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Category Archives: Television

The Middle Kingdom Ride

17 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Randy Johnson in Television

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Colin & Ryan Pyle

17673876THE MIDDLE KINGDOM RIDE is the story of two Canadian brothers and their journey around China via motorcycle.

Ryan Pyle had lived in China for ten years, working as a freelance photographer and journalist. Younger brother Colin had started a business in Canada, finally selling it, but staying on to run it.

The motorcycle journey came about because of both brothers finding life changing. The downturn in world economy made Ryan selling photos and stories on China realize that was going away. Ryan soon found running a company wasn’t the same as owning it. A desire to spend time together was another part of it, years having gone by between visits.

What they decided would be no easy task. 18,000 kilometers in sixty days in a wide loop around China. Boxer Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit!” The Ryan brothers had a plan and boy did they get hit: Mother Nature, the military, mechanical failure, local police, local businesses, bureaucracy, hidebound rules. road construction, and traffic jams(one thirty kilometer long one).

This book chronicles the planning. the journey, and all the problems they encountered, as well as the highs.

The ride was laid out for sixty days(money was tight as several sponsors had backed out and they were footing the bill themselves) with stops built in for Ryan to show Colin some amazing sights. The ride would eventually take them to the North Korean border, across to Pakistan, down to the Mount Everest base camp, along The Silk Road, and all manner of festivals and the people along the way. A support vehicle with spare parts and a camera man to film the expedition went along.

Mother Nature furnished torrential rains several days at a time on more than one occasion, hail storms, intense cold.

The hidebound rules involved mainly their motorcycles. They rode BMW 800 cc machines. Chinese bikes were rarely over 150 ccs, usually a 100. Therefor, motorcycles were banned from expressways, confined to B roads where they would impede motor vehicles. That the BMWs could keep up or surpass most automobiles didn’t matter. They were motorcycles. The BMWs could not be gassed up at the pump. Chinese motorcycles, small and compact, had a tiny tank directly over the engine. Pumps at Chinese stations had no shut-off valve. An overflow could spill onto the engine causing a fire. By law, all bikes had to pull to the side and the customer was given a small teapot to pump the gas. The BMWs didn’t have that problem, not to mention bigger tanks. It took four trips with the teapot for each bike to fill the big tanks. But they were motorcycles and rules were rules.

Military checkpoints were a frequent occurence with way too many teenager soldiers with inflated egos waving around AK-47s. One checkpoint might let them through, only to have the next one make them backtrack.

Many towns were forbidden to foreigners. Some allowed you to pass through, but most wouldn’t let you stay overnight.

The book was nicely written, never dragging, with each chapter broken into two parts, with Ryan talking about a particular part of the ride, then Colin giving his impressions of the same incident(culled from a video diary each made every night when they stopped).

An entertaining read. The book can be ordered HERE.

The Pyle Brothers and their ride through a developing China played out over six episodes. I liked the contrast of the big city plyed against the rural parts of the huge country. They go from North Korea to Pakistan to a base camp at Mount Everest.

A wonderful look at the mysteries of the old country with the two brothers, a clash between the old and the emerging new. The DVD can be http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Kingdom-Ride-Ryan-Pyle/dp/B00C2JD630

For All You Walking Dead Fans(And My Niece Diane)

15 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Randy Johnson in Television

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Walking Dead

The Streets of San Francisco: The Pilot

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by Randy Johnson in Television

≈ 1 Comment

StreetsOfSanFrancisco_titleThe television series THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO was based on the novel Poor, Poor Ophelia which I covered this past Friday. As I watched the pilot, I was struck by how close it stuck with the novel. Every plot point was straight out of the book in the same order, down to such things as missing keys, a girl constantly running out to replenish the parking meter, and most of the character names.

The big changes were the setting, from Santa Monica to San Francisco, and the two cops investigating. Homicide Detective Al Krug became Karl Malden’s Lt. Mike Stone and his new partner went from surfer boy, university man Casey Kellogg to Inspector Steve Keller, Michael Douglas’s character. They did51tRVt+NyOL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ switch the characters a bit though. In the book, Krug was the cynical man who believed the lawyer guilty and Kellogg the one who figured he might be innocent after a bit of investigation. Just the opposite in the pilot. I suppose Malden was the big star and must be the sympathetic one.

Kim Darby plays a girl whose body is found washed up on the beach, beaten and murdered, with a lawyer’s business card encased in plastic hanging around her neck. She appears in flashback sequences the lawyer, played by by Robert Wagner, remembers. The names were Holly Jean Berry and David J. Farr, same as in the novel. Other faces were Tom Bosley as the girl’s landlord Sarreti, Andrew Duggan as Captain Malone, Stone and Keller’s boss, Edward Andrews as Farr’s boat owning neighbor, and Lawrence Dobkin as the killer.

A Look At The Doctor Who Christmas Special

15 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Randy Johnson in Television

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Doctor Who

Looks Good-We’ll See

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by Randy Johnson in Television

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

DC, Gotham

Space: 1999 – Ennio Morricone

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by Randy Johnson in music, Television

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ennio Morricone, Space: 1999

Odd stuff written for the Italian showing of the series.

An Adventure In Space and Time(2013)

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by Randy Johnson in Television

≈ 4 Comments

2D_RGB_ADVENTURES_REVERSEThe coming Saturday brings the season premiere of Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi’s first as our favorite Time Lord. AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME was produced for the fiftieth anniversary of the show. It takes us all the way back to the beginning when the good Doctor was just a thought in the mind of Sidney Newman(Brian Cox). New to the BBC, he was looking to make his mark. He had a twenty-five minute slot that needed filling on Saturday evening. He wanted a science fiction piece and met immediate resistance.

Jessica Raine plays Verity Lambert, a novice producer put in charge of the show. As a woman, she had a lot to prove herself.

They wanted an older Doctor, but needed an actor that could play older, the54920262_700x700min_1 rigors of series television you know. Emphatically turned down by several actors, it was Lambert that convinced them they needed William Hartnell(David Bradley). They just had to convince him.

The movie covers the early years and the time after three years when Lambert wanted to kill the Doctor and a new concept was born. Patrick Troughton(Reece Shearsmith) became the second Doctor.

Below is the trailer for the film, below that the new series.

Image

Who Would Win?

03 Sunday Aug 2014

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Posted by Randy Johnson | Filed under movies, Television

≈ 6 Comments

Today’s Humor: SportsCenter Heavy Metal Variety

17 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by Randy Johnson in music, Sports, Television

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Metallica, Sportcenter

I’m Ready

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Randy Johnson in Television

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Doctor Who

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