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George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.
Chuck Todd interviews me about alternate histories
Showing posts with label Mamas and Papas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mamas and Papas. Show all posts
Writing science fiction and songs have been two of my lifelong passions. This anthology combines them, with a selection of my science fiction and fantasy stories that has music as a theme, and my lyrics that deal with far-off suns, robots, and time travel.
Table of Contents Prologue =stories= Marilyn and Monet The Harmony The Kid in the Video Store Ian, Isaac, and John Saving Lennon (from The Loose Ends Saga) The Suspended Fourth Sam’s Requests The Singing Pottery (from The Silk Code) =songs= Evening's Evergreen Morning A Piece of the Rainbow The Lama Will Be Late This Year Alpha Centauri Lime Streets Tau Ceti If I Traveled to The Past I Fell in Love with a Robot The First House on Mars =alternate equation #1=
Elvis, Ed, and Einstein
Being a meta-person myself, I've always thought the most interesting powers on Heroes were those which in some unusual way played off the other powers - causing them to vanish like a super-temporary-eraser (the Haitian), absorbing the powers of others like a super sponge (Arthur and, in a different, deadly way, Sylar), and now...
In the final episode of volume 3 - 3.13 to be exact - Ando gets a great power of augmentation, or intensifying the powers of those heroes around him.
This causes Matt to read the minds of everyone in the city at once - not very useful - but Daphne to travel super super fast, faster than the speed of light, in fact, which, if some quantum mechanical theories and applications of Einstein's are right, can allow the superfast traveler to travel through time. Works for me. And for the series.
Meanwhile, it's makeup, breakup, everything is shakeup, to quote the Mamas & the Papas in "Creeque Alley", as I've done before, in at least one review, of Heroes. A few villains are gone, at least one hero, and, as for everyone else...
Heroes will back the Monday after the Superbowl, and I'll be watching.
Time travel's a tricky thing. If the Bennett home, now Sylar's (turned good) home, goes nuclear four years into the future, taking with it all of Costa Verde - because good Sylar went understandably nuclear himself - what can the heroes who are still good, four years back in the past, or right now in our present, do to prevent this catastrophe?
Thus does the fourth hour of Heroes Season Three - actually the third episode, because the season began with a two-hour double episode - re-situate us on the horns of Season One's dilemma, or how to change time and stop the nuclear devastation of New York City not that far in the future. Except, this time, Costa Verde is gone...
And along with it ... Sylar, the good father of a son (named Noah - wow, it be a neat trick in time if somehow he survived and became HRG). And also Daphne, who fast as she is, can't get to the scene fast enough to stop it, nor to escape unscathed. But present Peter survives, because, like Claire, he can't be killed. But ... wait ... maybe that means that Sylar will survive this, too, because he now has some of Claire's power, too.
And while we're on the subject of immortality, how is it that Peter of the future is apparently killed - what happened in four years to strip him of his immortality? (Was the Haitian around?)
Well, one thing that's not too difficult to understand is Mohinder's sad story. Like a fly caught in the flypaper of the classic science fiction movie The Fly, Mohinder's serum not only gives him super powers, but is turning him into a scaly creature. He can barely tell present Peter what happens when he comes to see him.
And Tracy is beginning to make a little more sense, too. She's a triplet, along with Niki/Jessica and a third sister, which explains why she and Niki look exactly the same. Tracy will go on to marry Nathan, and become First Lady to his President of the United States-
But, not if someone in our present prevents that Costa nuclear future from happening.
Paging Hiro ... he saved the world once, sort of. But now Claire may be becoming his enemy, not to mention Ando, not to mention Adam, whom Hiro now diggs up because he needs his assistance.
As they say in Creeque Alley, "Make up, break up, everything is shake up..." The Mamas and Poppas and Heroes...
Episode 8 of this Season of Lost - the final episode of this first part of the 4th Season - was mostly about Michael. But I think the most important part may have been about Alex.
First, Michael - his story was told superbly in this episode, in a flashback that goes back not to before the crash of 815, but to the time after Ben sets Michael and Walt free from the island. When we first see this flashback, it's not entirely clear that it isn't a flashforward, to the time after the Oceanic Six have left the island. Michael - like Jack - is despondent, and tries to take his own life. Like Jack, he doesn't succeed.
Tom appears and explains to Michael just why he couldn't commit suicide. But, first, Tom's very appearance tells us this is a flashback to after Michael first left the island, not an Oceanic Six flashforward. Because, as we saw at the end of Season 3, Tom will return to the island and be killed by Sawyer when Hurley prevents the execution of Sawyer, Sayid, and Bernard by The Others who are exceeding Ben's command ... (one of my all-time favorite scenes in Lost).
But, back in Michael's flashback, Tom, not yet killed by Sawyer, tells Michael that the island won't let Michael die. Michael already tried to kill himself by crashing his car into a barrier. He survived that, and after his meeting with Tom, Michael finds he can't kill himself with a bullet to the head, either. By why not? What's the island's "game" in this?
Not clear. Except, ironically, it didn't work for Tom back on the island at the end of Season 3. And, in that same finale, it apparently did prevent Jack from jumping off the bridge in his flashforward.
Fascinating, and important - because it may also tie into the recuperative powers of the island on Locke, maybe Rose, etc. It was one of the two most important parts of Michael's story, tonight (which had some great acoustic markers, with sounds on the ship reminiscent of sounds in the hatch, and Mama Cass singing another great song).
The other part of Michael's story ties into the second branch of Episode 8 - Michael's relationship with Ben, who has a crucial conversation with Michael in which Ben reminds Michael that Michael killed Ana Lucia and Libby on his own, not under Ben's orders...
This is important, because it gets, again, to Ben's true nature - how truly evil is Ben?
Seemingly good, back on the island in the present, when Ben pleads with Alex to flee to the Temple, so she is nowhere near him when Widmore's people come after him. Alex reluctantly goes, along with her boyfriend, Karl, and her mother, Rousseau.
As the three get close to the Temple, an unseen sniper kills Alex's boyfriend. Rousseau soon dies...
Only Alex survives. (Presumably, because we of course can never be sure with this island.)
Were the bullets fired by Ben's enemies? That's the obvious conclusion.
But I'm wondering if Ben wasn't behind this, wanting to get Karl and Rousseau totally out of the way, so he can be Alex's father again with no interference, which is the way things were before the end of Season 3.
That would make Ben a pretty evil person. Yeah, I'm thinking that's just what Ben is.
And I'll be back here, with egg on my face for any wrong predictions, and smirks for what if anything I get right, at the end of April, for Part II of the spectacular season of Lost.
That's the Starland Vocal Band, performing this summer - 2007 - on PBS.
Their Afternoon Delight was my favorite song of 1976, and has been pretty close if not at the top most years since. Exquisite, zesty, soulful harmonies - not to mention a cleverly truthful lyric, if ever there was one.
I gave them a shout out a few months ago on Light On Light Through - did that term even exist in 1976? - and now, the more I listen to this song, I'm thinking it's not only up there with the best of the Mamas and Papas, it's even better (except maybe for 12:30 - "Young girls are coming to the canyon..." - my favorite Mamas and Papas song).
But Bill and Taffy and Margot and Jon are up there, singing their hearts and souls out, as good as they ever were, just a few months ago. What other harmony group can you say that about?
I put the Starland Vocal Band on my MySpace Top Friends section, and I'm going to keep them there forever. Check it out - and their great page on MySpace, too. And while you're there, take a look at Bill Danoff's page, and the pages for other members of the group. On Bill's, for example, you'll find a real gem of a video - John Denver, singing a song he wrote with Bill and Taffy, singing it down in Australia in the 1970s ... "Take Me Home, Country Roads"...
