My Facebook news feed was in overdrive yesterday with the passing of film critic Roger Ebert. An Urbana native, he maintained close ties to the community and sponsored an annual film festival that became the biggest event* in our twin cities.

I had the opportunity to meet Roger in person a couple of times, most recently in 2000 when we trekked up to Chicago to record an interview with him for the movie review show that I used to produce.

By that time Ebert had spent many hours in front of television cameras, and was, of course, entirely professional. As someone who grew up watching the original Sneak Previews on WTTW-TV, I found it impossible not to be awed.

A year or two after this interview, I began to be puzzled and annoyed by Ebert’s reviews. He would fixate on picayunish flaws.** He would serve as an outlier on films as widely-praised as the 2009 Star Trek reboot and as thoroughly panned as Nicolas Cage’s Knowing. And then there was his stubbornly ignorant stance on the question of whether video games could be considered art.

Of course, the reason that his opinions perturbed me far more than those of, say, Richard Roeper was the recognition that he was our preeminent film critic–arguably our preeminent critic, period. What he said mattered, even if I thought it was dead wrong.

And few people loved movies more, or did more to promote the appreciation of film, than did Roger Ebert. He might have hated, hated, hated certain films, but that burning rage was borne out of his beliefs that movies could and should be more. He will be missed.

Another great who passed on yesterday was a legend of the Golden and Silver Ages of comic books, penciller Carmine Infantino. His first story for DC Comics in 1947 introduced the Black Canary, a villainess who eventually became one of the industry’s best-known superheroines.

But it was his work on the Silver Age version of The Flash that made his reputation. Infantino was superb at selling the incredible velocity of the crimebuster, depicting him as a series of red-and-yellow after-images.

Later he was the regular artist of Marvel’s Star Wars comics, drawing most every issue during the years between the original film and the release of The Empire Strikes Back.

Infantino’s death is the severing of one of the few remaining ties to comics’ early days.

*The next Ebertfest is less than two weeks from now. No one has said whether they will continue beyond 2013, but I suspect that, given Roger’s failing health, contingency plans must have been considered.

**Really, there were plenty of good reasons to dislike The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but Ebert’s criticism was mostly about its inaccurate depiction of Venice. In a movie in which Mr. Hyde and Captain Nemo fight Professor Moriarty.

Dave General Carmine Infantino, obituaries, Roger Ebert, The Flash

I swear that the programmers at Cartoon Network suffer from ADHD. Shows will disappear in mid-run, pop-up five months later at a different time and day, then inexplicably vanish again with several episodes still unaired. It’s frustrating, and doubly so if the series in question has an on-going story arc.

I’ve written before about Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated, which earlier this week reemerged from a forgotten closet at Cartoon Network headquarters to finish out its long-neglected run in a weekday afternoon burn-off slot. It should wrap up next week, unless the head of programming spots a shiny object.

Perhaps the very qualities that made Mystery Inc. such a compelling series for older fans of the characters are what kept it bouncing around the schedule. It broke from the standard Scooby formula in favor of a two-season, 52-episode long storyline.* It romantically involved Velma and Shaggy, had Daphne (and later Velma) temporarily break from the gang, and revealed that Fred’s adoptive father was a villain who’d blackmailed his birth parents (who were part of a previous Mystery Incorporated team) into giving him up.

Even more remarkably, it introduced elements of real danger. A couple of supporting characters have been killed (off-screen, but still) by the sinister machinations of Professor Pericles, the talking parrot who was the real brains behind the earlier incarnation of Mystery Inc.

Okay, I realize that I have just typed the phrase “the sinister machinations of Professor Pericles, the talking parrot.” This ain’t exactly House of Cards. Yet, the notion that something going out under the Scooby-Doo banner has a murderous bird in it is strange and wonderful.

And then, yesterday, this happened.

Scooby-Doo visited the Red Room (aka the Black Lodge) from Twin Peaks. Okay, it was a dream, but so was the original Red Room. And as the scene involved a metaphysical entity speaking to Scoobs through his dog girlfriend,** I’m willing to accept that yes, Scooby-Doo was in the Black Lodge. Agent Cooper and BOB were presumably in the next room over.

And what was discussed? Oh, just that the reason certain dogs (and parrots) can talk is that they are the descendants of the Anunnaki,*** extradimensional spirits who can only physically exist  by inhabiting the bodies of animals.

Mind. Blown.

Okay, maybe I do understand why this didn’t fly at the Cartoon Network. But that anyone ever allowed it to happen in the first place is as peculiar as any ghost encountered by those meddling kids.

*Thanks to the delays, said storyline will finish out three years to the day from when it began.

**Again, I totally get how ridiculous this seems when I type it out.

***The Anunnaki are a “real” thing, in that they feature in real-world crackpot theories regarding the rogue planet Nibiru (also namechecked in Mystery Inc.) and the end of the world. 

Dave TV Scooby-Doo, Twin Peaks, WTF

Life is rough for those who work retail in Gotham City. One moment you’re waiting on a customer, the next moment you’re pinned to the ceiling by a giant umbrella while trained puffins steal the day’s receipts.

Things are even worse if your establishment happens to fit into the theme of one of Gotham’s many colorful crooks. Hands down, the absolute worst place to work is the Laughing Catfish Puzzle Store, 222 Iceberg Road, located between the Gotham Arboretum and the abandoned Wonderland Hat Factory. Turn left at the Arkham Asylum exit, you can’t miss it.

Dave Comics Batman, worst jobs in the multiverse

I’m unsure when I built my first web page. I do know that it was a simple “home page” (remember those?) hosted on the defunct Prairienet community network, which itself debuted in 1993. My guess is that I joined Prairienet soon afterward.

The first site that I created with an online audience in mind was a fan tribute to the ’80s sci-fi TV series V. You’ll still find a version of it right here on this blog. Unfortunately, as those files have been copied multiple times, their original date stamps are lost.

But my topic for today is the second site I built.

In the early-to-mid ’90s, I was seriously into action figures. Oh, you might think that I’m still into them, but not in the way I was then. I didn’t restrict myself to a couple of toy lines; I bought whatever tickled my fancy. I was a frequent contributor to the Usenet group rec.toys.action-figures, and even a member of a secret cabal of collectors who helped each other acquire more-difficult-to-find items.

I was also very much into Star Trek: The Next Generation. And my favorite character wasn’t Picard or Data or Worf. It was Dr. Beverly Crusher, as portrayed by actress Gates McFadden. I was smitten with her from the get-go. Sure, Deanna Troi was boobtastic, but it was the dancing doctor that held my attention.

And so it was that, as they say, two great tastes tasted great together. In the early days of the World Wide Web, I was amused by some of the oddly-specific fan sites that had sprung up, and wanted to create one of my own. In my head, the joke would be that it would be something insanely narrow in focus, something no one else in the entire world would devote a site to.

Thus was born Bevheads. I reasoned that anyone could make a Star Trek action figure site, but who in their right mind would build one solely for Beverly Crusher toys?

Eventually the joke began to run away with itself. As parodies often do, it came to resemble the very thing at which it was poking fun. I went from simply photographing tiny, plastic Beverlys to customizing my own. As I cannibalized figures for my Frankensteinian creations, the name “Bevheads” acquired a second meaning. Headless bodies and bodiless heads cluttered my work space.

I gained a little notoriety for my efforts, but was bothered by those occasions on which people failed to pick up on the joke. I bristled at being featured on the now-defunct site Portal of Evil, which subjected fan pages to mean-spirited mockery. One day I got fed up and deleted my entire site. Some of the figures were sold off in a general purge of my collection, and if I still have any of the photos, they’re hidden away on a poorly-labelled CD-ROM.

Bevheads was on my mind today when my friend Dave Lartigue directed me to this: Gates McFadden’s own Tumblr feed. While it’s ostensibly about her theater company, mostly she’s…posting photos of Beverly Crusher action figures. I am gobsmacked. (My actual reply to Dave L.: “You are fucking kidding me.”)

I did some Googling around in preparation for this blog entry, hoping to find some of my old photos floating in the ether. And I had my second surprise of the day: this tribute to Bevheads, complete with an Andy Warhol-inspired photo montage of one of my headless Bevs. It made me happy to learn that somewhere out there, someone got a kick out of the enthusiasm with which I pursued my oddly-specific mania.

While the original Bevheads pictures may be forever lost–with the exception of the one I stole back from the above-mentioned tribute–I pulled out my remaining Beverlys for a little photo shoot this evening.

Here are some of the original, unaltered figures made by Playmates Toys back in the ’90s. Front row (L-R): ’40s attire (from the episode “The Big Goodbye”); “Generations” movie uniform (actually an unused costume design); two standard Bevs (without and with lab jacket); Captain Beverly Picard (from the series finale “All Good Things”); Starfleet Academy cadet. Rear: 9″ scale doll with cloth costume and rooted hair.

Some decidedly non-canonical Beverlys. These were simple custom jobs involving head-swaps and a bit of paint. From L-R: captain’s uniform; dress uniform; Original Series miniskirt.

My weirder, creepier custom jobs (L-R): “tough chick” (body from a wrestling character); “slumber party” (body from the teen soap Swans Crossing); “Jabba the Hutt’s slave” (body from Princess Leia, natch); aerobics outfit (from the episode “The Price”); Lego; “Mirror Universe.”

My old friend Doug Mikkelson built this “Beverly Fett” for me as a birthday present. It’s noticeably more elaborate than my own customs.

And now for something completely different: a custom Deanna Troi, built from another of those Swans Crossing figures. I believe that I called her “Western Fun Troi.”

Finally, here are some of my bisected Bevs, including the one which inspired that Warhol homage. Amusingly, it was still in the same pose as when I took the original photo way back when.

I hope that you enjoyed this look into my psychosis. Why are you backing away from me?

 

Dave Weird Beverly Crusher, Bevheads, Gates McFadden, obsessions

As seen in director David Lynch’s version of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic Dune…

‘Nuff said.

Dave Sci-Fi bleeeeech, Dune, worst jobs in the multiverse

You may loathe your job and despise your coworkers, but take solace in this: no matter what you do for a paycheck, somewhere out there in the infinity of worlds someone has it far, far worse.

Consider, if you will, the work of the beacon keepers of Gondor, one of the medieval-esque nations dotting Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

The entire point of the beacons–at least, as depicted in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film adaptations–is to summon help from the nation of Rohan. Telegraphs haven’t been invented, and you can’t depend on the eagles to show up and carry your message, so the only recourse for sending a quick S.O.S. to the horsemen of the Golden Hall is to construct a series of bonfires set many miles apart. And since they need to be seen from a long way off, the best places to put them are on mountaintops.

So, your job as Gondorian beacon keeper is to sit on a mountain and watch a pile of sticks. They need to be lit at a moment’s notice, so you’d better keep them dry. You’ll only know that it’s time to light them up when you see the next beacon in the chain aflame. And that other pile of sticks is on a distant peak, so you’d best keep an eye on the horizon.

Now, bear in mind that they are only to be lit in an emergency. (Important: do not set your torch too close to the beacon.) And, according to the Encylopedia of Arda, the only recorded incident of their use since they were constructed in year 2510 of the Third Age occurred on March 8, 3019…509 years later. So, odds are good that they’ll never be needed in your lifetime. Or in your father’s lifetime. Or your son’s lifetime. (You can pretty much bet that this is a job that gets passed down familial lines, same as male-pattern baldness.)

But when they’re needed, they’re needed NOW. So keep your torch lit, and keep watching that mountain waaaaaay over there.

Dave Movies Lord of the Rings, worst jobs in the multiverse

Last Saturday was a milestone for our fair campus community: the 30th Annual Insect Fear Festival. Run by the Entomology Graduate Student Association at the University of Illinois, the Festival presents our ingrained anxieties about things that creep and crawl through the prism of bad movies.

This year’s fear fest was also notable for the participation of Chris Carter (seen sitting on the left in this photo from the event), creator of the television series The X-Files, as well as Emmy award-winning writer Darin Morgan (seated to the right). They were in attendance for a screening of the 1996 episode “War of the Coprophages,” one of several that Morgan wrote during his all-too-brief time on the staff of the sci-fi/horror/conspiracy drama.

“Coprophages” (literally, feces-eaters) is a spoofy installment in which a Massachusetts community* panics in response to a series of cockroach-associated deaths. Spoiler alert: the cockroaches are really mechanical probes from another world. Or not. The X-Files was that kind of show. More on that in a bit.

One of the script’s many in-jokes is the inclusion of a beautiful entomologist named Bambi Berenbaum, named for Dr. May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois. (“Her name is Bambi?” says an incredulous Agent Scully, to which Fox Mulder replies, “Yeah. Both her parents were naturalists.”)

It’s all great fun, and not just because of the comically-large cell phones our heroes keep pulling out. It also features one of my all-time favorite TV pranks: a cockroach which appears to crawl across the viewer’s own television screen.

Watching it again with an appreciative audience reminded me of just how good this show was in its early seasons. There’s a reason that it inspired so many knock-offs.

Following “Coprophages” was a screening of the first X-Files feature film, sometimes known under its promotional title Fight the Future. Set between the events of the show’s fifth and sixth seasons, it is–to my mind, at least–sort of the Grand Unified Theory of the franchise, an attempt to tie together various seemingly-unrelated alien incursions into a single conspiratorial invasion. It’s also, arguably, the last time that The X-Files was any good.

After that, the show’s underlying mythology grew ever more convoluted, asking two questions for every one it (unsatisfyingly) answered. Fox Mulder was eventually written out when actor David Duchovny became tired of the E.T.-hunting grind. The shadow government central to the show’s backstory was eliminated, only to be replaced by yet another group of extraterrestrials.

Lured back for the series finale at the end of its ninth season, Mulder showed up just long enough to endure an interminable show trial during which the franchise irrevocably disappeared up its own ass. Even worse, the finale left hanging the prophecy of a final, all-out invasion scheduled for December 22, 2012. Yes, that December 22, 2012.**

Never mind that the hoped-for follow-up movie series never materialized. A half-hearted attempt to revive The X-Files resulted in 2008′s I Want to Believe, a film which went after a wider audience by doing away with all that monster and alien stuff and managed to attract only crickets. December 22, 2012 came and went without so much an alien-human hybrid clone to be seen.

To bring us back to the present, questions of a third film were very much on the mind of the X-Philes who attended the Insect Fear Film Festival. Chris Carter could only demur that if he was given the chance to make another movie, he’d be very interested in addressing the whole apocalyptic space invasion thing, as if in denial that that particular flying saucer had sailed years ago.

After Fight the Future screened, there was another Q&A session with Carter. I went up to the microphone and commented about how the movie marked the halfway mark of the series, that we hadn’t even gotten to the “super soldiers” or Scully’s half-alien miracle baby. (Yes, that was a thing that happened.) I said that a few years after the show ended, I’d begun to speculate that perhaps the whole thing was really Chris Carter’s meta-commentary on real-life conspiracy theories, which seem to grow ever wilder and more confusing the more one tries to explain them.

He answered, “No. We thought it all made sense.”

Which may be all the explanation The X-Files will ever receive.

*”Miller’s Grove,” named for Grover’s Mill, the town in which the first Martian cylinder landed during Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds.

**This was the first time I heard about the so-called Mayan doomsday prophecy. Sadly, it would not be the last.

Dave TV lack of closure, The X-Files

I’m reminded that it was ten years ago today that Fred Rogers left us. Here’s the tribute that I wrote that morning, which was subsequently picked up by the public broadcasting news outlet Current as well as several PBS station program guides.

Mister Rogers was one of the first programs that I can remember watching. I was, of course, part of the show’s target demographic back then. I can’t recall much from my preschool years, but I do know that I loved the trolley, I loved the neighborhood and I loved Fred Rogers.

Like many early loves, it faded with age and distance. I moved on to programs intended for older kids: flashier, action-oriented, violent in the ways that caregivers and watchdogs lament and children adore. For the most part, I forgot about Fred and his neighborhood, reminded only on occasion by the parodies that proliferated in the ’80s as yesterday’s innocents grew into sarcasm and despair.

Let’s face it, it was easy to mock Fred Rogers. He had a simple style and a cadence that invited imitation. He stubbornly retained old-fashioned production values in an era of hydraulic-powered Muppets and computer-generated dinosaurs. Further-more, one could assign all sorts of hidden motivations to his soft-spoken manner and his devotion to children. Comedians, fools and cynics wondered aloud whether a beast lurked within such a seemingly humble man of God.

Mister Rogers re-entered my life once I began my career in public television. I worked as a master control operator for WYIN in Merrillville, Ind., in the late ’80s. One day, working the afternoon shift, all heck broke loose: The transmitter was down, the chief engineer and the program director were shouting and frantically hitting buttons. I was still very new, and very nervous about keeping my first broadcasting job. As my anxiety mounted, I focused on the eye of the storm, the oasis of calm, the 17-inch screen in front of me: the one on which Fred Rogers offered words of quiet reassurance. It was a moment I hope I’ll never forget.

Over the years, I became fascinated with the program, deconstructing its messages and marveling at the bizarre flights of fantasy that often emerged from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Mister Rogers had a way of tying together everything, making connections that defied adult logic. A segment on silverware inspired an opera about a trip to Spoon Mountain. In Fred’s world, your friend might be a Purple Panda from Planet Purple, and your king might sing “Row, Row Your Boat” in the most complicated manner possible.

Several years ago, Mister Rogers made the keynote address at the PBS Annual Meeting in Miami. As always, he spoke of simple, but important ideas: acts of caring, the need to love and the need to be loved. When the speech and the conference concluded, many ran to catch their planes and to return to their worlds of adult responsibilities. But a great many lined up for the opportunity to spend a few moments with the kind old man who had greeted them each morning so many years ago. Grown men and women were moved to tears as they hugged their childhood friend.

For his part, Fred waited patiently, shaking hands, posing for photos, signing conference program books and giving each person all the time they needed to express their feelings. He stayed for at least an hour, long enough for me to get through the line, then to run to my hotel room and fetch my wife so that she could hug and cry as well.

People have subsequently asked me, “Is he really the way he acts on TV?” My response has always been, “He’s exactly what you see on TV.”

That’s what I remember most about Fred Rogers. He was a man who could temporarily wipe away years of bitterness with a few words reminding us that We Are Special, each in our own way. Fred would probably reject this notion, but I feel that he was perhaps the most special of all of us. The world needs more people like Mister Rogers. There can never be enough love, acceptance and affirmation.

Dave TV Mister Rogers

This month was one I could’ve done without, thank you very much.

It started off innocently enough, with a WILL-TV production team descending upon my humble home to shoot the following promo for next month’s Britcom Vote pledge drive event.

That is my bathroom and basement, but not my wife. My coworker Lisa just plays her on TV. We tried to include my cat Baxter in the spot, but he was having none of it.

This proved to be the high point of February.

The real fun began a couple of weeks ago, when my dad was admitted to the emergency room after passing out in his kitchen. It turned out to have been due to an atrial flutter, and was subsequently treated via ablation: a technique which involves running a catheter up into the heart and zapping it to interrupt the electrical circuit causing the arrhythmia. Dad will need a checkup to determine whether the ablation worked; a pacemaker is still an option.

I spent four days up in Hobart keeping him company and generally trying to be the dutiful son. I found it challenging. We don’t get along all that well anymore. Dad loves to talk about politics and religion, two subject areas about which we have little in common. It’s frustrating. His attitude is that all he knows for certain is what he’s been told; unfortunately, all he’s been told comes from talk radio. He insists that he doesn’t seek it out, it’s just that there’s nothing else on. That might fly with me if I didn’t WORK FOR AN NPR STATION.

I have to remind myself that he has been, in many ways, a very good dad. He certainly was an involved parent, and I didn’t want for much growing up. He made sure that I was able to get a college degree, and he drove me across the country when I took an internship in Hollywood. And yet…and yet…

A few days later after I returned to Champaign, our cat Bixby developed a severe, painful limp. To our dismay, we learned that he’d fractured his femur. How it happened will have to remain a mystery for the ages. All we know is that the ball of the ball-and-socket joint at his hip developed a break, and required a procedure called a femoral head ostectomy. A couple of days of failed attempts at administering oral pain medication later, Bixby had a successful surgery and should be returning home tomorrow, slightly worse for wear.

Somewhere in the middle of this, we bought a dishwasher. So there’s that.

Here’s hoping that March will involve less medical care.

Dave General suckitude

It’s always nice when a long-running TV series sticks the landing for its final episode. So many shows are cancelled without the chance for a proper resolution, while even those that have had time to prepare for the end sometimes blow it. I wasn’t all that bothered by the finales of Battlestar Galactica or Lost, but I understand why they were divisive among fans. Then there was Seinfeld, which was almost universally reviled for the apparent contempt it displayed both for itself and its audience in its final hour.

This brings me to 30 Rock. They had an opportunity for a victory lap before departing for the syndicated afterlife, and swung for the fences. The result was one of the best final seasons I’ve seen, capped by a silly and sentimental finale that gave most every character the ending they wanted.

I don’t have time to go into the details, but I do want to comment on the post-credits montage that put the coda on seven years of shenanigans.

(SPOILERS AHEAD. SUCK IT, NERDS!)

Initially I was left confused. I thought that they tried to fit too much into a short sequence. Set “one year later,” it bounced from the unraveling of Pete’s scheme to fake his death, to Jenna flashing her boobs at the Tonys after a semi-successful Broadway career, to Liz balancing work and children as the head writer for Grizz’ sitcom, to Tracy’s dad finally coming home with those cigarettes, to Jack again becoming head of General Electric. It was happy endings all around, except for Pete, but even he got a year off from his awful home life.

And then it got weird.

A laugh track began to intrude on Jack’s scene, and the image of the 30 Rockefeller building itself began to warp until it was revealed to be inside a snowglobe. This was, of course, a reference to the infamous finale of St. Elsewhere, which pissed off its fans by revealing that the entire series had taken place within the mind of an autistic boy staring at a snowglobe.

Except that this globe was in the hands of Kenneth, the former NBC page who had been promoted to the head of the network in the previous episode. I was so thrown by the sudden laugh track and the snowglobe fake-out that I totally missed the point of the final scene. In it, the ageless (and, as often hinted on the show, possible immortal and almost certainly connected to the island from Lost) Kenneth took a pitch from the great granddaughter of Liz Lemon, while Jetsons-like vehicles–and at least one Star Wars Cloud Car–zipped past his window. The post-racial descendant of one of Liz’ adopted children told him that the new series would be based on the stories her great grandmother used to tell. Kenneth smiled and said, “I know…and I love it.”

Now that I’ve had time to reflect, I really love this moment, and not just because it suggests long, happy lives for Liz and her family.

As someone who grew up with television, always wanted to work in it, and somehow made a career of it, for years I’ve had the unhappy perspective of watching it all spiraling down the drain. So what I like most about the 30 Rock finale is the hope it offers me and those (like Kenneth) who love the medium that 50 or 60 years down the line–when everyone will be flying Cloud Cars–television still might be very much a thing, presided over by a benign benefactor.

It may be fantasy, but it’s a comforting thought.

Dave Tina Fey 30 Rock