Doctor Who is coming back! Doctor Who is coming back! So says this article! Do you know what this means!? It means jack. About once a year the Little Boy Who Cried “Doctor Who is Back” goes running around with a new update. Last year’s involved Anthony Stewart Head, who plays Giles on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” being pegged as the Doctor. Of course, that wasn’t true. So while it’s certainly kind of people to inform me of the imminent return of my favorite TV show ever, please understand if I’m highly skeptical.

Let me tell you how much fun it is to be a Doctor Who fan. This latest taunt of the show returning is only the tip of the iceberg. This is a show that was canceled by the BBC back in the 80s because it was unpopular. Never mind that this wasn’t true, it was canceled anyway. The BBC won’t bring it back, because of its unpopularity, but they’ll be happy to sell merchandise rights to anyone who wants to churn out tons of crap. They’ll be happy to put out books galore, audio dramas, and so forth. But they won’t actually, you know, make the show.

I don’t understand. This is a show that survived over 25 years. It’s got a wide-open premise that even allows you to change out the lead actor every so often. It’s got a nice gallery of villains. It can clearly be made on a shoestring budget. It’s got a huge fanbase. You’d think that channels like Fox, UPN, WB, and Sci-Fi would be fighting for the right for this property. Yet, although I can read any one of over eighty-twelve books based on the show while listening to dozens of audio dramas (all reported on and reviewed in the ongoing ‘Doctor Who Magazine’), drinking out my mug, wearing my shirt and cap, and enjoying my inflatable Dalek, I can’t watch the frickin’ show on TV. Not new episodes, at least.

I’ve tried to get into the novels. I tried a couple audio dramas. It’s just not the same. The stories don’t feel like Doctor Who stories. They’re ridiculously complex, and have developed this epic, overarching storyline with far-reaching implications. This from a TV show that had so little continuity, there were three different versions of the destruction of Atlantis! The fun, the innocence of the show has been jettisoned for heaps of sex, including gay Silurians! What the hell?

I will say that I have enjoyed the comic strips in the Doctor Who Magazine, though they too have flirted with this stupid idea to “modernize” the show by adding unnecessary ‘wheels within wheels’ plot arcs (curse you, Chris Carter!) but in general had a good feel for the show. Also, they were a good balance between the visual medium of the show and the unlimited possibilities of the books. But the rest of the magazine got depressing as we got further and further away from the actual show. Not only were we left talking about books and audio dramas I wasn’t interested in, and recapping “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” for the umpty-jillionth time, but there were all these articles about the original actors dying and the ones still alive appearing in weird fan videos. Both of those things are kind of sad. I really wish someone would publish the comic strips from the magazine by themselves, in trade paperback format. I’d love to have them.

And what’s worse is, to a large extent, it’s the fans who are to blame. I’ve seen more than one fan pose an argument that this is in fact the golden age of Doctor Who because of the books and we should never want the show back because that would ruin things. The argument is that the show was about a guy who can freely travel through time and space and is practically immortal, which is a huge realm to play in, and yet was confined to a cheap little show that could barely afford to have laser blasts. With the books and audio dramas, the show is free to do whatever it wants, on as big a stage as it needs. That’s not a bad point, but it ignores the fact that despite this ‘limitation’ the show succeeded for 25 years.

The real deal about the novels is that it’s more of a fan-based medium. Many of the novel authors hang out on the Doctor Who newsgroups, chatting with the fans there. This gives the fans more ownership of it than they did with the TV show (or would with a future show). This puts more of the show in the fans’ hands. I have a whole essay in my head about how fans are probably the worst thing that can happen to a show (or movie or comic or whatever) for exactly this reason. Fandom is notoriously elitist and exclusive, and being a true fan requires a level of access superior to all others. So in other words, in many fans’ minds, the show can only succeed if it fails, because then it just wasn’t as accessible to the mainstream as it was to the true believers.

Confused? What I’m saying is, I think for many of these people, they have transcended the level of merely being fans of a TV show and become insiders. They’re fans of a TV show that no one else can watch! A TV show that only exists in books that many stores don’t carry! And they can even talk to the authors of these books and maybe the authors even put little nods to them in the books, the way some TV people do with their fans. If the show comes back, they’re demoted again back to fans of a TV show. And worse, maybe a TV show that isn’t as good as the original was.

Because, and the fans aside, there is good reason to be afraid of a new show. The old show was a difficult balancing act. The traditional line is that because the effects weren’t good, the show had to have top-notch characters and plots instead. Well, that’s true up to a point. No one can tell me that the story of the “Horns of Nimon” is so well written and acted that it makes up for the silly effects. (A lot of people have argued that the show wouldn’t be as good without poor special effects, which is hogwash, in my opinion. In my opinion, if it did so much with so little for so long, give it a chance to do even more with a lot.) But there was a certain charm to it that I’m not sure will be easy to duplicate. The Fox TV movie showed how badly it could go. (I myself said at the time that I’d rather have no Doctor Who than more of THAT Doctor Who, which was silly, I admit.) I think it should be given a chance, both by producers and fans alike. I don’t know why it hasn’t. Maybe this latest rumor will be true and we’ll finally get a show again and it will be good. But as I said, I’m skeptical.

Dearest reader, we here at Legomancer.net work tirelessly to ensure only the finest quality content for your entertainment. Each word, each link, each image, every tiny scrap of HTML is hand-picked and examined by a team of experts who will settle for nothing less than the quintessence of material. We strive to make sure that no one is dissatisfied with their Legomancer.net experience (except of course for those whiners who’d bitch about anything.)

With that in mind, please direct your gaze to the left, where the “stuff” link has been thrown into the rubbish heap of outdated images and replaced with a new link: “LEGOpinions”. I’ve dusted off this material and given it a new environment in which to flourish! Using the vast knowledge of PHP and MySQL I gained from my work on the Linktank, I now have a way to update this page without it being a royal pain in the butt.

You’ve probably wandered around the internet thinking, “This stuff is pretty good, but where’s a page where some guy talks about stuff and whether or not he likes it? How come no one’s come up with that idea?” Your cries have been answered! Just as I pioneered the ideas of telling you what I’ve been listening to and listing a bunch of interesting links, so too do I now provide, in an easy to read and maintain format, a list of my opinions about stuff. Nothing may impede the march of progress!

I’ll be throwing in a bunch of random stuff from the past year to sort of catch us up, as well as new things. As always, remember that I’m just one person, and am not responsible for any decisions you make based on my opinions.

Please enjoy the LEGOpinions and feel free to email with comments, suggestions, and criticism. (By the way, the font is different because I couldn’t find the font I originally used for those buttons, and I’m going to change them all soon anyway. Also, the icons in there are temporary - the smiley-face dice icons I had before will be reinstated once I get some better scans of them.)

Just came across this article on CNN that has shocking text and shockinger subtext.

Bush ‘not paying attention’ to Democratic race

President Bush says he is paying virtually no attention to the Democratic race for his job, even as the candidates sharpen their criticism of his performance.

“Well, occasionally it blips on my radar screen, but not nearly as much as you would think. I’ve got a job to do. I’m occupied,” Bush said in a taped interview telecast Monday night on the Fox Broadcast Network.

“Their slogan is, ‘Vote for me, I don’t like George Bush,”‘ Bush said. “The American people are going to make that ultimate judgment as to whether or not I ought to be re-elected.”

Curious as to how he knows what their slogan is if he hasn’t been paying any attention to them. And since the American people didn’t have much say in whether or not he was originally elected, no reason to believe they will now.

The president’s 2004 campaign has been humming for months. He has raised more than $65 million at 21 fund-raising events since June for a Republican nomination for which he faces no opponent. His campaign offices employ dozens of people.

Nevertheless, Bush insisted he was “not paying attention” to the Democratic race. He said he knew who the candidates are, but had not watched a Democratic debate.

Likewise, Bush’s response to the Democrats’ specific criticisms about his handling of the war in Iraq and the economy. “I repeat, I’m not really paying attention to it,” he said.

Why pay attention? They’re just being all negative. If you’re at all dissatisfied with Bush’s policies - whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat - pay attention: he has no interest in listening to criticism.

Bush said he insulates himself from the “opinions” that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories.

A laugh-out-loud paragraph. Apparently news coverage is all “opinions”. This is how in touch he is with what’s going on outside his fishbowl.

“I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news,” the president said. “And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”

And here it gets scary. The only “truth” and “objectivity” is from his staff and handlers. He’s admitting that he insulates himself from all external stimuli except what has been approved by those around him. This is not the behavior of a democratically elected leader, folks. More like a despot.

This is also scary because it echoes the new philosophy pervading America regarding the nature of truth. Truth isn’t what actually exists, it’s what people think exists. So if polls show that the majority of people believe the Earth is flat, well there you go, it’s flat. The polls said so. We see more of this here:

Answering critics who say that a main reason for going to war has not been borne out, Bush said he thinks ousted leader Saddam Hussein hid his weapons of mass destruction.

“But I firmly believe he had weapons of mass destruction,” Bush said. “I know he used them at one time, and I’m confident he had programs that would enable him to have a weapon of mass destruction at his disposal.”

See, since he believes Saddam had WMDs, it’s okay. Because all we need are firm beliefs, not any kind of tangible proof. The only statement that claims to echo fact there is “I know he used them at one time” which was true, he did before the original Gulf War. Everything else is just based on his own opinions, sterilized and fed to him by his handlers.

So in short, he isolates himself from the outside world, gets his information from his own people, ignores criticism and the press, and thinks his beliefs shape reality. Is this the person you want in charge of America? In charge of its economic well-being? Its arsenal?

Last night Becky and I headed up to Northampton to see The LADY, Erin McKeown, play at the Iron Horse. We only recently got into Erin, via a colleague of Becky’s at UIUC. Erin plays…hrm, what does Erin play? Is it folk? Rock? Jazz? Bluegrass? Swing? Punk? Pop? Let’s just say she plays good music of all varieties. You can learn more about her at her website. Click on “Grand Radio” at the upper right to hear four tracks off her new CD, Grand, which is awesome.

We got there a little late and the place was packed. Fortunately there was one table in the back. The opening performer, Andrew Bird, had some really interesting stuff. He was sort of a one-man Radiohead, combining violin, guitar, glockenspiel, whistling, and vocals with quirky lyrics. I’d like to hear more of his stuff.

We settled in with drinks and a bowl of chips that were VERY salty — almost to the point where we considered legal action. More people continued to come in and we ended up sharing our table with two other people.

Erin then came on. She’s a wee pixie of a thing, and often it looked like she was wrestling with her seemingly oversized guitars. But man, what talent is packed into that person! Great guitar work, original songs, and a huge voice. She rocked out with a lot of tracks from Grand (though not “An Innocent Fiction,” which we were both hoping for.) She was spot on.

For an encore she played this great little song about Rhode Island that I would love to get a recording of. (According to fans on her website, it’s an old song called “Rhode Island is Famous For You.”

It was a fun evening. If Erin’s coming to your town, you should definitely check her out. And you can’t go wrong with any of her albums. I like Grand best, but Becky is more partial to Distillation.

It’s Banned Books Week. Celebrate your freedom to read by picking up something that so annoyed someone else, they tried to keep people from reading it! Might be a good time to re-read A Wrinkle in Time (#22), finally read the new Harry Potter book (#7), or just look for Waldo (#88).

But don’t worry about anyone grabbing your library records to see what you’ve been reading! That’s all hysteria, according to Ashcroft, who revealed that exactly zero records were requested from libraries. Which begs the question: Then why are you so gung-ho to get a law allowing you to do this?

Go to your library, check out what you want, and read what you want. Don’t let anyone try and keep you from doing so.

According to the IMDB, here is the mini-biography of actress Denise Richards:

Elder of 2 daughters born to Irv and Joni Richards. She grew up in the Chicago area, until the family relocated to Oceanside, CA when Denise was 15. She began working as a model, and moved to L.A. after she graduated from high school.

A pretty mundane story, no? But is it all a lie? Is there a conspiracy to rewrite details of her past and hide the dark truth — that she is related to me? Let me tell you of the whispers and rumors that surround the enigmatic Ms. Richards.

It all started with an innocent phone call a few years ago. My sister, Carol, called me with exciting news. “Hey, did you know that Denise Richards is our cousin?” I did not! “It’s true!” Carol went on. “She’s Shinny’s daughter, and her last name is really Richard.” (That would be pronounced REE-shard, which is a typical Cajun French last name.)

For the record, we really do have a cousin named Shinny. Well, I don’t know if that’s his real name or just a nickname. But he’s a real person. He inhabits the part of my Mom’s family that I don’t know too much about. So this was all plausible to me. I didn’t know much about Denise Richards, so I saw no reason to disbelieve this. It was pretty exciting. Turns out that I may have even hung out with her, when I was a wee tot, at another cousin’s wedding.

This was all pretty cool, and I told many of my friends about this. They were suitably impressed. Especially since Denise Richards is in one of the greatest movies of all time, Starship Troopers. (That’s the only movie of hers I’ve ever seen.) When she became a Bond girl in The World is Not Enough (or whatever Bond movie she was in), I was so proud that my cousin had made the big time.

And then it all came crashing down.

I visited my parents, who were now living in the town where my mom’s family grew up. While there, I spoke to my Aunt Shirley and asked her about this Denise Richards thing. “Oh yeah,” she said. “She went off to Hollywood, changed her name, got some plastic surgery done, and is trying to pass herself off as younger than she is.”

“Really!” I said. “How old is she?” (Note, the IMDB states that she was born in 1971, making her 32 years old.)

“Well, let’s see. She was born around when Mary was, so that would make her somewhere around 43, 44.”

“Uhh… Have you folks SEEN Denise Richards? That’s not a 44 year old woman.”

“Oh yeah, she got all this plastic surgery done.”

I was crushed. There was no way Richards was in her 40s. No way. Look at that photo up there. I went to the IMDB and got that information I posted above. It was a cruel hoax. Someone, somewhere, was lying. Maybe it was Shinny. Maybe it was his daughter, Denise (he really does have a daughter named Denise.) I don’t know. I had to tell my friends the updated news. I was no longer related to Denise Richards. This, of course, didn’t stop them from continuing to refer to her as my cousin. In fact, when I met Dave T. and told him my sad tale, he laughed and said that he and his wife were in a theater a while back and a trailer for something starring Denise Richards was shown. When she came on the screen, he heard someone in front of him whisper, “Look, it’s Dave’s cousin!”

That’s where the story stood until this weekend, when my cousin Trey visited. (Trey really is my cousin.) I brought this up, and he told me that it really was true, Shinny’s daughter Denise is Denise Richards. She’s in her mid-to-late 40s. She was born in Galveston, not Illinois. Supposedly there is photographic evidence of this somewhere. Trey informed us that the reason she denies her true heritage is because of a possibly embarrassing detail about her father, Shinny, that was revealed late in his life. I won’t repeat that detail here.

So the can of worms has been reopened. If you have any information that can support either side of the story, I urge you to email me and share it. All sources will remain confidential. Is the official story of Denise Richards’ past history nothing but an intricate web of lies? Does hubby Charlie Sheen know the truth? Believe me, if she really is my cousin, I don’t blame her. There’s plenty of good reason to distance yourself from that family. If I wasn’t thinking about removing some of the clutter from this site, I’d install a polling module and ask your opinions on this topic. Instead, I’ll get my uncle, Wolf Blitzer, to do it.

Yarr! As ye no doubt be aware, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day. Every September 19th, it be right an’ proper to remember our shared Pirate heritage. All of us be descended from scurvy seadogs, and even if ye aren’t, it be kind of like St. Paddy’s day — on this day, all be pirates!

So talk like a Pirate! Don’t be actin’ like a pirate now - lootin’, killin’, and pillagin’ are no longer as acceptable as they once were. But ye can walk a plank, wear an eyepatch, download some mp3s, or simply have a grog and think of all yer pirate kin that have gone down to Davy Jones’ Locker. Yarr!

But be pityin’ me, ye swabbies. I be havin’ to call ye bilge-rats at me old bank and get me doubloons in an old IRA rolled over into my new IRA. And I be havin’ to do this on Talk Like a Pirate Day. I thinks some scalawag’s gonna get keel-hauled before this is all over…

The story, or small legend rather, as it goes is this. An officer in the 101st Airborne Division, where most soldiers live in Clarkesville, TN, was given the task of painting the water tower. Buying paint he specifically ordered from the U.S., he set about putting the Iraqis working for him to good use. (His superiors never said what COLOR to use!) The next morning, Iraq had its first experience of what we call “Big Orange Fever.”

Good grief. Story here. (Link courtesy of Shas.)