Batman may be The World's Greatest Detective, but according to DC Comics, he's not a cunning lingus

Oh boy, this is a wild one, folks. The internet got a bit roiled the other day after it was discovered that DC Comics had requested a scene from an episode of HBO Max's Harley Quinn animated series be removed. So what was it about this one particular scene that triggered an intervention by DC?

Batman going down on Catwoman.

Yes, that's right folks, DC found out that one episode contained a scene in which the Caped Crusader *ahem* swabs the deck, so to speak because according the comic giant, "heroes don't do that". They apparently elaborated that it was a marketing decision because somebody at DC thinks that a billionaire who dresses up as a bat and punches clowns performing orally on a woman who dresses up as a cat will somehow negatively impact their ability to sell merchandise of a billionaire who dresses up as a bat and punches clowns. Okay??? Maybe overthinking it here, guys? Maybe projecting a little? 🤔🤔🤔

Really though, this is a perfect example of the "Streisand Effect" where DC unintentionally brought more attention to the whole oral sex thing by trying to excise it. The fact is that this wouldn't have been as big of an issue as they feared, but they made it one by overreacting. Sure, "Batman eats out Catwoman" would have gotten some attention on the internet, but not as much as "DC Comics made Harley Quinn cartoon remove a scene where Batman goes down on Catwoman".

Masters of the Universe: Revelation looks interesting

It's got all the right-wingers on YouTube riled up for reasons that I honestly don't care to find out why. It's He-Man, ya dorks.

This could have been Jurassic Park if Steven Spielberg hadn't been a coward

I only vaguely remember Dino-Riders and if I ever win the lottery, I'm buying as much of the toys as I can find because it's always looked awesome as hell!

This movie post is sponsored by S-Mart. Shop smart, shop S-Mart.

Be sure to say hi to Ash in housewares.

I don't why it is, but I like old action movies and Cliffhanger turned out to be better than what I expected. Jurassic World was fine, but it doesn't have the rewatchability of the original. Random Hearts was not at all what I was expecting. I only briefly skimmed the back of the DVD case, so I assumed that it was a conspiracy thriller, but it was a drama about two people not only having to cope with the loss of the spouses, but the revelations that they were having an affair with each other.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was a good movie too, but Keira Knightley's American accent was not great. It sounded like someone from California trying to do a New England accent. Earthquake was a good disaster flick with a dumb ending. I would still recommend it if you want to watch a disaster flick.

And of course Army of Darkness was groovy. ;)

When you're rich, you can afford to be the "weird" actor

The Daily Beast has an interview with Daniel Radcliffe titled "Daniel Radcliffe Somehow Became Hollywood’s Weirdest Actor—and Its Most Normal Celebrity" and my immediate thought was "Of course the dude can be "weird"; he made so much money from the Harry Potter movies that he doesn't need to mainstream appeal or oeuvre." and it's true. At this point, Radcliffe could star in an anal gangbang movie and it wouldn't matter to his career because he doesn't need the cash.

What I did find surprising is that he's starring in a show on TBS. It's not that he's doing TV that's surprising (though the fact that it's American television and not British telly is), it's that he's doing one on TBS which isn't exactly a big network compared to like NBC, CBS, and the others. I think in terms of that, they're probably below AMC, but equal to TNT and maybe the History Channel. Basically, they're not small or insignificant, but TBS doesn't immediately pop to mind the same way that AMC and FX or CW would. But again, Daniel Radcliffe is rich as hell and if he wants to do a TV show on a middle sized network, then he certainly can.

The article itself is a pretty good read but the title isn't terribly accurate. The only role Radcliffe has played that can be considered "weird" is in the movie Swiss Army Man where he plays a corpse. A flatulent corpse. Otherwise, the other roles listed in the article are pretty normal for an actor who wants to do non-standard, "safe" movies (e.g. big budget blockbusters) and I applaud him for it.

The new TV show he's starring in, Miracle Workers, sounds interesting and I might check it out when it premieres tonight. From the description, the show is similar to The Good Place, but a little more bleak. Radcliffe plays a low level angel working in the department that handles answering prayers in a version of Heaven that's run more like a corporation. Then God, immature and incompetent and played by Steve Buscemi, decides that he wants to destroy the Earth because he's bored with it and wants to move on to something else. To prevent this, Craig (Radcliffe) and another character named Eliza (played by Geraldine Viswanathan) have to help two people fall in love. My interest in piqued.

The day we've all dreaded has arrived: Stan Lee has died, age 95

There are no words to adequately describe that man's impact on pop culture, so I'll just say thanks Stan Lee for giving us so many superheroes.

Excelsior.

What boredom and a bare knowledge of MS Paint hath wrought!

Here's the official trailer for Into the Spider-Verse starring Spider-Ham and some other people

Spider-Ham, Spider-Ham, does whatever a Spider-Ham can.

February's Person of the Month: Sir Arthur C. Clarke

(via Wikipedia)

I've decided to revive my short-lived "Icon of the Month" feature and having just finished The Hammer of God, I can't think of no one better to honor than Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

Clarke, of course, is a titan of the SF genre. From his pen and mind came astounding works of science fiction such as Rendezvous With Rama, Childhood's End, The Fountains of Paradise, and more. His most famous work, without a doubt, would be 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in conjunction with the groundbreaking Stanley Kubrick film. 2001 would spawn three sequels as part of the Space Odyssey series.

Rendezvous With Rama was the first novel of his that I had ever read and I loved it. It was one of those books that I wish I had read long ago and regretted not having done so.

He had an impact outside of the SF as well. In 1945, he first wrote a paper describing the potential use of telecommunications satellites in geostationary orbit. While it's not clear if his paper led to the development of such satellites, he predicted them almost a decade before anybody else. Today, geostationary orbit is called Clarke Orbit.

He also played TV host in the 1980s and '90s to a trio of shows: Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe.

Arthur C. Clarke was the last of the "Big Three" of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and himself to die. Even though I had never read any of his books at the time, his death in 2008 was a gut punch because it was crystal clear that SF and the world at large had lost a bit of greatness.

The Good and the Bad: My Thoughts on Doctor Who's "Twice Upon a Time"

via Doctor Who Wiki.

The good: The crossover between the Doctor's First and Twelfth incarnations. David Bradley's turn as the First Doctor. Twelve's/Peter Capaldi's farewell speech before regenerating. Thirteenth Doctor!

The bad: Everything else.

So let's talk about the bad first. I thought the plot was weak and thin. It's like Steven Moffat went to the well and came up dry. The antagonist, The Testimony, turn out not to be antagonists at all, so there was pretty much no conflict whatsoever. Add to this that they're barely even in the story and it becomes clear that Moffat was just going through the motions. Not much in the way of action either. Really, "Twice Upon a Time" almost felt like a bottle episode. Like, Moffat and Co. had to do a Christmas special but only with whatever money they had left over from series 10 because BBC wouldn't give them a separate budget. I don't know and I doubt that that's true, but the lackluster nature of the special compared to previous endeavors makes it seem like they were making do with what they had.

I also wasn't feeling the reunion between the Doctor, Bill, and Nardole. It felt tacked on. The cameo by Clara was nice, though. 

Now onto the good. I loved David Bradley's portrayal of the First Doctor. I would love to see him reprise the role again. Maybe the Beeb could redo some of the lost episodes with him as The Doctor? His interactions with Twelve were pretty good too. I especially enjoyed the culture clash with One having the sexist mentality of someone both old and from the 1960s versus Twelve, who is much more open and progressive minded. Watching the latter being embarrassed every time his previous incarnation said something sexist had me snickering. The bit where One asks what browser history is while wearing the sonic sunglasses was one of the best of the special.

via Doctor Who Wiki.

Also? The First Doctor looks cool as all hell in Ray-Ban sunglasses.

The best part of "Twice Upon a Time", though, had to be the Twelfth Doctor's farewell speech before regenerating.



It was heartfelt and emotional without being over the top. It was a self-reflection of The Doctor and all they stand for and why people have loved the show for 50+ years. What really hit me was the final line before he regenerated. "Doctor...I let you go" to me sounds like Peter Capaldi talking and not The Doctor. That this was Capaldi saying farewell to a character he played for three series. It was wonderful.

"Oh brilliant!"
(via Doctor Who Wiki)

And now of course, there's the new kid on the block. The major anticipation of "Twice Upon a Time" of course was the debut of the Thirteenth Doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker. Much has been made of the fact that we were finally getting an incarnation of The Doctor that was a woman, so seeing her debut was obviously the main draw. We only see Thirteen briefly and we won't see her embark on her first adventure unless late next year (the horror! The misery! The injustice of it all!), but from our brief glimpse of the Time Lady, it should be brilliant!

Weak plot aside, I enjoyed the Christmas special. It served it's intended purpose of both sending off Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor and introducing Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth.

What did you think about "Twice Upon a Time"?

The wax job alone must cost a small fortune

I was reading a post on Armageddon Time last week that mentioned a He-Man action figure called Grizzlor with a link to the He-Man.org website about the figure. I watched the He-Man cartoon when I was a kid, but never really collected the toys, so I'd never heard of Grizzlor until that point. So I clicked the link and was not disappointed.

It's like someone tried to hot wax a Wookiee, but the limbs were the only things done before the esthetician gave up.

A longer post on Disney possibly buying 21st Century Fox

Yeah, let's start off with the fact that contrary to my previous post, Disney has not, in fact, bought 21st Century Fox. Yet. I jumped the gun in my excitement, opps. Anyways, I do think it will likely happen because Rupert Murdoch isn't going to turn down the over $52 billion Disney is offering. The biggest hurdle will be getting the merger approved by the the U.S. and probably other governments. Basically, any time a company tries to buy another company, the Department of Justice has to sign off on it, provided that it doesn't violate federal anti-trust laws. My one concern there is if the Fox television channel is included in the deal, then the DOJ might not like Disney owning two broadcast networks. If that becomes a problem, then I suspect Disney will simply sell the channel to someone else.

But all that aside, what I'm really keen on and I'm sure everybody else is to is the possible return of the X-Men and Fantastic Four film rights to Marvel and their addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of the two, I'm actually more hyped for the FF because if this deal goes through, then we'll finally, FINALLY, get a good Fantastic Four movie! The reason is because the X-Men franchise has had the luck of success for most of its existence, while the FF haven't. I'm partial to them, so I'd like to see the Fabulous 4some get the treatment they deserve.

So the obvious problem is how to integrate the X-Men into the MCU. The FF can pop up at any point, come to think of it, so their introduction isn't problematic. The X-Men and mutants, on the other hand, can't just show up and like they've always been there.

Or could they?

The thought that occurred to me before the news of Fox's possible acquisition by Disney (back when it was just rumored) is that Marvel could use Avengers: Infinity War Part 2. How? One of the Infinity Gems controls reality and another controls time. My idea is that near the end of Infinity War Part 2, Thanos or somebody uses the Reality and the Time gems or possibly the Infinity Gauntlet to create major alterations (coughcoughretconscoughcough) to the MCU that results in the X-Men and mutants having always existed in the MCU.

So what do you think about the X-ceptional and Fantastic possibility of these new additions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

RIP Jim Nabors

Man, this one especially sucks because I grew up watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show. Never watched Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. because it never seemed to rerun on on TV. Nabors was always able to get you to laugh with a "gollllly" or a "shazam!" and his bumbling portrayal of Gomer.

But you know what sucks? He had to wait until 2011 to finally marry his husband and only got six years to enjoy having a marriage. But it's nice that he lived long enough to actually tie to knot.

(Picture via Mayberry Wiki)

The Gifted is a really good show, y'all

I was skeptical when I first heard about The Gifted because I react to trailers the same way I react to seeing Jehovah's Witnesses - I avoid them. Sometimes by turning off the lights and pretending I'm not there. Sometimes by hiding in someone's shrubbery. So because of that, I had the impression that the show was about two parents on the run with their mutant children and that was that.

Kind of like 90s TV show Promised Land, if Promised Land had been cool. Which it wasn't.

What we got with The Gifted instead is a genuinely great X-Men series that Fox will be more than happy to cancel at the end of the season because Fox hates everything that is happiness and joy. The choice of characters from the X-Men mythos is interesting. Obviously, they couldn't use any of the major characters from the movie franchise, but the selection isn't terrible. We've got Thunderbird, the ill-fated X-Man who in the comics was killed off almost immediately; Polaris, who is quite aggressive and quite pregnant with Eclipse, a character created for the show. The show also has its own version of Blink and her skepticism at everything the Mutant Underground does is refreshing. I like a character who isn't just going to accept everything the other protags do because conformity will be the downfall of our civilization.

Conformity and Marvel's Inhumans.

But yeah, it's a great show and can't recommend it enough. Just be sure to watch it before Fox gets around to canceling it.

There's them Avenger boys and girls fighting their Infinity War

"And get this man a shield."

The Thirteenth Doctor's got herself some new duds!

Source: Official Doctor Who Twitter.

Spiffy.

Hey look, a new Star Wars: The Last Jedi poster

(via Star Wars Twitter)

Spiffy.

The Mysterious Disappearances of Ellie Walker and Warren Ferguson

During the first season of The Andy Griffith Show, Sheriff Andy Taylor was paired with Mayberry's pharmacist, Ellie Walker. Twelve episodes later, she was gone with no on-screen explanation. The two real life explanations given have the lack of chemistry between the actress, Elinor Donahue, and Andy Griffith. Donahue claims that she asked for a release in order to deal with personal issues.

via Mayberry Wiki

I'm a longtime fan of The Andy Griffith Show since I was a lad and I've never been a fan of the pairing because of the difference in age between Griffith and Donahue. Griffith was around 34, while Donahue was about 23. While eleven years isn't a huge deal, Griffith looked much older than his years, so it always seemed to me as if he were a middle-aged man rocking the cradle. But, eh, that's just me. I always thought him and Helen Crump were a much better pairing since they were closer in age, presumably.

Now, what's hilarious is that one apparent fan theory is that Ellie ditched both Andy and Mayberry to become of all things...a groupie. It's based on the sole fact that Ellie's last appearance on the show was an episode called "The Guitar Player Returns" wherein a guitar player reunites with his manager and band. The guitar player never appears on the show again. And neither does Ellie. The idea is that the town is sooo scandalized by her running off, that they decide as one never to mention her again.

[Overly dramatic zoom in]

Or maybe it was something more...sinister. What if Andy caught Ellie two-timing with the guitar player and the Sheriff Without a Gun became a Man with a Gun and a dead body. Could Ellie Walker be lying at the bottom of Myer's Lake, waiting for some hapless fisherman to accidentally reel her in? Is that why Andy abruptly moved out of state at the end of the eighth season?

[Cue X-Files music]

[Zoom out]

Or you know, not.

I don't know about you, but I would certainly buy this man's books

via Reddit.

If I were Stephen King, I would use that as my author's photo forever.

And now for some interesting television trivia

Because I'm both bored and have acquired quite a bit of otherwise useless trivia.

Leave It to Beaver was both the first TV series to show a toilet and the first to have a series finale. The latter is interesting because apparently most shows at the time just ended when they were cancelled without a proper sendoff like long-running successful shows do now. Meanwhile, Star Trek has been around for fifty-one years and has never shown the former.

Hugh Beaumont, who played Ward Cleaver, retired from acting at the end of the show's run and became a tree farmer until his death in 1977. I guess after you've played the dad of a kid named 'Beaver', it's time to call it a career. When they did a reunion movie and subsequent spinoff back in the 80s, they explained Beaumont's absence as Ward having died a couple years prior.

Speaking of death, when Don Blocker from Bonanza died in 1972 from a pulmonary embolism, his character simply disappeared from the show without any onscreen explanation. It wasn't until the first Bonanza television movie that his character Hoss Cartwright was revealed to have drowned by trying to rescue a woman from, ironically, drowning. Similarly when the last TV movie was made after the death of Michael Landon, it was explained that his Little Joe character had been killed at the Battle of San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. Talk about a critical failure of character shields.

He wasn't working harder,
he was working smarter.
Credit: Sid Avery | IMDb.

Actor Fred MacMurray of The Absent-Minded Professor and The Apartment fame filmed all of his scenes for his show My Three Sons in two separate one month blocks each season in order to be free to continue making movies and playing golf. These were just his scenes, mind you, so the rest of the cast had to film around him.

One of the reasons The Rockford Files was cancelled despite its popularity is because years of doing his own stunts for both it and his previous show, Maverick, had wrecked James Garner's back and knees. Another reason is that the show frequently used well known guest stars that were more expensive than using ones that were more c-list or otherwise cheap.

Speaking of costs, that was the reason The Dukes of Hazzard was cancelled. The General Lee had to be replaced every episode because surprise, surprise, the cars couldn't survive the landing from those epic jump stunts. Eventually it just became too expensive for the network to keep buying 1969 Dodge Chargers. The show did briefly continue as a cartoon, however.

Ja'net Dubois, who played Willona Woods on CBS's 70s hit Good Times, also co-wrote and sang the theme for another of CBS's hit, The Jeffersons.

That's it for now. I plan on posting more and even doing ones focused on singular bits, like Ben Cartwright’s (from Bonanza) marital curse, the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, and more. If you enjoyed these, then let me know in the comments below.