Ready to wage war for a tank of juice?

An upstanding citizen "sticks it to the man" and gets some gas the old-fashioned way
The price of crude oil hit the $50 mark for the very first time yesterday, no doubt adding to the already outrageously incremental increase in the price of gasoline we've seen during the past few weeks. Average price in this neck of the woods is $1.80 but I guess we should be thankful: in some places around the country the average is already at $2.00 a gallon. Some speculate it could go as high as $3 or $4 if not worse.

As a result, I'm no longer driving as much: if I don't absolutely need to go out for it, I just don't go period. That's not a conservative or liberal choice: it simply makes good sense. It might be something to get used to if, as some legitimate sources are now saying, the point of "Peak Oil" (the midpoint between petroleum demand and supply, where supplies are calculated to diminish greatly per year as population and industries increase) has now been reached. If so, the ramifications are almost too scary to comprehend: the price of EVERYTHING - not just gasoline but raw materials like plastics, and substances like fertilizer and pharmeceuticals - is going to skyrocket. We might do well to all tighten our belts.

And yet, I don't want to incline my ear so much to the "doom and gloom" soothsayers just yet. There's a growing - albeit controversial - body of knowledge indicating that petroleum may not be the "non-renewable resource" that we've been told for so long that it is. That instead of being the product of organic decomposition over the course of millions of years, it might be the waste product of bacteria many miles below the surface of the Earth. If so, petroleum and its byproducts may be a replenishable resource. And in the past few years experiments with domestic waste products have proven that crude oil can be made from already available materials and technologies. All that's really needed to make it a viable alternative to traditional petroleum sources is an investment of time and money to further research, to bring it to the next level.

Unfortunately, I doubt that the big oil companies (and their friends in the government) are going to be so keen on making the jump to synthetic (and more cheaply available) alternatives. For the time being we are almost at their mercy, and I'm almost tempted to say that it's going to take some outright nasty things happening across the board to bring them to their senses and let people have a real choice as to their energy sources. Barring THAT happening... well, might be a good idea to start watching those "Mad Max" movies for the valuable information they carry on surviving in a post-oil apocalyptic wasteland...

You have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice.

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Jump to Lightspeed... Again! (but who'll be flying the ship?!)

Well, this is turning out to be an interesting morning. Right after posting that Mel Brooks is making "Spaceballs 2", this comes along...

My old stomping grounds at TheForce.net is today reporting that there will be a live-action Star Wars TV series beginning in the fall of 2006. You can bet the farm that this is gonna happen. For one thing, that had to be Josh Griffin posting the story (no one else can type "Awesome!" quite like he ;-) and being his colleague for two and a half years and friend for even longer, I can vouch that he's way more thorough on his sources than a CBS editor. Also, this has been coming out piecemeal for the past several months anyway: the "Clone Wars" microseries on Cartoon Network was a smash hit and George Lucas has been pretty adamant lately about not only not making any more Star Wars movies, but letting the story continue "in other ways" and with other people taking a shot at the saga.

Exactly who those people would be might be quite an item of discussion coming up. No doubt Lucas is going to be executive producer, if at least to make sure "his baby" doesn't stray too far off the path... but someone else is needed to nurture and guide the show's development so that Lucas can have a free hand to do his other film projects.

Someone is going to have to be trusted by Lucas himself to be only the second person ever to have complete control of Star Wars, answerable only to Lucas himself.

That someone had darn well better know the television industry.

That someone should also know how to manage a vast, multi-generational epic spanning thousands of years.

That someone should be able to relay that epic across a wide variety of mediums: not just television, but the ensuing books and videogames, etc.

That someone shouldn't be afraid to take risks, or "play it safe" to appease a demographic: good storytelling comes from conflict, and this person just might have a good track record on that.

That someone had better be a heckuva good writer.

For all of these reasons and more, finding the right person to take over Star Wars is going to be like finding a needle in a field of hay. But is there such a person?

Yes, there is, I find myself believing, especially in light of some interesting conjecture courtesy of CloneCleaner02 on TheForce.net's forums...

There is one... and only one... person who really comes to mind. One person who has worked most of the past 30 years in television and wound up creating one of the most original series ever put to that medium. One person whose writing is as prolific as Isaac Asimov's... coupled with an understanding of human nature on par with Orson Scott Card. One person who has spun a tale that began millions of years ago and ended one million in our future... but mostly concentrated on a mere five somewhere in between. And, it happens to be the person who has been dropping hints like mad that he's been tapped for an executive producer of a new network series "and while I don't usually do that on shows I don't create or develop, when I heard what this project was, I had to get on board." He later added that this new show had "nothing to do with any current series." Not long thereafter he wrote to his fans on Usenet that "Pending contractual negotiations and formal pickup by the networks involved, I've been offered two different series, so we'll see which goes first. They could both be very cool to work on, but one of them could be insanely successful. I should know more about this situation in late October." In his initial post he said that part of the contract was "work out how that will interface with the stuff that'll be going on later in the year, but fortunately the start date for the series should work out, at least at this point."

The "other stuff" could very well be a few novels, a play, and some television work. Not to mention writing "The Amazing Spider-Man" every month. Everything on the timing works out perfectly for a 2006 launch.

Could it be that Star Wars is about to be placed into the capable hands of J. Michael Straczynski? The same "JMS" who brought us "Babylon 5"?

The mind boggles at such a thing...

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Jump to Ludicrous Speed... Again!

Oh Lord please no...

Ain't It Cool News is reporting this morning that Mel Brooks is currently writing "Spaceballs 2"!

The original "Spaceballs" was already as perfect a sci-fi spoof as a comic genius of Brooks' stature could make. It's BRILLIANT and it's FUNNY! It riffed on just about every major sci-fi classic up to its time. HOW da heck is a sequel going to not only live up to all that but raise the bar?

I love Mel Brooks' movies - heck, "Blazing Saddles" was the very first DVD I ever bought - but he should reconsider making this. Although, since his last movie was the largely forgotten "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" and that was almost ten years ago, he really should try something to show that he still possesses the edge he had when he did "Young Frankenstein" and "Silent Movie" back in the day.

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They don't cast 'em in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt anymore...

My wife and I talked a bit about the elections on our way back from working-out this afternoon, and I shared with her a story about Teddy Roosevelt: how one night when he was President he was giving a bill the "hairy eyeball" before signing it. Roosevelt found an item in the bill that he couldn't understand the rationale for... and he wasn't about to sign it until he did. So Roosevelt put on his coat and hat, stomped out of the White House and took a carriage to the house of the congressman who wrote the bill, and at about 1 in the morning started banging on the door. The bleary-eyed, disheaveled representative found the President of the United States on his front doorstep demanding to know what was constitutional about that part of the bill. The congressman couldn't give Ol' Teddy an adequate answer, which led to an angry scolding from Roosevelt, who then told him that he would not, could not sign the bill. Roosevelt then hopped back into the carriage and left.

Don't even think that there's this kind of accountability or stalwartness today. Lisa put it best when she told me "this country needs another Teddy Roosevelt." She's right... but I can't see one riding into town anytime soon.

Teddy Roosevelt figures well in today's article by Charley Reese: "First Lady Just a Wife". In it Reese speaks softly and carries a big stick against the notion that the President is like unto Caesar...

I have never bought into this imperial presidency. The office of president, under the Constitution, was made a deliberately weak office. If the politicians in Washington obeyed the Constitution, which is to say if frogs sang arias, the president would not be allowed to start wars without a formal declaration, nor would he be allowed to legislate with executive orders.

As for the president himself, whoever he is, he is nothing more than an ordinary American citizen with a temporary job. As a man, he is entitled to common courtesy; the office itself is entitled to respect, but not worship or awe. As Truman had the integrity to realize, the presidency does not belong to the man holding the office, but to the American people. The White House is the people's house. Some presidents have respected that; others have not. Ronald Reagan always wore a jacket and tie in the Oval Office. Richard Nixon was careful never to put his feet on the furniture. That's in stark contrast to Bill Clinton's behavior, which was personally disgraceful and showed contempt for the White House, especially the carpet.

Punch here for the rest.

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George Lucas returns to Mel's as filming winds down on "Forcery"

No blogging since Friday 'cuz the bulk of this past weekend (maybe 5 hours sleep total since waking up Friday morning) was spent wrapping up principle photography on "Forcery". Once our cast assembled here at the apartment we arrived at the set about 10 PM Friday night to film a scene that demanded a strong moonlight shining down through the window. We set up one of the incandescent lamps with a blue gel outside the window and angled it to cast its light down on the bed, then moved the lamp so that we could get another angle.

After picking up another cast member we had everyone at Short Sugar's Barbecue in Reidsville NC at 8 AM the following morning to film the final scene of the movie: George Lucas and Rick McCallum in a red convertible at Mel's Drive-In from "American Graffiti". After getting that done we had to... we just had to... take this photo of Chad in his George Lucas costume, in the same pose that Lucas is in while directing Ron Howard in a famous photo from "American Graffiti"...


We returned to our main set and filmed from 10:30 that morning until 6 that evening, then did one final take (it's taken us two months to figure out what this one character should be saying during a certain event). With that, the bulk of our filming is done: apart from a number of minor scenes that won't require much preparation for, "Forcery" is in the can. And I haven't slept this good in a looooong time :-)

I'll be doing some updates here as "Forcery" enters post-productions but in the meantime, enjoy some production stills that we took during Saturday's filming.

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Faux posts the next few days

I'm going to be "tweaking" the look of this blog this week and at times some posts that will be nothing but pictures will be getting posted, then promptly yanked. That'll just be me getting some things uploaded for The Knight Shift's new appearance (it's too dark and I'm not into the whole "Goth" thing).

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Latest poll says that Chris is posting too much about politics ZZZZzzzz...

...although in my own defense I'd like to suggest that I'm not a political junky! REAL political junkies spend their waking hours playing imaginary games of Risk between the Democrats and Republicans in their heads. They also usually have two television sets to watch Fox News and CNN at the same time. Some of them would betray the family's priest to the Cossacks if dinner with Ann Coulter or Susan Estrich was part of the deal. The worst of the lot get an erotic turn-on by covering the bed with printouts of Zogby projections. I spent four years with some of the most psychotic political science majors in the cosmos: I know political junkies, man.

Consider me a mere historian who is watching events unfold, shaking his head in disbelief as this country becomes divided along a false dichotomy, and unable to believe that anything short of extreme circumstances will shake America from those who have enslaved her. That may not be for much longer, as many are now waking up to the stark reality that neither major party has anything of substance to offer: I wouldn't mind if they stagnated, but the damnable thing of it is that they're dragging this country into stagnation with them.

So with that in mind I had to post this story about MSNBC's poll showing that 88% of Americans do not believe the polls are accurate! How about that: a poll of Americans showing that Americans don't trust polls. Sorta like Michael Jackson asking a pack of Cub Scouts if they think he'll just let them ride the merry-go-round at Neverland, when you think about it.

Regarding my initial post from about two weeks ago about having something to say about an experience I had with the George W. Bush campaign four years ago (I posted some other thoughts and even confessions about my motivations a few days ago)... I'm still weighing it in my mind. Ya see, some of what I'd share with everyone... okay, some people know some of what happened, the account that got published then. But some stuff I didn't report on then for no other reason than because at the time, I was more than a little shocked at a few things that took place. It seemed so unbecoming of what I'd expected from these guys that I wondered if I even heard it right. Then some evidence turned up that proved it DID happen. And there's one other thing that only a few other people know about so far... and I'm wondering what might happen if that came out. It's not something provable mind you, but the circumstances by which it came to me does raise some curiosities in my mind.

Bottom line is this, I guess: I don't hate George W. Bush, but he's not someone who can be trusted either. He's a hypocrite and I loathe hypocrisy. I can't vote for John Kerry because of a few things like his pro-abortion stance, but in my mind he's at least the more honest of the two. But I can't find any reason to not come forward with my story either, and let people take from it what they will, to trust Kerry more or not because of it.

May or may not post from here on out until Monday, as we are wrapping up principle photography on Forcery. It's gonna be fun Saturday morning when we replicate Mel's Drive-In from American Graffiti. I might have a photo to post from that sometime this weekend that oughtta make everyone laugh, if we can pull it off :-)

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