My Word! Oh - And Yours, Too

For Lo!  We Are Back To Charles Dickens Again
You know, that edifice of the Victoria era, who turns up on in-numerable media as an author of the day, or week, or decade.
     If your native language is not English, then you may struggle a little with what follows.  Given the way that Conrad's mind and fingers work, you may find what follows a little difficult even if you are the most English of English-est speakers ever assembled.*

A Bicycling Big-hat badger - as British as can be!

     To dart wildly aside in a blatant click-bait strategy, do you imagine that "Game of Thrones" would be remotely successful if it came in a single, solid, indigestible lump of television 106 hours long?  Art?

The Big Woman!

     No!  No, it would not.
     In the same way, Ol' Chas was so successful because of the way his work was published: by instalments in periodicals of the time, instead of the 2-inch thick doorstop that I am currently wading through.
     This, though, brought it's own problems with it.  As ever, there were sundry sad acts around looking to cash in on the success of Chas, because money calls to scoundrels.  Ser Bronn of the Blackwater, we're looking at you.  Oh, and Victorian vaudeville villains, too.  They would dramatise Chas's novels and, since they were anxious to make coin, would dramatise them even when unfinished.

The dirty curs!

     These rascals would simply make up their own ending.  This appears to have quietly infuriated Chas, since there is a peculiarly transparent rant in "Nicholas Nickleby" on the subject by none other than NN himself.
     The dragons are all killed!  The Night King was actually an alien!  Cersei is decapitated by the Hound, who marries Jon Snow and elopes, allowing Poderick to mount the Iron Throne!!
     There, that puts it in a more modern context.  Do you see how it might annoy an author?  Actually, I haven't been over to Fanfiction in an age, but I bet GoT is a big thing over there and that paragraph above is probably quite mild compared to what various fans have concocted.

Salmonella.  Because - we can.

     Okay, motley, this is a knife, this is a fork, and this is a plate of coal.  You have thirty minutes!**
Did Somebody Say Stranger Wings?
Ha!  Do you see what - O you do.  We have mentioned a couple of odd aircraft of late, and I thought I'd continue the theme with a development possibly inspired by the Nemeth Parasol.
     Vought V-173, take a bow.  Art?

Half-man, half-machine, all cop - hang on, is that right?

     This bizarre-looking beast was designed with making very short take off and landings in mind, and turned out to be quite accomplished at them over a test run that lasted for a couple of years.  The long-term plan was to have them as carrier-based aircraft, which never came to fruition.      What did occur, however, was an abrupt spike in the number of UFO reports called in by residents living close to the test airfield.

You can see why

     Methink it looks like something Dick Dastardly and the Vulture Squadron would use.
BOOJUM! Reviews Films
Look, it's either film reviews OR we start on my 5,000 word "Forbidden Planet" monograph, and if you object to that, then I'll begin on The North African Theatre In The Second Unpleasantness, and in fact I may do that anyway, just to be perverse and contrary.***
"Avengers: Endgame": Conrad was never very sure about The Avengers, because, given that title, they're bound to be reactive and not proactive.  They only show up after ten city blocks have been reduced to rubble, with hundreds dead and injured, and billions needed to salvage and rebuild.  Whereas, if they'd taken the time and effort to show up a mere thirty minutes earlier, there would have been a single burst tyre, a burnt newspaper, and a baby's lollipop fallen down a grating.

"We will avenge the dead!"

"Long Shot": Hmmm.  Conrad once again a tad sceptical, as snipers are never the most cuddly and warm-hearted of folks.  Given their trade, they can't be.  Anyway, I've seen "American Sniper" and the film of "Shooter" so I don't think this one can show me anything new.

They were brave, casting Seth against type as the ruthless assassin, weren't they?

"Wild Rose":  Sorry, but you're not going to make a film about gardening more 'edgy' and 'dark' and 'street' by sticking some stupid appellation about danger or insanity in front of it.  Besides, wasn't there something about "Tulips" a while back?  You're saturating the market, mate.  Time to go very far away very quickly.

The Andromeda Galaxy?  Yeah, I suppose that'll do.

Should They?  Shouldn't They?
Your Humble Scribe was rather torn by the suggestion that a remake of "Buckaroo Banzai" is about due, because the original film is practically perfect, and is one of those media ventures where the script appears to have been written by someone who ticked all Conrad's boxes.  You know that feeling when Philip K. Dick saw the rushes of "Blade Runner" and wondered how they'd lifted stuff out of his head? Like that.

"Laugh-a while you can, monkey boy!"

    Would a remake lift it out of the hallowed halls of cultdom and into more commercially successful territory?  Quite possibly, which would be a bad thing, as then it would no longer be Our Thing - "Our" here being all of us original fans.  Then again, given the depth of Buckaroo's world, there might be a spin-off television series or perhaps the teased-about yet never arriving sequel - which I'm not going to describe, so you'll just have to either Google it or remain forever denied.

"There!  Evil from the Eighth Dimension!"

 
     And at that point the formatting is beginning to go a little wonky, so, since we have hit the ton, it is time to shamble off into the nuclear-tinted sunset of Apocalypseland.

*  Conrad admits that, on occasion, even he is sometimes baffled by himself.
**  Art eats it, so it must be edible at some level.
***  My two best qualities.