Story: 'Yoghurt Vat Kids: New Heroes for the Probiotic Age!', I

They thought every permutation of superhero had been done, from Bananaman to the Fonzz, but they were wrong. Somewhere under Paris, a brainstorming session took place, one that would change us all forever.

*

Some weeks later toys began to appear in supermarkets, little figures in half-pot yoghurt cases: Strawb, Lem, Pina, Peachie and Squash. The Five of them together were apparently the Yoghurt Vat Kids! The back story went as thus:
"Apparently the results of illegal cloning experiments that took place behind a dairy company front, each of the Kids had a special yoghurt power, that they would use to defend liberty and embrace justice in the Probiotic Age! Armed with their gifts, and well developed intestinal fortitude, they would face down the horrors of evil restaurateurs and their nemesis Captain Moustache while plumbing the mysteries of their own existence."

People were amused and even a little tickled by the preposterousness of the idea, thinking it a blatant ripoff of the existing Power Rangers concept but little did they know what those brainstormers in Paris, those cads Jean-Pierre Grimaud, Stanley Tedwin and Ernst Lopner, had really in mind. Soon, and inevitably, a cartoon emerged onto screens all over the world, which predictably lasted less than a full season before vanishing off screens in a rush. It seemed the Yoghurt Vat Kids had failed.

*

Two years after the last episode of the Kids premiered in North America there was a sighting of a mysterious incident in Madrid. A man with a strawberry patch on his sleeve was seen plummeting from the Heavens and subsequently breaking up a mugging before soaring back to his unknown horizon. The following week, a woman emblazoned with the Squash was seen in Copenhagen emerging from the water with a young child that would otherwise have drowned. What was going on?

No one drew connections with 'Yoghurt Vat Kids' for a few months, after numerous sightings of all five heroes and even a sixth with the badge of the banana. People were concerned, feathers were ruffled, and dairies were looked at as suspiciously thereafter as they should have been before. People began to have conversations about the 'Probiotic Age' and what it might mean in the world as they knew it. Finally, a threat to the world emerged that only the Yoghurt Vat Kids could confront as a group. It did not involve a comedically moustached Swiss maniac, but it would raise questions that would last for years to come.

Most of all those questions? 'Why are the Yoghurt Vat Kids'?

Merry Christmas

Christmas is a confusing and somewhat confounding time of year for the professed agnostic. What exactly are we celebrating and what are we anticipating? It's best just to let it all drop away and enjoy the fact that it's a holiday. Meaning is only meaning if it's relevant to us. Otherwise it's just a trapping. Woo woo. New Year, on the other hand, is an even odder occasion. It's such an arbitrary date to cycle the calendar but we celebrate it nonetheless, and in far more varied ways. While we are stuck with the dull traditional roast lunch on Christmas Day we are liberated for New Year and it is wonderful. We can eat anything!

<Thinks for six hours>

Oh, I forgot and it's a little late, but here we go: Merry Christmas! We had some fun here over Christmas, with water coming through the roof and busted heating but all is well now. It must be well as I'm watching 'Quincy, M.E.' and remembering just how good that show was. Jeepers, between it and 'Columbo' there's no need to ever watch another detective show. The 70's were a good decade after all for television. There were those two shows, and 'The Bionic Woman', 'The Incredible Hulk', 'M*A*S*H', 'The Muppet Show', 'Taxi' and more.

As you may have noticed I know a lot about American television. It was a haven for me and remains so, a space where we can learn about human nature on some level. As a fully functional Trek Head I watched all of the first three 'Star Trek' series, as well as the shows I've already named, 'Cheers', 'Frasier', 'Alias', 'Community' and a host of other bizarre concoctions and even domestic British television. Yikes. And then were all the books... Oh, why ramble on about all this?

Looking back on Christmas Day I should mention the 'Doctor Who' Christmas special, entitled 'The Snowmen'. It was far better than I expected, and the new companion Clara was rather fetching and intriguing especially as she has now appeared and expired twice. Interesting! The previous companions really lingered on for too long, as in retrospect they had a perfect write-out at the end of series six and their leaving was foreshadowed relentlessly. Also, it seems that the foreshadowing of the eleventh Doctor's end have been dropped for now, which is welcome. Why foreshadow departures every single time? It spoils the surprise and wrecks the mood way ahead of time.

Back to sleep now. Snore.

O.

Movie: 'Safety Not Guaranteed' (2012)

Now, there are three movies that I watched for the first time in 2012 that I liked so much that I immediately decided I should buy when the opportunity came: 'The Lonely Guy' of 1984, 'Fish Story' of 2009 and 'Safety Not Guaranteed' of 2012. That last one I haven't written about until now. It's a largely unknown little gem of an independent movie that has captured me by a net of many little ways. It's opening to some kind of release here in the UK apparently so I'll try not to spoil it with details and encourage people to go see it if they are lucky enough to have a screen near them! It's a sweet movie, good and solid, and it features a zither.

Down in the film's story, a Seattle magazine intern called Darius and her two colleagues go to a small town to investigate the person who put the following small ad in a newspaper:
"Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before."

Darius is played by the super-cute Aubrey Plaza who appears in 'Parks and Recreation', and in whom I've had a minor league crush, secure in the knowledge that I'll never have to beat it over the head with reality. I mention that simply to explain any bias that may be apparent. Plaza does well, playing her usual offbeat self, and not leaning into any attempts at heavy acting. It would be interesting to see how her acting demeanour differentiates from what she puts forward as a standup. I imagine it's not too different. Oh, and of course she's lovely in her own unique way, says the bias leaning on my shoulder.

Darius's associates Jeff and Arnau have their own subplots, mainly based on Jeff's quest to meet a long lost flame and impress upon the youthful Arnau the importance of acting young while you are still young. They have a very touching little story but the horrifically foul mouth of Jeff really put me off, which I know is a personal problem rather than a film problem, although as he's practically the only swearer in the movie he really breaks the tone. Perhaps that IS a film problem. Comment below if you have an opinion!

The key to enjoying this movie is holding the idea of a fable in your mind, especially as you approach the finale. In a tiny budget time travel movie you will make compromises. and the time machine here is no exception but I love it. No one knows what a time machine will look like, so why not like this? Seriously? And what does time travel look like? We don't know. Rather this than what they do in 'Looper', where it looks like nothing at all.

Pulling it all together, I will recommend 'Safety Not Guaranteed', and not just because I like Aubrey Plaza. There's something charming about it, a sense of fun that pops up so rarely and should always be savoured. The ending is actually, literally, lovely in an understated fashion and unusually fantastic. On the negative side we have some plot implausibilities, Jeff's lonely arc of melancholy, and some blue sky acting which I personally like. If you tend not to buy into sappy finales then this may not be the film for you but if you can... then watch 'Safety Not Guaranteed'. People can argue that it's not a great movie, but personally I like it very much.

Oh, and I'll say again: There is a zither! That's only my second zither encounter after the music for 'The Third Man'. And Aubrey Plaza does her thing. Sweet but lethal.

O.

Errors

A cursory reading of my blog has revealed numerous and egregious errors both typographical and nonsensical. Over the next few days I shall revise as many posts as possible to make them more readable, while hopefully not damaging their essences to any great extent. I apologise for the lack of proficient proofreading in the past.

O.

Book: 'Ringworld' (1970)

This is a story about a man. No, it's a story about a giant ring habitat hundreds of light years away. Maybe not, maybe it is about a woman with extraordinary luck. Oh well, maybe its a story about how flawed the Ringworld is because it has no surplus resources and can only allow stasis or decline on a civilization scale. Urk. Well it could be about how we're not human until we've suffered a bit. Whatever else you can say about Larry Niven's 'Ringworld', you can't say it lacks multiple focusses in its narrative. In fact there are too many, resulting in a lack of focus in the narrative once we've landed on the Ringworld, and that narrative becomes even more diffuse once you include the standard science fiction writer's fixation with human sexuality. I think that back in the sixties and seventies there were hordes of science fiction writers just wandering around in a state of monomania. It's bizarre and incongruous and presumably existed to underline that these books were not for children. Anyway, so we have a lack of focus once we land on the eponymous Ringworld. But what is a Ringworld, who are our characters, and what is driving the plot?

In the far future the invention of teleportation, an instantaneous and ubiquitous form of travel, has rendered the Earth culturally and racially homogeneous. Contact with alien life form has been mostly with warlike and feline Kzin and the eccentric double-headed birdlike Pierson's Puppeteers. The human homogeneity and the advent of longevity-giving boosterspice have made it easier for many and harder for some as the boredom of immortality settles upon them. Our protagonist, one Louis Wu, is such a bored adventurer and is recruited by a Mad Puppeteer along with a Kzin and a genetically lucky companion to go forth and investigate a massive artefact outside of known space. The story is about their recruitment, journey, crash, exploration and ultimately the escape.

So, the idea is great and epic, and the concept of the massive artificial Ringworld is awesome in its scope but the story fails once we get there. Why is that? It must be due to the lack of focus, and the fact that not a lot of interest happens on the Ringworld itself. There's much philosophy and sociological commentary but that can only serve to counterpoint a faster and compelling narrative, which does not exist here. There's some half-hearted romance, which serves mainly to underline how the character with genetically engineered luck has been unconsciously manipulating her companions, but it is fairly nominal. In fact, the revelation that her luck has motivated practically the whole adventure for her own self-improvement totally undermines all the other characters and destroys the finale. The final point of the triangle of disappointment is that the exploration of the Ringworld is rather dull.

What is a Ringworld? It's a massive artificial structure, a ring built around a sun with a radius of presumably about an astronomical unit (AU = average distance from Earth to Sun) which is intended for habitation. It's a variation on a Dyson Sphere, where you would build a whole sphere around a sun and live on the inside surface. They're awesome ideas but ultimately abstractions which may never exist in reality. Such a ring would have the surface area equivalent to many dozens or even hundreds of Earths. It would also have no mineral treasure to allow further development or building and would be dependent on imported minerals for such purposes. It would also require the builders to totally clean out their solar system (and neighbours) of all material for the building and even then would be a huge target for meteors. Note, you can't have a Dyson Sphere or a Ringworld without some plan for dealing with meteors and comets.

Now, I've been a bit negative as I tend to be at times. It's not that bad a classic science fiction novel. In many ways it's actually rather good. The narrative simply becomes a bit disappointing and that's sad. Also, dissension is wrought between the characters as that story goes on and it's never resolved well. The main plus is that does have a massive Ringworld outside of known space and a cowardly manic depressive bird thing with two heads. I guess we can call that an even result. Go ahead and read 'Ringworld', it's not brilliant but it's kind of good in an odd way. For brilliance, always read 'Gateway' instead.

O.

Television: James May's Toy Stories, "Flight Club"

I must admit that I cried during this television programme. It was excellent, heart-warming and inspirational. The original series was wonderful but this special was even better. What am I talking about? Essentially I'm talking about toys and James May. Not just any toys but real toys. The toys you had to partly make yourself, and then test, and then maybe modify or plain destroy and try again. What can realistically be done with such toys on a large scale? In the original series they made a real house out of Lego, a 23 metre bridge out of Meccano, a garden out of plasticene, a full scale Airfix Spitfire, a replica of Brooklands race track from Scalextric and a 60km model railway from Barnstaple to Bideford. The train set episode was an awesome spectacle and my personal favourite but now it has an equal in something very special.

Suppose that you used to like to play with homemade gliders, paper planes, or just about anything that flew. Somewhere deep inside there was an wondrous sense of achievement at getting your construction down to the end of the garden from an upstairs window. You could always wonder, however, how much a better achievement you could accomplish if you could only get a little bit higher for the launch. What if you could scale up your model and launch it from thousands of feet in the air? How far could you get it to go then? As always with 'Toy Stories', James the awesome man-child, starts from a lofty idealistic premise of crossing the English Channel and, after some necessary compromises, manages to get his glider to cross a twenty two mile distance.

Now, you may think this is all rather childish, and from a certain point of view I might agree but in general I don't. It's uplifting. These toys, which have been largely forgotten in the last few decades, are some of the best ever to be produced and have been upstaged only by flashing lights and plastics with no scope for creativity at all apart from some fleeting enjoyable role play. There's something infectious in the idea of building the things you're going to be playing with, or even in the fact that the building is the playing, and it so rarely happens any more. I never made a model plane, although there were many many paper planes, but I was mesmerised by the soaring glider as it made its spectacular record-breaking flight, by the palpable joy of the following helicopter pilot and crew, and by James himself and the people who helped him in the doing. Oh, and by the way, the glider made it. I won't tell you where it made it to, as that would be a spoiler, but it did make it.

The key to it all is James May, the nice one from the 'Top Gear' crew, the one you think is pretending the least. James May, the man you'd actually like to have a chat with, and the man who gets all the unfair treatment from the Top Gear 'Other Two'. James May is the key to this whole show, as he really cares about these projects. It would have been easy to make a second series and milk it a bit more with some half-hearted projects but they didn't. They waited for something they could care about and get behind, and that James specifically could talk about with the emotion he has. Everything that works in this is allowed to work by his presence. He facilitates great television, and that's why I cried as an oversized model glider soared more than twenty miles across open water at vertigo-inducing heights, and then circled as it lost height for its landing, and finally did land. Contrary to outdated thought it is manly to cry, especially after such achievement.

Well done to James and all the people who made it possible. Please don't spoil 'Toy Stories' with half-hearted future specials. Do what you've done so far and wait and see if there's something you burn to do and then do it.

O.

(Program broadcast on 23 December 2012, at 2130, on BBC Two. Long live the BBC!)

Torching the peach (revised)

What does it mean to 'torch the peach'? Well, as coined recently in a recent Film Bin commentary, to torch the peach is to explain something via a tortured physical analogy with an overly demonstrative finale. "Now, this peach is the world and this flame thrower is the sun. See what happens when we turn off the electromagnetic shield?" Ouch. A necessary component to any scene where the peach is torched is an absence of due subtlety. True peach torching is rare but it does exist. Any examples outside of the movie which may not be named due to prior agreement will be welcome in the comment section below!

Here in deepest South Wales, the Christmas fortnight has begun with rain, rain and more rain. Ah, there's nothing like predictability to soothe the soul. The one thing you can say about Wales is that it's consistently wet. Wetter than anywhere except a jungle or Ireland. Nothing is wetter than a jungle IN Ireland, and that now forms the ultimate example of wetness. A ten on the Oliver Bain wetness scale is now Cork Swamp, home of their world famous tapioca refinery and pogo stick race course.

Ah, best get back on topic before the nonsense takes over. Where were we? Christmas! That's right, I wish a Merry Christmas for all! And a hat for everyone! With that merriment done, it's time to think of what there is to do for an agnostic/atheist with no real attachment to the ceremony of it all? Well, as mentioned previously we can celebrate the renewal of the seasons and be pagan. Hello, pagans! Seriously though, that renewal is the psychological event of the season and something tangible to celebrate. That does raise the interesting idea of what to think about in mid-Summer? As daylight becomes less plentiful do we celebrate seasonal death of all? Yay? It's a confusing time. If I behave festively am I a hypocrite? If I do not then am I necessarily a curmudgeon? There is no winning, so the festive losing choice is surely superior.

Over the next week or so I'm anticipating a massive increase in my reading and watching of things, as well as the writing thereof. You can expect articles on some of the following books

'Timeline' by Michael Crichton,
'Red Harvest' by Dashiell Hammett,
'Whose Body?' by Dorothy L Sayers,
'Master And Commander' by Patrick O'Brian,

and some of these movies too

'The Philadelphia Story',
'Green Card',
'Batman',
'Safety Not Guaranteed'.

All of this will be dependent real work being done. Mathematics is the primary concern, as always. Maths, maths, maths. Well done everyone. We made it through a whole post without torching the peach. Coming soon: News on the Film Bin Sting Project!

O.