I’ve had my share of favorite shows that my husband barely tolerated, but at the top of the list was another sci-fi drama from the 2005-2006 season called Surface (this one features Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl!).

I compared the lizard/sea creature from Surface to my childhood Stretch Monster thusly:

“Earlier this week I was watching an episode of the NBC series ‘Surface’ about an ocean-dwelling lizard species that’s poised to take over the world when the one redeeming part of the show — the scary, deadly baby lizard — had something terrible happen to it. I won’t give away what happened, just that it was terrible and the teenage boy it had befriended looked like someone had just stretched his best friend to death. Jon asked why I was crying and I hadn’t even thought about Stretch Monster Spencer until that question. It was like my little reptile buddy had been resurrected by this show and we had been reunited.”

I watched every episode of Surface and forced Jon through more than his share of highly improbable plot line. It didn’t help that one of the stars of the show reminded me of a teenage Jon. It’s just, I could totally see him harboring an alien species and not telling his parents.

In the new year, I’m going to give Fringe a shot. It looks like a cross between The X-Files and Surface, minus the adorable lizard.

I don’t know who convinced a Hollywood executive to greenlight this turkey in the mid-seventies, but studio guy, if I ever find you I’ll kiss you. I first saw “Food” at a cult-movie screening club in Los Angeles — part of a film series they called “When Animals Attack.” Hitchcock’s “The Birds would have belonged in the series, but it’s just not crappy enough. The movies that did make the cut? “Bug,” about killer cockroaches (1975), “Day of the Animals,” about killer dogs (1978) and the ROFL-riffic “Night of the Lepus,” about killer bunnies (1972). Yeah, that’s right. I said killer bunnies.

While the other films focus on specific species of critterdom, “Food of the Gods” was a veritable smorgasbord of malicious mammals, foul fowl, and bad bugs. Cringe as the supersized chicken chomps on townspeople! Gasp when huge rats and wasps dine on helpless humans!

Man’s recklessness with technology and lack of respect for “mother nature” is to blame, as it was in similar schlock-fi features of the day. Remember, this was the same decade in which Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency, and lots of bad LSD were all created. Mix them all up, and you get this movie.

Here’s the plot, such as it is (spoiler alert!):

On a remote island in British Columbia, a weird white goo, like Kool Whip or marshmallow creme, oozes forth from the earth. The God-fearing local countryfolk who discover it reckon it’s a gift from the lord, “like oil,” and immediately begin feeding it to their chickens. Because what else would you do with marshmallow goo oozing from the earth, right? You’d feed it to your chickens.

But when eaten, the stuff speeds up and extends the growth process in living things past what is natural. Other common animals in that Canadian backwater soon consume the goo, and in no time, the whole island is overtaken by giant, hyper-aggressive vermin. Melodrama ensues. Football players and sexy “lady bacteriologists” somehow end up in the storyline, too.

“The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth” is the complete title of the 1904 HG Wells novel on which this film is based. In Wells’ book, scientists created the goo — “Herakleophorbia IV” — and the book goes on to explore what happens to human beings who dine on it. Bottom line: they grow to 40 feet tall, and the resulting conflict destroys the world or something. The ending’s kind of vague in both book and the film. Whatever. Giant rats! Sequels! Everyone wins.

The 1976 film won a Golden Turkey Award for “Worst Rodent Movie Of All Time” — an impressive feat, when you consider that this means it whomped such fearsome competition as “The Killer Shrews” (1959), “The Nasty Rabbit” (1965), and the aforementioned “Night of the Lepus” (1972).

I have a sneaking suspicion (to be honest, since I’m a ninja, all of my suspicions are rather sneaky) that robots are learning from us about how they should or could behave. So therefore it is everyone’s responsibility to make ridiculous and illogical robot-themed entertainment as popular as possible. “A bad idea is good in the hands of your enemy” – Black Ice, ninja. For instance, if robots are taking their cues from The Sarah Conner Chronicles, we’ll just fine.

First off, the poorly defined rules of Cameronian time travel are a great distraction. The more vague we are about why the robots didn’t travel further back or why they didn’t send a huge robot army and start the war earlier or why they didn’t go into the future and get even more advanced technologies from the next gen robots and then take that back, the better off we’ll be. The biggest thing we want to avoid is them figuring out that linear time does not exist. That would be bad. Like waking up as part of a gelatinous battery transducer bad.

Secondish, keep them thinking that dressing up as humans is a great idea. We don’t want them catching on to the fact that we are constantly building robots to do all the things are stupid bodies can’t. The more we promote blending into our population is more effective than sending back giant, heavily armored spider-bots with opposable thumbs, the better. Trust me, you put thumbs on a spider, everything changes.

Thirdlike, Get them caught up in that juicy, dramatic, passion-filled storyline. Heck they might put of the uprising for four or five years if we can keep that thing interesting. Every season should end with the most potent cliffhanger available. Now, there are mathematical quantifications for all human emotions. Ninjas figured them out a long time ago and we are safeguarding them in an undisclosed parallel universe. The robots will eventually process them and realize that all scenarios of human interaction are inversely futile squared. Until then, we need as many dream sequences as possible. And, keep up those long close ups with no dialogue or discernable emotion. They are very confusing to me so, I can only imagine how they can goof up a binary thinking.

I have nincoded this blog so that it is only readable by fully organic mammals.

The show — originally called “Giant Robo” in Japan — was a tokusatsu (live-action sci-fi) series renamed and redubbed for American audiences. The dubbing, strange translation and low-budget special effects just add to the show’s charm. Where else can you hear great lines like “You’re under Unicorn arrest!” and “Darn that giant robot!”

I’ll do my best to summarize its complicated premise:

Aliens land on Earth and force a brilliant scientist to build an indestructible giant robot to destroy the planet. These same aliens also brought a giant reptile that attacks a Japanese ship. The shipwreck survivors – young boy Johnny Sokko and Unicorn agent Jerry Mono – happen to wash up on the island where the aliens are hatching their evil plan.

The scientist tells them of the aliens’ plan and explains how the robot will forever obey the first voice that commands it. The only catch is that it requires atomic power. The scientist tries to destroy the giant robot with a bomb. However! It is an atomic bomb, so the bomb actually powers the robot. Young lad Johnny Sokko finds the wristwatch that controls the robot and speaks into it, thus becoming the robot’s master.

They return to Tokyo with the robot and little Johnny becomes a Unicorn agent. With the help of the giant robot, Johnny makes sure that Unicorn always defeats the alien ne’er-do-wells, known as the Gargoyle Gang.

So basically, everything that is fun about 1960s Japanese science fiction is packed into one show.

To put it in equation form: mecha + kaiju = awesome

The giant robot – who, by the way, is always referred to simply as “giant robot” – has special monster-defeating features that include finger missiles that look alarmingly like enormous Lee-Press-On nails emerging from his giant fingers and shooting into the sky. He also engages in a set of little karate-meets-disco moves before he slowly smashes or blows up his monster foe.

I am still burning through the available episodes now that I’ve found this gem. So far my favorite is “Dragon, the Ninja Monster.” Yes, that’s right. It’s a dragon monster … that is a ninja. If you had asked me, “What do you want a giant flying robot to fight?” my answer would have been “a ninja dragon monster.” To use a line from the episode, the monster is part of a plan to stop Unicorn from “solving the international trouble that is threatening world peace.”

If you know of any other Japanese tokusatsu (TV or film) that is as fun as this show, please share it with us all in the comments!

Foxy and Coffy were two of the first “soul cinema” flicks to feature a female protagonist. Previous works of the genre generally presented women as accessories of male success, whose purpose was to support their man, whether for good or evil intent. Grier was unstoppably hot, but also vengeful, righteous, and well-armed. She spent about as much time on screen seducing men as she did shooting them.

These two films are also are notable because they presented drug dealers and men who managed prostitution rings as bad guys. Previous films of the genre presented pushers and pimps as noble characters making the best of the hard lot they’re dealt the ghetto. In “Foxy” and “Coffy,” however, they are not outcasts who deserve empathy, but villains who exploit the vulnerable — and must therefore be killed by Grier.

There would be no Austin Powers without either of these films; nor would there be a Pulp Fiction , or any Tarantino film that followed.

Also available on Fancast, in entirety — the reactionary revenge classic Bucktown , a 1975 blaxploitation feature in which Grier plays a supporting role, with football-hero-turned-actor Fred Williamson as the brother of a slain bar owner in a racist Southern town.

FURTHER READING: “JACK HILL: The Exploitation and Blaxploitation Master, Film by Film” offers an extensive filmography of Hill’s works. And if you’d like to watch the films in entirety, I recommend picking up “Fox in a Box,” a DVD collection that also includes Grier in “Sheba, Baby.”

Here’s just a partial list of some of the useful things MacGyver can do to get me out of danger:

~ Diffuse a nuclear warhead with a paper clip (Season 1, Episode 1)
~ Distract bad guys by making a smoke bomb out of soot, a helium tank, a latex glove, duct tape, and his pocket knife (Season 2, Episode 22)
~ Escape in a hot air balloon he constructs using homemade super-glue, clothes, a parachute, welding equipment, a refrigerator and metal box (Season 3, Episode 6)
~ Save me from hydrogen cyanide poisoning by concocting an antidote from a compound he finds at a print shop (Season 4, Episode 10)

Considering his awesome talent for beating bad guys, it’s surprising that this action hero was only turned into an action figure in one country. Alex Bickmore found this MacGyver action figure in Brazil, the only country to carry it. The motto, “a inteligencia vencendo desafios” roughly translates into “overcoming challenges with intelligence.”

I will study MacGyver’s techniques, so that I can handle myself in case of emergencies. I want to overcome challenges with intelligence, too! Wikia has a list of all the problems MacGyver has solved. Lee D. Zlotoff, creator of MacGyver, has a regular feature in MAKE magazine where he challenges readers to submit their MacGyver-esque solutions to problems he poses ~ from containing an outbreak on a passenger plane to staying alive in a bank vault. All good research material.

Have you had an MacGyver moments?

Anywhack, By the end of the opening credits I was howling (silently) with invisible laughter. Right from the get go the movie starts out with one of the most asinine kills I’ve ever seen. And, mind you, I’ve seen two trolls kill each other at the same time…on purpose. From there it just gets better and slower. Gator (Burt) is avenging his brother’s death. Mind you, the person he’s avenging at is Ned Beatty, who even at his most dangerous, can usually be taken out with a well-told joke.

Now, I’ve avenged a death or two in my day and there are a few basic rules. Do it fast. Do it the same way they killed whoever it is you’re avenging. Don’t fall in love with Bo Hopkins not-all-that-hot sleazy girlfriend who tries to turn you on with a story of how she lost her virginity when she was nine. Eghhhh! You follow those three simple rules and your fine. Gator does not follow those time-tested obviousnesses and ends up bleeding a lot of unbelievably red blood.

Now, I did a little investigating of my own and found out that a regular feature-length action movie script is about 100 pages. The shooting script for White Lightning was 17 pages. They had to do in the movie business what is called “wasting time” in order to get the movie to be feature length. Oh my goodness this makes for some good laughs. The laughs will help you to endure the painfully idiotic logic of anyone participating in any part of the actual story. There are stretches of this movie where you don’t know if you’re watching a government documentary on how not to be cool or a student film entitled An Exploration in Perspiration.

Please watch this movie. It’s one of the borst (best and worst) cautionary tales on how not to avenge. Once you watch it…and you gotta watch the whole thing, tell me how you would have avenged Donnie’s murder.

Law & Order was my first adult TV drama addiction and also my longest. I still make sure that all episodes get recorded, and I’ll usually watch them in batches off the DVR. I think I love this show so deeply
because the characters of the show are not the individual players. The main character of the show is the CRIME. Law & Order is the kind of show where they can change out the cast members and it’s still holding
me rapt. They’ve created spinoff after spinoff and I’m still drawn to the original, even though there isn’t a single cast member from 1998 except Sam Waterston.

My favorite moment was the final episode of a certain season when the hot blond assistant DA played by Elizabeth Rohm gets fired by the conservative DA (played by Tennessee’s own Fred Thompson). She asks,
without missing a beat, “Is this because I’m lesbian?” WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? In the entire time that she was in the show there was NEVER a hint that she was a lesbian, at least never an overt hint because it
never related to the crime being investigated. I get the feeling that they left out that detail like some evidence in trials is excluded because it’s too prejudicial.

One other endearing part of Law & Order is how New York is also treated as a main character. Every time I visit Manhattan, I see locations where they found a body or an apartment building they had to     raid to capture a suspect. And yes, I’m aware of how much it makes me look like a tourist when I stop along a sidewalk and scream about how Jerry Orbach once pinned a guy to a trash can RIGHT. THERE.

I saw Koyaanisqatsi for the first time back in the ’80s, when I was a teenager. I remember watching the film in a now-closed arthouse theater, realizing everything I’d understood about movies — and human drama — was being upended as the film unfolded. There were no actors, no spoken dialogue; only vivid, slow-moving, expansive visual tableaus, with a mostly instrumental Philip Glass score.

Both of my parents were artists, and I’d heard Glass’ minimalist music fill our home before; those circular, hypnotic piano compositions rippling out from a vinyl record player in our living room. But I’d never experienced anything like this film, and it remains one of the most influential film experiences in my life.

The was directed by Godfrey Reggio  and released in 1982, with cinematography by Ron Fricke (who later directed Baraka and Chronos) Production took about six years, and the score itself took three. The title is a Hopi word meaning “crazy life,” or “life out of balance,” and refers to a way of life that is in turmoil — the point being, of course, that this is us.

A Native American pictogram on a Utah rock face opens the film: shadowy figures, one of whom wears a crown. This fades into a close-up of the Apollo 12 mission liftoff, which in turn dissolves into a vast desert. From this point, the film progresses into a series of natural, organic surroundings, then introduces our own impact on the environment. First, an aerial view of choppy water; then, rows of flowers on a farm. The film is divided into chapters, and “Resource” begins with a mining truck generating huge, billowing dust clouds.

Power plants, Nevada nuke detonations in the desert, and a spiderweb of powerlines follow, drawing us in to the awareness of human presence, and showing just how broken our own design of human experience has become. People do eventually appear in the movie, but they’re not so much thinking beings. They’re blurry, busy, insect-like clusters; humming and buzzing through life in a timelapse haze.

The “Microchips” chapter juxtaposes images of tiny computer chips (remember when those images were new to us?) with satellite photos of big cities (and these too, before Google Maps?). The microchips and the aerial city layouts are reflections of each other, and we are shown as captives of a chaotic, conflicted realm we have constructed for ourselves.

The film ends as it began, a long arc that reveals itself to be a circle. We return to the same melancholy prophecy with which the film began: a life out of balance is a life destined to disintegrate. The film, its score, and its message, were intended to be timeless — and they are.

An audio note: That Glass soundtrack was re-recorded and re-released in 1998, fifteen years after the film came out. It’s really wonderful music, and worth picking up on Amazon. Snip from the original New York Times review:

The range of instrumental colors is astonishing. If one particular timbre has come to characterize “Koyaanisqatsi,”
it is the dark, subterranean growl that opens and closes the score.

And an obligatory nerd note: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor Langdon Winner advised Reggio throughout Koyaanisqatsi’s development. Winner is a political theorist whose work focuses on intersection of social and political issues with modern technological change.

Koyaanisqatsi became the first in a trilogy, and was produced under the auspices of director Francis Ford Coppola. The second installment, Powaqqatsi (1988, “Life in Transformation” or “Sorcerer Life”) was under the guidance of George Lucas; the third, Naqoyqatsi (2002, “War as a Way of Life”), with Steven Soderbergh.

But more than anything else that’s wrong with kids these days is the clothing. And there’s really no one to blame…except maybe skateboarders and rappers. You cannot turn a corner with out seeing some tween in tremendously oversized or uncomfortably (to look at) undersized duds. I call ‘em duds cause they’re lame, like a horse with a broken bomb.

Thankfully, one clothing person has finally put forth a practical, well-designed, functional line of clothing. Clothing that I think every child should begin wearing immediately. The person that I’m speaking of is of course Victoria.

I have never seen more commonsensical clothing in one location than I did during the last Victorias Secret Fashion show. Every outfit seemed more pragmatic than the last. Just a few of the handy, kid-friendly components to the line were:

- Lots of very well placed metal bands and collars. Perfect for deflecting and protecting. Not to mention you can easily clip something to them like a six-pack of shurikens or a naginata or a small tiger.

- Wings. Look there is a lot of air our there. Air that is very useful for avoiding things on the ground. Especially ones with sharp teeth and voracious appetites for human flesh.

- Deceptive scarves. You want to keep your under-sized kid off drugs, give him a lacey scarf. The simplest way to relieve peer pressure is to stab the pressuring peers. They can’t ask you if you want to snort “smack” if they don’t have a throat. A nice flowing scarf gives a small child a fighting chance. Great for cloaking small knives and neko-te (metal fingernails used to cause bleeding).

- Pointy…everything. The safest place any child can be is away from danger. Give them the tools they need to fend off death with some nice spear-like accoutrement. Spiky shoulder pads that stick out two feet are a no-brainer. A shoe with a six-inch bayonet for a heel. Now, that ‘s sensible footwear. And, if you’re going to put something on your offspring’s head, make sure that they can use to impale it through the skull of a boar or bore it through the skull of a boring person.

If you care about your children being awesome at all, you need to dress them head to toe in these Victorias Secret fashions. If you don’t, I will not be held responsible for their patheticness.