Mirrorless.

 O.J. Simpson has died, apparently of cancer.  He was 76.  

After he was acquitted of murdering his former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman he stated he would try to find the real murder.  This makes me wonder if he didn't have any mirrors in his house.

Mocking The Clickbait 22: News From The Future

 At 111, Linda Gray Lives So Modestly.

So, how are things in 2051?  Did we get over COVID 19 yet?

Linda Gray, best known for her years on the classic nighttime soap Dallas, is 81.  

Rethink Your Priorities.

I regularly watch Global's supper hour news, but there are times I wonder at their lineup editor.  The opening story tonight?  The firing of NBC TV personality Matt Lauer over sexual harassment and assault allegations.  Why was this the lead story on a Canadian newscast?  They didn't even have the excuse that Lauer's an expat Canadian, as are a number of US media personalities.  So why was this the opening story?  Why not the much more important story to Canadians, the appointment of Sheilah Martin to the Supreme Court of Canada, replacing retiring Justice Beverley McLachlin?  I'm sure some Canadian celeb will turn out to be a creep in due order, and give them their required sleeze quotient.

New Material.

The rumours have finally been confirmed.  Prince Henry of Wales and Meghan Markle will wed next year.  This should give the writers at the American tabloids new material to use to create clueless headlines.  I'm sure it won't be long before we see some variation on Queen Tells Tearful Kate, "Meghan Will Be Queen!"  Not that it works that way.  UK law determines the line of succession, which currently puts Harry in fifth place, after Prince Charles, Prince William, and William's children.  He'll be in sixth place next spring when the third child of William and the Duchess of Cambridge is born.  We're also sure to see more general headlines about infighting between Markle and her new in-laws, and ongoing rumours about whether she's pregnant or not.

Unfortunately you're also likely to see some really nasty headlines if you visit the nastier parts of the Internet and small press.  Markle's mother is African-American, which should get some racists foaming at the mouth.

Of course Harry's place in the line of succession may not matter.  If Charles is anything like his parents and grandmother he may end up being King into his 90s or later, and who knows what status the monarchy will have by then?

And if you were a fan of Markle's work, you're probably out of luck seeing any more.  I doubt she'll keep acting once she's married.

Mocking The Clickbait 10: You're From The Future!

Jenna Jameson's Final Net Worth Left Us Without words.

So, what year are you from, and how did you time travel back to 2017?  In this time period Jenna Jameson is alive and well.  And apparently has fallen for a bunch of hard right bullshit.

(The headline being mocked actually was written with a small W in words, and is not something I did.)

Goodbye, Commander.

Veteran actor Martin Landau has died at 89.  If things had worked out a bit differently Landau might be known as a cartoonist instead of an actor.  He was still a teen when the New York Daily News hired him as a cartoonist, but five years later he decided to quit to pursue acting.  A student of Lee Strasberg, Landau's big break came when Alfred Hitchcock saw him in a play, and cast him as the villainous Leonard in North by Northwest, leading to a nearly 60 year career.

My first real exposure to Landau was as Commander John Koenig in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Space: 1999, where he starred opposite his then wife Barbara Bain.  In memoriam here's the Space: 1999 episode "The Black Sun," one of Landau's favourites.

A Weird Thought.

Bryan Ferry as James Bond.

Not now of course.  But in the '70s or early '80s.  Ferry looks a bit like George Lazenby, and certainly could have pulled off the sauve spy bit that became a standard part of the Bond mythos in the movies.  Ferry doesn't seem to have had much interest in acting, other than appearing as himself in a 1980 French TV mini-series, and as Mr. Silky String in Neil Jordan's 2005 film Breakfast on Pluto.  How he might have dealt with the action parts of the role is an obvious question, but Roger Moore was looking pretty tired and unconvincing by the time A View to a Kill was filmed.

O'Leary Leaps In.

Some American visitors are likely to be familiar with Kevin O'Leary.  The Canadian businessman has been one of the regulars on ABC's reality TV series Shark Tank since its debut in 2009.  But he may be leaving the series, as he announced that he is running for the leadership of Canada's federal Conservative Party.

The Conservatives are Canada's equivalent of the Republican Party, although it's fair to say a lot of Republicans might find some of their policies dangerously left wing.  Previous Conservative Party leader, and former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper resigned after the Conservatives lost the 2015 election to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party.  The campaign for a new leader effectively began at the beginning of 2016, with the announcement the leadership convention will held on May 27th this year.

O'Leary has not surprisingly drawn comparisons to Donald Trump, and has said his interest in running for the leadership was inspired by Trump.  O'Leary isn't as rich as Trump(although, like Trump, some claim he's not as rich as he claims to be), and doesn't have the same kind of baggage Trump does.  He's had a long media presence in Canada, including being on the Canadian business reality show Dragon's Den, and co-host of the CBC News Network current affairs show The Lang and O'Leary Exchange before leaving CBC in 2014.  He's also said some things that might remind one of Trump, such as questioning global warming, and calling the fact that the 85 richest people in the world own as much as the poorest half of the world's population "fantastic."

The timing of O'Leary's entry into the race has raised some eyebrows.  This morning's announcement followed the sole leadership debate of the campaign held entirely in French.  To lead the main federal parties in Canada one has to make at least a pretense of trying to speak French, and O'Leary admits his French is weak.  Of course this could be said about some of the other candidates, and they made an effort.  And in case you're wondering, a candidate that was effectively unilingual in French wouldn't get the time of day from those parties.

What are O'Leary's chances of winning?  It's hard to say.  He's the fourteenth candidate to enter the race.  Yep, fourteen people are running.  O'Leary is the most well known, and at the moment the vote is heavily split.  On the other hand it's likely we'll see someone drop out with his announcement, and of course some of those candidates probably don't have much of a chance no matter who is running.  A good example would be my former Member of Parliament Brad Trost, who is not well known outside Saskatchewan.  But there's also the chance an "anybody but O'Leary" movement might build behind one of the candidates.

If he does win the next step will probably be someone resigning their seat in Parliament so O'Leary can run in a by election..  Presumably he would get elected, but that's not a given.  Not getting a seat would partially put him on the sidelines, since he wouldn't be able to show Canadians what he can do in the House of Commons, and might be seen as a bad sign regarding his chances in the next election.  Barring a gigantic political scandal bringing down the government, or Prime Minister Trudeau randomly dropping dead, the next Canadian federal election is in 2019.

Good Bye, Chris.

What an unpleasant surprise tonight when I learned Chris Squire died yesterday of leukemia.  He was 67.  Squire was the only consistent member of Yes from its formation in 1968 to his death, and was one of the most influential rock bass players of the 1970s.  In memoriam here are a couple of great examples of his playing with Yes.

 

Even There.

A bit ago I was, unfortunately, thinking about the Duggar mess again.  And that made me wonder if there was Duggar related material on the popular art site Deviantart.  I was unsurprised to see that there was.  There's not much, and in fact a lot of it isn't favourable to them.  I would imagine there's also Duggar fanfiction, pro or con, out there, as pretty much anything that can be considered a fandom generates fanfic.  You'll forgive me if I don't do any research on whether there's Duggar porn, especially now.

Goodbye, Leonard.

I doubt there will be any chance of you missing this.  But I just couldn't let the death of Leonard Nimoy go by unmentioned.  Like most people who grew up in the '70s, and had any sort of interest in sci fi TV, Star Trek was such a fixture.  And so another familiar face of my childhood is gone.

"Flop Has A Name."

That apparently should have been on the posters for Johnny Depp's latest film, Mortdecai, instead of the actual slogan of "Sophistication Has A Name."  The film has been out less than a month, and it's already in the cheap theatres in Saskatoon.   The film had a reported 60 million dollar budget, but it has apparently made just over a third of that worldwide.  Of late Depp seems to be able to make nothing but flops, often as a result of bad choices in roles, the most obvious being as Tonto in The Lone Ranger.

Years ago I watched an interview with Michael Caine, and the interviewer asked him about some of the poorer movies he'd been in.  Caine commented that he generally didn't turn down roles because he figured they might stop calling if he did.  One would think Depp wouldn't be worried about that given how much money he's made.  So it seems more likely Depp just has bad taste, although Caine also commented that you can't tell whether a movie will be good just by the script.  Perhaps Depp needs to reconsider taking roles that rely on him doing gimmick characters.

What's next for Depp?  Apparently a Kevin Smith film called Yoga Hosers.  Depp will also be appearing in Black Mass this fall, a film about Irish-American mobster Whitey Bulger, which strikes me as the kind of film Depp should be doing. 

There Are So Many Questions That Need To Be Answered.

Unfortunately many of them never will be.  For example, why have Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop never done a song together?

Funny It Took So Long.

I was just checking my Google + page, and one of the posts it came up with was from George Takei.  Given his web presence, and some of the things I have written about, I'm surprised I haven't seen something from him there before.

A Cultural Tip.

I was busy listening to the Roughriders game, and haphazardly playing poker online.  I don't watch awards shows these days anyway.  But I still got a bit of a chuckle out of Katy Perry's performance at the American Music Awards.  The AP piece on the awards described Perry's outfit as "a traditional Japanese dress."  It's not.  It's your typical vaguely kimono looking outfit, created by a Western costume or fashion designer.  It's not hard to find images of actual kimonos online to compare, but is that necessary if you're writing a simple article about an awards show? Well, you might want to consider doing so if you're going to claim it's authentic.

I'm Surprised It Didn't Happen.

Tonight I was watching Charlton Heston in the 1971 sci fi piece The Omega Man.  A few minutes into the film the thought came to mind that Clint Eastwood could have played the lead in that movie.  And that got me thinking that it's surprising Heston and Eastwood never did a film together.  Given the kind of films both men did, especially westerns, and the tough guy characters they generally played, it's odd no one cooked up a project involving the two of them.  Eastwood and Heston were friends, and reportedly talked about remaking Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country in the late '80s. 

One genre that the two didn't share was science fiction.  Other than a bit part early in his career Eastwood had no involvement in the genre.  The closest he got after becoming famous was 2000's Space Cowboys.  Compare this with Heston, who in the course of 5 years appeared in the first two Planet of the Apes movies, The Omega Man, and Soylent Green.  It would be interesting to know if Eastwood was offered sci fi movies, but rejected them, or if he just wasn't considered for such films.  The latter seems rather unlikely.

Check, Then Check Again.

If you're going to get a tattoo in a foreign language you'd best do lots of research.  Especially if your tattoo artist doesn't read the language.  Actress Hayden Panettiere is apparently having work done on a tattoo after finding out one of the Italian words was misspelt.  It makes you wonder how many other people are running around with such tattoos, especially those using characters the tattooist isn't familiar with.  

Rethink That.

Hey, Miley Cyrus.  I hear you're thinking about dropping your last name, and just being Miley.  Just like Prince and Madonna.  My advice?  Don't.  Prince and Madonna could do that because those are strong, iconic, intriguing names.  Miley?  Not so much.  Imagine if Madonna, all those years ago, had used her middle name, Louise, instead.  Yeah, you're not starting from scratch, but still.  Miley used by itself sounds like the name of the sitcom you'll be doing in a few years, where you play a high school teacher.

Defeated!

I saw a headline this morning that Bob Geldof's daughter Peaches has given birth to a son, who she named Phaedra.  I snarked to myself that she named him after an old Tangerine Dream album.  Imagine my surprise when I read the associated article and found out she apparently did exactly that.  A comment ceases to be snarky if it's actually true, doesn't it?

If you're not familiar with the album, take a listen below.  It was originally released in 1974.

Personally I prefer their followup, Rubycon.

I wonder if Peaches knows that Phaedra was a figure in Greek mythology, and was a woman?  I don't think I've run into any in the flesh, but I'm pretty sure I've seen references to a few women with that name.  So she's reversing the modern trend of what were traditionally male names becoming seen as female.

Will Work For Airtime?

Talk about hard up for work.  I just saw a Telus cell phone ad with Richard Simmons in it.  Does he really need money that badly that he's willing to be mocked in a Canadian market TV ad?