this decade ain't over yet...

During an episode of ‘The X-Files’ in late 1999; Scully, the show’s skeptic, pointed out to Mulder, the show’s woo-woo advocate, that the new millennium would not begin with the ending of 1999, but that it would begin when the year 2000 came to an end. And Mulder’s reply to Scully’s correct observation? “No one likes a math geek, Scully.”

Ain’t it the truth? When everyone was all giddy at the approach of the new millennium as 1999 came to a close, I was practically pulling my hair out. “It is not the new millennium!” I kept saying. We had one more year to go. The second millennium wouldn’t be starting until January 1, 2001!

There was no year zero, people!

Ten years later and my hairline is getting nervous again. As 2010 approaches, we are getting all the lists of the decade coming out. But, I’m telling you… the tenth year of this century’s first decade is just beginning!

Look at it this way, when you count to ten, how do you do it? You start at one and count to ten, right? But the way people are considering this decade, just as with the millennium, they are counting to ten by starting at zero and ending at nine. See what I mean?

However, with age comes wisdom, as they say. And a little mellowing. I’m still bugged by this, but I understand that people are actually looking at it as though the “zeros” or “aughts” (or whatever we call it) decade is coming to an end. I’m ok with that. After all, one of my favorite podcasts is ‘Stuck in the 80s’, a celebration of our favorite decade - the 1980s. For the purposes of that show, the 80s began in 1980 and ended in 1989. That’s true. Those were the 80s. However, the 80s was the ninth decade of the twentieth century and it lasted until the end of 1990.

Remember: there was no year zero. And when we count to ten, we count from one to ten, not from zero to nine.

Have I straightened out the confusion? Probably not. Have I changed any minds? Doubtful. Do people still hate math geeks pooping on their party? Absolutely.

the first season of star trek: the next generation kinda…sucked

Yes, I’m aware this is well past the point of relevance, but it’s my blog. Lately, one of the local TV stations has been playing Star Trek: The Next Generation. I haven’t seen the show for several years, so I’m taking advantage of their airing it to enjoy them again.

One thing that occurs to me while watching the first season is that the show wasn’t that good when it started. I am aware that the show went into production while a writer’s strike was raging in Hollywood, so I guess it’s understandable that the scripts are far less than stellar (is that a pun?). In fact, much of that first season wasn’t any better than the lousiest episodes of the original series. (Think ‘A Piece of the Action’ or ‘Spock’s Brain’.)

The cast all looked and sounded uncomfortable, especially when you compare them to how they seemed long about the third season. By then the cast had better writers and a much better understanding of their characters. Riker grew a beard (although he never lost that walking as if he had a board up his back), Picard became less bombastic, Worf’s make-up got better, Tasha Yar had been killed off, Wesley Crusher would soon be written off the show and other various improvements.

Some of those other improvements included better costumes and production values. I had heard somewhere that the cast wasn’t very happy with the costumes early on. Apparently, they were too tight and itchy. That may have contributed to the awkward acting in that first season. The set lighting was a bit substandard. And the alien planets looked a lot like sound stages, just like in the original series. Along with the acting and writing, many aspects of the show improved as it became more popular and profitable.

As I said, there was a writer’s strike going on that first season so viewers were treated to some pretty awful storylines and dialogue. In an early episode we were introduced to Lore, Data’s evil older “brother.” (The producers didn’t wait long to use the evil twin cliché.) Lore behaved suspiciously and Data seemed conflicted, so Lt. Yar, the Enterprise’s chief of security, asked Capt. Picard if he could still trust Data. Picard said he could and then admonished the rest of the bridge crew about Yar’s question being a “perfectly legitimate security question.” Picard’s outburst seemed strange to me and Yar reacted like a blushing little girl. This rough and tumble, tough as nails Star Fleet officer was bashfully smiling and batting her eyes at Picard’s statement!

In another episode, this one featuring Q (possibly the best character of that first season) offering Commander Riker the powers of the Q Continuum, a group of nearly omnipotent beings. The actor playing Q, John de Lancie, still hadn’t quite gotten a handle on his character. He had moments of overacting, but he was still interesting. Anyway, he zapped a few members of the bridge crew to the surface of a sound stage where they were menaced by what Worf referred to as “savage animal things.” Really? “Savage animal things?” They couldn’t come up with something better than that?

Then there was Wesley Crusher, the 12 year-old son of the ship’s chief medical officer, Dr. Beverly Crusher. Wesley was probably the fans’ least favorite character. When Wesley wasn’t looking stupid or grinning ear-to-ear, he was saving day. He must have saved the ship half a dozen times that first season alone.

Wesley Crusher looking stupid.

Wesley even suffered the “not now I’m too busy to hear your vitally important information because you are only a child” brush off on more than one occasion. This happened, despite Wesley’s track record of saving the day and the fact that some time traveling alien said Welsey was the next Newton/Einstein /Solock phenom (I wanted to do the two real names and one made up name device used so often in Star Trek). The phenom element never was fulfilled by the series for Wesley. Fortunately.

There were a few interesting moments and developments in that first season, however. The Q and Data characters. Tascha Yar and Data having sex (Data’s an android, by the way). Patrick Stewart had some good moments of acting to go along with his more over-the-top moments. That episode with Q I mentioned had Picard delivering a fine speech quoting Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet.’ That’s not surprising given Stewart’s background as a Shakespearian actor.

One episode late in that first season did something rather ballsy, I thought. One of the main characters was killed about 15 minutes into the show. It was Lt. Tascha Yar, the chief of security for the Enterprise, not very well portrayed by Denise Crosby. The ballsiness was somewhat diminished when, at the end of the show, the main bridge crew all gather on the holodeck (if you don’t know Star Trek, I’m sorry I’m not going to explain the holodeck) where they watched a prerecorded message from Lt. Yar. It was her chance to say goodbye to each of the cast… er, crew members. But, why would she have made such a recording? Her character couldn’t have been more than 28 years-old and she’s making farewell holo-images for her crewmates? It would have been better to have the bridge crew gather on the bridge or 10 forward (again if you don’t know Star Trek, I’m sorry) to talk about losing her. But then Denise Crosby wouldn’t have had her big goodbye moment, something I’m sure the show’s producers had to do to get her agree to be killed off so early in the episode.

Still, I like the series. However, when it first aired, I didn’t watch it. For some reason, I wasn’t interested. It was during the third season that I tuned in. The series had really gotten rolling by then, which is fortunate, because had I watched the series when it began, I might not have stayed with it for very long.

Grow old and do well.

Correction 12/29/09:

I had listed Wesley Crusher as being 12 years-old. It appears as though he was probably 14 years-old during season one. My apologies to all the Wesley Crushers fans that... oh, wait, there were no Wesley Crusher fans, were there?

quick observations

Here's a couple quick ones...

I'm sorry to say that I know who this man is, but it's almost impossible to escape pop culture's ever present grasp. So, I know Jon Gosselin. I'm not going to weigh in on any of the nonsense surrounding the "reality" celebrities. I just want to point out how much I think Gosselin resembles the Gill Man from 'The Creature Walks Among Us'. Gosselin may not be as menacing, but there's something there. Don't you think?




I just saw the long trailer for the much anticipated (not by me, I assure you) film 'Avatar'. I didn't know anything about this film until a couple months ago, when I first heard of it. From what I understand it's based on a video game. Is it? I don't know for sure.

So, I watched the trailer during the football game last Sunday. I thought the CGI characters looked like cartoons. CGI effects have made incredible leaps in fleshing out epic stories without epic costs. However, CGI still has a ways to go with depicting characters believably.

Also, the storyline seems familiar. I think this film will be big with Native Americans. Judging by what I saw in the trailer, the tagline should be... "Avatar, this time the Indians win."

the thing about EVP

In 1980 the film ‘The Changeling’ was released by MGM. It is a pretty effective ghost/haunted house/mystery movie starring the great George C. Scott. As the film openings we see Scott’s character, John Russell, suffer an incredible tragedy. The story then continues four months later as Russell gets back to living his life.

He moves to Seattle where he takes a job as a college music professor. Russell leases an old historical mansion which is waaay more house than one man needs, but makes for a more haunting setting than a little bungalow. Soon after taking residence, he begins to experience ghostly activity.

Of course, he’s skeptical at first, but before long he enlists the assistance of a psychic. The medium and her husband arrive and set out to see if they can identify who is haunting the house and what it is the ghost wants.

A séance is held.

The psychic goes into a trance and does what I think is called dissociative writing. She asks questions of the ghost as she runs a pencil over a pile of paper. Whenever she receives an answer, which only she can hear, she writes it down and her husband reads it to the others present at the séance.

Thrills and chills ensue.

The séance ended, everyone has gone, leaving John Russell alone in the big, old house. (Unless you count the ghost.) The séance was tape recorded, so he decides to listen to what happened. To his astonishment, he hears the voice of a child answering the medium’s questions! The answers all correspond with what the psychic wrote while in her trance, only no one else had heard the answers.

The voice is as clear as can be. The film leaves no doubt that somehow a reel-to-reel tape recorder can pick up voices from beyond the grave. It is a movie, so anything is possible. However, the real world is something altogether different.

Why this mini movie review? It gives me the opportunity to make a skeptical observation on Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). As I said the real world is different than the movies. The recorded ghost voice in ‘The Changeling’ is what real world paranormal enthusiasts would consider an example of Class A EVP.

From the admittedly small amount of research I’ve done, the vast majority of EVP examples I found are nowhere near as clear as in the movies. More often than not they are in the ear of the beholder. The examples I’ve found all tend to be described as though they were right out of ‘The Changeling’, but they don’t play that way.

(I must say that in my research I did find one EVP example that sounded clear. It sounded as though someone, in this world, spoke in a low voice into the recorder. I guess this is a bit of a catch 22 for the paranormal folks. Skeptics require clear evidence, but, the clearer the photograph or voice, the more likely it will be considered a hoax. I know that’s not fair, but we only have the presenter’s word that no one else was present to make that ghostly voice. And there is the fact that that particular EVP hasn’t made headlines and it remains tucked away on one of the thousands of paranormal websites.)

Last September, I appeared on Scotty Robert’s internet radio program, “Dead Reckoning”. Scotty is a dear friend of mine who can hardly be considered a skeptic. He reads tarot, hunts ghosts, speaks at paranormal events and hosts that internet radio show on politics and the paranormal and whatever else comes to his mind. He has me on periodically to add a skeptical perspective. We do our usual round and round on science, skepticism, and the paranormal.

During my September visit, my friend mentioned EVP he and his team of investigators had recorded. He talked about one in particular of the several he claimed to have captured of a singularly foul-mouthed “spirit”. The “spirit” told Scotty and his fellow investigator, “F--- you both!” when asked to turn on a flashlight. Of course, they didn’t hear the voice until they played back the tape.

During that show, Scotty described the vulgar EVP just the way I described that scene from ‘The Changeling’. Then, 10 minutes later, he played the clip. It was laughable. All one can hear for sure was some low gurgling sound. It was nothing like the profane statement Scotty claimed. My reaction was, “That was so convincing!” I was being sarcastic.

As a skeptic, I require much better evidence then some scratchy static or some low gurgling sounds to convince me of ghosts or angels or demons, etc. These real world EVPs are not like those from Hollywood. They are far too subjective and prone to suggestion to be considered convincing evidence of anything but wishful thinking.

Remember: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

the new electric company

How do I say this? How do I express my reaction to PBS’s new version of 'The Electric Company'? How do I state it without sounding like a… bigot?

Well, I’ll just say it. I hate it. Well, not all of it. There’s a 30 second bit with Jimmy Fallon singing the praises of the letter ‘H’ in the style of the Ramones. And there might be one or two other aspects or features of the show of which I don’t have much of a problem.

So, what is it about the show that bothers me?

What I hate about the show is that it’s all (or almost all) Hip Hop. I don’t particularly care for the art form. I do like a few songs, but the art form doesn’t speak to me. I don’t like the fashion. I don’t like the walking style, the hunched shoulders, the arm movements, the hand gestures. I don’t like the low angle camera showing the actors performing down to the audience. I don’t like the graffiti lifestyle that is on display in the show. It’s so urban, so New York City.

Am I sounding like a bigot? Or am I just showing my age and squareness?

The original cast was certainly diverse. They were hip to the fashion of the day. I miss the Marvel Comics connection (remember Spider-Man’s involvement?) and the fact that the cast was mostly made up of adults. This new cast is awfully young, not that that is a big deal. It’s just that the adult cast seemed more like teachers to the kids on the show. Very groovy, cool, hip teachers, ya dig? The adults on the new show seem less consequential.

I went to the YouTube and watched a few clips of the old show. It certainly seems more charming to me, but then again that could just be my age talking. I’m sure today’s kids are plenty entertained by the new show. I know my son is.

One thing about the old show that you absolutely won’t see in the new show, Bill Cosby smoking a cigar! A friend of mine rented a few of the old episodes recently and told me about Bill Cosby smoking on the show. Ah, the 70s, those were the days.

The new show’s “bad” characters are very cartoonish. That may be because of the fact that the show is written for kids. Cartoonish bad guys aren’t as threatening and besides they always get foiled in the end.

There are two characters I am particularly annoyed with: Manny, the very cartoonish and foppish bad boy, and Shock, the human beatbox. Manny is sooo cartoonish and over-the-top that he makes me feel violent. Not only that, but he has the trimmed, shaped eyebrows. I HATE THAT! Men just look foolish with shaped eyebrows. I have nothing against trimming the bushy, horse hairs that appear as men age.(I admit it, I do it.) But the perfectly formed, tapered, angular eyebrows of these metrosexuals are just wrong, wrong, wrong!

And Shock is one of those human beatbox guys. He’s very good at it. I'll give him that, but I just don’t like human beatboxes. He doesn’t seem to be shaping his eyebrows though. That's him on the left beatboxing away next to the always available Whoopi Goldberg. The other fellow is Hector and he's rapping to Shock's beat. I think Whoopi thinks she's in a low budget production of 'Cats'.

In my area, the local PBS station schedules 'The Electric Company' at 5:30pm, right after a kids’ show I really enjoy, 'Fetch with Ruff Ruffman'. The thing is, when I get home there’s usually only a few minutes left of the show I like, then I have to find something to do while my son enjoys 'The Electric Company', the show I hate.

It could be worse. He could be watching 'Dora the Explorer'.