From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V5 #107 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Sunday, April 24 2005 Volume 05 : Number 107 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [chakram-refugees] Locusts Review [KTL ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Locust! [KTL ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Locust! [] [chakram-refugees] Lucy on TV listing cover [KTL ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 01:44:17 -0800 (AKDT) From: KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Locusts Review Locusts was reviewed in the Seattle Post Intelligencer which, as I've said before, is one of my favorite newspaper names. Post modernism, post structuralism, post intelligence. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/221102_tv22.html?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=2 'Revelations,' popes and 'Locusts' - what in heaven's going on? by Melanie McFarland (Illustrated in the paper with a picture of Lucy looking up into the sky towards a big ol' black and white engraving of a locust bigger than her head.) Chance, fate, whatever you want to call it, there's something remarkable going on. You may write if off as coincidence when the world witnesses a pope's passing days before the debut of "Revelations." But then, when the inaugural Mass of his replacement is scheduled to air the same day CBS premiers "Locusts", it makes you wonder if the universe is trying to tell us something. Maybe not the universe per se. Broadcast networks still smarting from the Federal Communications Commission's lash and the religious conservatives helping to wield it, definitely. (Snipped lot's of non-Lucy, not Locusts stuff, including a funny satirical commentary on CNN's inane chatter talking for hours at a time about black smoke, OH! maybe grey, uh, no, still black, pouring out of the Vatican.) The Lucy/Locusts stuff: Just a reminder: Last week, "Revelations" gave us a Catholic nun spewing angrily about how physicians wanted to unplug a girl in a persistent vegetative state not because there was noting more they could do, but for the greedy purpose of harvesting her organs. Now we have "Locusts." Not "Bees," Spiders" or other bugs that have been known to kill people, but the Bible's most frightening critters, biogenetically enhanced by arrogant, imperfect science. The locusts in question reproduce quickly, are immune to all insecticides and can travel 300 miles a day, heralding their arrival with a castanetlike clacking and devouring everything in their path. Even meat. And the woman doing her fighting best to save us is Dr. Maddy Rierdon, played by Lucy Lawless. As in "Xena: Warrior Princess." Interesting choice. As Lawless proved time and again in her previous lead role, she knows how to work schlock like this into something that is, if not great, at least palatable. Give her a character with a title-in this stinkpile, she plays the undersecretary for the Department of Agriculture-and Lawless embodies all the accompanying struggles. She's steady, firm, vulnerable and aware she's open to assault from all sides. Here a woman putting career first is tantamount to sacrificing a goat on a pentagram. Maddy's husband berates her for not wanting to stay home with him and start making babies. Along the way, she finds out some new news that should make hubby happy, but doesn't. Meanwhile Maddy's male cohorts in government want to see her take the fall for an experiment linked to her department that she didn't authorize. So much for being a feminist icon. Libertine, progressive attitudes, not evil grasshoppers, are at the root of "Locusts'" evil. How's this for a response to all that rampant, moral relativism? If you're a black couple sharing a sleeping bag during a camping trip, sayonara. Have bust, will wear low-cut blouses to work? Peace out, Peaches. Even divorce is a no-no as we see when a dad who has his kids making cracks about their mom and her new boyfriend while picking oranges, only to be interrupted by a descending bug horde. A senator references Scripture, as does a geeky, office drone and a TV reporter. Science, and the clumsiest Department of Defense goons on Earth, may have been the disaster's catalysts, but the Hand of God certainly goosed it on its way. But then, "Locusts" tries to have it both ways. In the end, women save us from disaster, not men, and not a huffy, trigger-happy general all too willing to stop the threat using a scorched-earth solution. Everybody, even the killjoys at the FCC, get an ending they can accept, one that ameliorates the realization that they have just wasted two perfectly good hours of their lives watching this dreck. End of review There is also an ad in the paper for the upcoming "Lucy Lawless and Faith Prince in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 02:02:25 -0800 (AKDT) From: KTL Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Locust! On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, Cheryl Ande wrote: > No not that Locust real locust. Saturday night I was watching the History > channel which had a program about Biblical disasters and, naturally, locust > came up. Locust are really, really bad. When they came they literally ate > everything in sight and people did starve. In the Middle Ages the bishops > would threaten to excommunicate the locusts when they came but the locusts > were unimpressed and ate everything and people starved (no one explained why > the bishops thought acumination would work , grasshoppers seldom if ever go to > mass). Never mind confession. "Bless me father, for I have swarmed." Today they still are a grave threat in underdeveloped countries while > industrialized nations have been able to control them with pesticides. > Scientists are now concerned that the locusts will eventually develop and > immunity to the pesticides and if they do we are going to have to get George > Bush and Jerry Falwell to excommunicate them (that probably won't work since I > don't think grasshoppers are Protestants, more than they were Catholic). So > Lucy's bioengineered locusts which are bigger and hungrier than the average > ravenous locust would indeed be a really bad threat. So Locust! may not be > crap (as some one dubbed it ) but a cautionary tale based on reality. > > CherylA Oh yeah, that's an excellent observation. I bet that is indeed what it is. In the 50's (as you and I can remember, sweetie) there were numerous monster movies based upon fallout (literally) from atomic bombing. Godzilla I think was one and as someone mentioned, the excellent Them. (Okay, excellent to me when I was like 6 or so. My father took me, my sister and my cousin to see it and it scared my cousin so much he spent most of the movie in the bathroom. Leaving his ice cream bon-bons on the seat he vacated. My father went to check on my cousin in the men's room and when he returned he realized that while he was gone a woman had not only taken my cousin's seat, she was also probably melting my cousin's ice cream treats with her butt. But he was too embarrassed to tell her that. He hustled us out of there before the credits finished rolling and I heard him tell my mother later, "That must have been some girdle she was wearing." (Most women, even little skinny ones, did wear girdles then. It's amazing there wasn't a horror movie about mutated girdles. Named, "Squeeze!") Anyway, the fears then were all about mutations from radiation. Today the fears are more generically about the imbalance in the natural world from the activities of humanity. So yeah, I bet you're right--it's a right out of the headlines, topical human anxiety movie. Look at the last one in the set--sharks and bikinis--terrifying for many of us. KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 18:35:48 -0500 From: Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Locust! This whole message just cracked me up, especially this part: "Bless me, Father, for I have swarmed." Priceless! Laconia ****** - ----- Original Message ----- From: KTL To: Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 5:02 AM Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Locust! > On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, Cheryl Ande wrote: > > > No not that Locust real locust. Saturday night I was watching the History > > channel which had a program about Biblical disasters and, naturally, locust > > came up. Locust are really, really bad. When they came they literally ate > > everything in sight and people did starve. In the Middle Ages the bishops > > would threaten to excommunicate the locusts when they came but the locusts > > were unimpressed and ate everything and people starved (no one explained why > > the bishops thought acumination would work , grasshoppers seldom if ever go to > > mass). > > > Never mind confession. "Bless me father, for I have swarmed." > > > Today they still are a grave threat in underdeveloped countries while > > industrialized nations have been able to control them with pesticides. > > Scientists are now concerned that the locusts will eventually develop and > > immunity to the pesticides and if they do we are going to have to get George > > Bush and Jerry Falwell to excommunicate them (that probably won't work since I > > don't think grasshoppers are Protestants, more than they were Catholic). So > > Lucy's bioengineered locusts which are bigger and hungrier than the average > > ravenous locust would indeed be a really bad threat. So Locust! may not be > > crap (as some one dubbed it ) but a cautionary tale based on reality. > > > > CherylA > > > Oh yeah, that's an excellent observation. I bet that is indeed what it is. > In the 50's (as you and I can remember, sweetie) there were numerous > monster movies based upon fallout (literally) from atomic bombing. > > Godzilla I think was one and as someone mentioned, the excellent Them. > (Okay, excellent to me when I was like 6 or so. My father took me, my > sister and my cousin to see it and it scared my cousin so much he spent > most of the movie in the bathroom. Leaving his ice cream bon-bons on the > seat he vacated. My father went to check on my cousin in the men's room > and when he returned he realized that while he was gone a woman had not > only taken my cousin's seat, she was also probably melting my cousin's ice > cream treats with her butt. But he was too embarrassed to tell her that. > He hustled us out of there before the credits finished rolling and I heard > him tell my mother later, "That must have been some girdle she was > wearing." (Most women, even little skinny ones, did wear girdles then. > It's amazing there wasn't a horror movie about mutated girdles. Named, > "Squeeze!") > > Anyway, the fears then were all about mutations from radiation. Today the > fears are more generically about the imbalance in the natural world from > the activities of humanity. So yeah, I bet you're right--it's a right out > of the headlines, topical human anxiety movie. Look at the last one in the > set--sharks and bikinis--terrifying for many of us. > > KT > ========================================================= > This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. > To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with > "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. > Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. > ========================================================= ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:11:03 -0800 (AKDT) From: KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Lucy on TV listing cover Lucy is on the front page of the TV guide booklet in tomorrow's Sunday Houston Chronicle newspaper. (They sell an "Early Sunday Edition" on Saturday afternoon.) It's a nice picture-a glam shot-she's leaning against the edge of a doorway or maybe a big window and looking into the camera, with the outdoors behind her. (And I just realized she has no bangs. I always noticed immediately when XENA had no bangs. Hmm.) The blurb is actually more on her than on "Locusts". I noticed it was written by John Crook, who's Zap2IT. So I went searching and found this, which appears to have been posted Saturday, April 23 at 12:02 AM. The article in the Chronicle is a shortened, edited version of this piece on his site. http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,271|94614|1|,00.html You know I was thinking this morning that since Xena was finished, Lucy tends to play women with Irish names-Shannon McMahon, Aunt Kathleen, Maddy Reirdon. Though of course, there was also Madame Vandersexx. But I bet that was a "nom de prod". That character's "real name" was probably Maureen or Noreen or Bridgid. Or all three-Maureen Noreen Bridgid O'SomethingIrish. KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V5 #107 **************************************