Electro-Techno-Bass'n'Drum-Rock

So, the Pan-Dora (you gotta say it like Colonel Scarface from Avatar) found me this awesome band a while ago and I need to share it's Epic-ness with all y'all. That band is Pendulum. According to the Pan-Dora and the Wikipedia, they started out as a rock band and migrated to Bass-n-Drum Electro-Techno, and sorta weave back and forth. I like it. Plus, they're Australian and that adds +2 levels of Badass to anything, yeah?

The thing I most respect and adore about Pendulum is that their songs are actually distinct from each other. I can listen to any of their albums and not feel like I'm listening to an Hours-Long Single Track like with some other bands I could name but won't... (serious, not naming any.) I enjoy their Diversity of Sound, the combination of strong rhythm and well-written lyrics. They remind me, in a strange way, of Splashdown.

Splashdown is another great band, but they are no longer together. In a display of True Artist Badassery, however, Splashdown decided to make all their songs available for Free Download on their website. Thank them, go listen to their stuff.

I really can't recommend Pendulum strongly enough. It's great Rokking Out music, especially in the car. Not so great to sing along to, though, which is their greatest failing. Everyone's got some sorta Horrible Flaw, but theirs is only a Woeful Flaw (in that it creates Woe).

Oh, you want to know why else Pendulum is awesome? Because their music video for Watercolor uses Ferrofluids. What are Ferrofluids? Well, you remember the Bad Guy in Terminator 2? That's Ferrofluids. Except Ferrofluids are black, not silver, making them Moar Evily. Seriously. They're Insane. Watch this art exhibit video and shudder in Horror.

Where does Pendulum find themselves (shut up about my pluralization-grammar) on the Suspiciously Accurate Scale? They're right between Epic and Bad-Ass. If you could realistically sing along to more of their songs, they'd be Epic+, but since you really sorta can't.. Bad-Ass.5 is about what they average out to. Maybe an Epic-? Either way, they ROKK (see QC to understand the spelling there) and you need to Listen to Them. Right. Now.

Clash of the Titans: How To Kill Fucking Krakens

Thousands of years ago, there were a bunch of Greeks who all sounded British, except for one who was not only Australian, but so Badass that he had a buzz-cut four thousand years before the first set of clippers was invented. A fisherman found Mr. Baby Badass floating in a coffin, adopted him, named him Perseus (Greek for Badass, I assume) and taught him the important things in life like Love, Happiness and Snappy One-Liners.

Then some idiots throw a statue off a cliff and piss off a bunch of demonic bats who kill the soldiers before merging into the God of Death and Hellfire who fireballs the fishing boat out of random spite. Thus begins the Heroic Quest of Perseus to avenge his Family.

So he gets dragged along to a palace, meets a princess, finds out he has a guardian Warrior Chick who was cursed with Eternal Youth (man, don't you hate it when you get cursed with Eternal Youth? I do.) and decides to wander off to Kill The Fucking Kraken so that The God of Atmospheric Pollution will be vulnerable. No, we don't know WHY that will make the god vulnerable, it just will, okay? Don't question! You don't know!

To Kill The Fucking Kraken, Perseus has to go find some Witches (Fates) who tell him about Medusa and her Gaze of Petrification. So, he goes to kill her. Except that he's being chased by his biological mother's husband who was turned into a venomous crab-man or something when he was struck by Godly Lightning. Whatever. A walking tree shows up, saves Perseus from CrabMan Venom with Blue Fire and tames some giant scorpions so they can use them as replacement horses. Then they go kill Medusa, who laughs a lot and shoots arrows. Everyone dies and it's all really Quite Awesome.

After bidding a Manly Goodbye to his Not-Girlfriend the Cursed-With-Youth Chick (who told him to Calm His Storm because doing it with the mini-skirted son of a god famous for his sex mojo is not on top of her priority list...) because she got stabbed by CrabMan, Perseus mans up and goes to Kill The Fucking Kraken.

He kills it. The Kraken turns out to be what you'd get if a Giant Squid had babies with a Snapping Turtle and those alien bug-monsters from World of Warcraft. It dies Dramatically, the Princess (who had five lines) is saved, Perseus gets a Thank-You from his Daddy and seems remarkably chill about the whole Man Vs God thing now that he sorta-kinda laid the Partial Smack-Down upon Mr Hellfire.

And then Daddy brings Cursed-With-Youth Chick back to life because Zeus' son does NOT go off into the sunset without a babe on his arm.

That's Clash of the Titans for you, folks. How did it rate on the Suspiciously Accurate Scale? It was Win. Not EPIC, not Badass, but it was good and Win-full. On the strength of the special effects, the cinematography, the make-up, the costumes and the casting, oh, it was FREAKING EPIC. However they apparently used up all their budget (monetary and creative) on that stuff and didn't leave any for plot pacing, character development, coherent story or understandable motivation.

Clash reminded me of one of those oil-on-water rainbow-puddles. Pretty, fun to look at and play with for a few minutes, but shallow and short-lived. I'd see it again at the 2-dollar theater, I'll probably even get it on DVD when it comes out. I like pretty, shiny things and there really are some amusing moments. The battle with Medusa is pretty Awesome, actually Moar Awesomez than the battle with the Kraken if truth be told. But, I wouldn't spend money on the Deluxe Edition and I'd watch the movie while I was doing my taxes or filling out warranty cards.

Overall Rating: WIN with a side of CHARACTER FAIL. B-

Dollhouse: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Spoilers)

As you may or may not be aware, Dollhouse by Joss Whedon ended last night after 2 seasons and 26 episodes. Yeah, 26 episodes. That's like 1 full season of a normal TV show. So, lets pause here for a moment and rant about Fox.

Fox is clearly frightened of TV that might fail to attract more than 80% of the TV viewing population. Stupid Fox. Sing it loud, Family Guy and Futurama: Fox Sucks. Fox, how I hate you. It's like you get some kind of sick thrill out of making awesome TV shows and then pulling the plug on them just as they're becoming really epic for fear that they might take away viewers from your pathetic little reality shows or whatever other crap you have.

Seriously: Stop that. It's not cool, man, it's not cool. Now we move back to Dollhouse.

So, what was my reaction to the ending of Dollhouse? It's in the title. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. If Dollhouse had ended after 25 episodes, I would have had a warm, fuzzy feeling. The flash-forward to the future where they decided to Really, For Real, We're So Sure This Time That It'll End, End the show... eh. I mean, hell, it gets an A+ in Mindfuckery. It gets an F- in Not Killing Awesome People!!

Helo Paul freaking DIES with as much drama as Wash did in Serenity or Uncle Derek got in Terminator. Alive one second, DEAD the next, killed by a random extra and left on the ground to rot. Unlike Wash or Uncle Derek, Paul was one of the two Main Leads! After all the crazy stuff that happened, everyone else who died, you'd think they could have let Echo and Paul have their Happily Ever After in the decimated ruins of the post-apocalyptic world. But NO! So Paul dies.

And then! At the very end, Echo imprints herself with Paul's identity, adding him to the collection of other random mind-brains inside her skull so they can be together in spirit forever. Yeah. Her boyfriend is a computer-ghost living inside her head. That's just going to make having Relations all sorts of awkward. Or really simple, it depends on your perspective. Paul may have to get used to being a semi-embodied ghost living in a female's skull. I foresee the relationship being strained by his lack of body.

But who knows, this is a world where Mad Science has perfected the ability to download your entire being into a hard drive and upload it on demand into any body, to destroy personalities by remote and carry around PhDs on a flashdrive that you can synch with through a speaker held to your Cybernetic Bluetooth Tattoo. Somewhere someone learned how to grow a human clone and they can upload Paul-Ghost into Clone-Paul and him and Echo can have perfectly normal Ghost-Clone / Human Brain Salad relations. What? It makes more sense than the ending of Terminator: Salvation! Shuddap.

So, was Dollhouse good? Yes, Dollhouse was amazing. It had a strong ensemble cast. Virtually no one in Dollhouse was less than excellent at their role. Special shout-outs to Diechen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor) as well as Tahmoh Penikett (Paul). I'd give a shout out to everyone, but those three really took the cake. I'm still a huge fan of Penikett's work as Helo on BSG, but he was probably even better as Paul Ballard. The plot works, which is saying something for current TV shows. Everything ties together really well and by the end, it all comes together with a real sense of finality and accomplishment. The show had a story to tell and it told it. It may have gotten cut off early, but it told the story anyway. In fact, I'm not sure that it would have been improved by going longer.

I have to give it to Dollhouse, the show managed something really rare: It was episodic, yet coherent. You could miss a few shows and still know (mostly) what was going on and follow the story fairly well. All that without extraneous exposition or excessive explanation. Good job, show.

Did it end well? Yes, it did. Even with the lack of Happily Ever After for the main couple, it still ended well. The bad guys got what was coming to them (off-screen), the world is saved (..kinda) and at least 1/3rd of the cast survived to live meaningful lives. The deaths (aside from Paul's) felt necessary or at least they worked with the character's story and brought it to an acceptable close. November's demise was jarring and painful, but it was meant to be.

My single objection on the subject of character death is still Paul. Did it add anything to the story for him to get shot in the head by a mook? Not really. Sure, it gives Echo a chance to throw a big Grief-Rage tantrum and be very sad, but that was 5 minutes. Otherwise, his death was pretty much shoved to the side. The resolution of bringing him back as a code-ghost in Echo's brain...yeah, that's just so mindfuckery that I don't know how to react. Honestly, if he'd survived, I'd have enjoyed the ending more.

Good Deaths

• Topher sacrificed himself to make amends for accidentally destroying the world.
• Boyd got what was coming to him for being Crazy Evil.
• November sacrificed herself for True Love and Free Will.
• Mellie (who was also November, but not) lost her personality to the Dollhouse forever (died) because she decided to stand up for what she believed in and take a risk.
• Summer Glau died, well, because her character was introduced so late there wasn't time to really take that relationship anywhere and they couldn't fit her into the flash-forward. But I didn't see her going anywhere anyway, so death was acceptable.
• Whiskey died (off-screen, maybe?) after apparently coming to terms with her existence and making a sacrifice to save others.
• The Bad Guys died (off-screen) as a result of their Evilness and Bad Choices. Harding deserved it richly because we find out that after the world ends, he dumps his Old Geezer body and hijacks strong, handsome male bodies (he calls them 'suits'), then just indulges himself endlessly until the body is too ruined by obesity and disease to be useful, or until Echo kills his ass. One of the most disturbing scenes of the Finale was Fat-Harding inspecting a line of manacled, brain-wiped, buck-naked men to decide which would be his next 'suit'. He is distracted by finding Paul in the line (only pretending brain-wipery) and flees before Paul opens a can of Naked Badass Whupass on the room.

Bad Deaths

• Paul. Still stuck on that.
• Summer Glau might go here, actually. Upon consideration, if the show had not been cancelled, I really can see her character becoming very strong. Given that she only had 5 episodes, though, there was no where for her to go. Her death helped Topher's madness make sense. We'll call this one an Uncertain Death. Good given the short run, bad in a Perfect World.

Conclusion: Dollhouse = Epic, Fox = Fail, Paul = Dead. Mood = Happy, but not Ecstatic. It was at least 36 times better than the ending of Stargate SG-1 or Stargate Atlantis, neither of which ENDED! There were no resolutions at all! Nothing happened! RAAAGE!

Suspiciously Accurate Scale

The Suspiciously Accurate Scale

What kind of information is this? Vital information. When will it be vital? Every day of your life. That's right: vital information for your every day life. The Suspiciously Accurate Scale is how the Sources here at Suspicious Sources rate things that we tell you about. Do not question it.

• E-P-I-C (allcaps) - there will be songs and stories told of how legendarily awesome this thing was. It's epicness will be the stuff of legends! Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, 90% of Avatar, the first 10 minutes of Kung-Fu Panda, 70% of the original Star Wars Trilogy, these are EPICs. Beware, you may be rendered insensible by the overload of Epic.
• BADASS - If you said "Damn, this is good!" after beholding a Badass Thing, you had the proper reaction. Maybe you won't spend weeks of your life thinking about it, or come up with memes that last for years because of it, but it was still pretty damn good.
• WIN - Some things fail, this thing did not. It didn't get any prizes in the Games of Life, but it got a little participation ribbon. Remember those, from field day? We hated field day.
• POPCORN - 80% of entertainment today falls in this category. No, really. Movie, book, game, whatever. It's fun to do while you're also doing something else like playing WoW, eating poppin' corn, talking to friends or avoiding unpleasant obligations.
• FOR TEH LULZ - Like Twilight and any movie by Uwe Boll, a FTLulz is not good, but it has redeeming qualities. You'll never forget the jokes you make when you see a FTLulz movie or flip through a FTLulz novel. Ever. Even if you bleach your cortexes. Really, we tried it.
• SURVIVABLE - You didn't die or gnaw your own arm off to escape this thing, whatever it was. You don't remember it very well because you did slip into a mild coma, but you got better.
• FAIL - The rating rather describes itself, think you not?
• SAND-SUCKER - Whatever else this thing was, it was an evil chronological lamprey that attached itself to the hourglass of your LIFE and started sucking out the sands of time. Consider getting a severe head wound to avoid Sand-Suckers.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot - This rating is reserved for things that fall outside the Suspiciously Accurate Scale's normal range. Whiskey Tango Foxtrots may be so horrible that they become insanely cause they make you insane good or they could just confuse you so badly you want to cut them out of your mind-brain with a shovel. If we issue a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, be assured, we will tell you why. At length.


Thanks to Source T for her assistance assembling the Suspiciously Accurate Scale. You'll hear more from her (and me) later.