1. A change of pace
...since I can't find one particular topic to write about at length, but do have a few axes to grind at the moment. And some patented Useless Trivia.
Spoofing those never tiresome "choose your own adventure" books might seem a mad idea for a blog, but I'm really stealing the idea from Dave Langford, who used a similar gag device in one of his columns. "Talent imitates, genius steals", as a very clever sod once remarked.
If you reckon this was Oscar Wilde, go to paragraph 10.

2. Two-Face
Strikingly, one of the greatest and oldest Batman foes of all, the guy who in modern continuity is pretty much second biggest Big Bad in Gotham, has only actually been portrayed in live action twice, with a pre-disfigurement Harvey Dent appearing in 1989's Batman, something people tend to forget.
The 1960's Batman show toyed with the idea of adding Two-Face to thier cackling, colour-coded rogues gallery, reconfiguring him as a TV newscaster who has a television explode in his face (no doubt the illusion of horrific burn scars would have been achieved via the ingenious application of livid face paint, which was pretty much the approach taken with the character on Batman Forever, decades later). Their plan was for none other than Clint Eastwood to play the bifurcated brigand*, an example of speculative casting no more bizar(ro) than Billy Dee Williams.
Williams was excited to land the role, even securing a 'Pay or Play' contract to ensure his eventual transformation into the coin-flipping schizo in a future Batman sequel- and had Tim Burton made further Bat flicks, he'd almost certainly have come to Two-Face eventually. This surely raises an obvious issue: Williams appears in Burton's film complete with full, Lando Calrissian mustache. Would he have shaved half of it off for the sake of his art? Would half of it merely have been painted over, a la Romero's Joker? If so, what colour would they have employed? I mean, what exactly does corrosive acid really do to human hair?
These things are important.
Flip a coin. Heads: Go to 6. Tails: We blow your damn head off.

3. Don't test my patience. Go back and pick another number

4. Down with Porn!
Two nights ago, I received one of the harmless porn newsletters that regularly clutter up my inbox. I swear I have no memory of signing up with the company in question, but since I clearly have an account with them (no money changes hands, I assure you), I suppose I must have done, probably in my delirious early days of internet access. This one came with an offer, some World Cup tie-in thing, whereby every subscriber got a free ticket to "rent" one of their many titles for 7 days, for free. Well, not being one to look a big, rude horse in the mouth, I went for it and chose one of those compilation affairs, seven scenes, about two hours' content. Not bad, I said to myself.

Now, honestly, I haven't actually sat down and watched any mainstream adult film for ages. I just haven't felt the need. I think now I understand why.

I sat through all seven scenes and, I'll put this delicately, none of them exactly turned my crank. Not remotely. In each case, I was bored and hitting fast-forward within minutes. At first I wondered if it was me, if I'm just so jaded a consumer that this, ahem, entry level hardcore just didn't move me anymore. Then I thought no, it's more to do with the awful, mechanical nature of production line porn. We're offered the absolute minimum establishing dialogue and then the two or more performers launch into the usual pumping and groaning business, and honestly, they all may as well be on rowing machines for all the erotic sparks on screen.
It finally hit me just how immature you'd have to be to get off on this kind of rubbish, and also how any culture that believes in sexual self-denial is completely bloody mad.
(If this is boring and obvious and you figured it out yourself years ago, procede to 5)

You see the novelty of watching this awesome, forbidden thing play out in as much graphic, sticky detail as possible does wear off. It often takes years, but it does in the normal course of things. It is a myth that men who watch porn have no interest whatsoever in plot or even who the players are in relation to each other, that all they want to see is the sex and they will always choose to skip past everything else (hence the adult home video). Well, some men are like that, but they've either been conditioned to think that way or just never grew up, the same kind of troglodytes who walked out of Casino Royale because it was "boring" and went to see Borat instead.

When you reach puberty, sex suddenly hits you and hits you hard, but it's more than another facet of the adult world that you're just noticing for the first time, it's inside you, hardwired into yourself. It is indisputably a basic biological imperative, but one that you are shielded from by parents and authority figures, which can only seem bizarre, confusing and counter instinctive to your adolescent mind.

Imagine being told you're too young to eat, that you are 'protected' from learning about digestion, totally forbidden from seeing other people enjoying food, and your parents turn into hysterical martinets if you see any food in the media. If you think that's overstated, try to remember your pubescent days, when every fibre of your being was screaming for you to explore these new urges, to learn about how and why you'd suddenly discovered a whole new level of perception and why on earth your body had apparently declared war on you when you'd been such good friends for so many years.

I don't advocate dunking our kids headfirst into the sexual ocean and I fully appreciate that exposing children to sex can be terribly harmful, but whereas teenagers aren't yet adults, they aren't children anymore either. They have to discover sexuality at some stage, and if there's a wrong (often horrendously wrong) way to go about anything, there must be a right way, too. The wrong way would be for anyone to grow up with their sexual insight based almost entirely on pornography.

Eons of indoctrination from one church or another have left us monstrously repressed, terrified of doing exactly what we're supposed to do and expecting dire consequences if we give in to those desires- and people wonder how religion could possibly be construed as social control! Unsurprisingly, there don't seem to be any lasting social taboos where it comes to enjoying food or wearing comfortable clothes, but sex for it's own sake is still, when you come down to it, hidebound by shame.
Don't believe me? Look at doggers, giggling at their own faux-cloak and dagger, as if fucking in enemy territory under a Union Jack. Look at ageing "swingers". Look at the armies of porn performers who got into the industry as a means of sticking their fingers up to parents and teachers. Look at how we're still completely incapable of discussing anything sexual without labelling it "naughty", "dirty", "cheeky", whatever. Look at those endless, awful 1970's 'sex comedies', films that so plainly wanted to be porn, but couldn't stomach showing breasts and pubic hair without cringe-making gags about colonic irrigation and an appearance by at least one cast member from On the Buses.

The "permissive society" our elders have been moaning about since the '60's is an entirely predictable backlash to all those years of buttoned-up-to-the-neck 'restraint' and 'forbearance'. The harder you tie people's emotions down, the harder they kick and scream, and the prouder they are when they break free. This doesn't make us any healthier in out attitudes, mind you. This is why more nobly intentioned porn endeavours, like Anna Span's 'By Women, For Women' company, are still only treating the symptoms rather than the cause.

"Television", said Nicolas Roeg, "shows you everything and tells you nothing. Nothing." He could have been talking about the porn industry.
We complain that there's too much sex in the media, but that's not the issue at all. We want sex, we settle for smut... in magazines, sitcoms, ads, music videos.
We crave experience, we make do with a constant drip feed of pornographic sludge.
The result is a culture that reveres porn and loathes itself.

In fact, there has now arisen a whole porn apologist subculture, with the essential argument being that porn offers a healthy catharsis, much like action movies satisfy our desire for violence even if we don't necessarily want to see anybody hurt, and if presented in the right way, can even be informative and educational. I myself used to take this position, but I'm older now, I have porn DVD's tucked away that I'm no longer interested in. I've come to appreciate that sexuality is not an artform or fundamental biology or simple recreation, it's a whole damn galaxy, of which pornography can barely scratch the surface (pardon the mixed metaphor).
Trying to become more sexually aware via porn is like trying to experience a symphony by looking at slides of an orchestra, or trying to become an athlete by playing lots of sports video games (OK, I'm no Douglas Adams where it comes to analogies, either!).

I don't hate porn, not really. I hate living in a world that offers it as a substitute for the Good Stuff, the Real Stuff.

So now. I'm not sure what to do with those DVD's. If you reckon I should take them to the charity shop and tell the blind old lady there that it's my Grampa's Morse collection, go to 7.

5. My, my, aren't we a brazen lot!
Use the only even prime number to determine your next paragraph, smartarse

6. Nickelback (don't roll your eyes, I won't be long!)
These guys are in an odd position. They're one of the biggest metal acts in the business, and also perhaps the least cool rock band on earth. Even The Darkness generated more enthusiasm from the music literati, not to mention some tragically overblown optimism; I once heard a DJ proclaim that the chart success of that middling Queen piss-take act signalled the beginnings of a "glorious mainstream rock revival". I did dash away a tear.
Almost universally derided by critics, dubbed 'Grunge-Lite' and damned as unforgivably accessable by the kind of people who cannot embrace any musical outfit that's lost fewer than two members to heroin, Nickelback's hit singles and albums may carry the obligatory 'Parental Control' sticker, but their image remains fundamentally respectable, presentable... Canadian. The kind of rock stars you could safely introduce to your grandparents.
In a recent article, an AV Club reviewer discusses "How You Remind Me", describing "a noxious combination of pretentiousness and meaninglessness. So very freshman poetry", "curdled sarcasm, self-pity, and unbridled contempt", and asserts that the group's output as a whole "combines the worst elements of grunge and dinosaur rock. It beats the soft-loud-soft-loud dynamic into a fine pulp, alternating wimpy acoustic whining with macho power chords and hoarse shouting".

Actually, I don't disagree with any of that. But they remain, privately, one of my favourite bands.

OK, I make no excuses for the kind of lyrics that rhyme "tassels" with "assholes", and I'm well aware that tracks like "If Everyone Cared" sound as if they were written to be played over emotional montages in Smallville, but what I cherish is the lack of pretension.
Look, among my favourite bands are Type O Negative (doom metal), Stone Sour (alt. metal), and Fear Factory (industrial metal), I like heavy, angry, angsty stuff. But sometimes I just want macho power chords, and Nickelback are about the only outfit with that old school approach to rock that doesn't come draped in pastiche, that is, they aren't trying to ape any specific band or rock movement of yesteryear, like those interchangable 'ironic' cod-hair metal bands that have sprung up like weeds in the past decade.
These guys just wanna produce good, loud, distinctive music that inspires air guitar. You can even sing along to it without rupturing your own throat nodes! Which is novel, as opposed to novelty.

And don't kid yourselves, fellas, there's not a man alive who can resist "Hero". It's a male secret shame, like Bryan Addams.
If you know at least one verse of "Rockstar", go to 9

7. Who are they trying to kid?!
Paul Cornell, on this year's Doctor Who finale (via Twitter): "Doctor Who triumph. Cheering. Floored fans. Mythic grandeur"

Right.

I used to follow Paul's column in SFX, and whilst he wasn't quite the SF Julie Burchill he was accused of being, he certainly came out with some prize dingo's kidneys, like his assertion that Charlie's Angels was a groundbreaking feminist superhero movie, or that the Vic and Bob Randall and Hopkirk was something people should watch. He did offer some decent insights, though and seemed harmlessly bonkers, like most fanboys do once you get inside our heads.

Now, though, hoo boy!

The only thing remotely mythic or grand about that staggeringly cheap looking and grossly self-satisfied mess was the National Museum of Wales, which was certainly shown off to full effect as our heroes spent almost the entire Goddamned episode wandering around it, telling us what was going on, telling us what had happened, telling us what was going to happen, telling us what might have happened and being rather tedious and smug about it all.
My beef here is not with Cornell, not really. It's with the Grand Moff.

Since I no longer have the energy nor the inclination to engage in protracted and circular arguments with other online geeks about the pros and cons of this SF movie/ series or that, I'll just say my piece and leave it stand: The latest series of Doctor Who is dire.

I'm somewhat out of the fanboy forum loop, but I gather that I now qualify as a 'hater', for not showing unquestioning devotion to the works of Stephen Moffat, even when the work in question happens to be bollocks. OK, fair enough. I'm a sci-fi fanatic, I'm used to both blind creator reverence, vide Roddenberry, Gaiman, Burton, Miller/ Millar, Whedon... Just as I'm accustomed to being in a minority of one; I'm apparently the only SF fan on Earth who reckons Firefly was cancelled because it was rubbish, for instance.

But listen, kids, I was a follower of Moffat's writing long before most of you, I was a Press Gang fan from the age of 4. I've never denied the man his talent, creative flair or insight, but he's as prone to lazy writing as any hack in the business, and begins to rival the above listed for sheer masturbatory smugness. I had a bad feeling about the new series when Moff was announced as Davies' successor and I was right. The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances and Blink are all superb slices of SF television and well deserving of the accolades they received, but the seeds of a creative dead end were sown with The Girl in the Fireplace, and the six River Song episodes to date comprise a four and a half-hour televisual smirk of punchable self-indulgence. Any writer who knows, doesn't think but knows he has the audience eating out of his underpants like that should be kept well away from the driving seat of any series, especially something like Who.

Now I'm perhaps coming across as a karaoke Lawrence Miles, but that's not quite the case. I don't actively hate the series to the point where I can no longer bring myself to watch it, and there's not a lot wrong with this season that couldn't be rectified. I'm just deeply disappointed and feel slightly betrayed (only slightly, because I kind of saw this coming) that instead of making any real attempt to move the series forward, Moffat and cronies have simply taken RTD's wildly variable dramatic-flourish-over-logic storytelling formula, and run, giggling with it as far as they possibly can. Not a single episode this year comes within lightyears of classic status, and I'm struggling to remember even a handful of truly original, stand-out scenes.
This is a series so arrogantly sure of it's own towering status as a beloved institution that it can toss away concepts like a 21st century companion murdered, then erased from history, only to reborn as a fictional Roman centurion and an ageless Auton, who then spends two millennia alone, guarding the Big Scary Box containing his beloved, without pausing for half a second to even hint at the enormous, soul-rending implications of any of it, and then has the gall to milk the "emotion" for all it's worth, not even considering that someone at home might just raise their hand and say, "erm, hang on a sec..."

Only two things really make an impression about this year's Who; First, Matt Smith is the perhaps the greatest casting coup in the series' entire history. It's Smith alone who carries the show, week in, week out, more so than even Tennant or Tom Baker did when the stories of their respective eras were at their lowest ebb. It's Smith who brings dignity and nobility and actual magic to scripts that simply don't deserve it. It's Smith who's handed one reheated David Tennant speech after another and delivers them with tremendous aplomb; Second is that Amelia would have been a much more suitable companion than Amy, who's temperamental to the point of multiple personalities. Maybe having the Doctor travel with a child would be seen as dodgy, for the same reasons people don't like Robin (see my last blog), but Caitlin Blackwood is such an impressive and remarkably non-cutesy young actress, and her scenes are, weirdly, far stronger than most of the 'character' bits Moffat has produced lately. Maybe he should go back to writing programming for smart children, as opposed to drama for adults with the mental age of 7!
Having Amelia onboard would also jive better with the Eleventh Doctor's much more reassuring, fatherly behaviour towards Amy- which is why that awful 'comedy' scene where she tried shagging him made for such squirmsome viewing.

Smith's performance is often compaired to Troughton's, but he seems to be much more in the vein of Davison. Actually, what's interesting is how Smith's instincts on portraying the Doctor seem to go so against those of Moffat.
Moffat mostly writes Smith's Doctor like he did Tennant's, because he genuinely believes it's the same man with a different face. This is not only patently absurd- put the First, Sixth and Ninth Doctors side by side and tell me it's the same man all the way along- but flatly contradicts the whole point of The End of Time, in which Davies stressed how regeneration is a form of death, with each new Doctor effectively a new person, albeit a new person born fully grown and with the memories of all the previous Doctors. Smith certainly doesn't seem to be playing the manic depressive demigod the Tenth Doctor was written as.

Good evidence of how far this series has fallen can be found in the Dalek 2-parter. No, I'm not going to complain about the new iDaleks, because even Stephen Moffat's mum probably hates those things. No, my beef is with the presentation of Churchill as a cuddly celebrity.
The horrid miscasting of Ian McNeice (based, it seems, on the same any-English-actor-with-stature principal that landed Michael Caine the role of Alfred) notwithstanding, if Smith's Doctor is indeed the same man as before, the man who brought down Harriet Jones, and thus derailed Britain's new golden age, because of her ruthlessness, he'd hardly be pally with a cold-hearted bastard like Winston Churchill. Anyone with an appreciation of history beyond the self-congratulatory 'patriotic' myths or for that matter, anyone who knows the character of the Doctor, could see that these two would not be friends.

Churchill was neither avuncular nor in any way saintly, he was an arch imperialist who made some monstrous errors in judegement during the First World War and his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Churchill would have happily seen Gandhi crucified and, once ousted from Downing Street, would have abandonned Britain for Washington D.C. if they'd have had him.
We remember this man with the utmost respect and reverence because he was a great orator and the leader we needed him to be when the war Britain was totally unprepared for threatened to swallow us whole.

The writer of The Unquiet Dead, from way back in poor, underappreciated season 1, understood that national icons like Dickens were both less and more than the cartoon heroes of popular imagination, and his script was sincere and thoughtful, as indeed is Richard Curtis' Vincent and the Doctor, the biggest surprise of the season. God only know how the same writer could pen this flag-waving tripe with a clear conscience, but then Gatiss is an unjudgemental acolyte of that miserable old sod Nigel Kneale, so plainly his taste and discretion aren't all they might be. And who knows, maybe he was just in love with the idea of WWII fighter planes with laser guns (Star Trek did it first, by the way).

Then there's the 'fairytale' plotting. This is the excuse the Who team have come up with for when characters repeatedly get out of impossibly dire situations by 'just believing' they can do it. This is perhaps more understadable, if not forgivable, when you consider that today's audiences were raised on Disney movies, not storybooks. And so, the android Professor Bracewell deactivates the bomb in his gut by thinking happy thoughts, and Churchill certainly doesn't dream of having him sent off to some lab to be dismantled and back-engineered.
Now, unlike Mr. Miles, I don't demand that my popular fiction be written to the highest standards at all times. I mean, sure, in a perfect world, but I just know better. I've no issue with SF being daft, it often is, I can even live with deus ex machina if it's couched in a clever storyline (The Doctor Dances). But this kind of thing is where I draw the line. And again, with Rory's reappearance, one line could have saved it, something like "2000 years? I was asleep/offline for most of it, feels like a few days", that's all it'd have taken. I'd have accepted that. But no.

What I do find striking is the American perspective on this season. I've been following the weekly reviews on one of my favourite sites, the AV Club, and they're as good a barrometer of American tastes as any on the net. Their reviews are uniformly insightful, balanced and lively.
In the US, where TV is said to be enjoying it's golden age- I'm not so convinced of that, but anyway- and can and often does excite more public interest than movies, Doctor Who and Torchwood have enjoyed very respectable ratings and a hugely enthusiastic critical reception. This is a climate in which The Wire is seen as a monolith of screenwriting, looming over every other series, so I figured the American reviewers would be at least sceptical of froth like Doctor Who season 5.

Shows how much I know.

The notices have bordered on rapturous, more so in some respects than the 'just-stick-our-figers-in-our-ears-and-give-every-bloody-episode-5-stars' line taken by SFX. They've called it "epic", "thrilling", "heart-breaking", etc, only with far more conviction than one's used to reading in the British press, where a Specsavers advert can be dubbed "brilliant" and "genius". With Vincent and the Doctor, however, the reviewer was less convinced.
Now, on balance, this was probably the strongest episode of the season, even if they did lay it on as thick as humanly possible, in the style of Father's Day. There was some genuine wit, Curran was very good as Van Gough, Amy was less trying than usual, and Curtis was sensible enough to underscore that a lifetime of depression cannot be magically cured, even by a visit from the Doctor.
Still, our American cousins weren't all that taken with it, perhaps because they're much more used to seeing this kind of drama, where the conflict is driven by emotional watersheds, than they are the kind of pulp melodrama Nu Who specialises in.

There really is nothing like Doctor Who on American TV. Not remotely like it. Americans reckon they've got the TV thing pretty much sewn up, but I don't think they'd be capable of putting together a Doctor Who. It's not that Americans can't do eccentricity or even that there aren't any US actors capable of doing justice to the Doctor, because there are plenty (Vincent D'Onofrio would be top of my list, if you're interested). It's just that throwing so much money and talent and publicity behind a show aimed at a broad family audience and screened on a major network in competition with other primetime series would be unthinkable. Network suits would doubtlessly see Who as a star vehicle, and then start hunting for an affordable, reasonably charismatic and good looking celebrity to make the show his own, and of course as soon as that happens, it stops being Doctor Who and becomes Charlie Sheen: Time Traveller.

So, to finish, yes, I'll probably hate this year's Christmas special as much as I've hated most of Season 5. But I'll still tune in, because Matt Smith's playing the Doctor.

Damn you, Moffat, you despicable genius!
go to Eleven

8. Celebrity Bollocks
Amanda Bynes, possibly America's Sweetheart, who knows, just announced her retirement from acting, aged 24. Via Twitter, naturally.

Angelina Jolie has also floated the prospect of voluntary retirement to focus on her comically vast, rainbow family.

Remember how Liam Neeson used to threaten to retire whenever he'd finished a movie he didn't enjoy?

There is no retirement for a movie star. Retirement means living quietly, not being the centre of attention, not being talked about. Retirement means facing up to an unthinkable prospect for an entertainer, that of being forgotten.

I've said elsewhere that I used to have serious ambitions to become an actor, or rather a movie star. I did, and still do, genuinely love acting, but I loved recognition and adulation more than anything. I get that side of the business, and I certainly don't begrudge these people for having egos. You need to have an inflated sense of your own value and talent to make it in that game, and the people who do reach the top are still a small minority. Bully for them if they can get $30 million a movie. I knew I wasn't talented or good-looking enough to progress to that level, and that a career as a supporting player might well have driven me to an early grave, which is why I didn't persue acting beyond high school.

We do love these famous bastards, and we'll forgive them almost anything, it's when they start whingeing about how hard their lives are we start to get rattty. Everybody got sick of grunge bands for always moaning at the terrible hardships that huge recording contracts and award shows brought on them, having gotten exactly where they and every other musician who ever mailed a demo tape wanted to be. This is why anyone who isn't a teenage girl or a middle-aged weirdo who should know better has no time for that Twilight couple, and why only the hardest of the ageing hardcore grunge faithful can read Kurt Cobain's diaries without wanting to give the man a slap.
This gimmick has gotten away from me a bit, so go to 9. It's just there underneath this one

9. Daniel Craig
There's been a fair bit of showbiz gossip lately about Daniel Craig, who they're saying is gay. The basis of these insinuendos is that Craig was spotted kissing another man in a gay bar. I'm not saying the National Enquirer is the most reliable of sources, and even if it's true, well... Could mean anything.
But I'd love for it to be true.
OK, I'm only a fringe member of the LGBT community at the most, and I don't fancy the man, but he's a terrific actor and he plays James Bond!

Bond is one of the defining male icons, aspirational and uncomplicated in his irresistable maleness. For him to be played by a gay actor, and one who is undeniably, solidly old-school masculine (there's not an ounce of camp in Craig) could work wonders for the public image of gays in the media and in non-traditional roles.

Admittedly, this is rather contingent on him getting rid of that bloody mustache he's been wearing lately. I mean, if he's gonna keep it, he may as well wear a hard hat and denim shorts to the press junkets.
You can't deny the prize it may never fulfill you. It longs to kill you. Are you willing to die? If so, go to 4

10. When in doubt, lie
The above is actually Number 4 on the list of rules I try to live by.
Ok, so I stole this from the Rules of Acquisition, but it's an excellent point that most people follow, often without thinking about it.
We lie to everyone, about everything. The world gives you little in the way of other options; We lie to prospective partners to cover our quirks and neuroses. We lie on CVs and tax returns. We lie about why we were late this morning. And why not? It always makes me laugh when someone gets all indignant about being lied to. What would they prefer? That you tell them the truth and drop yourself in it? Don't tell me you'd actually respect someone more for admitting they were blitzed out of their skull the night before last and were too hung over to move, much less strap on a phone headset and sell broadband for eight hours.
Lying is a very valuable skill, but it takes work. Lying is not the same as acting, since acting is about convincing people you are someone else, whilst lying is about convincing people you know that something is real when it manifestly isn't. Fortunately for me, I'm good at both. But it helps to bare in mind another Ferengi rule: Keep your lies consistent.
And no, it wasn't Wilde at all. Pick which of these two numbers you'd rather have tattoed behind your ear: 3 or 13

11. Oh, I dunno (Sherlock Holmes pun here)
Moffat and Gatiss are also the head honcho's behind Sherlock, a radical new take on the Sherlock Holmes legend, transposing the hawk-nosed one into a modern day setting for a new series of movie length TV mysteries (see picture). This ticks me off somewhat, as I came up with an identical concept a couple of years ago and never had the presence of mind to become showrunner of Doctor Who before I proposed it to the BBC.
My first choice for Holmes would have been David Tennant, actually. Obvious, perhaps, but he is a great actor and he's bound to end up playing Holmes at some point in his career.
If you think there's a very good chance this spiffing new version of the Great Detective will foil London's criminal underworld with the words "I'm Sherlock Holmes. Look me up", go to 8

12. Buffy the Power Ranger
I mentioned in my very first entry that Optic Nerve, one of the special effects companies who worked on Power Rangers The Movie, went on to do sterling work on Buffy. This is not the only Power Rangers/ Buffy connection.
Stuntwoman Sophia Crawford, who doubled for Sarah Michelle Gellar for the first three or four years of the series, met her husband (a fellow stunt performer) when they were both working on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Sophia, naturally, played the Pink Ranger in action scenes.
James Marsters was romantically involved with Alison MacInnis, a.k.a, Dana Mitchell, the Pink Ranger on Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue. In a 2000 interview with SFX, Marsters was asked which other fantasy heroine besides Buffy he'd like to beat up. He answered "the pink Power Ranger". Maybe they'd had a row.
Alison is set to attend this years Power Morphicon, the second offical Power Rangers convention, alongside Walter Jones (Zack from the first season of MMPR), who also appeared in Buffy once.
Jamie Lee Curtis once dressed up as the Pink Lightspeed Ranger for some do (see photo), and if you're wondering what that has to do with Buffy, wellll... She was Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife in True Lies, and as the product of this improbable union was a young actress called Eliza Dushku.

Oh, and Buffy once referred to Kendra as the Pink Ranger.
If you thought Kendra's accent was a bit dodgy, go to 5

13. The End.

Well done. We've now established that you're a big smarty pants (and also more bonkers than I am if you actually tried following the "Go to paragraph x" system to read this) and that I have far too much time on my clammy hands.

Good day.

*I'm not sure he was ever called this in the comics, but you never know

The case for Robin

Of all the supporting characters in the Batman universe, Robin is the one most widely perceived as problematic, especially by those adapting Batman for movies and other media.
This stems from two main misconceptions, the first being that the 'true' Batman of the comics flies solo, and that the kid sidekick was only introduced when the credibilty of the writing took a nosedive. The second point, and the one most often referenced, in countless stand up routines, sitcoms and piss-takes, is that having Batman and Robin living together makes them look like a gay couple, or makes Bruce Wayne look like a child molester, or something along those lines. And either way, it's a portrayal of reckless child endangerment, right?

For decades, the only Batman known to the public at large was slightly out of shape, wore reading spectacles and liked Go-Go dancing. As a Batman die hard, I should perhaps hate the 1960's TV series, but I don't and, in fact, I think we should be grateful for it. People are a tad more superhero savvy these days, but while your average Joe or Jill might be able to name a few X-Men, or Spider-Man's aunt, to this day, Batman and his world remain the most famous of all superheroes, and we have that daffy old show to thank for it. Batman, Robin, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, the Joker, Catwoman, the Penguin, the Riddler, Batgirl, the Batmobile, the Bat Signal, Batarangs, Gotham City, the Bat Cave, the utility belt... That TV series made icons of them all, and its impression on the pop cultural unimind will never be totally sponged out. The trouble is that the real Batman, as everybody now knows, is dark, brutal, psychologically scarred and not remotely camp, and fights terrifying sociopaths, not over the hill vaudeville stars in domino masks.

The Camp Crusader was the bane of Bat fans and comics writers for a long, long time, and helped ensure that Michael Uslan's vision for a thematically true Batman feature film had a torturously drawn-out production history, but in hindsight the 60's Batmania probably did them all a big favour. The comics themselves had been splashing about in the murky waters of self-parody since the mid-1940's, with aliens, time travel, dimension-hopping imps, Bat-pets and much mortification besides. This was no crime, conventional superheroics were out of fashion and the books struggled to keep up with modern trends- lest we forget Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman all managed, via this creative contortionism, to survive uninterrupted through decade after decade, as many contemporary books fell by the wayside.
From about 1969 onwards, a harder-edged and more realistic approach was the order of the day, and it gave Batman a shot in the arm. I'm sure it's no coincidence that this was also the time Dick Grayson became a far less visible presence in Batman's life, having finally grown up a bit and found his own niche with the Teen Titans, and departing Wayne manor for university in New York.

Everyone knew the Adam West and Burt Ward incarnations of Batman and Robin, if not from the orginal run of the series then from their televisual afterlife, via reruns and voice-overs in 1970's cartoon shows. Older viewers remembered the awful, dirt cheap chapter plays of the 40's, which also did the rounds on US TV.
The picture was clear; old, embarassing Batman and Robin vs. modern, hard, serious and credible Batman, sidekicks optional. If Batman was perceived as risible, went the reasoning, Robin must have been at least partly to blame, so marginalizing him seemed a wise move.

When the Batman movie finally materialised in 1989, a huge hit thanks partly to the novelty value of it not being the expensive train wreck everyone was expecting, there was no Robin and no room for him. Tim Burton and co. had little if any enthusiasm for the character and when he did finally make it into the movie series, Joel Schumacher was directing. The architects of the awesome Animated Series also preferred an undiluted, no-nonsense Batman, with Robin on the fringes, until studio bosses made their feelings clear by changing the show's title to The Adventures of Batman and Robin.
In fact, the latter didn't hurt the animated series all that much (the early episodes, for all their gobsmacking style, were rough around the edges), and Batman Forever is nowhere near the war crime it's made out to be. Batman and Robin may be universally acknowledged as one of the worst anythings in the history of everything, but you can hardly put the blame for that on the shoulders of Dick Grayson. No matter, both incidents contributed in cementing the myth that Robin was an aberration, forced onto Batman by committee thinking executive types, in naked persuit of the kid appeal dollar.

In print, Batman only operated alone for the first year of publication before Robin was introduced, created by the same talents as Batman himself, Bob Kane and Bill Finger, with artist Jerry "I created the Joker! I did! Me, me, me!" Robinson. This was a canny business move, no question. Kids were the target readership, so putting a kid character into a costume and making him apprentice to the newest and, obviously, coolest superhero around was inspired. Sure enough, kids lapped it up, sales got a boost and sidekicks became all the rage for a while. But bringing in Robin was as much about giving Batman someone to talk to as anything else, and regardless of original intent on the part of the writers or DC, his creation broke new ground in superhero storytelling and added to the Bat mythos immeasurably.
Since 1940, through thick and thin, it's been Batman and Robin. Sharper comics writers like Grant Morrison have recognised this, and make the most of both the character and the resonance of his partnership with the Dark Knight. I think it was Denny O'Neil, in writing Nightwing, who described Dick Grayson as a prince, heir to Batman's throne, and it's as good an analogy as I've heard.

Far from being just the kid sidekick, there to keep kids happy (and while we're on the subject, the notion that the kids at home always demand kid characters or they get bored and find something else to watch/read is absolute rubbish. Kids watch Batman movies and read Batman comics for the same reason as the rest of us- Batman!) and get captured and rescued, Robin (specifically Dick Grayson) is a huge part of who and what Batman is, and has long since proved himself a great character in his own right. He should not be dismissed as gimmick or frivolity.

It goes without saying, then, that Robin has never quite been done justice on screen, even thought the Forever and animated versions mentioned above acquitted themselves fairly well. Though animated series made since haven't flinched from portraying Robin as a true Boy Wonder, elsewhere the accepted wisdom was to portray him as a young man, perhaps a late teenager, somewhere between 16 and 20. But Robin needs be a kid, perhaps not 8 or 10 years old, but a kid all the same. In one sense, he's the child Bruce Wayne never had a chance to be. He also represents Batman's worst nightmare, the tragedy he was always pledged to prevent... another orphan of Gotham crime.

Robin is an acrobat, a kid who grew up in the circus with his family, always on the move, always performing for a crowd. Swinging across rooftops at night is his way of recapturing how he felt when his parents were alive. That was the only life he ever knew and, to him, the circus was home.

One can look at Robin's story as a sort of violent metaphor for growing up. As children, most of us know the love and security of our families and we never doubt it. This was especially true of Dick Grayson, who knew from the age of four that his parents would literally always be there to catch him. But just as the onset of puberty, with its storm of emotion, potential, new energy and endless new questions is desperately bittersweet, as it usually entails that very security evaporating, Dick is propelled into the adult world by the tragedy of his home and family being ripped away from him. Life as Robin means grand heroics, endless excitement and adventure, often with the whole world or even the whole of creation at stake, but like Bruce Wayne, Dick only began that life at the expense of everything he knew and loved as a child.

When the young Bruce's parents died, it fell to Alfred to comfort the boy as best he could, forming an awkward and usually unspoken father-son bond, with Bruce never able to fully acknowledge Alfred's love for him, nor Alfred wishing to be seen as trying to replace the parents Bruce had lost. There is a tragic irony in that same relationship being played out between Bruce and Dick, Bruce assuming the new quasi-father role and, pressumably, coming to understand and appreciate Alfred more in the process. Both men were then charged with ensuring that Batman's 'squire' was spared as much of the pain and as many of the early pitfalls that Bruce experienced in the years leading up to his return to Gotham as possible. With the Wayne fortune and influence securing Dick as Bruce's official ward, Dick probably got the best upbringing a young orphan/ superhero could hope for.

Robin is not Batman Jr., however, and to interpret the character as such would be missing the point. From his very first appearance, Dick was portrayed as almost a direct spiritual opposite to Bruce, and as much as he would look up to Batman as everything he respected and aspired to be as a crime fighter, I think perhaps he also felt "There but for the grace of God go I". In a perhaps slightly self-centred, but typically teenage way, Dick seems to have consciously decided not to let the awful murder of his parents define him as a person, and though his heroic identity may have darkened slightly with the advent of Nightwing, and even his eventual inheritance of the Batman mantle itself, he's never quite become the brooding avenger. To this day, through many more tragedies and losses, he remains a naturally upbeat, energized, social character, dashing and romantic and everything the public persona of Bruce Wayne is meant to be. From that perspective, he's probably living the life his parents would have wanted for him, which is more than can be said for Bruce.

In short, there's more than enough dramatic meat on Robin's story to make for an excellent movie, provided the people making it have read the right comics (if any). Tim Burton declared he couldn't make the character "work" for him until he could figure out some sort of appropriate psychological profile, and going by his spin on the other Batman characters, I suppose that means his Robin would have to have been a total headcase. This might explain why the "Robin" meant to appear in Batman Returns, a "technologically savvy street kid" who would have been played by Marlon Wayans (seriously), bore no resemblance to the Dick Grayson of the comics whatsoever. Both Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale have publically stated that as long as they are involved with Batman movies, Robin will not be, which has prompted many fans to speculate on how they'd modify him to fit the depressingly 'realistic' tone of the Nolanverse. I wouldn't bother.
It seems plain that there'll be a Batman movie reboot of some sort within the next 6-8 years, since the new wave of DC movies are aiming for a Marvel-inspired 'shared universe', and a Batman who doesn't, or won't, interact with the aliens, gods and magic of the DCU is no good to anyone, especially when they come to make the inevitable Justice League movie.

On balance, for all their contributions to rehabilitating the Bat in live action, and the sheer perfection that was Batman Begins, the Nolan team's approach seems to represent a more narrow, conservative take on Batman lore than almost any other. I can live with his slightly sniffy remark that the villain of Batman 3 "won't be Mister Freeze!", but Nolan seems reluctant to even consider the likes of the Penguin as a viable antagonist. And when you get down to it, the Penguin is nothing more than a short, rotund, affected crime boss with a pointy nose. Christ, if they can make the Joker plausible...

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the studios concluded that, as with the Spider-Man trilogy, once movies of this type have been the biggest hits they can possibly be (The Dark Knight made over a billion dollars, as if you needed reminding), they only way to go is down. Either than or hit the reset button.

So no, Robin isn't a liability. He remains a Titan in waiting.