David Avallone

I was a teenager when John Milius promised it to me.

I’m 60 now.

bookstores are getting increasingly conservative in their actual book buying numbers, so 1000% preorder that book you're excited about please. Every single copy helps.

It’s also set up in the very first shot of the very first Conan movie, over 40 years ago. That may be some kind of record.

A strong authoritarian tendency: people should share my tastes. In fact, they MUST share my tastes. In fact, failure to share my tastes is the RUIN OF CIVILIZATION.

Absolute shrieking madness.

I am looking across the room at the magazine longbox holding the first 130 or so issues of Starlog. Dare I dig in…?

The world is full of options where you won’t run into the people he’s describing.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I think he’s in the fancy coffee place because that’s where the attractive women are. And they won’t give him the time of day.

So he comes up with this.

Voice to text or autofill?

Same goes for John Lennon.

Get that mother fucker some flavor crystals and a spoonful of shut the fuck up.

My guess is he’s asked women for their phone numbers half a dozen times in fancy coffee shops and heard “ew no” every time.

He’s looking for a way to make the people who make him feel bad… feel bad.

It’s a thesis looking for a proof, and the writer desperately making one up out of whole cloth.

And as someone else pointed out… if you order a bare bones hot coffee at any fancy coffee place, the barista usually just pours it and hands it to you on the spot, while the fancy folks are standing around waiting for their name to be called.

Every part of this is a (broken) thought experiment.

Yeah, Dunkin’ and 7/11 are perfectly acceptable options and — spoiler alert — their black coffee is generally better than Starbucks.

If he actually drank black coffee, he’d know where to get it.

This is my Joker.

Mission Accomplished Part Two.

Apparently this came up in issues 1 and 2 of Starlog!

catacombs.space1999.net/press/wrefch...

I vaguely remember the writer using those in his thesis.

Maybe I’ll dig out my back issues and see if I can find it.

Tom Cruise (squirrel) bites an almond out of my hand.

My squirrel got the nickname Tom Cruise because the first time I saw him he was hanging upside down (Mission Impossible style) to get into a bird feeder.

Now he just takes almonds from my hands.

I think the 1999 of it all made it hard. The value of a franchise comes down to familiarity with the title, and making it Space 2099 (or similar) throws that away a bit.

I remember an essay (in Starlog?) at the time that speculated everything was dictated by a Mysterious Unknown Force (perhaps analogous to the Kubrick Monoliths) both testing and protecting the denizens of Alpha.

That’s the one I remember, and I also remember the guy they talk to telling them the breakaway devastated the planet.

That said… this is like a 45 year old memory. Maybe I’m remembering how I would have written it.

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What's going on with me, where my head is at, and a couple of great Kickstarters you should check out and back, from my friends Rylend Grant and Leonie O'Moore.

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I feel like at some point they get back in contact with Earth and it’s revealed the moon breakaway devastated the planet.

Doesn’t help much with the FTL problem, though…

Fair point.

I try to not speak ill of fellow creatives and their output so I’ll just say… the Family Guy aesthetic and worldview is not for me. I’m glad friends of mine can get their union days working on it…

It always struck me as “Kamandi… For Kids!” and I found that super charming.

Rick & Morty rolls past cynicism and right into nihilism, which never appeals to me.

Absolute nightmare fuel.

Watching that special was the first time in my life that I really grasped human mortality and the passage of time. Truly.

If you want to find the worst/dumbest AI boosters, there’s always LinkedIn. They have that extra layer of batshit delusion that they are writers and artists and have something cogent to say about writing and art.

It’s great. Nick Nolte plays the lead. Sheryl Lee plays the dual role of his wife and her sister, and she’s amazing in it.

There’s also a very good movie that everyone ignored at the time.