| a guide to the pop culture references in “thew timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly, jiggery-pokery” |
[Dec. 6th, 2011|10:55 pm] |
- “jiggery-pokery” is my homage to the ninth doctor.
- “the big green cheese” is my homage to doctor thaddeus bodog sivana’s insultiing monicker for captain marvel: “the big red cheese”.
- the “vitrioplasmic consciousness” is my homage to both the "nestene consciousness" (seen in and both the third the ninth doctor's first appearances) and the tasha yar- murderin' "skin of evil" from “star trek: the next generation".
- the middleman series established that wendy’s aunt margarita LOVES miguel bose. i’m with her on that.
- the cinderellica is my homage to the matt smith episode “the pandorica opens”.
- kanimang kang was established in the middleman comics as the middleman’s arch-nemesis (and manservant neville as his perpetually gorilla-suit-clad sidekick), this is my attempt to fanwank both continuities. the comic book manservant neville was drawn in the likeness of actor mark sheppard, who then played the role of manservant neville's younger twin brother in the series. he also played the role of parallel universe manservant neville - who was good. technically, that still makes the younger twin "good" since manservant neville was not actually evil until the power of the polyditetrahexamonotrioctalon turned him evil. so it all makes sense. perfect sense. mark sheppard - and his father w. morgan sheppard - appeared in the eleventh doctor episodes "day of the moon" and "the impossible astronaut".
- shurons are both my (and buddy holly’s) eyewear of choice.
- “the most powerful thing in the universe” is my homage to “the most fabulous object in the world” from “time bandits”.
- roxy waserman also referred to wendy as “sidecar”.
- the bbc radiophonic workshop is best known as the birthplace of the doctor who theme music.
- “i can practically smell the history” is a callback to the middleman episode “the manicoid teleportation conundrum”.
- “the red riding trilogy” is a series of novels and movie murder mysteries set in the north of england.
- “the caves of androzani” is - of course - the serial in which peter davison handed the mantle to colin baker.
- we now know that ida’s favorite doctor is number three.
- “you remain as sweet as apple cider” is a reference to an eddie leonard/eddie munson-written song famously sung by bing crosby, frank sinatra and al jolson... the song featured in an ida the cranky android fanvid.
- i do not know if roland emmerich will, in fact, direct “time tsunami” for a 2018 release, but if he wants to, i have some ideas.
- greenland seems to be the place where everyone is sent who finds out too much about the middleman organization - at least that’s what we established in the middleman episode “the ectoplasmic panhellenic investigation”.
- guy goddard was the 1960’s middleman portrayed by kevin sorbo - his time travel to the nixon era was mentioned in the middleman episode “the obsolescent cryogenic meltdown”.
- captain jack is known to fans of the doctor as his occasional companion and star of the spinoff “torchwood”.
- the sixth doctor faced off against an army of daleks in the planet necros in the serial “revelation of the daleks”.
- the buddha fish is my homage to the babel fish from douglas adams’s “the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”.
- high aldwyn, maximum aldwyn - and now “extreme aldwyn” - (supreme commander of the clotharian rebel fleet) was a villain played by alan smyth in the episodes “the boy-band superfan interrogation” and “the clotharian contamination protocol”.
- “eroticon 6” was a planet in “the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” the place was famous for its three-breasted whores.
- the middleman’s adventures with the first doctor were alluded to in the “the doomsday armageddon apocalypse” graphic novel that completed the television series continuity.
- “samadhilon 5” is a tip of the hat to the buddhist concept of samadhi: a high level of concentrated meditation.
- the mikheyev/smirnov/wolfenstein effect has something to do with neutrinos existing simultaneously as both particles and waves - and the dearth of detectable neutrinos from the sun. the truth of the matter is that i don’t understand it fully to this day - in spite of having taken a physics course at carnegie mellon university taught by professor lincoln wolfenstein himself (a man whom i respected enormously and who treated me with the patience of a saint). that i passed this class is, in and of itself, a miracle of providence and it is my hope that in keeping the name of this process alive in the popular literature, i can encourage people smarter than myself to actually study science. the wikipedia entry for the MSW reads thusly: “The presence of electrons in matter changes the energy levels of the propagation eigenstates of neutrinos due to charged current coherent forward scattering of the electron neutrinos (i.e., weak interactions). The coherent forward scattering is analogous to the electromagnetic process leading to the refractive index of light in a medium. This means that neutrinos in matter have a different effective mass than neutrinos in vacuum, and since neutrino oscillations depend upon the squared mass difference of the neutrinos, neutrino oscillations may be different in matter than they are in vacuum. With antineutrinos, the conceptual point is the same but the effective charge that the weak interaction couples to (called weak isospin) has opposite sign. The effect is important at the very large electron densities of the Sun where electron neutrinos are produced. The high-energy neutrinos seen, for example, in SNO (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) and in Super-Kamiokande, are produced as the higher mass eigenstate in matter ν2m, and remain as such as the density of solar material changes. (When neutrinos go through the MSW resonance the neutrinos have the maximal probability to change their nature, but it happens that this probability is negligibly small—this is sometimes called propagation in the adiabatic regime). Thus, the neutrinos of high energy leaving the sun are in a vacuum propagation eigenstate, ν2, that has a reduced overlap with the electron neutrino νe = ν1 cosθ + ν2 sinθ seen by charged current reactions in the detectors”. ‘nuff said?
- “deus ex machina” is not to be mistaken for “deus ex pip,” which does NOT mean “the machines of pip”.
- the song quoted by noser is - of course - michael penn’s “seen the doctor”.
- the idea of the doctor as lacey’s imaginary friend is a tip of the hat to both “the girl in the fireplace” as well as amy pond’s arc with the eleventh doctor.
- “tell him i’m over him” is a callback to “the ectoplasmic panhellenic investigation”.
- “chesterton school of the arts” is a tip of the hat to the first doctor’s companion ian chesterton. similarly, tyler ford studied liberal arts at “mcrimmon college,” so named after another one of the second doctor’s companions.
- the doctor’s age is the subject of significant debate - this figure seems to get bandied about quite a bit.
- guy debord was the ideological mastermind behind the situationist international movement, which, in turn, inspired kalle lasn, the mastermind behind adbusters magazine, who, in turn, inspired the occupy wall street movement, in which, undoubtedly, lacey would be a major participant.
- the eye of harmony has not been seen in doctor who since the 1996 tv movie that introduced the eighth doctor - it has been described alternately as a portable black hole that powers the tardis or a lenticular gateway to the gallifreyan black hole that powers all tardii...
- the fourth doctor famously abandoned sarah jane without saying good-bye, and inexplicably left her in aberdeen, scotland instead of her home town of south croydon. kind of a dick move, that. |
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| A CHRISTMAS CARD FROM THE MIDDLEMAN |
[Nov. 28th, 2011|03:33 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  accomplished | ] |
SOMEWHERE IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC
8:00 a.m.
“Fudgety-Bow-Wow, Dubbie!”
The Big Green Cheese’s language was extra-salty today, but Wendy Watson couldn’t muster the gumption for a witty rejoinder for two distinct reasons. Reason number one? Two adamantine thoughts currently raging like an electrical storm in her brain:
Thought number one: an intense calculation of the tangled path of clues and conspiracies that had led her to this present, and precarious situation. The winding and dangerous intrigue of the past few days included but was not limited to: a. the kidnapping of a genetically-enhanced, superintelligent dolphin from a children’s waterpark in Dubuque, b. the sudden manifestation in a Bhutanese monastery of the Vitrioplasmoid Consciousness - an alien entity comprised pure hatred expressed as a small pool of malodorous brown bioluminescent ooze and c. the HEYDAR’s discovery of a not inconsiderably large rift in the fabric of space and time emanating from this location.
Thought number two: a certain yearning for her aunt Margarita’s Ropa Vieja, a thick and vinegary Caribbean stew of meat, peppers, and onions whose preparation inevitably filled the house with a. a delicious and savory aroma and b. the irresistible strains of Miguel Bosé’s signature 1980‘s hit single Amante Bandido.
Thought number two always intruded into Wendy’s mind during moments of extreme danger... and may have been the key contributing factor to her trademark serenity in the face of overwhelming odds.
Reason number two for Wendy Watson’s lack of a witty rejoinder? She was - indeed - experiencing a moment of extreme danger when she heard the voice of her employer: hanging upside-down, her legs magnetically shackled to a shining steel girder over the Coliseum-like lair of yet another egomaniacal-male-chauvinist-pig-supervillain who was probably neither breastfed as a baby nor picked for the football team as a child...
...and beneath her, an army of somewhat comical salt-and-pepper-shaker-shaped robots... all sporting plunger-shaped manipulator arms and lethal gunsticks... all crying out the same word with shrill and excruciating homogeneity:
“EX-TER-MI-NATE! EX-TER-MI-NATE! EXTERMINATE!”
The Middleman and Wendy
in
THE WIBBLY-WOBBLY, TIMEY-WIMEY, JIGGERY-POKERY
( Read more... ) |
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| welcome (again) to the middleblog! |
[Jul. 22nd, 2009|02:37 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | san diego comic con! | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | smashing pumpkins - the end is the beginning is the end | ] |
we are running some temporary repairs on o2stk.com - so until the end of the san diego comic-con, this is the place to find the middleman and wendy!
here's our comic-con schedule:
thursday -
11:15 AM - the middleman table read! room 6a
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING: Cast Autographs at the Shout! Factory booth!
friday -
9:30 - noon - javier grillo-marxuach and les mcclaine autograph signing at the viper comics booth
5:00 - javier grillo-marxuach at the dynamite entertainment panel - room 8
saturday -
9:30 - noon - javier grillo
4:00 pm - javier grillo-marxuach, writing for television panel (including the middleman's sarah watson!) - room 8
sunday -
cocktails!
wanna order the middleman dvd? click on this url -
http://www.amazon.com/Middleman-Complete-Matt-Keeslar/dp/B001XW7ICW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1248299026&sr=8-1 |
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| want new middle-info? |
[Jul. 20th, 2009|04:39 pm] |
like the complete schedule of middle activities for comic con?
like a new interview with yours truly?
like what the dvd critics are saying about our forthcoming "the complete series" set?
go to http://www.themiddleblog.com |
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| the middleblog 2.0 - fixes and tweaks |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|10:24 am] |
greetings middlefans!
thanks to your tinkering and tech support, the rss subscribe link at o2stk is fixed...
cheers lafinjack!
due to popular demand, i will continue to crosspost with the lj middleblog for the time being - thank you all for your emails tech assistance! |
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