The Omnigeek

I don’t know why NBC even tries these things. They clearly cannot do science based TV. Okay, ER was pretty good on a science side, but every thing else they do is an EPIC FAIL.

I didn’t go into this show with a lot of high expectations has other recent NBC shows have bombed, but hey, I’m willing to give it a go. I’m not sure I would even give this a “B” movie status on the SyFy (formerly SciFi) Network. Some of the original’s on SyFy are pretty bad, and this one would have a hard time making that network.

The basic plot of “The Meteor” involves a comet that hits 114 Kassandra, a main belt asteroid and knocks it out of its stable orbit into a collision course with Earth. A kook of a scientist who was fired from NASA/JPL played by Christopher Lloyd spots the impending dome and along with his assistant, played by Marla Sokoloff races from their exile observatory at the end of the Baja Peninsula with the information the Air Force will need to attack the planet killer.

Meanwhile, the JPL Science Advisor, played by Jason Alexander, that fired Lloyd’s character in the first place is at the Air Force’s Near Earth Astroid command center where the Air Force is monitoring the situation and plotting an nuclear missile strike.

A side plot revolves around a small California town, where the sheriff’s son, an LAPD officer who tries to bust his crazed partner has to try to keep the crazed partner from killing his daughter and his father the sheriff, played by Stacy Keach. The sheriff is trying to keep his small town from becoming mass chaos from the early meteor strikes that have been picking on it.

Science aside, this story is so full of stupid plot holes its not even funny.

Lets start with the exiled scientists. Instead of staying at the observatory where they can monitor things and transmit data over the internet, they decide to race along the Baja to get to JPL. Well, their older SUV breaks down and the character played by Lloyd gets hit by a truck while he’s standing in the road and killed. Note, I’m referring to the characters by their actor’s name because none of the character’s have memorable names. Assistant hitches a ride to a Police station, presumably in Tijuana, Mexico where she finds a couple of bad guys have taken over the police station and are now dressed as the cops and they try to molest her.

Now so far, she has been timid, scared and naive. Once the one dude ties to assault her, she manages to subdue him by beating the crap out of him with a fire extinguisher in a panic. But the suddenly she takes the gun from him, what looks like a .357 magnum revolver, and for the next 30 seconds, she is Laura Croft as she blasts her way out of the police station, dropping the other bad guy with three accurately placed shots and marches to the police car outside to drive to JPL where she immediately returns to her cowardly wimp character.

There is no way her character could squeeze off three shots from that gun. If she is the timid scientist, the first blast would have blown the gun right out of her hand and she probably would have missed anyway. Dumb character play.

Now to the Jason Alexander character. He’s a bumbling idiot. He doesn’t know squat and is panicked when put on the spot by the Air Force to come up with the answer. Well here is the problem. The janitors at JPL are smarter than this dude. JPL holds the brightest minds on the planet. This representation of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is an insult to all the fine people that work at one of NASA’s main research facilities. There is no way on Earth that JPL would depend on some numbers from a fired quack to get the job done. They are too good.

Secondly, the Air Force has a bunch of smart people too and probably wouldn’t need NASA’s input to figure out how to deal with this large rock coming toward Earth. I haven’t even gotten to the bad science in here, this is just character issues.

And WTF is going on with this sub-plot with the crazed LAPD officer? It has no place in this film.

Its a two parter that finishes up Sunday, July 19th. I’ve committed too much energy to this show to not watch the conclusion but save yourself the time…..

Okay, my wife likes reality TV and I respect that. With there being less and less hockey on to watch as the season winds down and a complete lack of creativity from the writers there are fewer and fewer non-reality choices to choose from.

Normally, I surf the interwebs while casually paying attention to the TV. I can count the shows I care about on one hand (and maybe a toe or two) and even then, I try to take it in and cruise the other “tubes”.

Shows that Matter to me!

• Big Bang Theory
• Criminal Minds
• Numb3rs
• Hockey of any kind
• NASCAR Sprint Cup and IndyCar Races
• The Mentalist
• Nurse Jackie — could be interesting, willing to give it a chance.

This week, NBC started airing a new TV series called “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here”. It’s a Survivor meets Big Brother meets Fear Factor show where “D List” celebrities get dropped in the jungle of Costa Rica, do stupid, gross stuff in teams and one of the losers gets voted off by the viewers all in the name of charity.

Fail point 1. I’m not sure you could call all these celebs even “D List”. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s wife, Patti? Though I have to admit, she’s actually one of the better people on the show!

NBC and its lack of any real TV is running four episodes this week, Monday thru Thursday. Come on NBC your “Inside the West Wing” news program last night was excellent, “I’m a Celebrity” not so much. Thru three episodes, no one has been voted off. Of course two people “left” the show (multiple times) and NBC replaced them with another person and the two quitters are trying to come back so they are getting more people than they are kicking off. Oh, thats Fail point 2.

Fail point 3 has to do with the two quitter celeb’s from “The Hills”, another stupid reality show. Spencer and Heidi Pratt quit, left the show. The others split up their stuff. They came back and a screaming match that would outpace The Apprentice” kicked up. Does NBC operate like the Apprentice’s Boardroom with people screaming at each other until stupid decisions come out? Reality check — thats not the way the real world works. At this point, the cast has voted against allowing the couple to come back after they have quit several times, but highlights indicate they are coming back.

These two characters are pure turn-offs. I’m not sure how someone like Spencer Pratt ever got to a point where he got a TV show on the air. I’m personally thankful that I’ve never waisted a single brain-cell on “The Hills”.

Fail point 4 is the Baldwins. NBC has something good with Alec Baldwin. Between some of the best Saturday Night Live hosting skits and 30 Rock, Alec is doing well for himself and doing well for NBC. But come one how many celeb reality TV shows can brother Steven Baldwin possibly be on? Someone in Hollywood give him some real work already. To that, brother Daniel is the “New” cast member, clearly to push Steven’s buttons.

Fail point 5: Eating gross Stuff. The show is on at 8pm in the Eastern and Mountain time zones which means 7pm in the Central and Pacific time zones. Thats dinner time for most people. We don’t need to see people eating disgusting body parts from gross animals. Folks, this is NOT entertaining.

Fail point 6. Sticking body parts into boxes with creepy animals in it. Okay, this is a game we all played as kids at our Halloween parties. You build a box, call it “Brains” and put in Jello and challenge your friends to stick their hand in the box. We’ve seen shows like Fear Factor do this, lay in a box while we pour hundreds of snakes on you….. Well last nights episode went to a new level. Lou Diamond Phillips (one of the actual celebs on the show) who has a reoccurring roll on “Numb3rs” had to stick his hand into a hole full of rats in an attempt to unscrew a “star” shaped nut from a bolt.

Okay, putting your hands in to an aquarium bowl of fish to do this, or a wad of dirt and earthworms is one thing. Okay maybe even a box with a couple of venom drained tarantulas is another. But for Phillips, the rats were hungry and he was food. Despite having his hand ravaged by dozens of bites, he hung in there until he got the prize. The person he was going up against, Torrie Wilson, a former WWE wrestler, pulled her hand out after one bite. Phillips determination earned him a trip to the set doctor (who we actually got to see) getting cleaned and stitched up from the dozens of bites. Did NBC really need to go there?

Fail point 7. The show is based on a British TV series by the same name. One of the hosts is the winner of the British version. She’s very attractive, but you can’t understand her. Her accent is too thick. Maybe I shouldn’t go there, but can we stop importing their garbage shows? American Idol was a winner, but please enough is enough. Why can’t we create garbage shows to export to other countries?

I’ve been informed we will be watching this while trying to watch Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Usually we flip away during the gross parts only to land on some other reality TV series. One night we were flipping between “I’m a Celebrity” and the Bachelorette. Sadly, “I’m a Celebrity” makes “The Bachelorette” look like rocket science. Could this be part of NBC’s grand plan? To lower the intelligence of their shows in an attempt to make their other shows look better?

Gag me with a “Reality Show”!

A lot of people get laughs from CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory” where an apartment full of “geeks” have their adventures with their neighbor, an attractive “normal” woman. Stereotypes aside (the geeks are portrayed as nerds, the woman a blond), the show does have a lot of good wit based around geeks fascination with speaking in tech and precision.

For instance in this weeks episode, Sheldon, the super genius astrophysicist is trying to describe to Penny, the normal, how to open a Chinese Puzzle Box. “Move the top panel 2 millimeters to the left, then move the side panel 4mm to the right (or some such very precise measurements)” Sheldon instructed over a phone. Penny frustrated by the geek speak asked if he was attached to the box and when Sheldon said “No”. She stomped the box to open it.

It was a funny moment with geeks and normals laughing at the scenario but its a perfect example of the communication barrier often faced by people when there is a huge separation in IQ.

The classic example of this was Albert Einstein. Even among his peers, his ability to understand physics was so far advanced, most people in the physics community dismissed them. It would take years before physicists would come to embrace his work.

Why does this communication break down?

The main reason for this is that most geek’s enjoy science and science is about accuracy and precision of measurements. There is an old saying:

When cutting a log, measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an Axe

In this case if you’re going to cut the log with a very imprecise tool like an axe, why are you measuring to millimeter accuracy? Because thats what scientists do: They measure accurately.

True Story: My wife (a Normal) and I were heading home from work. She was driving. My son called and asked when we would be home. My response was “We will be there in 97 seconds.” Sherry goes “Where did you pull that pile of stuff from?” I responded thats how long it will take for us to get home. 97 seconds later, she had stopped in the drive. 97 seconds is very precise but most people are not used to hearing that. “A couple of minutes” would have gone over much better with her. She still shakes her head at me when I come up with these seemingly random responses.

The Planes of Thought

NOTE: The following are my original thoughts and will come off as pure BS, buyer beware, Copyright © 2002-2009 Rob Miracle, All Right Reserved, Trade Mark, Patent Pending

Imagine a world where there are different Planes of Thought. These planes are where the mass of the population’s “smarts” are currently massed. Generations of people are smarter than their previous generation. For instance today, we have cell phones and text messages and we can use the Internet and you know what a mouse is and how to use it.

But go back 100 years to 1909 when we were amazed that a buggy could run without a horse, discussions of your mouse and your USB Key or your DVR would make you almost incommunicable with the people of that time. Yet they were as a population considerably smarter than those around in 1809 when the idea of communicating to distant cities with a telephone would be near magic.

This is demonstrated by Arthur C. Clarke’s quote:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

If we look at each of these era’s as a plane, there will always be one above where we are now and the past era’s planes below us.

People on one plane cannot effectively communicate with someone on another plane. The tech speak, the new words that come into the vocabulary, etc. make this communications hard.

Of course basic communications, like “Hello Grandma, how are you?” will work, but the more complex vocabulary hinders effectiveness and its frustrating on both sides.

Because it takes time for scientific language to become common language, those that talk in geek speak tend to be on these other planes. Eventually society as a whole will catch up.

Ladders

In addition to imagining the planes, you also have to imagine a series of ladders that connect the two planes. Some people live on these ladders. If they climb to the top, they pass to the higher plane and can no longer effectivally communicate back to the lower plane. People who are climbing the ladders exist in both planes at the same time and can reasonably communicate in either direction.

Back to the “Big Bang Theory” example. Sheldon and Penny can’t understand why the other one does or says the things they do. But Sheldon’s roommate Lenoard is on a ladder and is a bridge between the two. He can explain Sheldon to Penny and Penny to Sheldon.

A Joke!

A helicopter pilot was giving a ride to a businessman in the Seattle area when a heavy fog set in and they couldn’t figure out how to get back to the airport. The pilot spots an office building with workers in the windows and he hovers into place. After getting their attention he asks “Where am I?”. A worker yells back “Your in a Helicopter”. The pilot says thank you and flies away saying he knows where he is now. The businessman has a stunned look on your face and asks the pilot “How do you know where we are?” The pilot responds: “we are over Microsoft’s campus. They gave me a technically correct but utterly useless answer.”

That’s one of my favorite jokes, not just because it disses Microsoft but it points out the communication problem. Because geeks tend to be precise, they don’t think in generalities. In this case the pilot would assume he would get the answer of Redmond or Microsoft’s Campus and had he been talking to non-geeks, he would have gotten a general answer to his question.

This precision is part of what forms the barrier between the layers. Its also the reason geeks tend to migrate to computers, even at an early age. Computers are very simple devices but they are very precise. In fact, they may be the ultimate in precision since they only understand “Yes” and “No”. There are no maybes to a computer.

While geeks tend to be slobs and not care much about personal appearance, they are actually very well ordered thinkers. Much like computers which process things in a logical manner, geeks seek logic in things. I’ve always thought my quest to see logic in things had to do with watching too much Star Trek as a kid and a fascination with “Mr. Spock”. Geeks see things in our world that make no sense to them and they spend considerable mental energy to solve the problem or write it of as non-important. This is were the slob nature comes in. Its not important so geeks spend no time on it.

Between their scientific vocabulary, their logical thought process and their need for precision there will always be a rift between geeks and normals. Eventually the normals will ascend to the next plane but when they get there, they will find the geeks have also ascended to yet another plane continuing the cycle.

I don’t like reality shows for the most part.  I enjoy American Idol once the final 12 start performing because you hear *some* entertaining music.  But I don’t have time in my life to get involved in them.

Needless to say, “The Bachelor” is probably near the bottom of the rung when it comes to Reality TV for dudes.  Mushy “Rose Ceremonies” in exotic locations that mortals can’t reach are great for women’s dreams.  Its a romance novel on TV.  And you know what, I’m cool with that.  Its something they like.  They are allowed to have their fantasies as long as they don’t complain about my por…, er fantasies…..

So its Monday night, the Mrs. is clipping her coupons and she makes sure to watch “The Bachelor” when its on.  I’m sitting 6′ 4″ away in the other chair with my laptop surfing the net doing my social networking thing and I convert the show to white noise while I’m twittering away about photography to someone.  Its a fairly normal Monday.

But not this Monday.   “Honey, tonight is the last night and you won’t have to put up with ‘The Bachelor’ for a while.”  I replied “Yea, like 4 weeks”.  It was the “After the Final Rose Ceremony” night.  Three straight hours of mega mush, crying, frolicking in New Zealand and some really nerdy emcee saying “the most emotional rose ceremony every”.  Gag me with a pitch fork.  Three hours?  You have to be kidding me.

I manage to kill the 1st two hours by spamming my Twitter fans as I experimented with a Twitter chat of budding and experienced photographers for a blog site (Thats http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/ btw).  The show is to a point where the dude, Jason has dumped the woman who is probably really in love with him, Molly in favor the other woman, Melissa for whatever reason possessed him.

The third hour was dedicated to how things are going between the couple after six weeks.

My wife, and I love her dearly, was nice and realized how much torture this show was handed me the remote and went upstairs to watch the last hour from the bedroom.  This is where it gets embarrassing.

I didn’t change the channel.

I had the remote.  I had the power.  I even shut the computer down.  I watched the last hour on purpose.

Perhaps it wasn’t as much as on purpose as much as the show running as background noise had gelled my brains so the aliens can scoop them out easier with a melon baller.

I had 52″ of wide screen high def Jason with the nerdy emcee blasting me.

Six weeks had elapsed since the final rose ceremony where Jason proposed to Melissa after telling Molly to bugger off because she was 2nd place and well 2nd place as we all know is the 1st looser.

Now of course, this is all taped and the exec’s at ABC along with the nerdy emcee had time to write their promo scripts taunting you with “This show is so emotional out of respect to the participants we chose to film it without a studio audience” so it was obvious something was up.  Of course ABC has to keep mixing things up or the show will become boring (oh what, it is boring.)

Well Jason tells nerdy emcee in the couples six weeks of one-on-one time “Dude, something changed.  I messed up and picked the wrong one.  Its not working out with me and Melissa.  I want to press CTRL-ALT-DELETE and get a do-over.”  Nerdy emcee is eating this up realizing that their ratings are popping through the roof.  (BTW:  The hashtag for our twitter chat was trending higher than the hashtag for the Bachelor for the night!  Take that Nielsen ratings!!!!).

They bring Melissa out and Jason drops the bomb.  “I don’t like you I like the other one and you can go take a joy ride in the limo”.  Supposedly the couple had discussed this over the past six weeks and she should realize things are not working.  Well Melissa seems to have forgotten that and this is all news to her.  She rips Jason a new one and goes for her joy ride.

WTF?

So this is where I have to start getting “involved” with this.  Men have a bad enough reputation with women over commitment.  They know men have trouble committing and here on their grandest stage, Jason didn’t let them down.  He made us ALL look like chumps.   I was shocked.  I shouldn’t have been, we didn’t earn that bad rap without reason, but for ABC to parade that was just wrong.

Then they (predictably) brought Molly out where she sat on the couch listening to the story.  This dude breaks up with his bride to be on national television and a matter of minutes later, he’s telling the women he told to bugger off that he just dumped his choice and wants his do-over with her.  Molly of course has a skeptical “WTF” look on her face.  She looks like she’s about to slap the cooties out of him realizing his level of scumbagness for this move.

Jason then says he wants to hook up with Molly and she pretty much jumps him on set.

WTF?

So now Molly has done to women what Jason just did to all the men.  If guy dumps you for another woman then he comes back crawling and in a half-assed “I’m sorry” she’s all forgiving.  Molly, he dumped you six weeks ago.  You haven’t talked to him or seen him other than watching the TV episodes and in less that 10 minutes you’ve forgiven him and acting like nothing ever happened.  What if he changes his mind and wants to go back to Looser #2 or #3 or some other woman who passes through his life?

This show has to be the worst for male-female relationships.

Oh, the real last hour of the season is on now.  Its another six weeks later.  Who knows were we will be after tonight?

And he needs to turn in his man card for crying on national television!!!  (Thanks to Sherz for that one!)

Its nine minutes until 10:00pm on a Friday night.  It may be the nine most antagonizing moments in a geek’s life.  That is because this Friday night is a very special night for geeks around the world.  For in seven minutes now, the final season of Battlestar Galactica will start with the season premier.  For many of us, we are currently watching the last episode of last season.

Its with baited breath that we wait for the beginning of the end of what may very well be the best drama on television that no one watches, except for us geeks.  Ten episodes remain to answer last seasons cliff-hanger and to answer questions that have been nurtured through the entire series.

Many of us grew up with the original series in the 70′s.  It was cheesy TV sci-fi.  The special effects were cutting edge for the time but they reused the same combat sequences over and over.  The characters were ones that we fell in love with.  But it was a show of lightly connected individual shows.  The characters, though we loved them, were shallow and perfect.

When the Sci-Fi Network announced the new series and we got a glimpse of what was to come, we saw a very edgy, updated series that trampled on several pieces of gospel from the original series. The prime example:  “What the frak?  Starbuck’s a girl?” blazoned forums and chat rooms.  It wasn’t just a remake of the one Character.  Major important plot lines were changed.  Cylons now existed in two models, the old tin can’s from the old series and new “Human” like models.

This change turned off a lot of purists, but for many we latched on to the new series with a passion.

Accepting change is hard for many people.  But many times change is good and for those who stayed with the show, they have found a true gem.

Unlike the ’70′s series, the characters in this show are complex and well thought out.  Almost all have major quirks or dark twists.  For instance, the character “Apollo” in the 70′s was a hot shot fighter pilot and an all around “Captain America”.  This version of “Apollo” is a guy name Lee, who’s fighter call-sign is “Apollo” and he’s one angry and torn character.

In addition to these great characters, the cinematography is edgy and as dark as the characters and plot twists.  It is shot in a fashion that has a very editorial / documentary feel to it which helps the viewer tie in to the show even strong.

But more importantly the story has and is intriguing.  Its a show you have to watch from the beginning.  The episodes are so intertwined its very hard to pick it up in the middle.  Luckily for those interested, DVD’s of the previous seasons exist.  There are only a hand full of episodes that stand alone.  The long term questions are not over played but carefully weaved into the short term situations the cast finds themselves.

The problem is this show is never going to be known by the masses.  Sure, its tucked away on the Sci-Fi channel, which most people don’t get unless they have digital cable, DirecTV or Dish, but the fact that its a sci-fi show is an instant reason to turn away.  Science scares people who don’t love it.  Add the fiction twist and its just too much for non-geeks to enjoy.  They will never know how great this series is.

In a way I’m glad that this has stayed on Sci-Fi.  Had NBC tried to bring it to network, we would have ended up with another “Bionic Woman” failure, where “Suits” would micro-manage the show to a total train wreck killing the wonderful freedom the directors have had in creating this dark, deadly, dreary darling of a show.

Battlestar Galactia is an expensive show to produce.  The cast, save a couple are not household names, is large.  There are dozens of main characters and dozens more in supporting roles.  The Special Effects, space scenes, variety of sets all have the feel of a big budget Hollywood production.  No wonder the show is coming to an end.  An expensive show on a station that few people watch can’t go on for ever.

So its with sadness that we know tonight starts the beginning of the end, but for the next 9 episodes now (the 1st show of the season is now over and all I’m going to say is “Wow”) we can loose ourselves in this show that is a much better drama than anything shown on the big 4 networks.  Yes, its better than CSI and better than Desperate Housewives but the masses will never know.

Or never care.

*Sigh*