Ten Best Tech Heroes

Last time we discussed people with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. So what are mortal men supposed to do? They adapt as these ten characters have done. This time I am calling out the heroes rather than the specific skills.

 

Batman

Yeah who else would be first? No matter how many different variations of the character we get, there is always one thing in common. Batman has some really cool toys! Going over them all would require another list but from his utility belt to his batmobile, Batman uses every tool he can think up to continue his war against crime. 

Ten Best Super Powers

Of course one of the reasons to love superheroes is because of all the super awesome stuff they can do. Today, let’s go over the ten best super powers that our favorite heroes have. And since so many heroes share powers, let’s focus on the powers and less on the actual hero. You may be wondering, what about the heroes who are more tech based? We’ll get to them my friends.

 

Shape Shifting

There’s no power quite like being to shift into someone’s else’s shape. Martian Manhunter has used this technique to great effect as a detective. As had Beast Boy from the Teen Titans, who can turn into any animal. Metamorpho can also shape shift to anything he wants. Probably the most famous is Mystique, who is awesome but also a villain.

 

Five Painful Game Show Revivals

One common trend in game shows is the revival. Taking a game show that was popular and bringing it back for another run, years or even decades later. It’s usually the same game just things are tweaked or updated to reflect the times. This has happened a lot, including Classic Concentration (a revival of “Concentration”), Hollywood Squares and Super Password (just to name a few). It makes sense, if the show worked before why wouldn’t it again? And it usually does. Take Family Fud for instance, which is the Energizer bunny of game shows with all its revivals. Some revivals work so well you forget there was an original version. Jeopardy first appeared in 1964. The syndicated revival with Alex Trebek we all know and love came around twenty years later, in 1984.

Alas however, some game shows just aren’t as lucky. And not only are the revivals not popular, but they are just plain bad. Usually missing some element that made the original so beloved. Here are five examples of what I mean. And I should point out this is opinion, if you loved these revivals more power to you.

Whammy!

So here’s an idea, let’s take the old game Press Your Luck and rather than just return it, we’ll give it a spin and make it seem like a different show with a different board. This would be the equivalent of putting a fresh coat of paint on your car and pretending it’s something totally different. Why not just revive Press Your Luck? Well they would eventually but for a little while we had this which came off as a poor man’s copy more than a “revival”. I especially loved the CGI Whammy which went from being kind of funny to very creepy.

Top 10 Game Shows to Play Along With

I used to love game shows as a kid! Of course there are different types of TV game shows. You have the one’s that are almost stunt shows with all kinds of silly things contestants are forced to do to win prizes. “Double Dare” comes to mind, and you can go all the way to “Beat the Clock” for examples of that. Of course we have Reality Shows which function as game shows, where if you do something realistic you get a prize (singing contract on American Idol, a date on The Love Connection, or getting cash for having America’s funniest home video). Quiz shows which sound exactly like it sounds, questions and answered or puzzles are solved. There are a wide range of these from “Name That Tune” to “Sale of the Century”. And of course there were Panel Shows which involved celebrities trying to participate to win money (either for a contestant or a charity). Think “To Tell the Truth”, “Win Lose or Draw” or “The Gong Show”. These are fun thanks to the celebrities who are in the show. Sometimes the contestants are an after thought.

 

 

The best part of all these types of shows is being able to play along with the contestants. Some game shows, you can’t really. I mean we can laugh at the stunts on “Ellen’s Game of Games” but we can’t play along so much. Pyramid was like this, the audience is given the word so there is no fun in it to play at home. This doesn’t mean these shows aren’t fun to watch, but I like the one’s where you can actually play along and try to see if you can answer the questions or solve the puzzles.

 

 

 

 

 

And so after that long intro, here are the ten best game shows to play along with. Of course, this is all opinion and just for fun.

#10.The Match Game

I’ve said before that I was never a big fan of this show. But it still belongs on the list. There is a panel of celebrities, who kind of dominate the show, and the goal is for the contestants to match the answers that the celebrites had given. While not one of my favotites Richard Dawson, Charles Nelson Riley and Betty White were among the famous panelists.

 

Reviewing Even More Cartoon Openings

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I was going to run down some children’s TV openings, but after two or three I really couldn’t come up with any good examples to discuss. Children’s live action shows take a very different approach than cartoons. So instead, let’s go over cartoons. And maybe I will work in a live action show or two. Since I kind of covered syndicated stuff last time, let’s have some fun by going over some classic Saturday Morning fare.

 

 

Let’s start with one of the more quintisential Saturday Morning cartoons:

Smurfs

It’s amazing how just the first two seconds of this opening makes you realize how awful those live action movies were. Why in the world were The Smurfs in New York?? Anyway, we get this great shot of the world they live in before meeting our characters. The song is awesone, the characters are doing wat they do, and we even get a great intro for our main villain. And wat a dufus he is. This is a nice, quick opening that tells us all we need to know.

 

Top 10 Star Trek TV/Movie Scores

Five years ago I went over the Star Trek movie theme’s. And more recently, I went through all the main theme’s to the various TV series. But there is one other music area I need to discuss. That is the amazing music within the episodes and movies themselves. We all know movies have soundtracks, but did you know some of the episodes had such great music that they have soundtracks from them too? I owned a couple on audio tape. Star Trek always went above and beyond with thier music, with live orchestral melodies in every episode. Usually these were nice, but sometimes they would crank it up to something almost feature film worthy.

 

 

 

Here are my top 10 scores from Trek movies and/or episodes. I had to keep it 10 or we’d be here all day there is so much wonderful music out there.Two big rules here. One, obviously no main titles. It has to be music that takes place in the episode or film. Second, only one score per episode or film. As we’ll discuss there are episodes and movies with so much great music just one could take up the whole list!

 

 

#10.Star Trek-The Motion Picture

This is so high becayse it’s almost a cheat. This music is from the fampous beauty pass of the Enterprise. You know, that scene were Kirk stares at the ship for like six minutes? Jerry Goldsmith set a standard with this amazing music, as I said before one of the positives from that movie, and here we get a beautiful rendition on beautifuly display.