And the Eleventh Doctor will bear the face of... Matt Smith!

Matt Smith, who at age 26 will be the youngest person ever to take on the role, will be the next actor to portray the Doctor on Doctor Who, the BBC announced today.This will be the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor since the series began all the way back in November 1963. Smith will take over from David Tennant, who has been playing the Doctor since the finale of the revived...

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A great quote I found tonight...

"Those who dance are thought mad by they who hear not the music."I liked it enough to post here ...

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Must-see WATCHMEN featurette

It's funny: tomorrow marks the fifth anniversary of this blog getting started. And right from the very beginning I've been writing about attempts to adapt Watchmen to the big screen, mostly about how it could never be made. And now, 64 days from today and after more than twenty years of trying to do it, Watchmen will actually come out (provided that the ridiculous legal...

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My latest letter to the editor: Too many Christians worship political might

2009 is only a few scant hours old and it's already seen my first published work for the new year. In today's News & Record (the big paper serving this region) out of Greensboro there's this letter, "Political power presents a false god for Christians", written by Yours Truly.Here's the full text of it...My thoughts regarding the recent election were confirmed when the son of a prominent local minister told me, "Why can I not have both?" when...

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The only thing I know to be said about 2008...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far...

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Doctor apparently used liposuctioned fat to fuel his car

Tyler Durden should have thought BIGGER...Doesn't seem to be any dearth of weird news this past month. In the latest bizarro story, a Beverly Hills doctor is accused of running his Ford SUV and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator with fat that he liposuctioned from patients. The doctor in question, Craig Alan Bittner, supposedly even bragged on his website that he had pioneered...

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Oregon governor wants to use satellites to impose mileage tax

To quote that bard of our age Will Smith: "AWWW HELL NAWWWW!!!"The state of Oregon has a problem, according to its governor Ted Kulongoski. In his words, "As Oregonians drive less and demand more fuel-efficient vehicles, it is increasingly important that the state find a new way, other than the gas tax, to finance our transportation system."So Governor Kulongoski wants to use Global Positioning System technology to impose a "mileage tax" that will...

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United 93 families want Bush to steal land for memorial

Many of the families of passengers who died aboard United Airlines Flight 93 want George W. Bush to approve a seizure by the federal government of the field where the ill-fated flight crashed on the morning of the 9/11 attacks. The families want to turn the field into a memorial.In other words, these people want to implement socialism to commemorate freedom.I have never liked "eminent domain" uses like this, which is what the United 93 families...

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Coming in 2009 from KWerky Productions...

This afternoon I finished writing the first draft of the script for the first "episode" of a project that, Lord willing, we're going to start filming in the next few months. We've already found most of the cast too.But before that, "Weird" Ed and I may be doing something that, I like to believe it'll have some significant social relevance. At the moment I can't help but think that it'll be along the lines of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without...

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About the "Religious Review" blog (Plus: How Johnny Robertson spends Christmas!)

In the past week I've received three e-mails directing my attention to Religious Review, a newly established blog. And it's been asked if I'm the person behind it.I am not. And I didn't even know about Religious Review until the last several days. But I certainly have to applaud whoever it is who set it up.As was reported on this blog last month, "Religious Review" is the name of the bogus outfit that local cult leader Johnny Robertson came up...

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First poster for LAND OF THE LOST

Props to Cinematical for scoring the first look at the teaser poster for this summer's Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell and based on the television show from thirty years ago...Friday night I watched Elf for the first time. It's a very funny movie! And it reinforced what I said a year ago when I first reported on this movie: that given a serious treatment of the plot,...

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"Santa's helpers" disable traffic cameras with giftwrap in Arizona!

In August of 2001, I was p***ed-off enough about the "red light cameras" in Greensboro that I decided to do something about it. So I did some designin' in Photoshop, took it to a Kinko's and had it printed up huge and laminated, and for five hours in the hot sun stood next to one robosentinel that had particularly bothered me while holding a sign that read "SMILE: YOU'RE ON KOMRADE KAMERA!" Hee-hee-hee... got lots of supporters who honked in agreement...

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Garage-based amateurs now playing with genetic engineering

It's not likely that anyone will clone-up a velociraptor, but the Associated Press reports about the growing trend of "do it yourself genetic engineering" that a lot of people are experimenting with in the spare rooms and garages of their homes. Using equipment found on Craigslist and eBay, these burgeoning biotechnologists are involved with everything from working on melamine-sensitive...

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VHS finally dies as last major distributor gives up business

It's the end of an era as VHS finally heads into the West along with Frodo, Ronald Reagan and Roy Rogers. The final shipment of the once ever-present tapes has left the warehouse of the format's last major supplier. The business's owner claims that the same will happen to DVD within a few years and that it'll yield completely to Blu-ray... but I kinda doubt it. The same was said of VHS more than twenty years ago when laserdisc enjoyed a brief...

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Chris declares "The Next Doctor" the best DOCTOR WHO Christmas special yet!

This past season of Doctor Who has seen some of the best storytelling in the entire forty-five year history of the franchise. More than six months later and I am still as much in awe at "Forest of the Dead" as I am enthralled about what it hinted about the Doctor's future. And of course there was "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" two-parter that hailed the return of Davros:...

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The indomitable Eartha Kitt has passed away

There is some irony that she died on Christmas Day, when her sultry Yuletide ballad "Santa Baby" always enjoys tremendous airplay...Singer, dancer, actress, writer... and the greatest Catwoman ever. Orson Welles once called her "the most exciting woman in the world". Not a bad way to have spent 81 years of life. And a mighty far road to have come from the cotton fields...

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Is this a photograph of an angel?

I said in my last post that I was taking off until Christmas unless something demanded reporting about. Well, I think this might qualify, 'cuz I can't make heads or tails of this photo. Is it the real deal?WFMY News 2 is reporting about this strange image caught by a security camera at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte. Many people are saying that it depicts an angel outside...

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