A little while back, NASA announced it was ditching its space shuttle program. This more or less squashed whatever meager hope I had of ever going into outer space. I was bummed. But NASA hasn’t gone quietly into the deep, dark night of space where no one can hear you scream. No, they’re still kicking, with one eye on the sky, and the other focused on the Big Blue Marble we all call home—for now.

The space shuttle might be dead, but how about a space sub? No, not an intergalactic sandwich, but a submarine that explores the seas of spaaaaaaaaace. NASA just released plans to create a nuclear-powered, robotic submersible craft that could explore bodies of water on far-off moons and planets. Currently, NASA is targeting Kraken Mare on Saturn’s moon Titan as a possible place for Space Sub’s first mission.

Kraken Mare is roughly the size of one of the Great Lakes and made up of super-cold liquefied gas, kind of like the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Santa Cruz. Space Sub will be outfitted with a seafloor camera and sampling doo-dads that will check out tides, weather, explore the shoreline and, of course, search for signs of life, because that’s all we’re really looking for.

Let’s be honest, it’s kind of lonely floating around two planets away from the sun. We’ve been here as a species for, like, a million years or something, making war and iPhones and all kinds of shit and no one out there has taken notice, or if they have, they haven’t shown up in giant mother ships and been all, “Hey everyone, what’s up?”

What could possibly be floating in the “waters” of Kraken Mare is anyone’s guess, but the concept video NASA posted to YouTube looks like just about the coolest video game ever. It shows a hazy, orange seascape with mountain peaks in the distance and the ghostly rings of Saturn hanging ominously in the sky. Then Space Sub submerges and we get its POV through its seafloor camera. You keep hoping something will pop up and scare you, but nothing does. It’s just dirt or rocks or whatever. I guess we’ll just have to wait until Space Sub makes its maiden voyage, which won’t be until at least 2047. I’ll be 71, hopefully retired and piloting a Winnebago (or a Hover Winnebago, perhaps). No Space Sub captaining for me—sigh.

Meanwhile, on Earth, we may not have that much time. In a study authored by Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist for NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, western America may be on the cusp of the worst drought we’ve ever seen in modern times.

It’s not just any drought, but a MEGADROUGHT (caps mine), which is a prolonged dry spell that could last for decades. Greenhouse gases are contributing to rising temperatures that may cause northern areas to become wetter and southern areas to become drier. However, the rising temperatures will lead to faster evaporation, which means even if you’re getting more rain and snow, it’s going to shrivel up a lot faster, which basically means…like, we’re fucked.

That seems to be the gist of every study lately. This is a thing, this global warming, whether some of us want to believe it or not. Let’s just agree, for argument’s sake, that it’s a thing. But like even if we all buy Priuses and bike everywhere for the rest of our lives, it seems like we’re still going to be fucked. I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy a Prius and/or bike everywhere. Go ahead and do it. It won’t hurt, I guess, and hey, maybe it will even delay our impending fuckage, but just be aware that no matter what we do, we’re still going to be fucked. If you don’t think droughts are that big a deal because you can always run to Costco and buy cases of Poland Spring, then think of the Ancestral Pueblo people, whose civilization crumbled thanks to drought. And they walked everywhere. They never even heard of Hummers.

Maybe it’s all the allusions to mythology or awesome sci-fi hyperbole of attaching “mega” to things, but these kinds of stories always make me think back to the movies I loved as a kid, like Clash of the Titans in the case of Space Sub or the Godzilla franchise in the case of us all dying in some kind of environmental cataclysm. As far as the latter is concerned, I’m thinking specifically of Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, which sort of took Big G back to his roots as a cautionary tale of why humans shouldn’t mess with Mother Nature. Whereas Godzilla was a result of the nuclear arms race, the Smog Monster was born of the pollution that’s choking our cities. Godzilla defeated the Smog Monster thanks to his awesome breath weapon and a kick-ass, trippy J-pop song. I’m not sure if Godzilla would be able to rescue humanity from drought, though. With any luck, we’ll all be kicking it on the shores of Kraken Mare by 2050, so we won’t have to worry about it.

A few days ago, Ray Harryhausen passed away. I got the news over Facebook, which is where I find out about all celebrity deaths nowadays. Most of the time, I’m not affected all that much, but this one hit me pretty hard.

You may or may not know who Harryhausen was, but he was one of the most influential figures in my life. He was a stop-motion animator who brought myths and gods to life. His film credits include Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, Mighty Joe Young and One Million Years B.C. He was 92 years old.

When I was in kindergarten, I had a Clash of the Titans-branded lunch box—one of those tin jobs with the plastic Thermos inside. The front was a relief of the scene where Perseus, riding upon the winged horse Pegasus, stares down the monstrous Kraken, holding the severed head of Medusa aloft. I’d seen the movie more times than I could count. The Medusa scenes scared the shit out of me, so I usually covered my eyes for those, but I was completely blown away by what I was watching. There were giant scorpions emerging from the ground, blind witches, three-headed dogs and all kinds of other critters. I didn’t know who Ray Harryhausen was, mind you, but it was like I was watching magic on screen…the real kind, not that David Blaine shit.

I held onto that lunchbox for years, well into third grade even after some spillage had caused the interior to rust. My mother wanted to throw it out because that couldn’t have been healthy, but I begged her not to. She covered the inside with contact paper so I wouldn’t get sick from sticking my lunch in the nasty old box. Thanks, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.

Monster movies were all I watched growing up. Anything Godzilla was good. Harryhausen didn’t have anything to do with those, but there was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Both were favorites that I’d watch over and over again, and both were the result of Harryhausen’s painstaking craft. He’d build fantastic creature models and move them inch by inch, taking pictures with a 16mm camera and then blend them with live actors in such a way that you’d think they were actually real. Sure, if you compare it to the computerized wizardry of today’s special effects films, they’d look silly or childish, but there was a heart to Harryhausen’s work that’s lacking in modern movies.

It wasn’t until years later that I knew that all of these films could be traced back to one man. I admired him endlessly for it. When I was an adult, I had the privilege of interviewing him for another publication, and it was one of the biggest thrills of my life. I had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning and spoke with him over the phone from his home in England. I told him what a big influence he’d had on my life, and he seemed genuinely grateful and humbled to hear it. Here’s a guy who’d influenced important filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, talking to me, who doesn’t have a resume nearly as impressive as those guys, and he was still so gracious. It was a moment I’ll cherish forever.

Though I didn’t know his name as a child, Ray Harryhausen was the first person who really inspired my imagination. This past winter, before he passed, I decided to get my first tattoo. I chose Bubo, the mechanical owl who’d helped guide Perseus through his adventure in Clash of the Titans. I got it to remind myself that even though I’m getting older and have a serious day job now that having an imagination is still important. If it wasn’t for Harryhausen, I probably would’ve ended up a banker or something like that. Maybe I should be upset, because if I had gone on to more lucrative pursuits, my credit rating wouldn’t be as shitty as it currently is, but I’ll be forever grateful to him for inspiring me to follow my creative passions. If it weren’t for his films, I probably would’ve never wanted to tell my own stories by becoming a writer. So, thanks, Ray. You will be missed.

Taken 2

Rated PG-13

Liam Neeson has played some big name bad asses during the course of his lauded movie career. He was one of the Knights of the Round Table, Gawain, in Excalibur and Kegan in my favorite fantasy schlock fest Krull (come on, Krull was awesome!) back in the ‘80s. More recently he’s been stone cold criminal mastermind Ra’s Al Ghul in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and even starred as Zeus himself in the 2010’s Clash of the Titans and its 2012 sequel Wrath of the Titans. He’s even portrayed real life heroes like Rob Roy, Michael Collins and Oskar Schindler. It’s strange then that even with this impressive canon of roles he’s performed that Bryan Mills has become one of his most iconic. The character has become a cult hit among the Internet meme generation, and that’s a credit to Neeson, because though Mills is a retired U.S. spy who can easily throttle baddies, he’s not as flashy as your James Bonds or Jason Bournes. Taken was released back in 2008, and judging by the crowd at the theater on opening night, it would seem that this sequel was highly anticipated. Taken 2 delivers plenty of high-octane Neeson-ocity, which almost masks the fact that it’s kind of a by-the-numbers action flick.

The cool thing about Mills is that though he’s a kick-ass spy, he’s also a dad. In the first film, he unleashed holy hell on a horde of faceless villains in order to retrieve his daughter Kim (played in both films by Lost alum Maggie Grace). So, while Bourne whoops butt in hopes of regaining his identity, or Bond thwarts evildoers so he can score with a bevy of exotic women, Mills is much more relatable. Hey, he’s just a family man, you know? Why do you have to go and mess with the dude’s family?

Taken 2 sees Mills pitted against another family man, Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija). Krasniqi’s son was the man who kidnapped Kim in the first film and met a horrid end at the hands of Mills. Krasniqi assembles a group of ornery henchmen to exact revenge upon Mills and tracks the former spy to Istanbul, Turkey, where he’s relaxing with his ex-wife/baby momma, Lenore (Famke Janssen), and daughter. This time around, though, it’s Mills and Lenore who are “taken” leaving Kim to bust her parents out of a dungeon buried deep in the winding streets of Istanbul.

There are cutesy moments of Mills’ family life. He uses his spy training to track Kim down to her new boyfriend’s house and teaches her how to pass her road test. He gives Lenore a shoulder to cry on when he discovers that her new husband is just a big ol’ jerk, and on a boat in Istanbul, Mills asks Kim if this boy of hers is someone she thinks is special. It’s all very sweet and antiseptic.

Luckily, Mills is better at incapacitating well-armed villains than he is at Talking About Feelings. Be it via hand-to-hand combat or packing heat, he’s a one-man wrecking crew who’ll stop at nothing to defend his family and ensure that they will never again have to fear for their lives. There are some neat action sequences here, such as when Kim, still new to driving, escapes from corrupt Turkish police through labyrinthine streets with poppa bear in the passenger seat, unloading clip after clip into their pursuers. An epic boss fight occurs as Mills takes on Krasniqi’s head henchman, the man who was in charge of torturing his wife. Neeson, now 60 years old, more than holds his own in the fast-paced, bare-fisted battle.

Don’t worry, I won’t ruin the outcome for you, but you can probably guess who wins. But the burning question left for the end of the film is whether or not Kim will pass her road test. Spoiler alert: She gets a perfect score!