First Think, THEN Ink.

The story is out that Disney is planning to do a live action motion picture version of their animated television series "Kim Possible" The Hollywood Reporter.

I listed "Kim Possible" as Disney's greatest episodic television series when I wrote my IMDb review of it in 2011. T suppose that was faint praise at the time, considering the alternatives they had offered, programs like "Bug Juice," "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody," or "Dave the Barbarian" really presented nothing new, innovative or even all that interesting when it came to kids' entertainment.

Since then, the reboot of "Boy meets World" - titled "Girl Meets World" offered some brilliant commentary on family, school and relationships before it got canceled a year ago, and the current series "Andi Mack" has pushed the envelope in some surprising ways and likely will go even farther (if they have the chance) in future seasons. It didn't hurt that both "Girl" and "Andi" had and have strong, intelligent women characters, both as leads and as supporting players on those shows.

Still, for an animated series, "Kim Possible" was different from most of what The Mouse offered, certainly at the turn of the millennium, when it first aired. Even though it still used a standard trope for television: the high school setting, somehow, when it was combined with this heroine, scholastic standout and cheerleader by day, superhero the rest of the time, it seemed fresh and new! And the villains she battled were reminiscent of the rogue's gallery from Adam West's "Batman" with a nice and similar dose of camp included! It was a fun show for anyone of any age to watch.

To boot, they released a companion soundtrack with some really great tracks both inspired by and used in the show. Probably the most memorable track from the disc is this one:



The timing seems perfect to revive the concept, as women are coming to the fore and as we look to have better representation in all areas, Kim Possible would be especially good because she is one of the few Disney female leads who is not a Princess from a fairy tale.

The question seems to be in the setting and in the casting. Will this Kim Possible adventure still be set in high school, a kind of throwback to Kim's circumstances when the show aired, or will they advance the time line and it all happens as they are adults?

And who would play the role? Of course the choice of casting relies on the choice of how old the character would be.

I'm guessing they retain the high school setting. It's too good not to use at least once. So that leaves the difficult choice of who to play the crucial roles of Kim, her sidekick Ron Stoppable, Wade, her point man and Rufus, that famed naked mole rat.

It could be that they would animate Rufus, as the filmmakers did with the live action version of "Scooby-Doo" when that happened. But who would would both have the star power and the ability to pull off the concept of being this dynamic character?

My suggestion is one word: Zendaya



I think this works...

But then again, Zendaya may already be too big a star to take the role... her appearance as Mary Jane in "Spiderman: Homecoming" was a box office bonanza, at nearly 900 million. And her latest movie "The Greatest Showman" is pushing 300M and is still playing in theaters.

No matter who lands the role, it should be an interesting project!

2016 is not a year we are soon to forget. The choices that were made this year will have some long ranging effects on what the next several years ahead will be. First The United Kingdom voted to remove itself from the European Union, and then there was the small matter of the United States Presidential Election, who would succeed Barack Obama as the 45th President?

And instead of Mother Nature's frightening elements, it was man-made terrorism that became more commonplace this past year. Driving heavy trucks through crowds in Nice, France and Berlin, Germany. Bombs set off in Brussels, Belgium. Gunning down a nightclub full of people in Orlando, Florida. We really need to take stock of what's going on in the world, that there are those intent on causing mayhem and death. Where is this going? Are we headed into a world of anarchy or will there be some semblance of redemption? With refugees fleeing their homelands, trying to find a safe place to be, the question we sincerely have to ask is: does such a place exist?

Along the way, we lost a lot of really famous folks to boot. In just about every discipline there was a giant or two who fell. From the poet of the Sweet Science, Muhammad Ali to the Poet of Brokenness, Leonard Cohen... From the Creator of a Space Oddity, David Bowie to the last of the Original 7 NASA Astronauts, John Glenn... From First Lady, Nancy Reagan to Identical Cousin, Patty Duke... From "Life in the Fast Lane" co-writer, Glenn Frey to "Little Red Corvette" driver, Prince... From the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro to the head of "Arnie's Army," Arnold Palmer... From Brady matriarch, Florence Henderson to Wonka patriarch, Gene Wilder... From The Beatles' George Martin to Wham!'s George Michael, from Attorney General Janet Reno to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, From Holocaust survivor and author, Elie Weisel to To Kill a Mockingbird scribe, Harper Lee, and the daughter and mother movie icons, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds... to name just a few of the people who aren't joining us in 2017.

Back around LJ, the terrific low_delta and cynnerth were visiting NYC and they were nice enough to invite me along for a little get together where they treated me to dinner at Highlands, an authentic Scottish restaurant. Extremely tasty and the Whisky only added to the greatness of it! I got to return the favor, a little, by taking them to Serendipity3 for Frrrozen Hot Chocolates during an unseasonably cool and breezy May evening.

I actually had my busiest travel year since I started this journal in 2001. I got to Dallas in June, where I braved the under construction highways, visited the Texas Book Depository (O.A.A.), Got to see a Rangers game before they move into a newer swankier ballpark and caught a glimpse of the massive UFO that is referred to as AT&T Stadium. I didn't get to live out my "Lidsville" dreams, but I did at least see Six Flags Over Texas from my rental car windshield.

Then in September-October, I got to travel to the West Coast where I met up with several LJ users, including the always wonderful serendipity when I was in the Bay area, next the joyous and patient theda when I made my first ever stop in the Pacific Northwest in Seattle, where I suggested we each write an entry on each other's journals, and a person who has since become very much in demand, marieoroumania while I attended TwitchCon in San Diego. She's one of the top people over at Snopes.com and since my visit has dealt with a lot of "fake news" and personal attacks from people that want to claim Snopes is playing partisan with facts. Wish her all the luck you can for this year!

Meanwhile, I managed to squeeze in 4 more baseball games at four different venues, AT&T Park (not to be confused with the sprawling Texas sports venue) in San Francisco, Safeco Field, where there were 10 Blue Jays fans for every Mariner fan for that game in Seattle, Dodger Stadium, where it was Vin Scully's retirement night, and then Petco Park in San Diego, where it was Dick Enberg's retirement night. I got to attend several TV show tapings including "The Late Late Show with James Corden," "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "The Price Is Right." And I took a writing seminar at UCLA that I feel is really useful to my understanding of creating better and more compelling stories.

Speaking of writing, we're finally coming back to the issue at hand, my entries here in LiveJournal during the past year.

The third most popular entry was titled Terrorism, and Why It Never Works on July 11. Admittedly, this made the list primarily because of a back and forth I had with herwonderfulday who blasted me for being nonsensical and idealistic and for offering up no solution to what clearly is something that needs a solid response. My point of bringing it up at all (this was in the wake of the Orlando shootings a month earlier and just three days before the Nice truck attack) was in suggesting that terrorism never accomplishes what it hopes to do, so why is it still happening? It's still a question worth asking, maybe now more than ever.

At number 2, it was Twitter Expansion from January 7. Another compare and contrast LiveJournal to a different (and currently more popular) social media site, in this case, twitter. My thinking was that if there was more traffic, if more people are using the service, that would safeguard all of our journals on the internet to cherish and enjoy for as long as the internet is the way to do such stuff. Just as sure as music recordings went from cylinders, to 78s, to LP records, to 8 Tracks and audio cassettes, to CDs to MP3s and to the cloud which hosts everything, it's possible that we won't be working from computer screens and keyboards someday. Will we still be able to access what we want from our past lives via our Online Journals?

And this year's Number One Entry was a special case: it was LJ Idol X - Week [0] - Meeting The New Boss on November 9. Now, normally I exempt all entries that are associated with therealljidol because I feel that is a somewhat separate entity from the norm. But I allowed this for two reasons. First, this was a "pre Idol" entry, written the week before the competition began, and second, it fit a typical thinkpost, and I probably would have written this with or without Idol.

I often say that thinkpost entries aren't "know-posts." In fact, I really changed my assessment about the key factor in the election after letting some time pass and looking carefully at both the results and the history: Hillary is a woman and she lost states where "women's roles" are not as free as they are in other locations. I welcome a debate if you don't agree, but as far as I can see, the biggest determining element in how the vote went had nothing to do with the alleged "Crooked" acts that Hillary was accused of, or the health crisis that was getting a lot of play during the summer, or even the Russian hack. No. It was the fact that a brilliant woman still isn't good enough to beat the most flawed man we may have seen in any Presidential race in states that swung the election the other way.

In politics, sexism is even stronger and more powerful than racism, or at least that's the conclusion I came to after living with the results for a while. After all, black men were granted the vote in 1870. That's a half-century before the first woman could legally cast a ballot, just as one piece of evidence to demonstrate how women are viewed in this area.

Still, we are underway with 2017! We are going to stay as focused on what we need to do. We are going to work on the elements that will help us accomplish what we want. We are going to be supportive, be kind, be responsive, because we can... and even if we might have to quickly abandon LJ for Dreamwidth, that shouldn't change anything except the URL.

Have your best 2017, ever!!

Showtime has run the first couple of episodes of a new series: “The Affair” (original airings on Sunday evenings at 10pm, 9pm Central, with rebroadcasts throughout the week) which has a lot of really great stuff for any writer to chew on when it comes to interpersonal relationships. I can see how it potentially could become a series to not just watch over and over, but to study.

( The concept of the story... )

I have to think the "Awards Show" format is simply broken and needs a complete overhaul in order to be worth viewing. I mean, I know that the Oscar is the "most important" entertainment award in the world, and people from everywhere either tune in the telecast live or at least want to know the winners of the various categories, but a show like this, with the greatest living film stars in attendance (and clips of all the rest) should not ever lag.

Jon Stewart and his WGA staff did ok with most of the jokes. There were some lowbrow bits, like the "Baby" award segment with Jessica Alba, double nominee Cate Blanchett and the obligatory still photo of Nicole Kidman, for a cheap laugh. And most of the one liners worked. The opening animation with a UPS looking delivery truck driving through the Hollywood landscape with various characters and elements from the last 79 years of film was fun, and those are the sorts of things I like seeing on a show of this sort.

LA needs to build waterproof buildings, though. No fewer than three celebrities slipped on a wet spot at a podium, Stage Left at the Kodak, which reminded me that the LA Lakers had a RAIN delay during a game a couple of weeks ago!

But still... For me, I so want to reinvent the whole concept of the Award show. They did do a little bit of that, by having some troops stationed in Iraq present the Best Documentary Short (how did they manage to do that without the typical several second delay as the signal gets beamed up to the satellite and then back down to the control booth, I wonder?) Things like that help break the format up a bit and demonstrate the global reach of Oscar. That's especially true this year, with all four acting awards going to four foreign born actors!

I guess I'm asking what is an awards show all about? To me, you want to honor the people who are nominated, give those that win a chance to say something (trying to make them look as good as possible in the process) and make sure the program itself is entertaining to watch, since it is, after all, a television show.

The problem is the format is tired and everyone knows how it works, the people who win are hustled on and off so quickly they usually don't remember what they said in their speeches, and there doesn't seem to be an overriding focus for the show itself, which I think would instantly tighten things up.

I mean, it is film, so there should be more filmed bits throughout the show... and no, I don't mean those montage things... I'm talking about actual segments filmed by some of the directors and starring some of the nominated or winning actors. I know I suggested this last year, but I still like the idea, so I'm placeholdering it.

Ultimately, there should be a sense of fun for everyone... it is a great thing to be nominated, and can be a good thing to win.

Speaking of, I think I selected maybe one or two correct as far as Oscar predictions went and I believe they were the two writing awards, so I feel pretty good about that, at least. I should have remembered that the Academy Awards no longer seems to honor someone for their "body of work" or because this will be the last likely time they'll be nominated.

Eh. Maybe I should start by directing the Independent Spirit Awards. Work my way up to the SAGs and Emmys and top it off with the Golden Globes before trying to attack this monster.

Pipe dreamer. Oscar Screener. Yeah. It'll never happen.