Trailer park

First, the greatest actor ever in what will certainly be the greatest movie ever:



Second, a new kick-ass trailer for Iron Man. Hint: This is how you make a superhero movie.

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Mensa chairman issues a guide to smart television

In 1961, Newton N. Minow, then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave a speech in which he referred to television as a “vast wasteland.”

Ever since, many intelligent people — and not a few people who just think they’re intelligent — have harbored a prejudice against TV.

But now at least one officially smart person has dared to come out of the closet and admit he loves television.

Mensa International Chairman Jim Werdell recently named his list of the 10 smartest TV shows of all time.

Some, like Carl Sagan’s science documentary series “Cosmos” and the game show “Jeopardy,” are obvious picks. Well, except during the “Jeopardy” celebrity tournament. Celebrities can be pretty stupid.

Three of Werdell’s other choices are also favorites of mine: “House,” the original “CSI” — please spare me “CSI: Miami” and David Caruso’s wooden “acting” — and “Boston Legal.”

And then there is Werdell’s one baffling pick — the 1990s sitcom “Mad About You.” But the minds of geniuses often work in strange ways.

If I were compiling such a list, I’d include the Discovery Channel’s science series “Mythbusters,” Showtime’s provocative “Penn & Teller: Bull----!” and Fox’s late, lamented comedy “Arrested Development.”

The reality is that TV has never been as mind numbing as its critics have often contended.
In his speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, Minow infamously said, “... when television is bad, nothing is worse. ... I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”

Of course, what’s often left out is what Minow said first: “When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.”

Of the 10 shows on Werdell’s list, four are still on the air. That may just reflect a bias toward programs Werdell is more likely to have seen recently. But it may also reflect an improvement in TV programming.

Despite the explosion of “reality television,” most TV shows are getting smarter and demanding more of their viewers.

In his 2005 book “Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter,” Steven Johnson graphs the complexity of TV plots. He finds, for example, that more recent programs, like “The West Wing” and “The Sopranos,” ask far more of their viewers than did dramas of earlier decades, like “Dragnet” and “Starsky and Hutch,” to use his examples.

Of course, the politics depicted on “The West Wing” is a bit less accurate than the medical science depicted on “House,” but that’s beside the point. The point is that watching television is no longer a passive activity. It takes a lot of mental effort just to keep up. You almost need a scorecard to follow the goings on of “Heroes” and “Lost.”

Comedies are also more complex. Apart from “Arrested Development,” Johnson cites “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons” as examples of far smarter writing than, say, “Three’s Company.”

Simple sitcoms — Johnson mentions “Everybody Loves Raymond” — still prosper, but so do intelligent ones with rapid-fire dialogue and ongoing stories. For every “Raymond” there is now a “Scrubs” or “The Office.”

Given a cable lineup of 100-plus channels, you’ll certainly come across a lot of bad TV, but it’s more likely than ever that you’ll find TV worth watching, too. Just ask the chairman of Mensa; he’s a pretty bright fellow.

The goddamn Batman thinks you need Jesus

Decatur, Ala., City Councilman Ray Metzger, who owns a not-quite-authentic reproduction Batmobile, has been handing out come-to-Jesus pamphlets featuring everyone's favorite Dark Knight. Take a peek and maybe you'll be as moved as I was — moved to hysterical fits of incredulous laughter. (Click images to enlarge.)

Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck, dies

When I mention the name Howard the Duck, you probably think of the 1986 movie produced by George Lucas that became one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history.

You probably don’t think of Steve Gerber, the man who, in the early 1970s, created Howard the Duck for Marvel Comics.

That is a shame because while Lucas’ movie was a turkey, Gerber’s comics often approached genius.

Gerber died Feb. 10 from complications from pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease. He was 60.

In the ’70s, Gerber was one of the most creative and influential writers in comics. He brought the irreverent, satirical attitude of underground comics to the superhero genre.

As Gerber’s friend and fellow writer Mark Evanier tells it, a job offer from Marvel editor Roy Thomas “rescued” Gerber from the drudgery of writing advertising copy. At Marvel, Gerber soon took over the writing duties on “Adventure into Fear,” which at the time featured Man-Thing, a swamp creature charged with guarding the Nexus of All Realities, a place where various universes come together.

The story took an unexpected turn, however, when a talking, cigar-smoking waterfowl from another dimension came through the Nexus and found himself trapped on Earth, a planet populated by, as Howard put it, “hairless apes.”

Gerber didn’t plan for Howard the Duck to be anything more than a one-off character. But Howard quickly developed a following, which led to his appearing in more comics and, eventually, getting his own monthly title and a Sunday newspaper strip, all of which Gerber scripted.

Maybe Howard didn’t fit in on a planet full of humans and superheroes, but he definitely seemed at home in the cynical post-Watergate, post-Vietnam world of the ’70s. He was a voice of reason trapped in a world he never made.

Despite being a duck, Howard was an everyman. Evanier writes that Gerber’s “Howard the Duck” is, in fact, “obviously autobiographical to a large degree.” Except, of course, for all of the time Howard spent fighting a bizarre array of costumed supervillains. Gerber’s comics were as much a commentary on the absurdities of superhero comics as on the real world’s foibles.

Howard even ran for president of the United States, a story arc that Marvel turned into a successful publicity stunt.

During this period, Gerber also wrote other comics. He had a memorable run on “The Defenders,” which featured characters like the Hulk and Dr. Strange. He also created “Omega the Unknown,” a short-lived series that made a major impression on at least one young reader — future “Fortress of Solitude” novelist Jonathan Lethem, who currently is writing a new “Omega” miniseries.

Howard the Duck’s success, however, ultimately led to Gerber’s departure from Marvel and a lawsuit about ownership of the character. The parties settled, but afterward Gerber worked only sporadically in comics, for Marvel and other publishers. He also wrote for television, creating the popular 1980s Saturday-morning cartoon “Thundarr the Barbarian.”

Eventually, Gerber returned to his most famous creation. Marvel’s adult-oriented MAX imprint published Gerber’s six-issue “Howard the Duck” miniseries in 2002.

At the time of his death, Gerber was writing a “Dr. Fate” series for DC Comics. But his legacy will remain intertwined with his fowl creation, Howard, and with turning comic-book superheroics on its head.

That’s not a bad legacy to have, even if George Lucas didn’t quite get it.

Not a lot of love to go around for Valentine’s Day

It seems lots of people, not just singles and charter members of the Lonely Hearts Club, have reasons to hate Feb. 14.

Some reasons are better than others. A quick search of the week’s headlines turned up several stories from the Middle East. As you might guess, it turns out that the terrorists actually hate us because of Valentine’s Day.

OK, it’s not really “the terrorists,” but they’re probably not happy, either.

Ahead of America’s annual orgy of romance, chocolates and greeting cards, some Muslim countries are making sure no one within their borders gets too amorous.

Fox News reports that in Kuwait, the nation American troops “liberated” during the first President Bush’s administration, the head of the National Assembly’s Committee Monitoring Negative Alien Practices is looking to suppress Valentine’s Day, blaming it for spreading corruption among Kuwaiti youths.

In Saudi Arabia, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shops to remove red roses, along with anything else colored scarlet, according to a Reuters news report. Apparently, Saudi religious authorities see red at the prospect of anyone else seeing red.

Perhaps Islamic fundamentalists would look upon the holiday more kindly if its true meaning hadn’t been lost.

St. Valentine was a Roman priest who was beaten and beheaded in the year 269, or thereabouts. And there’s nothing particularly romantic about that. Valentine’s Day didn’t come to be associated with love until the Middle Ages. In fact, the earliest link between St. Valentine and romance is probably a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Yes, that’s the same Chaucer whose “Canterbury Tales” is now the bane of most English-speaking high school students. Evidently, he has much for which to answer.

Like many modern holidays, Valentine’s Day may have originated as a pagan festival. The ancient Romans, for example, celebrated a fertility festival, called Lupercalia, from Feb. 13 through Feb. 15. Not that ancient fertility rites had much to do with romance.

Of course, I’m not convinced that Valentine’s Day as Americans celebrate it has a lot to do with romance, either. There are too many obligations involved.

Cards, flowers, expensive dinners and boxes of candy — all given in accordance with a day on the calendar — do little to show genuine affection. They’re expected. Try not giving your significant other a gift for Valentine’s Day, and you’ll see just what I mean. There certainly won’t be any fertility rites in your immediate future.

But I’m not picking on women for expecting roses and heart-shaped boxes from their husbands and boyfriends. Men expect something on Valentine’s Day, too.

I’m sure my female readers will agree that they’re expected to be, shall we say, extremely grateful for all of the tokens of the holiday that they receive from the men in their lives.

Valentine’s Day is like a primitive mating ritual that refuses to go away, even after you’re married. Showy displays of flowers and candy are like the colorful feathers male birds use to lure female birds into their nests. But birds don’t really care about such things after the deal has been sealed.

Humans, however, have long memories. And some of us like to keep on reliving those mating rituals because they were a lot more fun than what followed.

So, this year, as we do every year, we all celebrate Valentine’s Day, either by going through the obligatory motions or by complaining about going through the motions.

Even singles celebrate it, mostly by moping about the fact that they’re not celebrating it with anyone.

On second thought, maybe Valentine’s Day is rather like getting beaten up and having your head chopped off.

Tennessee Valley horror icon Dr. Shock dies at 75

Tom Reynolds as Dr. Shock, with

Dingbat.

Two weeks ago, I noted the passing of horror hostess Maila Nurmi, better known as Vampira. Now I sadly must mark the passing of the Tennessee Valley’s own horror host.

Tom Reynolds died Jan. 20 in Huntsville at age 75. He had worked at WHNT Channel 19 as creative commercial director from the early 1980s until his retirement. But before coming to Huntsville, he became an icon in Chattanooga.

Reynolds’ day job in Chattanooga was working behind the scenes as program director for WTVC Channel 9. But on Saturday nights, his alter ego took over.

Donning a vampire cape and makeup, Reynolds became Dr. Shock, host of WTVC’s “Shock Theater.”

Throughout much of the 1970s, he and his sidekicks — a puppet named Dingbat and a nurse named Nurse Badbody — introduced B-grade horror movies, answered viewer mail and performed comedic skits. Dr. Shock gained a loyal following as much for satirizing local political figures as for sending up bad horror flicks.

Dr. Shock and Dingbat (performed by the late Dan East) “would often push the envelope, straying into controversial territory, offending the wealthy and powerful among us,” reported David Carroll of Chattanooga’s WRBC-TV upon Reynolds’ death. “... But the notoriety of their sometimes naughty behavior just seemed to boost ratings, and advertiser response.”

Dr. Shock made a brief stop at another Chattanooga TV station before Reynolds moved to Huntsville to work at Channel 19. And that’s where I entered the story.

In the early ’80s, Reynolds revived “Shock Theater” at WHNT. But viewers in the Huntsville area got only a glimpse at what had made Dr. Shock a legend in Chattanooga.

At Channel 19, Dr. Shock was a solo act. He made fun of the movies he aired and read viewer mail, but Dingbat and Nurse Badbody were gone, as was the original show’s political satire.

Still, the revived “Shock Theater” managed to make an impression on at least one viewer. As Eric Cartman might say, the show “warped my fragile little mind.”

“Shock Theater” was my first exposure to the Edgar Allan Poe movies that low-budget director/producer Roger Corman made in the 1960s. Just about all of them starred Vincent Price, and it was these colorful, drive-in shockers that cemented Price’s reputation as one of the masters of horror.

Poe, America’s poet laureate of the macabre, was the mainstay of Dr. Shock’s tenure in Huntsville. Apart from Corman/Price collaborations like “The Raven” (also starring Boris Karloff and a young Jack Nicholson) and “The Masque of the Red Death,” Dr. Shock featured oddities like “Spirits of the Dead,” a trilogy of Poe stories directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini.

These weren’t your typical schlocky horror flicks. These were good movies made by talented filmmakers. They ignited my lifelong obsession with horror movies. Because of them, I’ve scoured flea markets for used videotapes and sent e-mails to movie studios, practically begging them to release various obscure horror films on DVD.

For me, it all started with Dr. Shock. And when I interviewed Reynolds in October 1999, I was surprised when he told me that WHNT aired “Shock Theater” for only a few months.
“Shock Theater” didn’t take off in Huntsville as it had in Chattanooga, but for me, it was the best thing on television. Today, I probably own a copy of every movie Dr. Shock ever aired.

Ever since “Shock Theater” faded to black, there’s been a void. No one has stepped up to be the Tennessee Valley’s next Dr. Shock.

But as Dr. Shock’s many fans will tell you, no one can replace Reynolds. The best anyone can do is carry on the tradition.

Today’s blockbusters were yesterday’s trash

“Cloverfield,” the new film from “Alias” producer J.J. Abrams, had a monster opening weekend, setting a January record with its three-day take of $41 million.

Not bad for a film you can sum up as Godzilla meets “The Blair Witch Project.”

In the 1970s, a movie like “Cloverfield” wouldn’t have been a national hit. It would have been a B movie, seen mostly at rural drive-ins and urban grindhouses. But in the nearly 40 years since the heyday of monster movies and exploitation flicks, genre films have come to define mainstream, blockbuster entertainment.

Of course, today’s genre movies are a lot tamer than the ones that unspooled in the ’70s and early ’80s. For instance, compare “One Missed Call,” a PG-13 horror movie now flopping nationwide, to the movies of the ’70s. The contrast is stark.

I’ve nothing against PG-13 horror movies in theory. An atmospheric ghost story like 2002’s “The Ring” doesn’t need sex and gore to work. But a movie like “One Missed Call,” with its disposable cast of pretty teenagers, is begging for gratuitous violence and even-more-gratuitous nudity.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

“One Missed Call” is an exploitation movie that’s woefully short on exploitation. That’s the pitfall of turning exploitation movies into mainstream fare. It’s a rare film today, like “Hostel” or “Saw,” that pushes the boundaries regularly broken during the grindhouse and drive-in era.

So, while moviegoers were flocking to “Cloverfield” last weekend, I stayed warm at home, hunkered down with some ’70s trash cinema.

BCI Entertainment has released 10 double-feature DVDs under its “Welcome to the Grindhouse” banner. Each features a “grindhouse experience” option that plays a couple of movie trailers, then the first feature, then more trailers and, finally, the second feature. In other words, it’s just like watching a double bill in a rundown theater, except your feet don’t stick to the floor and you’re not in danger of getting mugged. Unless your house is in a bad neighborhood.

My weekend viewing consisted of three double features: “Pick-up” and “The Teacher,” “Malibu High” and “Trip with the Teacher,” and “Black Candles” and “Evil Eye.” The first four are American-made teenagers-in-trouble movies, while the last two are European horror flicks. None is a great work of art, but all except two are entertaining examples of drive-in sleaze.

The bad apples are “Evil Eye,” a plodding story about a man possessed by evil spirits bent on revenge against their killers, and “The Teacher.”

“The Teacher” has its moments, but they’re way too few for a movie that runs 98 minutes, should have run 80 minutes and feels like 120 minutes. This story of an ill-advised relationship between a teacher and her former student (played by Jay “Dennis the Menace” North) often plays like an “ABC Afterschool Special” gone bad. Only with breasts.

Back in the drive-in days, truth in advertising was more of a guideline than a rule. When you see the poster for “Malibu High,” you think “teen sex comedy.” But what you get is a story about a girl who blackmails her teachers, becomes a hooker, gets involved with the mob and ends up a hit woman. And the trailer for “Pick-up” in no way prepares you for watching three hippies experience increasingly bizarre flashbacks and hallucinations while stuck in the Florida Everglades.

Lastly, a few words of warning. “Trip with the Teacher” is a nasty piece of work that desperately wants to be “The Last House on the Left,” complete with a similarly psychotic heavy, played here by future “Red Shoe Diaries” producer Zalman King.

“Black Candles,” meanwhile, reinforces a theory of mine that all ’70s Spanish occult films are thinly veiled excuses for Satanic orgy scenes, often involving people you don’t want to see naked. For that and other reasons, it’s not for the easily offended.

Of course, that’s why they don’t make ’em like they used to.

Vampira, the first horror hostess, dies at 86

Maila Nurmi as Vampira.

Last week saw the passing of a television pioneer.

Actress and pin-up model Maila Nurmi was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi in 1921 in Finland. She moved with her family to the United States when she was 2. But fans of low-budget and no-budget horror movies will always remember her as Vampira, the first horror movie hostess.

Nurmi died in her sleep Jan. 10 at age 86.

Nurmi made TV history in 1954, when she debuted on Los Angeles’ KABC-TV as the star of “The Vampira Show.” As Vampira, Nurmi became the model horror hostess, mixing horror movies, humor and a plunging neckline, all to the delight of her fans.

She introduced old horror films like the Bela Lugosi feature “White Zombie,” acted out comedy bits with her pet spider Rollo, and invited her viewers to write in for epitaphs instead of autographs.

Nurmi based her look on Morticia Addams, a character in Charles Addams’ “Addams Family” cartoons. She had worn the costume at a ball and attracted the attention of a KABC producer who later hired her to host the channel’s late-night horror movies.

Unfortunately, “The Vampira Show” aired live, and no known footage of Vampira’s host segments exists. Also, the show lasted barely a year. After a contract dispute with ABC, Nurmi took her character to rival station KHJ-TV. The new show, however, was also short-lived. Still, Vampira’s influence extended far beyond her stint on Los Angeles television. She appeared in Life magazine and inspired fan clubs worldwide.

Nurmi crossed paths with Hollywood royalty, including James Dean. But, as she recalled in a 1994 People magazine interview, after her TV show’s demise, she was “scraping by on $13 a week.”
It was then that she agreed to the career move for which she is best known today.

In 1958, Edward D. Wood Jr., who had already made such schlocky drive-in movies as “Bride of the Monster” and “Glen or Glenda,” cast Nurmi in his most infamous film: “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” often cited as the worst movie ever made.

Billed as Vampira and wearing her TV-show costume, Nurmi shared the screen with Wood’s bizarre acting troupe, which by then included The Amazing Criswell, professional wrestler Tor Johnson and stock film footage of Bela Lugosi, who died in 1956.

Nurmi didn’t have any lines, but the image of Vampira haunting the movie’s wobbly graveyard set as a reanimated corpse became iconic. Actress/model Lisa Marie would replicate it decades later, portraying Vampira in Tim Burton’s 1994 film “Ed Wood.”

By the early 1980s, Nurmi was in negotiations to bring “The Vampira Show” back to television. But when the deal fell through, the show’s producers turned to a new actress, Cassandra Peterson, and a new character: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

The Vampira character clearly influenced Elvira, but Peterson’s performance was remarkably different — part punk, part goth and part Valley Girl. Nurmi sued Peterson, but the court dismissed the case, ruling that the similarities were not sufficient grounds for legal action. Elvira would go on to heights of fame and fortune Vampira would never see.

For her part, Nurmi didn’t fully exploit Vampira’s merchandising potential until late in life. But she nevertheless continued to cultivate a loyal cult following, and “Vampira: The Movie,” a documentary about Nurmi’s enduring character, was released in 2006.

Meanwhile, others continue the Vampira legacy. The latest is Ivonna Cadaver (Natalie Popovich), host of “Macabre Theater,” seen on small TV stations nationwide via the America One network. Locally, “Macabre Theater” airs on Athens-based ZTV at either midnight Saturday or 1 a.m. Sunday, depending on America One’s other programming.

Like many pioneers, Nurmi didn’t get the credit she deserved during her lifetime. But she will be remembered fondly for years to come.

Blu-ray wins the 21st century’s first format war

The latest great format war is over, and the winner is Blu-ray.

For the past 18 months, Sony-backed Blu-ray and Toshiba-backed HD DVD have battled it out to be the high-definition successor to DVD. During that time, Blu-ray seemed to have the upper hand, but the final blow came late last week.

Warner Bros., which had been releasing its movies in both formats, announced it will go exclusively with Blu-ray, joining other entertainment-industry heavy hitters Disney, Sony Pictures and Fox.

Warner currently sells more DVDs than any other Hollywood studio. But with DVD sales leveling off, it wanted to eliminate consumer and retailer confusion regarding Blu-ray and HD DVD, a company executive said at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. That obviously meant using Warner’s huge film and TV library to tip the balance in Blu-ray’s favor.

Warner’s decision leaves only Paramount, Universal and mini-major studio DreamWorks in the HD DVD camp. Industry observers expect all three to make the leap to Blu-ray by the middle of the year. Blu-ray sales and rentals were outpacing HD DVD’s even before Warner’s decision to go exclusively Blu-ray. The remaining HD DVD-aligned studios simply can’t afford to stay on a sinking ship.

Toshiba executives say the fight isn’t over yet, but it is. They just haven’t admitted it. Toshiba’s position is either spin or a river in Egypt.

So, if you purchased the first season of Universal’s “Heroes” on HD DVD, you probably shouldn’t count on seeing subsequent seasons released on that format.

While this is bad news for HD DVD’s early adopters, at least we shouldn’t hear a lot of complaints this time around about how the “better” format didn’t win. Most videophiles either rate Blu-ray and HD DVD as about equal or give Blu-ray the edge. That wasn’t the case with the last big home video format war — the war between VHS and Betamax.

Sony’s Betamax videotape format died an ignominious death in the early 1980s, and Beta’s partisans cried foul. They said Beta’s audio and video quality were superior to VHS’s, which they were. Thus, Beta’s failure was proof that the “better” format doesn’t always win.

But “better” is a relative term. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for millions of years until an asteroid wiped them out, paving the way for mammals that had barely eked out an existence during the dinosaurs’ reign. Which was better adapted to survive? That depended entirely on the environment at the time.
During the Betamax/VHS war, the environment favored VHS. Consumers were willing to sacrifice Beta’s superior audio-video quality to get what VHS offered: double the recording time. That was a decided advantage when most consumers just wanted to tape TV shows for later viewing.

Besides, true videophiles didn’t need Beta. They clung to their laserdiscs, which served the niche home-theater market until smaller, more convenient and technologically superior DVDs came along.

So, Blu-ray has vanquished HD DVD and will, in time, replace standard DVDs just as DVDs replaced VHS. Then what? Will we be embroiled in yet another format war in 10 or 15 years?

I suspect not. What is probably next is digital downloading. You won’t have to buy a physical product at all. Instead, you’ll download movies and TV shows directly into some kind of storage/playback device.

That means there won’t be much incentive to replace Blu-ray as the format of choice for consumers who prefer a physical object to bits in a box. Blu-ray may reign for a while, only to become the video equivalent of an audio CD in an MP3 world.

The fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves

If you think your answers lie in the stars, there is something you probably should know: Stars lie.

Or, to be exact, astrological signs lie.

For years, I assumed I was a Scorpio because my birthday falls in early November, a period that astrologers link to the zodiac sign also known as the constellation Scorpius. Astrologers determine the periods for the 12 astrological signs based on which one the sun “passes through” — as seen from Earth — on a given day. From Oct. 24 through Nov. 22, the rising sun passes through Scorpio.

According to just about every astrology reference I’ve ever seen, Scorpios are passionate, powerful, profound, complex, keenly perceptive and analytical. They also have large sex drives and possess a powerful, magnetic eroticism.

Yep. That sounds like me.

It seems simple enough, but there is just one problem with it: It’s wrong. Not the description of me, of course. That’s obviously correct. I mean the dates are wrong.

As you may recall from elementary school science class, the Earth is tilted on an axis. That tilt, relative to its orbit around the sun, gives us the four seasons. But as you may not recall, the Earth’s axis wobbles. And because of that wobble — called the procession of the axis — the sun is no longer in the same astrological signs that it was during the dates set down by early astrologers more than 2,000 years go.

Writing for LiveScience.com, Pedro Braganca helpfully clears things up. For example, the sun now appears in Scorpio from Nov. 23 until Nov. 29 — a mere seven days, which don’t include my birthday.

On my birthday, the sun is now in Libra.

Unlike astronomers, who as scientists constantly update their theories in light of new data, astrologers seem to have a hard time keeping up with new findings.

It gets worse for us poor Scorpios or, I guess, former Scorpios, or whatever we are now. Many astrologers say Scorpio’s ruling planet — whatever that means, but I’m sure it’s important — is Pluto. But astronomers no longer classify Pluto as a planet. Now what?

At least Scorpios don’t have it as bad as Cancers and Leos do. The moon and sun, respectively, rule those signs, and it has been centuries since anyone (besides astrologers) has categorized those two heavenly bodies as planets.

Astrology hasn’t changed much since the days of classical Greece, when the rule of the day, as set down by the philosopher Aristotle, was that the celestial realm was eternal and unchanging.

Since Aristotle, however, we’ve learned that space is far from unchanging. Stars form, burn for billions of years and die. Black holes crunch the fabric of space and time. And some celestial objects, like ex-planet Pluto, have wildly elliptical orbits that take them in and out of the orbits of other objects.

Nobody knew any of that when astrology began, and astrology today doesn’t take any of it into account. Instead of focusing on the real forces at work in the universe, astrology is all about some mystical force that has to do with where the stars were when you were born.

Of course, some celestial bodies do influence life on Earth. Energy from the sun makes life here possible. The moon’s gravitational interaction with the Earth causes the tides and creates the pesky wobble that has thrown off the dates for astrological signs.

But on a personal level, even gravity isn’t a big deal. There was more gravitational attraction between you and the doctor who delivered you when you were born than between you and the moon.

So, if you’re looking to get good advice from your daily horoscope, you’re looking in the wrong place.

As for my Scorpio dilemma, as a “keenly perceptive and analytical” ex-Scorpio, I’ve never believed any of that astrology stuff, anyway.

The new year is a good time to look ahead, not back

Other dates are more associated with division. There’s always some excuse to fight over the “true meaning” of Christmas, Halloween and even Columbus Day.

But while no one actively fights over it, no date reveals a greater divide than New Year’s.

That divide is between people who look forward and those who look backward. As 2007 ends and 2008 begins, we spend most of our time looking back at the year that was: who died, events that shaped the world, Time magazine’s Person of the Year. We spend a good deal less time, it seems, looking forward to trends and issues that will shape the new year and years to come.

If we spend more time looking backward than forward, that’s understandable. The past is easy. We usually know what happened even if we don’t know what it all means. The future, however, is unknowable. We can only imagine it.

Still, even if predicting the future is more difficult than reflecting on the past, that’s no excuse not to give the future a try.

Yes, as George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” History is important, obviously. But as The Amazing Criswell once said, “We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” A phony, showbiz psychic has never spoken truer words.

Looking forward, beyond the short run, doesn’t come naturally to us. In fact, it’s a recent phenomenon. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t have to look beyond the next hunt. And our agrarian ancestors, who came later, didn’t worry about much beyond the current growing season. As far as most people back then were concerned, the future was going to be pretty much like the past — awful. So, there was no point dwelling on it.

That didn’t really change until the early 1800s, and with good reason. According to Gregory Clark, chairman of the University of California, Davis economics department and author of “A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World,” living standards remained basically stable — and low — from our hunter-gather days through the 18th century. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution got under way in the 19th century that living standards (for some) shot up, technological advancement exploded and life spans increased.

Suddenly, the future mattered. In a big way. It’s no accident that the late 1800s saw the birth of science fiction, as seen in the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. People now had to speculate about the long term.

But before the Industrial Revolution could take hold, it needed the proper intellectual climate — one that fostered scientific discovery and entrepreneurship. That climate was the Enlightenment.

From the late 1600s through about 1800, scientists, philosophers, historians and economists — people like Isaac Newton, David Hume and Adam Smith — pushed forward the boundaries of human understanding. This was as forward-looking a group of intellectuals as the world has ever seen. By enabling the progress that followed, they helped make the rest of us in the West forward-looking, too.

Science fiction writer David Brin divides the world into forward-looking Enlightenment societies and Romantic societies, which look back to some long-ago Golden Age.

Romanticism in the 1800s was a reaction to the Enlightenment and idealized a pre-industrial bliss that never existed. Today, America still has elements of both its Enlightenment and Romantic heritages. But it’s the ratio that counts.

As we enter a new year, there is no better time to set out sights toward what is to come. We can indulge in nostalgia anytime. The past will always be there. But the future will be here before we know it.

All is quiet on the Christmas front

“Peace on Earth, good will toward men.” That’s what we say at Christmastime, and this year we’re getting it — on one front, anyway.

We’re not hearing much about the so-called War on Christmas. That’s a pleasant change from last year, when the airwaves were filled with chatter about a sinister conspiracy that was supposedly trying to stamp out the holiday season.

Instead, when I Googled the phrase “war on Christmas” this week, most of the recent discussions were about how all of the war talk had settled down.

During the Dec. 12 installment of his Fox News Channel program, Bill O’Reilly, whose voice had been one of the loudest decrying the alleged secular assault on Christmas, declared victory. The War on Christmas was over, and his side had won.

But really, how much has changed? I still see signs that say “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings” instead of O’Reilly’s preferred greeting, “Merry Christmas.” Isn’t that a sign that the war is still on?

I suppose it would be, if people hadn’t been saying things like “happy holidays” and “seasons greetings” for decades, long before some people with nothing better to do decided those were fighting words.

The closest thing I’ve seen to a real war on Christmas in the past year is a T-shirt with the slogan “I support the war on Christmas.” Of course, it was a joke. The people who made those T-shirts did so only to irritate blowhards like O’Reilly.

Being a contrarian sort of person, I thought of getting one of those shirts for myself. But I decided I didn’t want to risk getting punched in the face.

If there is anything I abhor, it’s violence against me.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, nothing has changed. People are celebrating Christmas this year just as they did last year.

Yes, there are the usual little spats over putting explicitly religious Christmas symbols on public property. The Catholic League, led by the country’s most easily offended man, Bill Donohue, released a list of about a dozen instances in which a town refused to place a Nativity scene on a city lawn or something equally trivial.

Not that Nativity scenes are themselves trivial. They aren’t, and you can see them in front of churches far and wide, which is why one more in front of a courthouse or city hall doesn’t matter. People don’t need the government’s blessing to celebrate Christmas.

But most people don’t get worked up about such legal battles, anyway. How do I know? Well, I’ve seen a lot of houses decorated for the season, and I can’t recall one that had its own Nativity scene. There were lots of plastic Santas and reindeer, though. And since the houses were in Alabama, you can’t tell me that a bunch of Christmas-hating secularists live in them.

If people really did get agitated about the fact that you can’t put up religious symbols on government property, they’d protest by putting up their own — just as some students hold private prayer rallies to protest the fact that you can’t have officially sanctioned prayers in public schools.

It’s not much of a war on Christmas when the vast majority of Americans go about celebrating Christmas as they always have. And guess what? That includes most secular humanists.

Richard Dawkins, the British biologist and atheist who created a stir last year with his book “The God Delusion,” admits to loving Christmas carols. That doesn’t seem like much of a declaration of war, does it?

So, the unpleasant, divisive War on Christmas is over, or as over as something that was never real in the first place can be. If nothing else, it reminds me of the title of a John Lennon song:

“Merry Christmas (War Is Over).”

‘The League’ faces its greatest threat: copyright

After nearly a year of delays, the third installment of Alan Moore and illustrator Kevin O’Neill’s graphic novel “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” has finally arrived on bookstore shelves.

For those of you just coming in, the first two volumes followed a team of Victorian-era “superheroes” brought together by the British government to fight such dastardly evildoers as Dr. Fu Manchu and Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis Professor Moriarty, as well as a Martian invasion.

Hollywood turned the first volume into a dreadful movie, but the less said about that, the better.

Picking up about 60 years after the second volume, the third installment, “The Black Dossier,” follows rejuvenated League members Mina Murray (from “Dracula”) and Allan Quatermain as they sneak into 1950s England to steal a top-secret history of the League’s various incarnations throughout the years.

Whereas the first two volumes feature numerous out-of-copyright characters drawn from Victorian literature — notably, in addition to Murray and Quatermain, the Invisible Man, Capt. Nemo and Mr. Hyde — “The Black Dossier” includes thinly veiled versions of characters still owned by various corporations and estates.

Some are fairly obscure, especially if, unlike Moore, you didn’t grow up watching British television and reading British adventure magazines. Others, like James Bond and Emma Peel (“The Avengers”), while not named as such, are impossible to miss. And, it’s putting it mildly to say this is probably the most unflattering portrayal you’ll ever see of Ian Fleming’s bruising, boozing, womanizing super spy.

It’s the presence of Bond and other fairly recently literary, film and TV characters that has gotten this installment into trouble. DC Comics refuses to publish it outside the U.S. because of differences in international copyright laws — not to mention fear of litigious copyright lawyers. And that has led to the most recent dust-up in Moore’s long-running feud with DC. So, Moore is taking his next volume of “The League,” scheduled for release next year, to Top Shelf Productions.

Of course, if copyright law had been as expansive 100 years ago as it is today, a series like “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” wouldn’t have been possible at all, and writers like Moore wouldn’t be able to draw upon our shared literary heritage in order to tell new stories.

Whenever the copyright term on characters like Mickey Mouse and Superman comes close to running out, companies like Disney and Time Warner, which owns DC Comics, rush to Congress for an extension. Characters and works that should enter the public domain — long after their creators have died — remain under copyright, where the rest of us can’t touch them.

A century from now, a future Alan Moore won’t have the option of creating his own league composed of, for example, Jack Ryan, Anita Blake and Hannibal Lecter. That will be a major loss for popular culture. Meanwhile, Moore is far from the only author to find new stories for old characters.

British novelist Kim Newman draws upon Sherlock Holmes and Victorian novels like “Dracula” and “The Island of Doctor Moreau” in his 1992 novel “Anno Dracula” and its sequels. And no one gets more miles from Victorian literature and early 20th century pulp magazines than science fiction writer Philip Jose Farmer.

Through numerous books and short stories, Farmer has crafted a fictional universe that includes Tarzan, Doc Savage and, of course, Sherlock Holmes. Everyone loves Sherlock.

But unless Congress finally says no to Disney and the rest, the worlds of Moore, Newman and Farmer may be the last in which fictional characters from all over can get together for one big literary party.

Some Christmas presents are just like lumps of coal

If you read the letters to Santa that appear in this and other newspapers, you’ll notice that Christmas gifts are a lot cooler than they were years ago.

One letter last week was from a child who asked for a Wii, an Xbox and, just so all bases were covered, a PlayStation 3. Good luck with that. When I was about that child’s age, way back in 1982, I asked for a state-of-the-art ColecoVision game console. Instead, I got an Atari 2600, which was already obsolete, having been replaced that same year by the 5200. I was scarred for life and haven’t owned a home video game system since. Yes, I’m bitter.

But it could have been worse. Much worse.

At this time last year, I was browsing the videos at YouTube and came across decades-old TV commercials for what can only be described as the worst Christmas gifts ever.

Mostly, I blame Ron Popeil. Before the inventor/pitchman took up residence on late-night TV, using infomercials to sell food dehydrators and pasta makers, he was the man behind such contraptions as the Pocket Fisherman and the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler.

Maybe the Pocket Fisherman was a good idea. But how lazy do you have to be to want to scramble your eggs before you crack open the shells?

Every December, Popeil’s company, Ronco, filled the airwaves with commercials touting its latest must-have technological marvels. And as Popeil assured us in his chirpy voiceover narration, each made for “a great Christmas gift!”

One of Ronco’s biggest sellers was the Smokeless Ashtray. Now, when I was 6 years old, I didn’t need a Smokeless Ashtray. So, I got one for my dad.

Yes, I know. I should have gone with the Pocket Fisherman. The problem with the Smokeless Ashtray was that it sucked up cigarette smoke only when the cigarette was in the ashtray. As I’ve since learned, cigarettes don’t spend much time in ashtrays until after they’re snubbed out.

It occurs to me now that the Smokeless Ashtray was the perfect really, really cheap gift for a child to give to a parent. When young children buy gifts for parents, it’s definitely the thought that counts because children don’t have any money. So, it doesn’t matter that the gift is crap.

My favorite Ronco product, however, was Mr. Microphone. All you had to do was set a radio to the appropriate frequency, and Mr. Microphone would beam your voice into the radio for all around to hear.

As seen on TV, Mr. Microphone was a great way to pick up women, who were suitably impressed by guys who could ask them out via a car stereo. As seen in real life, Mr. Microphone was a poor man’s karaoke machine, provided you could sing a cappella, which defeats the purpose of karaoke.

But Ronco wasn’t solely to blame for the metaphorical lumps of coal in people’s stockings. Consider the Chia Pet.

Amazingly, Chia Pets are now cool, in a kitschy sort of way. But in 1982, when the first Chia Pet appeared in time for the Christmas shopping season, they were just lame. Giving someone cheap, animal-shaped pottery that sprouts weeds was a sincere expression of hatred.

Speaking of gifts for people you hate, you couldn’t go wrong with Shrinky Dinks. Nothing conveys contempt like small pieces of plastic that get even smaller when you bake them in an oven. When my mom insisted I buy a Christmas present for my arch nemesis in elementary school, he got Shrinky Dinks — the festive way to say, “Up yours!”

Still, I get a little nostalgic when I think of the commercials that ran in the early 1980s for Underoos, the children’s underwear that came in designs based on Superman, Wonder Woman and other popular superhero characters.

The commercials featured prepubescent children wearing only their Underoos and thanking the aunts, uncles and grandparents who gave them such great Christmas presents.

You know, now that I think about it, those Underoos commercials are really creepy.

Showtime ready to beat HBO at original programs

HBO’s dominance of premium cable TV may finally be ending, just as the channel’s main rival seems ready to mount a challenge.

“Sex and the City” is long gone, and “The Sopranos” has faded to black. For years, they were the pillars of HBO’s original programming, but HBO’s potential replacements have lacked staying power. HBO canceled “Rome” after two seasons, and to the disappointment of many fans and critics, HBO pulled the plug on its gritty western “Deadwood” after three seasons.

“Carnivàle” fared no better. Despite impressive debut ratings and a passionate cult following, the show couldn’t retain its audience. HBO canceled “Carnivàle” after two seasons.

“John From Cincinnati,” the heir apparent to “The Sopranos,” flopped. Of the original programs remaining on HBO’s schedule, “The Wire” is entering its final season and “Extras,” a British import from Ricky Gervais, creator of “The Office,” will air its final episode next month. That leaves “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Entourage” and “Big Love.”

Meanwhile, HBO’s newest series, “Tell Me You Love Me,” aired to lower-than-expected ratings despite the controversy aroused by the show’s sexual content. The sex scenes in “Tell Me” are some of the most realistic and explicit ever to air on HBO, and if that can’t attract an audience, what can?

Of course, maybe the viewers who would tune in for the sex are turned off by all of the uncomfortable talk about sex, and vice versa. “Tell Me” stubbornly insists on doing both.

Yet while HBO is struggling to retain its reputation for cutting-edge original programming, longtime also-ran Showtime seemingly can do no wrong. HBO isn’t in danger of losing its No. 1 position in terms of subscribers — HBO has about twice as many as Showtime — but it is dangerously close to becoming unhip. HBO looks more and more like CBS, which is No. 1 in the ratings but skews toward older viewers, despite airing three “CSI” variations.

For years, original programming on Showtime meant the soft-focus sex of “Red Shoe Diaries,” which, while definitely stylish, lacked something in the prestige department. Now, it means a likeable serial killer, which gives Showtime a better chance of winning some of those Emmys that HBO has been stockpiling for the past decade.

Leading the way for Showtime is “Dexter,” which, in terms a Hollywood executive could understand, is “CSI” meets Hannibal Lecter.

The title character, Dexter Morgan, is a blood splatter expert for the Miami police. He is also a serial killer who hunts down and kills other serial killers. “Dexter” has given Showtime its best ratings ever for original programming.

Then there is “The Tudors,” a saucy mix of soap opera and sex set early in the reign of England’s Henry VIII. Most viewers don’t notice the historical inaccuracies, and most critics are willing to overlook them.

Lastly, David Duchovny, star of “The X-Files” and “Red Shoe Diaries,” returns to Showtime in “Californication,” in which he plays a writer with a serious case of writer’s block but no shortage of female companions.

All three have boosted Showtime’s credibility and added to a schedule that also includes “The L Word,” “Weeds” and “Penn & Teller: Bull----,” a documentary series in which the Las Vegas magicians turn their wits to debunking scams and hoaxes ranging from UFOs to alternative medicine.

Even if you’re not a Showtime subscriber, never fear. Season sets of Showtime programs cost about half as much as DVD sets of most HBO series. I won’t pay $80 for a season of “Rome,” but I’ll gladly pay $30 for a season of “The Tudors.” So do what I do: Rent one DVD, and if you like it, buy the box set.

Forget the writers; how will the strike affect me?

If you’re a TV junkie, one thing you can be thankful for is that Hollywood’s writers and producers are due back at the bargaining table Monday.

That doesn’t guarantee an end to the writers’ strike, which already threatens to end the fall TV season at its halfway point, but the smart money in Hollywood seems to be on both sides reaching an agreement sooner rather than later. That’s good news for those of us who don’t want to see 100-plus channels of unscripted “reality television” or rejected pilots for the next six months.

The last Writers Guild of America strike was in 1988 and lasted 22 weeks.

As usual, the strike comes down to money. The producers have it, and the writers want more of it. Specifically, the writers want to be paid every time someone downloads a movie or TV episode from the Internet. That’s in addition to the upfront money they get from writing the scripts in the first place.

I can see where the writers are coming from. Every episode of “House” I’ve watched this season is one I’ve downloaded from Amazon.com, where they cost $1.99 each. Screenwriters might earn a fraction of a cent from each download, but with enough downloads, it could add up fast.

Still, I refuse to pick sides. Both the writers and the producers are looking out for their own interests, and there’s no moral high ground in that. But that isn’t stopping the writers from painting themselves as the “little guy” and producers as a bunch of evil, money-grubbing fat cats. After all, that’s a Hollywood script that almost writes itself.

The WGA didn’t do its image any favors by picking on Ellen Degeneres, who has refused to shut down her daytime talk show because she has this funny little thing called a contract — which promises her affiliates new episodes, not reruns. Heaven forbid that Ellen look out for herself and her employees by fulfilling her contractual obligations.

If you really want to talk about the “little guy,” he’s the fellow who owns a catering business that’s lost money every day since the strike began. When Hollywood shuts down, the first people to feel it are those who work in the service industries. You can’t sell lattes to writers who are walking picket lines instead banging away at laptops in your cafe.

But I’m not really interested in the little guys, either. Like the writers and producers, I’m looking out for myself. And what I want is a full season of “C.S.I.,” not a schedule full of “American Idol” and “Survivor” clones. Maybe I should make a sign and pace back and forth in front of some screenwriter’s house.

The WGA says it’s looking at the long run, when Internet downloads will become the main way people watch TV and movies. I say I’m looking at the long run, too. If the strike continues, how long will I have to wait for my favorite shows to hit DVD? And when the new season sets finally arrive, will they contain only half the usual number of episodes? These are important questions affecting my TV enjoyment well into 2008.

Probably the only good thing about the strike is its timing. We weren’t going to see too many new scripted dramas and comedies over the next month and a half, anyway. That’s because it’s the Christmas season, when TV programmers’ thoughts turn to endless repeats of classic and not-so-classic holiday fare. Never mind the 30 or so college football bowl games on TV, too.

If nothing else, it’s as good a time as any to check out what’s on BBC America. At least the TV writers over in the land of Shakespeare aren’t on strike.

Looking back at the first year of shocking culture

After writing this column for one year, it’s time to look back and see where some of the past year’s stories stand.

Dec. 7, 2006: I wrote about the newfound respect some science fiction writers, Philip K. Dick in particular, are receiving from traditional literary circles. That trend continued in 2007, when Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Lessing, 88, is the oldest person ever to win the award. Her long career includes two notable transitions. She went from communist to anti-communist and from “serious” fiction to science fiction.

The latter move upset some critics, among them Harold Bloom, who said, “Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable ... fourth-rate science fiction.”

But Lessing is unapologetic. “What (critics) didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time,” she said in an interview.

Good for her.

Jan. 4, 2007: I wrote about the new comic strip “Lio” by Mark Tatulli. Since then, “Lio” has increased its following. It now appears in about 275 newspapers worldwide, including The Daily. And that was enough to get Hollywood’s attention.

A live-action film based on the strip is in development.

Jan. 11: Time magazine named “You” its Person of the Year in recognition of ordinary people flooding the Internet with blogs and videos.

The flood continues, and it may be making its biggest impact in politics, where citizens are bypassing the “old media” to spread the word about their preferred presidential candidates. You get a sense of how revolutionary that is when a “second-tier” candidate like Ron Paul raises more than $4 million in one day when his online supporters stage a fundraising drive.

Feb. 1: I continue to receive e-mail about my column on self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Brown, who still hasn’t demonstrated anything that looks like real psychic ability. Perhaps that is why she has moved on to write, with the help of “her spirit guide Francine,” an absurd book titled “Secret Societies ... and How They Affect Our Lives Today.”

March 15: Marvel Comics killed off one of its most recognizable heroes, Captain America. He is still dead, but someone else is set to don an updated version of Cap’s red, white and blue costume. I still say the original Cap will return — eventually.

July 12: A cryptic marketing campaign for an upcoming sci-fi/horror film by producer J.J. Abrams (“Alias”) had fans scouring the Internet for clues. As it turned out, the Web sites www.ethanhaaswasright.com and ethanhaaswaswrong.blogspot.com, which many thought were promoting the then-untitled movie, were for an unrelated role-playing game.

At any rate, the film now has a name, “Cloverfield,” and it opens in theaters Jan. 18.

July 19: “Harry Potter” fans were eagerly awaiting the final book in the saga while trying to avoid spoilers that had leaked online.

By now, everyone who cares knows who lives and who dies. Also, Dumbledore is gay, but we didn’t learn that until months later.

Sept. 6: I wrote about a study published in Nature magazine, which found that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is almost as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica. A spokesman for Britannica then e-mailed me a rebuttal, which included links to stories critical of Nature’s findings.

“Dozens of the so-called inaccuracies they attributed to us were nothing of the kind; they were the result of reviewers expressing opinions that differed from ours about what should be included in an encyclopedia article. In these cases Britannica’s coverage was actually sound,” Britannica responded.

After reading up on the controversy, I’m siding with Britannica, although I still think Wikipedia is an amazingly successful experiment.

Nashville con is fun for geeks, but on a smaller scale

As far as conventions go, the October Comic and Horror Fest is far from the largest.

Certainly, no one is going to confuse it with, say, Atlanta’s Dragon*Con or San Diego’s Comic-Con International, where tens of thousands of humans, Klingons, elves and other sentient life forms gather each year for weekends of revelry that threaten to knock the Earth off its axis.

But the Comic and Horror Fest, held every October in Nashville, is an eye-opening experience for convention newbies and a pleasant afternoon for geeks who would rather avoid teeming crowds.

This year, the convention returned to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds after a couple of depressing years during which the Fest took place at Nashville strip malls. It was definitely a return to form.

On Saturday, the fairgrounds’ Agriculture Building was filled almost to capacity. Fans browsed from table to table, where dozens of dealers hawked old comic books, vintage movie posters, DVDs, toys and other collectibles.

I managed, just barely, to resist a late-1940s “Phantom Lady” comic book with the $500 price tag. “Phantom Lady” became infamous in the 1950s as one of the comic books that crank child psychologist Frederick Wertham blamed for causing juvenile delinquency.

But I couldn’t pass up an original poster for the 1977 Clint Eastwood film “The Gauntlet,” painted by famed fantasy artist Frank Frazetta.

Speaking of juvenile delinquency, “The Gauntlet” has sentimental value for me, as it is the first R-rated film I ever saw in a theater. My dad took me to see it when I was 6 years old, and Dad isn’t known for his parenting skills.

This year’s guest of honor was John Saxon, and even if you don’t recognize his name, you probably know his face. Saxon played the heroine’s dad in the original “Nightmare on Elm Street” and, more importantly, co-starred with Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon.” More recently, he buried Nick Stokes alive in an episode of “C.S.I.” directed by Quentin Tarantino.

I got Saxon’s autograph and had my picture taken with him. Overall, I acquitted myself far better than the time I met Ray Bradbury and, for what I think was the first time in my life, was struck speechless.

One of the other guests at the Fest was Chris Durand, a stuntman and actor best known for playing Michael Myers in “Halloween H2O” and Ghost Face in “Scream 2,” in which he killed Sarah Michelle Gellar of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame.

“I killed her in ‘Scream 2,’ and she killed me in (an episode of) ‘Angel.’ So, we’re 1 and 1,” he said while signing autographs.

Such is the life of an actor who spends most of his career behind masks. It’s kill and be killed. And rise to kill again.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a comic/horror convention without a woman in a bikini. In this case, it was Thong Girl, the star of a series of no-budget films in which she fights crime. Or something. Mostly, I think, she poses while wearing a string bikini and a cape.

So, which is the more inappropriate crime-fighting attire, a bikini or a cape? You decide.

Thong Girl became something of a scandal for Gallatin, Tenn., Mayor Don Wright last year, when Wright let filmmakers shoot scenes for “Thong Girl 3” in his office.

City Council members and several little old ladies were not amused, and Wright lost his bid for re-election.

I guess some people just don’t appreciate the arts.

Internet radio is thriving now, but for how long?

I have a new addiction: Soma.

No, not the fictional drug of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” but SomaFM, an Internet-based “radio” station broadcasting commercial-free music from a garage in San Francisco.

SomaFM emerged in 1999 from one of those most noble of institutions: a pirate radio station. Not a “Pump Up the Volume”-style pirate radio station, but a station serving that year’s Burning Man festival.

Burning Man is an annual celebration of arts and anarchy held in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. For more about it, see Brian Doherty’s definitive and entertaining book, “This Is Burning Man.”

Burning Man, however, was only the beginning. In February 2000, Rusty Hodge, SomaFM’s founder, launched a Web site to stream his station via the Internet to the entire world. SomaFM is now one of the largest Internet-only radio stations, broadcasting more than 3 million “listener hours” a month and reaching about 8,000 listeners on average at any given time.

SomaFM’s playlists are far removed from typical top 40 radio. The 11 separate channels at SomaFM.com offer mostly a mix of electronic, ambient, trance and trip-hop music — the sort of stuff often referred to as “New Age,” not that much of it has anything to do with the eclectic group of religions often lumped under that name.

It’s music most people usually can’t hear over the air, apart from public radio shows like “Echoes” and “Hearts of Space.”

Hodge and SomaFM quickly became an Internet success story, not in terms of profits because there weren’t any, but in terms of Web hits, word of mouth (or e-mail) and satisfied listeners who had gone unserved by the likes of Clear Channel.

If SomaFM were the subject of a VH1 “Behind the Music” episode, this would be the point in our story where everything goes wrong. As it happens, everything does go wrong.

In 1998, Congress passed one of the most poorly conceived pieces of legislation of the past decade: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And in 2002, using the DMCA as a sledgehammer, the Recording Industry Association of America went after Internet radio stations for millions of dollars in royalties.

“I was looking at owing the RIAA an obscene amount of money, like $100,000,” Hodge told the San Francisco Chronicle in a 2004 interview, “so I chickened out at the time and took the station off the air.”

Internet broadcasters fought back, and Hodge testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Eventually, the RIAA relented and settled on a lower royalty fee, which for SomaFM is $2,000 a year, funded by listener donations.

As a result, SomaFM is back. But the legal problems, unfortunately, continue.

On May 1, the federal Copyright Royalty Board raised the fees for Internet broadcasting, making Web broadcasters responsible for royalties that over-the-air broadcasters don’t have to pay. A bill in the U.S. House to overturn the CRB’s decision, H.R. 2060, has more than 140 co-sponsors, but so far it has gone nowhere.

The duplicity here simply reeks. Congress is filled with demagogues who routinely rail against the broadcasting conglomerates like Clear Channel and Cumulus Media, the two largest owners of traditional radio stations. But when it comes to fostering competition where it really matters — the Internet — Congress stands with the big broadcasters and major music labels.

Of course, traditional broadcasters are dependent on government licenses in order to transmit over the “public” airwaves, so they, unlike Internet broadcasters, are reliable donors at election time.

But for now, Internet radio stations like SomaFM are still going. So, try them out before it’s too late. And maybe leave a few bucks in the tip jar while you’re at it.

Digital downloads remaking music industry

The British rock group Radiohead has found a business model that Priceline pitchman William Shatner could appreciate: name your own price.

Radiohead’s latest release, “In Rainbows,” went on sale this week as a digital download via the Web site inrainbows.com. The band’s contract with EMI having lapsed, Radiohead is cutting out the middleman. With no pesky record label in the way, Radiohead can sell its music however it wants.

And right now, Radiohead wants its fans to decide for themselves what they think the band’s music is worth.

I bet Radiohead makes a mint. In fact, with no record label to take a cut, I bet the band will make more from “In Rainbows” than from its previous releases.

Unlike Metallica, which waged war on the music-sharing Web site Napster in 2000, Radiohead is embracing the Digital Age. If you don’t want people pirating your songs, you’d better give them a reasonable alternative.

Radiohead gets it. The rest of the recording industry doesn’t. The Recording Industry Association of America persists in suing its customers, most recently a Minnesota woman ordered last week to pay an outrageous $222,000 in damages for downloading and sharing 24 songs on her computer.

The RIAA claims illegal file sharing is bankrupting the American music industry and costing people their jobs, although at least one study, by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf published in The Journal of Political Economy, disputes that.

More to the point, the people sharing music online probably are improving the country’s overall economic welfare.

Writing recently at his blog, Marginal Revolution, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen said, “In the past most people didn't much like or listen to most of the music they bought, or in any case most of the value came from their very favorites. ... So if people can sample music in advance, and know in advance what they will like, music sales will plummet. This will be a sign of market efficiency, not market failure.”

Even if file sharing is costing the music industry the hundreds of millions of dollars the RIAA claims, it’s because most of its music isn’t worth paying for. People sample songs online and download their favorites so they don’t get stuck paying for compact discs containing only one or two good songs.

If the music industry is worried about its profits, it would do well to lower the price of CDs. And musicians would do well to make better music, not just one or two hits per CD for every 10 duds.

But if the RIAA’s member labels are slow to learn, others are eager to drag them into the 21st century.

Amazon.com has joined Apple’s iTunes in selling legal music downloads online. And while Amazon doesn’t have as extensive a music library, it has overtaken iTunes on two fronts. First, Amazon’s music is less expensive. Second, and more important, all of the songs at Amazon are available without Digital Rights Management.

DRM, embedded in most of the music iTunes sells, limits what you can do with your own music files after you’ve paid good money for them. Apple’s Steve Jobs says he wants to do away with DRM, but so far he hasn’t forced the issue. So, the only label to offer DRM-free music via iTunes is EMI, Radiohead’s former label.

But there is still a catch: iTunes charges more for EMI’s DRM-free music.

Still, with competition like Amazon around and bands like Radiohead going directly to their fans, I bet Apple will get the message. Apple isn’t as slow on the uptake as the RIAA.