Coming right at ya

I have noted with interest the reactions to the Avatar movie that various Facebook friends have had. The visuals get rave reviews ... it's awesome ... spectacular ... then there's usually a pause before they talk about how cliched the storyline was, and how much the 3D glasses annoyed them.

Avatar shows that you don't need a good story to become an award winning movie (does anyone doubt it will sweep the Oscars?) and that despite the 'sea sickness' effect some noted with the 3D it's a gimmick whose time has finally arrived.

Sony plans to launch eight models of Bravia 3D TVs this year, ESPN is launching a 3D sports channel, and DirecTV, the big U.S. satellite TV provider, has three 3D channels due for release in 2010.

Along with hovercars and cities on the moon, holo or 3D TV was another of those broken promises of my childhood. We had no Moonbase Alpha in 1999. There are no Jetson-like traffic jams in the sky. But now we get to have the fun of 3D viewing of our soap operas and reality shows.

The 'sea-sickness' effect some viewers of recent 3D movies have spoken off can only enhance upcoming episodes of 3D Survivor, 3D Coronation Street and 3D Rock of Love. Finally we can experience the same queasiness the drunk women that throw themselves at Brett Michaels are feeling.

I look forward to the 3D News, with the latest shocking headline just jumping out of the screen, terrifying us in new exciting 3D ways. Home Invasions will seem three times as bad when a recreation actor swings a hammer towards us with brutal force. Teen drinking stories will benefit from 3D projectile puking. Tsunami's will appear to be sloshing through our living rooms.

Finally the future of my past has arrived. 3D TV is here. Although I don't remember Luke having to wear silly coloured glasses to play holo-chess in Star Wars. They must have edited that out. Maybe Lucas will put them back in when her remasters the new version of Stars Wars so we can all see Greedo firing first in full 3D glory.

So drugs really do make jokes funnier ...

I may have watched a few Simpsons episodes in my time. Okay, so I can recite most of the first ten or so seasons. These days, however, I don't watch them as fanatically as I once did. There's no need, they are repeated endlessly. It seems prime time TV will never be without them again.

In fact, the Simpsons saturation has reached the point where I no longer bother to watch or record so-called 'new' Simpsons. Often because they turn out not to be new, but mainly because I know I can see them again, and again, and again ...

However, the yellow-skinned family of misfits is so engrained in our culture and our psyche that references turn up to them everywhere. One of the strangest Simpsons moments for me this year was a result of someone taking illegal drugs.

Now there's a Simpsons episode where evil forces try to move the local baseball team, the Springfield Isotopes, to Albuquerque. Homer manages to thwart the evil plans of the Mayor of Albuquerque and the heartless Duff corporation. The Isotopes remain in Springfield.

I'd always thought it was a funny episode, but this year drugs made it funnier. Manny Rameriz, a slugger for the LA Dodgers, tested positive for a substance that is used to recover from the effects of steroids, and was promptly banned for 50 games. That sounds like a lot of games, but each baseball team in the majors plays 160+ games a year.

As Manny's suspension approached its end he was allowed to work out and get game fit by playing for a minor league team in the Dodger's organisation. The team he played for was ...

... The Albuquerque Isotopes.

Thanks Manny. Shame you and the Dodgers 'got beat' by the Phillies in five games. But at least you made me laugh.

And to think I've always sworn off them myself.

I see nothing!

For me, Hogan's Heroes will always be linked with Fish & Chips. Not the TV programs, Fish and Chips, but rather the meal. When I was a kid Hogan's Heroes was televised on a the same night of the week that my family ate Fish & Chips. So whenever I see Col. Klink, Sgt Schultz, or Hogan himself in reruns I can actually smell and taste greasy battered fish and steaming hot salty chips.

Hogan's Heroes was a very repetitive show. The plots tended to be very similar from episode to episode. But it was fun, well acted for a comedy show, and had lines you could recite in the schoolyard to your friends over and over.

It was a fantasy. Prisoners of war helping the Allied cause by spying and sabotaging the Germans. Far-fetched fun, that seemed to go on longer that the war itself. (There's a theme ... tv shows about wars that lasted longer than the actual war they were set in.)

Yet it turns out it wasn't a fantasy. There really were POWs who spied on their captors. There really were hidden transmitters and receivers (in baseballs, for example). There were even secret departments, MI-9 and MIS-X, dedicated to finding new ways of using POWs to aid the war effort; devising letter writing codes, smuggling in cameras, and so on. There were playing cards with secret maps, compasses inside hollow hairbrushes, magnetized razor blades that pointed north, hollow buttons, and much more.

The whole thing was kept very secret, even after the war, as using POWs in such ways was a direct breach of the Geneva Conventions. Even in 1990, when someone finally broke the silence the Pentagon wanted to suppress the story, because it endangered future POWs, and cast deep shadows on the past.

POWs are, under "the rules of war", considered safe, special, immune, and out of play. Spies, on the other hand can be shot out of hand. By confusing the two the Allies were risking the lives of thousands of their own men.

The POWs risked a firing squad if caught spying, the higher ups risked being war criminals, and they also risked upsetting the international agreements on how POWs were treated. If it had become common knowledge that the US and UK routinely operated POWs as spies then the whole raft of Geneva Conventions might have been ignored by all concerned, not just in World War Two, but in later conflicts.

Even basic humanitarian aid, such as the famous Red Cross parcels, was endangered by these departments, as the Allies set up dozens of fake Aid Agencies to ferry their illegal contraband to the prisoners. The Allies always made a big deal about the neutrality of the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups, and publicly maintained that they never used them covertly. While the Red Cross may have been above board, many of the groups it turns out were not. In fact, their sole purpose was to ferry in contraband.

All this contrasts nicely with the recent controversy about labeling captured 'terrorists' as not POWs but 'enemy combatants'. Words are powerful. Now I'm going to associate fish and chips with the Geneva Conventions .... Mmmmmm, tasty, tasty articles.

Comedy Bug

I mentioned my parent's LP collection in a disparaging manner recently, but I should point out that they had some wonderful comedy albums. Two Fred Dagg records, Wayne & Shuster, and Bridge Over the River Wye. The last of which is a Spike Milligan penned masterpiece with Peter Sellers, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook. These records had a lasting effect on my sense of humour. A sense of humour which I'm forced to apologize for on a regular basis.

Combine this with the Muppet Show, the occasional Marx Brothers movies that NZ TV would sneak on air on a Sunday Afternoon, my accidental discovery of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy on the radio, and some Monty Python shows and I was set for a life of nerdy loneliness.

Somehow I survived. I restrained my tendency to quote these shows and records for long enough to fool a woman into marriage. I even managed to pass my somewhat suspect genes onto a new generation. Now thanks to digital technology I can inflict my humour on these unsuspecting children, mutating their humour to something that resembles my own.

Is a sense of humour like a slowly infecting disease? I'm a carrier for a particular strain, and close contact with me can result in the development of related symptoms. Of course, some people are immune. Others avoid contact; "Unclean! Unclean" they scream on the inside. People with the same or similar strains of humour tend to find solace in one another's company. Humour colonies, where isolation not only keeps others safe, but strengthens the strain for those in the colony.

Comedy festivals are like health outreach programs for humour. Attempting to educate the public and show that these afflicted individuals are not always contagious. Mainstream American sit-coms are what's left after the humour has gone through a rigourous sterilization programme, injected with anti-humotics, scrubbed clean with laughter suppressing soap, and irradiated with large doses of UV (unimaginative visualizations).

Uh-oh! I feel I'm coming down with a case of the Goodies. I'd better rest up on the couch and have some warm milk. Goodie goodie, yum, yum!