I have been looking high and low for a good Stanley Tweedle music video, and it was right under my nose right here on xanga. There are a couple more posted by LexxAddict, if you want to check it out, plus lots more goodies when you click to her main page and go through her posting calendar.

I haven't looked around in awhile, but I think the Lexx soundtracks are out of print. I was surprised to see that a brand new original print is going for over $300 on Amazon. Don't know if that will change before you click this link, or how long it will sit there like that.

Amazon.com: lexx soundtracks: Music

Here are linx to more info about the soundtracks, wavs, and apps.  

This is part 9.
Go back to part 8.
Go on to part 10.
Return to The Lexx.
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Images from photobucket.com/lexxpix. Thumbnails click to original size.

Thodin is revered in our household. I once had a blog named Thodin. My oldest daughter named her first car Thodin. Aside from breaking out into the Dammit Janet song whenever we see Barry Bostwick, we Hail Thodin, winner of His Shadow's Award Of Merit...

We first saw this little bug coach on the prisoner transport in part 2.

"It's your day of justice, Thodin!"

Remember how I was wondering how long Zev had been bolted to her slab? Yeah, this guy has been sitting in this tiny little bug thing just as long, or even longer, who knows. This little bug style prisoner chariot (so love the symbolism, a human inside a bug, like he's been eaten) is remote walked to the holo judge, essentially taking cuts in front of the blue person who was behind Zev. Please note that the bug coach is bolted to a drop chain before anything is even said.

"You- Thodin of the Ostral B Pair- are accused of- " (new voice cuts in while her hologram freezes)- "Due to the special nature of this crime, the arch heretic Thodin of the Ostral B Pair will be tried in Cobalt Stadium. Following that, his sentence will be immediately executed for the entertainment of His Shadow's loyal followers."

Ok, gotta cut in already. First of all, the fill in the blank part is HER voice, unlike the previous prisoners' names being filled in by a different voice, leading me to wonder if the people originally acting the parts of the other court officials for the holorecorder were even still alive. So this judge is either still ~alive~, or they had her record this particular prisoner's name for a special reason, maybe both.

At this point, the bug coach is whisked straight up to the stadium.

As Thodin is being delivered to Cobalt Stadium full of screaming people, Zev is being delivered to an empty room full of more machinery.

Without warning, her slab brakes to a lurching stop, jerking poor exhausted Zev really hard like a rag doll.

Her robot escort steps around to the other side of the machine a little out of view, and without a word starts working. There are no explanations, no soothing words of comfort, just the robot throwing switches, turning knobs, and pressing buttons with their accompanying unnerving noises, and it locks her slab into position. The prisoner is beyond any more personalized courtesies, however mockishly cruel they were before. Her status on the Cluster as prisoner has officially been reduced to object. She's no longer a citizen of the Cluster, now she is property of the Cluster.

Again without warning, Zev's slab flips back to a horiztonal position.

She has time for one surprised gasp before a screen slides over to her face and a Divine Cleric pronounces, "In the execution of this sentence you are hereby cleansed of your crime against the People of 20,000 Planets, may His Merciful Shadow fall upon you." What do you say at this point? Zev says, "Whatever." Like it really matters any more, unless a person is still so enthralled with a belief in His Shadow even now that they might ridiculously feel some relief that they are forgiven, even in the face of more torture.

Meanwhile- panning into Cobalt Stadium, we can see that it is huge, not only many stories off the ground, but a further number of stories high in its construction. It is like an evil crown over the Cluster below, filled to bursting with perhaps as many as a hundred thousand bloodthirsty fans screaming for more entertainment and cheering on the executions.

As the prisoner's bug coach is lowered onto the platform, the holo judge towers in giant form over it and calls out, "The arch heretic, pirate, and rebel of the Ostral-B Pair, Thodin!" while the crowd goes wild yelling, "Tho-din! Tho-din!"

The bug coach opens by remote, and we finally see Thodin, cuffed to inner walls that look like the coach is crafted from a genuine bug exoskeleton. The first thing we see are some awesome boots that mean business, and after that an odd warrior outfit that can only be Ostral B culture. We never get anything else on that, but we get a better look later. Thodin seems pretty calm despite being surrounded by a stadium full of people screaming for his execution and uncomfortably near cluster lizards banging and rattling their cage bars, hissing spit and fighting over the chance to get at him. Their high pitched screamy squeals whip the crowd into a frenzy.

(Coolest Barry Bostwick role ~ever~.)

(The Cluster version of Judge Judy...)

Whoever this Thodin is, he looks pretty tough, isn't getting rattled at all. Is he this accepting of his death? Is he going to explode in furious retorts? There is no way this guy has a snowball's chance in hell.

I'm an MST3K fan, I eat cheesy stuff up, but Cluster lizards are awesome badass, the live action feel is top quality, these things are ~alive~, and gunning for Thodin. I bet they stink to high heaven, too.

So what's he doing, going into a meditation while they violently fling themselves at him?

Heck, no! Thodin has a plan! What the hell....?

How maddening must it have been to sit there and let a mechanoid bug crawl out of his nose? And how long did it sit in his skull? Before he was ever even caught and cuffed into the bug coach he had that little thing sitting inside his head.

As it flies clear, the bug says, "Bug bomb activated. Bug bomb searching, Thodin." See, there it is right above his head, looking like one of those remote control helicopters you get for Christmas, only teeny tiny. (And that was in his head.)

I don't know about you guys, but my interest in and respect for Thodin just shot up a thousand points. How COOL is it that this guy smuggled a ~bug bomb~ into a stadium full of screaming people and cluster lizards through all that security right under His Divine Shadow's nose? THIS GUY HAS A PLAN. Hot and sexy just got hotter and sexier. The fact that he has no pants isn't even why I said that.

So the screaming is going on, no one seems to notice a teensy little bug droid taking off out of Thodin's face, and we start getting the bug bomb activity relay that Thodin must also be hearing, because it talks to him by name. We don't know if the relay is going to something implanted in Thodin's ear or brain or what, but after the stuff we've seen happen to prisoners in the judicial tower, are we surprised? The level of tech His Shadow uses gets so buried in barbaric, dare I say macabre looking machinery and behavior that I'm not sure anything else would surprise me from here on out. Bug tech is obviously far above average human capacity, as is the barbaric nature of the society built around it.

"Bug bomb searching, Thodin. Turning left."

That robot is different from the previous 790 robots we've seen that escort and execute prisoners. 790 robots are still mostly human with robot heads replacing the original heads, but this one is much more mechanoid and later we see is used more for policing duties. We never find out what they are called, and unless someone can link me to a script scan, I'm not sure they were named. You can see this one has human hands, but everything else about its former human body has been adapted to biomechanoid. It could be a human in a special geared up suit, you say, and I say just wait, you see they're pretty stupid later on like their brains have been wiped or replaced.

If this isn't lending itself to a really good question forming in your mind about now, I'll ask it for you- if this is such a bug oriented society, with the leader exhibiting a hive like predispositioned mind, and everything in charge seems to be decapitated or deconstructed humans, why aren't bugs just running the place? That is a really good question. Hang onto it.

Thodin's little bug bomb seems to looking for a very specific target...

Back in Cobalt Stadium, the sentencing is gearing up. A couple of gigantic screens pop up for His Divine Shadow's loyal followers' entertainment. Gotta be able to see every grisley detail, right? I mean, who knows how far these people traveled and at what expense to sit in this very special arena on this day? It's not like they paid for football tickets on the internet, their society doesn't work like that. I have a feeling this is an invitation only kind of thing in the League of 20,000 Planets. What the heck is the guy displayed on the right side screen doing...

Whatever he's doing, it's driving the cluster lizards into a crazy, frothy frenzy, not to mention the spectators. Hold on a second, egads, he's pulling a fresh brain out of a newly stripped skull, no doubt off a pile of brains and skulls just delivered from the judicial tower. Wonder if Argon Protopi's head wound up on this pile. As fast as things have been moving along in the executions, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is actually Argon's brain we're seeing.

And not to put too light a point on how savagely bloodthirsty this crowd is, it looks like a fun family night out... Look at those cute little uniforms and those happy smiling faces!

..and the nice man holding up a fresh brain for the cluster lizards....

If this were a regular formula movie, the bug bomb would find the target and Thodin would escape against all odds and save the day before the next hour is up. But this isn't happening on our planet for an earth audience. This is happening in another universe in a society maliciously molded by a bug overlord of some kind, where little kids gleefully scream for death, because seeing cluster lizards eating the brains of heretics is ~fun~. Stayed tuned, I have already started work on the next part, because I know the suspense of this super slow posting is nearly killing some of you.

Do you like Thodin? See more about Barry Bostwick - IMDb.

Due to what seem like haphazard marketing strategies, there is at least one release for a particular year and region that leaves the bug bomb activity relay off the soundtrack. You're going to run into this kind of unmatchy stuff in Lexx, which I believe in the long run makes Lexx more collectible. Whoever can collect all the different releases with all the different edits ~wins~.  I own the complete original Salter Street release for Region 1, which will reflect in all my Lexx film study posts. If you own other versions and want to compare notes, have a ball in the comments.

This is part 9.
Go back to part 8.
Go on to part 10.
Return to The Lexx.
Go to main blog.

Find Lexx.
iTunes - TV Shows - Lexx, Season 1
Watch Lexx Online | Netflix
Watch Lexx on Hulu
Watch Lexx Online - TV.com
Echo Bridge Entertainment - Lexx
Amazon.com: lexx: Movies & TV

I'm so used to lurkers all over me that I kinda blow off my tracks, but it hit me that I've been getting so many hits on my guestbook and no one writes anything, thought I'd try it out. Comment box wasn't working, but there is a link directly beneath that makes the box accessible, so I tried that out, works great, except it's supposed to allow embedded pix and they show up awesome in the preview but don't transer over to the published comment. Sorry about that, this blog will be 9 years old soon and Xanga has updated their coding a few times, and I elected to keep this blog set in an unsupported old style because it adapts more easily to the things I want to do. Anyway, just wanna say THANK YOU to all the continual traffic I get even when I don't plugz or tweet linx back here, and I really am working on the I Worship His Shadow film study, sorry it's taking so long because of holidays and other family stuff. It's been over a month since an update on that, I know, I suck!  But I love you guys, and I really love Lexx, and it's time to gear up and crank it out.

 

(This post follows two previous posts called The Nerdist Way and Team Nerd, and after this post go to The Nerdist Score- 'aspie spoonie Lexx fan on a mission' assessment.)

I've been singing the praises of Chris Hardwick for founding the Nerdist Way for all us nerdlings spinning our puny little wheels and not getting anywhere with our brilliance in our dark little rooms, surrounded by tech and living on feeds. Chris knows the secret to coaxing evil villains out of the dark, and I ventured forth, blinking in the light and found my way into a real fitness center, the premise being that evil genius must be nurtured with good health. I was doing awesome one puny step at a time, reaching personal goals I didn't believe possible for someone like me.

Kinda all blew up this last month. Holidays, stress, other people's dramas, and then you throw in fall allergies and other people's germs, not to mention the social pressures- social anxiety isn't cute on its best day and blows up into a nightmarish hell around holidays. All these things start spiking depression and preexistent pain levels, and when you already live with *stuff*, sometimes the wimpy spiral back down goes out of control into the screaming before the big crash stage, and then you lay there after the holidays in a little jumbled heap wondering how in the world you can ever pull it back together.

For instance, going to physical therapy and then 'graduating' to the fitness center was helping me get a really good handle on my fibromyalgia, which a rheumatologist once called "severe", and docs all feel frustrated because I react badly to so many meds. So I treat the old fashioned way- quality rest, good hydration, excellent nutrition, and psychological health projects. But all that does is create a great way to tread water. Throwing workouts into the mix actually brought the pain level DOWN, and depression easing up followed close after. I have Chris Hardwick to thank for that motivation, because no one else on the planet was getting me to take that last step into accepting fitness as a way of life.

So everything piled up again the last 6 weeks, I crashed like the alien chasing Will Smith in Independence Day, and now I've got to come up with a Plan. WWCHD? (What Would Chris Hardwick Do?)

First thing is assess. Go back to part one in his book The Nerdist Way and review. What are my character strengths, what things do I love doing most, what am I doing with my life ~right now~? Next thing is organize it all back into little lists and charts, just like I did in the beginning. What do I want to do? Where do I want to go with this? What will it take to get back on track? And once I have my mind organized, I can start small stepping again back into the direction I was going, remembering that since I've done it all before, my body will remember it and be able to click right back into the pattern. The hard part in all this is picking my crumpled crashed self back up and taking the steps. Especially in the winter. It's nasty outside!

Assess- I'm actually not doing that bad. Before I started following the Nerdist Way I was in so much pain in my spine that I could barely sit for long or carry groceries in from my car. It seems to be coming back again, but stress and slacking off and cold weather does that, right? I. can. do. this. I don't have to be a wimp just because I'm wimpy. Before you all think I can get up and grind along on sheer will, no I can't. You can't, either, that's why you're reading this. We suck. But Chris says we can suck in a much cooler way. All we have to do is remember our innate penchant for world domination and use our natural brainiac talents to succeed in our quest. And part of that quest is the goal for more mobility and endurance. And part of reaching that goal is to keep moving, keep learning how to keep moving correctly, keep using what we've learned to keep gaining more small steps toward our bigger goals. I have to be honest, I feel like everything sux again, but compared to six months ago, I'm doing pretty fabulous, so even though I went splat on my face, it's not going to take as much work this time to get back to where I was.

Organize- The third part of The Nerdist Way was about organizing my time. Now that I've slumped, my life is in some disarray again, and it looks harder to get something done. I got sidetracked by all that social pressure and the resultant physical and emotional drain, and I dropped the ball on keeping a pattern going on my calendar. What I need to do is pick back up on making a pattern again, assign tasks to dates and make sure I don't overextend myself. Small steps back into the pattern. Make it easy to get rolling again so I don't get frustrated and give up. Worked the first time, it'll work again.

This probably seems babyish and dumb to people who have boundless energy and preset schedules with work or school. This probably seems monumental to people who have chronic fatigue and endless time because they can't work or go to school for various reasons. I've been on both sides. If you haven't experienced THIS, then none of your advice will help me, because you won't understand, even if you think you do. Chris Hardwick actually understands. He's lived with a spinal injury, anxiety attacks, depression, and being overweight. You can't even tell now. He got where he is exactly by doing what he says to do in his book. He crawled out of his ditch, made a cool nerd map, and now I'm crawling out of my ditch following his map.

I think the last time I posted about this I had very happily worked my way up to work level 4 for 15 minutes on a recumbant nustep, and 15-20 reps on various weights for core strength training. I was feeling pretty rough when I made it back into the fitness center to pay my bill a couple of weeks ago, so I dialed it back. There was no way I could pull off a hard 20-30 minutes of my full workout. So I geared the nustep back down to work level 3 and took my time pedaling over 12 minutes to warm up, while frantic people all around me flapped their body parts like crazed holiday freakazoids, sweat dripping down bodies I was afraid would collapse across me in heart attacks. Don't exercise like that. Those kinds of noobs don't last long at the fitness center, and all us regulars *know* it. We watch them come and go. You can tell the people who are really used to regular workouts, no matter how light or difficult, because they stay ~calm~ and pace themselves. So don't be a noob. If you don't feel well, take it easy, let your poor body acclimate to the warm up, then move slowly through your workout. That day I also pulled all the pins out and dialed my weights back to just 7-8 reps at only 20 pounds. My total workout time was about 18 minutes, and I was worn out because I went in feeling rough to start (fibro + virus + nasty cold weather, you get the picture). But I felt GREAT walking out that door. I could never have done that workout 6 months previously. I have apparently built up my endurance to the point of actually being able to work out on what feels like one of my worst days. *wow* I can't tell you what that did for my mental and emotional frame of mind the rest of the day.

It's ok to have a wimpy workout. The main thing is to keep making it out the door and feel good about accomplishing something, even if you have to dial it back a little bit. The main thing is that your body is getting stronger and more capable, even when you don't feel like it is.

If you are having trouble getting started on your New Year goals and resolutions, please try The Nerdist Way of doing it. Your life really can change, and you can find a way to do stuff that looks impossible to you right now. Chris has it mapped out, it's all there. Just click his pic.

:edit: 1-3-12 I can't say enough for the nustep TRS 4000 recumbent cross trainer if you have joint pain in your feet.

:edit: 1-4-12 Nustep did not pay me to say this.

I ran into this old post archived on my private blog on August 31, 2006. I'm pretty sure I wrote it quite a bit earlier, possibly back to 2005. I didn't save anything else that I know of before I kaboomed my old Lexx stuff, so this is a rare blast from the past. Images click back to original sources.

Had no warning on this one on any of the sites I check. Left the house yesterday afternoon, the grass was green. Drove home an hour later in a snowstorm with low visibility and an inch of snow sticking to everything in the wind.