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I was delighted a week ago to see this article on the absolutely insane plan for an early Dazzler film.  I recommend you go read this and marinate in the crazy.

Yes, Dazzler, Marvel's disco superheroine mutant, in a movie that would have Cher, superpowered KISS and Village People, and . . . well OK you sort of had me at superpowered Village People.  It's totally, over the top nuts, and the kind of thing that clearly would make you say "only in the 80's."

You know what? I kind of wish this was made.  Because in our media?  I'm starting to miss crazy.

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You may have noticed recently I got curious about the future of China and the Geekonomy. Well, more appropriately I became more curious about China – if you follow the global economy, China is something you follow.

So here we are with so many world changes that affect all of us.  Greece melting down (and Portugal to follow apparently).  China's big search company allying with Microsoft.  Japan's potential entry into the rare earth market.  Massive media scandals in the UK.

So much news.  So many geeky things to keep track of.  So many usual economic things to keep track of.

You know I'd LIKE to be able to pay more attention to it.

See the problem is watching economic stupidity here in the US. 

The whole debt ceiling mess was, to say the least, a distraction, and a stupid one.  There's never been any real debate about the debt ceiling in its history, the political posturing was dumb, and the whole mess was potentially destructive.

None of it had to happen of course.  But it did.

So what did we miss during this time?  What could we have focused on if Washington had been behaving like adults?  What could I have been focusing on?  What could our shiny-thing-chasing media have been focusing on?

I'm not entirely sure because, of course, I was trying to find out if my government was going to melt down the economy and take the world with it.

Really people, we have other things to do.  All other political immaturity aside, we got other stuff happening.  We don't need you to make more.

– Steven Savage

It's not new you know.

Have you ever heard the complaints about how there's too many sequels in games and media?  People are tired of Call of Duty games or a spinoff of CSI and so on?  Yeah, you know the drill – everything is so unoriginal.

As an Elder Geek let me note that I've seen this before.

There were eight Wizardry games Since 1981, plus spinoffs and repackaging.  There were nine Ultima games since 1980 plus all sorts of spinoffs (and yes an MMO).  I could go on.

Television?  'Happy Days' gave us three spinoffs that I remember.

Movies?  Did 'Star Wars' end?  'Canonball Run' got a sequel and was inspired by another film.  I'm still figuring out how much was done with 'Smokey and the Bandit' as it had regular AND TV movies.

I could go on, but I think I'm depressing myself at this point.

Look, we may complain about Sequelitis, but it's not new.  It's been around for years (what you think ONE 'Flash Gordon' serial was enough?).   We don't have room to complain as if this is something new.

Here's my theory:

For years we had more and more innovative media, more and more foreign media, more and more television stations, and more people able to make new and cool stuff.  The last few years (decades?) we had a burst of new.

Well things have tightened up economically, people are playing it safe, and people who normally might be innovators going "OK time to be careful and go for a sequel."  This is not abnormal, its a change back to the way things were.

So, nothing new is happening.  It's just we got used to a lot of new.

– Steven Savage