My TV

Right before the Powers That Be shut down sites like Oink, I was turned onto the magic of TV-Links, which gathered all of the streaming video shit or whatever.  Secret techno things happened that produced moving pictures on my computational device’s viewing screen!  I immediately set out to watch things that have been withheld from my video library by other sectors of the Powers That Be – namely the abysmal last two seasons of Sliders (which will soon be out on DVD), and the hideous Logan’s Run TV Series from the mid 70’s.

For some reason, Logan’s Run is not out on disc.  In a world where Galactica: 1980 sees the light of day, it’s beyond me that we don’t have all the back-stoop foster child cult shit available.  Survivors in region one?  Nope.  Misfits of Science?  No.  Salvage 1?  Uh-uh.  There are four episodes of that which have never aired, I think.

How the hell can Salvage 1 not get a release?  Andy Griffith plays an interplanetary junkman driving a homemade (from truck parts) spaceship around!   

Not even TV Links could deliver Salvage 1, but I did remind myself why I hated the last couple years of Sliders.  And I drove myself to drink trying to watch Logan’s Run.  Well, I started drinking before I entered that marathon.  The first episode is a sort of Cliff’s Notes version of the movie, where they reenact highlights from the film in the first half hour, then totally fuck up the whole Logan’s Run universe.  Which the movie does, as well.  If you’re the type of guy who has read all the books, like me.

I’m the only one who has read the books, right?

In the first book, they all die at 18 instead of 30.  And Logan is rescued by aliens.  Then he comes back to Earth in the sequel and screws around.  Then, in the third book, he battles the same bad guys from the first novel – in an alternate reality!  So, in terms of just not making sense and deeply offending anyone smarter than a six year old, the TV show is quite loyal.

The show is an intentionally non-violent example of classic journeyman 70’s sci-fi.  The “wagon train in space” routine we all know well from Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.  Logan and Jessica and their robot sidekick drove around in a big armored personnel carrier, pursued by Francis and some lackeys, and became involved in various ridiculous adventures with the not-so-wasteland outside world.

You spend each episode wanting to stick a fork in every character’s eye, and then mummifying yourself in the bathroom using classic Egyptian techniques.  Slowly insert the stick up your nose, stir your brain around, pull it out.  Time for another episode!

Well, just as I was working my way through Andromeda, which is on disc, They took TV-Links away.  Which is probably a good thing, because I was becoming obsessed with Lexa Doig. 

After several dark months where I had to resort to episodes of Knight Rider, Magnum PI, and The A-Team on the Netflix Watch Instantly page, TV-Links snuck back.  So now I’m watching Bones because, obsessions with Lexa Doig and others aside, I’ve always been obsessing over one or both of the Deschanel sisters.  The eldest, in Bones, plays yet another crime-solving extra-legal type with a quirky mental condition.  I don’t think that’s official, it’s just the actress saying she’s trying to play someone with borderline Asperger’s because her publicist said it’d be a neat thing to say. 

I am, by the way, opposed to the name “Asperger,” because it just isn’t helpful when you tie a funny name to a retard.  Now, yes, I know that they aren’t retards.  I just have a classical suburban DC public school education.  Black people are retards, for example. The Hispanics, anyone riding the short bus, and anyone with a combined household income lower than $50,000 (in 1988 dollars).  All retards. 

The short bus is a sticky problem because, occasionally, the bus I connect with on the way home from work is a short one.  I tend to wait for the next full-sized bus, because I ain’t no retard.  At the very least, they could offer a short bus transfer discount.  In fact, I think public transport should have a whole host of unadvertised, unexplained, arcane discounts.  Little perks along the way that suddenly save you a dime, and the bus driver looks at you knowingly.  A sense of belonging as you reach out for him and…

No, wait!  God.  It’s happening again.  That absurd need for human contact.  But I’m saving myself for Madchen Amick.   When she was young.  Like immediately after Twin Peaks when she took her clothes off all the time.