It’s been confirmed that Joss Whedon’s latest show Dollhouse won’t be getting a third season. This comes as a surprise to exactly no one, after the show struggled to find an audience within the first few episodes of the first season, and didn’t improve its numbers this season. FOX even went so far as to pull it from its November sweeps programming, instead choosing to air reruns of House and Bones. That’s right- they chose to show episodes of shows people had already seen instead of brand new episodes of a show which desperately needed attention from viewers.

The trouble is, for the first time in basically forever, and I can’t belive I’m about to say this… they’re absolutely right to do so.

Look, Whedon has had a bad run at FOX, everyone knows that. They gave him his head on Buffy, it’s true, but pulled the plug on Angel just as it was getting good again, not to mention the complete debacle that was their handling of Firefly.

And it’s not just Whedon’s shows, FOX are well know in fandom for their heavy handed practises with shows, up to and including threatening to scuttle the relaunch of Futurama by completely recasting the voice actors with people who’d work for less money (they eventually reached a deal with the old cast, but still- wow)

The Firefly incident especially leaves fans bitter, that such an incredible show, with such instant chemistry between its cast and a wealth of stories and settings to draw from, was shuffled around the schedule, given little to no promotion, before being dumped after 13 episodes for “not rating”.  That’s the sort of thing to create a lifelong enemy of your brand.

But unfortunately, that isn’t what happened here. Dollhouse was given every opportunity to succeed; it was scheduled in the popular Friday night timeslot in the US, teamed up with the already popular Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as a programming block to keep viewers from clicking away; it was heavily promoted, with TV spots, radio and print ads, even public transport and other types of advetising; it was even saved from a last-minute axeing by fan-petition towards the end of the first season, despite an abysmal showing in the ratings. And that was taking into account views online via sites such as Hulu which streamed it officially as a broadcast partner.

No, what every Whedon fan has to do at this point is face the awful truth that we may be looking at a previously unheard of phenomenon- a Whedon flop. Up until now, the man has seemed untouchable, even as he presided over several doomed ventures. But Dollhouse is a different beast altogether.

Dollhouse should have worked. The premise of the show itself was awesome- an Evil Corporation has developed a way to wipe a human brain of its personality and implant it with a new one; like wiping a hard drive. Like all cutting edge technology, it’s used largely for sex; several nubile young “volunteers”, called Actives, are kept in a facility called the Dollhouse, where they act as basically very-high class prostitutes, with the twist that you can make them think, completely and truly, that they are in love with you, and want to do anything to please you.

It’s an intriguing idea, and of course there are myriad ways the Actives could be used other than as walking talking RealDolls; in one episode, an Active is programmed as a master safe-cracker, in another, as a skilled hostage negotiator.

But it was here that the show also fell down. The entire show was reportedly set up as a vehicle for Whedon-and-fan-favourite Eliza Dushku to showcase her acting talent, esentially by playing a new character every week. The trouble with that was Dushku, while a fine actress, doesn’t have anywhere near the range needed to pull off the various roles she was being called on to play. It also didn’t help that because the main character, who the audience is usually meant to identify with, was a blank slate, there was no relatability. “Echo”, as Dushku’s character was known, was a childlike tabula rasa when she wasn’t imprinted with false skills and traits for the current mission.

Not to mention that most of the other Actives were far better at playing their different personalities, meaning whenever Dushku was on screen, we wanted to see what the other Dolls were up to. Let’s be clear here. Even when Dushku was wearing this-

we still would have preferred to see what one of the other characters was up to. That is not right, Dollhouse writers. If I see Eliza Dushku in bondage leathers and think “I wonder what Topher is up to?” something has gone terribly wrong.

And ultimately, I think it did. Dollhouse suffered not from poor casting, but from some actors being stretched way, WAY past their range, poor plotting, a glacial reveal of backstory which should have been brought forward a lot more quickly, and a general sense of wasted potential. So many great ideas, but none of them seemed to mesh.

Take for instance Episode 13 of season 1, “Epitaph One”. In it, SPOILERS the show flashes forward several years to a time when humanity is in a post-apocalypic chaos, following a mass wireless wiping of the majority of the population by a rival to the Rossum Corporation. There are only small groups of survivors who managed to not be wiped in the intital onslaught, trying to survive in a world now populated basically by the fast-zombies from 28 Days Later, people with their original personality wiped and replaced with mindless rage.

It is a gripping, fast-paced 45 minutes, some of the best TV I’ve seen for ages. It also, in a brave move, foreshadows a massive event in the near future for the show as it currently stood, and which Season 2 has been dropping little hints and clues about as it works towards the inevitable mass-wipe. A pity then that “Epitaph One” was never aired, and only appeared on the DVD of season 1. Who’s fault that is remains open for debate, but the simple fact of the matter is in 45 minutes, Joss made me care more about a group of characters and their story than he had managed with 12 whole episodes of Dollhouse.

The question then becomes- why wasn’t THAT the show? Or at least, why wasn’t that storyline incorporated more fully into the show? Half-assed attempts at viral marketing based around the future as seen in Epitaph One just seem all the more hollow now we know the show is done after this season.

Who knows what reasons lay behind how the show turned out. Maybe Joss and the other writers literally only came up with that apocalyptic future after they’d started making the show. Maybe studio pressures really did hamper him again; its common knowledge FOX made Whedon re-write the first 7 or so episodes of the series to make it “less confusing”.

But ultimately, they were very hands-off with the making of the show, much moreso than in the past. Which means there’s really no one left to blame but the production team, including Whedon himself.

Look, this all kills me to say, because I’ve been a fan of Whedon’s stuff ever since Buffy. That show was paradigm-shifting, it changed things forever, and has rightly entered the pop culture milleu along with things like Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, and Star Trek. But Whedon has not had a good run in his last few projects, and the cancellation of Dollhouse could be a sign that the wheels are finally coming off the geek-train.

I sincerely hope they’re not, but you have to admit he’s starting to lose some of his shine. Especially when you start to realise that his bag of tricks only includes two or three tricks, and they all involve women being AWESOME. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if you eat the same meal every day for a month, you’re going to get sick of it.

In the end it comes down to this- industry people and fans are going to be watching Joss’s NEXT project with great interest. Because it’s make or break time. If he comes through with another instant classic, or even just a workable film or TV series, then the streak is broken and we’re all good. But if it’s another flop then we can’t write it up as the Big Bad Studio stifling Whedon’s creative vision any more. We’ve got to start coming to terms with the idea that maybe he was a one trick pony all along, and we’re looking for a new trick.

Dear Scarlett,

May I call you Scarlett? I want to establish a friendly rapport with this letter, and will take your silence as assent.

I, like many others I’m sure, have been watching your rise to stardom with interest for some time. And can I say right off the bat that I find you to be an engaging and charming actress, with a wide and varied body of work which belies your relatively few years.

But there’s one thing which has been bothering me about your career up til this point, and I wanted to address it with you in this admittedly imperfect and impersonal medium. I feel that there is a particular aspect of yourself which we have so far not seen, and it is an omission which I feel is not only disappointing for those of us watching your performances, but also must be disappointing for you personally.

You need to get your tits out.

Please excuse the crudity of my expression, but there is the problem, in a nutshell. In all of your roles, not once have “the girls” made an appearance, and cinema is poorer for it. So many wonderful movies, which could have easily been improved by letting the funbags hang free.

Don’t get me wrong, I have certainly appreciated the various times we’ve almost seen your boobs. A certain amount of titillation (if you’ll pardon the pun) keeps people guessing about exactly when we might see that glorious chest of yours. It adds that frisson to watching one of your movies. There was even that bit of side boob that you threw out there in that one film that all the celebrity nude sites use in their adverisments.

But you can only maintain an audience’s interest for so long. If this goes on for much longer, several larger men are going to have aenuryisms and heart attacks waiting for a glimpse of your pleasure pillows. I implore you, Scarlett, out of a concern for public safety, to bare your breasts on film at the next possible opportunity.

I understand Michael Bay actually prevented you from appearing topless in The Island, which would make me hate him if I didn’t already for his myriad other crimes against cinema. So I know the will is there on your part, for which I applaud you. But then I see you’ve made at least three films for Woody Allen, including a film where you have a lesbian tryst with Penelope Cruz and still no joy in the funbags department. One begins to suspect that you are a bit of a tease, Scarlett.

If, indeed, directors will not allow you to expose yourself on camera, I offer a delicate solution- simply remove your top at all times while on set. You have to be forceful with directors, they sometimes cannot see the forest for the trees. In this way, the breasts in question will invariably end up on screen somehow, unless the director chooses to film you only in closeup, or over one shoulder for the entire film.

On the other hand, it occurs to me that the no-show of your lady-humps in celluloid so far may actually be due to modesty on your part, or the belief that that is all people are interested in. I assure you nothing coyuld be further from the truth. I’ve enjoyed your acting in… the several films you have been in. I enjoyed that scene in that film where you were very angry with someone, so angry that your boobs wobbled around furiously. That must have taken a few takes. Very impressive.

But if I can offer some advice- time and gravity is not your friend. And lets face it, with mammaries that size, you’ve only got a couple more years before everything starts heading south for the winter. And no one wants to see that. Well, actually, we’ll take it, but wouldn’t it be better if you got everything out there now, in its prime? Instead of waiting for time to carry out it’s terrible, frustrating work?

Take Helen Mirren, for example. She’s a stunning woman, even now in her 60s. If she got her boobs out now, I would actually be kind of interested to see them, and you can’t say that about too many people who’re old enough to be your grandmother. But the only reason I’m interested in seeing them now is because I have in my head the memory of what they were like back when she was young, and curvy and would frequently get them out in a number of trashy movies. She was a busty blonde who went on to play the damn Queen of England and win an Oscar for it! It can be done! You can sacrifice your integrity for a paycheck and still get a gold statue! Sure, you have to wait a few decades for it, but surely that makes it all the more satisfying?

I won’t take up any more of your time, but I implore you to consider what you’ve read here today, or been told by an assistant who read this for you. Having your breasts committed to film would be the single greatest acheivement of cinema cince they first made people wet theselves in terror with the short of a train rushing towards the camera. Now, people can wet themselves with joy.

I remain expectantly yours,

Stuart Q Fightmaster.

PS- alternatively, just some private pictures of your breasts would suffice. Please send them via email to this website.

A little while ago (well, it seems like only a little while but was in fact-holy crap- a little over 2 years ago) I wrote an article for Cracked.com about the 9 Manliest Names in the World. It was one of the first articles to appear on the revamped site right around the time it absorbed the PointlessWasteOfTime.com forums, along with editor David Wong, who threw open the doors to all the long-time posters and gave us a chance to write some comedy for money.

It was the first of a grand total of two articles I wrote for the site along with some other small stuff, and it was great fun. It’s still one of my favourite things that I’ve written, and that’s not just because I got paid for it. First, it was a great learning experience for me, handing in a dense, poorly worded article and having the editors pick over it and take out everything but what worked. It taught me a lot about how to write things that are funny.

But it’s also experienced a longevity that I never expected. Two years after it was published, it’s currently sitting on well over a million views, which as one of the writers of a blog that on a high traffic day can boast readers of a hundred or so, is a staggering number. Every other week I get messages from people who’ve just read it. And those readers have suggestions.

Of course, some of the suggestions are “UR LIST SUX DIE INA FIRE!!11″ but every once in a while I’ll get a PM on the Cracked boards, suggesting another entry for the list. Most of those are completely unverifiable, things like “my friend has a cousin who knew a guy once called Shaftboner Donghammer”. But every once in a while someone suggests a person and I’ll think “why the hell weren’t you around when I was writing this thing?”

Today I opened my inbox to see one of the most manly names I have ever seen. My own. But below that was a message from a reader, who’d stumbled across the article and who had a suggestion for another name. The name?

Dick Killington.

PROFESSOR DICK KILLINGTON

I mean, wow. And it’s verifiable too, he’s mentioned in a Times Higher Education article and on the University of Leeds website, where he’s a Professor of Molecular Biology in addition to being one of the room wardens.

So that’s just wonderful. I mean, you can’t go past the man who topped the list originally, the inimitable Sergeant Max Fightmaster (who I’m told is now a First Sergeant in the US Army, because would YOU be denying Max Fightmaster a promotion?) but if anything Prof Killington embodies even more what I wanted to get at with that list- ordinary, everyday people, who happen to have ridiculously manly names. Some guy signing his bank cheques with “Dick Killington” and the cashier not believing that’s really his name. Imagine being pulled over and the cop asking what your name is, and you say “Dick Killington”. That is intensely funny to me.

Not to mention, it gives me a great idea for a possible villain for Max Fightmaster to take on in the movie the universe must produce of these most manly-named men. Sergeant Max Fightmaster against the evil Professor Killington, and his threat to release a deadly supervirus into the atmosphere that only HE has the cure for! He’s holding the world to ransom! It’s a race against time, will Fightmaster be able to get there before the needlessly elaborate release mechanism is released? Well, yes, of course he will, but isn’t it going to be fun finding out how?

I finally joined a gym the other day.

I had been actually going to a gym for most of this year, since I had my second brain snap around April and decided to get my lardy arse into shape. My first brain snap came last year when I realised that I had gotten much fatter than you generally want to get, even if you’re putting on weight for a movie role, or maybe your lady likes to grab onto something during intimate times. (I can assure you, neither of those scenarios applied to me.) I started running for a bit but kind of let it slide, because as I think I’ve mentioned before I’m criminally lazy.

Then, one day at work I was climbing up ONE flight of stairs to get to my office. When I reached the top I was puffed. I couldn’t speak because I was out of breath. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen to my brain, but I had a small moment of epiphany- I was a fatty. That needed to change.

It was especially surprising to me because I had been quite fit at school. Like, running cross-country, captain of the swimming club fit. But that was before I was able to drive, or legally drink, both of which conspired to ensure that I slowly inflated like a fleshy balloon. The change was gradual enough that I didn’t really notice it happening. However I got a bit of a wakeup call when a friend returned from a few years overseas and commented that I had somehow misplaced my jawline.

I started going to the gym with Friend-of-olilolo Strangely Brown. Strangely (Brother of Uncomfortably, son of Suddenly and Mary) is an enormous man, despite being only approximately four feet high. He can lift something crazy like double his body weight, and has been bodybuilding for years. He has always eyed my six foot frame like a champion horse breeder eyes a promising stallion- trying to make money off me, before selling me for glue. He’d do it, too. He’s ruthless when money’s involved.

Does it make me a bad person that this picture made me laugh more than anything else this week? (probably)

I seem to have wandered off my point.

Oh yes. So I started working out with Strangely and some other guys at the local gym. I noticed right away that Strangely basically knew everyone. And I mean everyone who walked through the doors of that place knew him, and he knew them. Now this wasn’t some massive Globo-Gym type deal, it was much more of your small specialty place. The clientele were almost destined to know each other simply because there were so few of them.

But still, they all knew each other, which kind of weirded me out a bit. I’m a private exerciser; I don’t like people watching me work out. And for some reason having a room full of muscly, sweaty men who kind of knew who I was watch me lift weights was freaking me out a little. I have no idea why.

Anyway, things came to a head at that gym when it passed to new owners, who didn’t take kindly to Strangely sitting on their desk and telling them that he was going to keep his old membership rate, and if they didn’t like it he would “have sex with their mothers in their butts.”  I found myself glad that I had trusted my first instinct and not joined the place, as everyone who knew Strangely well couldn’t come within 50 metres of the place after “the incident” without the manager hurling dumbells at us. We were soon looking for a new gym.

We started working out at a new place up the road, which struck a nice balance between actually having weight equipment made after 1963, and not being brimming with the kind of gurning munters that fill the more trendy gyms. This place is a gym. It’s not a “fitness centre” or “health clinic”. People run on tresmills and lift weights, and everyone’s okay with that. I liked it immediately.

And that’s where I signed up last week. It felt good to finally make it official, but like marriage after a lengthy period of living together, I was forced to look at the relationship anew. I was a member of a gym, something I have never been before in my entire life. Did this mean I had to walk with my arms splayed, and constantly refer to protein shakes and weight straps? Probably not. Stupid thing to say, really. Don’t know why I did.

But it felt like a big step, and it’s one that I’m determined to not let take over my life. I caught myself evangelicising at work the other day about the benfits of regular excercise to an increasingly glazed-eyed coworker, and forced myself to stop gripping her by the shoulders and leave. She’s agreed not to press charges, which is nice of her, really. I don’t want to be That Guy, always stinking of rust and BO and not fitting into suits. That was my problem when I was fat, I don’t want to hit the problem from the other side.

So I’m being careful. I’m feeling good, sleeping better, feeling more confident in my daily life. I just need to make sure I don’t becaome one of those guys who BLOGS about it too. That would be terrible.

You know sometimes you have a friend or at the least some guy you know, and they basically agree to anything? Like they’ll say “man, I love Nickelback” and you’ll say “Nickelback are literally the worst thing anyone has ever done musically,” and then they say “yeah, I guess they’re pretty bad.” I’m wondering how far you could push that.

I was having a conversation the other day talking to someone about a music festival that was held a couple of years ago. I hadn’t gone, but this guy had, and I asked him “wasn’t that the one where some guy got crushed in the crowd?” And at first he wasn’t sure. But then, the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that maybe it was, until eventually he declared that yeah, it was. He even claimed to remember seeing an ambulance take the guy away.

The trouble is, that never happened. I was thinking of a different music festival, as some light googling once I got home revealed. And yet that guy told me he remembered seeing that stuff. He became more confident as time went on.

Scientists have actually done studies on this phenomenon, they call extreme cases False Memory Syndrome. Basically, you can “plant” memories through suggestion, and with the right watering, they can take root.

So I’m wondering- how far could you push this? Could you convince a guy he’d crapped his pants in front of you one time?Just keep repeating the hilarious story over and over again about how he got drunk and did it at a party. And maybe he remembers being drunk, and thinks, “well, I don’t remember it, but hell, I WAS drunk. Maybe I forgot.”

Could you convince that guy that you had sex with his Mother? Could you convince HIS MOTHER that’s you’d had sex with HER?

Could you convince someone that these particular metal humanoids are not the metal humanoids they’re currently searching for?

Could you change the public perception of history, just by repeating wrong facts over and over until people start parrotting it to you? Like how Obama was “an appeaser, just like… that English dude, I guess.”

Cause I’m wondering if I can convince girls that they totally gave me permission to hang around outside their bedroom windows. How fast does this memory implanting stuff work? Would it take hold before the cops got there? Before they got their tasers out, at least?

You know what should make a comeback? Hats.

Australia is a sunny country. We’re constantly being warned about the dangers of excess exposure to the daystar and it’s burning tentacles of pain. And yet, hats remain something only daggy people wear. Either granddads or blow-ins from the bush or even just that one guy with the hat and the backpack, who looks like he collects and catalogues moths. Hats are not a cool thing to wear.

But they are when we’re stepping out, as I discovered when I went to the races yesterday for Cup day. Everywhere I looked, men were sporting hats of varying types. Most were the tiny Trilbies which are effectively useless for blocking the sun. But a few were the wider-brimmed Fedora style, which in my opinion still looks classy while also actually being funtional. Of course there were others again who were sporting the traditional straw cowboy hat with the XXXX GOLD logo on it, but that’s to be expected at any outdoor event in Queensland, including funerals and riots.

But there was just a whiff of irony to me about the men wearing the hats. “Look at us, out for a Day at the Races,” their hats seemed to say to me, exactly as if I had taken a large tab of acid. “Aren’t we Dapper”. To be honest, though, the answer is “yes”. There’s something just old school and classy about a nice hat. Something that is lost to the t-shirt and Crocs wearing masses of the early 21st century.

The reason I’ve been thinking about this is because I burn like crispy bacon in the sun, and it’s annoying the hell out of me. I wear sunscreen now, but it only does so much against a sun which is rapidly being turned up by God’s browning knob. Not to mention sunscreen doesn’t prevent you from getting heatstroke.

So bring back hats at all times and places, I say. Fedoras and Bowlers for day wear, Top Hats and Trilbies for an evening out.

Sombreros, of course, for parties.

I think the one thing that I would have to work around is that fact that I have an encephalitically large head, and therefore I can’t really wear hats. Baseball caps perch on my crown, forlornly trying to cover the vast expanse below. Bucket hats and other hats with a brim fit almost by default, just sort of flopping lazily over the globe that is my head. A trilby would have as much chance of fitting me as a tea towel thrown over a mountain.

So I’d probably have to go to a hatter of some description. Do they even have those anymore? Some guy who just makes hats?

This guy came up in google when I searched for "hatter". Anyone have his number?

Also, if I was getting it personalised I’d want to give it a few touches that were unique to me personally. Things like a leopard pattern, plush velvet and a matching jacket.

The gold chain I can take or leave.

Which brings me to my second point- canes need to make a comeback as well. Get on this, people. It’ll be the look this summer. Don’t make me choke a bitch.

I have no interest in horse racing whatsoever. But I had a bet on the Melbourne Cup today, and that’s all you need to know about the sort of event it is.

Every year you get people knocking the Cup. The animal rights groups have a dig, saying horse racing is inhumane and should be outlawed. You have the anti-gambling lobby saying it promotes gambling to people who wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to it. Anti-liquor people say it promotes binge drinking at venues, especially down in Melbourne where they actually get a public holiday on Cup day, the bastards.

Most of all, you get the people who have no moral or ethical objection to the Cup, but say they’re not watching it, because they’re “not interested in horse racing”. Well neither am I, as I said, but that didn’t stop me having a bet. The Melbourne Cup isn’t about horse racing. Well, in a practical way it is, but where going into the realm of allegory here. Stay with me.

We have precious few institutions in this country which weren’t imported from somewhere else. National events, which capture the imagination of people on a National level. The Melbourne Cup is one of those institutions.

What other day of the year would your boss probably not be mad at you for taking time off to go an drink all day in the sun? What other event would inspire a manager to not only allow their employees to drink booze in the office, but maybe even provide it themselves? What other event would get people to lay down hard-earned money on the horses when you have no interest whatsoever in horse racing?

Every year they appear, those people who are secretly horse experts, but who keep their prowess a secret until the Monday before Cup day, suddenly expounding on the form of a particular animal with a ridiculous name. “Oh yes,” they’ll say, “Satansball Sack has had some good form in the weekend races, but Tittsan Azman is going to peak today. Not to mention, he favours a wet track, and there’s been rain in Melbourne.”

But that’s the sort of thing the Cup inspires. People who’ve never been interested in the sport before suddenly are experts, at least for the day. They’ve read up on the horses, they know the form, they know all about track conditions and weight handicaps and jockey’s history. And they make a bet.

And then some FUCKING HORSE THAT NO ONE MENTIONED IN ANY OF THE REPORTS JUST WALTZES HOME WITH THE CUP WHILE THE SO-CALLED “FAVOURITES” STAND AROUND SCRATCHING THEIR ARSE AND THE PERSON WHO’S JUST DROPPED A TWENTY ON A PUNT IS LEFT STANDING THERE LIKE A DICKHEAD.

Ahem. So that’s why the Melbourne Cup is like nothing else in the world. And why I’m glad it only comes once a year.