Joseph Mallozzi's Blog, page 30

December 5, 2024: Recent Yes/No’s – Best and Worst!

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BEST: Melktert

WORST: Coffee Jelly

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December 4, 2024: Amazing Covers!

A few that caught my eye this week…

Marvel: Holiday Tales to Astonish #1 – cover art by Leonardo Romero

The Ultimates #7 – cover art by Miguel Mercado

Action Comics #1078 – cover art by David Nakayama

Batman Smells, Robin Laid and Egg 31 – cover art by Lee Berjemo

Birds of Prey #16 – cover at by Sergio Acuna

Two-Face #1 – cover art by Leonardo Romero

2000 AD Prog 2402-2406 – cover art by Mark Harrison

So, which were YOUR favorites?

 

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December 3, 2024: The Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 1, episodes 9-12!

Season 1, Episode 9, “Corpus Earthling”

This episode was first broadcast November 18, 1963.

This was the only first season episode based on a book – Corpus Earthling by Louis Charbonneau.

According to Orin Boston who wrote the episode: “During my story conference with [Outer Limits Producer] Stefano, I gave him an idea for a teleplay. He
passed on my idea, but gave me the paperback novel
Corpus Earthling , to which the series had rights. Would I come back with my own ideas for translating it to television ?“

And then, after reading the novel: “I found the book uninteresting dramatically. But the central concept of
rocks turning into beings, I decided, could be the basis
for an interesting segment.“

Director Gerd Oswald admitted to an unusual laissez-faire approach to this episode: “There was no
real attempt to accentuate the nightmarish feeling in
this particular episode .” Oh. Okay.

Actor Robert Culp, for his part, didn’t hold this role in particularly high regard. He once remarked: “I must have phoned that one in.“

Director Oswald and the crew paid tribute to cameraman William Fraker during the scene where Paul refuses to answer the phone and a strange thumping is heard. Laurie peeks outside to investigate and then reports: “It’s Billy Fraker. He’s been drinking again.”

Another episode that feels like a jumbled mish-mash of fantastical elements: telepathic alien rocks bent on world domination that can infect and assume control of people and also posses the power of hypnosis, a lab accident that conveniently allows a guy to eavesdrop on the telepathic communications of these rock aliens, a spiritual cleansing circle that goes nowhere.

This one was unremarkable and, almost ten episodes into the Outer Limits rewatch, I’m regretting not having gone with Batman.

Season 1, Episode 10, “Nightmare”

This episode was first broadcast December 2, 1963. It was originally scheduled to air November 25 but was delayed for one week due to the coverage of the state funeral of President John F. Kennedy.

The 91 word Control Voice closing narration was the show’s longest.

Byron Haskin was originally slated to direct this episode, but the decision was made to give the opportunity to casting consultant John Erman. According to producer and episode writer Joseph Stefano: “I inherited John, but I liked him and wanted him to have one of my scripts, even though he hadn’t really directed anything before . That didn’t worry me.”

In retrospect, it should have. Erman admitted: “I had no real technique as a director. And I think one of the deficiencies of that show was that it was done on [Director of Photography] Connie Hall’s off-week. He alternated episodes with John Nickolaus, and while John is a lovely man with whom I’ve worked a great deal since then, he’s very conventional. Unless you pushed him into doing odd or provocative lighting, he wouldn’t do it. Whereas Connie would walk onto a set and say, ‘Oh God, wouldn’t it be interesting if we did this! ‘ John could do all that-he could do anything,
and was very skilled- but the director had to come up with it, and I was not ready to come up with it.“ Clearly.

According to Producer’s Assistant Tom Selden: ” It j ust didn’t work. It wasn’t that Joe was disappointed in the direction; it just didn’t matter. Sometimes the pace is
wrong, the angles are wrong, something is wrong, and a film doesn’t jell. So he reworked the show in the editing room, reconstructing it and turning it almost entirely around .“ Almost.

“I was promised a certain number o f Outer Limits
in my deal with Leslie,”said Erman. ” But after Joe
saw ‘Nightmare ‘, he was not happy with my work, and
told me he didn’t want me to do any more . In
retrospect, I think he was right when he said I dealt
wonderfully with the actors, but did not have enough
film experience. I asked Al Sargent, who is now a
successful writer, what was wrong and he said, ‘It
looks too much like a play; you approach things from
the proscenium arch, and you have to learn the film
medium better. ‘ I imagine Joe, in editing, wanted to
make it more theatrical, and I’d let him down, and he
was pulling every trick he could to give it more style
than I had. I went to Leslie and said, ‘I’m very
confused. I really feel I want to be a director and Joe
doesn’t want me to direct anymore. ‘ And Leslie said, ‘If
that’s what you really want, then you should stop
casting. And direct.’

Erman would go on to direct a similarly themed episode for Star Trek, “The Empath”, that sees Kirk, Spock, and McCoy being tormented by aliens on a sparse set.

One major production issue was the poorly-designed alien suits that didn’t breathe well. The episode was shot in the California heat and the air conditioning was fighting a losing battle against the extra lighting brought in to light the massive set. As a result, more than one actor fainted during filming.

This was a terrific cast headlined by a young Martin Sheen, with fantastic performances by James Shigeta and Bill Gunn among others – but the cast was unable to save an episode that, ultimately, felt like a stage play. Poorly directed and cheap-looking, the episode is championed by several Outer Limits aficionados for its script and, while the dialogue is tight, the entire premise and plot developments is nonsensical. Compare to The Twilight Zone pilot, “Where Is Everybody”, that tackles a similar scenario (military experiment) in much more grounded and believable fashion. The military enlists the help of a bunch of reluctant aliens to torture these men, forging ahead despite one dying of a heart attack, and crushing another’s arm…to what purpose? To test if they would crack under the pressure of being prisoners of war…even though there really was no war? Also, did they really have to name the Asian character Major Jong – Maj Jong! Get it?!! And why was he the only character to introduce himself by his last name, Jong, while all the others introduced their full names and rank?

Season 1, Episode 11, “It Crawled Out of the Woodwork”

This episode was first broadcast December 9, 1963.

This is the first episode whose pre-credit sequence is not a teaser re-use of a later scene.

1st AD Lee Katz’s breakdown of this opening scene is as follows…

The character of Dr. Bloch was probably named after Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, a book that Joseph Stefano (who wrote this episode) adapted to the big screen for Alfred Hitchcock.

Actor Edward Asner, who portrayed the young Sgt. Thomas Siroleo, was very excited to work on the show. Until he actually worked on the show. According to Asner: “I thought that (“The Sixth Finger”) was one of the most interesting, poetic, dramatic shows I’d ever seen, so when I got the call to do The Outer Limits , I almost might have done it for nothing. When I first heard the Control Voice it was like, yeah , I ‘m with you; wherever you’re going, take me with you. I thought I was going to levitate out of my living room !“ However, he would later describe the script as “dreadful”.

Barbara Luna, who played Gaby, appeared in Star Trek’s “Mirror, Mirror” while Michael Forest, who played Stuart, appeared in “Who Mourns for Adonis?”.

So whose story was this anyway? At first it appeared to be Stuart’s story, but he is killed early on, so then it looks like it will by Jory’s story, but he is ineffective and, after finally gathering up the courage to act, arrives just in time to be told everything has been taken care of. I mean, it can’t be Detective Siroleo’s story as he arrives too late in the episode – although he does help address the issue of the escaped energy creature…with a big assist from Stephanie Linden who sacrifices herself in the process. And what was going on with that energy creature? Where did it come from? How was it let out long enough to kill that mouthy security guard and then lured back into containment? How did it know the security guard squealed on them and why would it care? Was it intelligent enough to care? Who was the Gaby character (an escort?) and how did she glom onto this mystery after going out on a single date with man-child Jory Peters (who was supposed to be 20 in the episode but was played by a 30-year-old actor)?

I mean, sure, it’s a story about the fear of atomic energy and abuse of power but, in the end, not a very good one.

The episode’s biggest highlight was the fact that the facility (What was its legitimate purpose again?) was named Norco – which was the name of the stage where we housed all of our Stargate props while the series was in production.

Season 1, Episode 12, “The Borderland”

This episode was first broadcast December 16, 1963.

The generators depicted in this episode are actually part of a hydroelectric dam.

The magnetic coil power pylons were actually spray-pained, coiled garden hoses. They were used as background set dec in later episodes.

How, pray tell, did they pull off the two right hands shot? Well, according to actor Peter Mark Richman who portrayed Professor Ian Fraser: “In one shot they had another guy in my jacket with me; I had my arm in
one sleeve, he had his arm in the other, and we had to time our movements so that the two right hands would work together. It felt kind of ridiculous, but it worked.“

Veteran director and VFX expert Byron Haskins was called in to assist with this episode. He recalled: “‘The
Borderland’ was filled with moving, shimmering lights filmed at odd angles . And you’ve got to know what an effect is going to look like in advance so you can shoot to fit it. You can’t go panning around an actor when the background is going to be double-exposed. We had to take the film apart reel by reel, frame by frame. We marked the many times the [ionic rain] effect was to be seen, and doing this one effect ultimately cost $14,000. [Producer Leslie] Stevens saw the bill and cried.“

The great Gladys Cooper puts in an appearance here as Mrs. Palmer. She guested in three memorable Twilight Zone episodes: “Nothing in the Dark,” “Passage on the Lady Anne” and “Night Call”.

What was that opening shot? A magnet sweeping through iron fillings? Shag carpeting?

This was an okay episode that would have benefited immensely from stripping out the whole medium and afterlife angle and making it a pure science fiction story. The spiritualist elements added absolutely nothing to the episode outside of a means for the research team to acquire funding for their project, but the writer could have come up with an alternate source. Also, it was never made clear why everyone assumed that the flip-flop dimension also a conduit to the hereafter.

Top-notch technobabble spewed during the experimental phase, but I’m not sure I would been so eager to hazard the crossover after witnessing test subject #1 explode.

In the end, the experiment was all for naught. Which mirrors my feelings about this episode.

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December 2, 2024: Those those who asked what I’ve been working on…

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A couple of months ago, my agent forwarded me a package from a production company in search of a showrunner for an upcoming project.  A couple of these cross my desk every month and they usually fail to capture my interest, but this one was different.  This one wasn’t just any project.  It was a proposed television adaptation of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s science fiction classic The Mote in God’s Eye.  This was, in a word, HUGE.

While I have written over 100 hours and produced 350+ hours of sci-fi television, that time commitment pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of hours I have spent consuming sci-fi: film, television, and books.  Lots of books.  I grew up reading the likes of Asimov and Clarke, Bradbury and Ellison, Heinlein and LeGuin.  And, of course, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.  I am first and foremost a fan of the genre, and the prospect of bringing to life one of its greatest works was an opportunity I could not pass up.

So I got on a zoom with the production company to share my thoughts on a possible adaptation after which they scheduled a second zoom so that I could chat with a gentleman named Harry Kloor who had done ALL of the creative lifting on the project to that point, putting together an impressive and highly detailed pitch deck and series overview.  Harry is a writer and producer who wrote for Star Trek: Voyager and created the series Earth: Final Conflict.  He is also a scientist, an entrepreneur, a policy adviser and CEO, and the first simultaneous Ph.D winner in US history (in physics and chemistry).  The guy is brilliant – and also a surprisingly chill, down-to-earth, genuinely nice guy.  We had a great chat, bouncing ideas back and forth, allied in our enthusiasm, love and respect for the novel.  And I was officially welcomed aboard.

We are presently putting the finishing touches on our official pitch and visual deck.  Once that’s done, we’ll be taking it out with our partners Michael Rosenberg (Hell on Wheels, Hung, Rogue) and Laura Notarianni (Orphan Black, X Company, Killjoys).  We’ll be looking for the perfect home for one of the last untapped science fiction classics.

If you’re a fan of the book, know that we all are too and will deliver a show that will be ambitious, wildly entertaining, and, most importantly, true to the source material.

You’re gonna love it!

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December 1, 2024: Sharky Sunday!

With the tricks!

New spell: Snackafillus!

Steak snack!

Out and About…Almost Santa!

Bubbie came over for a playdate…and did most of the playing….

Bubbie zoomies…

Sharky samples chicken gizzard…

Shabbie Time!

Sharky samples sea urchin…

 

 

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November 30, 2024: Best of the Crime Binge!

Unbeknownst to you all, the Crime Binge has continued apace and I just finished checking out 610th(!) series.  It seems like a lot but, to be fair, in most cases I dropped shows that failed to impress so I didn’t finish all of them.  Hell, I didn’t finish a lot of them.  But I did finish quite a few and of those I finished, I did like at least half.  I’m batting roughly .250 and, rather than listing EVERY show along with my bullet review (I think I’ll set up a dedicated letterboxd account or website for that) I’m only going to regale you with my recommended watches.  Starting with these five fantastic shows…

The Diplomat (2 seasons) United States

In the midst of an international crisis, Kate Wyler, a career diplomat, lands in a high-profile job for which she is not suited, with tectonic implications for her marriage and her political future.

Now some will object to my classifying this as a crime show, but my definition of crime covers everything from mysteries and suspense to mob shows and espionage thrillers.  And this one falls into the latter category.  Terrific twists and turns with some cliffhanger outs that compel you to keep watching.

Poromafia/Reindeer Mafia (1 season) – Finland

A fierce power struggle amongst family members ensues following the death of a powerful matriarch and long-time ruler of the northern wastelands.

 I had to check this one out for the title alone.  To be honest, I wasn’t wholly convinced after the first episode but I decided to give the show a chance and I was rewarded with a delightfully different, darkly humorous crime show.  Finland’s answer to Fargo.

Say Nothing (1 season) United States

Spanning four tumultuous decades during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

I really wasn’t familiar with the specifics regarding this difficult period and this series sheds an unflinching light on the struggles, sacrifices, and betrayals of those at the very heart of the conflict.   Truth is more heartbreaking than fiction.

Silence (2 seasons) – Croatia/Ukraine

A cop and a reporter on a Croatian murder case cross paths with a Ukrainian expat who’s searching for her missing niece.

A terrific character-driven multi-pronged narrative about human trafficking in Eastern Europe.

The King of Pigs (1 season) South Korea

Two friends meet up and recall their experiences as victims of school bullying when they receive a message from a friend from 20 years ago and mysterious serial killings begin to occur.

A solid serial killer tale with more than a few surprises.

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November 29, 2024: The Friday Report!

I was speaking to my good friend and fellow writer/producer Alexander Ruemelin during one of our recent weekly zoom chats, and he floated the idea of writing a novel.  Apparently several of his screenwriting pals have taken this route, establishing IP and then selling the film & television rights with themselves attached.  It’s essentially what I did for Dark Matter to differentiate it form the pack and, after talking with Alex, something I’m considering for a couple of my pilots that have, thus far, failed to gain traction.  On the one hand, they’re pretty high concept and I have no doubt they would find an audience; but on the other hand, I would have to sit down and write a novel.  Years ago, I was invited to submit a short story to a dark superhero-themed anthology and it took me some nine months to write.  I’d hope I’d be a little quicker now, but who knows?

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Next year is Sharky’s year!

Thinking of getting back into reading comics.  Last time I tried earlier this year, I gave up after checking out three underwhelming series.  Any comic aficionados out there able to recommend a great ONGOING series?  And, by ongoing, I mean a current run with the same creative team or writer?

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That’s the closest I ever came to roughing it.

Apparently, Dana Bash’s lemon squares are to die for!

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November 28, 2024: The Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 1, episodes 5-8!

Season 1, Episode 5 “The Sixth Finger”

This episode was first broadcast October 14, 1963.

According to series producer Joseph Stefano: “‘The Sixth Finger’ was the first, and possibly the only script I read through and immediately said film it. Now, you can’t know what that means when I felt the need to rewrite every script that came in.”

Some of the sound effects heard in the radiation chamber were used in Forbidden Planet (1963).

This episode’s director, James Gladstone, would return for the season 2 two-parter “The Inheritors”.

The first draft was pared down to remove five speaking parts, a scene where Gwyllim kills the deputies, and another in which he attacks the mine. However, the trims made the episode short at 40 pages, so actor David McCallum suggested the addition of the piano-playing scene. The son of accomplished musicians, McCallum actually learned to play the piece although a recording was actually used in the final edit.

In the first draft Gwyllim lists morality as one of the things that hinders man’s development. Fearful of offending viewers, the production changed “morality” to “immorality”.

Along the same lines, it was originally scripted for Cathy to accidentally regress Gwyllim to an ape but, again, it was felt that doing so might offend some viewers so they made him a caveman instead. According to actor David McCallum: “There was also some discussion that Cathy should open the box and out would jump this sort of rhesus monkey. For that we would’ve used a real monkey. That was all that was left of Gwyllim, and he would go leaping around the room. I still think there would be something wonderful about the idea of this woman keeping her boyfriend as a pet monkey!”

Professor Mathers’ chimpanzee, Darwin, was played by stuntman Janos Prohaska who had played the alien in “Architects of Fear”. He’ll also make an in-costume appearance as an amoeba in the show’s final episode, “The Probe”.

John Chambers, who would go on to win the first ever Academy Award for make-up for his work on The Planet of Apes (1968), made a life mask of David McCallum and then sketched and designed the three stages of Gwyllim’s development.

I thought this was a pretty terrific episode with one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments on this rewatch so far. Professor Mathers steps out of a room and hears someone playing a piano. Curious, he heads down the hall one way, looks around and then realizes “Wait, it’s actually coming from the piano upstairs!”

David McCallam was fantastic (Most of you know him as Donald Mallard from NCIS, but he’ll always be Illya Kuriyakin to me), and I thought Jill Haworth did a great job as the simple yet down-to-earth Cathy. I did like the fact that his fast-paced evolutionary process matured him past feelings of hate and vengeance. I thought that was a nice little unexpected development. Apparently, the original draft of the script called for Gwyllim to be devolved back to an amoeba state but, again, the production felt this might offend viewers and scrapped the idea.

Boo!

Season 1, Episode 6, “The Man Who Was Never Born”

This episode was first broadcast October 28, 1963.

Andro, the name of Martin Landau’s character, is Greek for “man”.

According to writer Anthony Lawrence: “I wanted to do a romantic fairy tale . I wanted to touch people emotionally with a kind of lyrical, poetic thing that not
too many people were doing in TV. ”

Martin Landau recalled: “” I got a telephone call from Joe Stefano. ” He said, “There’s a script on it’s way I’d like you to have a look at because I think you’ll find the character very interesting .” The script arrived within the hour, and I read it, and loved it. “

Shirley Knight and Martin Landau already knew each prior to production as, five years earlier, Knight had been a student in an acting class taught by Landau. He attended her first wedding: “But that time,”said Landau in an interview, “I didn’t pack a gun .“

Knight, meanwhile, revealed: ” I almost didn’t do the part because I was five months pregnant. Everybody was so wonderful; Joe S tefano, Conrad Hall. I remember asking Martin “So, are you going to be giving me advice in this other capacity, actor to actor?” And he said, “Absolutely not. You’re on your own .” Leslie Stevens was a very socially conscious man, a loving producer who cared about what he was doing, which is why he did it so well, I think.”

Apparently, the Andro mask was ill fitting. Recalled one crew member: “Martin Landau couldn’t breathe. It’s too bad some of those things couldn’t have been taped; there were some horrendous bloopers that went on .“

The Outer Limits Companion on that final shot: “Noelle,
alone in the spaceship cockpit, dwindles back and back
into space until she becomes just another star in the
firmament. Hall laid a great deal of camera track down
inside KTTV’ s Stage #2, got the longest boom mike
MGM had, and lit only the two cockpit seats, killing
every other light onstage . Once the camera had pulled
far enough away from Shirley Knight, she was
replaced by a photo cutout that was shrunk optically.”

Interestingly, this was not originally planned as the episode’s final shot. In the original edit, Noelle awakens on a grassy knoll and encounters a man in what is described as “an air car”. The following dialogue ensues –
MAN : Could I help you?
NOELLE (after a pause) : What is this place?
MAN : It is London. (smiles) That is, if you follow this road, you will come into the Old Town.
NOELLE : And the time?
MAN : The time?
NOELLE: The year?
MAN (a smile, then ): Twenty-0ne-forty-eight. Are you lost?
NOELLE (pauses) : No. Just alone.

But the episode was running long so they lost this epilogue, choosing instead the more somber ending that sees Noelle stranded in space.

Mixed feelings about this episode. It’s one of the show’s most highly rated entries and, while I really love it on a conceptual level, there were just too many instances where the viewer is required to buy into illogical instances. How did Andro learn to pilot a spaceship? What are the chances that the ship would crash land on Earth in close proximity to his target? Why did he wait until the wedding to dispatch of Cabot when he could have done it in a more discreet manner? Why did Noelle run after Andro after he disrupted her wedding and why would she throw everything away to be with a guy she’d met only days earlier? If Andro was such a sympathetic character as scripted, why didn’t he reveal his true form to Noelle before whisking her off into space?

Still, I appreciated what they were trying to do here and thought the darker ending was very effective. What did you all think? Which ending would you have preferred?

Season 1, Episode 7, “O.B.I.T.”

This episode was first broadcast November 4, 1963.

This episode was written by Meyer Dolinsky who also wrote “The Architects of Fear” and would go on to write “ZZZZ”.

According to Dolinsky: “Originally, I had the OBIT machine all over the place. I changed it because they wanted to cut costs. My canvas had been wider. I confined it to the Army base, which helped the dramatics but wasn’t as much fun..“

The script actual names the alien homeworld as Helos, but this reference was lost in the final edit.

The O.B.I.T. console featured in this episode would serve as Mr. Waverly’s communication console in the first season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964).

Actor Peter Breck, who played Senator Orville, was a remarkable quick-draw, able to draw a gun in 16/100th of a second. Breck also reportedly possessed a photographic memory that allowed him to memorize a script after two or three readings. He, ironically, died of Alzheimers.

Jeff Corey, who played Byron Lomax, refused to name names when summoned before the Un-American House Activities Committee, choosing instead to offer an acting critique of the previous witness. This offense cost him as he was unable to land film or television work for the next twelve years.

Harry Townes, who played Dr. Clifford Scott, also appeared on The Twilight Zone in “The Four of Us Are Dying”.

Very well-written, provocative but undeniably a little dull, this episode is surprisingly topical given our increasing surveillance state. Lomax’s claim that people who have nothing to hide shouldn’t be worried about the government spying on them echoes supporters of the Patriot Act (among other increasingly Orwellian panopticon models). A solid and fascinating episode but, in the end, too confined and slow-paced for me to grant it a spot in the Top 10.

Season 1, Episode 8, “The Human Factor”

This episode was first broadcast November 11, 1963.

This episode was written by Donald Duncan (with some revisions by producer Joseph Stefano) who also wrote the big screen adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Duncan was displeased with one particular scene which I also found kind of strange: “You may have noticed the blurry bit where the heroine attempts to get the keys to the cell. I had rewritten this scene at the request of Joe Stefano, who had said, ‘Let’s get some suspense into it, so she has difficulty getting the key. ‘ The panel holding the keys was placed behind a switchboard operator, who thereby became its guardian. The excuse manufactured by the heroine so that she could approach the panel was that she pretended to forget the number of her own extension, and so had to look it up in the phone book, which was right next to the panel. While doing so, she pinches the keys. In the finished film, the key panel was ten feet behind the operator, and within easy reach of the heroine, so that all my dialogue-which had been retained became meaningless . When I saw the film, I asked Stefano how come, and he said something like, ‘You know, I thought that looked sort of strange myself, but no one else said anything, so I figured it must have some kind of subtle meaning, and I wasn’t going to lay myself open by asking any questions ! ‘”

In the first draft of the script, Ingrid’s line to Hamilton,
“You don’t need a woman or a wife ” originally ended
with “but you might want a mistress. For some reason, the decision was made to lose it.

This was director Abner Biberman’s sole episode of The Outer Limits, but he directed four episodes of The Twilight Zone: “The Dummy”, “The Incredible World of Horace Ford”, “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”, and “I Am the Night – Color Me Black”.

Special effects advisor Byron Haskin and Wah Chang of Project Unlimited designed a life-size figure encased in translucent ice, with frozen stalactites hanging from its outstretched arm and a yellow bulb inside the head that caused the empty eye sockets to glow. Nicknamed “Chill Charlie”, it never appeared in the episode. Instead, a far less effective alternate was used: a guy in an icicle-encrusted jacket with black eyes. Chill Charlie did, however, appear in some publicity stills.

This episode marked Sally Kellerman’s first t.v. role.

Actor Ivon Dixon, who played Kinchloe on Hogan’s Heroes and made two Twilight Zone appearances, as Bolie Jackson in “The Big Tall Wish” and Reverend Anderson in “I Am the Night – Color Me Black”.

Ceeerpies, this episode was not good. It felt like a mishmash of various plot elements that never really came together. And what exactly was Colonel Campbell’s plan? He was going to set off a nuclear device in order to…hide the fact he had abandoned someone for dead? Was that it? And don’t even get me started on the beautiful Ingrid’s infatuation with her decrepit-looking boss. Also, the whole “Hey, show me how I could set off the nuclear device if I – theoretically – was going to do it – which, of course, I am not” scene ludicrous.

I’ve noticed that one thing The Twilight Zone had going for it that The Outer Limits does not are those trademark final twists. There was, of course, the final, shocking twist of Noelle being stranded in space last episode, but that wasn’t so much planned as it was an 11th hour decision as a result of the episode running long. Gotta be honest. I’m not enjoying the straight-forward storytelling as much.

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November 27, 2024: Amazing Covers!

A few that caught my eye this week…

Detective Comics #1091 – cover art by Mikel Janin

Power Girl #15 – cover art by Jeff Dekal

Power Girl #15 – cover art by Tiago Da Silva

Superman #20 – cover art by Chris Samnee

Superman #20 – cover art by Dan Panosian

Uncanny X-Men #6 – cover art by Phil Noto

So, which were YOUR favorites?

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November 26, 2024: This and That!

Guess what this is a commercial for…

Answer at the end of this blog entry…

Came across this interesting study on egg consumption:

“Eating more eggs could reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by nearly 50%.

And for women, eggs may mitigate changes in cognitive function due to old age.

That’s what a pair of new studies suggests.

In one study, a higher egg intake was associated with less of a decline in verbal fluency among women during a 4-year period, with those consuming 5 or more eggs per week experiencing the greatest benefit. However, no association between egg intake and cognitive function changes was observed in men.

In the other study, eating 2 or more eggs per week was associated with a 47% reduction in Alzheimer’s disease risk over a nearly 7-year follow-up period.

But that’s not all—an analysis of brain samples from participants who died during the study revealed that consuming 1 or more eggs per week reduced the odds of having a pathological diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease by up to 49%—indicated by the presence of fewer plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.

These effects are likely due to choline—an essential nutrient that serves as a precursor for methylation, affecting epigenetics globally, and plays a role in the production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Choline is also converted into phosphatidylcholine, a crucial component of cell membranes that regulates intracellular transportation. Choline literally makes up the stuff of our brain and cells.

40% of the beneficial effects of eggs on Alzheimer’s disease risk reduction were directly mediated by choline intake, highlighting the critical importance of this nutrient for brain health and reducing neurodegenerative disease burden.

Not only are eggs rich in choline, but they’re packed with omega-3 fatty acids and the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, which have well-known benefits for the brain.”

I’m heartened to hear it as I average between 12-15 eggs a week.

How’s your egg consumption?

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I’m going to have to go with The Penguin.  After hearing so many people rave about it, I finally checked it out.  It was…fine.  At times, it felt like Sopranos fan fiction.

And you?

Finally, give me your favorite recipe for chicken feet!

And the answer to that mystery ad…

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