Blackmoor Vituperative

There is a computer game called Baldur’s Gate. It’s a fantasy adventure game based on Dungeons & Dragons, along the lines of Lord Of The Rings. An expansion for the game was released recently, and in that expansion there is a minor character named “Mizhena” who, if you engage with them and repeatedly ask them questions, will eventually tell you that they are transgender. If you are unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons, you might not realize that transgender characters have been a part of that game world for 30 or 40 years. It’s not new. It is, however, new to the Baldur’s Gate game.

As a result, a small segment of the Baldur’s Gate fan base revealed themselves to be vile bigots. These bigots created a “controversy”, objecting to the inclusion of this character in the game.

This “controversy” comes at an interesting time. Today, April 8 2016, is the 48th anniversary of the broadcast of the Petula Clark Show on NBC. Petula Clark was a very popular singer at the time, having fifteen consecutive Top 40 hits in the USA, starting with “Downtown” in 1965. Clark was joined on her special by Harry Belafonte, who had made Calypso and Caribbean music popular throughout the world with his singing in the 1950s. During a duet toward the end of the show, Clark touched Belafonte briefly on the arm. Doyle Lott, a vice president from Chrysler, the show’s sponsor, was present at the taping. Lott objected to the “interracial touching”. He pressured NBC to remove the “forced” contact between Clark and Belafonte, to remove this “social justice” from the show. However, Petula Clark stuck to her guns, and the special was broadcast with the “controversial” touching. When the show aired, it received high ratings.

It’s been over 40 years, and the Doyle Lotts of the world are still manufacturing controversies to defend their bigotry. I think it is right and just that people are enjoying the music of Petula Clark and Harry Belafonte to this very day, while Doyle Lott has been reduced to a footnote in the history of civil rights.

There are many cases where people of good will can and do disagree. That is usually the case, in my opinion. However, these cretins who wail and moan and gnash their teeth any time they see someone other than themselves represented are not people of good will. They are the bartender who says, “We don’t serve their kind here.” They are the prejudiced priest who refuses to heal the half-orc in the party. They are the pig-faced sheriff that says, “We don’t take kindly to outsiders around here.” They are the craven peasant accusing a midwife of witchcraft. They’re the corrupt king who doesn’t want the adventurers to fight the dragon because it’s never his daughter that gets sacrificed to it.

These are not people of good will. They are not defenders of the sanctity of gaming. They are, by their own choice and by their own hand, villains.

I’ve reached the end of Misfits (eight seasons on Netflix, but there’s only eight episodes per season). While it’s a bit uneven, and sometimes it takes some effort to care about the characters, I like it so much more than the current seasons of Gotham, Agents of Shield, and Heroes Reborn.

The thing that irks me most about Heroes Reborn, and why I won’t be watching it anymore, is the tiresome “there’s no time!”/”it’s too dangerous!” enforced secrecy, without which the whole plot would collapse like a punctured bouncy house. If the main characters just had a five minute conversation, they could save us all the trouble of sitting through a dozen episodes of nothing. But no: there’s no time/it’s too dangerous! “No time” is right: life is too short to watch an exercise in padding.

Agents of Shield is just boring. I don’t care about the characters, don’t care about their mission, the plots are dull, the villains are dull, the outfits are dull, yawn, goodbye.

And Gotham… I liked the first season of Gotham, but FFS, I get it: the red-headed kid is the Joker. Except he’s not, because the Joker won’t show up for another 10-15 years (after Batman does), and when he does, whoever he used to be is a huge mystery, so he can’t be some famous over-the-top psycho from when Bruce Wayne was a kid. Seriously, he’s way over-the-top. Jim Carrey in The Mask is looking at this guy and going, “Whoa, dude: dial it back a notch.”

I hope Powers comes back for another season. The first season was slow, the production values are… frugal, and Eddie Izzard’s character will probably not return (he was the shining beacon of the first season), but I would still like to see where it goes from where the first season left off.

I was at a restaurant once, and the widescreen TVs were set to non-widescreen stations, with the image squashed vertically (or stretched horizontally, potayto potahto) to fit. That was bad enough. But then the show itself had a person standing in front of a TV (it was some kind of “news” show or something), and THAT TV was a widescreen TV showing a squashed 4:3 image.

How can anyone not notice how wrong this is?

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? STOP DOING IT!

How many of you remember with fondness the 1973 “Dr. Phibes’ Abominable Christmas Special”?

“Twelve signs of the zodiac. Twelve apostles. Twelve times, twelve! The human body has twelve cranial nerves, Doctor. … I will now play the Twelve Days Of Christmas. Ho. Ho. Ho.”
(from “Dr. Phibes’ Abominable Christmas Special”, 1973)

Dr. Phibes’ Abominable Christmas Special was a Christmas-themed television special starring Vincent Price broadcast December 23, 1973 on ABC. It featured guest star Joseph Cotten in a reprisal of his role as Dr. Vesalius from The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Also guest starring were Virginia North as Vulnavia, Billie Hayes as Witchiepoo from “H.R. Pufnstuf”, Tim Conway, Roz Kelly, Florence Henderson, rock band Pink Floyd, Billy Barty, Betty White and, in an unbilled surprise appearance, Sonny and Cher (whose own Christmas episode of the hit show “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour” had been broadcast on CBS four days earlier, on December 19, 1973).

The 1983 Japanese LaserDisc release is the only issue of this special on disc due to the rights issues involved with the various characters and musical performances. The special was announced for DVD release in 2002 but then cancelled when rights could not be obtained, and Disney now claims rights clearances are impossible.

In episode two of this charming series, Fry visits the South. He has such an obvious affection for what makes us distinctive, including our friendliness and our love of our history (celebrating the good and transcending the bad).

I can’t help but wish that more Americans had as few prejudices about the South as Stephen Fry does.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

I’ve started watching Stephen Fry In America (on Netflix). I’m scarcely 13 minutes into the first episode (there are six episodes, I believe, and each of them an hour long), but I am already charmed by Fry’s affable approach and his obvious affection and admiration for what is best about the people and places he visits. In a world with so much cynicism and so many reasons to be bitter, it’s really quite lovely to see someone visit the USA and find reasons to like it.

He says, while visiting Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont, “In a hard and harsh and unpleasant world, we need ice cream. That’s my feeling.” Well, in a hard and harsh and unpleasant world, I think we need Stephen Fry.

Here are ten tips which you can use to drastically reduce the quantity and increase the quality of your television viewing:

1. Do not watch “reality” shows unless you have a friend who is on the show.
2. Do not watch game shows unless you have a friend who is on the show.
3. Do not watch award shows unless you have a friend who is on the show.
4. Do not watch sports unless the broadcast is live.
5. Do not watch television shows that have a “laugh track”.
6. Do not watch television shows that feature musical numbers.
7. Do not watch movies that have been “formatted to fit your screen” (i.e., pan and scanned).
8. Do not watch movies that have been “edited to run in the time allotted” (i.e., butchered).
9. Do not watch movies that have been “edited for content” (i.e., censored).
10. Do not watch movies that are interrupted by commercials.

I have been watching Sling & Arrows, a Canadian show about the theatre. It’s like Glee, but with better writing and no musical numbers (which also makes it better than Glee). It reminds me a great deal of Smash, although it has no musical numbers (which, again, makes it better than Smash). Here’s the thing: that camaraderie the cast feels on the completion of a successful show… I have felt that. Not often. Not after the conclusion of a successful convention (I was on the staff of a local SF&F convention for most of its history). The last time I felt that esprit de corps was probably back in the late1980s, after a successful performance of Rocky Horror (in which I was a cast member for a few years). I imagine (rather, I assume) that it’s the same feeling that members of a sports team feel at the end of a good game. It’s a good feeling. Even then memory of it is a good feeling.

I’m watching the first episode of The Time Tunnel, a show I have heard of but never actually seen. Two observations: 1) you don’t see this combination of sets, forced perspective, and miniatures on TV anymore — the early scenes of the facility are breathtaking on a 46″ screen, 2) I think fully half of the passengers on the Titanic must have been time travelers. Seriously, the Titanic is to time travelers what Kinkaku-ji is to Japanese tourists.

By the way, when I say 46″ screen, I do *not* mean that I have the image stretched to the whole screen (why would anyone do that? STOP DOING THAT). This is the equivalent of a 37″ screen on an old-fashioned 4:3 television.

I am imposing a unilateral un-grimmening! No more grim tidings for at least one week. Time for Christmas cheer and good will.

As a start, here are my favorite Christmas specials and movies, in no particular order. Some are great. Some are just terrible. Some make me laugh. Some make me cry. I love them all.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the real one, not the Jim Carrey abomination)
Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
(Mexican) Santa Claus
Gremlins
Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
Silent Night, Deadly Night
Elf
Bad Santa
Scrooged
Star Wars Holiday Special
Hogfather
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

Merry Christmas!