I got tired of the late night talk show wars, and decided to give The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson a look.  Turns out he’s twice as funny as the others, and does it all by himself on a shoe-string budget and without the safety net of either a band or a sidekick.

Here’s Craig, picking on bloggers:

Of all the images I’ve seen of D-Day, here are three that are untypical.  (Link, link, and link)

At this point, the war had been going on for over three years (over four years for the Brits).  Despite what you might see in movies about this war, or read in books, victory for the allies did not look inevitable at this point.  In the beginning of this year the Allies held only the foot of Italy in Europe, and in the Pacific, things looked like they were at stalemate.   Up to this point, neither America, nor its allies had such a great track record at amphibious assaults, so the decision to open up a Western Front by attacking the well fortified coast of France was very risky.

Each year at this time I take a moment to remember the sacrifices that our parents’ generation went through to keep our world safe for us.  There are no end of websites that explain the details of D-Day, the subsequent campaign, and the unassuming heroism of the average Allied soldier. 

Wikipedia article on D-Day

Flickr set of contemporary WWII photos

Some contemporary documents and photos

The photos kind of bring the whole thing closer, don’t you think?

A friend of mine always used to tell me that two kinds of people in the world: those who think that there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t.  I think he was kidding.  I mean, everyone knows there are two kinds of people in the world.  It’s just that no one can agree on which kind there are.

Scifi exhibits this same basic duality that everything in nature has.  There’s the kind that’s all about the fun and adventure. That would be the kind that resembles the Star Wars movies.  This kind has always been more accessible for the average, mundane person.  After all, who doesn’t like a fun story?  Then there’s the kind that tries to present the audience with ideas and what-if scenarios.  What if everyone always had to conform to social norms?  What if the world ran out of food?  What if mankind goes where no man has gone before?  This kind of scifi has always appealed to those who wonder about what’s beneath the surface of things.  To put that another way, these sorts of stories appeal to those for whom good things don’t automatically fall into their lap, or find social acceptance difficult to achieve.  You would recognize us as nerds.

I certainly enjoyed the original three Star Wars movies (that would be episodes 4, 5, and 6), but my heart has always belonged to Star Trek.  For an old Trekkie, the love fest that has accompanied the new Star Trek movie is gratifying to see.

I debated quite a while with myself whether or not to add to the cacophony regarding the new Trek movie.  Do I really have anything to add that’s different than this Salon.com essay, or this nostalgic photo essay about the early days of the Trek fandom?  Not really.  I never participated in the whole Trek fandom thing.  I’d like to say that it was because I was above such things, but really it was mostly because I was a student back then and didn’t have extra money for those things.  Even so, I went to one scifi convention in 1976 and saw the famous blooper reel from the series.  Mind you, this was in the days before video casettes and VCRs.  Blooper reels are now very ho hum, and almost ever DVD of a show has them, but back then it was definitely a novelty to see one, especially one from Star Trek.

Here’s a neat insight into how the screenplay for the new movie was put together.  And for all the anal nitpickers out there who can only see the trees, and not the forest, here’s the film writers’ rebuttal to all the grousing.  I can only say that seeing this movie was almost exactly like when I first saw Trek on TV, thirty odd years ago.  People who missed out on the original series, and now wonder what on earth anyone could’ve seen in those cheesy old episodes, can look to this movie as an explanation for why it was such a phenomenon. 

Now that the weeping and wailing over the past network television season is winding down — ALL my favorite shows were canceled, and we’re losing an hour of prime time drama to NBC’s killer plan of All-Leno-All-Week-All-Year-Long (oooh, doesn’t that sound delicious?? NOT!) — I’m hoping that we have some interesting cable shows to look forward to this summer.  Like the rest of us, the television networks are all economizing, so we can look forward to even more stupid reality shows and game shows and game/reality show hybrids.  Oh and all sorts of shows dealing with paranormal stuff. 

On USA (Characters Welcome) Burn Notice is returning.  In my last post about this show, I ventured the hope that it would not succumb to the same fate as most of USA’s shows, namely that they sink into formulaic repetition.  Season 2 managed to be just as much fun as season 1, so I’m ready for season 3 to begin.  (June 4.)

USA (Characters Welcome) has a new show airing that same night, Royal Pains, which might be worth at least a look.

Fox is perpetually trying to find ways to cope with its truncated fall season (due to the baseball playoffs), so it is trying to pique our interest in a new fall show by airing a single episode this coming Thursday, right after the finale for American Idol (gag).  The show is called Glee, and I guess you could say it’s a sort of clone of Fame, but with the focus more on geeks.  It’s produced by the same guy that did Nip/Tuck, and based on what I read here, I think I’ll check it out.  Musicals are definitely not my cup of tea, but this one looks like it’s about anyone who went through high school thinking that they were destined for better things.  (And that’s pretty much everyone here, right?)

Also on my summer list is TNT’s (We Know Drama) Saving Grace, and The Closer.  These two are aimed at women audiences.  There’s plenty of action in them, after all, they’re both cop shows, but their focus is on characters, with stories that are mostly a sort of simple framework upon which to hang some strong women characters.  (Er…they have strong men characters, too, but these shows are definitely for women viewers.) 

TNT (We Know Drama) is also bringing back Leverage, which debuted this past winter.  It was a winsome con-caper show, with Timothy Hutton in the lead.  He’s nearly overshadowed by this character, who plays the team’s geek, and who steals every scene he’s in.  (Sigh.  Doesn’t every team has that one guy who knows all about any electronic roadblock they face, instantly and without having to read the manual?)  The show is fun to watch, as long as you don’t examine its premise or its methods too closely.  (If versimilitude and gritty real life street drama is your thing, than skip this.)

Some dates to keep in mind:

• June 4 (Burn Notice returns and Royal Pain debuts)
• June 8 (The Closer returns)
• June 16 (Saving Grace returns,
• June 16 (Burn Notice AND Saving Grace season 2 released on DVD)
• July 15 (Leverage returns)
• July 21 (Pushing Daisies second season DVD is released.)
• July 28 (the British Life on Mars series 1, region 1 DVD gets released)
• July 28 (The Middleman complete TV season 1 DVD gets released)
• August 28 (The Middleman complete season 1 DVD is released.)
• September 29 (the American Life on Mars season 1 DVD gets released)

Scheduled summer network burn-offs for their canceled shows (from TheFutonCritic.com)

“Pushing Daisies” (May 30-June 13), “Eli Stone” (June 20-July 11)…and “The Unusuals” (May 27-June 17)

(The Unusuals was an unexpectedly delightful replacement for Life On Mars.  Both shows are set on the gritty, urban streets of NYC, and both were well made.  What’re the odds of a replacement show being as good as the show it replaced?  So of course it was canceled!)

Kings returns to finish its remaining 7 episodes on Saturday, June 13.

Meanwhile, surf on over to Hulu, and check out these two gems of a short-lived TV series, Easy Money and Raines.

A USS Enterprise instruction manual.

This morning I found a blog devoted solely to reviewing only little black notebooks.  I’ve seen sites that review notebooks, but not one as specialized as this.  Even so, this isn’t the weird part yet.  After poking around in various blog entries, I found a website for an outfit that manufactures notebooks that can stand up to the rain.   Even that’s not all that weird.  A little esoteric, perhaps, but having worked on construction sites before, I can see that there might be a few uses for such a notebook.  But, take a look at all the testimonials from people who have used their notebooks and what they’ve used them for.  Now those are some interesting occupations, don’t you think?  Weird, but in a good way, that is.

Not weird enough yet?

How about the Comics Curmudgeon?  This guy takes comics a little too seriously, I think.

The Boring Store?  Wonder what they sell?  Not only a bunch of boring stuff, but would you believe they also offer tutoring?

From the Times (that’s the LONDON Times) comes an article proclaiming their list of the 50 best US television shows. 

Wow. 

I remember a time when the whole rest of the western world looked down on American television.  I remember squirming when I thought of all those episodes of Kojak and Dallas running constantly in the capitals of Europe.  Granted, they wouldn’t have aired there if audiences there didn’t want to watch these shows, but one could hardly defend them on their cultural merit.  In those days, what little highbrow cultural shows there were on American televisions usually came from the UK, and aired on PBS.

I can’t argue too much with their list, except to wonder if some of shows that I would’ve added maybe haven’t aired in the UK?  There’s no mention of Veronica Mars, Burn Notice, Monk, My Name is Earl, Rescue Me, or The Closer.  These, too, are American originals (unlike Ugly Betty, Life on Mars, or The Office).

As a die hard old school Trekkie, and a big fan of ST:TOS (er. that stands for Star Trek: The Original Series), I have been cringing at the thought of a “re-boot” of the franchise, as promised by the upcoming J. Abram “pre-quel”.  The movie is supposed to show the early formative years of Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew of the Federation Starship Enterprise, but after watching the slow deterioration of the various TV iterations, I had quite given up hope.

The new movie comes out in less than a month, and has already received its premiere in Sydney.  From one of my favorite V-bloggers comes a preview/review.  It has no spoilers, making it safe to watch, and has plenty of cool clips.

I’m less interested in how spiffy the special effects are — after all, a diehard fan of ST:TOS cannot possibly object to even the cheesiest of scifi special effects — and more interested in whether or not the new movie can possibly re-capture the spirit of the original series.  Judging by what Blunty has to say, it looks like the movie might just live up to my hopes.

I saw this YouTube video over at Running With My Eyes Closed, and almost passed on it.  I mean, who’s got time to watch another damn video that someone else thinks is cute, right?  But damn me, if this isn’t the funkiest YouTube mashup of disparate amateur musicians evah!  Plus it includes a THERAMIN, an instrument that you would never imagine as “funky”.

You really gotta admire the film-making skills, eh?

Woah!  What’s THIS show Kings doing on network TV?  It sure looks like something WAAAAY too good to be there.  It has scale, scope, subtlety and nuance.  And who knew that the story of David could be as fascinating as The Sopranos or Deadwood?  I mean, it’s an old and dead bible story, right?

Usually when a bible story appears on the screen, it’s depicted as holy and pious, with the events unfolding in a preordained fashion, starving the story of its drama.  These versions are almost always utterly unwatchable.  But this series, Kings, shows that these stories were about real humans with real passions.  It’s so well written and packed with drama that even though I already know what happens, I’m still left hanging and wondering what will happen in the end.  Will the pure of heart David be corrupted by the court in the end?

King Saul's Council Meeting

New York City is used as a backdrop to this story, and it isn’t often that one sees the majesty of the city the way it is shown in this series.  I don’t imagine that those who look upon The Big Apple as sin city would be pleased to see it as a backdrop to the story of Saul and David.  And using Al Swearingen as King Saul?  Shear genius!!  (Yeah, I know.  It’s really Ian McShane, playing a sly old bastard as only he can play one, except without all the profanity.)

This story is more Shakespeare than King James — including a version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  Even so, if you really want to explore what the story of David is all about, this is a good start.  It is at the moment the best thing on TV, and I hope the network allows all the episodes to air.