1978: Mork from Ork – In honour of Robin Williams

What can be said about Robin Williams that hasn’t already been said? He was a comedic genius. He was a phenomenal actor. And he was a legend of his time. He will always be remembered for the way he made people feel.

This people know.

It’s been 9 months since his passing, and he is missed. Fortunately for his fans, he can live on forever in his brilliant performances captured in both movies and TV. So this post, I do in memory of him.

His performance in Aladdin is what makes that movie, in my opinion, the funniest movie they ever did. He’s what I love about Hook and Jumanji. My wife will watch Ms. Doubfire time after time after time, and while I say it annoys me, I enjoy watching it over and over again too. When I watched 1 Hour Photo, he pulled an about face that blew me out of the water. That’s why when I heard he was going to be in The Dark Knight Rises, I almost crapped my pants. That’s why when I found out that he wasn’t really going to be in The Dark Knight Rises and I had just been a sucker for an online rumour, I almost crapped my pants. Most comedians, I don’t care for, because I don’t know them. And if I do, they aren’t some one who has brought me to the emotional highs and lows that he had. But Robin has always been one that stood out for me, ever since I was a child. And when he died I felt that connection, the same connection I felt when Nimoy died, to my childhood grow a little weaker.

However, I have not watched everything he has done. So my journey with him is not over.

1976: Isaac Asimov’s The Bicentennial Man

I do not have a ton of science fiction literature under my belt. But even before I really started to get into it I knew the name Isaac Asimov. I knew he had written lots about robots, and I knew about his “3 Laws of Robotics”. I had watched I, Robot and I had even seen Bicentennial Man. The story I read this week was the inspiration for the latter in both name and story.

Bicentennial Man tells the story of NDR, AKA Andrew Martin. Andrew is a robot and is originally the property of the Martin family. Meant as a household servant, Andrews role changes when it is discovered that he has left him a knack for woodcarving. His creations make a small fortune for the family. His creativity comes from a unique abnormality in his positronic brain that gives him a heightened sense of self. The Martins are the type of family I hope I would be if I were in this situation. Despite being the legal owners of Andrew, they recognized that these masterpieces were of his doing and put half of the money away in savings for him. As the years pass they update his body to the most advanced of technology. Slowly, between the efforts of himself and the lineage of the Martens (/Charney) family, he becomes more and more human in body, mind and legal status. He eventually concurs his goal. On his 200th Birthday.