Dispatches from the Eccentric Frontier

Before Thanksgiving vacation, sandpanther recommended that obsessivewoman and I take a look at Avatar: the Last Airbender, and there just happened to be a marathon on Nicktoons over Thanksgiving weekend that had all three seasons. I told the TiVo to grab it, and we had a good time plowing through the episodes.

It’s a show for kids that is very watchable to adults as well; the main characters range from ages 12–16, but there are plenty of interesting adult characters in the supporting cast, and the “adolescents save the world” plotline works without requiring that the adults display an abnormal degree of foolishness or be rendered irrelevant. The writers had a story that lasted for three seasons, and they tell it in a steady progression that doesn’t go wandering.

They also managed to work in a fair amount of Eastern mysticism, and based the movements controlling the elemental powers of the world on real-world martial arts. Adults with background in martial arts or the occult will enjoy this nuance, but it’s seamlessly integrated into the world and I doubt it’d be particularly noticeable to someone who didn’t already know what to look for.

Overall, this is a fine show for families to watch together; the DVD box sets would be great gifts if you have friends whose kids like to watch things over and over again.

Friday’s Stargate: Atlantis had a nice reflection on the torture debate that’s current in America. The episode featured the classic unrealistic movie-plot scenario used to justify keeping torture legal: a known ticking bomb that can only be disarmed by having the right MacGuffin of information, and a prisoner who is the obvious person to possess said MacGuffin.

( Mild spoilers for 'The Eye' )

A nicely written debunking of the standard justification for the use of torture, and much less heavy-handed than some of the classic Star Trek episodes like The Omega Glory.

( TiVo hackery )

Since sandpanther tagged me:

1. Total number of films I own on DVD/video: about 150. I also have the complete (as possible, for shows not fully released) runs of Babylon 5, Crusade, Farscape, Alias, Yuu Yuu Hakusho, and Good Eats.
2. The last film I bought: Not sure. Perhaps Return of the King Extended Dance Mix or whatever they call the long-playing version.
3. The last film I watched: Star Wars: Return of the Sith.
4. Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me:
   • Baraka. In my opinion, the best of the wordless films in the tradition of Koyaanisqatsi.
   • Cutthroat Island, since obsessivewoman’s wedding dress was modeled on the one Geena Davis wore in the auction scene.
   • Giant Robo, for the operatic-scale adventure story and the Art Deco giant robots.
   • The Fifth Element, because I love how it manages to disguise a fairy tale as a science fiction action thriller. (Hits the same spot as the Liaden books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.)
   • Tonari no Totoro, which is so well done that I enjoyed watching it the first time without any translation. (So did my parents.)
   • Extra bonus anecdote: When obsessivewoman and I were first dating, I was looking over her video collection, saw her tape of The Princess Bride was still in its shrink wrap, and said, “You haven’t opened that yet? We should watch it!” She neglected to inform me (until much later) that what I had found was her new copy to replace the previous tape, which had worn out.
   • They’re not technically films, but Babylon 5 and Farscape rate a mention because they’re fine pieces of storytelling, standing well above the majority of television.
5. Pick five people and have them put this in their journal: I’m pruning this meme’s replication code. If you want to talk about your film collection, blog away, but I’m not adding any social obligation to do so.

Gnod - the Global Network of Dreams is another interesting place to find recommendations of various sorts. Flork is a profile site whose login takes you to Gnoosic, Gnooks, and Gnovies. Flork gives you your own profile page. It looks like the technology is still fairly early stage, but it’s an interesting thing to explore.

I was born in 1971. I grew up in Northern California knowing what a fallout shelter sign was for, but I never went through a “duck and cover” drill or heard a live air raid siren. I saw nuclear armageddon as a sort of natural disaster, something that might happen, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I might as well not worry about it. I didn’t consider it likely, but while growing up I had a gut estimate that there was about a 10% probability that I might be nuked out of existence along with most of the rest of humanity. One of my mother’s friends once remarked that he made a point of always living within the firestorm range of a military base or population center, so it would be quick; I remember thinking, “That’s comforting.” The usual item of speculation, on the rare occasions that the subject came up, was not “how could I survive?” but “how could I make my last moments really good?” Films like The Day After were sobering, but what could you do about it?

A while ago, I was watching an episode of Secret Passages on the preparations people took during the Cold War, and I suddenly noticed: I had, at some point in my life, quietly revised that chance of death-by-atomic-bomb down to “negligible”. I recognize that a rogue nation or terrorist group might get their hands on a handful of nukes, but I estimate the probability as too low to bother with— just keep the standard earthquake preparedness kit handy and don’t fret. I think somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, my hindbrain just wrote off the prospect of nuclear annihilation.

So shows like Secret Passages, or a chapter in The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of, which I’m reading now, can remind me of those days. Looking back on the Cold War, now that I have a lot more perspective, I get a mixture of the chills at how close we came and relief at how far we’ve come and I don’t know what all else— it’s muddled. Weird. And then I remember how “weird” used to be much more related to the notion of “fate”, and that, I think, is the cherry on this peculiar emotional sundae.