Unsought Input

Good news, everyone! One of England’s best sitcoms ever created - Simon Pegg’s Spaced - has finally come ’round to Region 1 DVD here in America!

the cast of Spaced

Before Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were fighting zombies in Shaun of the Dead, they were slacking around North London as Tim and Mike in Spaced.  Spaced is a somewhat dark yet giggly show that wasn’t really about much of anything other than that stale bit of your life that falls between leaving the fun of your 20s behind and laying out how your 30s might pan out. Besides Pegg, the show stars and was co-written by Jessica Hynes (nee Stephenson) who didn’t have quite a large role Shaun but is a central character in Spaced.

The plot is simple - Tim (Pegg) and Daisy (Hynes) are strangers when they meet in a cafe at the beginning of the show, but find that flat hunting is more lucrative as a pair. They find the perfect flat but are told the renter is looking for couples only, so they pose as a couple in order to be accepted. Also living in the house are cougar landlord Marsha (Julia Deakin) and conceptual artist Brian (Mark Heap). Frost plays Tim’s Army-obsessed best mate Mike and Daisy’s best friend Twist is played by Katy Carmichael.

Tim is a graphic artist/comic book writer and Daisy is an extremely unproductive writer. The two bounce around between jobs and being on the dole, inbetween marathon video game sessions and Robot Wars. Daisy is trying desperately to be fun and hip while Tim is trying to hold on to that last bit of childhood fun.

What’s most fun about the show is the endless homages to various sci-fi movies and shows, 70s and 80s pop culture, horror films, cartoons and video games. One of the extra features of the DVD set is a “Homage-o-meter” so you can follow along.

Besides the wink-wink-nudge-nudge of the homages, the writing, acting and filming of this show are all top notch. Each character is a bit of a caricature in contrast to the more boring Tim and Daisy yet they are mostly harmless and genuinely care about each other as part of a new surrogate family. Any resemblance to Friends pretty much ends there - none of the characters are successful, all of the characters are odd and/or awkward and they all live in an apartment they can seemingly afford.

The new Region 1 release has the complete show (all 14 episodes…goddamn that British short series!) plus the extras from the original discs in the form of outtakes, commentary, deleted scenes and a short documentary. New for this release is special commentary by American celebs Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Bill Hader (from SNL, not Napoleon Dynamite), Matt Stone, Patton Oswalt, and Diablo Cody.

It’s taken 7 years for this gem to come out in Region 1. Even though I’ve watched it a few times from a few different skeevy sources, I was still moved to buy the DVD set. It’s an absolutely perfect little show that show be part of any Gen Xer’s “I’m so fucking cool” DVD collection. I know the truly cool amongst you had it on Region 2 already but now you can stop pointing out how your pals didn’t hack their DVD players and get your Spaced on without prejudice. I love it when a plan comes together!

We often complain about the future not being so futuristic. Where are the flying cars, the teleporters, the personal ray guns? These complaints are simply whininess. A mere look at your cell phone and bluetooth headset shows that the future is here.

Thus I speak of time travel merely through change of perspective.

The ability to get to the future can be done with righteous self-determination.

(more…)

Recently I have felt that I have not been reading enough. I already feel that I have become very stupid since I graduated from college, but now I feel even dumber. My job is simple and under stimulating, so I really don’t have anything to keep me from becoming slightly less intelligent each day. Anyway, I just wanted a short introduction to why I am doing this, not a personal bio on myself which I am assuming you could care less about (I know I wouldn’t).

So….I have decided that I want to read the entire top 100 list for BOTH fantasy and sci-fi novels. I also think I would like to watch the top sci-fi movies. Now, mind you, I realize that this is quite a lofty goal seeing as how I have 200+ novels and some amount of movies ahead of me. And recently I have also come to realize that there aren’t a lot of authoritative lists of the top 100 novels in either category. I have found a few on the internet but I don’t know that I agree with the lists. I understand that these lists are all rated on someone’s opinion but I feel that it would be much better if we could come up with some way to create a rating system to make it a little more scientific.

Anyway, I am rambling. Basically through this blog I want to do three things: 1^st: I want to read and review the ‘supposedly’ top 100 novels in both lists (here is the link to my lists, if you wanted to follow along.

Top 100 sci-fi novels: http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books_rank1.html

Top sci-fi movies: http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_film.html

Top Fantasy novels: http://www.geocities.com/area51/cavern/6113/t100256.txt).

These are the best lists I could find, and actually my friend gave me the Sci-fi list. Anyway…

2^nd: I want to create a rating system to neatly rank the novels so the rankings are a little less opinionated and a little more scientific. It is science fiction. I am still playing around with the ranking topics but I think that basically it will fall into these categories:

-Overall readability (if you can’t get through it, it doesn’t matter how

good it is),

-Story quality (is it just cut and paste basic plot or is it creative and

different)

-Originality quality (have you heard this story before)

-Character believability (do you feel for the characters, sympathize

with them, love/hate them, feel part of the story because of them)

-Overall effect of novel (does it compel you to continue reading the series?

3^rd: I want other people’s opinions of my rating and possibly other people’s ranking of these novels so we can create an authoritative list. Also, if people have novels they want to add to the list (both of these lists aren’t exactly updated regularly anymore and don’t include newer books) that would be awesome.

Well, I think that’s it for my first post. It would be really cool if people wanted to participate. Please leave me comments!