Unconscionable

What I read in the paper yesterday: two terrible disasters are looming.

Least bone-chilling first: aw, and I had a post on the CBC all ready to go, and now look what they’ve gone and done, they’ve made it yesterday’s news.

These fuckers have all got to go.

So the shit comes down, and they starting cutting the so-called “fat” — and it is more transparent than I’d ever imagined it would be. They cut radio. They cut regional news. They cut arts programs. They cut documentaries. They cut the international service.

On the TV side, they cut consumer affairs shows, they cut investigative journalism — these are award-winning flagship programs, these are what everybody acknowledges the CBC does best — they cut amateur sports in the run-up to an Olympics year (!), they cut children’s programming…they cut CBC North. Jesus, those fat cats in the North, always lighting their cigars with hundred-dollar bills, eh? Well I say they’ve had it far too easy for far too long…!

And what did they keep, with all the money they saved from all this…this…this carnage?

Their silly little short-shelf-life glossy American-style cop-dramas and their parochial feel-good wink-wink comedies…what they imagine stimulates water-cooler talk. This year.

But what happens next year?

Not that these shows escaped the axe entirely. They’re being asked to cut back on the number of episodes they produce. Hey, what a great idea! Thanks, I got it from the Bay — to save money let’s sell less shit.

See if we can’t get all the way down to zero losses, zero profits. Maybe, one day…fingers crossed!…zero employment, too.

It is too much. It’s horrifyingly shortsighted and stupid. It’s an affront. And let me tell you, I would be absolutely going to town on it…

…Were it not for the fact that there is a far bigger thunderhead of affront massing on the horizon. And this one’s as serious as a heart attack, and it’s no fucking joke.

Enhanced driver’s licences.

Now, listen carefully, provincial governments. I want you to really pay attention, here.

There is

NO!

WAY!

that this is acceptable, and that you don’t seem to know it’s unacceptable is beyond unacceptable. It actually makes a person rather curious, don’t you think? I mean…who is it, exactly, who can look at this and say “Hey, great idea, what dystopian techno-thriller did you get it from, was it one with Bruce Willis man that is awesome“, huh? I mean seriously who has a thought-process like that?

FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST WHO IS IT, WHO FUCKING THINKS THIS KIND OF THING IS REMOTELY OKAY?

Well…

Ontario was once famous for it, actually: as reported by a much-missed (whoops! cutbacks) CBC-TV current affairs show once upon a year, the Mike Harris government was at one time determined to be a world leader in Supercard “smart” IDs…digital this and digital that, RFIDs and DNA samples and fingerprints, swipable access to medical records and police reports and unpaid taxes and outstanding traffic fines and you-name-it, all on one handy dandy mandatory unfakeable piece of permanent plastic…that was, quite clearly I think, the dream.

A dream that failed…

But ha ha Ontario, now my fucking useless provincial government has decided that they want to be the exemplars of business-driven Orwellianism…in the name of better border security, natch. My, but international crises make it possible to do so much dirty work, don’t they?

Hey, the dream is alive for 2010, people!

So now you know who the “who” is, I guess. And, you know…holy fuck. If we lie down and roll over for this, it’s all over anyway, isn’t it? Might as well put a chip in everybody’s fucking head. Jesus Christ, this is unconscionable. This is fucking evil.

And that’s my government, folks! Americans, you are now free to point the fucking finger, you know what I mean? ‘Cause there sure as hell isn’t any high ground up here anymore.

Shit.

So, yeah, I won’t be getting an EDL. That’s just never going to happen. And I’ll tell you another thing too, which is that if anybody out there was wondering what I look like when I get politically active…well, I’m about to get that way. I haven’t gone door-to-door for anything since the mid-1970s, but I’m damn well getting ready to do it now. Damn well getting ready.

Because these fuckers have all got to go.

And then we’re gonna spring the CBC.

And then we’re going to get the fucking band back together.

Non-Canadians, if you feel inclined to help, there’s something you can do, and it won’t take long. Please, if you can spare the time…mock the shit out of us for this. We so very clearly deserve it. Blacken our eye. Talk us down. Kick us around. This isn’t right, and we can’t have it.

If It Was Up To Me, You’d Be Going To The Attic

…But it isn’t up to me, so you get another chance. But you better watch your step from now on, because I’m gonna have my eye on you.

Life imitates art, eh?

So here we are, the fabled sixth episode of Dollhouse has come and gone, and what have we learned? Well, for one thing we’ve learned how horrifically destructive the first five episodes were to the conceit of this show — because although plot has finally begun (holy shit, hooray!), there’s just not a lot of wiggle room left, at this point, for stuff that’s just glossy and poorly-framed and off. Much as I kind of like Patton Oswalt, when he started talking I had one eye on the second hand…much as I understand the point, that none of this show’s characters will ever get to be as real as the people in the street in the (pointless) TV report, it was still a lot to ask me to sit through, to get to that one crucial interview in which it is revealed that, yeah, the makers of the show are well aware that if this technology existed it would be PLENTY SCARY BUSINESS. I mean…

This show needed that statement. Badly.

But there was sure a lot of sitting around involved, to get it!

Also, much as I’m ordinarily fairly willing to go along, in the name of shit happening, with shocking sights like totally empty kitchens of Chinese restaurants, in this case I found myself thinking about the procedural details that would be required to properly empty it. Because for five episodes, all we’ve seen are procedural details that don’t make a lick of sense, and they’ve congealed into a small set of logically-necessary implications that just plain need plugging in, to make sense of every fuck-up that’s come before. And either they can be so plugged-in, or they can’t. Like: how does the restaurant get so empty, so quickly, so fortunately?

There are only a couple of ways to explain this, that I can think of. But, those explanations aren’t get-out-of-jail-free cards, because they themselves carry implications. See where I’m going with this?

What I’m saying is: the flower stuff was refreshingly menacing, but not unexpected.

And that’s a good sign. Because that’s one puzzle piece that finally got connected to another puzzle piece — five episodes later! — so at least it proves that somebody out there really does have some sort of good-faith intention in re: the putting-together of puzzle pieces. At this point, “unexpected” isn’t so important anymore — but “menacing” and “refreshing” are oxygen itself. The Dollhouse up to no good? The FBI agent finally following up on an actual lead? This is essential, indispensible plot-progress, the kind this show could not possibly have lasted one more episode without: dealing with what’s been introduced. Also, Patton’s admonition to accept the change that’s already happened? A vital pronouncement, if this show is ever to aspire to be anything like, anything even in the ballpark of, slightly creepy science fiction…which is the only way it can ever hold my interest, or indeed (as far as I can see) be of interest. The Sixth Episode hasn’t saved this show — hasn’t “gone into it more deeply” either, as much as that was promised — but it has successfully expanded the show’s horizon to the point where it can now include a thought, maybe even two thoughts, that I myself am capable of finding somewhat interesting. The show hasn’t been saved; but, it has been convincingly demonstrated that before this episode the show was in full-on lockdown, with no change, no growth, no unseemly interest or activation allowed. Flashback to the Seventies and Eighties, but in a bad way — pure Knight Rider. Not Star Trek, but Supertrain. Anaesthetizing junk.

It’s not that now, and that’s the good thing we can say. But the bad thing is, there’s no more wiggle room here. That was a whole lot of credit the last three episodes used up, and there’s no more left, hell I almost didn’t make it through Patton’s speech…there’s just no time anymore to wonder if the Dollhouse is really a front for something bigger, or what the hell is wrong with these people, or why anybody does what they do. It turns out that I’m a little bit sympathetic to the kind of guy who’s got such good habits that he’s only comfortable developing character through developing plot, that’s Screenwriting 101 and there’s nothing wrong with Screenwriting 101…and although I might not have done it that way if put in such a pinch, at least it now becomes apparent why the FBI-guy’s been such an incredible cipher, just so goddamn uninteresting up to this point: because it’s his story, and until it actually starts getting told there’s nothing we need to know about him. With the corollary that everything we do manage to find out about him will just seem like so much phenomenally useless, irritating crap, until his story begins. Well, okay, that actually worked out to be true: the very first thing we found out about him, after all, has just lain there like a big smelly fish for a month now.

That is, he’s a ridiculously skilled hand-to-hand combatant, and he just keeps going and going and pushing and pushing, absorbing absurd amounts of punishment along the way pretty much like it was nothing. In other words, there’s something really wrong with him. But at least I don’t think he’s Alpha anymore — though it’s still possible he might be, there are now other ways to explain his existence. And you know…

I needed that!

…But if what was hampering the show was Whedon’s adherence to the good solid principles of Screenwriting 101, any forgiveness for past anaesthetics must come coupled with the responsibility to push Screenwriting 101 very hard now, because I’ve grown to hate most of these characters, these lollygaggers, these random action-takers…and that’s a big obstacle for a show to have to overcome. To be able to say “wow, it really was all Fox’s fault” is not enough to save the show, but it’s enough to get it a second chance at grabbing me…enough to let me discount all the crap that’s gone before.

With one proviso: if I see any plodding garbage I’ve already suffered through warmed up and served to me again…well, then it’ll be over, I think. Screenwriting 101 must rule, now, and with an iron fist. Things must go somewhere, and they must get there fast. It won’t be enough to push the theme; the theme’s been pushed. I mean, God help me if I’ve somehow managed to not figure out what the fucking theme is by now, you know? So…

That’s going to be a difficult row to hoe. But at least now I know what the show itself wants to be about, and that’s something. If Whedon can produce, say, three excellent episodes in a row, well then…all will be not just forgiven, but forgotten too.

But anything short of that, and he may lose me as a regular viewer!

Sad but true.

In other news, another episode of Kings has come and gone, and I am still managing to read it as satire…Ian McShane continues to be as phenomenally watchable as he always has been, the kid continues to radiate the charisma of uncooked muffin-dough at near-Starship-Troopers levels of ironic signification…and the dialogue must have Stan Lee cackling, and my God those Royal Guards are stupid, and I love the world where credit cards are backed by big piles of gold sitting in a vault somewhere, and OH MY GOD COULD IT BE TRUE D’YOU THINK? Is it possible somebody made a satire out of the King David story, and pointed it at America? Because that’s the sort of thing that just may have been a long time coming, you know…

Or…

No, you’re probably right. It’s probably just me.

Still, Dollhouse wishes it could be this creepy!

At Long Last…Starship Troopers: The Series

Imagine that! And after all this time.

Of course, in the TV listings they call it “Kings”.

And I don’t think it’s intended to be a satire…!

Nevertheless, it’s a pretty good one. My one quibble is that the war hero’s housewarming gift was a piano instead of a TV. I actually laughed out loud, said “Oh God, please let it be a TV…!” Not because that would’ve been better — the piano was better — but because it would’ve been the most fantastically outrageous “fuck you” to the audience I think I’ve ever seen.

But the piano was better.

So here’s the way I come at TV shows and movies, myself: I’m interested in seeing the interplay of dramatic potentials, after they’ve been skilfully built-up. But a whole lot of TV shows and movies around about these days tend to do something a lot more ambitious than that: to make a good show out of establishing such potentials fait accompli, and then equalizing them as swiftly as possible back into a steady, boring state, and then keep on making show out of that. And in a certain way this is what you’re supposed to do — equalize. So a lot of people will look at something like that and conclude it’s good writing.

And every once in an extremely long while, that’s just what it is!

But it’s a hard trick to manage, and few get it right. More and more are trying for it all the time, and the number of successes is actually going down. Isn’t that amazing?

I’m damn lucky to have had this fall into my lap. I was going to do something else tonight, not watch TV at all. But then this. That fits so astonishingly well into my last several posts’ overall trend-toward-point!

Clearly, God has blessed my motion-picture entertainment watching. Two more like these and I ought to have it all wrapped up.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: don’t watch it.

[EDIT! David informs me that it sounds like I'm trying to insult this show by comparing it with Starship Troopers...actually I'm complimenting it:  I'm a very big fan of ST:  The Movie, and I just wish -- maybe hope? -- that Kings is more subversive than it looks, because reading it as a satire is possible, and it makes for a much more enjoyable viewing experience.  Having said which:  yeah, it's kind of crappy, and that satire thing could just be my misreading, so...TV watcher beware.]

Dullhouse

I watched the opening, then switched to hockey — came back for the ending.

Here’s the problem.

I don’t give a damn about the “missions”. Really, really, really. Because I know that whatever mission it happens to be, it’s going to be nothing but a mirror of Echo’s situation in the Dollhouse, and yet another opportunity for Langdon to get attached to her. And these things have already gotten as interesting, probably as they’re ever going to be. The dire warnings about how they shouldn’t be using Echo (they really shouldn’t) have been made; the extralegal nature of the Dollhouse’s activities have been, if not explained, at least covered. The FBI guy — who I don’t care about at all — is well-established by this point as being on the case like a bloodhound. The end-of-episode “remembering” has been done. There is no point here that needs to be driven home any harder than it already has been, and in fact I didn’t watch any more than I did last night for that very reason. Doesn’t matter how elegantly it’s done, I don’t need to have the theme sketched out for me anymore. “This is our theme. This is our theme. This is our theme. This is our theme.” Yes, I know. And it’s a not-too-bad one, I’ve gotta admit.

But where’s the story, that it belongs to?

Next episode:  the fabled Sixth.

So here’s hoping!  Although at this point, for me anyway, it feels a lot like hoping against hope.

Man that did not take long, eh?  What happened.

…And Then Again, Sometimes The Shark Jumps Itself

Ah, Dollhouse. You certainly need some sort of help, don’t you? This fourth episode was, in terms of comprehensible drama, certainly head-and-shoulders above the last one…but surely that only means it isn’t drowning yet?

I am running out of ways to believe there’s an end in sight. In some way I don’t fully understand, this show is slipping gradually down into Studio 60 territory. It should not be happening. It ought to be impossible.

But, here’s what we know so far:

We know that no one hires a million-dollar mind-controlled midwife and flies her to the top of a mountain to deliver a baby, without there being a damn good reason for it. Such a reason, at least a sort of Scotch-tape reason (because I have to work with what I’ve been given, and I haven’t yet been given Band-Aids), could have easily been supplied by the simple exigency of giving the father-to-be an accent…in doing this, the dialogue concerning the first kiss between Mommy and Daddy could have been made stiffer, more evocative stuff as well…

But that this wasn’t done, must surely be taken as an indication that no one thought it needed to be done, and so…

I doubt.

Another thing we know is that this Dollhouse operation is both very very big, and very very secure. Because to be this big and also secure, it must be extremely secure to be secure at all. Lots of staff, in lots of different countries. Lots of clients who are all in on what the process is…even, God help us, managers of pop songstress divas. Moles in major law-enforcement agencies. The ability to make people disappear, and also to make legal records of them disappear, while still leaving craploads of evidence of their previous existence lying around. With every indication that the security must be full of holes, there’s a new necessity for some kind of extreme security cordon we can’t see, that is keeping the operation safe from prying eyes even so. And this implies a yet-greater size and scope and scale of resources and influence, that the Dollhouse has available to it. If we know nothing else yet, we know that the damn thing is HUGE, and that it is POWERFUL. It sends helicopter gunships into national parks. It finds recruits and co-opts them effortlessly, both mindwiped and regular versions. It creates templates of personalities from at least hundreds, and probably thousands, of mind-donors before it even has a use for them, and even from ones with enormous tactical competencies. It has backup satellites. And yet it is constrained…but we have no idea by what. Therefore what its purpose is, is utterly obscure…

And therefore I doubt again. What could constrain such an organization? The bigger and more secure it gets, the more the number of candidates for this constraint drops closer to zero.

Another thing we know is that there is an operation out there at least as powerful as the Dollhouse, that wants something from Echo. I presume what they want from her is for her to regain her memory, because I can think of no other reason for the homicidal bowhunting billionaire — whose false identity fooled the Dollhouse’s security apparatus totally — this is a supposed billionaire we’re talking about here, it would be hard to fool me about his bona fides — to drug Echo with what I can only think is a psychoactive chemical designed to undermine her programmability, and chase her through the woods under high stress…

But why her?

And, why doesn’t the Dollhouse know about it?

They aren’t even doing anything about it.

And maybe they will, maybe they’re even about to, but there’s more. We know that not only Echo’s programmability, but also Sierra’s, is breaking down. Of course the fourth episode conveniently forgot this…but then it also (UNFORGIVABLY!) forgot that there was a plot-hole-sized exit to its locked room problem standing right behind it for a good half an hour…

And, is there any way that can be explained away?

So let’s just say it’s kind of stupid, this fourth episode. Though better, it’s even stupider than Episode Three. And, what a world we’ve been invited into, where it can be both at once, eh?

We also know that, in addition to being special to the unnamed rival of the Dollhouse, Echo is also special to its super-scary nemesis. Why? There can only be a few reasons, and I’m sure we’re going to find them out…but more important than that is the question of how the managers of the Dollhouse can be so sure that the one “special interest” isn’t the same as the other…while clearly not knowing why either of them are doing the things they’re doing anyway.

What else do we know?

We know the Dollhouse flat-out lies to at least some of its clientele about not knowing what their requested “scenarios” are. But, why would they do this? Would you do it? It doesn’t really make sense.

Nothing in this show makes sense.

We know that while the Dollhouse occasionally does jobs only it can do, it frequently does jobs that don’t need doing at all…at some very large sum of money a pop. And, say…where does the money come from? How is it accounted for? How much of it is there? Helicopter gunships. Spare satellites. The crispest available lettuce. Multinational operations. Hit squads. Mind-control technology. Like the invisible security cordon, its necessary justifications get bigger and bigger the more the possible candidates for this justification approach zero. In Episode One, all we needed was shady government connections. By the end of Episode Four, we are pretty close to needing the Matrix…or at least Roswell aliens. Or the bruised ego of Aaron Sorkin. I don’t know which of these is worse, honestly. What’s going on, here?

How good is that sixth episode going to have to be, for God’s sake? Is Joss Whedon dead, and the Fox executives writing scripts from the plot summaries he left behind? That’s too harsh of me: Episode Four managed a few very nice moments. But it’s getting so it’s like extraordinarily crafty executions of Time Tunnel scripts, that we’re seeing.

And it’s a mess.

Unless there’s a sufficiently large hidden justification for it all, that is.

I can now think of three, that don’t involve Roswell aliens, the Matrix, or Aaron Sorkin’s therapy sessions. Any of them would be enough, to make me clap my hands and say “my God, what a brilliant trick you’ve pulled off Joss! You had us all fooled!”

And maybe he has a couple more in mind, that I haven’t even thought of suspecting yet. It’s possible.

But here’s the problem: at the end of Episode One, I could think of two dozen possible justifications for the Dollhouse’s existence. Oh, those halcyon days of yesterweek! Such good times we had, then.

Now it’s three.

One episode to go before the fabled Sixth.

I worry that this show is not going to last.

More than that, I worry that I’m not going to want it to.

I don’t mean to get overly cute, here, but seriously…it’s shoulder-to-the-wheel time, for this show.  Joss, buddy, you know I love your stuff…

But you’re going to fool me too much, if you let this keep going the way it is.

Okay, I’m all set for that Dark Knight post.  Figure there just might be time enough to get it in, before seeing Watchmen.

Wish me luck!

“Ride, Captain, Ride…”

Hey, attention, all you people who saw Watchmen and liked it! Can I please have your attention for a minute? Thanks.

I haven’t seen it yet. But you are already ruining it for me. And you know why?

Because you are lowering my expectations of it.

“Eh, I enjoyed it, it was fun as a movie and that’s all I care about…what they changed didn’t really make a difference, some of the stuff they kept ended up being just so-so, but overall it’s hard to complain…”

Jesus Christ, are you KIDDING me? So, if I’m reading you correctly, this movie was a lot better than expected because it made the source material seem like, eh, not such a big deal after all, in fact now that I think about it it’s nothing to get that excited about, IS THAT THE MESSAGE I’M RECEIVING FROM YOU?!?

Holy shit…but I mean that’s awful, isn’t it? I mean, I read this comic pretty much when it came out, and it is still doing my head in, you know? I am still freaking out over reading “Watchmaker”, I feel like I’ve been gobbling mushrooms for twenty-three years, as far as I know I’m still reading it…

So are you really telling me that when I go see this thing, it’s just going to be like getting into a tepid bubble bath where the bubbles have mostly melted down into rings of foam on the surface of the water? Is that what you call a favourable review?

Or even, an unfavourable one?

Truly, the mind reels.

Somewhere around here recently, somebody posted a list of some magazine-or-other’s list of comics to make into movies post-Watchmen…I think it was the AV Club actually…and imagine my shock (especially considering it’s the AV Club) when I saw “Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron” on it, eh?

(Warning: if you can’t imagine my shock, you will not understand why I am wasting my time writing this…)

So I don’t know, is there any point to seeing this Watchmen movie? A couple of days ago I was all het up for it, sort of. But as of this writing the best review of it I’ve seen is one that reads like a Grade Five book report, and says it was okay although the slo-mo was kind of annoying. But for Christ’s sake you could say that about any movie these days…!

And so it is almost like taking a bubble bath in ennui. I feel like I’m watching these reviews on a late night movie show, on a crap TV, in a cheap motel room, at 4 a.m. ’cause I’m too bored to go to sleep. “Ride, Captain, Ride…!” I mean really. Could someone at least reassure me that it’s better — or that it’s worse — than your average episode of Magnum, P.I.? Earth: Final Conflict? Holmes And Yo-Yo? Law & Order: Criminal Intent? Just throw me a bone here, people. Will I like it more than Scrubs?

Is it good-or-bad? Seriously, I can’t tell. Does it — I don’t know — taste like chicken? Was it all worth it, in the end?

If somebody would explain that to me, I’d appreciate it. ‘Cause I’ll tell you, I am not feeling you guys. I thought we were all supposed to go right to town on this. That was the impression that I got. I thought this shit was going to be fucking fascinating.

So what am I missing?

Are you just all burned-out from Final Crisis? Or was it really entirely unexceptional, inspiring no particular strong feelings of any kind.

Because I’ll tellya: I’ve got Dr. Ho commercials right here at home, for that.

Just my initial reaction, off the cuff.

Cover Madness

Wow, you should see this.

Not just because it’s cool, either. I mean, obviously it is cool, because it’s as instructive to look at where the earlier covers beat hell out of the newer ones, as it is to — with a shock! — observe covers that very well might have been the originals, but for the artist’s individual quirk. And this is the whole thing, really, isn’t it? Choosing the moment. There are lots of possible moments to choose…it’s like drawing a punch: you can choose to show the instant before it connects, or the instant after. But oh, how awesome to see that in a really good story, the instant after can be just as good as the instant before! I don’t think a modern cover can ever quite show the weird, thing-of-the-moment magic of place that an older one does…some things can’t, and probably shouldn’t, be recaptured with 100% fidelity. Mind you no one will ever be able to recapture these later images with 100% fidelity either, will they? There will always be a subtle time-stamp on ‘em, whether it’s the colouring or what I like to call “the inking accent”…

…Because the thing is, you know, there are time-based accents as well as space-based ones…and they’re just as unmistakable…

…And it isn’t just accents, although that is a thing I found distressing about the movie “Backbeat”. More to the point, however…and it’s kind of like the accent thing…I mean it isn’t even like no one can reproduce an old space-based accent, many actors of recent memory have managed a very creditable “old” accent…

But it’s the musical background. You see, no one would dream of attempting to replicate Beatle voices (or instrumentations, or onstage performances) by using performers who had no musical training…and yet that selfsame training could never occur in a vacuum, it would itself be a product of the welter of untracked influence…and here’s the thing, that the Beatles were influential enough that they didn’t just produce easily-trackable influences on modern-day musical training, but they also fell into the “no one knows where the hell this came from but it’s good so we’re gonna use it” category! You can hear it in the voices, and in the guitars — I don’t want to be a bastard, so let me make it clear that I don’t expect the actor playing Lennon to have Lennon’s voice, but the fact remains…

…That the Beatles’ musical training (though it was on the job — well, I don’t expect performing talents of the Beatles’ caliber to be available for this film either — those people are off making records somewhere, if they’ve got any brains!) had a cultural context too, and it’s a real specific one. Anyway: “accent”. There are musical accents too, and they’re not all space-dependent too…

Anyway I thought it was a very time-of-production-specific movie! Ten years from now, if you’ve got a good ear and a good education, you’ll be able to watch it and nail down the era of its creation…!

But anyway…!

We were talking “One Minute Later”, and I have to tell you…

There’s an “inking accent”. It’s the same as a musical accent, kind of. Which is the same as a time-space accent, sort of. I guess not really. But I think so…

However I often think things that are utterly beside the point, so that shouldn’t be too surprising. Therefore, let’s leave all that to one side, and return to the main point…

Which is: it isn’t only cool…although it is very cool!

But it’s a bunch of hockey cards, too.

What I love about it: you want to know the name of that artist? You want a quick-and-dirty snapshot of what he looks like, how he makes decisions? Having the hockey card isn’t like seeing the games, but it’s a good front-pocket reference, and I think that’s pretty neat.

I think the whole thing is pretty damn neat.

Go and take a look, won’t you?