Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #5 – “Book I: Skywalker Strikes (Part 5)”

* Part 5 of 6 of the Book I: Skywalker Strikes storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #5 – “Book I: Skywalker Strikes (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, Jabba the Hutt and Darth Vader bond over their respective obvious hatred of one another. Luke Skywalker cries and moans about never being a real man, let alone a real Jedi, and opts to leave the Rebellion. Boba Fett has been hired to look for Obi-Wan Kenobi for reasons that aren’t clear at the moment. That guy is dead, son! Why bounty hunt a dead guy?

Will we find out why? Will anyone care?


Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #5 [July, 2015]
Written by: Jason Aaron
“Book I: Skywalker Strikes (Part 5)”

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #5

I can’t imagine how hard it is to draw all these real people. The three of them on the cover look amazingly accurate. Kudos to John Cassaday who probably prints out screenshots from the Star Wars movies and traces over Harrison Ford’s handsome, chiseled face.

Luke Skywalker is sauntering around Tatooine under the blazing hot Tatooine sun looking for a new purpose in life. Boba Fett is sauntering around Tatooine under the blazing hot Tatooine sun looking for the guy who destroyed the Death Star. Ol’ Whatshisname. Jeff Something.

Fett is in a bar trying to maintain his intimidating presence while he asks about the whereabouts of the guy who made Death Star go Boom. “Does anyone here have something they’d like to say?”

A burly manly man of a man with six arms approaches Fett to kick his tender ass, but Fett is ready for a fun challenge! He successfully tears off one arm and breaks two others, then “kindly” asks the bar patrons once more about the whereabouts of the guy who made Death Star go Blooie. He keeps breaking arms while the dudes in the bar insist they don’t know anything. “Kenobi came in here not too long ago with some kid nobody’d ever seen before. Looked like a farmer’s brat. We don’t know the boy.”

One little human kid in the bar looks terrified before trying to run off. Fett quickly shoots out his hogtyin’ ropes and subdues the kid. “AAAAHHH!” he says! Time for some interrogation techniques! Torture! Tickling!

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #4

Fett’s going to shove so many bamboo shoots up so many fingernails.

Han and Leia are discussing what it would take to fix the Millennium Falcon. Han suggests a hyperdrive regulator, two laser-powered cells, and three degaussers. Leia suggests flying the fucker right into the sun. Also, she is not the spare parts department, so stop bugging her with your whining about op-amps and defibrillators.

“All of a sudden, the deck crew tells me I can’t have the parts I need, not without proper approval,” Han whines. “Mind telling me why that is, your worshipfulness?” And then she reminds him that there’s a war going on, and all resources need to be diverted to establishing a new base. Not to Han Solo’s smelly landfill ship.

Han gets sly and says outright that the only thing actually keeping him here is that Leia doesn’t want him to leave, and if that’s not true then she should give him his parts. Post haste.

Nope! Here’s the deal, slacker: do some work around here to earn your parts. Luke went back to Tatooine to fill his underwear with sand, so Leia needs another copilot for a mission. And Han Solo is just the rugged go-getter for the job!

“I just helped you blow up the biggest weapons factory in the galaxy. I put my name on the Empire’s most wanted list for you,” Han whines.

“That was days ago,” Leia smiles WRYLY. “You need to stop living in the past, Captain Solo.”

Aw snap! Now you’ve gone and done it! Han is surly, and puts his foot down. One last time, Your Worshipful-Highniness. He’ll help one last time and then he’s going to get his fly-away-forever parts.

Meanwhile, Bobb Fett’s really beating this kid up. He’s tied to a table all hella missing teeth and surrounded by pointy knives. He fesses up, getting a stitch for being a snitch. Luke Skywalker’s the name, Mr. Boba Fett, sir. He lives with his aunt and uncle over by the ol’ moisture farms. You can find his underpants full of dirt about seven miles away.

Last thing he knows, Luke and old Ben “Kobe Beef” Kenobi were in Mos Eisley trying to get off this stupid rock.

Now please let him go and don’t kill him.

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #4

Sorry. I couldn’t hear you over all the killing.

Satisfied, Boba “Tea” Fett heads out.

Luke is hanging out in the desert with R2-D2. They intend to find Obi-Wan’s old stomping grounds and see if there’s anything in his hovel that will be of use to Luke, such as a Jedi training video. Or some hella nunchucks. “I hear him sometimes. I know that sounds crazy, but somehow it’s really Ben’s voice inside my head,” Luke muses, wondering why Kenobi doesn’t just tell him what he needs to know or what he needs to do next. Like a GameFAQs walkthrough for his life.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of those Tusken Raider Sand People that plague the Tatooine lands pops up and does a big “EEERRGGHH” at Luke. He whips out his lightsaber, and then realizes a group of them are milling around Kenobi’s house. “No!” Luke yells. “Get away from there!”

Leia is scouting the galaxy for possible new base locations. Like Hoth for instance, but she doesn’t know that yet. Han is being snarky. Leia is being grumpy. “Since you went through all this trouble just to get me alone,” Han smiles with that Harrison Ford charm, “the least you could is take me someplace with a nice beach.”

Han’s “copiloting” job is easy. Just let Leia take the controls and shut it the hell up. She’s doing a pretty good job flying this stolen Imperial starcraft on her own, so I’m beginning to think she did want Han Solo there for a little bit of possible kissy kissy.

It’s too bad a couple of TIE fighters start following closely behind. “Attention, unknown shuttle. You do not have clearance for this sector. Identifiy yourself.”

Eep! No time to panic! Tell them we’re Bert and Ernie! Gaahh, that won’t help, those guys can barely tie their shoes! Wait, hold on…

“This is the Shuttle Invictus, out of the Blackfel System, on a classified scouting mission. Transmitting clearance codes now.”

That outta hold ‘em off for a hot nanosecond! What are TIE fighters doing this far into the Outer Rim, anyway? The Empire is trying to stick their fingers in too many pies, and not in a sexy way.

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #4

These Imperial assholes interrupted the kissy kissy!

The funny thing is, the clearance codes were going to work and the TIE fighters were going to allow Han and Leia to pass, but Han decided to take the reigns and try to fly away fast! I’m a poet and I do noet! Anyway, this is suspicious! Leia is pissed! Han, you suave drink of water. You really know how to rile a woman up, and not in a sexy way.

“Okay, okay, I’ll think of something,” Han says, losing his swagger. The TIE fighters are shooting green lasers at them like it’s a Pink Floyd lightshow. Oh wait, Han knows a planet they can fly to and evade the BOWTIE fighters.

“The nav computer doesn’t even recognize this as a planet,” Leia gripes as the advance toward the ugly, red rock in space. “Scanners say there’s nothing here but an atmospheric sea of cyclones and electrical superstorms.”

Han Solo thinks this is the most perfect, jim-dandiest place to be! The electrical storms will be so electrifying that the TIE fighters will explode into 365 smithereens! That’s one smithereen for every day on Earth. Whatever the hell “Earth” is. And indeed, the TIE fighters stop giving chase once they realize that flying directly into lightning isn’t very alluring. Han Solo, on the other hand, welcomes the idea and smiles through it.

Leia thinks they’re going to get real dead.

Star Wars (Vol. 2), Issue #4

OK, kids. That’s enough kissy kissy.

While these two lovebirds are descending upon this planet, the mysterious bounty hunter is tracking them. “The Monsua Nebula. I knew it,” he says, looking at his radar and knowing it. “A dog always returns to its favorite den, doesn’t it? I’ve got you now, you sorry son of a bantha.”

While this sorry son of a — what is it now, a bantha? That’s quite hilarious! — is getting chased down, Luke Skywalker is on Tatooine also getting chased down by those Tusken Raiders that want to bite him in the neck and chew on his ankles. But the lightsaber scared them away! The big scary lightbulb that burns hands off! Nobody wants that!

“All I feel is anger and frustration. Something tells me that’s not the path to becoming a Jedi,” Luke muses quite observantly. He hopes he can ransack Kenobi’s house for clues on how to become a Jedi the easy way.

He enters Kenobi’s shitsack of a dwelling and finds garbage everywhere. “BIP BOO WHEEP,” says R2-D2. “BEEDO BEEDO WWHMPP.”

Snip snoop bippity boop. Spism spazzle frazzle frism.

“Why do you think Ben spent all those years out here in the middle of nowhere?” Luke asks. “After everything he must have seen and done, all the places he’d been… why Tatooine? Why…”

BIPPITY BOOP. BOOP-A-DOOP-A.

R2-D2 finds a weird casket with “For Luke” written in Tatooinese.

Then someone throws a smoke bomb into Kenobi’s old hut. It explodes! Luke can’t see! R2-D2 is fizzling!

It’s Boba Fett. It’s always Boba Fett

Final Thoughts

Issue #6 is going to show Han Solo’s dick entering and exiting Princess Leia’s vagina over the course of 44 panels, occasionally buffered by panels of Luke Skywalker’s frowning face.

Bucketheadland Pike #5 – Look Up There

Bucketheadland Pike #5 - Look Up There

Released: August 17, 2011
Length: 32:29


We’re double the track number since Pike #4. Now we have two whole big tracks to chew on, which means I’ll have to look within myself yet again for writing inspiration. That blows chunks, man.

Track 1 is “Golden Eyes”, just shy of 11 minutes, and the intro is that trademark soft, electronic beat-backdropped downtempo guitar melody that sounds like the Metroid Prime soundtrack. I love that game. I’m glad they remastered it for the Nintendo Switch, which I own now because my 6-year-old owns it and only plays Mario Kart and Animal Crossing. I didn’t not pay $350 for that! I’d load the thing up with my own games if they didn’t cost $59.99 apiece with no room for discounts ever. You don’t even have a monopoly on the video game market, Nintendo! 32gb SDHC card? Go eat a pile of turd sandwiches.

Merzbow

Merzbow makes a living out of being unapologetically annoying!

The 3-minute mark is still largely the same, and I expect all of Pike #5 to be a noodly chillwave trip-hop affair. Maybe a little bit of Portishead but not so much Massive Attack. I like the idea of both of these bands, but I’m never in the mood for something moody, slow, and vaguely psychedelic while there are also vocals. Not lively enough for foreground music, not ambient enough for background music. Not a very good category. It’s in the same box as drone albums with vocals or breakbeat electronic albums à la Venetian Snares. Even Merzbow seems to require some active listening, and that guy just sticks a microphone in front of an amplifier for 78 minutes.

By the 8-minute mark, the guitar has dominated. It’s quite nice, actually. Virtuosic while maintaining some mainstream appeal. Your Moody Blues-loving father might get a kick out of this. It starts getting a little weird around the 9-minute mark, but it’s nothing that’s going to make your grandmother try to exorcise the demons out of your shitty, black, goopy soul.

Next is the title track, “Look Up There”, clocking in at over 21 minutes. Even more ambient and chill than “Golden Eyes”, Buckethead strums his unplugged guitar in a call-and-response folk instrumental. It sounds sullen and atmospheric like the moodier bits of a Porcupine Tree record. The production values are certainly similar; Buckethead must pay top dollar for, I’m assuming, his own personal recording studio. Or he has a really good recorder on his iPhone! Solo electric guitar starts about 3:30 minutes in, laconically dancing around the acoustic rhythm guitar work. This continues to build and build slowly, with no noticeable changes in small chunks. If you want to hear Buckethead extendedly jam it out with fluidity and effortlessness, this is the track to do so. The emotions start pouring out with soaring guitar lines at about eight minutes in.

Guitar Playing

Pictured: me being a complete jerk to a lady.

What else can I talk about here? I’ve only picked up an electric guitar once in my life at a friend’s house and it sounded like rats running across a violin. I didn’t want to touch it after that because it was probably $2,000. I’ve barely even strummed an acoustic guitar, and every time I try it feels like I’m going to snap the strings. I think I’ve dropped the pick in the hole too many times to not die of complete embarrassment! I’m more of a piano guy, but I play that like my dad typing on a keyboard. I played trumpet for 14 years in middle school, high school, and college, and I peaked in 8th grade with that one. Fuck the trumpet.

Nothing significant has changed in the fourteen-minute mark, so I’m guessing that there’s not much to really write about anymore! Power through though, seven minutes left! I took a day off today, so I’m listening and typing on a Friday afternoon on my kitchen counter. I probably wrote all this literally months before I posted it because I tend to spend another six weeks putting off adding the pictures and another fourteen months before I bother proofreading. That’s right, friends. I proofread all my posts! Only the best for my fans, whoare used to an imaculate presnteation of corectly spelled words and a done grammer good.

Two minutes left and I’m wrapping this sucker up! Stay tuned next time, kids! Don’t do drugs.

The Great Hunt (Book 2) – Chapter 11: “Glimmers of the Pattern”

The Wheel of Time - Book 2 - The Great Hunt

Prepare yourself, ladies and gentleman, because we have more Rand freaking out ahead of us. Ingtar hands him a bundle courtesy of Moiraine. Rand is very unwilling to accept such a bundle. He knows what’s inside and it ain’t good. Before he opens it, Rand is informed by Ingtar that, if Ingtar would to die, he would have to take over as leader of the group. Rand is like “fuck no, uh uh, no way Jose, go bone an exhaust pipe, son”. Lord Agelman gave the order, though, so it shall be. Then Ingtar stabs himself in the brain! Wouldn’t that be funny? Fuck you, Rand.

Rand opens the bundle and discovers the Flag of the Dragon Reborn or Whatever. Before he has a chance to hide it, Mat and Perrin approach all livid and incredulous about how LOOOORD RAND has fancy coats and banners and blowjob servants. Of course, Rand insists that he doesn’t want any of it and he just wants to go home and play Super Mario Odyssey, that isn’t the way the world is working right now. He admits to his friends that he is able to channel the One Power and it’s automatic and uncontrollable. And that a few of the Aes Sedai know this, including the Amyrlin Seat. Mat asks why the ungodly fuck he hasn’t been gentled yet, and it’s because the Amyrlin claims that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. Rand also keeps insisting that he’s being used and abused! Both Mat and Perrin agree that Rand should run off far, far away.

Rand packs up the banner and returns to camp where Loial is reading books and examining a mysterious stone… PAY ATTENTION TO THE STONE, IT IS THE CHEKHOV’S GUN! BANG BANG!

We end with Padan Fain, surrounded by Trollocs and Fades, deliriously babbling about killing the Myrddraal and stabbing him through the eyes and onto the door, and stealing Mat’s cursed dagger. He muses about what happened to him back in Shadar Logoth. He has the Horn on his person. He doesn’t know where Rand is, but oh ho ho, he’ll make his location known soon enough. Soon enough.

He orders the Trollocs and Fades to destroy the village. And then they’ll move on.

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Rules of Engagement (Part 4)”

* Part 4 of 6 of the Rules of Engagement storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Rules of Engagement (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, Lex Luthor frames Senator Crabtree, Chairman of the Picking and Choosing Which Company Gets the Weapons Defense Contract Board, by pinning the prostitute murder from Issue #1 onto him. Batman is completely onto Luthor, so much so that he may as well have just planned and executed the framing himself. Gordon thinks Batman’s reasoning is flimsies, and since Batman himself was witnessed at the scene of the crime he’s going to do a lot more wriggling to get himself out of this than he has bargained for.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is searching for the notorious bat-like man and will succeed in his efforts by using one of his magic robotic Batman-sensing bats. It’s dumb as shit and I predict each issue left in the story will get progressively dumber.

I’m having a blast.


Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4 [May, 2007]
Written by: Andy Diggle
“Rules of Engagement (Part 4)”

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4

“Welcome to Area One, General. I trust you’ll find it fit for your purpose.” Lex shakes hands with a guy who will use Area One to rub one out to his anime porn collection.

Area One is full of robots as part of Luthor’s defense system. The General is in awe of how big the army of robots is, and how quickly Luthor was able to put it all together. Lex Luthor’s head looks like someone grafted a shoe to a neck.

The General starts talking about the robots like he’s the General of Robots while Luthor dips out to make a quick phone call. “Sir, you wanted to be informed the moment we lost contact with the infiltration unit,” says Luthor’s lackey on the other end. This sounds like bad news but it is, in fact, good news. This means that the Bat-tracking device is tracking the Bat! Luthor smiles, showing off his 400 teeth. Time to proceed with the plan! *pulls out box of anime porn*

In the Batcave, Batman is readying his Batjet. Alfred is requested to make himself useful for once and help Batman get ahead of Lex Luthor. They’ve been behind the 8-ball this whole time! Let’s get in front of the 8-ball! We’re talking 9-ball here. “Now that they’ve won the defense contract, LexCorp is supplying G.I. robots to every military base in the country.

Stupendous, sir. Maybe you should’ve been better at sucking dick than your bald counterpart. At any rate, Batman wants to try infiltrating Area One to, I don’t know, see what he’s up to or something? Meanwhile, Luthor’s robot Bat-tracking bat device, which is very conspicuous, is scurrying around the cave spying on the two. It plugs itself into a keypad and hits the “KILL” button! This is bad news!

 Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4

Damnit, I was told it would be a bad idea to install that button on the keypad, but I wouldn’t listen! I wouldn’t listen!

Alfred and Batman hear a low rumble like someone had too much spicy chili for dinner. “ALFRED! MOVE” Batman shrieks, pushing his butler out of the way and bracing for the impact of a released missile. The missile hits the floor, making the tiniest explosion I’ve ever seen, harming nobody.

Back at the military base, Lex Luthor decides he wants to own the base and all the robots with it. I suppose this wasn’t actually a military base owned by the government, unless Lex Luthor owns the government, which very well may be the case. He presses four buttons on this clunky machine and overrides their command functions. They now answer only to Luthor. “Secure the site,” he smiles. “And give General Adams thirty seconds to run screaming from the perimeter gate. If he doesn’t make it in time, vaporize him.”

General Adams has a shadow cast over his face that makes him look like he has a rather impressively bushy Hitler mustache. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he blithers.

“What you should have done a long time ago, General. Taking a stand.”

General Adams runs screaming from the perimeter gate. Look at that little nerd go!

Am I to understand the the missile that blew up covered the Batcave with bat shit? “The floor of the Batcave is submerged beneath twenty feet of guano. Writhing maggots. Flesh-eating cockroaches. Dead bats. Unpleasant, but deep… deep enough to cushion a fall.” Ah, I see now. The missile blew a giant hole in the ground and Batman never realized that his Batcave toilets never actually transported all that feces to the sewer system. An unfortunate oversight on the planning and construction of the cave. Alfred is going to hang by his shriveled little testicles about this.

Batman removes his grappling hook from his Swanky Utility Belt and intendeds to hoist his guano-saturated bulk back out of the hole. The jet is still “looking for targets”, including Alfred, who begins sprinting away from it as it shoots bullets North by Northwest-style. He doesn’t make it out of the cave, and in fact ends up holding onto a broken ladder hovering over the floor. Somehow. Batman is chasing the jet down and somehow lands right on top of it, intending to override the controls. This whole scene is immensely dumb.

 Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4

Sits. Shakes. Rolls over. Craps on the floor.

Batman eventually enters the jet and discovers that Luthor’s robot bat has plugged itself into the mainframe. He is terrified now that it’s going to do the same thing to the Batmobile, but Alfred emerges out of nowhere and steps on the fucker, crushing it beneath his shoe. “Filthy vermin,” he says, dusting off his hands like the badass that he is. Bruce Wayne’s got nothing on this pimp.

Captain Jimmy Gordon is stuck in traffic! The radio has no news of what’s going on, some announcement is taking up every channel. It’s Sex Luthor, and he rambles on and on about his plans for world domination. Here, let me cut out the important snippets of his monologue:

“Democracy isn’t working.”

“Our leaders have failed…”

“Monsters walk among us. Aliens and freaks.”

“We would never allow a rival nation to develop such catastrophic power.”

“Who are these people? Who do they answer to?”

“It is within ourselves that we will find the means of our salvation.”

“My G.I. robots have taken control of our army bases and missile silos.”

“Martial law has been declared.”

“My name is Lex Luthor.”

“My pants are filled with diarrhea.”

Here’s a shot of how worried Gordon looks:

 Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4

Nice Bono sunglasses, sir.

Final Thoughts

Whatever, man. This Lex Luthor cat ain’t gonna get away with it. For someone so goddamned smart he sure doesn’t get away with anything.

Except my heart.

The Shield, Season 1 – Corrupt Cops Be Corruptin’

Through the Idiot Glass Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you’re even remotely interested in this show and you haven’t yet seen it, or if you’ll be mad if you accidentally read any possible spoilers about it, I’m going to chalk it up to “not my fucking problem”. You have been warned.
Discussion Subject: The Shield, Season 1 (2002) (FX)

The Shield, Season 1
I’ve been wanting to watch this show ever since I started watching The Wire back in 2009. I heard that fans of one are usually the fans of the other. Once upon a time I loved The Wire like it was my own child, but I’m not expecting something nearly as dense or nuanced with The Shield. I’m also nervous that something that started over 20 years ago might not hold up, but I’ve had a good track record of finding shows from the early ’00s satisfying. The golden age of television started in the ’00s after all.

That’s enough blithering. Here’s Season 1 of The Shield.


The Premise

Another show about the LAPD. We follow Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), a dirty cop with a bad attitude! He does things his way and only his way, and no fucking white shirt in charge is going to tell him otherwise! Boy howdy! Yes sir!

The Shield, Season 1

Check this out, I’m a master of stand-up yoga.

One of the members of Vic’s little rogue troupe is Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins, the worst name I’ve ever heard). He’s one ugly motherfucker. At times he’s even worse than Vic, who at least tries to handle his work with dignity. Shane will fuck strippers and pee on people.

You’ve got rookie Julian (Michael Jace) paired up with training officer Danny (Catherine Dent). This gets complicated because Julian kind of sucks at his job, has too much integrity to work with the system, and faces a few emotional breakdowns do to his homosexuality fighting against his strong religious beliefs. She’s nice to him.

You’ve got detective partners Claudette (CCH Pounder) and Dutch (Jay Karnes), the former being a no-nonsense, seasoned vet and the latter being the whitest guy on Earth. They’re both the best at what they do, it seems, even though Dutch gets nothing but ridicule from most of the rest of the precinct. He takes it in stride though, but at one point a serial killer taunts him and he cries in his car.

The Shield, Season 1

Oh yeah? Well, I have a witness that places you in the conservatory with the revolver. Motherfucker.

Then there’s Captain David Aceveda (Benito Martinez) who barely manages the precinct. He’s gunning for a council position, which means he wants to make a positive difference in the city by removing the corruption in his precinct and there’s no way that’s going to happen. Aceveda doesn’t like Vic because Vic is a dirty cop. Vic doesn’t like Aceveda because Vic is a dirty cop and he doesn’t want Aceveda to bust him. There’s a lot of tension between these two.

There are other main-ish characters, but they don’t seem to be as important in this leg of the series. Fuck ’em.

The main plot points of Season 1 are as follows:
-Vic kills a guy named Detective Crowley, who was chosen by Aceveda to dig up dirt on Vic. Ramifications abound.
-Julian witnesses Vic and his men stealing cocaine during a drug bust. After Vic learns he’s gay, he uses that information against him to intimidate him into keeping quiet.
-Vic’s son has autism.
-Vic keeps helping a crack-addicted prostitute named Connie, a woman who is not his wife.
-Dutch chases down a serial killer who has been murdering prostitutes.
-Dutch has the hots for Danny, who is fucking Vic. This actually isn’t that important.

The Shield, Season 1

Ma’am, “My husband wanted to watch Baywatch reruns” is not considered domestic violence.


My Half-Baked Thoughts

This holds up pretty for something that is actually older than it seems. This season was over 20 years ago. Time flies when you’re jerking off.

Right at the top, I’d like to express my utter contempt and disgust with Shane. Boy, I’d to crack him in his ugly face with a baseball bat. Just swinging it as hard as I possibly can. He always carries himself as Vic’s weaselly lackey, being an over-the-top tough guy to impress the actual tough guy. There’s a part where he pisses on a guy during a minor drug infraction that made me want to make him eat his teeth.

The Shield, Season 1

I don’t want to catch you jerking off in the cemetery again, Shane. Show some respect.

Dutch is someone I can relate with since I’m also a lame white guy who is good at his job, although he does have sort of a resting smug face and he constantly gets shit from the rest of the department. The funny thing is, he brushes off all the ridicule like it’s nothing, but the one time that he gets a standing ovation he immediately cries in his car! Go figure. That might have something to do with the serial killer nailing him down to a T during an interrogation, though. Father issues and all that, you know the drill.

I found the whole Julian gay-Jesus-freak arc uncompelling and off-putting. At least for now, but maybe it’s more of a product of its time. Six Feet Under did a similar arc at around the same time where David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) was trying to come to terms with his homosexuality with respect to his devout Christian beliefs, although I’m pretty sure that David Fisher didn’t attempt any sort of conversion therapy. By the end of this season of The Shield, Julian is all sorts of talking to religious figures and getting testimonies from “converted” homosexuals and praying for a love of the vagina. I predict his character arc will involve getting into a relationship with a woman he’ll barely kiss, marry her, have a baby, and hang himself by his belt in the office bathroom. He won’t even do it at home, he’ll do it at work where everyone will point at his limp body and go “hey, look, Julian hanged himself”.

The Shield, Season 1

IF I WANT TO WATCH BAYWATCH, I GET TO WATCH BAYWATCH!

The autistic son angle is interesting. Vic seems like a guy who would want his son to grow up to be some sort of football player / domestic abuser / confirmed heterosexual, so I can imagine how awful it must be for the chip off the ol’ block to have a developmental disability. I predict that Vic will starting really taking this out on his wife, making her feel guilty for producing a defective child. The season ends with his family temporarily moving out of the house anyway, perhaps Vic will never see his family again! Just one less thing to worry about, honestly. It would do this guy some good.

Special shout-out goes to Benito Martinez who I think is a godawful actor. His character is right out of a subpar Law & Order franchise where he’s all like “I wanna get a dirty cop off the streets” my “my honor and integrity will not be compromised”. The statutory rape subplot at least gives him a sordid past and moral ambiguity. I’m looking forward to a David Aceveda “redemption” arc where he literally chokes Shane to death with a belt in front of his weeping mother. I’ll forgive all the bad acting in the world for that.

The Shield, Season 1

I strangled Shane today right in front of his mother. It felt… I felt so powerful… like a unicorn.


Worth the Watch?

This show started over 20 years ago! Not bad for an early installment in the contemporary Golden Age of TV, as it were. I think it comes off as more campy than gritty at times, but I hear the show only gets better from here.