Dopplegangland

(1) The Sarah Jane Adventures have been commissioned for a second season…of no less than 24 episodes! That’s 12 two-part stories!

What a wonderful show of confidence — on the part of the BBC — for a delightful show that has managed to be more intelligent, more adult, and more entertaining than most of the “grown-up” series currently on television.

But it’s also a genius piece of scheduling. With Doctor Who coming back in 2009 with only 3 movie-length specials, Sarah Jane is the perfect antidote for those of us who will be suffering serious withdrawal pains, until the magnificent David Tennant returns in force the following year. The expansion of the Doctor Who universe that has taken place under the aegis of Executive Producer (and demi-god) Russell T. Davies has puffed up the heart of this aging fanboy to bursting point. If I were still 11 years old, with all of this going on, I would be spontaneously combusting with happiness right about now. As I’m nearly 34 years of age, I’ll smile and do a happy dance when no one is watching…

(2) Barrack Obama wins the South Carolina primary. Whoop-dee-dooo! I still believe he is too inexperienced to run the U.S., especially with hard economic times on the horizon. Come Super Tuesday, I think the states of New York and California might express similar misgivings…

However, it does make my heart swell in old-school, poli-sci happiness when I read in today’s Globe & Mail that the delegate tallies might be SO close that little Puerto Rico’s (that’s right, you remember Puerto Rico…that colonial possession we ignore…they get a say in the candidates, but no actual vote in November) primary in June might be a key deciding factor in the run up to the Democratic Convention. There’s nothing like the possibility of a brokered convention to stoke the fires of a jaded political hack & cynic such as myself.

(3) A new Rambo film (a.k.a. WHY WHY, OH MERCIFUL GOD, WHY) opened this past weekend…the first one in 20 years. If nothing else, it exists merely as a feature-length infomercial for Sylvester Stallone’s belief that human growth hormone works, and that people who call it a steroid are misinformed. According to a side-bar in Saturday’s Globe & Mail (and confirmed by CNN), Mr. Stallone believes that, within 10 years, HGH will be an over-the-counter medication.

No offense, oh aging Rambo, but LOOK AT YOURSELF! Twenty years ago, you looked like a ferocious, massively cut, machine of death. Today, you look like a droopy, fleshy, muscled experiment dreamed up in the lab of Futurama’s Dr. Farnsworth! If that’s the pharma-future, then freeze me now…