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Sandwiched between ads for senior medications with the usual side effects so frightening they can’t possibly make up for the benefits, and offers for legal representation to products liability victims who surely must not have survived their ordeals, were two episodes of this rather sleepy series I’d forgotten had originally aired in time slots for livelier audiences, then into syndication where it kept me company for a decade of lonely late nights—

[Sent: Fri Jun 28 04:46:08 1996] Speaking of religion, I’m up right now (at, what, 4:30 in the morning–I woke up a couple of hours ago after this weird dream that made me question my feelings for couple of women from my past), watching late-night TV, of course, and find myself flipping between a number of different programs, one of which happens to be the Jack Van Impe Ministries, somewhat reminiscent of the 700 Club in format and content. (The other is Dear John, not only because Kate’s tits look bigger than ever before in this particular episode, but also since this local channel airs the phone sex ads featuring my beloved 1-800-510-SEXY woman. I make no bones about my damnation.) Seems like the Christians are foretelling doom and gloom, but then again, what else is new: now they’re predicting the Second Coming before the Millennium, preceded, if you recall your New Testament, by the rise of the Anti-Christ. Oh, geez. I wonder if they’ll wipe out past credit problems after Armageddon?

Looking at them again, no, they weren’t that big (I’ll clean up my act whenever the church proves themselves right), but she was the sort of vulnerable character that would ultimately shape my interactions with women, for better or worse. Surprised to realize it is the same Isabella Hofmann now with the recurring role as Martin “Firestorm” Stein’s wife on The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.

How long will this alternative to YouTube last copyright purges? Tonight, at least, I got to revisit one of my favorite audio recordings off a rerun of SNL, which, like Devo’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives”, always outdid the studio version I later acquired.

Not sure how these full-album uploads get away with it, but I’m grateful for this sentimental trigger; “The New Stone Age” also sounds like Proustian involuntary memory, too, though that might be the way it takes that turn at the end like Underworld’s “Cups” from Beaucoup Fish did so much later.

My first memory of reruns goes back to Channel 2 in the Bay Area sometime in the 80’s, wasn’t it, but those were the color Peels and Kings (CBS showed the New Avengers late night while I was in college, too), so I didn’t actually see Steed’s first companions until only recently over the antiquated antenna, and even then the monochrome video was trying—to me, of all people.

But what a surprise Honor Blackman as Mrs. Gale has been! Almost 40 in the role, which would be unheard of in the genre today (unless Bonds have improved since I stopped watching them when Denise Richards was cast as a nuclear physicist), she is every bit the foil for her co-star, before he and the show went on and surely invented the phrase “reduced to self-parody”, however polished and better packaged it was. Her judo is all the more convincing, as is her castigation of her partner’s ways, and sure, it’s still the silly Sixties so she’ll immediately laugh it off like a crazy person, but is this my maturity finally kicking in, twenty years later?

Looks like it’s been more than a month since I toasted his departure with a revisit to They Live, which seems no more far-fetched as it was back then as things are now must’ve been. Confession: I was ambivalent of this film when it debuted, because as groundbreaking as I knew The Thing was even as a kid and as much as I may have enjoyed Big Trouble in Little China (although the latter is not quite as easy to return to), John Carpenter was surely stealing my earlier idea of an invaded Earth, the manuscript of which I recently unearthed. At least as far as I had gotten; the Gothic ball on my Selectric II must’ve given way by that last chapter, which would explain the abrupt change to Courier. My ending would’ve had the unfortunately-named protagonist uncover the secret conspiracy to control the destinies of our future leaders, only to be convinced by the aliens that we were all better off that way, anyway. It’s hardly remarkable, I admit, other than to show how much I owe Douglas Adams, but Henry’s treatment, wherever that went, could definitely be considered a progenitor of the modern graphic novel.

I didn’t notice it as a kid, but boy, is that shift in tone for the second season ever so noticeable. The gloominess of their predicament is gone, and they seem to all but forget about the day’s events after that last commercial break before the end credits—to bring myself up to current events (because of that IP issue at home), like DC movies “v” Marvel’s. That refreshed theme reminds me a lot of recent music from the BBC, and make no mistake about it, the Alphans aren’t pussies anymore, even if their weapons work on aliens only 5% of the time.

Did I mention how a few weeks ago when I finally got around to watching the Age of Ultron, I tuned into “COZI TV”‘s new time slot for the British namesake afterward, and even though it was a Tara King, still enjoyed it more, despite hundreds of million dollars and nearly half a century the wiser.

Once again, threat contained with less casualties than jokes (and maybe spending more time evacuating civilians than either was appeasing critics still whimpering over the 9/11-scale destruction in DC’s over-the-top follow-up to the first Avengers), so I’m not sure why they had to go with a reminder of the abominable mini-series in book form. If you ask me, they also missed a great opportunity to do the team vs. a giant-sized Ultron-7:

Incidentally, I had this idea for a Man of Steel sequel, which I understand was planned before all this Batman v. Superman nonsense (or still is, after it), that introduces the Martian Manhunter, so unfairly left off the Justice League roster for Robocop throwback Cyborg—methinks Geoff Johns is downplaying Bruce Timm’s contribution to the pantheon in favor of what, the shitty Super Powers Galactic Guardians Superfriends cartoon—to parallel Kal El’s own alien origin and coming to terms as mankind’s benefactor: McConaughey, who’s said to being courted by both studios, is my pick for his John Jones disguise. Morrison’s first JLA arc serves as the basis, where Martians appear on the scene as beautiful superheroes, easily dispatching said skyscraping robot and inept extraterrestrial invaders, never missing a one-liner, and earning the adoration of the public. Clark is skeptical; members of the Justice League could cameo, Flash revealing their fast person isn’t connected to the Speed Force because he lapped him without being noticed, and Batman figures out their aversion to fire, but Superman insists on going at it without their help, telling them he’s found another ally, someone else on Earth with the same shield to his scan, who turns out to be J’onn. He could be immersed in ordinary surroundings, trying to hide in our culture and learn, or be a captive of the government, like in New Frontier. We’ve already seen Kryptonian predestination, so the whole White vs. Green Martian schism might be retreading, but needless to say, the two of them bond and beat the bad guys together.

Streets of Rage has been our thing, the two games (never did get the third; maybe Street Fighter II had by then relegated 2P co-op to lower priority than new controllers) being loud and violent yet playable enough for a toddler to conquer—if only I had Twitched the time he started break-dancing, trying to stand on his head and everything, to the 古代 祐三 boss theme.

I Steamed (look at me incorporating all the modern lingo in a post about a twenty-year-old game) Streets of Rage III and found it far too difficult for us, but did some reading up on it to learn that wasn’t the case with the Japanese version, which also had additional content deemed unsuitable for the US, namely, Ash:

Twenty-plus years of amassing “exclusive” collectibles worth little more than the momentary reminiscence when coming across them in a silverfish-infested box, and I still felt the calling, caving to untimely inflation on eBay, only to learn Sega instituted hardware region locking after my interest in MegaDrive imports waned.

The boy underestimated the solution: either buy the latest monstrosity (from, coincidentally, one of our prospective clients, though their recent sticker-shock at our services makes any discount unreliable), or resort to Game Genie codes.

AABT-AA5L
DJBT-AADN
RYDA-A608
AJDA-AAHA

or

2JAT-BHNR
8ADA-AAG6

My last weekend with YouTube on the AppleTV (fuck Google for ending support over ads; the Yahoo! Screen app still airs Community without them) I spent browsing some montages of battle sequences from 宇宙戦艦ヤマト and Battlestar Galactica, and I realized it was from the latter that Man of Steel borrowed its cinematography. Later that night I sat through one of the bad alien episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and noticed on a commercial for Gilligan’s Island that Dawn Wells looked quite a bit like Jenna-Louise Coleman:

I find making connections like these strangely rewarding. “The Invisibles clouds,” I call them. Maybe it’s not too strange, after all; in my declining years, it’s more comforting than to admit there’s more left that I can’t account for.