War of the Worlds

No, not red vs blue, think bigger! In 1898 HG Wells, one of the founding fathers of the Sci-Fi genre “gifted” us with some incredibly imaginative thinking about an alien invasion, bringing a whole new (ahem) alien concept into sharp focus and leaving us howling at whatever planet suited our fancy.

It took the genius of Orson Wells to turn that story into a radio drama in 1939, when his troop of players, the Mercury Theater, performed a live version of it on the air. This time, it was far more realistic. Using cutting edge tech – radio broadcast – and cutting edge techniques – sound effects, live orchestra, inspired performances – he simulated an invasion of Earth by wicked, up-to-no-good Martian invaders, whose advanced weaponry promptly flattened our puny defenses, dispatching with great swaths of humanity, as on-scene reporters, bystanders and military brass helplessly intoned the bad news in real time. 

One of the coolest concepts that gave the show a more believable bent was to use a small live orchestra, whose job was to play insipid dance music, simulating a normal evening radio broadcast, only to be repeatedly interrupted with breathless reports uttering “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this special bulletin” or even more convincing: “We now return to our program of evening music…” at which point the (really awful) dance music midst would be cut back into.

The effect was electrifying, so much so that it caused actual panic in the streets, with people spilling out of their homes, armed with guns and pitchforks. Heady stuff.

Now comes the latest iteration of the show (which was redone as  2005 Spielberg feature with Tom Cruise), a War of the Worlds OPERA (!) staged by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, based on the Mercury Theater broadcast, based on the book. The company has gone so far as to schedule not only the premier performance at Disney Hall in downtown LA, but a simulcast at three additional yet-to-be-announced outdoor public spaces, where a live actor will take to a makeshift stage and perform along with the live show. This will be done via loudspeakers mounted on poles built to hold the original 50-year old air raid sirens that were installed back in the days of the Red Scare. Quaint!

Just bought tickets (including the $14 per ticket convenience charge) and can’t wait to go next week. Stay tuned for broadcast interruptions.

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Film Commentary: Logan and Bladerunner -- Bleak vs Bleak

 OK, we all know that the future is loaded with tons and tons of dark, somber grays and blacks and midnight blues with smoke and fog and haze wafting through, to cover the sheer devastation of a shiny future turned dystopic because, well, it’s inevitable, right? Right – so let us entertain you! 

Two films exemplify dissimilar shades of that bleak spectrum: “Logan” and “Blade Runner". United in their agreement on the coming Bleakness, they diverge immediately in execution. But first, their similarities. 

Both films present beat-down protagonists, exhausted from their physical and mental battles, questioning their worth, their effectiveness and the meaning of their pathetic lives. Logan, the exhausted X-Man, must summon the strength to triumph over a seemingly endless variety of bad-to-the-bone dudes. And Bladerunner’s “K” must risk the enmity of his superiors in wrestling his conscience into doing what’s right, outside of party lines. 

 Both men find themselves in thoroughly unpleasant surroundings. The Blade Runner earthscape is particularly onerous, given to its barrenness in the face of a complete sociological collapse, with the seemingly same hapless city-droids from the original feature lurching past those urban noodle parlors, 35 years later.  And Logan’s world staggers from stinking desert hideaways to murderous highway stretches filled with soulless mercenaries and endless carnage. 

The glue that holds both stories together? Kids. Innocent children, lord love ‘em. Without them, live is a meaningless miasma of murder and mayhem. Save the children by all that’s holy! 

The difference, however, is stark. One film is just plain violent and the other is artistically, exquisitely cold. Director Denis Villeneuve and DP Richard Deakins present a stunning depiction of a serenely coiffed Bladescape that beckons via a series of details and shadows that are museum quality photos of the pride and privilege of a near future ruling class. Cold, cunning, exasperating, beautiful. Each setup is an airbrushed magazine ad for a $500 perfume. Logan’s setting is low-budget Mad Max. Sputtering killers, heads rolling in the sand, road kill. While somehow, Bladerunner couples its murderous violence with design and lighting brilliance. 

The result is a paradox of pleasure derived from the pain of a depicted world, delicious in its arched grind towards conflict and hopeful resolution. And if this is my choice to make, I’ll take the grace of a skyway filled with screaming air cars banking in formation along ruby skies, kissing the sunset with madly disruptive serenity. If the future is gonna be horrifying, let’s do it in style.

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Another Kind of Immortality

There's ample evidence and research indicating that it's just a matter of time before virtual entertainment becomes virtual living. How far out are we from being able to step into a world that is so perfectly generated, it becomes real to us and as it does, more and more compelling?

We're already bored with the early mind-blowing attempts that brought this unfolding tech to the forefront. Occulus Rift seems a lightyear ago, with Augmented Reality such a compelling second step. But the case for Fully Virtual is incredibly alluring.

To be able to step into a world designed for your personal use, edification, advancement and pleasure isn't just attractive, it's being madly developed in tech centers from San Francisco to Tel Aviv. And as it moves towards a functional reality, another parallel track will follow. Perhaps sometime later, but with utter certainty. Virtual Life. And with it, virtual immortality.

In Richard Morgan's barn-storming scifi detective novel "Altered Carbon" a central conceit features the ability of its characters -- living somewhere around 500 years in the future -- to store their living brain functions in a tiny implantable capsule that can preserve the essence of someone too sick to live or who has actually died.

Think about it: the sum total of your life experience in a tiny chip that is stored in a super facility, then implanted into another body for you to then be revived and alived all over again. Morgan refers to this process as slipping in to a new sleeve. And if you're determined and wealthy enough, you can pick and choose the kind of body you want -- including changing sex -- and do it repeatedly, netting you lifetimes of hundreds of years, as you wake up inside another casing and figure out what you look like and how it feels to be someone entirely new.

Nuts? Nu-uh. It's logical, possible, predictable and simply a matter of time. Gives the term "be seein' ya" a whole new connotation, eh?

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On Auto

So I'm cruising along at 350, enjoying some big puffy cumulous formations and breathing some sweet pistachio synth air, when Boom, the dash starts flashing bright enough to wake you out of a chem dream, the car screams to a mid-air halt and a blue'n'white floats over with a sour-faced cop in the window.

 "Sir, may I see your bios and lightband?"

"Uh, sure, officer, what seems to be the trouble?"

"Sir, were you aware that you were altering your cloud course through that last bank?"

"Alter... Officer, I was just admiring the view when..."

"We have a heat impression of both your hands ON the steering stick."

"Well, I was just resting them for a moment, I mean, it's a beautiful day and..."

"Sir, when was the last time you texted during this flight?"

"Tex... I, I was just in touch with my friend about the party on Rexus9, and HE was saying..."

"Your transmit log indicates that conversation was over 5 minutes ago. Any sub-orbital texts you can produce in the ensuing time frame?"

"Well, I was about to send..."

"May I see your record of cute animal viewing for this period, please."

"Oh! I just finished that one with the kittens running across the meadow with the ducks!"

"Which played on your screen 26 hours ago?"

"Wait, I mean the puppies! The puppies rolling over each other and then falling out of the dresser drawer!"

"Earlier this morning."

"The... the parakeet -- with the Pitbull!"

"Sir, you haven't texted or participated in any form of social media for the past 34 minutes and appear to have been steering your vehicle in a random manner for the past twelve, prior to my pulling you over."

"But I... wait, look! I found these babies eating strained peaches. (laughing) Look at that, they're getting it all over their bibs and faces, isn't that a riot, don'tcha just love watching them carry on, OMG that's so..."

"Sir, please step out of the vehicle and place your hands behind your back."

"But they're... Wait: You want me to step OUT -- we're 150 feet up!"

"On to the jet-plat, sir, let's not make this any more difficult, OK?"

"Officer, I NEVER steer, I was just day-dreaming and, and staring..."

"At nothing. Step out of the vehicle please. Central, this is 34F6, requesting backup..."

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Wonder Woman and SciFi Mythology

Finally got around to seeing Wonder Woman, the movie. Well, actually, hung with Wonder Woman herself, as well, but read on. 

First, on the way back from a trip overseas, the film was available on demand to watch from my seat on the plane and I began it there, only to realize that for something this big and this good, dealing with a low res print on an 8” screen with the engine noise a constant component of the soundtrack wasn’t going to work, so I switched to a Bollywood musical instead (which was pretty cool!). 

Day after arriving home, we got an invitation to a press screening for awards consideration – nice timing, which featured a Q&A with the director and several members of the cast, including Gal Gadot – who could resist that? 

If you haven’t seen it, no spoilers, I promise. Instead, these thoughts about effect, focus and our current culture. 

First, it’s about as good as a superhero film gets. Which begs the question: why? And that’s where mythology comes in. My problem with most superhero films is the absurd leap of faith you have to take to accept some kind of agreement that invulnerability et al, is the given and impossibility is the norm. Which I find difficult to impossible to accept most of the time. From super-villains, bent on destroying the world with their atomic weapons to superheroes getting slammed through buildings and emerging unscratched, eh, how’d they do that? 

There’s an alternate supposition for WW. She comes from a mythical island fashioned by the gods and blessed with god-enhanced magic, which in the skilled hands of director Patty Jenkins, seems utterly plausible. 

And Diana isn’t neurotic or a misfit. She’s simply naive. Having lived on this island all her life, she’s been 100% sheltered from all things earthly, let alone an actual man. So what comes across is a hero focused on a single goal: setting things right – to the exclusion of anything else, gifted with powers that serve to intensify her resolve. 

That makes for an alt conceit that is uniquely entertaining in how forgiving and fresh her take on a situation plays out. Of course, there are all the usual bad guys and insane situations, but the cast is remarkable in its warmth and cohesiveness – kudos to Patty for that and the result is a picture that stands as one of the very best of its genre. Amazing! 

And afterwards, I managed to get into a great conversation with Gal, a gorgeous in-the-flesh Amazon herself and got away with a few dim-lit selfies I get to share. 

Look for Wonder Woman on upcoming best picture lists. It belongs on them.

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Wake me When We Get There

There was a fascinating article somewhere (that’s the problem these days –there’s so much info everywhere, it blurs together) about the realities of long-term space travel. Which means what?

Look, the thing is, for the foreseeable future, we’re going to get to places like Mars or Titan (Saturn’s most promising life-possibility moon) in the coming generation or two and by scifi standards, it’s gonna take forever-ish. Seven months each way to Mars, years and years to Titan. Wanna go? Think of what a hero you’d be on Earth. If you made it. Or didn’t. Or actually managed to get there and return in say, 40 years. Who knows, if you travelled fast enough, you might even come back younger! And wouldn’t that be a great thing to mull over with all that free time in space?

So to the practical. As of the latest science, you can’t simply seal yourself up in a pod and chemically induce some kind of suspended animation and wake up refreshed and ready to go 7 years later, as the ship’s AI calmly informs you we’re now in low orbit over our destination planet and how was your rest?

No. But not totally no. You CAN sleep big gulps of it off. You just have to be awakened every 3 weeks or so. Why? Body has to be reanimated, pumped with fresh good stuff, moved around, cleaned out – all the things we do on a daily basis, which, it appears to turn out, you cannot simply ignore for years of sleep at a time without dying. Might happen someday way in the future, but by then we’ll be folding time and travelling across galaxies just like Seth McFarlane does every Thursday now.

So sleep three weeks, wakie-wakie, eggs n bac-ie walk around, catch up on instagram, watch a movie, tighten a bolt on the holo-deck and then back to bed for another three weeks. Which means around ten cycles like that to get to Mars. Boring? How could that be boring!? Now, to Saturn and cycling oh, a hundred, 150 times, hmmmmm… Where’d we leave off on that Parcheesi game last time? And aren’t we intrepid…

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Where was the future in the year 1700?

From all the info I can gather, science fiction got its more or less official start in the early 1800’s with the appearance of one Dr. Frankenstein. Written by Mary Shelly in 1811, it basically crowned her the Mother of Science Fiction. Try smoking that one, guys…

But prior to that, we have a distinct lack of evidence of anything quite so fanciful and a big part of the reason is, in my mind at least, for lack of things electric. Oh, there were drawings from Galileo – fantastical ones – and a great TV series based on his life as well. But story telling? Not so much. You need to have some basic understanding of possibility in order to dream in scifi and without having any clear concept of propulsion, for instance, how are you gonna get there?

It looks like it may have taken the industrial revolution to get the wheels turning, from laying powerful railroad systems around the world, to great migrations into the cities, factories, efficiency, suffering and overcrowding – the kinds of concepts that might have been quite different in the 1700’s, when the world was still tilted towards agrarian. 

What did your average peasant think about space travel, robotics, reanimation and ray guns? I think religion must have had a huge impact on the way we ALL thought about things in the 1600’s. Religion was the answer for questions unanswered, the purview of the wisest and most powerful figures and a convenient way of explaining unexplainable phenomena.

And strict interpretation and god-fearing belief was undoubtedly the most acceptable, politically correct and life-affirming path to take. You want to take a stroll down that corridor to the suite of rooms we keep for trouble-makers downstairs, do ya? I didn’t think so. Any more questions, my son?

Given the baseline of info we own, it’s easy to teleport into the next galaxy for a 10-year old. Were kids thinking about star-hoping in the middle ages? I’d love to be able to ask ‘em.

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Shooting the Moon

Dateline 1871

There has been examination of the makeup and content of the moon that encircles the earth, with fanciful poetry and lore of the Man who lives there. Undoubtedly, his face is plainly visible at times, a sign from the heavens that he beckons us with open heart and good will.

Astronomers tell us the orb is outside the reach of Man, but the engineers at Winchester now believe it is indeed within the realms of possibility to construct an instrument with such length and power as to create a predictable trajectory that with recently devised chemical compounds affixed therein, power a massive projectile capable of striking its surface with some assurance of accuracy.

The bullet casing has been estimated at a circumference of 3 meters in width and 6 meters in length, sufficient for a coterie of scientific scholars to enter into a padded and succinctly prepared interior and travel the distance without physical harm.

It is of the political opinion that such a journey would do great justice to the country of origin from which the shot would take place and that a suitable location could be created in the Hoboken dockyards of New Jersey, suitably removed from denser, more populous areas, thus insulating them from the great boom of the cannon and creating a zone of serenity around its immediate functionality.  

Once lunar contact is suitably arranged, Earth would rapidly create an alliance between itself and the Moon populace, establishing trade and mineral rights, greatly benefitting the United States. Winchester, Inc. stands ready to cooperate with the government, as always, in arranging for a demonstration of its capabilities and to successfully launching a new phase of extra-heaven communication.

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The Future of the Future

How lame is our current culture going to look to someone exploring it a hundred years from now? You could start by considering life in 1917, as American was embroiled in World War 1. There’s a scary thought. Will someone be writing “You could start by considering life in 2017 as America was embroiled in WW3.” Yikes…

Let’s figure on that not being our history and how about another bite of that nice fresh-baked brownie you got at the dispensary?

OK: 1917. Candlestick phones, Model T’s, women’s suffrage, bowler hats and new-fangled typewriters. Quaint, but relatable. Which is to say in the hundred years between now and then, we progressed faster than a speeding freakin’ bullet, going from 17 mph to 17K mph and developing technology absolutely and unimaginably magical. How much of what we are today could a smart reader like yourself have figured on back then? Commuter jets? Gay marriage? Pop Tarts? VR? Chuckie Cheese? Rock ‘n’ Roll??

So the Q that keeps rattlin’ around in my head is if that much happened in the trailing 100, what can we expect in the Next? And let’s consider Moore’s law and apply it to the future of everything. Which is to say we’re evolving SO much faster than we ever have, the amount of general information in the world has gone from doubling every thousand years to every hundred, every 50, every ten, five and yes, one or two, now. Doubling.

And at that rate, we, each and every one of us, brainiacs all, are gonna be equally gob-smacked with what happens in the Next hundred, because we can only guess at where they’ll take us. Or our kids, at least. Who’ll likely live well into their hundreds and vaguely remember gramma n gramps giving ‘em bitcoin to go out and buy some toy levitation shoes.

Quaint.

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Caution: Only 87 Years to Go…

In 1999, whispers turned to talk, turned to shouts, turned to panic that at the stroke of midnight 2000, most every computer on Earth would reset itself to the year 1901 and turn of the lights of the First World.

The Millennium Bug was an unplanned disaster in the making, fueled by the temerity of early programmers foolishly building in 2-digit year designations next to the 2-digit month and date. Remember how it unfolded? First, a lot of tech companies made a lot of money by combing through mainframes and laptops and reprogramming them to recognize four-digit year numbers, instead. And then, at the stroke of midnight 2001, the trillion or so other processors, from car radios to toaster ovens, looked left, looked right, and then muttered a collective “whatever” and continued to burn the edges of that artisanal bread that was going stale on the kitchen counter.

Much ado, indeed. Fast forward to today, and we’re a society that now has an 8-digit date standard. Yay, us! Look at how forward-thinking we are. No one’s gonna catch us with pants around ankles on THAT one again. Last month, the fam left on vacation and stopped the paper for a week. The two-minute phone-automated vacation stop process went like this: “Please enter the month, day and 4-digit year you want your paper delivery suspended, then press #. Now enter the month, day and 4-digit year you want your paper to begin delivery again and press #.”

Wait, you want to know the 4-digit YEAR I want to take the vacation I’m calling you about stopping my paper for? And then the 4-digit YEAR I want it resumed? How about 1856 and 1922? How does that grab ya, grandma? What idiocy. But wait: We’re Protected! Against the Twenty-SECOND Millennial Bug coming in 87 years!  Yep, when 2101 rolls around, ain’t no notion of the wrong century gonna confuse THIS machine – It gonna KNOW.

You’re welcome, great, great grandson. Breathe easy.

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We’re All Voice-Over Stars

I’ve been involved in the VO world for decades and have watched it change dramatically, then become commercially disrupted and change again, then socially and change again.

In the entirely different world of the 1960’s and 70’s voice-over artists were a neat little boutique extension of the entertainment business, who worked mostly out of three cites: New York (by far the largest market), Chicago and LA. 

To be a VO talent was to be represented by a union talent agency and be a card-carrying SAG and AFTRA member. Your agent brought you into their offices several times per week to record demos of radio and TV commercial copy, then the tape operator edited several auditions together onto a reel-to-reel tape and messengered it over to the advertising agency for review and hopefully, a booking.

There were stars in the voice-over world, quite different from any other types. They were only known to the agencies and each other and enjoyed both the faceless anonymity of being regular people in the outside world, but also made gobs of money with ongoing campaigns that could pay residuals as high as a quarter million per year, per campaign. Which, if you were really hot, could be one of a dozen you’d nabbed and could go on for years. I recently met the woman who played Charley Tuna’s girlfriend for Starkist Tuna, back in the 70’s. That gig netted a house and a college education for her kids.

By the 1980’s, voice-over got a suddenly glitzier with the advent of major TV and screen stars landing million-dollar contracts to become the voice of big and luxury brands. It gave the brand a sheen to be associated with a premier voice and it gave the VO business a deep and fearful shudder to see a significant portion of its rank and file actors being shunted aside for in the name of glamor.

By 2000, digital recording made it possible to record from casually constructed home recording setups, then submit via the internet to your agency, which would assemble a digital link to send off to the client, now anywhere on earth.

And by 2010, entirely digital agencies had established such an internet stronghold, that many traditional agencies dried up, replaced by direct-to-client business models via digital handshake, repeated thousands of times per day.

Today, with something like 500 hours of video getting posted online per minute, voiceover is anyone making a smartphone video and talking over the picture. It’s turned the cultural tonality of voice recording into a much more casual overall style and created dozens of sub-genres, ubiquitous on a web that seems second only to the infinitely expanding universe out there in space.

Where outer-worlders are undoubtedly listening.

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Gaga: Five Foot Two

Born this Way, Bad Romance… I know these tunes by cultural osmosis more than having listened to them in rotation. As a baby boomer, I’ve moved from pop to denser electronic and experimental genres, but I listen to all manner of playlists and  I wonder if given the limited involvement and exposure I’ve had to this newest Joanne incarnation, I may have a different reaction to her new doc, now streaming on Netflix.

I remember watching her initial TV appearances on the talk shows and SNL and remarking about the genuine talent and technique she brought to her game. And those nutsy vids, so superfluous but so entertaining. And now, what, nearly a decade later, here’s the woman unmasked, as it were, committing to making both an album and a video recording of her life as honestly – nakedly – as she can.

She did it by allowing a trusted director, Chris Moukarbel, to point the camera and essentially be a one-man tag-along buddy. And it appears he was allowed to follow her virtually everywhere but the loo. What we get, as a result, is an unvarnished behind-the-scenes treatment that deconstructs her glitzy concert dates and feature videos, as she relates to a coterie of about a dozen close-in entourage people, who assist, sew, remind, make-up, style, drive, bodyguard and give family comfort.

And what we net is the portrait of a woman in her prime, dealing with an avalanche of challenges – from joy to managing physical pain, from stadium jitters to lonely depression, from intensely creative flourishes to exhaustion. It’s constant, it’s overwhelming, it’s real.

I think some of her mega-fans may find exception with the film. What’s she got to complain about, who does she think she is, stop whining. But my perspective is of a star who has expertly channeled her seemingly unlimited energy and who is acutely aware of her status and resolve to be fair and even-handed with staff and fans alike, when so many others of her ilk are dismissive, rude or have simply morphed into egotistical nightmares.

Gaga is none of these things. She shares the traits of a sober Amy Winehouse crossed with a strutting Beyonce, injected with true originality, creatively on fire on the inside while striving to maintain a practiced sense of calm and survival on the out. It’s a bitch being a superstar. But this superstar’s no bitch. She’s simply unafraid.

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RIP, Cassini

We’ve now witnessed the passing of NASA’S greatest explorer, the Satellite Cassini, which flew nearly a billion stress-causing but mostly trouble-free miles to its destination, Saturn, sending spectacular photos and info every step of the way.

The heroes of this mission, the engineers and architects of the flight, sat at their consoles with tears in their eyes as they issued the command for Cassini’s final descent towards Saturn’s surface. There was no expectation of a landing. The satellite would be ripped to pieces as it entered Saturn’s gravitational force and encountered airborne debris. It was simply a miracle it lasted as long as it did, interweaving with bands of meteorites, orbit after orbit, just skirting the outer limit of those particles, per minutely calculated circles of concentricity.

In the end, we got evidence of 62 moons orbiting Saturn. Sixty-Two. Each with its own set of peculiar personalities, from oblong shapes to the presence of liquid substances on Titan, famous for its role in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001. Wait, I think it was his book “2010.” In which a message was received inviting Earth to come and explore, but to stay offa Titan.

So Arthur – he knew. Fascinating mind in that human. Which begs the question: What if he REALLY knew? That man, if you watch the videos of him espousing on space travel and life on other worlds, spoke with an air of intellectual engagement and… certainty… you didn’t hear from his contemporaries.

Wouldn’t it be fitting that the guy who helped inspire and invent modern scifi film-making, was actually revealed to be a Visitor someday? With all the evidence, all the logic that supports UFO theory, who better to be the chosen spokesman of the 20^th century? And who will be the next?

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Time Is the Jones

What would you do with YOUR time machine? Like, after you got over the mind-whack of what that actually meant. That you could dial up a time in the past and transport yourself there, knowing what you know now, walking amongst the populace as the secret God of Tomorrow.

When would you chose? What would you do? How would you do it?

That’s the subject of my song Time is the Jones, focusing on a sloshed sled-head who smokes a lotta weed, drinks way too much, tries to do good, loves being bad and scared he’ll come back to a screwed-up world, forever changed by his own past-tense behavior.

 Fortunately for us, he’s stoned more on the concept than on reeking havoc. In fact, he chooses times to go back and help improve a given situation, though always mindful of things potentially going wrong. You’d better carry some fire power in case of trouble. Stay on the path, don’t mess with mother nature, that kind of thinking.

It’s enough to give a guy pause. And admit to a room full of one that he’s a user, addicted to The Jump, high on fore-knowledge, crazy to hang with the superstars of history and prove his worth by nudging them towards their glory.

And it’s got to stay a secret, an invention second to none that nestles in a 2-car garage under a $20 tarp that no one, not mom, best girl or some five-star general gets to know about. Because that would be the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. Never mind you’re the someone who stumbled onto successfully building the thing. It’s an ultimate weapon of destruction with virtually unlimited magical power to change things.

Which makes it the world’s largest dollop of insanity. And when you’re on that kind of level, the best way to handle it is to have another drink, right?

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Happy Peace Day, Space Aliens!

Nukes, wars, megalomaniacs – it’s enough to make you wanna move to a nice, safe dictatorship and hide in a comfy cement cell. But hey, nothing changes a day in the life like a full-scale alien invasion, sci-fi style. You want peace on earth and someone to show you the way?

There's a de facto vision of other-worldly beings that we all know: the gangly, egg-shaped head, elongated arms, pencil-thin legs and those big black eyes. Instant alien. We saw them in Spielberg’s Close Encounters and in thousands of images created by artists of this fanciful repeating vision. Why?

Oh, wait, one more thing: they're naked. No clothes. Who needs clothes on other planets? Waste of xoxxo-blocks. Why wear clothes when you're built for... alienship? The planets they come from are warm and utterly temperate. Or icy cold but we're built for that, so no problem. Also no problem with hiding sexual apparatus, which is really none of your damn business, but whatever: It's all under our skin folds and don't ask exactly where, just trust me, it works. We may look passive and emotionless but when we couple... hoo, boy.

Ditto for shoes. Nope, unnecessary. First off, our skin is like, impervious. Except for gunshots and knife wounds. Not nice when you point those things at us. We're here to either make friends or totally dominate you, so believe me, best thing for you to do is to accept it, relax and enjoy. Easy. No one gets hurt and we all get along under the New Order.

Back to shoes. We walk slowly and purposefully for a purpose.  Our planets are both way bigger and way smaller than yours, so the gravity thing -- it's just better for us to take it easy on Earth. Think of it as a way for you to observe us more easily. When we reveal ourselves, we want to give you a good look. I mean, know your conquer... er, new friends, right?

Dude, if we stay, we'll wear clothes, but why would we want to? Stay, that is. I mean, yer planet is quaint and all but honestly, a globe without a working Globulator is gonna be a hot mess. Always. I mean, just look at yourselves -- you call that livin'?

 So go wear your clothes and do your thing. We'll check in on you from time to time and one of these days -- could a while, mind you -- one of these days, we'll have a few laughs together, OK?

In the meantime, try not to blow each other off the face of your planet. We’d like to still be able to mingle, once we get there…

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“Our Tomorrow” vs Software Tech

The end of my live retro scifi futurism show features an original tune called "Our Tomorrow" which is about connecting with intelligent life on other planets. Simple concept, dramatic tune, it starts quietly emotional, lyrics describing the frustration of not yet making contact, then builds to a big gospel-tinged finish about reaching for the stars, while videos display dramatic galactic zooms alternating with real people reaching towards the sky.

As with most all the tunes I write and record, everything gets properly sussed out in my home studio over a period of weeks. I have the unnerving habit of gradually building up different revs of each tune in a quest to get it to a place that's both personal and satisfying. And unnerving, because that takes WAY longer than it should, averaging 1-200 hours of studio time. Crazy, and for me, impossible not to do -- it's my l'il process!

Two key elements on this one: tempo and back-up singers.

By the time it got good, the tune seemed a little sluggish, beat-wise. It's easy to just hit some keystrokes and speed it up, but you lose little bits and pieces of fidelity when you do that, unless you isolate each track and process it separately with high-end tempo software. Which turns out to be a lot trickier than it looks. 'Took three days to get it right. That was to move the needle from 116 beats per minute to 118. That was all it needed -- quite subtle, very powerful. Three days = 0.67 beat per DAY. Why? Timing and algorhythm issues constantly warring, even when carefully aligned. Ugh -- next time I'm going for the couple o' keystrokes.

Now the good stuff: the singers. Was fortunate to snag two terrific voices, Amber Sawyer and Mayia Sykes, both artists in their own right, for the live session. Both helped to lay down a rich tapestry of harmony, then at the end of the session let loose with a tremendous set of high-energy step-out gospel stylings that infused the Reach for the Stars chant into an emotionally winning frenzy. Truly, were they great. Just finished sorting through and stacking those tracks and can't wait to share and perform the tune live. At the right damn tempo. Here's a photo...

Left: Mayia Sykes, Right: Amber Sawyer

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind, post-screening follow-up

What an experience to see it present day. Had a pre-screening dinner in the towering LA Live section of downtown LA with 50 new friends, all brought together by Paul Hynek, son of the man who worked closely with Steve Spielberg to bring the original movie to light 40 years ago and who defined what the three phases of close encountership are: 1) sighting, 2) physical evidence and 3) contact.

Then into the cavernous theater for the 4K digital director's cut, which did not disappoint. Spielberg has always had a gift for capturing the American cultural zeitgeist of the moment on the screen, lingering over families and especially kids. While scenes were much longer then than now (who has time to watch people talk at dinner?) one of the reminders that we get when we watch something decades old is how it preserves the former age of people we know now as old or ancient.

Richard Dreyfuss as a virtual kid, with the reckless energy to match, not to mention that this was Spielberg’s, what, third feature film? How insane is that on the genius scale? And how in hell did anyone get along without hiding their phone under the dinner table for continuing updates on whatever? Eh, whatever.

What really resonated was the final third of the film, as Dreyfuss hones in on the secret governmental operation on the mountain plateau in Wyoming, where an enormous temporary landing strip has been assembled by a devoted corps of engineers and scientists, preparing for the greatest moment in modern Earth history. Which happens and does not disappoint.

The aliens throw a half dozen gorgeous little scout ships around just to bedazzle, which apparently signal the mother ship all's well, clearing the space for the landing of this giant vessel that handles gravity like it was a raindrop, then disgorges a group of air force crews it had scooped up 30 years prior, ostensibly for benign probing (everybody seems dazed but in perfect health) before beckoning a replacement crop of volunteers to join the friendly naked-looking aliens motioning them to walk up the gangway. Which, you may remember, includes a blinking, grinning, mind-blown Richard Dreyfuss, who has been summarily written off as certifiable by his clueless earthbound family, anyway, so what's to lose? This is what he was born for.  

It was a religious experience for me in 1977. And while time changes everything, it still left me buoyed and otherwise uplifted the other night. That scene, that visitation. Have we already experienced it? Are we simply descendants of a race that touched down a million years ago and dropped off the building block DNA to get us started? And if not, why not? And why haven't they made themselves more known if they have the tech to get here?

We'll never know. Until we know.

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The Guns of Sci Fi

They shoot colored beams of light, in streams, lines and glowy balls. Interestingly, they all shoot slowly, to better illustrate the path they are taking and show off said balls. They're various forms of deadly, depending on the weapon. Some just stun their target, some flame and spark on the clothing of their intended victim as he/she/it stares at the wound incredulously.

Size: Star Trek phasors were quaint compared to most modern scifi weaponry. Your basic sidearm is a big damn thing designed to make you look important, impressive and just plain scary. Gun barrels are 4 inches in diameter, the better to pack a bright flash. Handles barely fit in demure human hands, barrels run from 8 inches to a foot and a half and we're talking side-arms here. Magically, they are lightweight and easily maneuverable. THAT'S a good thing.

Bigger armaments -- handheld rifles, repeaters, bazookas and the like. Them's some POWERFUL colorful light-balls, brah... They'll blow holes in the interior wall of a ship’s hallways, but not to worry, your outer hull always stays intact. Lightweight, easy to run with, big guns use fine-quality scifi materials designed for minimal impediment and maximal explosive appeal. Right on.

Now: Accuracy. The count-onable anomaly of scifi gunmanship.  The law of scifi gunfights -- say it with me is: Good guys hit, Bad guys miss. Simple as that, and think about it, could it be any other way and if it were, would you really be willing to deal with the consequences? There are obvious conclusions long drawn on this principle. Good guys have had access to the finest marksmanship training and munitions schooling in the galaxy. Bad guys have, for the most part, had to deal with aiming at zero-grav space garbage or landfill smeer cans for practice. No wonder they can't hit the broad side of a shuttlecraft.

This is a good thing. It preserves the balance, saves the day, makes for happier endings and indemnifies the genre for future generations. So support your local third act and be thankful for the balance of handheld weaponry in space. It's a simple ecosystem that errant mutants are gunning to change, but good luck with that, sucker. Take your best shot.

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Dark Blather

This series cancellation brought to you by I-Former, the app that sorts out your past life and keeps mostly the best parts. Purchase a one-year membership and get two months of memories free.

Click here for clone reconstruction. When you choose TablaSordidum, you're in charge of your future destiny -- for a while… Act now and get a fast pass one-way Marauder ride to Zairon and a free android tune-up at any authorized Ferrous Port. Offer limited to oxygen-breathers whose social security numbers have not been breached within the past 30 microns.

Side-effects may include envy, deceit, hallucinations, visions of grandeur, insane gunfights with aliens, random character number switching, intense personality shifts and home gravity envy. 

Employ nanites for self preservation. Blink Drive not included.

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Keepin' Up With the Jetsons

What's it gonna be like to run with the fast crowd in the year 2400? Will we still be waiting at rope lines to get into the coolest zero-grav clubs? Dropping big bucks on magnums of GoThereJuice and sporting the latest pomp-doos?

I wrote this song to give myself a little tour of what money could buy 383 years out. Or whatever money's called by then. Maybe retinal scans will be so retro you'll just need to think’n’pay... Jet packs, vacation planets, fetching androids, textured ultra-beats, flying cars! Oh, it's ALL comin' baby. 

The twist in the song is about being able to AFFORD it. You think you can join in on a piddling salary? Honey, if you have to ask... So my avatar in this one is bound and determined to be a playa, even though he has no business being there. His FOMO runs so deep, he's about run through his second mortgage hangin' in, and those beautiful people he's running with? Every now and then one whispers to another: Wait, WHO'S this guy again?

You know the type, the sad wanna-be who's just so doggone determined, he'd be cute if it weren't for how hard he was trying to be someone else. Give the dude a nod for tryin', but without the scratch (or whatever slang it'll be then) it ain't gonna happen. With this crowd? You gotta be bad, beautiful or filthy rich -- pick three.

But thanks for playin' our game, and damn, look’it the time. Gotta jet!

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The Orville

Cool CGI, big music underscoring, shiny interiors and costumes that look like everyone is about to get in formation and march down the football field playing an arrangement of the latest Taylor Swift tune.

The Orville (Fox, Sundays) made its debut last night with Seth McFarlane doing what he does best – starring Seth – and opening with a pretty funny bit about spousal cheating when it’s about getting caught in bed with a panic-stricken alien. This one, a blue-hue guy who splooshes when scared.

Let’s be sure we understand this is a Star Trek-type spinoff comedy series, meant to, like, disrupt, outer space, that place that’s always been fraught with peril and discovery and drama. And that no one ought to be more qualified to do so than Mr. Family Guy, who looks cute in his marching suit.  The challenge comes from pushing the envelope every which way until it’s no longer mailable.

McFarlane, the show’s writer, dances between what he seems to want to portray as legit dramatic saga combined with silly pizza party jokes, and illustrates how you really can’t have it both ways. The movie “Airplane!” is the perfect example of a serious soap opera genre going rogue, leaving us with a permanent joke about gladiators and filling every 20 seconds with another pratfall. That was funny, because funny was what the producers aimed squarely to be.

The problem with Orville is that it tries to go both ways, dipping its characters into ostensibly real danger, running around to neutralize it, then relaxing back into goofy characterizations to frame the after-jokes that no longer fit with the seriousness of what was just supposed to have been being portrayed (self-editor: woah, interesting sentence construction).

The net result is a show that doesn’t seem to know what it is. Is it middling SciFi drama lurching boldly forward or is it cartoon shtick, portraying frat-party humor in the 24^th century? Keep on eye on your main screen to see how warped things get.

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Where Retro Meets Futurism

In 1928, Fritz Lang unleashed his masterwork, Metropolis, on an unsuspecting movie-going public. No one had had ever seen the spectacle of a beautiful female robot brought to life via the genius of a possessed inventor using glowing animated electrical rings pulsating up and down the length of her body. The spectacle of her first animate move, then gesturing towards a male visitor with mechanical precision in a slow-motion movement of arms and hips that was wondeorously sensual in its precision and cold silence.

This, whilst an entire underground city labored around towering expressionistic machines to provide the energy needed to power the machinations of a foppish above-ground populous blissfully unaware of its very existence.

It happened again in 1931 as Dr. Frankenstein linked massive tesla arcs of power to shoot through his monster in the raucous splendor of a castle laboratory at the top of a dark European castle, losing his mind as the formerly dead body reanimated and came to life.

In France, a series of illustrations were published in 1902 depicting life a hundred years hence, with vivid illustrations of flying automobiles, societal parties featuring projections of living operatic performances broadcast from some stage a hundred miles away while its viewers listened in on candlestick phone devices.

So that by the time Arthur Radenbach shared his depictions of a streamline future in the late 1950’s we’d already become used to a rich pastiche of trailing imagery that made his incredible predictions easy to associate and believe were just around the corner.

SciFi was born out of fantasy and imagination dating back hundreds of years and works on the same logic, informed principle and vastly increased sense of magic we’ve come to expect from a culture that has assimilated a trail of visions of flying spacecraft, alien invaders, medical breakthroughs and unexplainable phenomena that begs to be taken literally in the name of a future we never cease to dream of.

It’s our nature to dream, invent and progress. And is a product of dreamers and visionaries who wove the path we will continue to broaden, explore and constantly bring to a closer reality. To witness that progression is to be dipped into the past and appreciate the culture that brought it to spectacular light.

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