Michael Offutt's Blog, page 122

Okay so Almost Human is finally getting my attention

A hacker for hire by the name of "Nico" that got arrested in "Almost Human."
This guy was an interesting character. However, I thought the portrayal of
hackers in last night's episode was laughable with eyeliner, light rods straight
out of an early 90's rave, and a good portion of them actually looked hot.
Come on, I know some hackers and they have acne and are out of shape.Okay, so I'm going to admit now that Almost Human is finally getting my attention. When I first started watching this show, I was surprised at how boring some of the episodes ended up being. But now, things are starting to gel and I like it. Monday night's episode had to do with Smart Home technology, and this is what I do for a living. I have to admit, I never went down the road where Smart Homes could end up killing people, but I suppose it could happen in the absurdly high-tech future.

What I install for a living are environmental controls for people who can't move (quadriplegics). Imagine controlling the thermostat, the television, the satellite, all your lights, cameras, fan, radio, and basically anything electronic with the sound of your voice. Well that technology is right here, right now. I make it possible for someone to look at a camera, see who's at the door, and then open the door from the bedroom to let them in. But all of this is done through Insteon, X-10, and infrared technologies. It doesn't involve a personal hologram that stands in your living room and communicates with you like a human being and has its own artificial intelligence to provide you with all the security and environmental control that you could ever desire.

I suppose that's the next step, right?

In "Disrupt" (the episode that aired Monday night), Almost Human imagined that next step and then took it to the dark side by posing the question: What if a hacker who hates you killed you with your own house?

Right now, the technologies to do this kind of anonymous murder don't exist. I don't even think they exist in Bill Gates' house. But who knows, it could be a different story twenty years from now. Maybe we will have houses that are so hermetically sealed that they can have all of the oxygen sucked out of them to put out, say, a fire. A hacker (as the one in the show) just makes it so the house doesn't see anyone living in the house before doing this and voila, asphyxiation by vacuum while standing at the dish washer.

I found particularly horrific the death of the woman that got trapped under the pool cover while swimming. This pool cover was made of some kind of unbreakable plastic. It didn't even crack when the husband pounded on it with what looked like a fire extinguisher. The Smart Home just covered her up with the transparent top while she was swimming and she didn't even notice it was happening. How awful, right?

Now don't get me wrong. I haven't become a raving fanboy of Almost Human overnight, but I am intrigued. I want to see what's over the Wall (Dorian's creator fled there at the end of one episode). The existence of the Chromes has raised all kinds of ethical questions in my mind (which has been good for tabletop discussion). And the world development has finally reached a point where I get it and am starting to care for some of the characters. So yeah, I'm actually starting to hope it might be renewed. It's still no Sleepy Hollow though. That show just knocked everything out of the park.

A lightning bolt to the top of the world's tallest building reminds us how cool it is when heaven and earth collide in violence

Click to EMBIGGEN!Photographer Michael Shainblum named this picture "Tesla Tower" and said he stood out in the rain four hours trying to get it. I'd say, "well done." It's the most spectacular picture of this kind I've ever seen. I guess a lightning bolt to the top of the world's tallest building reminds us how cool it is when heaven and earth collide in violence.

May lightning strike for you too this Valentine's day. I'll be back next Wednesday as Monday is a holiday.

If I were in charge of Hollywood, every one of Hickman and Weis' books would be made into a movie

Click to EMBIGGENI have never met Tracy Hickman or Margaret Weis, but I've read the trilogy that kicked off Dragonlance and then the whole War of the Twins plotline. I've also read the trilogy that includes Rose of the Prophet. Based off this alone, I'd turn all of their stories into a movie. Io9 got me thinking about this with their article published yesterday (READ IT HERE), and I agree with most everything that's been said regarding Dragonlance. 

But I guess I'm not in charge of anything. However, I can add my voice to the silent multitude that asks, "How can you not look at this painting of Takhisis and Raistlin and not think OMG THIS IS THE COOLEST THING EVER!!??"

Seriously Hollywood, stop making Vampire Academy movies and give us fantasy lovers out here what we really desire: a story much different than "The Lord of the Rings" that's part of the fantasy zeitgeist. We will shower you with greenbacks if you do.

At least I will. I cannot speak with regard to my readers out there.

Have a great Wednesday.

And isn't that picture just the most awesome thing ever? 

Michonne finally gets her episode and it was incredible

Now that the season has started again, who is going to survive the fall of the prison?Last night's Walking Dead episode called "After" took us into Michonne's mind, and I absolutely loved it. It's been a couple of months since the mid-season finale, and we knew that life wasn't going to be the same following the destruction of the safe haven that was "the prison" at the hands of "The Governor" and his new lackeys. But I had no idea they were going to give us what the show probably needed most right now through the eyes of a brilliant character like Michonne.
Michonne having to revert to her most basic form of surviving the world of
zombies is a fate and a road she never wanted to walk again. The weight and
emotion of her having to make these tough choices really struck a chord
with me and I sympathized so much with her. I'm glad she made the most
courageous choice by accepting her vulnerability and drawing strength from it.Michonne for me is the touchstone for the entire concept of humanity in a world full of zombies and the survivors (who you may not be able to trust). She is so incredibly scarred (post traumatic stress disorder comes to mind) but somehow finds the strength to still remain human. In one of the best scenes in the episode, she looks around at the other zombies in a herd she's traveling with and you can see that she's choosing not to be one of them (which she is in a real danger of becoming because of her state of mind). That's when she whips out her sword and starts killing them by the dozen. And when it's over, she screams, returns to the tracks in the mud that she found, and tracks down the people that she'd grown to care about.
This is more than just Carl leading zombies. It's Carl proving to himself that he
can survive this world without anyone's help. But what does that prove in the end
other than "You're alone."I loved that the Walking Dead also gave us a glimpse of her past. We got to meet Mike (her boyfriend) and his best friend who were seated at the breakfast table. And we even saw their little boy, and it brings to mind the question of "what happened to him?" I suppose not knowing his fate is preferable to actually seeing a child grow to adulthood in this world. We're seeing that in Carl, who said to his unconscious dad, "I would be okay if you died." Sure, there's some father/teenager angst going on there. But the coldness in which Carl utters it sent chills down my spine because it means he truly views himself as being alone in this world (with no one to count on), and he's okay with that.

Apathy, not caring, and loneliness are the things that make people into zombies, not whatever the disease is that actually causes the plague. In this episode both Carl and Michonne manage to wrestle and overcome those demons and show us that humanity is worth fighting for. "After" was probably the best episode of the season. Did any of you get to watch it? If so, what did you think?

Also, I'm kind of glad we are away from the prison. That was starting to get old. Huzzah for the return of The Walking Dead!

I wish people in the United States supported art more so that artists didn't have to go to companies like Wizards of the Coast to survive

The latest Magic: the Gathering expansion called "Born of the Gods" is set to be released soon, and as usual I'm seeing art that really doesn't belong on cards. These panels that I've picked out deserve better treatment. But people in the United States don't support art very well, and people with non-science degrees and majors are often treated like their discipline is a penny stock. Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments below.



As usual, click to EMBIGGEN :)

Confidence is silent.

It needed to be said. 
This post is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Read about it HERE and have a great Wednesday.

Would you rather own Facebook or Disney in its entirety?

It's possible that I will never truly understand people. What seems like a logical choice to me is illogical to other people. What seems to be a "clear cut case" is in fact severely obfuscated. Take for example Facebook. It's a free social network that allows people to argue politics and play Candy Crush and join the ranks of "humble braggers" who post only the best parts of their lives for others to view so as to make others think that their lives are worthy of celebrity.

Well just last week, Facebook reached a market cap so huge that if liquid, the fortune that is Facebook could buy both Boeing and Eli Lilly and have money left over. Boeing is an aerospace giant that makes commercial and military aircraft that entire nations cannot live without. Eli Lilly is an American global pharmaceutical that goes a long way to combating diabetes with its drugs. So how is it possible that a social network (which I deem rather useless if you must know) is worth more than these companies combined based upon ad revenue?

And as of the close of the market on Friday, Facebook could buy Disney in its entirety. I asked a friend this question: If you could choose a company to own completely, would you own Disney or would you own Facebook? His response: Disney by far.

Disney now owns Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Marvel, and Pixar (not to mention its huge and very fun theme parks).

Hands down, I'd want to own Disney over Facebook too. I actually loathe logging onto Facebook. However, you can bet that I'd love to go to Disney World and then post all my pics to Facebook. Afterall, isn't that what Facebook is for?

I guess I'll never understand why people put such value in Facebook. Maybe that's why I'm not rich. I just find it all mildly frustrating because I don't think Facebook deserves its market valuation. It's entire product is smoke and mirrors. Ah well. /shmuck out

The Seven Wonders of American Horror Story makes me hope they've got a series in the works

I looked forward to American Horror Story: Coven every Wednesday night because it was the kind of garbage that I really like to watch and sadly, it's over. So now I feel I must weigh in on the season finale called "The Seven Wonders" because I have oh so much to say about it.

To get the good out of the way, AHS: Coven was as insane as its predecessors and that's a good thing. Chicks casting magical spells and dying only to come back to life to just die again was done in grandiose and oftentimes ludicrous fashion. And how can you go wrong with Stevie Nicks just randomly turning up for a music video of "The Seven Wonders" to hand out shawls to all the girls who are trying to become the Supreme? And that's basically where the good ends.

The bad (as usual) starts with questions. I know...why must I ask questions? Why can't I just watch and be done with it? I guess that's just how my brain works, so here they are:

Why was Stevie Nicks even there? She's not a witch, yet she randomly shows up to hand out shawls? Maybe it was for the benefit of Misty Day who had a real honest to god chance to be the Supreme, only she died and her body became dust. Which leads me to my second bone to pick with this series. Why oh why was a character as cool as Misty Day just allowed to die and turn to dust? This is the same witch who brought alligators to life so that they'd eat a camp of hunters, the same witch who healed Frankenkyle and who brought Myrtle back after she got burned at the stake. This is the same witch that kicked the sh*t out of Madison when Madison buried her alive.

Coven was also as disjointed as HBO's True Blood (that has six-hundred different characters). Was this show supposed to be about a magical sisterhood? Or was it supposed to be about an ancient rivalry between an immortal witch and the most powerful witch of her generation? Or was it supposed to be the story of a young girl cast out of her home to find solidarity with others who are like her? Or was it supposed to be about a Bible-banging, husband-murdering woman with an incredibly handsome and innocent son that she abused by giving him borax enemas only to kill him and burn his body to ashes? Or maybe it was about trying to find some kind of redemption for a truly rotten woman that didn't quite work out? Or last, maybe it was about witches gathering together to take a stand against an ancient order of witch hunters who own a billion dollar corporation and want nothing more than to stamp magical women out of existence?!

And oh the extraneous characters! Why did we even have Luke? What purpose did he serve other than to be some lame love interest for Nan who ended up getting sacrificed to the ruler of the underworld: Papa Legba? And Luke managed to uncover something terrible his mother did right before she murdered him, only to get murdered by Nan. And Marie Laveau died by falling down some stairs? Seriously? Honestly, there was no point to any of this. And why did Cordelia end up being the Supreme? She was completely useless all season, and in the season finale, Myrtle turns to her and just randomly says, "It must be you" or something like that and of course she is. The whole "Supreme" reveal was lame. Half of the coven died off under Cordelia's watch, she stabbed out her regrown eyeballs to get her powers back (and that didn't happen), and she was so incompetent she didn't know her husband was a witch hunter.

Coven was ALL of these things all at once, and that's probably why it felt like there was too much going on at times. Any one of these stories could have been a great season unto itself, but I think it tried to do and be everything when what it needed was more episodes and more focus.

However, I did love the idea of the witch coven, and I thought the test of the seven wonders was brilliant. Who knows, maybe there's enough material here to warrant its own series in the future. I think that might make me happier (and maybe I'd stop referring to it as indulgent trash fiction).

Did you watch American Horror Story this season? If so, what did you think of it?

Helix has a MacGuffin and I think I know where the show is going

No, Doreen! You can't be dead. This really did kind of suck. Sigh.So, I've been watching SyFy's Helix on Friday nights (yes I know my social life is just banging) but as one who is all too familiar with "income inequality," it's the more affordable mode of entertainment for me (that and cooking my meals at home really does save money). However, since it premiered about three weeks ago, I've been a little "meh" about the series as a whole (wrongfully comparing it to The Walking Dead at times). I have my reasons for my immediate eye-rolls in watching the episodes. For example, I don't really like anyone in the cast, the weird "elevator" music when the title credits roll took a bit of getting used to, and I was kind of primed for this to be a twist on zombies in the arctic. Either that or a really cool Outbreak-esque apocalyptic tale. But both of these scenarios never really materialized, and I think that's a good thing.

In addition, it turns out that the whole "zombie breakout" thing that I expected turned out to be a MacGuffin. Do you guys know what this is? In fiction, a MacGuffin is a plot device that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. MacGuffins are usually the central focus of a film's first act, and decline in importance as the story progresses. This is exactly what's going on in Helix, and the result has finally piqued my interest (if just a wee bit).

Now, I don't think that I have an unusually short attention span. In my defense, I tend to hold onto a series a lot longer than I should (this is happening with Almost Human, which has just about reached the intolerable level in the "boring" department). But I was just about ready to give up on Helix when the episode this last Friday aired and everything seemed to coalesce.
Dr. Peter Farragut infected with the Helix Vector (they call the zombies "vectors".)Mysteries in Helix are plentiful much in the vein of Lost, but by far the most intriguing thing about the show are the characters themselves. At the center of this evolution are characters who may act like psychopaths but may in fact be on the side of good. Peter (brother to Alan) is one of these as it turns out that he was doing grunt work, i.e., he knows nothing about the disease. Hiroshi was the one running the show the entire time, and Hiroshi has this whole creepy fascination with Julia (which seems oddly compelling). This "creepiness" gets another layer when Julia comes to a realization that she's been to the arctic laboratory before and doesn't remember any of it. Why?
Hiroshi Hatake with the strange glowing eyes that he hides behind contacts. It's
another mystery that needs some explanation. But then I'd also like to know about
all the frozen monkeys and about the message supposedly encoded in the RNA
strands of the Helix Vector disease. Sigh.Is it possible that Hiroshi used Julia as one of his experiments? And what do we know about Hiroshi? One, he has many secrets. He has a secret scrapbook of all things Julia, a secret stairway down to the quarantine level, and has the ability to stare down one of the zombies (and they just let him walk on by). He's also a cold-blooded killer, willing to murder unarmed men over clean air (when they could just open a window to get clean air).

Then we have Sergio who murdered Doreen and fed her to hairless rats right after a great bonding moment. WTF? For the record, I really liked Doreen. She was the one true scientist on the show, given that Alan is self-absorbed and incompetent and Sarah is just useless. It's unfortunate really that she pretty much had a target on her back, being the one that got close to Sergio and being fat and unattractive (as deemed by Hollywood). This show also has other problems: the "zombies" are all black people with the exception of Peter, and the "villain" is turning out to be a Japanese guy. It makes me wonder if the show's being written by paranoid white men who secretly wish we could return to a time when it was okay to sexually harass a young attractive woman (and suffer no repercussion).

I hope they explain the black goo before the series finale though. I have so many questions about it.

TL;DR: Helix has a MacGuffin, and I think I know where the show is going.

Dear New York Times Magazine, was your other option Hillary's face on a giant testicle?

I try not to get political on my blog. My regular readers know I'm a democrat and that's that. However, the New York Times Magazine (a publication that usually has great covers) just published the most shocking one I've ever seen, and Hillary Clinton looks absolutely terrible in it. Seriously, this whole theme of "Planet Hillary" is so ugly it makes me cringe every time I see it.
Click to EMBIGGENI take some validation that I'm not the only one that thinks this is terrible. I can't explain how anyone with any taste would take a look at this and think, "I'm going to print this as the cover for our magazine."

For one, it's incredibly unflattering extending the sides of her face in fleshy wrinkled overtones to make her resemble something straight out of Dr. Who (Cassandra anyone)?
Cassandra and Rose (one of the Doctor's companions). Cassandra in this
episode is the last human. They've managed to keep her alive through 800
surgeries, and she's basically stretched skin, veins, and needs to be misted
to prevent from drying out. She's also incredibly vain.And two, the whole premise of it: that Hillary has got an irresistible pull likened to gravity and is somehow sufficient to bring stars into her orbit is absurd. Planets orbit stars, NOT the other way around. But even aside from scientific inaccuracies, the thing is a mess and is rightfully being ridiculed.  Planet Hillary Spoof 1: Wrecking Ball ala Miley Cyrus Planet Hillary Spoof 2: E.T. Planet Hillary Spoof 3: Hillary as the Death Star Planet Hillary Spoof 4: The Annoying OrangeWhat a train wreck. It makes me want to ask the editors of The New York Times Magazine, "What exactly were you thinking by publishing this? Was your other option a picture of her face on a giant testicle? Please don't answer that."