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2020-04-13 18:52:24

Democrats win in Wisconsin despite -- or because? -- of voter suppression.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … court.html

Did Republican voter suppression tactics inadvertently suppress more Republicans than Democrats?

2020-04-13 18:14:35

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

That's what I don't get about Trump. This could be his re-election. All he would have to do is stop being self-serving and narcissistic for a few months, and people might respect him as a leader.

David Dunning wrote:

In 1999, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, my then graduate student Justin Kruger and I published a paper that documented how, in many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize—scratch that, cannot recognize—just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Logic itself almost demands this lack of self-insight: For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack. To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent. Poor performers — and we are all poor performers at some things — fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack.
What's curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.
https://psmag.com/social-justice/confid … .m6pxgw6fq

Mark Twain wrote:

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure. You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it.

Joe Biden wrote:

The world sees Trump for what he is. Insincere, ill-informed, corrupt, dangerously incompetent, and incapable in my view of world leadership. And if we give Donald Trump four more years, we will have great difficulty of ever being able to recover America’s standing in the world, and our capacity to bring nations together.

2020-04-13 17:28:31

And north of the border...

Here in Canada and in my province, we have a premier (your equivalent of a state governor). Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, was widely seen as the Canadian equivalent of Donald Trump. Ford rode into office due to widespread frustration with the Liberal Party that had been in power so long that they'd accumulated enough disappointments to piss anyone and everyone off at one point or another. Ford was, like Donald Trump, a loudmouth twit whose deceased brother Rob had been Mayor of Toronto until he inexplicably allowed himself to be filmed smoking crack cocaine in a video that was released on the internet. The only difference between Rob Ford and Doug Ford is that Doug Ford swore a little less.

Ford was an absurd, antagonistic premier from the start, saying that a tax on fossil fuels would cause a recession and ordering that gas stations have stickers claiming dire consequences would result from paying a few extra cents per fill-up and threatening to fine gas stations that didn't. He nonsensically gave out his cell phone number and urged anyone among the 13 million citizens of the province to call him with complaints and eventually had to change his number after he slashed legal aid programs, children's aid programs, rolled back a minimum wage increase, removed legislation granting all workers 10 paid sick days, cancelled a universal basic income pilot project he'd pledged to leave untouched, and, in a vindictive act on behalf of his former mayor brother, he slashed Toronto city council in half shortly before an election to create chaos.

Ford's later mandated a new vehicle license plate design for Ontario cars and his chosen design proved unreadable in the dark making it impossible for law enforcement to identify vehicles, for which Ford was mocked severely. At a basketball game, Ford attended and when his presence was announced the venue was filled with the sound of the audience loudly booing him. Ford was a national punchline and nationally, the Liberal Party was racked with scandal but managed to form a minority federal government by spending their entire campaign pointing out that Doug Ford embodied all the values of conservatism: austerity and antagonism -- and that if the Conservatives were voted into power federally, it'd be Ontario's troubles country-wide.

At the start of March, as fears of COVID-19 rose, Ford went on the radio and said that the infection rates were low and that people should stay calm and go on March Break vacations and enjoy themselves. Then people started getting sick and dying.

Something suddenly changed. Ford began doing daily press conferences and reversed his previous position, declaring he'd been mistaken, the viral threat was real and people needed to stay in their homes. Despite having been the Liberals' punching bag, he began coordinating the provincial response with the federal government and declared that the Liberal deputy prime minister was "a firecracker" and a treasured ally.

He began to address the province every day in a gentle, somber, frank tone without the obnoxious bombast of his past appearances. He asked gas stations to leave their restrooms open for truckers delivering their food. He said he could not sleep at night, he was struggling to secure protective equipment for doctors and nurses and at one point revealed that the provincial supply had a week left. He drove his truck out to a dental office to personally pick up a small donation of masks. He thanked the press that had been mocking him the previous week for getting the word out on social distancing measures.

At one point, the Prime Minister of Canada refused to release estimates for the coming deaths across the country. He feared a panic. Ford released his models for the province, saying that he couldn't go against his prime minister, but he needed his province to know the worst possible outcome so that they could commit to reducing it by staying home. A week later, the federal government followed Ford's lead and the population began adhering even more closely to the advice to stay apart and stay home.

Some constituents were furious with Ford for his recommendation to go on a March Break holiday, and the former premier whom Ford had defeated, Kathleen Wynne, spoke out -- and in his defence. "It was a mistake, but he did that out of the kindness of his heart; I could hear it in his voice," said the ousted former premier who undoubtedly despised Ford but was nevertheless recognizing his newfound decency. "He was trying to calm the waters."

And the money. The once tight-fisted Ford began to spend like no tomorrow, maxing out provincial investments in health care, in payouts to senior homes and public services and lending his support to what is effectively a universal basic income plan for unemployed or furloughed workers. Ford devised a list of non-essential businesses that were to close for the duration of the pandemic to induce social distancing and began urgent efforts to secure masks, gowns, ventilators and other medical equipment. At a daily briefing, Ford was asked if he had anything to say about the soon-to-be implemented carbon tax and if he had anything to say to the prime minister who spent his re-election campaign smearing him.

Ford replied that it was a conversation to have, a conversation he would welcome, but right now, he was grateful for the teamwork and support he'd been shown from the federal team and that they were in constant contact and working together closely to save lives and protect their citizens and that they were all on the same team. The country's team. The Liberal deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, was asked what it was like to work with the former Liberal boogeyman. She replied, "He is my therapist," describing the mutual support over late night, fretful phone calls.

When Trump banned mask exports from the US to Canada, the prime minister struck a diplomatic tone, saying he hoped the issue could be resolved. Ford, a once fervent Trump supporter, went on camera and expressed grief and heartbreak.

Doug Ford wrote:

When you sit back and you think of your allies and the wars we’ve gone through, and we’ve stood shoulder to shoulder fighting the same enemies. And now we have an enemy and we’re at war and they want to shut things down with their closest ally in the world? It shouldn’t come down to this. We have 1,000 nurses leaving Ontario that we’re in desperate need of going to help Americans.
How would the people in Michigan feel if all of a sudden we said, OK, the 1,000 nurses, we’re in desperate need and you need to stay here in Ontario and you aren’t going down to Michigan. That would be a wake-up call for them, but it shouldn’t come down to that. There’s no one that loves America more than I do. They’ve cut out one part of the family. It’s not right.
We’re stronger together than we are separated. In a major crisis, they want to cut everyone else off? That is totally unacceptable.
Canadians wouldn’t do that.

Ford later unveiled a plan to mobilize industry to produce all the medical equipment that had proven difficult to secure; to manufacture it in the province to supply the entire country. It would not only save lives but create new jobs that would also end Canada's dependency on other countries for life-saving equipment, particularly when the US had been seizing medical supplies on their way to Canada. So long as he was premier, he vowed, those manufacturing lines would never be closed.

In all this, Doug Ford went from being the laughingstock of Canadian politics to a man now being praised by friends and former enemies alike.

If he continues on this path through the pandemic and for the rebuilding that will be needed, his scandals will be a footnote in his legacy and he will be remembered as the hero that my people needed in the moment that we needed him; we'll remember how he rose to the challenge and became a leader driven and guided by the data and advice of medical experts and whose every action and decision has been to protect his constituents and guide them through adversity and into the future.

And I very much wish that this were Donald Trump's story because I am so worried about all of you right now.

2020-04-13 13:35:43

Watching Biden and Sanders talk today -- this is the America that I always saw from afar but couldn't always find when looking up close and certainly not from looking at Trump. Biden conveyed great respect and warmth towards Sanders and Sanders was a little off balance at first but was smiling glowingly at the end and there was a moment when Biden told Sanders that he would need Sanders' help, not merely to campaign, but to govern, and Sanders was clearly moved.

And I'm not an idiot; of course there was a bit of rehearsal and Sanders is probably choking on his wounded ego as he struggles to put country before campaign and Biden is probably sending out goodwill without necessarily having much philosophical or ideological core aside from being nice and pleasant and not taking much of anything personally and all this sentiment has been planned and manufactured but I still like it. Together, Biden and Sanders felt like two people merging to become Professor Arturo, and not the bombastic, insecure Professor of Seasons 1 - 2 but the grandfatherly, reassuring go-getter of Season 3.

2020-04-12 16:24:45

So, I've found Tara Reade's accusation towards Biden suspicious given her relentless praise of him on Twitter when she hadn't seen him for 14 years with her turning on him when she developed a deranged crush on Vladimir Putin and the ardent adoration she once had for Biden now went towards the Russian President and she went from extreme praise to extreme loathing for Biden.

There's another article that finds Reade's account strange, not just from what I've noted, but from looking into the political environment of 1993 in Washington and the geography of the space where Reade says Biden assaulted her. https://arcdigital.media/joe-bidens-met … d16bbe0ddd

Specifically, writer Cathy Young notes that Senators Brock Adams and Robert Packwood were accused of assault and harassment by a multitude of former staffers and lobbyists the past year. Adams gave up his re-election and Packwood's career was slowly strangled by the scandal. Living in 2020, we might think sexual assault was an unspoken, silent torment in 1993; that's certainly the reason Reade gives for not coming forward. But in reality, sexual assault had been been politically devastating front page news starting with the Anita Hill inquiry of 1991.

And Reade says she approached Biden just as he was concluding a conversation with someone in the hallway and then Biden slammed her against a wall and digitally penetrated her -- suggesting that in a year marked by the shadow of sexual assault and broken careers over being caught and accused, Biden decided to rape a woman in an open hallway of a government building where anyone could have walked by at any time.

Look, I can believe a lot. I believe that Transmodiar is reformed. I believe that Informant is not an alt-right neo-Nazi Men's Rights Activist who hates black people and women. I believe that Henry the Dog lived a long and happy life. I believe that Rembrandt came out of the vortex in "The Seer" and found Quinn, Wade and the Professor waiting for him. I believe that Jerry O'Connell came to regret abandoning SLIDERS. I believe that the Season 3 monsters have a place in the mythology. I even believe that David Peckinpah is talented. But I do not believe THIS.

As the first person here to post Tara Reade's accusation and as someone who started with the presumption that Reade was telling the truth, I do not believe the claims:

That reporting sexual assault was unheard of in 1993.
That Reade's unsolicited and constant praise for Biden on Twitter from 2016 - 2017 was Reade trying to normalize a relationship with someone she'd had no contact with for 23 years who lived in a different state.
That Reade's absurd, sexualized essays about the attractiveness of Vladimir Putin shirtless were taken out of context from a novel she was writing when she posted those writings on Medium of her own accord.
That Reade's sudden obsession with Putin was unrelated to her then accusing Biden of harassment and now assault.
That Joe Biden would rape a woman in the foot-traffic heavy hallway of a government building.

#BelieveWomen is a very good place to start, but it's only a starting point. We should balance that with the need to #TrustButVerify by asking questions about every area of seeming implausibility. And Reade's answers to these questions are ridiculous.

2020-04-11 22:20:45

I don't think DARK PHOENIX was the worst, but it felt fractured and incomplete -- like it was Episodes 21 - 22 of a TV show where Episodes 1- 20 were somehow never filmed due to a viral outbreak that shut down filming.

2020-04-11 22:13:33

Well, I will always welcome an opinion that is stated honestly and openly and presented as the specific view of a specific person.

Whatever points of disagreement Transmodiar and I may have, he never presents his opinion as the universal default.

ME: "It's weird -- all the scenes you hated most in SLIDERS REBORN like the monsters being trounced by MacGyver-style tactics or Rembrandt losing his new Cadillac right away or the joking references to the Season 3 episodes -- they're always the readers' favourite scenes."
TRANSMODIAR: "I'm not the final arbiter of taste, good sir!"

He doesn't makes claims that are based in stark denial of audio recordings and photographs in order to bolster his personal dogma. He doesn't link to deceptively edited videos and insist they're to be taken as absolute truth. He doesn't demand that Nazis never be identified as such. He doesn't rail against people marching for women's rights and call them unlawful anarchists while insisting that anti-abortion marchers are above criticism.

He doesn't find excuses for why every cop who shoots a black man is a hero to find a semi-socially acceptable way to express racism. He doesn't misrepresent a Muslim ban as a safety measure to justify Islamophobia. He doesn't call women-only screenings of WONDER WOMAN stupid in order to couch his contempt for women.

He doesn't argue that anyone who disagrees with him is mentally ill or lying. He doesn't declare that his views are the consensus just because no one is inclined to engage in a discussion with him should that ever be the case. And he doesn't see disagreement and difference as an impediment to helping a troubled soul assemble a foolhardy twentieth anniversary special to a cult TV series to craft an ending long after everyone had stopped asking for one.

I suppose Transmodiar's view is that Biden would be incompetent in other ways, perhaps not as overtly as Trump, but inept nonetheless. But the president's job is to mount a federal response to national crisis and Trump has proven completely incapable and the death count is rising. I'm in favour of getting Biden into the White House as much as getting Trump out of it and, to me, it's more important to put out the house fire than to renovate the house. You can renovate after the flames are extinguished. I respect Transmodiar seeing it differently. I will never want anyone to cast a vote that they don't believe in.

I would argue, however, that we have to step back from thinking that voting for someone means endorsing everything they've ever or done or will ever do; sometimes, we vote against something rather than for someone.

I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's gray coat, Wade's purple suit, Rembrandt's bronze suit and the Professor's waistcoat that the views of ireactions do not represent the consensus of Sliders.TV.

2020-04-11 17:22:12

I don't disagree with Transmodiar, but I don't wholly agree with him either. Let's say I'm adjacent. Biden's not great. Biden is an artifact of a previous era when politicians, to get anything done, had to work with people they disliked. Biden has worked to benefit South Africans against despotic regimes; he's not a racist, but he had to work with his share much in the same way Cleavant Derricks had to maintain a working relationship with David Peckinpah even after Peckinpah drove all his friends off the show and sexually harassed a treasured coworker.

Biden has been harrassing with women, but what we've seen captured on camera in video and still is not the behaviour of an assault perpetrator but instead a man of a previous generation whose attitude to women was to view them as objects -- treasured, valuable ones, but objects nonetheless.

Biden's accuser for rape has gone from the extreme of praising Biden on Twitter unbidden and with no relationship to normalize; she declared when Biden spoke on sexual harassment, "My old boss speaks the truth. Listen to him" and other lavish compliments -- until she developed a peculiar fixation on Vladimir Putin and wrote open love letters to him at which point she accused Biden of raping her and nonsensically claimed her besotted writings to Putin were "research." I would be extremely cautious about taking this person's word for anything given the extremity with which she's commited to completely contradictory views.

Biden is not a revolution. This is absolutely true, but the claim that Biden would preserve the status quo is untrue when the status quo has over 20,000 dead from a pandemic warned of in January and which the current president ignored until mid-March. This status quo has the US president seizing medical equipment from hospitals to redistribute to states with governors that have spoken well of him in the press while refusing to create any national, federally-led plan of addressing the outbreak. This president dismantled the organizations and offices designed to address a pandemic and has refused to use his office to create the supplies and equipment needed to repel it while urging that people resume rampantly spreading it in order to briefly raise his economy before another massive death toll. Trump's removal from office would change all of this immediately.

Andrew Yang was preferable. Andrew Yang is no longer running. That opportunity has passed. What is before America now is a chance to remove a dangerously incompetent man from office and replace him with an average man who will defer to medical and supply chain experts to lead efforts to treat the sick and rebuild the country. The choice is the deranged, delusional grandfather who embraces racists and quacks or the dim, Democratic-in-name-only grandfather who will accept the knowledge and experience of others. It is not a revolution. But a Biden presidency could create the ground on which Sanders, Yang and others like them could build. Another four years of Trump will see more Americans ensickened by completely preventable equipment shortages.

Supporting Biden does not refute progressivism. Supporting Biden is simply to remove Trump. One can vote for Biden and then receive the stability needed to resume advocating for Medicare For All, universal basic income, transgender rights, reproductive rights and everything else.

But regardless of our differences, I support Transmodiar voting for Yang and intending to write in Yang on his ballot and I wouldn't want anyone other than Transmodiar writing Quinn Mallory's political opinions for me.

2020-04-10 18:20:22

Joe Biden has a podcast. Yes, that's right, Grandpa is staggering into the audio medium.

It's been two 20 minute episodes and it's ghastly but... I mean, it's like BATWOMAN. I admire the intent but the execution is clumsy and it's using freakin' Zoom. Come on! Record the voices independently and stitch it together or you'll have audio dropout and time lag, Gramps!

But to be fair, I'm as out of touch as Biden, that's why I run all my thoughts through my niece (an angry college student) before I admit to having any.

Other constructive criticisms here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04 … etter.html

2020-04-10 10:18:59

If Trump wants to focus on Hunter Biden, he can draw more attention to his own impeachment and I think the Biden camp happily welcome it.

The accusation is that Biden withheld aid money to Ukraine unless a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son's company was fired. However, Biden was authorized to communicate that on behalf of the US Government which had observed this prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was failing to investigate financial corruption; he was delivering a message and not acting on his own behalf. Shokin had filed an investigation with Burisma Holdings on which Hunter Biden was a director, but the case had been inactive for months. If Biden hadn't called for Shokin's firing, the Obama administration would have dispatched someone else to do it.

I'd be more concerned with Biden's approach to women, his plagiarism, his lies about visiting Nelson Mandela, his weird forehead bumping-nose-rubbing thing...

2020-04-10 07:28:53

Yeah. Some have said that Trump will completely outclass Biden in showmanship -- but Trump got himself impeached trying to dig up dirt on Biden.

Trump is terrified of Biden.

2020-04-09 17:23:19

Slate.com on why Biden's blandness is so appealing and why Trump running rings around Biden might just make Biden look like a good choice for the Oval Office:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … a=taps_top

The greatest example of Biden’s indestructability—the biggest attack that didn’t take—was Trump’s own effort to extort Ukraine to “open” an investigation into Biden. It’s hard to appreciate in hindsight how colossally that gambit failed, but fail it did. Trump got himself impeached trying to smear Biden! And it cost Biden virtually nothing politically.
“Look, it’s simple,” he told the New York Times before the Iowa caucuses, laughing. “They’re smearing me to try to stop me, and they know if I’m the nominee, I’m going to beat Donald Trump like a drum.”
In political terms, Biden is an inert gas. His main superpower—and I think it really might be one in this landscape—is that he doesn’t come across as reactive.
Despite his occasional outbursts of temper (which no doubt help him scan as “authentic”), the former vice-president is intriguingly immune to the personal grudges around which Trump builds his entire politics. Sure, there’s a more complicated version of him, but Biden telegraphs as the definition of a nice, normal guy. That’s why Barack Obama picked him to be his running mate, after all.
Despite Trump’s efforts to extort a U.S. ally to manufacture a smear against him, Biden offered to call Trump on the phone to help him deal with the pandemic. The (meaningless) phone call happened, and Biden—whose idea it was—set the terms for the tone and won. Biden calling Trump “very gracious” is meaningless (this is what a nice guy persona does for you), but Trump describing his call with Biden as a “wonderful, warm conversation” notched Biden an immense moral victory.
He just doesn’t seem to take things personally, and while that was a perfectly ordinary quality among politicians at one point, it might be operating as a real political asset in a landscape where the president punishes people who criticize him by denying them lifesaving equipment.
Biden doesn’t just rise above. He floats so high you can barely see him. There’s no reading a country, and one hesitates to invoke the silent majority, but judging by Biden’s numbers, an ability to take punches without striking back is a quality many Americans seem to miss. And because he’s known for gaffes—yet another inoculation!—he doesn’t get punished for saying things other politicians might take real heat for.
His challenge was to run against the biggest, loudest media hog in the history of American politics, and he has met that challenge by barely appearing at all—and by making his appeals so mild you don’t even remember what they were.
A Biden tweet asking for donations is almost comically opposed to Trump’s screaming appeals to destroy the enemy. “Folks, I know these are tough times, but this crisis has made it clearer than ever how much elections matter—and what a difference it makes who is in the White House. If you can, please chip in to fuel our campaign. I would really appreciate it.” I can’t believe this is the strategy in a political landscape based on gun-to-your-head rhetoric. But there it is: The tone isn’t DONATE NOW TO SAVE THE REPUBLIC; it’s “if you can, please chip in.”

This is why people like Biden. Transmodiar is right to say that Trump is very heavily armed, but Biden is fundamentally disarming.

2020-04-09 12:54:04

I've come to accept that politics is the art of the possible with a majoritarian doctrine. It is the practice of determining what ideas can be the most broadly accepted among the widest range of people even if that range encompasses people with views that are irreconcilable. Biden's bland emptiness, his stance for nothing, his Republican values in Democrat marketing could be viewed as a hollow shell -- or it could be seen as molding clay in all its versatile flexibility. Broadly, people want life to be affordable.

Sanders is right, in my view, about pretty much everything, but when you try to do everything in politics -- which again, is the art of the possible -- you accomplish nothing. That said, if you try to stay blandly acceptable to most if not all, then all you accomplish is maintaining what already exists. But, to re-re-requote James Carville Jr., an election is about acquiring political power and if a political party can't acquire political party, it isn't a political party as much as an ideological cult of talking points and that's what Sanders is.

Sanders was willfully hostile towards allies he'd need, dismissive towards segments of voters that he'd yet to win over, and ultimately incapable of being bland enough to win over a wide range of people. He's that cranky, brilliant uncle who's fun at parties but tough to deal with one-on-one. In contrast, Biden is a tender grandfather who will listen to you describe the death of a family member and weep with you and hold you (and forget to ask for permission to do so), but he's also a member of the ruling class who would like to see his status maintained with minimal disruption.

That's not the leader I want, but it's possible that he's the leader that we can get and work with for this very specific moment in history.

But of course, I support Transmodiar voting for Andrew Yang.

2020-04-08 15:19:26

Biden's speechwriters wrote a respectful and beautiful message from Biden to Sanders: https://medium.com/@JoeBiden/statement- … e128a935ac

As someone who ghostwrites lots of stuff for people, I know that we should all be mature adults and recognize that oratory and rhetoric is carefully crafted by a team of specialists and calculated down to the last comma, but I still really admire the artistry there and the intent even if Biden is a dim dinosaur and a Republican in a Democrat's suit.

But I suppose this is what must be done when you seek to be a majoritarian political party that has some hope of acquiring power as opposed to being an ideological cult of symbolic and empty gestures.

2020-04-08 07:35:22

Also, I don't think Slider_Quinn21 -- or I -- are saying that victory is a foregone conclusion (because it's not) or that Trump couldn't possibly win a second term (because he could) or that Republicans won't succeed in reducing voter turnout across the board (because they might) or that the Democrats won't destroy their own platform and campaign like they did in 2016 (because they've done it before).

But it is possible to defeat Trump. There is no certainty. But there is a chance and to declare that there isn't is as naive and foolish as declaring that it'll all work out with no effort or attention. Giving up never accomplished anything. And if Trump wins a second term, even more commitment will be needed.

2020-04-08 07:07:55

Personally, I am glad that the Supreme Court upheld the decision to hold an election in the midst of a pandemic and force people to vote in person if they didn't receive their mail-in ballots even if they'd already signed up for them.

It shows anti-Trump voters exactly what they need to anticipate in November and gives them months to work out how to prepare for what will not be in any way a shocking surprise. It's seeing the iceberg before your ship is even out of the dock.

2020-04-08 00:02:50

You know, imagining a solution to a problem is in itself an act of revolution.

2020-04-07 07:43:10

Grizzlor, please stop saying democracy is dead. Democracy is in a fight. And nobody ever won a fight by giving up.

EDITED TO ADD: That's a request, not a demand.

2020-04-06 17:35:51

Over in the world of TV, showrunners for SUPERNATURAL and the Arrowverse are assuring fans that they will finish filming the current seasons of their shows when it's safe to do so, implying that in a few weeks or months, all will be back to normal. It is unwise to affix an end date to a crisis when the factors are so unclear. Lockdowns and social distancing work; I saw family members in China commit to a course of isolation and gradually, the infection rates peaked and fell. But the numbers go up every day because tests are reporting infections that happened before the isolation measures began. In addition, the implementation of quarantine measures has been scattershot and inconsistent across the globe.

The pandemic will end, but people who declare it'll be over within two weeks or four weeks or two months are only setting themselves up for disappointment. We need to believe that it will end while accepting that we don't know when that end is coming. It won't take a year. But it also won't be over by next week.

2020-04-06 17:27:43

The Wisconsin election is on, the Governor doesn't have the authority to stop it.

I'd try to look at this defeat as a teachable moment along with why it's unwise to elect an idiot to run a country out of spite.

Also, I wish Temporal Flux would go into politics. We're on opposite ends politically, but TF is a problem solver.

2020-04-06 15:15:36

Please don't say that we're doomed. Even if we are, that attitude never helped anyone ever.

**

It's interesting that the Governor of Wisconsin has called off the election, a move certain to issue a court challenge as he had earlier conceded that he didn't have the authority to do it and is now declaring that authority or not, he's not letting a public health hazard unfold. It will most definitely be hit with a court challenge and I have the sense that he hasn't stopped it; he's stalled it, but every effort is worthwhile.

2020-04-06 15:13:25

Temporal Flux once expressed some concern that Warner Bros. would cancel THE FLASH on TV in order to prop up the perpetually imploding failure of the FLASH movie, a project that is perpetually unwritten and has seen multiple directors walk away from the project. After today, I am going to hazard a guess that the project is over now that the star of this unmade film has been caught on video choking a woman and throwing her to the ground.

https://screenrant.com/ezra-miller-fan- … explained/

2020-04-06 15:10:55

LEGENDS was never getting a full season anyway; it only had 15 episodes, the first of which was the CRISIS tie-in.

I have to say, it's not looking good for CANARIES; with so much uncertainty and no sense of when filming can resume, I personally wouldn't greenlight new projects and couldn't blame others for declining to do so.

It's hard to say WHEN filming will resume. While the world will get through this pandemic, it is foolish to say when it will be safe to lower social distancing measures. China took several months to peak and slow down and that was with very intense measures of control that Western countries can't and won't use.

2020-04-06 10:42:12

The truth is that voter suppression is going to be a serious problem in November and if the federal and state and municipal governments are no help, then support must come from a grass-roots, DIY level.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/06/82712285 … arks-anger

We're seeing some of that now in Wisconsin and it will be up to voters and campaigns and activists to work together to minimize the risk of voting. There is absolutely no way to make it completely safe, but the risk of contracting COVID-19 while voting is, by my calculations, not as hazardous as another four years where this incompetent non-leader will be in charge for the next crisis on top of COVID-19. Because there will be another crisis that needs federal leadership and we're already seeing what happens when you don't have any.

2020-04-05 15:38:30

So, I've been in no mood for talking about superheroes, but going back to Ray's departure --

Despite Routh's anger over how he was dismissed from the show, the exit for Ray Palmer and Nora makes sense for the characters. Ray had gone from being a mysterious, distant scientist on ARROW to a goofy, hyperactive blunderer who couldn't find a single bad situation he couldn't make worse and whose overeager errors reflected insecurity where he'd once been highly capable.

In Season 2, Ray confesses that he feels worthless because what he has to offer doesn't come from within himself; his contribution to the Legends and the world is the ATOM suit, a suit that is perpetually malfunctioning and dependent upon a rare mineral that he's unlikely to find and reproduce again -- much as Routh's primary place in this world was a single performance as Superman that defined his career but was ultimately discarded.

And then, in Season 3, Ray began to come further into his own as his perseverance, optimism, sense of fair play and teamwork and manic overperformance in all tasks be they laundry or punching villains to the point where his relentless insistence that Nora could be saved turn out to be quite correct. And now that Ray and Nora have gotten married, Ray Palmer's life aboard the Wave Rider has come to a turning point.

They could've kept Ray on the Wave Rider; they could have had more arcs for him and Nora; they could have kept Ray in play and had him deal with living with roommates and his wife, they could have had Nora wrestling with her dark past -- but the writers decided that they had reached a point of closure, completion and fulfillment for both Ray and Nora. And they wanted to let the characters go and send them off to a happy ending.

Probably should've told Routh that properly, in person, over a lavish lunch and with a stipend to cover his expenses for having to move back to Los Angeles and an offer to play Superman again before his exit story.

2020-04-04 10:26:38

I think the Biden campaign will have to do everything to equip people to minimize the risks of voting physically. Election edition masks. Biden branded gloves. Joe's election day hand sanitizer. The Biden face shield. The Biden measuring tape that extends six feet. The Biden MP3 playlist.

Assuming defeat is an assumption too.

2020-04-03 18:42:43

Transmodiar wrote:

And I can see why some of you don't see a path to victory for Trump in the fall. But between Trump's largesse and Biden's incoherent mush-mouthed ambivalence to marking a clear path through the pandemic or supporting M4A, Trump will emerge on top. Biden can't string two sentences together, even with prepared notes just off camera. He is the ultimate Democrat in this election; stands for nothing, changes nothing, advances nothing. His victory doesn't better America - it is a slightly less bellicose status quo.

I'd agree that Biden stands for nothing, but in this case, it also means that he stands for not being Trump, a man now responsible for failing to prepare for a clearly warned pandemic that has crashed the economy, the success of which was his argument for re-election. Biden's lack of ideology may be an asset. There may be no passion for Biden, but there is passion against Trump.

Transmodiar wrote:

Trump is a boob but he's a showman - and he will run circles around Biden. You think Crooked Hillary was bad? Wait 'til the Trump campaign latches on to the Anita Hill testimony, Biden's plagiarism during his first presidential campaign, his appreciation for Strom Thurmond's support, lies about apartheid-era visits to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, lies about marching for desegregation. Not that he'll even have to - the stuff with his kid in Ukraine, or his absolute inability to say anything that makes sense during televised interviews is right at their fingertips.

I think you and I have very different memories of Trump's debate performances. Trump was an incoherent, inarticulate mess of entitled rage and pathetic desperation, wandering the stage in a confused haze and then pettily trying to intimidate Hillary by lurking closer to her. Trump isn't any more articulate than Biden and his lack of focus is further defined by pitiful insecurity as he desperately tries to seem clever and is clearly an ignoramus. In contrast, Biden's waffling and confusion conveys warmth and sincerity. Yes, Trump might blow Biden off the stage -- or Biden might seem an oasis of reassurance in contrast to Trump being dangerously incompetent.

Transmodiar wrote:

Don't assume anything.

I'm assuming what was true before the pandemic and during the pandemic: there is a chance to topple Trump and it will be long and hard and fraught with difficulty and compromise. But there's a chance.

2020-04-03 17:01:20

In seven months time, we may know far more about the virus and how to prevent its spread in the midst of others and treat it's symptoms.

In seven months, we may find that the absence of passion for Biden is balanced by a fervent determination to remove Trump from office.

In seven months, we may find that NBCUniversal has renewed SLIDERS for a sixth season.

Bringing back SLIDERS is a process, not an event, and this route was never free of challenges. It must be overcome with inventiveness, cleverness, commitment and no small degree of compromise and often accepting an approximation of the intended result.

2020-04-03 08:38:50

I have a hot take of my own.

It's the same one as Slider_Quinn21's.

2020-04-02 16:23:21

I liked PICARD. A lot. The only issue I really had with it -- the artificial synthetic apocalyptic beast from far away who would bring doom to all organics -- I didn't feel the show set up what it was, where it came from, why it was coming, what it was doing, why it left its phone number telepathically or what that was about at all. It was simply a means to an end in terms of creating a ticking clock. Aside from that, I felt in transitioned the NEXT GENERATION universe into one more a mirror of our own reality.

I thought Data's dream sequences and his final scene at the end of PICARD was poignant and beautiful even if Brent Spiner's voice reflected all the years that the CGI was wiping out of his face and girth and hairline. I'm fascinated by the question of whether Picard is still Picard or merely an approximation, a backup copy of the actual human being. I'm intrigued by where his journey will take him next. Patrick Stewart is signed for one more season of PICARD.

I'm not as Starfleet-focused as you are, but that's a valid take, I respect it. I'm happy with PICARD being about Picard's life after he left the Navy. And I think that Bashir is a computer sales clerk in San Francisco, Worf is a bombastic combat professor whom nobody likes and La Forge is somewhere in a residential area basement working on anti-gravity but on the verge of discovering something else instead. Meanwhile, Tom Paris is likely a labrat in an interdimensional experiment after he lost the use of his legs in a car theft gone wrong.

2020-04-02 16:16:56

I agree that Biden is basically a Republican -- but Biden would never have ignored warnings of an impending pandemic or declared that it wasn't happening or encouraged unproven drug treatments or seen mass deaths as a ratings bonanza. A lot would change -- not necessarily due to having Biden in the White House but certainly with Trump out of the Oval Office and that outcome seems likely given Trump's disastrous non-handling of a pandemic with hundreds of thousands likely to die and the States on the verge of a depression.

I take no pleasure in declaring that the suffering of Americans is Trump's defeat. I'm terrified for my American brothers and sisters. I'd take a Trump victory if he could earn it through demonstrating the competence needed to save lives.

2020-04-01 12:10:18

Grizzlor wrote:

It was 1993, and she supposedly told her immediate family. I think the brother backs her story, but unless someone from the campaign does, where is this going? Biden denied it. Do I think Biden did this? Ehhh, I'd say 50/50 but beyond that, unless you're going to file charges on him, which after this many years I don't think you can, again, what is the point?
The Russia stuff I think was overblown and irrelevant. Ms. Reade explained that she's basically socialist and commended Putin, but then quickly realized he was no socialist just a thug so she denounced him, unlike our President.

Reade's story is proving difficult to corroborate which is why mainstream media hasn't reported on it heavily. There are many oddities even when you take into consideration that abuse victims have confused and erratic memories. Her accounts of her employment with Biden were extremely positive and flattering from 2016 - 2018 where she, on Twitter, repeatedly called him a hero against sexual assault, saying, "My old boss speaks the truth. Listen to him."

Now, sexual assault victims often maintain a relationship with their abuser in an attempt to normalize what happened, but Reade now claims she was fired after reporting Biden for raping her and hadn't worked for Biden in over 20 years; there was no relationship to normalize. She was declaring herself a fan of Biden -- and I find it difficult to reconcile her accusations with her actions. Unlike the actresses who were forced to keep dealing with Harvey Weinstein to maintain a career, Reade had been out of Washington for decades and was ardently praising and retweeting her former employer from far, far away.

And with Russia -- from 2016 - 2017, she was constantly tweeting fury at Russian interference in US elections -- until 2018 when she began writing bizarre and infatuated essays about Putin and calling Russia as a picture of a perfect society. Her fondness for Russia has continued straight into 2020 when she was criticizing John Cusack for expressing concern at Russian interference in US elections. There has been no turnaround aside from a claim that her 2018 love letter was "research."

It's difficult to find her credible on Biden or Russia. That doesn't mean her story can't possibly be true, of course, but it's difficult to believe -- at least for me. Reade seems too schizophrenic to be trustworthy and Biden seems to lack the self-control needed to cover up a predilection for rape.

An auto worker accused him of wanting to shut down the Second Amendment; Biden threatened to kick his ass. A college kid asked Biden, when his poll numbers were bottoming out, why anyone should think he could recover; Biden asked if she'd ever been to a caucus; the girl nodded uncertainly and Biden snapped at her, "You're a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!" and the student later confessed that she had never been to a caucus. Biden, for all his faults, reads people well and could see her lack of conviction and saw that she was lying and it pissed him off and he said so.

While Biden has not treated women with respect for their personal space, his behaviour conveys a (foolish and outdated) sense of benevolent ownership over women -- seeing them as objects to be held and protected -- as opposed to a contemptuous, abusive disdain. If he had such hatred for women in him, I don't believe he could hide it.

But I've been wrong before. I didn't think Bryan Singer was a rapist, after all.

2020-03-31 16:24:37

I support and respect Transmodiar voting for whoever he wants to vote for and I am extremely nervous about Joe Biden; I don't personally think he is a TERRIBLE choice. I think he is a crashingly mediocre choice, but, as Slider_Quinn21 points out, the system defaults to privileged white men who instinctively seek to maintain the status quo that gave them their privilege and are old enough to have known war rationing as toddlers, so the options are either mediocre/terrible or apocalyptic. Yang is an excellent choice. Would that excellence were a target within range. If I were an American, I'd probably vote for Yang too.

2020-03-30 16:06:31

Despite all my many, many, many, many, many issues with Biden -- I cannot imagine that sweet old man slamming a woman into a wall, fingering her by force, then telling her, "You're nothing to me." Biden is a man of absolutely no self-control whatsoever, getting into moronic arguments with auto workers and college students -- but the impulses he can't control are impulses to call people out for buying into conspiracy theories or for lying to his face or to hug people when they describe the loss of a family member or to whisper support to a woman who bruised herself badly on some ice or to describe his grief over his wife and daughter dying in a car crash and his son dying of brain cancer and nearly spitting out his phone number on national TV for grieving families to call him.

If Biden were a rapist, I don't believe he could hide it because he's incapable of any real subterfuge -- or that's a part of his act, but if Biden were pretending, wouldn't his act have less rambling, less random bursts of incoherent thought, less outbursts of frustration, less everything?

2020-03-30 14:39:07

ireactions wrote:

Oh crap.
VOX: A sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden has ignited a firestorm of controversy
A woman says Biden assaulted her in 1993. Now #TimesUpBiden is trending.
Are we at the point where we say that voting for the man with one accusation of assault is a better option than voting for the man with 21 accusers for the same?

Transmodiar wrote:

It's not just one - there have been eight women who have come forward about Biden's behavior/assault:
Lucy Flores
Amy Lappos
D.J Hill
Caitlyn Caruso
Ally Coll
Sofie Karasek
Vail Kohnert-Yount
Tara Reade

ireactions wrote:

Lucy Flores: Put his hands on her shoulder, smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head.
Amy Lappos: Rubbed noses with her.
D.J Hill: Put his hand on her shoulder and then slid it down her back.
Caitlyn Caruso: Put his hand on her thigh and hugged her too long.
Ally Coll: Squeezed her shoulders and held her too long.
Sofie Karasek: Took her hand and pressed his forehead against hers.
Vail Kohnert-Yount: Put his hand on the back of her head and pressed their foreheads together and called her a pretty girl.
Tara Reade: Says Biden raped her.
One through seven are not good -- but they aren't accusing Biden of rape and they reflect his upbringing from a past generation with views of women that are outdated and should never have been tolerated even when they weren't outdated. I wouldn't call him a perpetrator of assault based on one to seven -- certainly a harasser, possibly an unwitting one.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

When you only nominate people who were born before the Civil Rights movement, you're going to have people who didn't grow up with the benefits of the Civil Rights movement.
Want better candidates? Vote for younger candidates. Until then, we're stuck with old creepy men.

...

Okay then. I guess this is as settled as it's going to get.

Damn it.

2020-03-30 12:41:15

Lucy Flores: Put his hands on her shoulders, smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head.
Amy Lappos: Rubbed noses with her.
D.J Hill: Put his hand on her shoulder and then slid it down her back.
Caitlyn Caruso: Put his hand on her thigh and hugged her too long.
Ally Coll: Squeezed her shoulders and held her too long.
Sofie Karasek: Took her hand and pressed his forehead against hers.
Vail Kohnert-Yount: Put his hand on the back of her head and pressed their foreheads together and called her a pretty girl.
Tara Reade: Says Biden raped her.

One through seven are not good -- but they aren't accusing Biden of rape and they reflect his upbringing from a past generation with views of women that are outdated and should never have been tolerated even when they weren't outdated. I wouldn't call him a perpetrator of assault based on one to seven -- certainly a harasser, possibly an unwitting one.

2020-03-29 16:56:26

Biden's accuser once penned an absurd, deranged opinion piece declaring Putin's rule in Russia to be benevolent, democratic, loving and peaceful -- an utterly delusional piece of propaganda that suggested she was a Russian plant and not a particularly covert one. But you can be a Russian mouthpiece and still be a rape victim.

Trump is unquestionably a violent sexual offender. He has bragged about entering women's change rooms and abusing women on radio and television; his entire demeanor conveys physical entitlement as he grabs world leaders hands and yanks them forward to put them off balance, sticks his fingers into politicians' faces -- just imagine how he treats women.

Biden's trespasses, in contrast, are from a misguided affection that was bred in a generation of men taught that women were objects -- objects of artistry and value to be protected and admired and treasured -- but ultimately possessions, and Biden's behaviour with women has reflected what was intended as benevolent ownership. And being treated as property, even valuable property, is intrusive and obnoxious and upsetting -- but it isn't necessarily the behaviour of someone who assaults people. Biden come off as my sweet, harmless, loving, naive grandfather.

However, that's just his public image. And as we know from watching the intellectual, reclusive, thoughtful Quinn Mallory onscreen as played by the dim, brash, arrogant Jerry O'Connell, someone's public image is not always their true self; it is what they choose to put out into the world. Trump is someone who deliberately presents himself as narcissistic, self-delusional, volatile and erratic and I suppose we can trust that. Can we trust that Biden is who he says?

Are we at the point where we say that voting for the man with one accusation of assault is a better option than voting for the man with 21 accusers for the same?

I think Biden should submit to an independent investigation of the assault accusation.

2020-03-28 12:35:50

Reading ARCHIE comics is a very interesting exploration of SLIDERS-esque storytelling. ARCHIE comics have an interesting approach to continuity: there isn't any. There's a core title, ARCHIE (started in 2015 with Mark Waid writing it), featuring young adult high school dramedy with Archie being a clumsy, well-intentioned kid with a peculiar best friend in Jughead and Betty being a tomboy mechanic with an eccentric friendship with the regal and elite Veronica.

Then there's the JUGHEAD title written by Chip Zdarsky in which Jughead finds himself on a date with Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, a storyline that isn't reflected in the core ARCHIE title. When Sabrina appears in the ARCHIE title, it doesn't acknowledge her JUGHEAD plotline at all and she meets the ARCHIE cast for the first time again and is dating Archie. There's a SABRINA THE TEENAGED WITCH title in which Sabrina is in her own town, irreconcilable with ARCHIE.

Then there's the ancillary titles. BETTY AND VERONICA: VIXENS has the two girls starting a biker gang. It has a completely different version of the Betty and Veronica friendship in the main title. There's JUGHEAD: THE HUNGER in which Jughead is revealed to be part of a lineage of werewolves, hence his voracious hunger for hamburgers. It kills off a large number of the cast, it reveals Betty to be the latest in a family line of werewolf hunters; this isn't reflected in any other title. There's VAMPIRONICA, in which Veronica is transformed into a vampire and then she later travels to a parallel universe where she meets the werewolf Jughead from JUGHEAD: THE HUNGER.

There's ARCHIE VS. PREDATOR where all but two cast members are murdered by the Predator; this appears to be a series finale to the 'classic' ARCHIE comics as the surviving Betty and Veronica refer to various events in the original comics and travel into the parallel universe of the 2015 reboot.

The horror line also has CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA and AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE, two very dark versions of the characters which haven't been appearing regularly in comic stores as the writer has been working on RIVERDALE. Interestingly, there's a series, JUGHEAD: TIME POLICE where 2015 reboot Jughead discovers that the classic version of Jughead has become evil and been gathering Jugheads from parallel universes.

One of these Jugheads is the RIVERDALE incarnation who wears a Serpents leather jacket and delivers an overwrought monologue describing the war of Jugheads only to be interrupted when he's knocked unconscious.

What's interesting is that despite the light and dark and sci-fi variations on these titles, Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica remain the same characters, simply in different situations and with different choices before them even if those choices involve summer jobs in one universe or time and space in another.

2020-03-28 07:10:50

Well, I wrote a bit in this thread about my irritation with Biden's lack of respect for women's personal space here: http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=8601#p8601

In addition, the first photo you're using -- that one is not a fair example. The lady in the photo is Stephanie Carter who has insisted that Biden was very welcome to touch her like that; she had hurt herself earlier in the day and Biden was helping her stand.

Stephanie Carter wrote:

On February 17, 2015, my husband was being sworn in as the Secretary of Defense — a job his years of work at the Pentagon had prepared him for and the crowning achievement of his career. I could not have been prouder and I had gushed to friends that it was like “seeing Secretariat run the Kentucky Derby”. We had started the cold, snowy day at Arlington Cemetery in Section 60 visiting the graves of our fallen. It was somber and quiet and the weight of Ash’s new responsibility was palpable.
Upon our arrival at the Pentagon, I had slipped and fell on some ice — which a few journalists were nice enough to tweet about. Later, we went to the White House for the swearing in and I was feeling self-conscious and tentative (not a normal state for those who know me) about the fall.
By the time then-Vice President Biden had arrived, he could sense I was uncharacteristically nervous- and quickly gave me a hug. After the swearing in, as Ash was giving remarks, he leaned in to tell me “thank you for letting him do this” and kept his hands on my shoulders as a means of offering his support. But a still shot taken from a video — misleadingly extracted from what was a longer moment between close friends — sent out in a snarky tweet — came to be the lasting image of that day. https://medium.com/@scarterdc/the-metoo … er=twitter

The problem is that there is a gap between being handsy with women and raping them.

I don't want Trump to win, but if Biden assaults women, he shouldn't be president. And it terrifies me that people who want Biden to win might simply refuse to acknowledge the accusation the way Informant ignored over 20 women accusing Trump of assault because he couldn't assimilate any criticism of his chosen leader.

2020-03-27 21:25:39

Oh crap.

VOX: A sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden has ignited a firestorm of controversy
A woman says Biden assaulted her in 1993. Now #TimesUpBiden is trending.

2020-03-27 14:53:37

Not "Summer of Love"?!!?! :-)

2020-03-22 20:52:13

It's interesting, because in one draft of the Pilot script, Stephanie already has a boyfriend and Quinn is crushing on her, making excuses to run into her -- which doesn't really fit with Quinn Mallory as he would later be established. In another, Quinn asks her out and she says she already has a date on any night Quinn asks her out on and her friend Beth calls Quinn a "dweeb." This is hopelessly at odds with Jerry O'Connell and indicates, very simply, that Torme and Weiss didn't imagine Quinn being a tall, handsome, football player type. The script would make more sense if Quinn were played by Tobey Maguire with his awkward mumble and slight stature.

If Jerry had played either draft -- I just don't think the scenes would have worked with the dialogue as written; I can't see how Jerry's performance could have amended it -- I think that's probably why the scenes were cut.

As for what Torme's idea was for Stephanie -- I genuinely don't know. As presented in the script, Stephanie is simply the beautiful woman that a Tobey Maguire version of Quinn could not interest, but if we see Jerry as Quinn and playing Quinn with confidence, charm and a peculiar isolationist streak, Stephanie's dismissive attitude would suggest that Quinn just isn't her type. However, it still doesn't work: why would Jerry's Quinn have such low self-esteem that he would pursue someone uninterested in what he has to offer? It would make Jerry seem like a stalker who's developed a pointless fixation on a woman who doesn't want to know him.

Looking at Daelin in "As Time Goes By," there isn't really a lot of scripted detail as to why Quinn and Daelin were a good match. It's really up to the performances: Quinn shares sliding with Daelin and has an earnest, sincere openness that clearly speaks to her; Daelin has a habit of "taking in strays" and Quinn is moved by her daring and compassion especially when she does so at her own risk. When Daelin reveals that she has a fiancee, Quinn is still willing to help her; he cares about her and there is a mutual respect and tenderness and warmth between them, a comfortable ease and instant trust.

And this is why the Stephanie character as written does not work for me when looking at Quinn: Quinn Mallory is not someone who gets wounded by rejection nor does he pursue someone who has turned him down. If someone doesn't want to go on a date with Quinn, he will (a) ask someone else or (b) dive into his engineering experiments which are his focus and passion and joy. Quinn is attracted to intelligence -- not necessarily scientific intelligence, but fans will note how Quinn is aroused when he and Logan start talking about whispering galleries vs laser gyro systems in the timer. Quinn is drawn to intelligence whether emotional intelligence (Wade), survivalist intelligence (Michelle) or compassionate intelligence (Daelin).

However. Tracy Torme clearly had some fixation on Stephanie because she shows up in his unfinished "officially unofficial series finale" outline, "The Long Slide Home." In that story, the original sliders after the events of "Double Cross" find that slide windows are getting shorter and shorter and the vortex has become unreliable because of Logan messing with the timer. They land on an Earth where the original supercontinent never broke up and encounter a Stephanie double and her husband, whom the sliders join for dinner.

The detailed breakdown ended here and was never completed, but Torme's overall plot: Quinn and Arturo rig the timer to send them backwards through the interdimension, visiting the Earths of Seasons 1 - 2 and seeing how their impact had turned out after they'd left for better or worse, trying to get home before the timer burnt itself out. The climax would have had Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo make it home with Quinn stranded. Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo resume their normal lives but over time, they are able to repair the timer and find Quinn, but in doing so, the way home is lost once again. Quinn is outraged, but the sliders assure him that so long as they are together, they are home because home is the people they choose; they may have lost the way back, but they have chosen who they want to be; they are sliders.

So... I guess in this context, the scene with Stephanie represented all the stability and home and family life that all the sliders had lost and might never have so long as they remained sliders, but then the ending would show that the sliders themselves are a family in a different form.

2020-03-22 18:26:45

Grizzlor wrote:

His novel was fine, the Episode guide is another story. Apparently Brad died last year from cancer.

I remember being 11, I think, and loving the quirky comedy and fun and adventure of SLIDERS and reading the novelization in the school library -- and the opening has the sliders observing a mass shooting of victims and Quinn studying all the dead bodies and detaching, thinking of them as masses of flesh instead of people -- and it repulsed me.

SLIDERS would go on to traumatize me further with Arturo being shot and blown up after getting his brain sucked out and Wade being sent to a rape camp, but Linaweaver started this pattern of abuse.

I don't know why Linaweaver thought it was acceptable to produce a novelization of a charming, winsome dramedy and open it with a bloody mass shooting, a scene that is not in the Pilot, in none of the drafts I've read and completely out of step with the eccentric, satirical and eerie story crafted by Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss, who wanted Quinn's journey to begin with wonder, daring, adventure and curiosity. Linaweaver arrogantly decided to open with mass slaughter because he enjoys savagery and bloodshed whether the story calls for it or not and this story did not.

His novelization should be struck from the record; whatever deleted scenes are there, Temporal Flux has provided with his script outtakes and Linaweaver's episode guide is worthless when we have the one from The Expert who actually watched the episodes whereas Linaweaver merely read scripts.

**

I maintain that it is very hard to imagine Jerry O'Connell being too shy to ask Melanie Bradshaw out on a date and I wonder what he made out of those scenes, but however he played it, it wouldn't be as scripted.

2020-03-22 18:17:44

I've noticed that it's been a bit hit and miss, sometimes working, sometimes not. Haven't figured out why.

2020-03-22 12:02:42

Anyway. I would like to, for the 25th anniversary of SLIDERS, share the screenplay "Slide Effects" in the Google Docs format which can scale to desktops, tablets and smartphones.

Slide Effects
a story by Tracy Tormé
In a 2009 interview on Earthprime.com, co-creator Tracy Tormé revealed how he would have repaired his series if given the chance. Faced with cast changes and plots he didn’t care for, Tormé devised a one-episode story to restore the show’s original cast and concept.
“Slide Effects” begins with the original Sliders finding themselves back home. In fact, it’s like they never left. Time has been rewound back to the Pilot and the original quartet is alive and well. Wade’s employed at Doppler Computers, Arturo is teaching, and Rembrandt is working on his musical career.
“Quinn is the only one that remembers sliding and he feels like he’s losing his mind,” said Tormé. “All familiar and important characters are here and Quinn is relentlessly trying to prove to his friends that they actually went sliding.” In Tormé’s tale, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo will arrive at a shocking confrontation that leads to a new beginning.
The story was originally conceived in 1996 during the production of the third season of Sliders, shortly before Tormé left his series to spend more time with his family. He imagined that if he were to return as showrunner in the future, “Slide Effects” could reverse any unwelcome developments made during his absence. Had Tormé regained control of Sliders in Season 4, “Slide Effects” would have been his season premiere.
This fan-created screenplay, written in 2011, brings Tormé’s “Slide Effects” to life in a 46-page script taking place immediately after “The Seer.” Presented in Google Docs for desktops, tablets and smartphones, this new edition also includes a retrospective essay on "Slide Effects" from Darren Mooney of them0vieblog.com from a parallel universe where Mooney was obsessed with SLIDERS instead of THE X-FILES.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11KF … sp=sharing

2020-03-22 11:55:58

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

How about doing a read of the Sliders novel by Brad Linaweaver? That would be incredible!

I beg you not to do that. Please do not do that. Linaweaver is the worst and his novelization was trash and his episode guide was a joke and there are such better options out there. The two greatest SLIDERS stories ever written are, of course, the ones by Nigel Mitchell with his gift for capturing the eerie and dangerous sci-fi tone of SLIDERS matched with the earnest charm and friendship of the sliders.

X Marks the Spot
http://freepdfhosting.com/2e80122e71.pdf
Agents Mulder and Scully visit San Francisco to investigate the murder of Dr. Quinn Mallory and find their investigation takes a turn for the strange when confronted with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo.

Slide Rulers
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140744 … ulers.html
The sliders are captured by an organization that claims to police the interdimension and put the sliders on trial for interfering with the natural development of the worlds they have visited.

2020-03-21 23:55:55

Well, I can tell you why Informant devoured James O'Keefe: it's because Informant desperately needs to believe that the world at large loved BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title) as much as Informant did and that anyone who didn't care for it is lying, delusional, unfair, mentally ill or in Marvel's pocket because the alternative would be to concede that Informant's personal views are not a universal default, not shared by all and not even within the mainstream. I noticed this when noticing how much it pissed him off to constantly be told, "I cannot stress enough in the name of all that is holy that the views of Informant do not reflect those of the Sliders.tv community."

By the way, I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's highlights, Wade's "Dead Man Sliding" dress, Rembrandt's shotgun and the Professor's orange slushie that the views of ireactions do not reflect those of Sliders.tv and that the Sliders.tv community at large is much smarter and cleverer than ireactions.

Informant, for example, is a much better writer and reviewer than I'll ever be. However... a person like O'Keefe assures Informant that his views are indeed shared by all and that anyone who claims otherwise is part of a conspiracy of electoral fraud and human trafficking because otherwise, Informant might have to concede that his point of view is only his own and a conspiracy panderer like O'Keefe assures Informant that anyone who disliked BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title) is an agent of Disney.

And in terms of actual politics -- you have regularly pointed out that Republicans govern by minority rule; they use extensive gerrymandering to elect their candidates which undermines Informant's chosen belief that his politics are the default for all. O'Keefe's deceptively edited videos allowed Informant to justify gerrymandering by claiming it balances out the supposed electoral fraud that Democrats engage in. O'Keefe's work encourages white men to justify their sense of feeling under threat when their privilege is challenged, when a corrupt economic system that benefits them is questioned or when the world that's always validated them is called out as unjust for benefiting the few at the expense of the many.

I don't doubt Informant's sincerity in most areas -- except that curiously, O'Keefe is the one area -- the only area -- in which I caught Informant flat out lying. He claimed to be unfamiliar with O'Keefe's attempt to seduce a reporter and create a sex tape, but he later shared more and more of O'Keefe's newer videos; he was clearly following the man's career and would have known what he'd been up to.

Anyway. I am at the age where I welcome people challenging anything and everything I believe. I DEMAND that all of you disagree with me. My opinions are mine. You get your own!

**

Soooo, awhile ago, Temporal Flux made a very astute observation: the American population is fed up with Democrats and Republicans alike who promise economic relief, job creation, the chance to buy a home and start a family and have health care -- only to fail to deliver any real change. Temporal Flux said that the people voting for Trump didn't actually think Trump would help them; voting for Trump was a way to damage a government that had done nothing to help those citizens survive a collapsing economy and debilitating addiction and the breakdown of essential services and a social safety net. It was a protest vote, a scream of outrage.

And I understand that, but I think it's fair to say that not having a functional, semi-competent leader in government is possibly not the best move when that leader will be expected to, say, prepare his country for a pandemic with something resembling organization and an ability to solve problems and work with others.

2020-03-21 21:50:36

Informant had previously posted links to videos by discredited journalist James O'Keefe claiming he had proof of electoral fraud in 2016, but given his history of deceptive editing, only Informant took him seriously. Recently, O'Keefe made Cracked.com's list of political smear artists whose methods backfired spectacularly upon them.

James O'Keefe Has Become a Laughing Stock
Conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe rose to prominence for his selectively-edited takedown of ACORN, a government-funded NGO that advises low-income residents about everything from welfare to housing to healthcare. Yeah, he's that kind of an asshole. However, that was in 2009 -- since then O'Keefe largely spends his days tripping up over his dick.
In 2010, for instance, he attempted to 'sting' CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau, casting her as a sex-addled lunatic by luring her aboard a floating "pleasure palace" filled with sex toys, condoms, erotic paintings, and a video camera. As O'Keefe described in a piece-to-camera he recorded before Boudreau's arrival, the transcript of which reads like an incel's manifesto:
"Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath."
This was his response to believing CNN wanted to portray his organization as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional... Great plan, James. That'll show 'em.
Except as soon as Boudreau pulled up outside the boat, an O'Keefe staffer warned her about the sting and the whole thing had to be abandoned (We're sure Operation: James Loses His Virginity would have gone off without a hitch otherwise). The whole fiasco got out to the media, leaving O'Keefe a laughing stock. Later, that same year, O'Keefe was arrested after he and several colleagues snuck into the office of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. They posed as telephone repairmen in an attempt to bug her phone lines -- which is a federal offense for reasons that should be pretty damn obvious.
In 2016, under the banner of 'Project Veritas' (dork), O'Keefe attempted to sting the philanthropic organization operated by the billionaire, conservative boogeyman, and not-a-Nazi George Soros. O'Keefe left a voicemail in which he -- under a fake name of 'Victor Kesh' -- posed as a foreign national "fighting for European values." A super basic, low-effort, attempt to entrap Soros' organization into saying something that O'Keefe could spin as being sinister and shady (Soros isn't good enough for the Love Boat plan, James?). But O'Keefe couldn't even pull that off without crapping the bed -- as he forgot to hang up, and left behind a seven-minute-long voicemail of him and a colleague describing their plan to sting Soros in great detail like the dumbest Bond villains imaginable. "What needs to happen [is for] someone other than me to make a hundred phone calls like that," said "Kesh".
And hits are still coming. In November 2017, The Washington Post busted O'Keefe's group for trying to run a con on them whereby a woman, Jaime Phillips, presented herself as a victim of sex monster and creep-ass politician Roy Moore. Their end goal was to get the Post to publish a fake story that could then be used to discredit all of the mainstream media's reporting about Roy Moore.
Unfortunately for O'Keefe, this wasn't the Post's first day and they quickly discovered several odd things about Phillips' story -- as well as a GoFundMe campaign that she set up to raise funds to go work for Project Veritas and "combat the lies and deceit of the liberal MSM." A campaign which, apparently, involves stanning alleged sexual predators. The Washington Post told Phillips to kick rocks and splashed a story about the failed sting over their frontpage. Meaning, in the end, O'Keefe technically did play a part in exposing dishonest media frauds.
https://www.cracked.com/article_27196_p … idlly.html

2020-03-21 21:20:19

I have believed a lot of ridonkulous things over the years and still often do. I believe that rock star vampires, super-intelligent snakes, animal human hybrids and Dream Masters fit into SLIDERS. I believe that Maggie Beckett is a very interesting character with a lot to offer. I believe that the sliders could somehow rotate between different outfits and that Arturo could have a tailored suit every week despite nobody ever carrying luggage. I even believe that David Peckinpah was talented.

But I do not believe that the Wave Rider only has one washroom under any circumstances. That's nonsense. It's a spaceship with multiple suites and extensive living quarters.

2020-03-21 18:11:33

Over in the political thread, I wrote:

ireactions wrote:

This might have fit in better with the Arrowverse thread, but it's political in nature. Since the Season 2 finale, SUPERGIRL has raised a question it hasn't been able to answer: where is Jeremiah Danvers? Where the hell has Dean Cain been?
His character was introduced as Kara's foster father in the pilot, thought dead in the present day, revealed to be alive in Season 2, exposed as being in league with Cadmus, an anti-alien terrorist group, for reasons unknown, aside from a hint that Lillian Luthor was building something for him in exchange for his help.
Jeremiah didn't appear in the Season 2 finale when the Cadmus arc was resolved and a defeated Lillian Luthor said that she didn't know where he was. Cain never returned to SUPERGIRL. Seasons 3 - 4 have acknowledged Jeremiah's existence without indicating his whereabouts and neither production nor Dean Cain have publically addressed his absence.
Why? I've heard that it's because during Season 2, Cain publically supported Trump in the election. And even though he was contracted as a guest star, production decided not to have him on set again after Season 2's fifteenth episode and cut all ties with him. They didn't want Cain associated with the SUPERGIRL brand, a brand that would later take a hit worse than anything Cain might have inflicted when showrunner Andrew Kreisberg was investigated for sexual harassment and fired off all his shows.

So, three years later, SUPERGIRL has apparently decided to, um, kill Jeremiah off camera. Okay then.

**

SUPERGIRL's episode about transphobia reminds me of the BATWOMAN episode. I was telling my (very gay) niece, Lauren, about BATWOMAN that week; how Gotham assumes Batwoman is straight and starts shipping her with an attractive cop; how the physicality of Kate stopping a runaway train with a grappling hook is nonsensical; how the teenaged Parker tries to flee Alice but helpfully runs towards Alice so Alice can capture her and have a hostage for the climax. Lauren, a film student, agreed that this sounded pretty amateurish.

But when I described how Kate is irked by the press straightwashing Batwoman and how Parker describes her ex-girlfriend outing her and how she doesn't see lesbians represented as people of importance and how Parker dismisses Batwoman trying to console her over her outing, saying a popular and straight lady being shipped with the hottest guy in town couldn't understand -- but then Kate unmasks before Parker to reveal a gay woman as Gotham's protector --

ME: "Lauren, are you crying?"
LAUREN: "I'm a little teary, don't make a thing of it. BATWOMAN sounds like a cheap CW show with some serious blocking problems."

BATWOMAN, despite its faults of scripting and visual storytelling, was clearly saying something that needed to be said (albeit in a crashingly unsubtle and somewhat artless manner). Temporal Flux remarked that shows like THE TWILIGHT ZONE once presented stories in a more artistic and clever fashion with allegory rather than merely transplanting the real world into a fictional context and there is something to that -- which for me, says BATWOMAN could have used some irony, some humour, some charm in its Very Serious Pronouncements.

And I feel the same way about SUPERGIRL's transphobia episode. It's saying things that need to be said. I have regretfully been transphobic in that I have never been able to wrap my head around why a man would want to be a woman and get paid 80 cents on the dollar under a glass ceiling while standing in long lineups for the washroom. That said, people need to be who they are; I myself wouldn't mind regenerating into Jodie Whittaker. I once went out on a date with a woman and I am ashamed to say that I told her, "I'm sorry; I don't think we can date. I can barely deal with having a penis myself; I don't think I can handle yours as well." The woman told me to go fuck myself and I went to see Lauren.

ME: "Was that transphobic?"
LAUREN: "YES! What the hell is wrong with you!? CHANGE your dating app settings! Holy fuck!"
ME: "Sorry. Sorry."

But, um, I've done better since then? A little while ago, I was listening to a DOCTOR WHO podcast and really enjoyed it because a prominent SLIDERS fan was speaking about it. I did get confused for a moment, however; why was Ian McDuffie suddenly using they/them pronouns and going by the name Annie Fish? But if Annie Fish were the real person before or even just now, so be it; I sent Annie a message saying I enjoyed their appearance and was happy to learn who they were now and I logged into EarthPrime.com to take out Annie's deadname and add their real name.

My point is that despite having no dislike for transgender individuals and being ridiculously attracted to androgynous looking individuals (everyone I crush on looks like a thirtysomething Lachlan Watson), I have behaved in transphobic ways and said transphobic things and so SUPERGIRL was saying something important. The transphobic assaulter is shown to be absurd, in no way a character; I believe the Angus character would lure transgender women to beat them, but he specifically seeks out the local transgender superheroine and when he gets his moment with her, he seems to think a hunting knife could defeat a metahuman who can wield psychic energy in any form. What exactly did he think was going to happen? Angus is not in any way a plausible depiction of transphobia; he's a punching bag who spouts some.

And the strong moral argument of the episode is that Dreamer would be wrong to murder Angus, which is absolutely fine, but I'm not sure Dreamer would be wrong to break his hands, break his legs, blind him in one eye and see to it that were he to attempt a future assault, he'd be hobbling towards his victims with limited depth perception and an inability to close a fist. But SUPERGIRL is not a show that seems capable of nuance. One longs for fake feminist Joss Whedon's comic touch -- such as that episode of FIREFLY where Shepherd Book concedes that as a priest, he shall not kill, but the Bible is somewhat vague on maiming and kneecaps.

Anyway. Transphobia is bad. That's something worth saying. Would that it were said... more gracefully. That said, as the SUPERGIRL subreddit is filled with straight white men labelling any story element not relevant to straight white men as "virtue signalling," perhaps TWILIGHT ZONE style allegory is simply mis-timed to the moment.

2020-03-21 15:46:57

Well, this is a nice revisitation of Annie's sterling work on Think of a Roulette Wheel. There was the longest time when I dreaded Annie's review of "The Seer" being the last item on EP.COM and the next thing I knew, I had rented a hotel room a day before March 22, 2015 to urgently complete the first script for SLIDERS REBORN.

Looking at this now, there are certain insights Annie made that I have internalized as part of my personal SLIDERS dogma.

Annie Fish wrote:

SLIDERS: it’s not really a science fiction show. Oh, sure, the premise is. It has all the trappings of a sci-fi show. But it’s heart is in a weird form of comedy. Think again of what things it focuses on: slight parodies of recognizable things: dumb jock DJs, cheap attorneys, Quinn’s weird relationship with his Mom. Understanding Sliders’ brand of comedy is not unlike trying to watch a Carrot Top bit from 1992: half the jokes just aren’t really meant for our present day.
SLIDERS, at its root, isn’t actually a science fiction show like THE X-FILES is, otherwise all of the characters would be professors or scientists. Rembrandt is a washed-up RnB singer! That doesn’t belong on a sci-fi show! SLIDERS doesn’t want to play by the ‘rules,’ SLIDERS is like if you made a show out of all the recurring characters on THE X-FILES.
SLIDERS is a show about alternate histories, right? Well, I’d actually argue “wrong.” Yes, it takes place in a flurry of parallel dimensions, and uses a fictional scope of history to frame its setting, but it’s never been about history. It’s goal to be a quirky comedy.

This is, to me, precisely the heart of SLIDERS and I would complete Annie's thought: SLIDERS has the backdrop of a science fiction show like STAR TREK, and the stories are deliberately arranged as a potentially deadly dramedy like THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE OUTER LIMITS -- but SLIDERS is really a situation comedy like THE ADDAMS FAMILY and SEINFELD which is why I wrote SLIDERS REBORN as a sci-fi sitcom.

As for feeling tired of SLIDERS -- I think there comes a point when we all have said all that we have to say with SLIDERS and settle for revising our greatest hits and there's no shame in that; we had hits and they were great!

At this point, I think I've said that the parallel universe concept allows SLIDERS to resurrect all the characters whether it's in a simple one-episode story ("Slide Effects") or in a tie-in novella; that the characters would be just as fascinating at the actors' present-day ages as they were in 1995 and that SLIDERS can continue to reflect our culture and world and that the multi-genre platform of SLIDERS welcomes not only Torme's quirky comedy-dramedy but also Peckinpah's monster movies and Zicree's sci-fi focus and Bill Dial's cop shows (REBORN). And Annie finished their blogs shortly before the 20th anniversary and I debuted my scripts in time for the 20th and there's no law that says we have to keep doing something big every five years

That said, I'm sure Transmodiar has something cool in mind.

2020-03-20 19:48:00

Finishing up the conversion of "Slide Effects," the script I wrote based on a Post-It note Tracy Torme passed onto EarthPrime.com in 2009 -- and I've made a few changes here and there -- specifically for Tom and Cory of REWATCH PODCAST. In their finale for the SLIDERS REWATCH, they reviewed "Slide Effects" last so as to end on a happy note rather than something as depressing as "The Seer." Tom and Cory were confused by the significance of the psychiatrist's office in "Slide Effects," so I've made sure to specify that it is the same office that Rembrandt went to in "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome."

Tom expressed disappointment that Ryan and Sid were not present in the story as specified in Tracy Torme's original outline, so I added them back to where I'd originally put them: they are the two previously unnamed police officers who go to Arturo's house. Constable Ryan Simms and Officer Sidney Morgan.

Never found anywhere to add Henry the Dog. Sorry about that, Tom.

Tom also expressed distaste for the Kromagg shapeshifting in "Slide Effects," saying it irked him because the Kromaggs' mental powers were established in "Invasion" and having them create physical clothing and alter their features in Season 4 is a ridiculous superpower when their telepathy should allow them to cast different appearances without their appearances changing physically. I have added a line for Quinn where he tells the Kromagg, "I've seen that shapeshifting pattern before. I can feel the telepathic distortion in my occipital lobe. You're a Kromagg."

Cory at one point said that he was confused by the location of where the sliders wake up from the dream of Seasons 3 - 5 and the Pilot, so I have specified that it is indeed The Cave of Season 3.

Looking at this script I wrote nine years ago, there were a number of sections where it felt like the characters were saying what I wanted to hear rather than what they would naturally say in those scenes and situations, so I've removed and trimmed a few things here and there to make the dialogue read more naturalistically.

And while SLIDERS REBORN is my magnum opus and allowed me to say all absolutely everything I wanted to say with SLIDERS, I feel "Slide Effects" says the most important things that matter most to the fans.

2020-03-20 18:42:21

I went eight days without internet and only dial-up speed on my phone. I may never be the same again.

2020-03-19 15:27:56

I agree that Routh redefined himself during LEGENDS. He elaborated further on his post-Superman depression during his Inside Of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum -- he said that before auditions, he resented having to audition at all and wouldn't read scripts properly and he auditioned poorly. Instead of preparing, he would sink into WORLD OF WARCRAFT at the expense of rehearsing and working out -- until his wife gave birth and he realized his video game addiction was a problem.

He wanted to be the charismatic leading man, couldn't get the work -- and on LEGENDS, he came into his own as the dysfunctional manchild who suffers from imposter syndrome who makes error upon error until his persistence leads to success. In Season 1, Reddit set up a "Fuck Up Counter" each week to count how many times Ray screwed up. It was hilarious. It made me -- and Routh, I guess -- realize that it was okay to fail, to lose, to be defeated -- so long as you kept trying to move forward even if your original goal (playing Superman again) might no longer be possible. And in the end, Routh did get to play Superman again. We saw Superman having lost his wife, his best friend, his parents, his father figure -- and he mourned, but he carried on and then at the end, they were restored. LEGENDS gave Routh clarity and closure. It wasn't the feature film release Routh had hoped for, but it was an acceptable facsimile of his hopes much in the way SLIDERS REBORN was an adequate substitute for a revival (for me, at least).

Anyway. I would like to see Routh and Ford in a reboot of REMINGTON STEELE, an 80s TV show about a talented lady private investigator named Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) whom no one takes seriously because she's a woman, so she starts telling her potential clients that she's a mere employee working for a non-existent detective named "Remington Steele" -- except a con man (PIERCE BROSNAN) sweeps into her life and assumes the name Remington Steele, forcing Laura to play along, continue her cases while trying to uncover who Steele is, why he's come into her life, and how and why he seems to have all the skills and talents that the imaginary Remington Steele would have.

I think Routh should play Loren Holt whom no one takes seriously as a private detective because he's a superstar gamer who was banned after an embarrassing event involving bungee jumping and a bar fight and a Slushie and a woman named Ambrosia. Routh's character decides to present himself as the tech support for the brilliant, deadly and glamourous lady detective named Remington Steele, a fictional creation whose identity is adopted by a con woman played by Courtney Ford, a woman whom Routh is hopelessly crushing on, except -- is this woman he's falling for in any way real? Or is she simply performing in the role of the dream woman Routh imagined for himself as the public face of his detective agency?

Brandon Routh! Courtney Ford! Together, they are REMINGTON STEELE! It could happen. I had to use dial-up speed to post this.

2020-03-19 08:50:44

The essay I wrote on Routh is here: http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7938#p7938

I'm still offline -- my home internet is down (and I have two technicians coming today and tomorrow), but that's why I haven't been that active and why I haven't been able to stream the Arrowverse shows. I have dial up speed internet through my phone.

I don't have a problem with Ray Palmer being written out. LEGENDS has always been a show where people come and go. Hawkman and Hawkgirl left; Nate came in. Jax and the Professor left; Snart left, Amaya left -- the Wave Rider was a journey for these characters, not their final stop. I don't think Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford would take issue with it -- except that, reading between Routh's extremely unspecific statements, it looks like Phil Klemmer didn't tell Routh and Ford that they were only going to be in eight episodes out of 15 until their contract options were picked up but only for half of their availability, meaning Routh and Ford had to find out from their paperwork when reviewing it with their agents. They did not receive a formal meeting with their showrunner informing them that they were being fired.

Fired is a strong word. Actors are very much freelancers with options for contractual renewal. John Rhys-Davies was fired from SLIDERS. In contrast, Meghan Markle (Amy Jessup) was not fired from FRINGE for having done something wrong; she was intended to be a regular but the season's storyline shifted away from supernatural threats to technological forces and Jessup's faith-oriented character no longer made sense without supernatural elements. Markle didn't do anything wrong and she wasn't thrown off the show, but it amounts to the same result of an actor no longer being employed on the series. Meghan Markle seems to have done okay since then, but if you don't communicate with an actor that their role is being written out and given a happy ending and a fond farewell, it feels like a firing.

And I think that was an issue for Routh and Ford because they had a home in Vancouver and their son was enrolled in school in Vancouver and they had expected to be working in Vancouver for the entire season of LEGENDS. When informed that they were only doing eight episodes, they suddenly had to plan for a move back to Los Angeles to find new work, take their son out of school, confuse their child with abruptly different surroundings, say good-bye to their friends and colleagues in British Columbia -- and the LEGENDS showrunners could have let them know much before they'd planned another year of their lives in Canada.

They may also have not been given enough notice to make sure they had projects lined up to make up for the loss of income after their LEGENDS exits.

I don't know why this happened, but we should never ascribe malevolence to what might be incompetence. Routh is worth $12 million on paper, so I assume he shall make it through the year, but he is of course upset. He says he won't be returning to LEGENDS but will guest-star on FLASH, SUPERGIRL, BLACK LIGHTNING, SUPERMAN AND LOIS and (if picked up) GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES.

2020-03-17 10:14:10

Wow. If he comes here, I'm going to have to watch what I say about him. Haha!

**

I have been hit with internet outages and other projects and have not completed adapting the final SLIDERS REBORN script to mobile format and haven't gotten anywhere with the website. I've had other websites to build professionally. However, I did (mostly) complete adapting "Slide Effects" (my script of Tracy Torme's plot to revive all the sliders after "The Seer" in 46 pages), so I'll post that for the anniversary.

2020-03-17 08:23:57

The drug fell out of use when malaria became resistant to it, so supplies may not be readily available. It’s still being tested.

2020-03-13 13:19:38

I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's bumper stickers, the Professor's bow-ties, Wade's sweaters and Rembrandt's vocal warmups that my views do not represent those of Sliders.TV.

I would identify as liberal, but I don't see most mainstream Democrats as liberal. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were quite determined to prop up the banks that crashed the global economy, Biden presents as socially liberal but is economically and legislatively conservative. Again, this is where James Carville Jr. would say that a liberal political party needs to have its ideology as wide as possible to be broadly tolerable by centrists and those on either side -- "majoritarian" -- or it will never acquire sufficient votes to gain political power.

Why have Republicans become a cult that declares their leader cannot be questioned or criticized? Because their gerrymandering and closed ranks have helped them win political power and keep it without any serious challenge to losing it. It's a position of (political) strength.

And this is why I find Carville Jr.'s mentality alarming: I wouldn't want Democrats to simply become oppressors who wear blue sweaters instead of red hats. But he points out, not unreasonably, that if Democrats don't win, then they have nothing but empty, symbolic gestures of process and rhetoric in the House and the Senate.

Slider_Quinn21 and I have a mutual friend. And while our old conservative pal would declare that I do NOT understand him, I suspect that I understand him perfectly. Our acquaintance is an ardent Trump supporter who declares his supreme leader cannot be criticized and declares that anyone who does so is off their meds and needs psychiatric help.

It might be helpful to look at his attitude on a different subject -- and observe his angry declarations that no criticism of MAN OF STEEL or BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN is acceptable, valid or reasonable even when there are at least two flaws that are objectively present. MAN OF STEEL has a climax where Zod and Clark tear up Metropolis and crash buildings into each other, the equivalent of a citywide terrorist attack -- and the ending has people cheerily traipsing through the city with no trauma, grief, loss or even visible damage to the city.

Then with BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN -- Bruce spends a portion of the film befriending Wonder Woman, but when she shows up, Bruce nonsensically says he thought Wonder Woman was Superman's friend. Our acquaintance simply ignored these two errors, declared us wrong to note them -- because he couldn't reconcile the idea that something to which he'd pledged allegiance could have genuine flaws or it would mean that reality does not always reflect his inclinations and preferences and he's spent too many years insisting that it does.

Then there's his consistently declaring that the Marvel movies are "a failure" and that they "don't work." If a 23 film series over 11 years is a failure by this gentleman's standards and measurements, then his metric is deeply flawed.

I am not immune to this myself. I was once infuriated by fellow fans who declared that Quinn in Season 4 was a valid depiction of the character. I pestered poor Slider_Quinn21 for daring to dislike Rey in STAR WARS. I was grossly inappropriate in my absurd contempt for pilight's ideas for rebooting SLIDERS. I was at the time angry that the world and others didn't reflect my inner thinking.

After some time and reflection, I came to realize that if I had nothing open-minded, kind or constructive to say, I should shut the fuck up. Also -- it is vital that we realize our likes and dislikes are not necessarily how the world around us is formed. That we may make mistakes ourselves.

We might have jumped on the wrong bandwagon, might be out of step with reality, might have backed the wrong horse or chosen someone whose conduct is ultimately not in line with the beliefs our political party of choice supposedly represents. I was certain VENOM would crash and burn at box office. I was wrong and it clearly struck a chord with a large audience.

Maybe my distaste for Biden will be proven wrong. I just know that Biden isn't the horse I would personally choose to ride. But I respect that Slider_Quinn21 is not blindly joining Biden's cult (if Biden has one) and sees Biden as (a) flawed but better than the worst and (b) a path forward. I can respect Slider_Quinn21 supporting Biden because Slider_Quinn21 remains capable of criticizing his chosen leader.

2020-03-11 15:37:35

As Democrats go, Biden is a Republican, albeit one capable of not falling in with neo-Nazis and able to do his job or delegate others. Is marginal competence the best we can hope for? Is the alternative to having a cruel man with dementia in the White House instead an at-best tolerable man with Alzheimer's there instead?

Democrat strategist James Carville Jr. points out that liking or disliking Biden is irrelevant in this situation and I don't know if I agree. I think Slider_Quinn21 would agree. So here are Carville Jr.'s thoughts: that right now, what matters is winning.

James Carville Jr. wrote:

Do we want to be an ideological cult or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party?
Sanders might get 280 electoral votes and win the presidency and maybe we keep the House. But there’s no chance in hell we’ll ever win the Senate with Sanders at the top of the party defining it for the public. So long as McConnell runs the Senate, it’s game over. There’s no chance we’ll change the courts, and nothing will happen, and he’ll just be sitting up there screaming in the microphone about the revolution.
We’ve got to be a majoritarian party. The urban core is not gonna get it done. What we need is power! Do you understand? That’s what this is about.
The fate of the world depends on the Democrats getting their shit together and winning in November. We have to beat Trump. The Republicans have destroyed their party and turned it into a personality cult, but if anyone thinks they can’t win, they’re out of their damn minds.
You’re not going to change the turnout model. It’s never been done and it’s not going to be done. Eighteen percent of the country elects more than half of our senators. That’s the deal, fair or not.
The party has to have a majoritarian instinct. We’ve got to be skilled enough to excite our most important voters, African Americans, to get our own new exciting demographic out, these college-educated women, and also to cut into the margins in the more rural and small-town parts of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, places like that.
The purpose of a political party is to acquire power. All right? Without power, nothing matters. It means building coalitions to win elections. It means sometimes having to sit back and listen to what people think and framing your message accordingly.
That’s all I care about. Right now the most important thing is getting this career criminal who’s stealing everything that isn’t nailed down out of the White House. We can’t do anything for anyone if we don’t start there and then acquire more power.
Without power, you have nothing. You just have talking points.
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/10/21172111/ … le-podcast
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics … s-carville
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/20 … ical-cult/

TF and I are on opposite ends politically, but I once asked him why Cleavant Derricks was friends with David Peckinpah. Didn't Peckinpah fire all of Cleavant's friends and run SLIDERS into the ground? Why was Cleavant taking Portia and the kids to Peckinpah's house for family dinners and whatnot? Was the Peckinpah housekeeper's meatloaf really that good? Did they have bumper cars in the backyard? Dear God, WHY?

TF said that Cleavant was a professional and a businessman and that to accomplish anything in this world, you sometimes have to work with people you don't necessarily like or who have done things you find repugnant. That may or may not be why he didn't strangle me in my sleep for working with Transmodiar on SLIDERS REBORN.

Transmodiar would add/counter that Cleavant found SOMETHING to admire in Peckinpah, presumably their mutual love for their families. And that we should all do that; we should all look at the people around us and find some point of admiration or respect. This may or may not be why he kept resigning from SLIDERS REBORN and kept helping me with it.

It's possible the endpoint of Slider_Quinn21's view is that until someone other than the extremist Republicans have power, ideology is meaningless and so is ideological distaste for Joe Biden.

2020-03-10 19:06:39

The pilot script for SUPERMAN AND LOIS has been written. Production has cast two boys to play Jonathan and Jordan Kent, the sons of Lois and Clark.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

They need to get Kate out of Gotham for season 2. There's too much history in Gotham, and the show doesn't have the ability (contract-wise) to reference almost any of that. For example, the antagonist in the most recent episode was Duela Dent - a character known as Joker's Daughter. Everything was fine except for the fact that they couldn't reference Harvey Dent. They refer to him as a beloved ADA.
So Batman was around for a while but never faced Two-Face? Or was Two-Face never confirmed to be Harvey Dent? It seemed like, based on Elseworlds, that most of Batman's villains are in Arkham, but are they all in there? Are they still there? Is that why Bruce left? Is any of that ever going to be referenced?
If the answer to any of those questions is "probably not" then Kate needs to move to a different city with less history and less baggage.

I'm curious as to why this is where you drew the line, although I admit, SUPERGIRL was not set in Metropolis. I don't question your judgement at all on this; I have regularly joked that the CW is airing low budget cable spinoffs of SUPERMAN and BATMAN shows that never made it to air. But why was Duela Dent the tipping point for you?

I guess, for me, I have a sense of humour about it. We get Luke Fox instead of Lucius Fox! Hush instead of the Riddler! Magpie instead of Catwoman! Mouse instead of Clayface! The Executioner instead of The Reaper! Nocturna instead of the vampire Monk! Parker Robbins instead of the Calculator!

It's funny and I look forward to Batwoman encountering Jason Todd instead of Dick Grayson; Marsha Queen of Diamonds instead of Mr. Freeze; Olga, Queen of the Cossacks instead of Cheshire, Egghead instead of Hugo Strange, and I do hope we'll see Aunt Harriet and Harold Allnut (Batman's mechanic).

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