Robert Goulet, RIP

Filmdrunk has a moving tribute to the man, and the voice.

KSK Does the Governator

Schwarzenegger watches the Chargers:

Shawne Merruhman, you call yourself a steroid abusuh?!

I make big laugh at you. Ha ha ha ha. You are little more than a namby-pamby wurst-swallowuh, yes? How many hausfraus have you grabbed and made bangbang with lately? Back in 1979, I broke a personal best by groping over 765 asses in just one month, yes. And when I groped an ass, I groped it HARD, yes. I would tear it, the woman’s asscheek, clean off her body. She would never sit on a shittuh the same way again. If she wanted to make braunschweiger in the toilet, yes, she had squat like a 1932 Vienna homosexual in a back alley. It was FANTASTIC AND WONDERFUL. Have you ever done such things as this, tiny little Shawne Merruhman? Then you cannot call yourself a true steroid abusuh, yes.

A true steroid abusuh, he does not research his steroids, yes, or know where they are coming from, the steroids. That is for little Heidis. I was dedicated, yes, to being a top bodybuilduh. And that meant I was willing to plunge into the unknown, or to plunge the unknown into me. One time I injected myself with this pure mercury, because this mercury, it is liquid metal and I wanted to be like the T-1000 and stab people and milk cartons with my liquid metal knife-arms. This did not work, yes, and sometimes I see diamond patterns now. But I am still more man than you, miniature Shawne Merruhman.

So hot.The funniest line ever: " . . . and milk cartons . . ."

In other important KSK news, Big Daddy Drew posits the question, "Which Deschanel sister is hotter, Emily or Zooey?"

I leave that to you to answer. But the Wonder Woman costume goes a long, long, long way. . .

Sony Watch

It's been awhile, so here's the latest:

* Microsoft's game division is profitable for the first time ever, due certainly to its triumph over the PS3.

* Sony's game unit just saw its Q2 losses double. The really bracing news:

As of September 30, Sony's worldwide game inventory had increased 31.7 percent to 247.8 billion ($2.15 billion) "due to the buildup of finished goods following the introduction of the PS3 platform."

As for hardware sales, the three months ending September 30 saw Sony sell--not ship--1.31 million PS3s worldwide. The company also sold 3.28 million PlayStation 2s . . .

* Also, Will Wright says that Spore, one of the most anticipated games ever, will be coming to Wii. No other console will get the PC game.

Justice League News

I'm just warning you right now: I'm going to do a lot of updates on this movie because I'm obsessed with watching my childhood being destroyed in slow motion. So here's what we have today:

* They've cast a 21-year-old blonde from The Grudge 2 as Wonder Woman.

* Herc has a short FAQ on an older version of the script, which has Maxwell Lord and Talia al Ghul as the villains.

What, no Starro?

Not to be master of the obvious, but the recent Brad Meltzer Justice League re-boot with Solomon Grundy as the villain could have been easily re-written into a fabulous, intelligent origin story for the League. If the studio was convinced that the JLA needs an origin movie.

On a semi-related note, Wedding Crashers' David Dobkin is now on board to direct The Flash.

No, you lock it up.

Human Race to Split into Two Different Species?

Drudge carried this headline over the weekend, and I have to say I was unimpressed with the story, for three reasons:

(1) Wasn't Reihan all over this, like two years ago?

(2) The story ignores completely the phenomenon of falling fertility rates where, in industrialized nations, the level of education (and to a lesser degress, socioeconomic status) is inversely proportional to fertility rate.

(3) The story makes no mention of mutant abilities.

Geek TV News

So Bionic Woman has another new showrunner, this time a guy named Jason Cahill, whose previous credits include Sopranos (good), ER (eh), Profiler (terrible), and Cane and Surface (huh?).

Now may be the time to check out on Jamie Sommers.

Oh, and the final season of Battlestar Galactica has been pushed back until April . . . and Sci-Fi still might wait until 2009 to air the end of the fourth season.

Let's Go Football: London Edition

KSK is on a roll this week, with this guide to football for Londoners:

Hello, English people! Or should I say, top of the marnin’ to ya? Huh? Huh? It’s my honor to take you on a tour of all things NFL and explain why it might appeal to you folks in London, or as I like to call it, “Seattle With Funny Accents.” No doubt you’ve heard of the NFL, but haven’t had the chance to learn more about it because you were too busy breathlessly overhyping lousy bands (“The new Travis album is absolutely MASSIVE!”) and eating spoonfuls of mayonnaise straight from the jar. . . .

What You’ll Think Is Absolute Shite About The NFL:

-The padding. Yes, yes, rugby players are tougher because they don’t wear pads and play exclusively in hot pants (nice kit!). Whatever. I’m sure Ray Lewis wouldn’t last one second playing for Leicester. You keep on believing that.

And at the risk of insulting your intelligence, if you aren't reading the article tags at the end of KSK entries, then you're missing out. The tags of this post are:

tags: Big Daddy Drew, british people think white socks are for dorks, england, gay, KSK Guide to American Football For Pussified Countries Of The International Arena, princess diana? i'd still hit it

Awesome.

Get Matus on Line One

Casino refuses to pay out $1.6 million jackpot--says slotmachine malfunctioned in awarding it. This at an Indian Native-American casino.

That's great. The jokes--the terrible, offensive, racist jokes--write themselves.

P.S.: I'm not suggesting Matus should be called in for making the jokes, rather that no one feels a gambler's outrage like he does. Just so we're clear.

I wonder what Galley Friend and Hoya Superfan P.L. would have done . . .

"Lacrosse is the little brother of war"?

Yeah, that's what "The Fridge" said on the back of his G.I. Joe filecard. Galley Friend B.W. sends us to this fabulous celebration of the 21st anniversary of the special-edition "Fridge" G.I. Joe action figure.

I didn't get The Fridge figure as kid--I was so scarred by the Boba Fett experiences, waiting nearly 2 years to get a Fett whose rocket had been glued into the backpack launcher--that I swore I'd never send away for a toy again. And when I saw my friend George Hoffman's Fridge figure, with its stupid football-mace, I felt completely vindicated.

Go follow that link, by the way, the blogger has an impressive collection of stuff from Hasbro's campaign for the Fridge figure.

Update: Galley Reader, Maryland native, and Redskins superfan P.G. informs us:

The “Lacrosse is the little brother of war” line derives from the fact that Bagataway, what Indians called Lacrosse, literally means "Little brother of war."

Did you ever notice in HD that Trebek wears a gaudy, gold-and-silver bracelet?

And incidentally, Galley Friend Nick Swezey won his third night on Jeopardy! last night in dominating fashion. So dominant, in fact, that Final Jeopardy was meaningless. He's a machine!

Just Asking . . .

Has anyone else noticed how much Todd Helton looks like Mick Foley?

Ross Douthat: Officially Cool

Neil Gaiman engages Ross on the issue of Dumbledore's sexual preference and Ross defends himself ably. But in case Ross has missed the big picture: Neil Freakin' Gaiman is reading him.

That's awesome.

Who cares if Gaiman disagrees, really? If Gaiman, or Frank Miller, or Brian Vaughn called me an idiot, I'd basically explode with delight. Or whatever wouldn't sound really girly and stupid.

Go Ross; he's my new hero.

P.S.: The Dumbledore-gay thing? I don't know that I ever consciously suspected it while reading the books, but it doesn't surprise me at all and, to me anyway, kind of makes some sense.

Not that you'll see Neil Gaiman reading this stupid blog . . .

Hey mama, make that pumpkin pie!

The great Robert Goulet is in critical condition, having recently been diagnosed with interstitial pulmonary fibrosis. He is currently in Cedars-Sinai awaiting a lung transplant and we can only hope for the best. But in the meantime, check out Goulet's website, particularly the clips for his old ESPN promos for college basketball: "The only thing more dramatic than my hairdresser Ricardo is a game-winning three-pointer on ESPN!" Also: "When it comes to live entertainment, you got dinner theater, that performance-art hippie crap, and NC-2A basketball on ESPN!"

Justice League News

Lots of updates today, on Jessica Biel not playing Wonder Woman; on Barry Allen vs. Wally West as Flash; and on a possible casting choice for Superman.

That's all fine, but what I want to know is this:

Who's playing Gleek? Because if they try to CGI him, this movie is going to be lame. CGI space monkeys never work.

Can This Possibly Be True?

I lean toward "no," because this is the sort of routine that only movie villains go to the trouble of concocting:

Copperfield designed part of his show around "a system for picking up women." During his show, David goes into the audience and chooses women to come on stage. We're told that if David likes a girl, he'll use code words with assistants like "mama" and "secrecy." The assistants mark the women on a map of the inside of the Hollywood Theater at MGM Grand. After the show, the women are brought backstage -- and that's where the profiling begins.

The women are told that David may use them in his show when he comes to their hometown. They are then photographed with a digital camera, asked questions like, "What is your favorite men's cologne?" and "Where do you like to vacation?" We're told one of those vacation spots mentioned by staff is the Bahamas, where the accuser claims she was assaulted. Copperfield owns a cluster of islands in the Bahamas -- which he bought for $50 million.

This may explain the FBI's interest in David's camera system and hard drive. If the accuser is a woman who was brought on stage, the FBI would be interested in a possible M.O.

Who Is, "Your Mother," Trebek?

After a huge upset victory over a three-day champ, Galley Friend Nick Swezey won his second appearance on Jeopardy! last night. It was a tough battle, but Swezey pulled it out with a Final Jeopardy question on geometry. Well played!

Trailer City

New trailers for both Rambo and I Am Legend and, amazingly, both are heavy on interesting, lonely atmospherics.

I'm totally almost fooled.

I'll take The Rapists for $500

Congratulations to our Weekly Standard colleague Nicholas Swezey, who appeared on Jeopardy! last night and won. The category was "B.C. Quotes" and the question (or answer) was from which work is the following quote taken: "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."

Nick answered correctly with Sun Tzu's The Art of War and successfully outbid the reigning champ. Nick continues his quest on tonight's show, so stay tuned. The Galley Slaves wish him well and no, we really don't know how well he does, owing to a nondisclosure agreement. In unrelated news, Nick recently purchased a Maserati Quattroporte Executive GT sedan.

Kidding.

Bionic Change

I wonder whether or not it's fair to render judgment on Bionic Woman. The show's numbers are holding up pretty well and, four episodes in, we have at least some sense of what the show is. And while that could change, what it is right now is pretty unappealing.

Bionic Woman has all sorts of problems. Some of them, like the tacked on little-sister storyline, are understandable. Some of them, like the underwritten and not-terribly-charismatic lead, are structural. And some of them--like the incompetent editing, poor scoring, and laughable f/x--are incomprehensible. (Battlestar Galactica and Heroes have raised the bar to point where there just shouldn't be any compromises made in f/x on TV.)

That last category of problems is readily fixable given a talented, engaged showrunner. Some of the other problems are less easily fixed.

Take the lead, Jaime Sommers: As written, Sommers vacillates widely, from naïve over-achiever, to hardened bad-ass, to dim, struggling parental surrogate. Who is she really? So many shows have grappled with strong female leads in recent years—Buffy, Karen Sisco, Alias, Veronica Mars—that if you can’t get this basic characterization right, then you might was well fold up shop.

Instead, with Sommers, we get a muddled mess. We’re told that she was bright enough to go to Harvard, but she’s always seven steps behind everyone else in thinking through problems.

The “Harvard” backstory is indicative of the series’ overall tell-don’t-show approach. Instead of showing us a brilliant girl mysteriously trapped in a dead-end bartending job, the writers tell us that she got into Harvard—the broadest possible shorthand for “smart”—as if this information releases them from the need to show Sommers acting with any striking intelligence.

Tell-don’t-show is always annoying, but it can be fatal if it prevents the characters from earning payoffs.

That’s the biggest problem with Bionic Woman. Jaime Sommers went from innocent (but secretly special) bystander to human weapon in the pilot. That episode concluded with her menacingly telling Miguel Ferrer’s character to stay away from her because she “knew what she was capable of” now and that if he sent people after her, she’d “bury them one after another.”

I was kind of thrilled to see this dark tone; the sentiment—a bionic woman who’s a reluctant killing machine—is intriguing. But none of her transformation was earned: She’d had one short fist fight. She actually had no idea what she was capable of; it was never clear that she was cold-blooded enough to take a life.

The pernicious problem with lazy character writing is that it undermines and makes ridiculous even sound plotting that takes the tone of a series in the right direction. This is everywhere on display in Bionic Woman.

(I’m sure no one else is bothered by this, but I also don’t get the crypto political references to “Halliburton” or “Hillary Clinton.” It’s as if the writers are trying to signal some ideological leaning in what they think is the most obvious code in the world, but it comes across as non sequitor. Have we reached the point where all you have to do is have a character say “I’ll call Halliburton”—out of nowhere—and audiences are supposed to think that he’s a scary man who puts ends above means?)

The one bright spot has been the prototype bionic woman, Sarah Corvus. She’s all motivation, and it’s both reasonably consistent and quite interesting: Corvus became bionic, lost control, and started killing people. She didn’t really mean to, it seems, but she thought the source of her weakness was her remaining human parts, so she started giving herself more bionics. Now, it seems that her bionics may be killing her. And she doesn’t want to die. (This is all way more engrossing than the Jaime Sommers storyline, but it doesn’t hurt that Corvus actually gets clever dialogue and is played by Katee Sackhoff, who’s the most interesting actor on the show.)

The simple solution would be to make a radical switch: turn the show into Sarah Corvus: Bionic Woman and move Jaime Sommers to the backburner. Obviously, that won’t happen. But I wish something drastic would.

"First Orgy After Brian's Death Very Solemn"

From the Onion:

"Nobody knew Brian like we did—not his parents, not his brother, not even his wife," fuck-fiend Rebecca Baker said. "After all, Brian was more than just a guy who sometimes strapped on a jelly dong and did you from the side."

I don't even quite know what that means. But it's awesome.