Hello, New Mexico. Julia gave me permission to jump back on the ol’ Reeper for a one-time post about my favorite, favorite TV show: Doctor Who. Why? Because in the latest animated serial, the Timelord solves the mystery of the Roswell crash.

A few years ago, I wrote a brief about the Doctor’s adventures in New Mexico, which pretty much boiled down to a short battle in 1957 with his arch-nemesis,  The Master, at a fictional Air Force base. That happened in one of the spin-off books and as far as I know, he’s never had a televised adventure in the Land of Enchantment (which is strange considering NM’s interstellar ambitions and extraterrestrial mania).

Well,  in Dreamtime, which ran in five parts last week, the Doctor did not visit New Mexico in the animated flesh. The adventure only starts there with a flying saucer getting shot down by other flying saucers and crashing into the desert outside of Roswell.

This isn’t the first time Roswell has come up in Doctor Who and it seems at odds with what Who-nerds call the “canon.” Previously, it was described as a cosmic “fender-bender” by the Doctor and later shrugged off by his companion, Sarah Jane, as only a minor event in human-alien history.

This go around, Doctor Who gets it wrong, big time, as illustrated by the above screen capture. The Roswell crash did not occur on June 13, 1947 but on July 8 of that year. Secondly, as anyone in New Mexico knows: though  I-25 bisects the state,  it doesn’t come nearly that close to Roswell. And let’s not even delve into the cave-dwelling, bows-and-arrows portrayal of Native Americans.

Spoiler Alert: The “little grays,” as Roswellians call them are from species that was nearly obliterated by a race of giant cockroaches called the Viperox; they had developed a genetic poison capable of exterminating the entire Viperox race from the universe. Obviously, the anti-genocidalist Doctor won’t let that happen, but he does help rescue the shot-down Grays from Area 51–with the help of a diner waitress and a Native American rockabilly–and uses their technology to chase the Viperox out of the solar system before they can savage the Earth.

Dreamland (which you can watch at Life, Universe and Combom),  is one of the last adventures of the 10th Doctor, played by David Tennant, who will meet his doom in the two-parter scheduled for Christmas and New Years. It’s a much lighter, kid-oriented serial, compared to the November special, the Waters of Mars (airing in the US on BBC America on Dec 1q), which saw the Doctor pull an Anakin Skywalker and that’s all  I’m gonna say.

In this week’s Reporter, our Indicators column looks at New Mexico’s video game industry. One of the more *exotic* shops, D-Dub Software, has developed what it calls the “World’s First Action Adventure Porno Video Game.” The game, Bonetown, features porn star Ron Jeremy and a cast of characters ranging from busty valley girls to Baptist preachers to crack whores with fake teeth. The above game trailer is absolutely NOT SAFE FOR WORK–SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT AND ADULT LANGUAGE THAT MAY BE OFFENSIVE.

Dearest Santa Fe:

I’m leaving you. I’m moving west and filling up my border state bingo card. It’s an economy thing, a weather thing, a move-close-to-close-friends thing. Lest you think I’ll forget you, I’ve put together this list of places, people, issues that will always stick with me. And I’ll also tell you what I never got to do, but wish I had and will haunt me until I return.

Continue reading »

Yes, I keep harping on the fact that New Mexico didn’t real end the death penalty, it just repealed it for anyone convicted of a murder after July 2009. There’s still two guys on death row in New Mexico and several other defendants in ongoing murder trials are still “death-eligible.”

For those of you who follow the death penalty just as closely, the New Mexico Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty is hosting a must-see capital punishment event this weekend. Here are the details:

Witness to Innocence
America’s only national organization led by exonerated death-row survivors
Saturday, October 10, 2009
4 – 6 pm
At the home of Ms. Trish Steindler
10 Hondo Lane, Santa Fe

Hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be served

Featuring brief presentations by
Ray Krone, Exonerated Death Row Survivor
Juan Melendez, Exonerated Death Row Survivor
Kurt Rosenberg, Executive Director, Witness to Innocence
Gail Chasey, New Mexico State Representative

The event is free.

OK, I know we’re Santa Fe and we shouldn’t mess around with Albuquerque politics, but tomorrow is election day and…I can’t help myself. This is, hands down, the silliest 11th hour appeal I’ve ever read from a candidate. You may need to click to enlarge.

For the search engine crawlers, here’s the text of Mayor Marty Chavez’s 10pm, election eve tweet:

I humbly ask u 4 ur vote tomorrow & ur help keeping ABQ moving forward. Click here 2 find your polling place tomorrow: http://bit.ly/138s6h

OK, so set aside for a moment that the Mayor of Albuquerque is writing messages to us as if we were 15 year olds. That’s just annoying and a little bit pathetic. One could even argue it encourages illiteracy. But, no, let’s not go there. Let’s analyze.

Mayor Chavez spells out “tomorrow” not once, but twice, a totally of 16 characters. In order to pay for his double helping of tomorrow, he steals six letters from you and yours. He collects another eight letters by gutting Albuquerque. Then he cuts corners with the prepositions and leaves a single unspent character. Technically, he can claim he’s a pay-as-you-go type of Tweeter, who can come in under budget to boot.

Call me capricious, but if I was a voter teetering between Chavez and challenger Richard Romero, this slimy tweet the night before would’ve pushed me over. But maybe I’m reading too much into it…. (ba-dum-dum).