Okay. All set and ready to fly!
Looks like it’ll be an all-travel day, so I’ve lined up a few things to keep me occupied:
On my kindle:
The Boys from Brazil, by Ira Levin
Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
Medium Raw, by Anthony Bourdain
It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, by Jeffrey Steingarten
The Men in the Jungle, by Norman Spinrad
On my laptop:
Six scripts for “the mystery project”.
One set of network notes for “the mystery project”.
One pilot script for the “untitled Carl Binder project”.
On my iTunes:
Breaking Bad, season 1
Top Chef, season 2
Mother (Dir: Bong Joon-ho)
Transporter 3
It’s a six hour flight to Toronto so, hopefully, between my stockpile and the in-flight entertainment, I won’t be bored.
This week looks to be interesting as we assemble to discuss the show’s direction and, more importantly, Paul, myself, and the production try to figure out whether we’d be a good fit. It’s kind of like a blind date. A four day long, involved, occasionally argumentative, take-out-lunch-blessed blind date. And, like any blind date, it will either culminate in a commitment and relationship, or an excuse to use the facilities followed by an attempt to sneak out the tiny window in the men’s room.
Can’t go wrong with Breaking Bad, amazing show.
Oh and mystery project guesses, or just wishful thinking
Is it the new Hulk tv show from ABC Family or maybe NBC’s Wonder Woman?
Joe good luck in Toronto and remember to have some fun. I hope you are rested for the trip. Are you going to have time for (or have planned) a Super Bowl party when you return? (i know u are not happy with one of the teams) Might be a good way to wind down or party on, depending on the results of the trip. Is this like getting the band back together?!? Enjoy!
Sounds like you have plenty to keep you busy on the flight. My boys have been learning about the provinces of Canada in our homeschool, and I thought about you today when they were labeling their maps.
Have a good flight!!
Do you say break a leg to writers? Or would that be break an arm? Regardless, hope you come home with great news.
What if the blind date ends up in frolicking roll in the hay, followed by an awkward breakfast, a week spent dodging phone calls, the appearance of a troubling rash, and a trip to the doctor’s for a hearty dose of antibiotics? What then?
das
I saw the pilot for Breaking Bad the other week, I loved it!
Good luck in Toronto 🙂
If this new show turns out to be entitled “The Mystery Project” I am going to laugh!
Good luck and have fun!
Hey, Joe – there ARE some heroes in this world:
http://www.logiccool.com/blog/591281-lone-nepali-soldier-defends-potential-rape-victim-against-40-men/
das
Have a great time, and good luck with your mystery project/blind date!
Toronto, yay! I’m very excited for this new project; did I already guess a reboot of the X-Files? I’ll just throw that in there again, sure it’s wrong tho.
Hope you won’t miss the superbowl with all this to-ing and fro-ing. Here are some cute Steeler babies to tide you over; yes, even the newborns are Stillerz fanz in Piksberg. Notice there are only a lucky 7; the 8th baby’s parents were from Cleveland.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/early-lead/2011/01/super_bowl_terrible_towels_bri.html
Hope this week gives you the info you need to make this all work for you. Looking forward to hearing about the adventure.
Sounds like a GREAT opportunity to use your twitter account, doesn’t it?
Anyway, good luck and have fun in Toronto!
Hello Joe,
Hope your flight is uneventful & you get something read. I’m always anxious before a flight, worried I’ll sleep in, worried I’ll crash etc. I find that children help. When I travelled with my sister, niece and nephew, I was so pre-occupied I didn’t notice the flight.
But do I want to have kids just so I’ve got a distraction on flights? Maybe I can just find a childish adult flying companion.
So on your mystery date what do you bring? Do you find flowers or a fruit basket too forward?
I looked up what was filming in Toronto this year…is the mystery project XIII with Stuart Townsend, a conspiracy thriller based on the miniseries with Stephen Dorff?
Say hi to Fondy, Brie and Stewie for us. Looking forward to lots of pics. Rob is in Toronto too? I thought he’d come back to Vancouver. I can’t keep up with y’all…give Rob a big hug from me too.
Me, well I was challenged to take a month off Twitter…then the guys let me off a day before starting but I’m kinda curious if I could do it…hmmmm…still thinking.
Cheers, Chev
Happy to see you’re still Super Secreting…. yay!!!
Cheers, Chev
I’m sorry that this doesn’t have anything to do with your post Joe, but I really need to know: How does the future look for the Stargate franchise? With SGU cancelled and SGA and SG-1 movies put on hold I’ve started to doubt that I’m ever going to see any new Stargate episodes or movies again. Please tell me that I’m wrong!
Responding to questions/comments from yesterday’s post, referring to the new SGA Legacy series of books – maybe this will help clear up confusion. Here’s an interview with two of the three authors collaborating on the series:
http://www.stargatenovels.com/jo-graham-and-melissa-scott-talk-about-stargate-atlantis-homecoming.shtml
This covers what they viewed as canon going in, and their recognition that if the movie does go forward, the movie is canon and their books become AU.
Wraith fans – yes, looking at you, Das! – gotta love what they’ve done with expanding on Wraith culture, etc.! The Wraith Defenders Club has recently discovered Jo Graham’s LiveJournal blog, and the conversations have really been fun to read.
A blind date? Eek! Well, at least it’s not quite as scary as that.
Paul is going, and Rob, your kemosabe* (trusty scout) and good friend, will be there. If you had to bail, the “three amigos” could come up with a plan so you wouldn’t have to shimmy through a restroom window. But then, those two-a-day work-outs gotta be worth something, right? 😉
I DVRed District 9 this weekend. Will see if that’s different from The Fifth Element, a wacky Bruce Willis sci-fi movie. The art director must have had a blast with that one.
(*Gotta love the Urban Slang dictionary.)
Absolutely loved Kitchen Confidential 😀
If you do end up sneaking out the bathroom window, we need pictures!
Joe – I presume that you are travelling with Paul, if so don’t males talk to each other? My friend and I could talk for that length of time no problem – sorting out all the problems of the world in the process. 🙂
das – that Gurkha solider was pretty brave even if he did need a little ‘prodding’ by the girl. Taking on so many people must have felt like a suicidal act.
I have a kukri in the house (no idea where I got it from) so maybe I could go and be a super hero for the day – but I think that I am too fat to fly.
😉
What am I saying? *smacking forehead* Changing your life is scary, whether there are friends along for the ride or not. Give ’em heck, Joe! 🙂
What yummies did you eat tonight?
Best of luck with your new show. I’m sure you’l be fine. You and Paul did write some of the best Stargate episodes out there, both together and solo(As in Paul only scripts and You only scripts) So. Yeah.
When will you announce what show you’l be working on? Hope it lasts longer than a season. Lot’s of shows these days seem to die before their mid season breaks ratings wise and get cancelled.
Das: sounds like you’ve been there 😀 .
Safe travel, Joe! And good luck.
My marriage to Jeff started with a blind date, so sometimes they work out to be awesome. Hope that will be the case for you. Always remember, safety first.
luck of the irish to you….
@ BMc – I haven’t been to the WDC lately. Not sure how I feel about anything Wraithy outside of the show. I might check it out…I might…not. I guess it feels too much like fan fic to me – one person’s opinion instead of the collective view of the original creative team. I’ve never read Star Trek books for the same reason. I know it’s silly, but I guess I’ve moved on to a point where I’d rather just keep my show-based understanding of Wraith and their culture instead of getting all involved with someone else’s ideas.
It’s sort of like back when all the Wraith fans wanted to have Wraith babies, and I’m thinking, ‘Why would a Wraith ever want to mate with his ‘herd’?’ (unless it was Edward Sleazyhands from The Hive, who I’ve always thought had a rather twisted bend to him 🙄 ). Then there was the debate over whether they were mammals or not – even after the nippleless Wraith showed himself in Vegas, and – of course – the whole discussion about their reproduction (some still convinced they had live births, even though the show strongly indicated that Wraith emerged from pods)…and I could go on. Discussing what the show created was fun, but when it turned too much into individual speculations – much of which was based on fan fic – I just lost interest. I’m not sure I feel like going back there now, though if the Atlantis movie ever gets made, I will gladly jump back into Wraithy discussions.
Damn…I DO miss those guys… *sniffle*
@ susan the tartan turtle – On one of the links in that article the guy says something like how it’s hard for him to believe he took on 40 thieves. Of course, not all 40 were probably present at the time, but still – he took out a quarter of them! I can imagine he wanted to be invisible – the instinct to survive – but when it became ‘personal’, when the girl pleaded with him – well…he did what he had to. Most people would have chosen to remain invisible…he didn’t. A true hero, and a truly brave man. Plus…he’s kinda cute. 😀
das
Have fun on your trip. I don’t know whats really going on with Stargate, but the only thing I wish is that SGU gets at least a 3rd season. I thought nothing could top Atlantis, but although SGU is very different, its as good on a different level. It’s one that I can keep rewatching over and over again. And that’s something thats impossible for someone like me who gets bored very quickly. So I hope I’ll be getting bigger load that I can rewatch every couple of months, because SGU is really an entertainment masterpiece that can make me forget anything at all.
@Tammy and Das: I was going to say the very same thing Tammy said – it sounds like you’ve been there, done that, Das! Oy!
Couldn’t you give us a hint about the project? Like, is it more sci-fi, more fantasy, or something else entirely?
Glad to hear things are looking up for Stargate. Hopefully this trend will continue.
@Das, I know that the Wraith males were nippleless (at least the one in Vegas was), but why do you think Wraith Queens have boobs if they aren’t at least partly mammalian?
Joseph…with you being in TO…your implanted tracking
node appears to be having a few minor “difficulties”.
Would you please wink your right eye several times really
fast while tugging down on your left earlobe a few times
to help reset the tracking node.
Thanks a bunch.
Have a safe trip.
Good luck with your meetings!
@ Deni & Tammy – Me??! Never. Woof! Woof! See? I’m all bark, no bite.
@ Bailey – Squeezy toys. Didn’t you catch Todd at the end of The Queen, flexing his fingers as he watched the departing Teyla sashay out of the hive? I’m tellin’ ya, he was just trying to figure out how the hell to get his little green digits on those queenly fun bags. As you may have noted, he later had to settle for a little grope-a-chest on Woolsey instead. Not quite the same, but – somehow – I imagine it was quite satisfying for Todd nonetheless. 😉
das
Joe,
I wish your flight was to Hawaii to take to the powers that be there about becoming writers on this show… I would love to see what you and Paul would do with Danny and Steve…. as for the mystery project, well if that works out that’ll be good too..
Opps sorry that should be “talk not take” duh!
I think the mystery project is the revival of Ufo?
Or maybe its Torchwood?
Hey Joe,
I just want to know if you enjoyed the TSA pat-down? Was it all you expected? Or maybe just boring…get this over with already?
Here is wishing you and Paul a fun filled four days. Did Paul fly out with you? Does he come prepared…or do you supply entertainment for the two of you.
Also, this appears to be a three-some blind date. You are taking Paul along aren’t you?
hmmmm
Best to you Joe AND Paul…
Always,
Cheryl 🙂
@Bailey If I remember correctly the Wraith did evolve from the Iratus Bug incorporating human/lantean DNA into it’s own. So a Wraith may feature any number of human characteristics. I imagine these feature are not entirely by choice so random features may be present such as boobs or missing such as nipples.
Since the wraith are essentialy decendants of the bug I doubt they reproduce like mammals though.
Of course we DO know that there are 2 realworld reasons why female wraith DO have boobs:
1. To make the male audience of the show happy
2. You simply can’t seperate an actress from her boobs… physically that is ^^
Is the mystery project the new charlies angels? I hope its not. I imagine that being very tacky-gimmicky. But it would be deadly if it was the hulk or wonder woman.
Have fun, and good luck!
@ Merced – Humanoid reproduction for Wraith just makes no sense. Even without the cloning there are just far too many in comparison to available queens – no way these creatures could have come about through the relatively slow human method of reproduction. The pods, however, make sense. HOW those pods are fertilized is up for debate.
We know the soldier drones are made from the queen’s genetic material first, then cloned – we saw how all of that was accomplished in Spoils of War. It can be compared to the hymenoptera order of insects (ants, bees, wasps), who reproduce some of their kind through haplodiploidy. This is when the sex of the offspring (or, perhaps in the case of the Wraith, the ‘type’) is determined through the chromosomes; a fertilized egg has more chromosomes and is therefore female, but an unfertilized egg (no male required for mating) has half the chromosomes and is therefore male.
For producing the higher, more intelligent ‘faced’ Wraith like Todd, and Steve (and queens, of course), the actual fertilization process may more closely resemble that of humans. However, it would be so much more FUN (and icky) if it was something totally different. Webbed sperm sacs like spiders? Some sort of symbiotic relationship between Wraith and technology like we saw in SoW? Something more along the lines of a praying mantis in which, during the mating process, the male is also consumed? (This happens in lab studies, no proof it happens in the wild.) Anyway, it’s too bad the writers never had time to hint at the process…it could have been quite amusing. 🙂
das
cherluvya – 😆 I think that’s what they refer to as the bad kind of ménage à trois. 😉
das
Interesting article about Nielsen Ratings:
http://splitsider.com/2011/01/why-nielsen-ratings-are-inaccurate-and-why-theyll-stay-that-way/
das
Joe:
I can’t help but wonder if you had something to do with this:
http://www.syfy.com/marcelsquantumkitchen/
If nothing else, it seems the SyFy folks have been reading your blog…
I trusted you to keep me updated on any amazing chocolate-related events in Vancouver. How can the First Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival dedicated to unusual flavours be halfway over without a word from you? Some of the offerings are mundane, but I can’t even imagine what Sweet Basil-infused Vodka hot chocolate will taste like.
And Toronto has a very special welcome for Mister Mallozzi — one foot of fresh imported American snow starting midnight. Better stay underground in the PATH maze Joe!
Hi Joe,
Hope you have a great trip to Toronto, land of the massive snow right now.
Great selection of things to read and watch, can’t see you being bored with those.
And just a question on SGU. I’m a big fan of all 3 series, but do you feel that SGU would have been more accepted if it was merged with Atlantis? Like it was done when Atlantis started up, it was merged with SG-1. I hope SGU finds a new home and we get to have more seasons.
travel save and the best of luck getting the job.
Hi Joe,
Just wondering if you could put into plain words exactly where we stand with SGU in particular and the whole fanchise in general.
What are your plans for 2011-12 regarding the fanchise?
Thanks,
Stuart.
I hope the travel day went well and the meetings this week do too! Sounds like you had plenty of good options to keep you busy and entertained.
things must be going really well. He hasnt been blogging here for the last 2 days. if things went poorly he would have time to post something.