Thanks to some recent reviewers of my books:
Vernon Petersen, on Royal Flush (Banyon Mysteries #3)
I really enjoyed the humor used in this book. It was silly, corny, and
at the same time very creative. I actually read certain lines to my wife
'cause they were too good to keep to myself...
J. Buckley, on Red the Riot Act (Red Menace #3)
With each book in this series, Mullaney seems to sharpen his portrayal
of the main characters, while simultaneously teasing us with just enough
back story to keep us wondering... There's also plenty of the
trademark humor and satire...
Uncle Fud, on Drowning in Red Ink (Red Menace #2)
[Drowning in Red Ink is] a high-velocity, slam-bang, all-out, full-throttle action adventure
with enough superhero derring-do to satisfy the most demanding
adrenaline junkie.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "Requiem for Methuselah"
We learn at the start of this week's Star Trek that everyone onboard the
Enterprise is sick with space sniffles and the lunar hot trots. Also
some of Kirk's cold sores have gotten loose and are charging around the
corridors attacking everything in a miniskirt. Bones says the cure is
Vitalis, which is a mineral that make heap good medicine, and so Kirk,
Spock and McCoy beam down to a Vitalis-rich planet to mine for this
futuristic penicillin, much like Louis Pasteur when he bravely donned
his lighted helmet and spelunked into the Wonder Bread Caves of Southern
France.
We are told that in only a couple of hours the entire crew will be dead, so time is of the essence. Remember this later when Spock is doing his Liberace impersonation at the piano and Kirk is chasing sexy robots through the parlor with his pants down around his ankles.
Right off the bat I wonder why they need to go down to the planet at all. They've located the stuff they need from space, and they have that beamy thing. Can't they just zap a pile of rocks directly to the ship? Tech Sgt. Chen could.
As soon as they materialize on Planet Vitalis, Kirk and the others are attacked by a floating colander glued to a tin mixing bowl and floating on a string. Then a guy in a cape and tights shows up. Then in a little while the show starts to get a little weird.
We find out that the guy in the tights didn't show up on the Enterprise's instruments because he has special shields to avoid detection. Which means that if this guy lives on Planet Vitalis's version of North America, and with an entire planet to beam down to, instead of beaming to Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, South America, Central America, a couple of poles, or countless islands and atolls, or even on the other side of the exact same continent, Kirk and his pals just happened to beam into this guy's backyard while he just happens to be out for a romantic stroll with his floating kitchen utensils. What a lucky break for us, since if they had beamed down just five miles away they would have beamed back up ten minutes later with their Vitalis and never met the guy in the tights and we'd have no exciting episode with sexy lady robots. What are the odds?
According to McCoy's whistling purse, the guy in the tights and cape is an Earthling from the old home town. Judging from his getup, I'd say that town was San Francisco. He says his name is Flynt, but he's not in a wheelchair so he's probably not that one.
Kirk tells Flintstone that his crew has jellybean fever and that eating the magic rocks from this planet is the only thing that'll settle their tummies. I guess the leaches and bloodletting didn't work. Flintstone reluctantly says they can collect their rocks but not to touch anything on his planet because he just got all the mountains arranged exactly the way he likes them.
Flintstone lives in a massive matte painting palace that only has three rooms, with no evident kitchen or bathroom.
The floating colander comes into the house on its string carrying a bag of purple gumdrops, then Spock drinks some brandy and looks at some paintings with his whistling purse. Then the babe who is really a robot shows up, but that's still a secret. The music likes her a lot, because the soundtrack starts screeching like the sound guy dumped his coffee in the mixing board.
They all have a nice long chat and play pool while another eighty crew members drop dead upstairs.
Bones goes to the lab where the flying colander is processing the rocks into aspirin. The colander floats behind a screen to work, so I don't actually see its glued-on spatula arms but it probably has them. Bones admires the colander's well-stocked lab, where in the future all pharmaceuticals are colored water that is kept in six giant unlabeled glass bottles.
In the next room, Spock plays a Wagner waltz on the piano while Kirk and the robot lady, who he still doesn't know is a robot lady, dance around and Flintstone leers at them. Then the script says the chick has no more lines so she just vanishes with no explanation, probably to change her oil at the craft services table.
Bones says the colander messed up the drugs like that old pharmacist in It's A Wonderful Life. I don't know if the colander got some bad news about his son the measuring cup who died of influenza, but now they have to start all over with another bag of purple gumdrops. At this point my decision as captain would definitely be to take the new batch of gumdrops to the ship and let Bones process out the Vitalis, but Kirk thinks it's a better idea to give a strange floating colander that screwed up once already a second chance. Besides, there's maybe some more idle chitchat they haven't engaged in yet while everyone on the Enterprise dies and there might be a robot hootenanny later on, and who would want to miss that?
Kirk makes out with the robot chick and the floating colander leaps out from behind the door on its string and says beep-beep-whoop! menacingly at him. He tries to shoot it but the colander, like everything and everyone else they ever meet, disables his phaser. Those things are the most useless pieces of equipment since post-op Chastity Bono's. Hi-yo!
Spock's ray gun still works and he jumps out from behind another door and shoots the colander's string and it falls on the floor and breaks back into a colander and a giant stainless steel mixing bowl. Then we find out that Flintstone is actually 6000 years old, so maybe he's that Flintstone after all. Yabba-dabba-crossover.
Later, Kirk continues to be obsessed over the chick he met five minutes ago. We know it's five minutes ago, because they keep giving us the time in captain's log voice-overs and it's always just about two hours before everyone onboard the Enterprise is scheduled to drop dead. But when Kirk talks to the ship, Scotty and Uhura look fine. Come to think of it, Kirk, Spock and McCoy look pretty healthy too. If you or a loved one were misdiagnosed with jellybean fever by an incompetent Starfleet doctor, you may be entitled to compensation. Call the law offices of Jetson, Skywalker and Sokolove today.
What is Kirk recording all of these captain's log voice-overs on if he's not on the ship?
Kirk tells the sexy robot chick (who, remember, he doesn't yet know is a sexy robot) to run away with him because, he tells her, she loves him. Why wouldn't she? She's known him for all of twenty minutes. I'm surprised this guy's ego is small enough to fit in outer space.
Kirk makes out with the sexy robot while pervert Flintstone watches on TV. Maybe he is that Flynt after all.
Kirk and Spock find a secret room with all kinds of sexy robots lying under sheets. So he is that Flynt after all.
Flintstone says he needed Kirk to jump-start his sexy robot's emotions so that she'd have the hots for him and he can get down and dirty with some hot robot lovin', and now that he doesn't need Kirk as a surrogate anymore he shrinks the Enterprise down and puts it on the coffee table between the ceramic kitty cat and a copy of The Wonderous Waterfalls of Yosemite.
Flintstone plans to leave the Enterprise there for the next million years with the crew in suspended animation, then he'll let it go. Kirk looks in the window and sees everyone on the bridge is frozen, but all the lights are still blinking which means when they're thawed out in a million years the ship's battery will be dead and they'll have to call Triple A.
Kirk and Flintstone's stunt doubles fight while the actors grab a sandwich off-camera.
I notice that there's a massive still for making moonshine in the background, maybe for Flinstone to get his sexy robot drunk so she'll like him. That might work for a night but does he really think that can be the basis for a long-term 6000 year human/robot relationship?
The sexy lady robot overheats, but not in the way Kirk or Flintstone wants. Then she dies.
Back on the unshrunk Enterprise, Kirk is moping over the robot he loved for the most romantic eight minutes of his life, and Spock feels so bad that he sneaks up behind him in his bedroom and the audience braces for the most uncomfortable scene in Star Trek history.
Instead, Spock sticks his finger in Kirk's ear and tells him "forget," which, I guess, means he's going to forget about the sexy robot. But that means he'd have to forget about Flintstone, too, because their stories were intertwined.
Which also means he'd have to forget about going down to Flintstone's planet because he would have no memory of collecting the lifesaving Vitalis since the floating colander did all that work.
Which means he'd have to forget about the fact that his entire crew was sick with jellybean fever.
Which means that all those captain's logs he somehow recorded will have to be doctored or deleted entirely to remove all references back to the point where the crew started exhibiting signs of jellybean fever.
Which means the entire crew would have to be made to forget or involved in a conspiracy to shield their captain from his own perverted robot love life.
Which means there is no explanation for the crew members who we were told had died of jellybean fever at the start of the episode.
Which means Kirk won't know what to write in the letters back to their families.
Which means that if Starfleet asks him any questions about the events of the past couple of days he will have no memory of them.
Which means he'll be removed from command and never make it to the end of the season, which at this point is probably just as well.
I wish Spock could make me forget too.
We are told that in only a couple of hours the entire crew will be dead, so time is of the essence. Remember this later when Spock is doing his Liberace impersonation at the piano and Kirk is chasing sexy robots through the parlor with his pants down around his ankles.
Right off the bat I wonder why they need to go down to the planet at all. They've located the stuff they need from space, and they have that beamy thing. Can't they just zap a pile of rocks directly to the ship? Tech Sgt. Chen could.
As soon as they materialize on Planet Vitalis, Kirk and the others are attacked by a floating colander glued to a tin mixing bowl and floating on a string. Then a guy in a cape and tights shows up. Then in a little while the show starts to get a little weird.
We find out that the guy in the tights didn't show up on the Enterprise's instruments because he has special shields to avoid detection. Which means that if this guy lives on Planet Vitalis's version of North America, and with an entire planet to beam down to, instead of beaming to Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, South America, Central America, a couple of poles, or countless islands and atolls, or even on the other side of the exact same continent, Kirk and his pals just happened to beam into this guy's backyard while he just happens to be out for a romantic stroll with his floating kitchen utensils. What a lucky break for us, since if they had beamed down just five miles away they would have beamed back up ten minutes later with their Vitalis and never met the guy in the tights and we'd have no exciting episode with sexy lady robots. What are the odds?
According to McCoy's whistling purse, the guy in the tights and cape is an Earthling from the old home town. Judging from his getup, I'd say that town was San Francisco. He says his name is Flynt, but he's not in a wheelchair so he's probably not that one.
Kirk tells Flintstone that his crew has jellybean fever and that eating the magic rocks from this planet is the only thing that'll settle their tummies. I guess the leaches and bloodletting didn't work. Flintstone reluctantly says they can collect their rocks but not to touch anything on his planet because he just got all the mountains arranged exactly the way he likes them.
Flintstone lives in a massive matte painting palace that only has three rooms, with no evident kitchen or bathroom.
The floating colander comes into the house on its string carrying a bag of purple gumdrops, then Spock drinks some brandy and looks at some paintings with his whistling purse. Then the babe who is really a robot shows up, but that's still a secret. The music likes her a lot, because the soundtrack starts screeching like the sound guy dumped his coffee in the mixing board.
They all have a nice long chat and play pool while another eighty crew members drop dead upstairs.
Bones goes to the lab where the flying colander is processing the rocks into aspirin. The colander floats behind a screen to work, so I don't actually see its glued-on spatula arms but it probably has them. Bones admires the colander's well-stocked lab, where in the future all pharmaceuticals are colored water that is kept in six giant unlabeled glass bottles.
In the next room, Spock plays a Wagner waltz on the piano while Kirk and the robot lady, who he still doesn't know is a robot lady, dance around and Flintstone leers at them. Then the script says the chick has no more lines so she just vanishes with no explanation, probably to change her oil at the craft services table.
Bones says the colander messed up the drugs like that old pharmacist in It's A Wonderful Life. I don't know if the colander got some bad news about his son the measuring cup who died of influenza, but now they have to start all over with another bag of purple gumdrops. At this point my decision as captain would definitely be to take the new batch of gumdrops to the ship and let Bones process out the Vitalis, but Kirk thinks it's a better idea to give a strange floating colander that screwed up once already a second chance. Besides, there's maybe some more idle chitchat they haven't engaged in yet while everyone on the Enterprise dies and there might be a robot hootenanny later on, and who would want to miss that?
Beep-beep-whoop!
Collect rocks. Beep! Kill intruders. Beep! Strain macaroni. Beep!
Put myself in dishwasher. Whoop! End transmission.
Kirk makes out with the robot chick and the floating colander leaps out from behind the door on its string and says beep-beep-whoop! menacingly at him. He tries to shoot it but the colander, like everything and everyone else they ever meet, disables his phaser. Those things are the most useless pieces of equipment since post-op Chastity Bono's. Hi-yo!
Spock's ray gun still works and he jumps out from behind another door and shoots the colander's string and it falls on the floor and breaks back into a colander and a giant stainless steel mixing bowl. Then we find out that Flintstone is actually 6000 years old, so maybe he's that Flintstone after all. Yabba-dabba-crossover.
Later, Kirk continues to be obsessed over the chick he met five minutes ago. We know it's five minutes ago, because they keep giving us the time in captain's log voice-overs and it's always just about two hours before everyone onboard the Enterprise is scheduled to drop dead. But when Kirk talks to the ship, Scotty and Uhura look fine. Come to think of it, Kirk, Spock and McCoy look pretty healthy too. If you or a loved one were misdiagnosed with jellybean fever by an incompetent Starfleet doctor, you may be entitled to compensation. Call the law offices of Jetson, Skywalker and Sokolove today.
What is Kirk recording all of these captain's log voice-overs on if he's not on the ship?
Kirk tells the sexy robot chick (who, remember, he doesn't yet know is a sexy robot) to run away with him because, he tells her, she loves him. Why wouldn't she? She's known him for all of twenty minutes. I'm surprised this guy's ego is small enough to fit in outer space.
Kirk makes out with the sexy robot while pervert Flintstone watches on TV. Maybe he is that Flynt after all.
Kirk and Spock find a secret room with all kinds of sexy robots lying under sheets. So he is that Flynt after all.
Flintstone says he needed Kirk to jump-start his sexy robot's emotions so that she'd have the hots for him and he can get down and dirty with some hot robot lovin', and now that he doesn't need Kirk as a surrogate anymore he shrinks the Enterprise down and puts it on the coffee table between the ceramic kitty cat and a copy of The Wonderous Waterfalls of Yosemite.
Flintstone plans to leave the Enterprise there for the next million years with the crew in suspended animation, then he'll let it go. Kirk looks in the window and sees everyone on the bridge is frozen, but all the lights are still blinking which means when they're thawed out in a million years the ship's battery will be dead and they'll have to call Triple A.
Kirk and Flintstone's stunt doubles fight while the actors grab a sandwich off-camera.
I notice that there's a massive still for making moonshine in the background, maybe for Flinstone to get his sexy robot drunk so she'll like him. That might work for a night but does he really think that can be the basis for a long-term 6000 year human/robot relationship?
The sexy lady robot overheats, but not in the way Kirk or Flintstone wants. Then she dies.
Back on the unshrunk Enterprise, Kirk is moping over the robot he loved for the most romantic eight minutes of his life, and Spock feels so bad that he sneaks up behind him in his bedroom and the audience braces for the most uncomfortable scene in Star Trek history.
Instead, Spock sticks his finger in Kirk's ear and tells him "forget," which, I guess, means he's going to forget about the sexy robot. But that means he'd have to forget about Flintstone, too, because their stories were intertwined.
Which also means he'd have to forget about going down to Flintstone's planet because he would have no memory of collecting the lifesaving Vitalis since the floating colander did all that work.
Which means he'd have to forget about the fact that his entire crew was sick with jellybean fever.
Which means that all those captain's logs he somehow recorded will have to be doctored or deleted entirely to remove all references back to the point where the crew started exhibiting signs of jellybean fever.
Which means the entire crew would have to be made to forget or involved in a conspiracy to shield their captain from his own perverted robot love life.
Which means there is no explanation for the crew members who we were told had died of jellybean fever at the start of the episode.
Which means Kirk won't know what to write in the letters back to their families.
Which means that if Starfleet asks him any questions about the events of the past couple of days he will have no memory of them.
Which means he'll be removed from command and never make it to the end of the season, which at this point is probably just as well.
I wish Spock could make me forget too.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Thanks, J. Buckley, for your review of The Red Menace #4: Red the Riot Act.
"With each book in this series, Mullaney seems to sharpen his portrayal of the main characters, while simultaneously teasing us with just enough back story to keep us wondering (Wainwright, for example, evidently ran afoul of Napoleon. Yes, that Napoleon)."
"With each book in this series, Mullaney seems to sharpen his portrayal of the main characters, while simultaneously teasing us with just enough back story to keep us wondering (Wainwright, for example, evidently ran afoul of Napoleon. Yes, that Napoleon)."
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "The Lights of Zetar"
On this week's Star Trek the Federation's flagship with its awesome
array of technological wonders designed for exploring the farthest
reaches of the galaxy; a ship bursting at the seams with fearsome
weaponry that has blasted countless enemy vessels out of the heavens and
which could on a whim lay waste to entire worlds; the famous, feared
and lauded heavy battle cruiser, the Starship USS Enterprise,
registration number NCC 1701; under the command of the most decorated
officer in Starfleet history, Captain James Tiberius Kirk is charged
with the awesome responsibility of taking a librarian to her new job
across town.
We find out in some voice over narration that Scotty has the hots for the new librarian, but I'm more interested in the bird's eye camera angle that looks down directly at the top of William Shatner's toupee. I can see why they call it a bird's eye view because from above it looks like something terns would lay eggs in.
The librarian's name is Romaine Lettuce, and she's on the bridge haranguing Sulu about his overdue men's muscle magazines when a floating space jellyfish wearing a fireworks tuxedo attacks the ship.
The space jellyfish makes some fireworks explode in Romaine Lettuce's eyeball and she passes out and starts making Satanic belching sounds like the kid in The Exorcist. Scotty plays like Gene Hackman's oblivious blind monk in Young Frankenstein and says he didn't quite catch what the monster possessing her was saying. I don't exactly sing as sweetly as the birds nesting in William Shatner's Woolworth's hair, but I'd like to think that even total strangers might notice if I caught eye-fireworks then started belching Apocalyptic baritone horrors. On the Starship Enterprise, it just gets the librarian taken down to sickbay to take her temperature and later, if she's a good girl and doesn't try to take over the ship and kill everyone aboard, she'll get ice cream.
The library where Lt. Romaine Lettuce is supposed to shush unruly space kids is called Memory Alpha, and Spock says it's the only spot in the galaxy where all of the knowledge Starfleet has accumulated has been archived. So if you need to know the treatment for poison ivy or how many Friday the 13th movies were made, you're out of luck in the 23rd century because there's no more Google. In the future there's no looking up oatmeal cookie recipes at home in your underwear. It's much more convenient to book a flight on a spaceship and fly a billion light years away to get Dolly Parton's complete discography. Yes, Virginia, the future is run by Washington bureaucrats.
Before the Enterprise can get to the library, the opening credits to Love, American Style show up and fireworks everyone there to death.
Kirk and his pals arrive at Memory Alpha and find everyone dead, including Eddie Munster's werewolf doll and that blue-headed guy with the antennae who I'm beginning to think is like the Alfred Hitchcock of Star Trek for the number of episodes he's shown up in. I think I saw him getting on a bus in the background with Tippi Hedren in the one with the space gangsters.
One space lady is left alive, and her head changes Skittles rainbow colors as she makes growling monster noises like Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters when she was possessed by the Zuul. Then she dies.
Romaine Lettuce now has some psychic connection to the fireworks and she says they're on their way back because they're not sure if they killed everybody completely dead, so Kirk leaves Eddie Munster's werewolf doll, Mr. Blue-Head and Gozer's Gatekeeper in the library and he beams everybody back to the Enterprise.
The space jellyfish does some fireworks behind the ship and everyone goes "ooo" and "aaah" and applauds, but then Kirk tells the flashing lights that, while they are very pretty at a distance, physical contact with fireworks kills humans. This has been a Star Trek public service announcement aimed at all of you dummies who blow up your propane grills and set fire to your porch roofs every 4th-of-damn-July.
As soon as Kirk informs them that they can kill people by touching them, the jellyfish fireworks move out in front of the ship. After telling an enemy that has killed before their great advantage over humans, Kirk decides that this is a genius moment to leave the bridge and go sit around the dining room table to talk about all the interesting things that have happened in the show so far, like fireworks jellyfish and Scotty's romance with the sexy librarian, and why Romaine Lettuce can see what the jellyfish fireworks are up to inside her psychic head. Then everybody has a light supper and a nice long nap so they'll be nice and refreshed for when they all get murdered.
Spock puts crackers in the com-pu-tor! and McCoy's Lite-Brite agrees that something ain't quite right with Romaine Lettuce's brain waves. Probably it's because she was possessed by some jellyfish fireworks in the first act that made her eyes explode and made her talk like my garbage disposal when I grind up incubuses, but I'm not a genius Vulcan scientist or a brilliant Federation doctor so I'm not sure.
Kirk orders the ship to go at warp eight and the jellyfish winds up inside. What a shock. If you drive your car eight times the speed of light into that insubstantial space cat with the fireworks fur that's in the road up ahead, there's a pretty good chance kitty will end up next to you in the front seat.
Romaine Lettuce begins belching guttural obscenities, so naturally they stick her in the washing machine.
We learn that the fireworks have been floating in space for 1000 years looking for a body to act as host. Luckily, an alien race that can float around in the vacuum of space for a millennium and permeate the shields of a mighty Federation starship can't get out of the Whirlpool's rinse cycle.
Scotty's sideburns are outrageously big in this episode.
The jellyfish fireworks are dead by the time the washing machine hits "spin." Wisk around the collar beats alien jellyfish around the collar every time.
Kirk says that they're going to bring Romaine Lettuce to the library after all because she has "a lot of work to do." What work? Spock said when they beamed down earlier that the computers were wiped. Everyone's dead on Planet Library, so there's no one to give the bathroom key to or vagrants who smell like pee to turn out at nine p.m. Maybe she's just supposed to fiddle with the card catalogue and haul bodies out by the curb for the trash man the great USS Enterprise will be charged with bringing out next week.
We find out in some voice over narration that Scotty has the hots for the new librarian, but I'm more interested in the bird's eye camera angle that looks down directly at the top of William Shatner's toupee. I can see why they call it a bird's eye view because from above it looks like something terns would lay eggs in.
The librarian's name is Romaine Lettuce, and she's on the bridge haranguing Sulu about his overdue men's muscle magazines when a floating space jellyfish wearing a fireworks tuxedo attacks the ship.
The space jellyfish makes some fireworks explode in Romaine Lettuce's eyeball and she passes out and starts making Satanic belching sounds like the kid in The Exorcist. Scotty plays like Gene Hackman's oblivious blind monk in Young Frankenstein and says he didn't quite catch what the monster possessing her was saying. I don't exactly sing as sweetly as the birds nesting in William Shatner's Woolworth's hair, but I'd like to think that even total strangers might notice if I caught eye-fireworks then started belching Apocalyptic baritone horrors. On the Starship Enterprise, it just gets the librarian taken down to sickbay to take her temperature and later, if she's a good girl and doesn't try to take over the ship and kill everyone aboard, she'll get ice cream.
The library where Lt. Romaine Lettuce is supposed to shush unruly space kids is called Memory Alpha, and Spock says it's the only spot in the galaxy where all of the knowledge Starfleet has accumulated has been archived. So if you need to know the treatment for poison ivy or how many Friday the 13th movies were made, you're out of luck in the 23rd century because there's no more Google. In the future there's no looking up oatmeal cookie recipes at home in your underwear. It's much more convenient to book a flight on a spaceship and fly a billion light years away to get Dolly Parton's complete discography. Yes, Virginia, the future is run by Washington bureaucrats.
Before the Enterprise can get to the library, the opening credits to Love, American Style show up and fireworks everyone there to death.
Kirk and his pals arrive at Memory Alpha and find everyone dead, including Eddie Munster's werewolf doll and that blue-headed guy with the antennae who I'm beginning to think is like the Alfred Hitchcock of Star Trek for the number of episodes he's shown up in. I think I saw him getting on a bus in the background with Tippi Hedren in the one with the space gangsters.
One space lady is left alive, and her head changes Skittles rainbow colors as she makes growling monster noises like Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters when she was possessed by the Zuul. Then she dies.
Then she tried Proactiv and started seeing a difference in just three days!
Romaine Lettuce now has some psychic connection to the fireworks and she says they're on their way back because they're not sure if they killed everybody completely dead, so Kirk leaves Eddie Munster's werewolf doll, Mr. Blue-Head and Gozer's Gatekeeper in the library and he beams everybody back to the Enterprise.
The space jellyfish does some fireworks behind the ship and everyone goes "ooo" and "aaah" and applauds, but then Kirk tells the flashing lights that, while they are very pretty at a distance, physical contact with fireworks kills humans. This has been a Star Trek public service announcement aimed at all of you dummies who blow up your propane grills and set fire to your porch roofs every 4th-of-damn-July.
As soon as Kirk informs them that they can kill people by touching them, the jellyfish fireworks move out in front of the ship. After telling an enemy that has killed before their great advantage over humans, Kirk decides that this is a genius moment to leave the bridge and go sit around the dining room table to talk about all the interesting things that have happened in the show so far, like fireworks jellyfish and Scotty's romance with the sexy librarian, and why Romaine Lettuce can see what the jellyfish fireworks are up to inside her psychic head. Then everybody has a light supper and a nice long nap so they'll be nice and refreshed for when they all get murdered.
Spock puts crackers in the com-pu-tor! and McCoy's Lite-Brite agrees that something ain't quite right with Romaine Lettuce's brain waves. Probably it's because she was possessed by some jellyfish fireworks in the first act that made her eyes explode and made her talk like my garbage disposal when I grind up incubuses, but I'm not a genius Vulcan scientist or a brilliant Federation doctor so I'm not sure.
Kirk orders the ship to go at warp eight and the jellyfish winds up inside. What a shock. If you drive your car eight times the speed of light into that insubstantial space cat with the fireworks fur that's in the road up ahead, there's a pretty good chance kitty will end up next to you in the front seat.
Romaine Lettuce begins belching guttural obscenities, so naturally they stick her in the washing machine.
We learn that the fireworks have been floating in space for 1000 years looking for a body to act as host. Luckily, an alien race that can float around in the vacuum of space for a millennium and permeate the shields of a mighty Federation starship can't get out of the Whirlpool's rinse cycle.
Scotty's sideburns are outrageously big in this episode.
The jellyfish fireworks are dead by the time the washing machine hits "spin." Wisk around the collar beats alien jellyfish around the collar every time.
Kirk says that they're going to bring Romaine Lettuce to the library after all because she has "a lot of work to do." What work? Spock said when they beamed down earlier that the computers were wiped. Everyone's dead on Planet Library, so there's no one to give the bathroom key to or vagrants who smell like pee to turn out at nine p.m. Maybe she's just supposed to fiddle with the card catalogue and haul bodies out by the curb for the trash man the great USS Enterprise will be charged with bringing out next week.
Friday, February 15, 2013
The Red Menace #4, A Red Letter Day cover blurb:
A SAFE BET?
Official Washington is in an uproar when late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's top secret safe is found and then promptly goes missing. Rumor has it that Hoover was infamous for collecting files on all the nation's powerful movers and shakers, so there's no telling what damning information exists within the high-tech vault.
There's usually only one man MIC calls for dire situations like this, but this time it's not the Red Menace. It seems Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright designed the safe years before so that only Hoover could open it. Flash-forward to a post-Hoover world where the billion dollar blackmail question becomes: can whoever stole the safe spring the lock? When Wainwright says it's a very definite maybe the whole world turns upside-down.
The race is on for the big black box that holds America's future, and the Red Menace and Dr. Wainwright must outrun, outfight and outfox the Mob, a doomsaying environmentalist, every nation on earth desperate to watch the U.S. bleed, as well as an ancient enemy determined to bust the safe and a certain brilliant doctor's world wide open.
Official Washington is in an uproar when late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's top secret safe is found and then promptly goes missing. Rumor has it that Hoover was infamous for collecting files on all the nation's powerful movers and shakers, so there's no telling what damning information exists within the high-tech vault.
There's usually only one man MIC calls for dire situations like this, but this time it's not the Red Menace. It seems Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright designed the safe years before so that only Hoover could open it. Flash-forward to a post-Hoover world where the billion dollar blackmail question becomes: can whoever stole the safe spring the lock? When Wainwright says it's a very definite maybe the whole world turns upside-down.
The race is on for the big black box that holds America's future, and the Red Menace and Dr. Wainwright must outrun, outfight and outfox the Mob, a doomsaying environmentalist, every nation on earth desperate to watch the U.S. bleed, as well as an ancient enemy determined to bust the safe and a certain brilliant doctor's world wide open.
For a new Valentine's tradition this year, why
not an old one? Rip out the still-beating heart of one you love and
offer it to Kukulkán, the plumed serpent, then sit back and watch the
bountiful harvests just roll right on in! --Sincerely, A. Mayan (not one
of the calendar ones...those guys were way nuts!)
Monday, February 11, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "That Which Survives"
At the start of this week's Star Trek I was reminded of those kickballs
we used to try to kick up on the roof in grammar school. Evidently
those suckers had a lot more bounce than we thought, because at least
one of them cleared the solar system. The Enterprise flies up to Giant
Planet Kickball Floating in Space which Spock says is the size of
Earth's moon. I figure it's probably not one of ours after all, because
we couldn't have pumped that thing up with a bike pump by the end of
recess.
Kirk thinks Planet Kickball is a spooky ghost planet because it shouldn't be there, it should be in the closet at the end of the second floor hallway with the half-deflated basketballs and the tangled volleyball net from 1957. He decides to beam down to investigate with Sulu and Bones, and he orders Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse to meet them in the transporter room.
As they are beaming down, a chick in a purple genie costume appears in the transporter room and kills the ensign who is running the beamer. But wait! What foul feline fiend is this? Could Captain Kirk have a clawed criminal cat-astrophe on his paws? Watch out, Enterprising souls, for this purr-fect purveyor of perilous pandemonium is none other than that villainous vixen...Catwoman! But...oh, wait a second. Everybody hold onto your hairballs, because she's the least interesting one after Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt.
As soon as Kirk, Bones, Sulu and Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse arrive on the planet, the Enterprise is thrown out of orbit and vanishes. Sulu thinks the Enterprise blew up and suggests that men in certain dire situations resort to actions they ordinarily wouldn't to fulfill certain -- you know -- needs.
After a quick survey, they find that there is no water on the giant kickball, and all the plants are poisonous. Not to worry though, since they'll soon have a Thanksgiving dinner's-worth of dead geologist to eat a la a South American soccer team.
Genie Catwoman shows up and talks to Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse for ten minutes before he suddenly recognizes her as the woman who murdered that guy in the transporter room eleven minutes before. Either a.) he needs glasses, b.) he needs to survey his own head for rocks or c.) there must be one whole crapload of genie Catwomen in purple bikini pantsuits wandering around up there in outer space.
In a shocking twist that no one could have seen coming, Catwoman kills Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse. I'm stunned. I was sure he'd make it to the movies.
Later, at the "he's dead, Jim" after party, Bones says that each one of the geologist's cells were scrambled like a milkshake and that this is a cat-egory of meowing medical malfeasance not cat-alogued before. Why, it's a virtual tabby-la rasa.
Upstairs, the Enterprise has been sent a thousand light years away, probably because Spock put a woman in Sulu's place at the helm and we all know what gals are like with that whole sense-of-direction thing. Am I right, fellas? (Oh, lighten up, Bella Abzug...I'm building to something for the last episode.) This one looks like a leftover witch from the Halloween episode and demonstrates her respect for Spock by rolling her eyes, making "pfft" noises and standing in front of the viewscreen and insisting he talk about his feelings during the best part of the show.
Scotty says the ship doesn't feel right, so he sends his assistant in his pajamas out front to pop the hood. The assistant meets the chick in the purple bikini pantsuit who kills him like she killed the ensign in the transporter room, then vanishes into a dot like a TV turning off. I think that's a pretty good idea right now, but I decide to stick with it anyway.
Back on Planet Kickball, Kirk thinks the joint is artificial and might be hollow, and I assume we viewers aren't supposed to remember the last hollow planet they were on where Bones thought he was dying so he got married, but then he got better and gallantly ditched his wife of five minutes and took off so fast that all he left behind was a Bones-shaped puff of cartoon dust.
Kirk says they should sleep in shifts and tells Sulu to take the first watch. Kirk fluffs up a Styrofoam rock as a pillow and Sulu hikes around a corner and about a hundred miles away to keep a lookout. How all these tactical geniuses survived more than two minutes let alone three seasons and six movies against the Klingons is beyond me.
The chick in the purple bikini pantsuit shows up again, and Sulu tells her, "I don't want to have to kill a woman." That's not all he doesn't want to have to do with a woman.
Catwoman touches Sulu's arm and he screams that she's a yucky girl with cooties. Kirk jumps in between them to valiantly get felt up by the hot babe. Catwoman grabs him but for some reason when she touches Kirk she doesn't milkshake his cells like everybody else's, so she disappears in a TV dot while some sexy "La-la-laaaaa!" singing screams over the soundtrack. I wonder why if she can appear and disappear at will, she just doesn't appear right next to Sulu and scramble his cells.
Back on the Enterprise, Scotty says the chick in the purple bikini pantsuit has set the ship to blow up in 15 minutes. The show still has 32 minutes left, so I guess the last 17 minutes will just be scenes of Sulu's post traumatic stress from being touched by a girl intercut with images of floating space debris.
On Planet Kickball, Catwoman comes back for Kirk this time. It turns out each Catwoman who appears can only kill one guy at a time, which is why Kirk didn't get milkshaked before when she grabbed his goodies. Sulu's melted shoulder is mysteriously better with no explanation whatsoever, and Captain Courageous bravely hides behind Sulu and Bones while Catwoman tries to grab him. It occurs to me that this is probably the first time that Kirk has run from a hot babe, and I wonder what exactly happened between him and Sulu during those scenes where the show cut back to Spock and Scotty on the Enterprise. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Up on the Enterprise, Scotty feeds yellow crackers to the computer. Spock talks to the com-pu-tore! Then Scotty sticks tools down his underpants like Sandy Berger with top secret documents. Apparently the advanced technology for constructing a so-called "tool belt" was lost to mankind sometime during the Great Handyman Wars of the 2120s, so the only place to shove your screwdriver now is down your underwear.
Unlike William Shatner in an earlier episode, both Scotty and Spock pronounce "sabotage" correctly, so that's nice.
Down on Planet Kickball, a Styrofoam wall rolls away and Kirk, Bones and Sulu decide it's a good idea to walk single-file into secret cavern on a poison-plant kickball world where their ship may or may not have blown up and Catwomen in bikini pantsuits keep popping out from behind the nearest molecule to kill them. What could possibly go wrong?
On the Enterprise, Scotty is trying to fix the ship with a giant lipstick, but it sticks. Then it unsticks and he shoves it in the toaster and everything is fine.
Back on Planet Kickball, Kirk and co. have found a secret computer room dedicated to producing Catwomen in purple bikini pantsuits. This time three of them show up in a special effects-laden finale that will leave you baffled. Although I figured it out. (Spoiler Alert! Lee Merriweather has been triplets in real-life all along, like that magician movie with Wolverine and Batman. End spoiler!)
There is now one Catwoman programmed to kill each of the landing party, so Kirk decides to play the worst shell game in the history of the universe. Kirk, Bones and Sulu jump around waving their arms like the puppets in Team America, thus confusing their attackers. This is probably the absolutely most moronic decision he could make under the circumstances, since running around in circles around the three Catwomen would only serve to confuse the attackee. Each Catwoman knows who she's after, and has announced it to the room, so running around in circles absolutely will only confuse the guys from the Enterprise. If, for instance, the Dionne Quintuplets show up in your living room with a murderous glint in their Canadian eyes, don't start doing laps around the sofa. If Yvonne says she's going to kill you, stay put and keep your eyes locked on her rather than risk mixing her up with Annette.
Luckily Spock shows up with a ray gun and shoots the plastic box glued to the ceiling and all the Catwomen vanish in a puff of sexy "la-la-laaaa!" music.
It turns out that Catwoman has been dead for a million years and the plastic box on the ceiling was just sending out projections of her to kill intruders because it was taking a nap and it was sick of the Space Girl Scouts ringing Planet Kickball's doorbell every five minutes with their damn mint cookies. Or something. I don't know. Who cares?
Kirk thinks Planet Kickball is a spooky ghost planet because it shouldn't be there, it should be in the closet at the end of the second floor hallway with the half-deflated basketballs and the tangled volleyball net from 1957. He decides to beam down to investigate with Sulu and Bones, and he orders Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse to meet them in the transporter room.
As they are beaming down, a chick in a purple genie costume appears in the transporter room and kills the ensign who is running the beamer. But wait! What foul feline fiend is this? Could Captain Kirk have a clawed criminal cat-astrophe on his paws? Watch out, Enterprising souls, for this purr-fect purveyor of perilous pandemonium is none other than that villainous vixen...Catwoman! But...oh, wait a second. Everybody hold onto your hairballs, because she's the least interesting one after Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt.
As soon as Kirk, Bones, Sulu and Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse arrive on the planet, the Enterprise is thrown out of orbit and vanishes. Sulu thinks the Enterprise blew up and suggests that men in certain dire situations resort to actions they ordinarily wouldn't to fulfill certain -- you know -- needs.
After a quick survey, they find that there is no water on the giant kickball, and all the plants are poisonous. Not to worry though, since they'll soon have a Thanksgiving dinner's-worth of dead geologist to eat a la a South American soccer team.
Genie Catwoman shows up and talks to Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse for ten minutes before he suddenly recognizes her as the woman who murdered that guy in the transporter room eleven minutes before. Either a.) he needs glasses, b.) he needs to survey his own head for rocks or c.) there must be one whole crapload of genie Catwomen in purple bikini pantsuits wandering around up there in outer space.
In a shocking twist that no one could have seen coming, Catwoman kills Senior Geologist Inevitable Corpse. I'm stunned. I was sure he'd make it to the movies.
Later, at the "he's dead, Jim" after party, Bones says that each one of the geologist's cells were scrambled like a milkshake and that this is a cat-egory of meowing medical malfeasance not cat-alogued before. Why, it's a virtual tabby-la rasa.
Upstairs, the Enterprise has been sent a thousand light years away, probably because Spock put a woman in Sulu's place at the helm and we all know what gals are like with that whole sense-of-direction thing. Am I right, fellas? (Oh, lighten up, Bella Abzug...I'm building to something for the last episode.) This one looks like a leftover witch from the Halloween episode and demonstrates her respect for Spock by rolling her eyes, making "pfft" noises and standing in front of the viewscreen and insisting he talk about his feelings during the best part of the show.
I don't like the way Captain Kirk keeps dressing me with his eyes.
Scotty says the ship doesn't feel right, so he sends his assistant in his pajamas out front to pop the hood. The assistant meets the chick in the purple bikini pantsuit who kills him like she killed the ensign in the transporter room, then vanishes into a dot like a TV turning off. I think that's a pretty good idea right now, but I decide to stick with it anyway.
Back on Planet Kickball, Kirk thinks the joint is artificial and might be hollow, and I assume we viewers aren't supposed to remember the last hollow planet they were on where Bones thought he was dying so he got married, but then he got better and gallantly ditched his wife of five minutes and took off so fast that all he left behind was a Bones-shaped puff of cartoon dust.
Kirk says they should sleep in shifts and tells Sulu to take the first watch. Kirk fluffs up a Styrofoam rock as a pillow and Sulu hikes around a corner and about a hundred miles away to keep a lookout. How all these tactical geniuses survived more than two minutes let alone three seasons and six movies against the Klingons is beyond me.
The chick in the purple bikini pantsuit shows up again, and Sulu tells her, "I don't want to have to kill a woman." That's not all he doesn't want to have to do with a woman.
Catwoman touches Sulu's arm and he screams that she's a yucky girl with cooties. Kirk jumps in between them to valiantly get felt up by the hot babe. Catwoman grabs him but for some reason when she touches Kirk she doesn't milkshake his cells like everybody else's, so she disappears in a TV dot while some sexy "La-la-laaaaa!" singing screams over the soundtrack. I wonder why if she can appear and disappear at will, she just doesn't appear right next to Sulu and scramble his cells.
Back on the Enterprise, Scotty says the chick in the purple bikini pantsuit has set the ship to blow up in 15 minutes. The show still has 32 minutes left, so I guess the last 17 minutes will just be scenes of Sulu's post traumatic stress from being touched by a girl intercut with images of floating space debris.
On Planet Kickball, Catwoman comes back for Kirk this time. It turns out each Catwoman who appears can only kill one guy at a time, which is why Kirk didn't get milkshaked before when she grabbed his goodies. Sulu's melted shoulder is mysteriously better with no explanation whatsoever, and Captain Courageous bravely hides behind Sulu and Bones while Catwoman tries to grab him. It occurs to me that this is probably the first time that Kirk has run from a hot babe, and I wonder what exactly happened between him and Sulu during those scenes where the show cut back to Spock and Scotty on the Enterprise. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Up on the Enterprise, Scotty feeds yellow crackers to the computer. Spock talks to the com-pu-tore! Then Scotty sticks tools down his underpants like Sandy Berger with top secret documents. Apparently the advanced technology for constructing a so-called "tool belt" was lost to mankind sometime during the Great Handyman Wars of the 2120s, so the only place to shove your screwdriver now is down your underwear.
Unlike William Shatner in an earlier episode, both Scotty and Spock pronounce "sabotage" correctly, so that's nice.
Down on Planet Kickball, a Styrofoam wall rolls away and Kirk, Bones and Sulu decide it's a good idea to walk single-file into secret cavern on a poison-plant kickball world where their ship may or may not have blown up and Catwomen in bikini pantsuits keep popping out from behind the nearest molecule to kill them. What could possibly go wrong?
On the Enterprise, Scotty is trying to fix the ship with a giant lipstick, but it sticks. Then it unsticks and he shoves it in the toaster and everything is fine.
Back on Planet Kickball, Kirk and co. have found a secret computer room dedicated to producing Catwomen in purple bikini pantsuits. This time three of them show up in a special effects-laden finale that will leave you baffled. Although I figured it out. (Spoiler Alert! Lee Merriweather has been triplets in real-life all along, like that magician movie with Wolverine and Batman. End spoiler!)
There is now one Catwoman programmed to kill each of the landing party, so Kirk decides to play the worst shell game in the history of the universe. Kirk, Bones and Sulu jump around waving their arms like the puppets in Team America, thus confusing their attackers. This is probably the absolutely most moronic decision he could make under the circumstances, since running around in circles around the three Catwomen would only serve to confuse the attackee. Each Catwoman knows who she's after, and has announced it to the room, so running around in circles absolutely will only confuse the guys from the Enterprise. If, for instance, the Dionne Quintuplets show up in your living room with a murderous glint in their Canadian eyes, don't start doing laps around the sofa. If Yvonne says she's going to kill you, stay put and keep your eyes locked on her rather than risk mixing her up with Annette.
Luckily Spock shows up with a ray gun and shoots the plastic box glued to the ceiling and all the Catwomen vanish in a puff of sexy "la-la-laaaa!" music.
It turns out that Catwoman has been dead for a million years and the plastic box on the ceiling was just sending out projections of her to kill intruders because it was taking a nap and it was sick of the Space Girl Scouts ringing Planet Kickball's doorbell every five minutes with their damn mint cookies. Or something. I don't know. Who cares?
Friday, February 8, 2013
Errors in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln"
I just read that somebody found an error in Steven Spielberg's
"Lincoln." Only one? They weren't watching carefully enough. Here are
a few more:
--Lincoln wore actual stovepipe hat, not one constructed from mashed potatoes
--Did not write Gettysburg Address on back of "1941" shooting script
--Lincoln was shot by assassin, not eaten by mechanical shark
--John Wilkes Booth was not captured by Zorro after thrilling six minute action set piece
--Civil War had more to do with slavery, less with keeping Jefferson Davis from capturing Ark of the Covenant
--Pinkerton detectives not aided by young Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
--Lincoln's actual anthropomorphic teddy bear companion had less foul mouth
--Fewer gremlins at Pickett's Charge
--M&M's not Reese's Pieces was official snack food of War Between the States
--Aliens landed on White House lawn in March 1861 not April 1861 as depicted in film
--Guns digitally erased from daguerreotypes for Civil War 20th Anniversary Special Edition
--Lincoln's last words were not, "Abe L. phone home."
--Lincoln wore actual stovepipe hat, not one constructed from mashed potatoes
--Did not write Gettysburg Address on back of "1941" shooting script
--Lincoln was shot by assassin, not eaten by mechanical shark
--John Wilkes Booth was not captured by Zorro after thrilling six minute action set piece
--Civil War had more to do with slavery, less with keeping Jefferson Davis from capturing Ark of the Covenant
--Pinkerton detectives not aided by young Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
--Lincoln's actual anthropomorphic teddy bear companion had less foul mouth
--Fewer gremlins at Pickett's Charge
--M&M's not Reese's Pieces was official snack food of War Between the States
--Aliens landed on White House lawn in March 1861 not April 1861 as depicted in film
--Guns digitally erased from daguerreotypes for Civil War 20th Anniversary Special Edition
--Lincoln's last words were not, "Abe L. phone home."
Thursday, February 7, 2013
New slogans for Burger King:
Let's Giddyup to Burger King!
Hi-ho, Savings!
Burger King: Didn't You Always Kind of Suspect It?
Because Greyhound Meat Was Too Stringy!
Try Our New Barbecued Fetlocks!
I Feel Like Horse Meat Tonight!
If There's a Horseshoe in Your Burger, It's Free!
We Hope To God You Don't Ask What's In the Fries!
Eat At Burger King Tonight: It Just Makes Horse Sense!
Home of the Whinnier!
Burger King: A Lot of Love In Every Burger, and Substantially More Horse!
KING RICHARD III: A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!
CATESBY: Withdraw, my lord; I'll help you to a horse. And a delicious order of piping hot fries!
They EXEUNT to Burger King
Hi-ho, Savings!
Burger King: Didn't You Always Kind of Suspect It?
Because Greyhound Meat Was Too Stringy!
Try Our New Barbecued Fetlocks!
I Feel Like Horse Meat Tonight!
If There's a Horseshoe in Your Burger, It's Free!
We Hope To God You Don't Ask What's In the Fries!
Eat At Burger King Tonight: It Just Makes Horse Sense!
Home of the Whinnier!
Burger King: A Lot of Love In Every Burger, and Substantially More Horse!
KING RICHARD III: A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!
CATESBY: Withdraw, my lord; I'll help you to a horse. And a delicious order of piping hot fries!
They EXEUNT to Burger King
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "The Mark of Gideon"
The plot of this week's Star Trek is thinner than a double-decker Karen
Carpenter/Lara Flynn Boyle sandwich on gluten-free helium bread.
In the opening scene, the Enterprise arrives in orbit around Planet Giddyup. We're told it's a paradise, but for some reason the Giddyuppians won't let anyone actually see how idyllic the joint is. No one on the Enterprise is suspicious that this "no flash photography, please" rule maybe means the place ain't as swell as Giddyup claims. Giddyup also claims that their basement is as clean as a whistle, their garage isn't crammed full of broken skis and used car batteries, and that they've Swiffered the whole planet, even the tippity-tops of those hard-to-reach mountains.
Only one person is permitted to beam down, so of course a non-vital senior officer with diplomatic credentials is sent to represent the Federation. Oops. Wait. Nope. It's Kirk.
Spock recites the coordinates that the Giddyuppians have sent like he's reading farsighted Kirk the number to the White House switchboard or McDonald's corporate headquarters. I'm sure the fact that they've just had Spock tell us a series of numbers a mile-long won't have any bearing on anything later on in the episode.
Kirk beams off the Enterprise but materializes back in the transporter room of what appears to be the Enterprise. There is no one on the ship and just as Kirk begins to panic that he won't have anyone to bang this episode, a crazy babe in a wrapping paper dress dances up the corridor. Crisis averted.
The crazy chick says her name is O'Donnell and she doesn't know how she got there or where she came from. If she's looking for an abstract physiology lesson, boy did she ever pick the wrong guy to ask where babies come from.
All of a sudden we're back on the real Enterprise. Everyone is still there at their blipping, bleeping consoles, including some guy in a blue shirt who sits in Spock's chair with his arms crossed like a seat-warmer at the Oscars doing nothing for the whole rest of the episode. This guy's getting a check from Starfleet and Paramount for doing nothing all day long. And I think I saw him lugging a block of WIC cheese onto the turbolift at the end of the show.
The Nazi Diana Ross and his baldheaded Supremes who run Giddyup tell Spock that Kirk never arrived, but promise they'll conduct a ruthless, door-to-door search for him in every attic from here to Amsterdam.
Back on the fake Enterprise, the ship appears to be zooming through space, so to address the problem of a missing crew and a runaway ship, Starfleet's greatest captain shakes the crazy broad, makes out with her, shakes her some more, then takes her to his quarters to play some Barry White and show her his ceiling mirror. Okay, yes, this one actually is a hot babe, but Kirk doesn't even try to contact Starfleet. I'd probably fiddle with the knobs on the radio first.
Twenty-four minutes in I realize that if William Shatner didn't pause for fifteen seconds between each word, this episode would be ten minutes long.
Kirk is convinced this is his ship, even though we now know that it isn't. Wouldn't there be at least one stain on one console somewhere on the ship where his coffee mug sat without a coaster that has been there since he took over as captain but which he notices is now suddenly mysteriously missing? How would the Giddyuppians who built the fake Enterprise with plywood and glue out in the backyard know every little chip and ding and stain that might be on the ship, let alone what books Kirk has in his quarters, how many wig stands Chekov owns and which Vulcan Justin Beiber poster Spock has hanging on his wall? And how would they have access to Kirk's log voice recordings? Couldn't he try to play them back only to find out they no longer exist and begin to realize that this isn't his ship after all? Nah, Kirk doesn't bother to check any of those things since he's too busy making out in front of the window with the chick he just met.
All of sudden a bunch of leering creeps in green unitards are peeking in on them. Kirk, whose crew is lost and whose ship has been hijacked, is too busy making out and doesn't notice them. Is there something that's the opposite of Viagra, because this guy needs the maximum strength dosage. How about Flintstone's chewable vitamins with Sarah Jessica Parker's Hee-Haw donkey face on them?
The Nazi leader of Giddyup allows Spock to beam up a baldie Supreme from the council chamber, then back down again. Spock realizes that the numbers Space Hitler gave this time don't match the coordinates he gave the first time for Kirk to beam down to. And here I thought they were just reading twenty numbers at the start of the show just to kill time.
Kirk hears drums pounding on the ship and says they sound like a thousand heartbeats. Then he makes out with the chick he just met again and this time he sees the unitard peeping toms staring in the window at them. Then the alien chick who he's just met and who he's been making out with the whole episode gets sick. I'm surprised I don't see any rampaging cold sores. Then she passes out.
The Nazi leader of Giddyup walks out a door like Allen Funt, but at least he's not doubled over and wiping his eyes from phony laughter. We learn from Space Hitler that the Giddyuppians built this huge, elaborate, multistoried working replica of the Starship Enterprise because they wanted Kirk to sneeze on the chick.
Giddyup was a paradise, Space Hitler says, until everyone stopped getting sick and started living forever. Now all they can do is march around shoulder-to-shoulder in unitards and look in each others' windows. They wanted Kirk to get the girl, who is Space Hitler's daughter, sick with terminal genital warts so that she could spread them to the whole planet and everyone can die. Ah, so it's the OVERPOPULATION episode of Star Trek, where we humans here in the far-off distant 1960s past on Earth need to learn to stop making babies or we'll eventually be stuffed in a unitard and forced to look in a window at horny William Shatner.
Let me think.
No, Sarah Jessica Parker is still worse.
Kirk wants to spend a couple of days flying around the planet shoveling IUDs out the shuttle bay door, but the Nazi nixes the idea and says they really have their hearts set on this mass-suicide thing. It's a shame they don't listen to Kirk, because if anyone in the galaxy is an expert on not getting broads knocked up, it's James T. Kirk.
I wonder why if the Giddyuppians can build a starship on the surface of their planet good enough to fool a starship captain, they didn't build it up in the air and fly off to another planet in it instead of settling on mass suicide. I also wonder who is making all those unitards they're wearing, since we're told there's no room to do anything on the whole planet but stand shoulder-to-shoulder next to other people. Tailors have to be sitting down somewhere to make those unitards on their Singer sewing machines. And they must be eating stuff, so there must be farmland. And why if they can build a perfect replica of a starship, don't they at least think to build their buildings...I don't know...up? It seems to me that very tall buildings in major cities and a fleet of ships ferrying pioneer settlers to other nearby planets would be preferable to voluntarily infecting your entire world with a dose of Kirk's jambalaya of 1001 exotic alien social diseases.
Spock shows up with his whistling transistor radio. He beats up Blue Man Group and beams Kirk back to the real Enterprise, even though we're told earlier in the episode that the Giddyuppians block everything with planet-wide shields.
On the Enterprise, Bones cures O'Donnell and wonders why he only had two lines these past two weeks.
The disease is dormant in O'Donnell, but she's still a carrier, so she beams back down to Giddyup to set up a kissing booth at the state fair so she can French-genocide down the population and everyone can live happily ever after except for the quadrillions of people who Captain Kirk, because he now knows the plan, indirectly murders with his Romulan gonorrhea.
In the opening scene, the Enterprise arrives in orbit around Planet Giddyup. We're told it's a paradise, but for some reason the Giddyuppians won't let anyone actually see how idyllic the joint is. No one on the Enterprise is suspicious that this "no flash photography, please" rule maybe means the place ain't as swell as Giddyup claims. Giddyup also claims that their basement is as clean as a whistle, their garage isn't crammed full of broken skis and used car batteries, and that they've Swiffered the whole planet, even the tippity-tops of those hard-to-reach mountains.
Only one person is permitted to beam down, so of course a non-vital senior officer with diplomatic credentials is sent to represent the Federation. Oops. Wait. Nope. It's Kirk.
Spock recites the coordinates that the Giddyuppians have sent like he's reading farsighted Kirk the number to the White House switchboard or McDonald's corporate headquarters. I'm sure the fact that they've just had Spock tell us a series of numbers a mile-long won't have any bearing on anything later on in the episode.
Kirk beams off the Enterprise but materializes back in the transporter room of what appears to be the Enterprise. There is no one on the ship and just as Kirk begins to panic that he won't have anyone to bang this episode, a crazy babe in a wrapping paper dress dances up the corridor. Crisis averted.
The crazy chick says her name is O'Donnell and she doesn't know how she got there or where she came from. If she's looking for an abstract physiology lesson, boy did she ever pick the wrong guy to ask where babies come from.
All of a sudden we're back on the real Enterprise. Everyone is still there at their blipping, bleeping consoles, including some guy in a blue shirt who sits in Spock's chair with his arms crossed like a seat-warmer at the Oscars doing nothing for the whole rest of the episode. This guy's getting a check from Starfleet and Paramount for doing nothing all day long. And I think I saw him lugging a block of WIC cheese onto the turbolift at the end of the show.
The Nazi Diana Ross and his baldheaded Supremes who run Giddyup tell Spock that Kirk never arrived, but promise they'll conduct a ruthless, door-to-door search for him in every attic from here to Amsterdam.
Back on the fake Enterprise, the ship appears to be zooming through space, so to address the problem of a missing crew and a runaway ship, Starfleet's greatest captain shakes the crazy broad, makes out with her, shakes her some more, then takes her to his quarters to play some Barry White and show her his ceiling mirror. Okay, yes, this one actually is a hot babe, but Kirk doesn't even try to contact Starfleet. I'd probably fiddle with the knobs on the radio first.
Twenty-four minutes in I realize that if William Shatner didn't pause for fifteen seconds between each word, this episode would be ten minutes long.
Kirk is convinced this is his ship, even though we now know that it isn't. Wouldn't there be at least one stain on one console somewhere on the ship where his coffee mug sat without a coaster that has been there since he took over as captain but which he notices is now suddenly mysteriously missing? How would the Giddyuppians who built the fake Enterprise with plywood and glue out in the backyard know every little chip and ding and stain that might be on the ship, let alone what books Kirk has in his quarters, how many wig stands Chekov owns and which Vulcan Justin Beiber poster Spock has hanging on his wall? And how would they have access to Kirk's log voice recordings? Couldn't he try to play them back only to find out they no longer exist and begin to realize that this isn't his ship after all? Nah, Kirk doesn't bother to check any of those things since he's too busy making out in front of the window with the chick he just met.
All of sudden a bunch of leering creeps in green unitards are peeking in on them. Kirk, whose crew is lost and whose ship has been hijacked, is too busy making out and doesn't notice them. Is there something that's the opposite of Viagra, because this guy needs the maximum strength dosage. How about Flintstone's chewable vitamins with Sarah Jessica Parker's Hee-Haw donkey face on them?
"My God, whatever these ghoulish creatures are, they are truly horrifying specimens."
"Yes, especially the fat one in the wig and the yellow velour circus shirt."
"Yes, especially the fat one in the wig and the yellow velour circus shirt."
The Nazi leader of Giddyup allows Spock to beam up a baldie Supreme from the council chamber, then back down again. Spock realizes that the numbers Space Hitler gave this time don't match the coordinates he gave the first time for Kirk to beam down to. And here I thought they were just reading twenty numbers at the start of the show just to kill time.
Kirk hears drums pounding on the ship and says they sound like a thousand heartbeats. Then he makes out with the chick he just met again and this time he sees the unitard peeping toms staring in the window at them. Then the alien chick who he's just met and who he's been making out with the whole episode gets sick. I'm surprised I don't see any rampaging cold sores. Then she passes out.
The Nazi leader of Giddyup walks out a door like Allen Funt, but at least he's not doubled over and wiping his eyes from phony laughter. We learn from Space Hitler that the Giddyuppians built this huge, elaborate, multistoried working replica of the Starship Enterprise because they wanted Kirk to sneeze on the chick.
Giddyup was a paradise, Space Hitler says, until everyone stopped getting sick and started living forever. Now all they can do is march around shoulder-to-shoulder in unitards and look in each others' windows. They wanted Kirk to get the girl, who is Space Hitler's daughter, sick with terminal genital warts so that she could spread them to the whole planet and everyone can die. Ah, so it's the OVERPOPULATION episode of Star Trek, where we humans here in the far-off distant 1960s past on Earth need to learn to stop making babies or we'll eventually be stuffed in a unitard and forced to look in a window at horny William Shatner.
Let me think.
No, Sarah Jessica Parker is still worse.
Kirk wants to spend a couple of days flying around the planet shoveling IUDs out the shuttle bay door, but the Nazi nixes the idea and says they really have their hearts set on this mass-suicide thing. It's a shame they don't listen to Kirk, because if anyone in the galaxy is an expert on not getting broads knocked up, it's James T. Kirk.
I wonder why if the Giddyuppians can build a starship on the surface of their planet good enough to fool a starship captain, they didn't build it up in the air and fly off to another planet in it instead of settling on mass suicide. I also wonder who is making all those unitards they're wearing, since we're told there's no room to do anything on the whole planet but stand shoulder-to-shoulder next to other people. Tailors have to be sitting down somewhere to make those unitards on their Singer sewing machines. And they must be eating stuff, so there must be farmland. And why if they can build a perfect replica of a starship, don't they at least think to build their buildings...I don't know...up? It seems to me that very tall buildings in major cities and a fleet of ships ferrying pioneer settlers to other nearby planets would be preferable to voluntarily infecting your entire world with a dose of Kirk's jambalaya of 1001 exotic alien social diseases.
Spock shows up with his whistling transistor radio. He beats up Blue Man Group and beams Kirk back to the real Enterprise, even though we're told earlier in the episode that the Giddyuppians block everything with planet-wide shields.
On the Enterprise, Bones cures O'Donnell and wonders why he only had two lines these past two weeks.
The disease is dormant in O'Donnell, but she's still a carrier, so she beams back down to Giddyup to set up a kissing booth at the state fair so she can French-genocide down the population and everyone can live happily ever after except for the quadrillions of people who Captain Kirk, because he now knows the plan, indirectly murders with his Romulan gonorrhea.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)