Territorial

No wonder I had no idea. I didn't realize his makeup was based on anything. Not sure what sith are? Or Darth Maul? Those are Star Wars characters or something, right?

I have no idea what that getup is supposed to be. Newest member of the Shield? Halloween Darth Vader costume?

Mysterion looks like he could be Samoa Joe's long haired brother. Also, is he wearing an oversized furry coat or is he working a yeti gimmick? Well, we were just talking about Mark Henry. He hasn't done too badly for himself.

I thought he retired to Christmas to keep the people on the planet safe from the races massing overhead, not to keep from doing something else (they made it clear that trying to bring Gallifrey out of the Pocket Universe would restart the Time War).. What I don't get is why he thought that would be a good idea. The alien races had no way of knowing what the message was until he translated it for them. And even after the message translated, the daleks and such only knew that it had something to do with the Doctor. They couldn't have known about the crack, or what it was, or what was on the other side. It was said early on that everyone came to find out what the signal was, then held back out of fear. Since the planet was being protected by the church, it seems like a better way to protect the population would have been to relocate them somehow via the Tardis, find some way to deal with the crack, or simply go away. Even if the daleks worked out what the crack is, they probably couldn't access the pocket universe without the doctor's real name, right? If the doctor is the key, it seems like hanging around the planet guarantees that the planet stays under siege and that eventually the enemy force will be more than the doctor can deal with. I thought a better plan would have been to remove himself and/or somehow insure that his true name would never be revealed. Didn't they already establish that he took steps to keep his true name from ever being revealed? So the only way that knowledge would end up in dalek hand, for example, would be if they captured him and extracted it from him or Clara? Which makes hanging around in the vicinity of the crack a really awful idea. I still have no idea how the Doctor escaped from his own timeline (where he was stuck in the season finale).

I really don't get the doom and gloom hand-wringing they've started doing each time the Doctor starts to regenerate. The Smith and Tennant doctors have both given soliloquies as if the character was actually dying. Which makes no sense since the changes seem to be mostly superficial. As much as the show acts otherwise, regeneration mostly just gives the doctor a new face. The character retains his memories from the previous incarnation, and generally has the same personality, values, intelligence, beliefs, skill set, emotional core (and emotional attachments), etc. Even wacky sense of fashion stays pretty much the same. The idea seems to be that each incarnation is different from the others, but they never write the character that way (probably because TV tends to work off a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. Why risk the cash cow by changing the character?). You could easily swap the Tennant version of the Doctor out for the Smith incarnation, and the stories would play out pretty much the same. (We'll also overlook the logic of regeneration being a natural part of a time lord's life, so reacting to it as if it were something out of the norm just seems odd, given that the society would view it as perfectly normal as having two hearts). At least Smith's "deathbed" scene wasn't as bad as Tennant's. I really hated the maudlin, melodramatic walk down memory lane they wrote for Tennant in his last episode. They really need to do a Honest Trailer parody of Doctor Who. Much like Rick from the Walking Dead, the Doctor is a man of peace true to his convictions. Except for when he isn't. Then he's a man of wiping out entire alien races for the heck of it.

Well, Stavros - and by extension, the writers - called the Doctor out on that at the end of season 4 (the Catherine Tate season). Stavros made the observation that the Doctor wouldn't carry a gun, regards himself as a man of peace, etc., but generally finds himself in conflicts where he more or less clings to his ideals while the people around him - his companions, the military, etc. - take up weapons and do the fighting. The finale that season brought back all the previous nu-Who companions and made the point that the Doctor had basically groomed his own mini-army. Finale was alright. Not really that interested in seeing what comes next, but I'll give it a try.

I really liked his Spider Man run. There were some awful plot twists (Gwen's clone children), but I'm blaming editorial for at least some of that. The actual scripting was good. Not a big fan of his aborted Superman run, but I liked the idea. Kinda wish he had stayed on the book and things had had time to play out. Midnight Nation, Supreme Power, and Rising Stars are easily his best work, imo.

I really hope he's bring ironic or parodying online reviewers or something. If not, wow, someone needs to take away his Internet. I'm a little disappointed he hasn't discovered Judd Winnick yet. His rant about how Zatanna would cure AIDS in 15 secs could be epic. Just my opinion, but JMS seems really underrated to me.

It never occurred to me that it was supposed to be some sort of in-continuity Marvel 616 story. <shrug> I thought it was very well done. I haven't read it since it came out, though. A lot of comics I liked 10 years ago haven't held up well.

In retrospect, I wish I hadn't thrown out Nic Cage's name. When I threw out his name, the only Cage movies I probably could have named off the top of my head were Con Air, the Rock, and the 15-20 movies he's made in the past decade and either been completely awful or mailed it in and only been kinda awful. I completely blanked on films like Raising Arizona, Family Man, Moonstruck, etc. Until I looked up his filmography, I forgot how good he was when he was younger.

Nigel signed with TNA after the WWE pulled their contract offer. He contracted Hepatitis B while working for TNA - possibly as a result of blading. Not sure how he departed TNA, exactly, though I've heard he was fired when TNA thought he had Hep C, not B. The rumor going around was that the WWE wouldn't sign TNA due to his concussion history. However, in his documentary, Nigel claimed that the WWE passed on him due to the condition of his shoulder/bicep. Nigel gave the company his records and got a couple of independent doctors to certify that he was healthy. The WWE's doctor disagreed and thought he needed major surgery on the shoulder. I think Meltzer backed that version of events.

Might have a been a little miscommunication there.

Saw Jonathan Coachman on ESPN2. He's done reasonably well for himself post-WWE. I'm a little surprised Vince hasn't decided to humiliate him for having a career after his stint with the company. I keep expecting a bald midget named Jonathan Catchman to show up on RAW and be inducted into Hornswoggle's Kiss My Ass club.

One thing that jumps out at me as a huge omission is the 9/11 issue JMS wrote (Amazing #36, irrc). One of the best written single issues ever, imo.

When the announcer said "But he sure sucks" (2nd panel from the top), I realized that the announcing crew must have worked for Vince at some point. Telling the audience how bad your wrestlers are = what's best for business.

As I said only a page or two back, I thought Death of the Family was quite good. I liked the Mr. Freeze story from the annual, though I'm not sure about the retcon. It didn't ruin the issue for me, though. Speaking of polarizing books, I started Identity Crisis last night. Haven't read it since the issues came out. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Meltzer's a strong writer, and I'm a fan of Morales' art. I kinda treat it like an Elseworlds book, though. I'm fine with everyone's actions and the treatment of the situation with a pragmatic, real-world ethos in the same way I'm fine with, say, All-Star Batman or Watchmen. Not sure about making super-powered rapists and mystical lobotomies part of canon, though, so it's probably best Identity Crisis gets largely ignored or retconned out of the New 52 DC. Taken on it's own merits, it's a decent read.

I was thinking it might be helpful if we break out the doll and have Domino_Not_Deuce show us where FFVIII touched him. Hopefully, it would cathartic.

I wasn't thinking at all of Leaving Las Vegas, but, yeah, I thought he was great in a lot of films during the 90's - Leaving Las Vegas, the Rock. Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, etc. From the late 80's - late 90's, I thought he was consistently good, frequently great, and showed a lot of range, At some point after Con Air, he seemed to start parodying himself, and the last few years. he's mostly been in dreck and mailed it in. If I had to sum his career post-2000 in one sentence, "IRS wants money" might be apropos. Honestly, until I looked at his filmography a couple minutes ago, I forgot how many good movies he was in 20+ years ago. He seems to have driven his career into a ditch. Is he hard to work with? Too many personal problems?

If the producers expect me to remember which one is a stiff block of wood, they should have put name tags on those two.

What's Nic Cage's best performance? 'cause that may be the right answer.

Starting IX this weekend. Looking forward to it.

Lol, AMC didn't sound right, and I started to go back and look it up, then decided not to bother. My bad. Now I'm a little sad. I remember when A&E actually lived up to its name and attempted to broaden my family's cultural knowledge. Now it's the channel I surf by occasionally to see if CSI: Miami reruns are on.

Y'know, even with the controversy, I've never seen the show and wouldn't recognize the stars if they came to my door. I barely know what the show is about (some rural southern family who made millions selling duck.... calls? Live ducks? Ducks to supermarket?) I'm only sure what channel it's on because AMC has been mentioned in this thread. My wife was talking about the show last night and asked me what the family's name was? Apparently, "Duck" is not the correct answer. I'm taking way more pride in my ignorance right now than I should.

And....? I don't really see an issue (other than Derek Billington not being a particularly exciting choice),

He was a regular on Private Practice (the Grey's Anatomy spinoff) during the last several years of the show. He only has about four screen credits since the Brian Benben show was canceled in 2000. Several years on Private Practice, a tv movie, one episode of Masters of Horror, and a regular gig on Kingpin (NBC crime series from about 10 years ago, lasted 6 episodes).