[image:122:l] Movies, T.V. and dead rock stars.

They’re making a Transformers movie. Don’t know how I feel about this. Optimus Prime will battle Megatron in downtown L.A. and that’s a good thing though L.A. has been through enough what with deadly viruses, nuclear attacks, Presidential candidate assasination attempts, ex presidents assasinations, and nerve gas. And don’t forget Shaq and Kobe. Don’t know if this will be geared towards kids or the adults who grew up watching this stuff and playing with the toys, but it wont be easy to tailor it to both if that’s the plan. Or maybe it’s a built in home run without trying. Don’t know but I hope there’s more than meets the eye.

Looks like JJ Abrams and the Lost production team are going to direct and produce a Star Trek prequel that will deal with Spock, Kirk and the rest of the old time crew in their academy days. This also fills me with mixed emotions. Prequels in general make me ambivilent because you know how certain things work out. Spock wont die in this one, Kirk will screw alot of cadets, Scotty will fix something for the first time, and McCoy will complain about the archaic curriculum. Abrams seems on a role though and maybe he can take the series out of the grave and revive it in a dramatic and exciting way. Maybe an electromagnetic subspace anomaly that takes the form of a black nano cloud that reads minds and casts judgment on Earthlings.

And a hatch. Some kind of mysterious hatch.

The casting of this will be a much ballyhooed affair I’m sure. How do you cast someone to play a role William Shantner originated and made famous for overacting in? I think you have to go CGI here. No human can pull this off.

Last nights 24. Loved it. I yelled out loud at 2 in the morning when I watched it and put my hands over my head when Heller’s fate grew apparent. I don’t care how implausible evil Robocop’s multi-tasking layers of “contingincies,” of which he, Jack, and 24 viewers know there are always alot of, really are. I don’t care if I don’t understand what the effing hell Chloe and Jack are talking about half the time. On that note let me say that Chloe is like Macgyver with a computer. Is any of that stuff she does based on any kind of reality? She patches together satelite images and interior heat sensing body imaging readings with a laptop, a database, a coathanger, and spliced speaker wire. She and Jack might be talking gibberish or Chinese for all I can tell when they go into all that LAN hooked to matrix overriding the paralel com links with external processor techno-gobbledegook they throw at each other. Why don’t they just admit they love each other damn it!

But its all good. I’m happy in that world where Jack has a hooded sweatshirt that protects him from nerve gas and makes him appear to be a baggage carrier. (Props to blogcritics.org for the carrier call).

I had a moment when Jack looked back at Audrey as he left her behind to screw things up and she told him to get that tape. He heroically and assuringly, but with a superheroes stoic matter of factness says, “I Will.” He could have ended the sentence with, “Lois,” and it would have been seamless. Never have those two words been more truly spoken by someone not wearing a cape. He’s Jack Bauer.

I’ve begun composing songs and poems for Jack. A current tune to which I’ve yet to put to music goes a little something like this:

As the dawn breaks on America
And terror walks the land
A hero’s called to battle
To make a final stand

His day will last forever
Many lives surely will be lost.
He’s stronger than Jesus.
And carries a bigger cross.

He wears his hood of hope
So that we don’t despair
Carrying his utility backpack of justice
He’s got righteousness in there.

Chloe don’t know better
Chloe’s just like me…only beautiful
A couple of years younger…oh shite that last stuff is from Mother Love Bone.

Well you get the point. I want to learn to play the acoustic guitar so I can put it to music and properly worship Jack Bauer in a manner befitting a mostly emotionless government automoton that has never smiled and who destroys everyone who knows him as he saves faceless Americans that he puts first because its his job and they outnumber the people he knows, and who have presumably seen a lighter side to Jack. Perhaps that is why they must die.

There is this pay per view seance to contact John Lennon that is going to air tonight. I hear Yoko is involved somehow but have not been able to confirm this online. The psychics involved, not surprisingly are reporting the attempt at contact was a success. This included the following as per the Irish Examiner:

“An online trailer promises viewers they will also see the figure of a man filmed on infra-red cameras, and asks ‘Is it John Lennon?’”

Also included is footage filmed in Lennon’s favorite spots in Liverpool, India, New York City and Los Angeles. Supposedly his voice was caught on tape at his favorite NY restaurant La Fortuna where makers claim paranormal “Electronic Voice Phenomenon“, or EVP allowed John to speak in much the same way radio and tv broadcast signals. Irish Examiner

And what did Lennon supposedly say? Reports indicate he called for peace. “A messege of peace.”

Shame on you Yoko if you are involved and profiting from this.

Now I’m not saying this is impossible. If spirits exist and can communicate it makes some sense that radio wave like signals might be the route. Perhaps our consciousness is operating on a broadcast channel and when we die its like turning the channel on a tv or radio and were just switching the frequency. Like going from Fox News to PBS. Except teh TV is off and we are Tivo-ing it. Perhaps.

Probably not. And these people are getting richer by exploiting a legend who probably would have been disgusted at being used in a pay per view special. In all probabilty he sat in on a seance at some point in his life. He was an explorer with an open mind. But he wasn’t stupid or gullible and he wouldn’t have commercialized the process.

Do you really see him taking advantage of this unique opportunity to communicate from the great beyond and going, “ooooh, all I was saying is give peace a chance. Ooooh listen to my message of peace. Get along everybody. Ooooh?”

Personally I think he’d yell “Listen you bloody fools we know everything up here and Bush lied. His religiosity is disingenuous. Anybody who voted him is a wanker. England and America are deep trouble you know if you don’t turn it around quick. I kicked Elvis’s ass when I got here and Nixon’s when he did. Oh and up here I am more popular than Jesus. My gigs totally outsell his. They don’t think much of desert healers anymore. On to them and all that. Piss off now and get a life.”

Oh and “Shame on you Yoko.”

If she’s involved. I’ve only heard that anecdotally. I’m not sure they could do something like this without her though. It makes sense that in a time of war and American decline, she’d want to recapture a bit of that 60′s era activism and use one of the main forces of that era to do so. Hope that a reminder from John that peace should come first might light that spark that’s been snnuffed for so long. That’s all well and good. I understand Yoko. I do. And I don’t think you broke up the Beatles. But these guys are charlatans and opportunists.

But what might be the worst part of this whole thing is that the special is being called The Spirit Of John Lennon at a time when i have started working on a screenplay called The Ghost Of John Lennon. I want them to ask Lennon who he’d really like to have using the title idea. My guess is that it’s the guy who isn’t going to have the whole thing boil down to something as obvious and trite as a message for peace, though yeah that is part of my story. By way of hard decisions and fighting the internal and external battles that Lennon fought. He was a guy who lived with alot of anger. He made alot mistakes. He understood the limitations of his humanity. He’d want the whole spectrum represented. And I think he and you would appreciate it revolving around a mileu as we have been trapped in for decades now where some part of John reignites that dormant spark of engagement and activism in my main character who in turn helps bring John’s message back in a new and vital way.

But hey I’m biased on that last part.

Idol tonight. Missed last week when everyone was supposedly actually good for once. Chris did What A Wonderful World and I hear it was great. I like Chris and like that song. Tonight was love songs and most of them got trashed by the panel including my beloved Katherine. I didn’t like any of the songs tonight. Eliot and Chris got the best reception from the judges along with an ok one for Paris. But something really must be done about Paula Abdul. She’s an embarrsment. When she was opining on Eliot’s performance she was in tears. I mean real bubbling mascara dragging tears. And when she did Chris (and I’m sure she’d like to), she was up and yelling like a maniac and jacking her knee up as she made pumping gestures. Simon was just sitting there next to her putting his head down and laughing at her. I think she’s on something dudes. I think she really was hooked up with that guy from the show a couple of years ago who ratted on her (hes a dirtbag for doing so though), and she just screams emotional imbalance and chemical dependency.

She must be stopped before someone gets hurt or just starts doing stuff like stripping and touching herself during hot males perfromances because she’s not too far off that now. Get help girl. Let Jessica Simpson take your place as was rumored. I”m just trying to be straight up now baby, with you Paula.

And I dont really like love songs. Not standard ones anyway. My god Paris even did Feelings. That to me is one of the worst pieces of dreck to be put to music ever. Give me a good Heavy Metal ballad over that anyday. Or a little Barry of course. Schlock with no pretense. Even Memories by Mega Barbara would be more palatable though I feel Streisand represents everything wrong with music. Well not everything but enough of it. All this Idol singer stuff. Who cares about how good someones voice is? I want a song not a singer. Sure they have to have an ok voice, but if its about the voice like it is with Babs and her offshoots such as Mariah and Whitney it becomes vocal masturbation to me. Just warbling with vocal vibratos to get yourself off.

Write a friggin song and play an instrument like a real musician. Those are the guys out there trying to save the bloody world.

And if you got to go sentimental you can still do it without the drivel and ick factor. Give me some Carol King and It’s Too Late. Now there’s a love song (well sort of-an out of love song) I can appreciate.

Still the greatest love song of all times has got to be Ac/Dc’s You Shook Me All Night Long. Beautiful sentiments every girl wants to hear. She told him to come. . .but he was already there. Damn!