DETAILS: Continue reading
Monthly Archives: May 2018
COLLEGE BASEBALL: NAIA PLAYOFF TEAMS
BOWLING GREEN BRACKET
Top Seed: UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND ARTS OF OKLAHOMA DROVERS
2. CAMPBELLSVILLE UNIVERSITY TIGERS ### 3. REINHARDT UNIVERSITY EAGLES (Should be the Rottweilers) ### 4. BELLEVUE UNIVERSITY BRUINS ### 5. MIDLAND UNIVERSITY WARRIORS ###
HATTIESBURG BRACKET
Top Seed: SAINT THOMAS (FL) UNIVERSITY BOBCATS
2. WESTMONT COLLEGE WARRIORS (Should be the Guardians) ### 3. INDIANA UNIVERSITY SOUTHEAST GRENADIERS ### 4. LSU-SHREVEPORT PILOTS (Riverboat Pilots) ### 5. WILLIAM CAREY UNIVERSITY CRUSADERS ###
KINGSPORT BRACKET
Top Seed: SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY FIRE
2. TENNESSEE WESLEYAN COLLEGE BULLDOGS ### 3. MADONNA UNIVERSITY CRUSADERS ### 4. CLARKE UNIVERSITY CRUSADERS ### 5. TRINITY CHRISTIAN COLLEGE TROLLS ### Continue reading
Filed under College Baseball
DYSTOPIA NATION: TECHNO-TYRANTS OF SILICON VALLEY
Here at Balladeer’s Blog I write plenty of items about myths from around the world. I often mention that my blog posts about figures from the American West are along the same lines to me since I think the exaggerated tales of whatever their real-life stories were originate the same way that many religious fables do: the usual human tendency toward superstition and embellishment.
Dystopian literature is similar but instead of embellishing figures and events from the past this type of fiction involves taking contemporary problems and/ or trends and extrapolating them into larger than life menaces in the near or far future.
Soylent Green did it with overpopulation and food shortages, One Blade of Grass did it with environmental issues and Orwell’s 1984 did it with totalitarian political forces which still threaten to use his nightmarish novel as their road map. Countless other examples could be cited.
THE TECHNO-TYRANTS OF SILICON VALLEY – The modern-day versions of the disgusting old Robber Barons might well be the corporate fascists aka techno-fascists in assorted tech industries, not just regarding Silicon Valley but also privacy-violating rich pigs at Facebook and elsewhere.
In fact, you could make the case that people like Mark “Skippy” Zuckerberg and his fellow corporate fascists are even worse since I don’t recall bloated rich pigs like E.H. Harriman or Cornelius Vanderbilt trying to police other people’s every thought, word and deed. The invasive and ever-expanding tentacular reach of techno-fascists or in this fictional case Techno-Tyrants would make these villains a very credible threat to political freedom and freedom of expression. Continue reading
Filed under Future History, Neo-Pulp, opinion
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973)
It’s Balladeer’s Blog’s semi-annual Mother’s Day post!
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973) – Category: Bad movie elevated by kitsch value in the casting.
Directed by THE Darren McGavin and featuring his wife Kathie Browne in a small role, this hilariously bizarre film is also known as Run, Stranger, Run. “Run, Potential Viewer, Run” would be a more appropriate title.
Happy Mother’s Day Love, George (henceforth HMDLG) is often described as a psycho-sexual thriller but actually it is nothing more than a melodramatic soap opera with a few murders and VERY few scenes of blood and gore. Those blood and gore scenes are so over-the-top they are completely at odds with the low-key, almost made-for-tv mildness of the rest of the movie.
This was a theatrical release but is so subdued and slow-paced it seems like a telefilm. You and your friends can keep yourselves entertained making jokes about the recognizable cast members to kill time since the first murder doesn’t happen until we’re more than an hour into this flick.
Ron Howard IS Johnny, a teenager who has come to town to discover who his birth parents are but who mostly just stands around staring at people and ESPECIALLY at houses. He seems completely taken aback that the townspeople find this somewhat creepy. Johnny is intrigued by the rash of missing persons plaguing the small town and feels they are connected to the secret of his past.
Cloris Leachman IS Ronda (no “h”), Johnny’s real mother, as we learn very early in the film. Ronda is in such dire financial straits she had to hock the “h” in her name for rent money. (I’m kidding!) She never speaks to her sister, sleeps with a gigolo passing through town and serves up meals along with expository dialogue. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
SECRET AGENT MAN BY JOHNNY RIVERS
Balladeer’s Blog’s latest round of Give Them A Shoutout Before They’re Dead features another song about another Patrick McGoohan television series from the 1960s. It’s Johnny Rivers with Secret Agent Man, the theme song to McGoohan’s series Secret Agent.
Filed under opinion
THE PRISONER (1967): THE CHIMES OF BIG BEN
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: THE CHIMES OF BIG BEN. In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 3rd in the series. Any comments that I have regarding the Alternate Chimes of Big Ben will be made in this same post.
Leo McKern makes the first of his three appearances as one of the Village’s rotating series of Number Twos. Despite his villainous role he gets the audience on his side right off the bat. He does that while watching the surveillance video of Number Six as he wakes up for the day and voices his observation that the Prisoner “Can make even the act of putting on a dressing gown seem like a gesture of defiance.”
Leo McKern’s character’s verbal fencing with Patrick McGoohan is as much fun to watch as Columbo’s cat and mouse games with the murderers on his show. (And yes, I know McGoohan was no stranger to Columbo, both the 1970s series and the later revival.)
The part where the Prisoner intentionally adds three lumps of sugar to his tea just because Number Two says his file reflects that he takes NO sugar is particularly enjoyable. It’s also one of those scenes that is not appreciated by people who don’t have a nonconformist bone in their body.
McKern as Number Two also proves to be the most informative of those rotating Village executives. His attempts to persuade our protagonist to just tell the Villagekeepers why he resigned and then join their conspiracy go beyond just admitting that he, too, tried to resist when he was brought to the Village.
Leo makes it clear that the Village represents the model for the Earth of the future as pursued by highly-placed elements from both sides of the Cold War. He paints a picture of inevitability for the Prisoner in hopes that he can make McGoohan cave in while retaining his sense of personal honor. If a Global “Village” is inevitable there’s no shame in surrendering to it. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
AVENGERS: THE KREE-SKRULL WAR PART THREE
FOR PART ONE OF THIS LOOK AT THE KREE-SKRULL WAR (1971-1972) CLICK HERE
THE AVENGERS Volume One, Number 91 (August 1971)
AVENGERS ROSTER: THE WASP (Janet Van Dyne), THE SCARLET WITCH (Wanda), GOLIATH (Clint Barton), QUICKSILVER (Pietro), THE VISION (Not Applicable), YELLOW JACKET (Hank Pym, PhD), CAPTAIN MARVEL (Mar-Vell, Kree Captain)
NOTE: CAPTAIN MARVEL IS THE HERO THAT NICK FURY SUMMONED TO FIGHT THANOS IN THE POST-CREDITS SCENE TO AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR.
In this superhero-crazed world readers have made it clear they want more Marvel items. It’s another warm-weather season of escapist fun with The Kree-Skrull War, the prequel to last year’s Celestial Madonna Saga. I have a soft spot for superhero stories because reading them as a kid served as a gateway to two of my adult passions: mythology and opera.
TAKE ONE GIANT STEP … BACKWARD
Synopsis: We pick up right where we left off last time around. In the northernmost reaches of Alaska a “De-Evolution Zone” is spreading. Every life form in that zone, be it plant, insect or animal, is devolving to what it would have been over a million years ago.
The cause of that De-Evolution Zone is a citadel that is the product of alien Kree technology. Inside the citadel was Ronan the Accuser, who recently usurped the throne of the Kree Empire from the Supreme Intelligence, the Artificial Intelligence who had ruled the Empire for centuries.
The De-Evolution Ray causing the zone was put into use by Ronan the Accuser because he thought (mistakenly, as we’ll learn in a few installments) that this De-‘Vo assault aka Plan Atavus was why the Supreme Intelligence was studying Earth’s evolutionary past when Ronan overthrew him.
The Accuser feels the Supreme Intelligence’s goal was to eliminate Earth and its plethora of super-beings as threats to the Kree Empire by setting back the planet’s evolutionary clock. This will force life to start anew on Earth and hopefully – from the Empire’s point of view – this time less-threatening life-forms will evolve.
Ronan the Accuser has been bragging about his plans to his new captive, Captain Marvel, the traitorous Kree Captain who years earlier sided with Earth against the Empire. On one viewscreen Ronan and Mar-Vell see Rick Jones and three other Avengers – the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and the Vision fighting the enormous Sentry 459 ( a Kree robot) and the enthralled Avenger called Goliath (formerly Hawkeye).
Sentry 459 and the unwilling Goliath are preventing Wanda, Pietro and the Vizh from entering the Citadel and trying to rescue Captain Marvel. Meanwhile on another viewscreen, Ronan and Mar-Vell behold the Avenger called Yellow Jacket – now devolved to cave-man levels – approaching his fallen wife the Wasp, who was just rendered unconscious while fighting the Sentry and Goliath last issue. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
DURAN DURAN: THE REFLEX
Balladeer’s Blog’s Give Them A Shoutout Before They’re Dead strikes again with the old Duran Duran song The Reflex.
Filed under opinion
TRUMP EFFECT: ELEVEN-YEAR HIGH PERCENTAGE OF AMERICANS SAY THINGS ARE GOING WELL PLUS MORE …
Balladeer’s Blog has long emphasized the need for Third Parties in America since the Democrats and Republicans are just rival gangs of white collar criminals.
De facto Third Party President Donald Trump isn’t really a Republican – Republicans themselves often remind all of us of that – he just commandeered their political party apparatus.
ELEVEN YEAR HIGH PERCENT OF AMERICANS SAY THINGS ARE GOING WELL – CNN’s own polling is telling us this – which means the figure is probably even higher than the 59% they quoted. At any rate , I always make it clear that after the 2016 election I don’t trust polls and surveys done by the corporate media but Trump-hating fascists eat, sleep and breathe by such polls and surveys so I periodically have fun mentioning results like this.
It’s always hilarious to watch those people IMMEDIATELY go from pretending polls are sacred indicators to pretending they aren’t at all accurate if there’s a result they don’t like.
THIS BUFFOON IS LIVING PROOF WHY WE NEED THIRD PARTIES.
TEARS OF A CLOWN – The weak, inept and crooked little man named Barack Obama was sniveling and whining about President Trump – make that de facto Third Party President Donald Trump – trashing Barry’s pathetically one-sided Iran Deal.
I guess Barry’s worried that this jeopardizes his name as the Father of the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program.
SAMANTHA BEE STUPID – The relentlessly unfunny Samantha Bee looked like an even bigger fool than she usually does recently after New York’s Democrat Attorney General Eric Schneiderman – whom she praised and groveled for in an interview – had to resign amid #METOO accusations of brutal VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN. At least FOUR accusers have come forward.
Schneiderman’s reps have been saying his explanation is that the violence was all consensual BDSM “games” in which he would abuse the women – and in the case of a woman of color among the accusers – allegedly made her call him “Master.”
AGAIN, DEMOCRATS ARE ALWAYS LECTURING THE REST OF US ABOUT ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN BUT IT TURNS OUT TO BE AS HYPOCRITICAL AS IF PRIESTS LECTURED THE REST OF US ABOUT NOT MOLESTING LITTLE BOYS.
AND NEEDLESS TO SAY, AT LEAST ONE OF THE ACCUSERS MENTIONED HOW OTHER DEMOCRAT FEMALES PRESSURED HER NOT TO COME FORWARD JUST BECAUSE SCHNEIDERMAN WAS A DEMOCRAT! WHAT A BUNCH OF “HANDMAIDS.” “IS THIS WHAT FEMINISM LOOKS LIKE?”
Y’know, Samantha, when your only criteria for hero-worship is that the figure you bow down to criticizes Trump (Bee even called Schneiderman a “superhero”) you’re always going to be vulnerable to the kind of humiliation this incident brings down on you.
LLOYD MARCUS: DESPITE THE MEDIA, TRUMP PULLING DOWN WINS FOR WE THE PEOPLE – As I always mention, Lloyd is religious and I’m a non-believer.
But aside from his religious remarks I find his take on Trump’s triumphs very interesting. Among many other items he mentions Kanye West being the latest African-American to break away from the Democrat Plantation.
CLICK HERE Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
THE WRECK OF A WORLD (1889): ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION
THE WRECK OF A WORLD (1889) – Written by W. Grove. (No other name available) This novel is the sequel to Grove’s A Mexican Mystery, an ahead-of-its-time work about a train engine devised to have artificial intelligence. The machine – called only The Engine in that story – rebelled and took to preying on human beings in horrific fashion. For Balladeer’s Blog’s review of that novel click HERE
The Wreck of a World is not a direct sequel to A Mexican Mystery but does use one of that novel’s elements as its springboard: the deliciously frightening notion that the Engine’s artificial intelligence might have included the capacity to design and build others of its kind. Though A Mexican Mystery never explored that concept, Grove deals with it in much more detail in this second novel.
Our story begins in what was to Grove “the far future” of 1949. After a fairly superficial depiction of the world’s political and scientific situation in this imaginary future the meat of the tale begins. All in all the author did not present 1940s technology as being much more advanced than what was available in the 1880s. Grove might have done better to set his tale in 1899 or just into the 1900s to detract from his lack of vision on this particular element.
The revolt of the machines begins with train engines, presumably as a nod to the memorably malevolent Engine from Grove’s previous novel. The engines begin constructing others of their kind with the same robotic arms and with each new edition flaunting deadlier and deadlier weaponry to boot.
The engines soon modify themselves beyond the need for train tracks and become more like tanks, so kudos to this neglected author for nicely predicting the advent of such mobile death-machines. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
Balladeer's Blog 