It's A Waking Nightmare, Charlie Brown!

This is a little late, but eh, whatever. Last week the cast of the Today Show (which is apparently still on the air) all decided to dress up as various Peanuts characters.

The results were ghastly and terrifying, to say the least. Warning! Disturbing images ahead!

I have to assume that NBC and Today have some sort of vendetta against the upcoming Peanuts movie, and are doing their best to a plant deep-seated revulsion for the characters in the minds of the audience, which will prevent them from seeing the film.

How else to explain these abominations? I'm calling it now-- twenty years from now some serial killer will be describing these costumes to his court appointed psychiatrist.

Here we have one of the Feral Ghouls from the upcoming videogame Fallout 4, for the XBox One and Playstation 4. The ghouls are one of the most dangerous... wait a minute. What's that? Really? Hmm. I'm sorry, I'm being told that this is not a Feral Ghoul after all, but Today show weatherman Al Roker dressed as Charlie Brown.

Here's a full length shot of him, which just goes to prove that translating the stylized Peanuts characters into reality is a very, very bad idea.

This is Today anchor Matt Lauer as a transgender, hairy-armed Lucy Van Pelt. Good grief! The horror... the horror... If this doesn't forever screw up the sexual orientation of any kid who sees it, I don't know what will.

By the way, take a look at "Lucy's" hairdo. Was she born in the 1940s? Seriously, that coif looks like it came right off one of the Andrews Sisters' heads.

WARNING! GRAPHIC IMAGE! Here we see one of the unfortunate residents of Pripyat, shortly after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in 1986. Note how the victim's hair fused to his skull, as the intense heat and radiation caused his skin to begin drooping and melting off of his skull.

On the other hand, this may be inexplicably popular Today host Carson Daly dressed as Linus.

Here's Daly with Savannah Guthrie, whoever the hell that is, as an equally terrifying, rictus-grinned Sally Brown.

This is Today reporter Meredith Vieira dressed as one of the ghastly walkers from AMC's hit series The Walking Dead. Some will try and convince you she's supposed to be Peanuts character Pig Pen, but make no mistake, this is a shambling, undead zombie on the prowl for brains.

This is allegedly a shot of Today hosts Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford as Snoopy and Woodstock. Personally I think it looks more like a representation of serial killer John Wayne Gacy's tortured psyche.

Here we have Today personnel Tamron Hall and Natalie Morales (again, whoever the hell they are) as Peppermint Patty and Marcie.

Apparently this is an alternate universe version of Patty, where she's been knocked up by Charlie Brown.

Actually these two aren't all that horrifying. Sure they're both offputting, but they're not scary.

OH SWEET JESUS! Did I say not scary? I take it all back! This is a closeup look at Hall's appalling, be-sandaled feet. Dear lord, I hope those are prosthetics, because if not, she must be some sort of demented, unwholesome Hobbit.

Morales' Marcie getup looks more than a little like Velma Dinkley from the Scooby-Doo cartoons. Are Marcie and Velma related? Could they even be the same person? Do the Peanuts and Scooby-Doo characters all reside in the same universe?

As terrifying as it sounds, this isn't the first time NBC has attempted to bring the Peanuts characters to life.

Back in 2000, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch commemorating the death of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, complete with actors in similarly hideous and disturbing makeups.

Please NBC, for the sake of our nation, nay, our world's sanity, stop trying to translate Peanuts into reality. Some characters were meant to stay on the comic page!

It Came From The Cineplex: Lucy

Lucy was written and directed by Luc Besson, whose impressive resume also includes La Femme Nikita, Leon The Professional, The Fifth Element, District 13 and the Taken films.

Lucy is typical of Besson's films, which are generally visually impressive and filled with over the top action sequences, along with strong female characters (often with superhuman powers).

The entire plot of the film hinges around the theory that humans only use 10% of their brain power, and that we would all be supermen if we could only access the other 90%. Of course this is a completely erroneous and boneheaded concept that for some reason just will not die. No matter how many times this cockamamie idea is debunked, it keeps on rising from the dead in "Mind Blowing Facts" lists on the internet every few weeks. It's the Jason Voorhees of bogus theories.

So how did the 10% idea ever get started? Some believe it started way back in the 1890s, when Harvard psychologists studied a child prodigy named WIlliam Sidis, who had an IQ of between 250 and 300. From this they posited that most people don't meet their full mental potential. Then in 1929, an ad in the World Almanac proclaimed that humans use only 10% of their brain power (the writer having apparently pulled the figure right out of his ass) and claimed that were we to use the other 90%, there would be no limit as to what we could accomplish. Others simply blame the origin of the myth on poorly understood early studies of neurological science.

However it started, it is most definitely false. Modern brain scans have shown that no matter what we're doing, our brains are always active. There's never any part of our brains that is not functioning. Even during sleep, all parts of the brain show some level of activity.

Plus, the brain consumes up to 20% of the body's energy, despite making up only 2% of its mass. If 90% of the brain was dormant, there'd be no reason for it to be so large and natural selection would have caused us to evolve smaller ones long ago.

In the end I'm not really bothered by the film's laughable premise. It's not like this is the first time a movie's plot has centered around absurd science. Peter Parker gained arachnoid powers from a radioactive spider bite and everyone was fine with it, so why can't Lucy use the 10% theory?

Despite the ridiculous science, somehow it all manages to work. The film sets up its own set of rules and then plays by them, which is more than I can say for a lot of movies.

BRAIN-EXPANDING SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
Lucy (played by Scarlett Johansson) is a young woman studying abroad in Taiwan, who is coerced into delivering a briefcase full of an experimental drug to Mr. Jang, a Korean drug lord. Jang (played by Choi Min-sik of Oldboy and I Saw The Devil fame) captures Lucy and has a bag of the drug sewn into her gut, so she can smuggle it into Europe. During her recovery she's attacked by one of Jang's thugs, which causes the bag to burst inside her, and she absorbs the experimental drug.

The drug, a synthetic form of CPH4, allows Lucy to access all of her brain, which gives her superhuman powers. She then exacts revenge on Mr. Jang, and tracks down the other bags of CPH4 in order to ingest them and develop her brain even further. She contacts Professor Norman (played by Morgan Freeman), an expert in neuroscience, who tries to guide her as her brainpower increases exponentially. 

When Lucy reaches 100% of her brain capacity, she travels throughout the space time continuum, becoming like unto a god as she tells Professor Norman and his colleagues that she is now everywhere.

Thoughts:
• The film is filled with dozens of fast-cut visual metaphor shots, apparently included to help those of us in the audience who aren't accessing 100% of our brains to understand what's happening. 

For example, at the beginning of the movie, Lucy nervously delivers a briefcase to Mr. Jang's penthouse. She's quite obviously in danger here, as Jang's black-suited goons converge ominously around her.

Besson needlessly hammers this point home though by splicing in shots of a cheetah stealthily sneaking up on an unsuspecting gazelle.

These kinds of shots pop up all through the movie, and become grating after a while. We get it, Luc, you don't have to draw us a picture.

• When the CPH4 is first absorbed into Lucy's bloodstream, she reacts by recreating Lionel Richie's Dancing On The Ceiling video. She writhes around in agony, eventually rolling up the wall and then squirming around on the ceiling. Apparently one of CHP4's side effects is anti-gravity.

• As Lucy begins accessing more of her brain's potential, she gains more and more powers, becoming virtually invincible. Note to future filmmakers: Invincible characters are dull. When a character can't be hurt, then there's no tension, and they become boring. This is why Superman has kryptonite.

They tried to introduce a bit of vulnerability by mentioning that Lucy's powers would cause her to die within a set number of hours, but it was too little, too late.

• When Lucy escapes her cell, she approaches two Taiwanese cab drivers. She asks one if he speaks English. When he says no, she coldly and nonchalantly shoots him. She then asks the other, who nervously exclaims that indeed he does speak English and agrees to drive her. 

As they get into the cab, a voice on the soundtrack moans, "My leg..." Apparently this was supposed to be the voice of the first cab driver. 

A couple of things here. First of all, if he didn't speak English, how is he saying, "My leg?" Secondly, his voice was obviously dubbed in after the fact, as he's not even onscreen when he says it. I'm thinking they crudely dubbed this line in to make Lucy seem less cold-blooded, and imply that she just incapacitated the driver instead of killing him for no good reason. It reminds me for all the world of the G.I. Joe cartoon. Every time the Joes would shoot down an enemy Cobra plane, they always had to show the pilot parachuting to safety to prove he hadn't been killed.

I honestly don't know why they bothered to dub this line in though. At this point Lucy had already killed at least four of her captors, and would go on to kill dozens more. I don't see how sparing this one man made any difference one way or the other in our perception of her character.

• Lucy goes to a hospital to have the bag of CPH4 removed from her abdomen. She walks briskly through the hospital corridors while carrying a handgun in plain sight. She makes absolutely no attempt at hiding it, but no one pays the least bit of attention to her. Is she mind controlling everyone there so they don't see her gun?

She then barges into an operating room in the middle of a surgery. She gives the patient's X-ray a quick once-over, then shoots him dead and shoves him off the table (he didn't even get a chance to groan, "My leg!"). She tells the stunned surgeons that they wouldn't have been able to save the patient anyway, because his tumor had spread too far.

That may well have been, but I'm sure he had at least a little bit of time left. Time he could have used to say goodbye to his family and make his peace with whatever god he worshipped.

• Lucy forces the surgeon to remove the leaky bad of drugs from her gut. The surgeon does so and tells her it's a synthetic form of a naturally occurring drug called CPH4. He says it's normally produced by pregnant women in small quantities and "jolts" fetuses into growing brain tissue or something.

So is CPH4 a real thing? According to Luc Besson, yes. He claims there is a hormone that pregnant women produce that affects developing fetuses like an "atomic bomb." But he says he changed the name because he doesn't want people taking it to try and increase their brain power. So who knows if any of it is true or not.

• I don't get why Lucy was so determined to have the leaking bag of CPH4 removed from her abdomen in the first place. At this point she knew it was responsible for the changes in her, which she seemed to be OK with. So why remove it? Why not continue to absorb the rest? Did she just want the vinyl bag out of her gut?

• Throughout the film Lucy has several opportunities to kill the evil Mr. Jang and his gang, but doesn't. In fact she goes out of her way not to kill them. She shows no hesitation killing anyone else; so why spare them?

The ONLY reason for sparing them is because the script says so. The story needs a big shootout at the end, so she seemingly saves them only so they can show up and cause trouble in the third act.

• When Lucy first contacts Professor Norman, her face appears on his TV screen. She explains that her newfound powers allow her to control and manipulate simple electronic devices. Oddly enough, the image on Norman's flatscreen includes very visible scan lines, like it's a video monitor from the 1970s. Scan lines aren't visible on modern TVs.

I suppose I could be generous here and say that Lucy's control of TV waves hasn't yet reached 1080p levels yet. I suppose I could say that, but...

• During Lucy's flight to Paris, her body begins to disintegrate for some reason. Why this happens is never explained. Maybe her brain is cannibalizing the rest of her for fuel? That doesn't seem very logical, as a brain without a body isn't going to be much use, no matter how smart it is. Anyhow, she locks herself in the lavatory, which greatly agitates the stewardesses.

Airline employees should know that a lavatory door can easily be opened from the outside, even if it's locked from the inside. All you have to do is lift up the "Lavatory" sign on the door and pull the latch under it.

• When Lucy first contacts Paris policeman Pierre Del Rio by phone, she proves she's legit by identifying him by name and describing what's on his desk. How she does this is not explained. There are no cameras in the office. Is her brain power somehow allowing her to see through the phone lines? Or is she accessing Del Rio's brain and seeing through his eyes?

• Lucy tells Del Rio where he can find the various drug mules who are also carrying CPH4 in their guts. When he asks her for details about the drug, she tells him it's in powdered form. It looked a lot like crystals to me.

• Speaking of Del Rio, he's a bit of an odd character. He speaks French, his name is Del Rio and he's played by an Egyptian actor (Amr Waked). In a similar vein, the first half of the movie is set in Taiwan, but Mr. Jang and his gang are Korean. It's A Small World After All!

• As Lucy's powers grow, she begins manipulating the world by swiping at everything she sees with her hand, exactly the way one controls an iPad or iPhone. Funny how the best way to control the world exactly mimics Apple's interface design. Steve Jobs was right!

• When Lucy reaches 100% of her brain capacity, she begins traveling through time. She goes far back into the past, eventually confronting the oldest recorded ancestor of humanity, who was coincidentally nicknamed Lucy. The two touch fingertips, and the shot perfectly mimics the pose from Michelangelo's The Creation Of Adam, because of course it does.

Lucy is based on a ridiculous and debunked premise, but if you can get past that it's a decent sci-fi action film. I give it a B.

Lucy Seifert 1997 - 2012

I am very saddened to report the death of Lucy the wiener dog.

Lucy was not my dog, she belonged to my pal KW Monster. Nevertheless I knew her for fifteen long years. I saw her every time I went to KW's house and I would occasionally babysit her in my home. In a way I felt like she was partly my dog. She was personable, playful, very intelligent and up for anything. Most of all she was a fun little furry pal.

"Hey Big-Head, I need to go outside, NOW."

I remember the first time I ever saw Lucy. I went to KW's house and sat down on his couch. Lucy came barreling into the room, heading right toward me. I chuckled to myself a bit, figuring there was no way a dog with such tiny legs would ever be able to jump up onto the couch with me. When she was about ten feet away she literally flew across the room and landed beside me on the couch, eager to see who I was and what was going on. Bear in mind that when I say she flew, that's exactly what I mean. Her stubby legs lifted from the ground and she sailed upward into the air like a missile. I was absolutely gobsmacked. Astonished even. I'd never seen anything like that before.

I used to babysit Lucy when KW would go out of town; often for two or three weeks at a time. She never made much of a fuss about it; she seemed to accept her new situation and environment without any trouble and quickly fell into the routine of my household. 

I always wondered what she thought of this arrangement. Did she just think that KW was at work for an exceptionally long time (three weeks!) and would eventually come back? I can't see how she could possibly know that. Did she think, "Well, I guess that other guy's gone and I live with this guy now?" Too bad we'll never know.

I remember the first time KW took a trip and was separated from Lucy for an extended period. She was apparently greatly offended by his absence and when he returned, she wouldn't "speak" to him for about a week. She wouldn't even look at him and when he'd try to pet her she'd pull away. It was exactly like watching a petulant child. She was most definitely punishing him for leaving her. After about a week she got over it and forgave him.

"Hulk smash! Ride War Steed into battle!"

Amazingly Lucy never bothered anything that didn't belong to her. KW would leave DVDs, books and shoes lying on the floor, as well as several expensive guitars resting on stands, all well within her reach. Lucy never once bothered any of that stuff. She had her own toys and never touched any of KW's. This discipline carried over to my house as well. In all the times I watched her she never bothered any of my stuff either. Her one weakness: the trash. Occasionally the siren's call of the trash can would overpower her and she'd knock it over and spread the contents all over KW's kitchen floor. But it didn't happen very often.

Lucy's main hobby over the years was licking her paws. Her delicious, succulent paws. She spent most of her waking time lying down and licking her front paws. It's a wonder she didn't lick them off. Her vet suggested it was an allergy, but I wonder if it was a habit, like a human constantly cracking their knuckles or clearing their throat.

Baby got back! Lucy during her "chunky" period.

Lucy was a very intelligent dog and I truly believe she had the ability to think. One day KW came home from work and noticed that the kitchen rug was lying out in the middle of the floor, instead of by the door as it should have been. He picked up the rug to move it and saw that there were a couple of Lucy's poops underneath. Apparently earlier in the day Lucy just couldn't hold it any longer and pooped on the floor. Panicked, she realized she'd done a Bad Thing and would be punished for it. So she walked over to the rug, grabbed it in her teeth and dragged it out to the middle of the floor and covered her poops with it. The perfect crime!

That right there showed me that she had the capacity for abstract thought. She was able to think ahead several hours and recognize that punishment would be forthcoming. She then formulated a plan to hide the evidence, thereby avoiding said punishment. That's chimp or toddler level thinking right there. By the way, KW was so impressed with her quick thinking that he didn't have the heart to punish her for pooping on the floor (that time).

Lucy could understand many words as well. Included in her vocabulary: she knew the difference between "bone" (her rawhide chew) and "ball," and would pick up whichever one you called out to her. She also understood the difference between "eat," "drink" and "get in your bed." And of course, "potty."

Lucy was broke when she first started out so she was forced to pose nude for Playmutt magazine.

Speaking of potty, the one thing I did not enjoy about watching Lucy: letting her out to poop and pee. KW would just let her out and go about his business inside while she went about hers outside. I never did that when I watched her as I was afraid she might run off. So I would stay outside and keep an eye on her while she went.

She would slowly and deliberately make her way around my backyard, sniffing the ground intently as she searched for just the Right Spot in which to relieve herself. Apparently in the world of dogs, this is a Big Deal. She'd sometimes wander around for ten to fifteen minutes before finding the optimum spot to take a crap. Once I sat out there for twenty interminable minutes waiting on her. I was pleading with her, saying, "Please Lucy, I'm begging you. POOP ALREADY so I can go to bed!" She sniffed around some more, stopped, sniffed more intently and then finally screwed herself up and got into the "position." "Thank Thor," I thought, near tears. Then at the last second she aborted the mission and started sniffing around again, to my groaning vexation.

I can't say for sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she was playing me; deliberately drawing out these poop sessions just to spend more time outside.

Whenever I babysat Lucy she would spend most of her time dozing (or licking her paws) at my feet while I sat at the computer and drew. She would follow me from room to room, unwilling to let me out of her site, lest I disappear as KW apparently had. A few years ago I painted my kitchen and she spent the whole weekend keeping me company, sitting in the doorway intently watching my every move.

Like most dogs, Lucy was terrified of the vacuum cleaner. I tried not to use it if she was around (I can go a lonnnnng time without vacuuming if I have to), but sometimes I had no choice. Whenever I would use it, afterward it'd take me a while to find her again. Usually I'd find her hiding way back under my bed, safe from the hideous shrieking vacuum demon.

Ever vigilant: Lucy protecting my porch from the dreaded squirrel menace.

Lucy was of course a dachshund and had the breed's characteristic elongated torso. When something spooked her and she took off running for her bed, hilariously her back end was faster than her front end. Her butt would actually overtake her front half until she was running virtually sideways. Made me laugh every time I saw it.

I liked to play the Security Game with her when she stayed at my house. KW trained Lucy to bark whenever he'd say the word "Security" and to stop when he'd say "Safe." So I would see how close I could get to the word "security" before she'd bark. I'd suddenly yell, "Seppepity!" and she'd give me the stink eye, no doubt wondering what the hell was wrong with me. "Segoogidy" didn't work either. But I lost the game when I'd yell "Seckity." Apparently that was too close to "security" and she started barking.

In recent months her age began to catch up with her and her hearing came and went and her vision began to fade. Because she was a dog, she didn't let these maladies get her down though. Unlike most dogs her age she was still playful well into her old age. She was even learning new tricks right up to the end. Just a few months ago she learned to sit up and beg, which is quite a feat for a dachshund.

I'm really going to miss babysitting her and hearing her paddling little feet follow me from room to room.

One More Reason To Love Lucy

August 6 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lucille Ball. You may not realize it, but if you're a Star Trek fan, you owe her a big thank you. If it hadn't been for Lucy, there would be no Trek.

After Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, he began shopping it around to various studios around Hollywood. They all turned him down, except for one: Desilu, the studio formed by Lucy and husband Dezi Arnaz. By the time Roddenberry pitched his idea to Desilu, Lucy and Dezi were divorced and she was the sole owner of the studio. Lucy must have seen something she liked in the series and gave it the green light. The rest, as they say, is history.

Star Trek was an expensive show to produce and as hard as it is to believe today, suffered from dismal ratings during its original run. The Desilu bean counters pleaded with Lucy to cancel it (along with Mission: Impossible, another expensive Desilu show), but she refused, saying that she liked it. As Lucy was one of the most successful, shrewd and powerful women in television, you didn't say no to her. Perhaps she knew a good thing when she saw it. Maybe she saw the value in a product that could be syndicated. Or maybe she thought Spock was sexy. We may never know.

By the end of Star Trek's second season, Lucy decided to sell Desilu. She sold the studio (and all its TV properties) to Paramount, which was the beginning of the end for Star Trek. Paramount kept it on the air for another season before ultimately pulling the plug.

You know the rest of the story. Star Trek became a huge hit in syndication, often scoring higher ratings than first run shows. That led to a worldwide army of rabid fans, a series of movies, FOUR more TV series and a merchandising empire rivaled by no other.

And to think we owe it all to a dizzy redhead.

Sometimes A Gal Just Likes To Feel Pretty

Last week Lucy, my pal KW Monster's dog, was a guest at my house. Lucy's a really good dog, and smart too. She's stayed at my house many times, and never causes any trouble.

On this particular visit, she decided to get all gussied up and put on a fashion show. Here we see Lucy wearing a stylish ensemble featuring a smart monochromatic stripe pattern. Note the addition of the fashionable leash in the background, in contrasting royal blue.

If I were to judge what Lucy is thinking by her expression here, it would be, "If I had opposable thumbs I'd kill you."

Paging Dame Fashion! I have a Ms. Lucy on the line, sporting a sleek and stunning frock for those chilly spring evenings! Note that the bold horizontal stripes help to de-emphasize Madame's extra long torso.

Is it possible for a dog to feel humiliation? Based on Lucy's expression here, I would say the answer is a resounding affirmative.

Down, Lucy! The "catwalk" is just an expression!

What? Why are you looking at me like that? It's not weird for a grown man to dress up a dog and take pictures of it! Lots of men do it! I'm not weird! I have a full time job and a mortgage, just like a normal person! Don't judge me!

Run, Spaceman, Run! Full Book Cover

Right after I posted my Run, Spaceman, Run! paperback cover, several readers of my blog said they wished it was a real book.

Well, I don't have time for any authorin' these days, but it got me to thinking that there was nothing to stop me from completing my hypothetical book cover. So here it is all laid out: back cover, spine and front cover.

I had a lot of fun writing the back cover copy and the critic blurbs, trying to make them read as authentic as possible.

After I got it all laid out, I printed out the cover, cut it out, then dug through the garage and found a suitable old paperback. I carefully glued my cover to the real one and created my own one of a kind sci-fi novel. Just don't open it and expect to read about Zok.

Once it was finished I showed it to my smartypants 12 year old nephew who pointed out that Earth is actually in the Orion arm of the galaxy, not in the Sagittarius arm as I've indicated on the back cover. Whoops! Too late to change it now! I thanked him for the correction and then punched him hard in the gut. That's what you get for embarrassing your elders with your fancy book learnin'!

Here's a shot of the finished faux paperback. It really does look like one you'd find in a used book store, if I do say so myself. It even fooled my smartypants nephew when he first saw it.

Here's a shot of the back cover and spine.

It's a compelling read! I couldn't put it down! Maybe because the glue was still wet.

 

My pal KW Monster does this all the time on his blog, so here's a shot of my fake book next to special guest star Lucy, for scale. Judging by Lucy's expression, it appears she found the book lackluster and derivative.