President Pryor's Convictions

I just watched a clip from The Richard Pryor Show where Pryor portrays himself as Jimmy Carter's successor-in-POTUS. I was struck not only by how many not-yet-stars there were (can you spot Robin Williams?), but also how the jokes had aged.

Set-up 1 (0:32): The worsening situation in the mid-east

• Punchline: There isn't any (ha-ha, Richard Pryor was being SERIOUS)
• Metapunch: It's 33 years later and this premise still works. Let's face it: it will always work. -_-

Set-up 2 (0:57): SALT/Neutron Bombs

• Punchline: Either Pryor misread his prompter, or something funny happened off-screen.
• Metapunch: Despite few ERWs, the US still has arms reduction talks with Russia and still has a President that can't go off-prompter. ZING!

Set-up 3 (1:43): ≤5% Unemployment

• Punchline: For minorities it's 45%! ...Ha?
• Metapunch: Annual-avg-unemployment wouldn't dip below 5% for another 20 years, since when it has nigh-doubled. The unemployment rate for Black people in America hovers 'round double the general population's, but in March it was "only" 7-tenths higher. So, yeah, way to play the race card over nothing, President Pryor.

Set-Up 4 (2:20): You just okayed a $250m increase in our space program

• Punchline: I think it's time Black people went to space. White people have been going to space for years, and "spacing out" on us, you might say. [blahblah] Miles Davis.
• Metapunch: First of all, wow, John Witherspoon in a suit. Second of all, three years later a Black person did reach space...a cosmonaut.[1] Thirdly, the current-POTUS still has plans for space travel, if not extra-galaxial.

Set-Up 5 (3:17): On your list of candidates for director of the FBI, are you including Huey Newton?

• Punchline: "Yes...he knows the ins and outs of the FBI."
• Metapunch: Newton's most lasting contribution to the next 33 years was probably being the inspiration for Huey Freeman.

Set-Up 6 (3:41): Blacks in the labor force

• Punchline: "I plan not only to have lots of Black quarterbacks, but we gon' have Black coaches and Black owners of teams...I'm tired of this mess that's been goin' down; ever since the Rams got rid of James Harris my jaw's been uptight. You know what I'm talkin' 'bout?"
• Metapunch: While Blackness isn't exactly a non-issue in the NFL, there have been lots of Black QBs and coaches. I don't think there have been any Black owners, though. Of course, the real president has better things to do than worry about professional American football...like worry about amateur American football.[2]

Set-up 7 (4:37): Mississipi Herald

• Punchline: President Pryor refuses to answer a journalist's question on the assumption he's from a racist organization.
• Metapunch: Obama obviously feels Ailes is out to get him, but even he recently sat down with Fox News.

Set-up 8 (4:48): A Christian Woman's News reporter asks if President Pryor will keep "courting" white women

• Punchline: "As long as I can keep it up. I mean, why you think they call it the White House?"
• Metapunch: The chick who asked this question was kinda hot.

Set-up 9 (5:34): Yo MOMMA

• Punchline: When you say bad things about a Black man's mother, he becomes angry.
• Metapunch: Obama had a teenage mother named Stanley who married an older man that was already married, then she dumped her kid off with her parents and ran off to Indonesia to further her career...YET THIS WASN'T AN ISSUE!

[1] I'm not saying it was better to be Black in the Soviet Union or Cuba than it was in America...I'm just sayin'. p_o

[2] The whole idea of Ebony sending a Black Muslim journalist — who then calls a silent Sarah Sandra Bernhard "Snow White" — to ask Obama about helping Black people get jobs...this sequence could just never happen today. I mean, really, Ebony having journalists? ¿Amirite? ^_^

Pride Cometh Before the Autumn

My latest favest TvTropes, fresh for [two]oh-ten, suckaz!

• Ever seen an invisible character beat the crap out of antagonists, even when they know s/he's coming? But, wait, how can you see someone that's invisible? The Badass Blink. (e.g. The only time you can see Batman is when he is kicking your ass.)
• When a supposedly awesome attack ends up effecting negligible damage, what you have isn't awesome: it's a Worf Barrage. The trope's named after Star Trek: TNG's resident Klingon warrior Worf, who can't win a fight for his life.
• Shows are often criticized for worsening over time, i.e. "jumping the shark." But some shows gets better over time. This is called "growing the beard." Again, this is named after Star Trek, but the most important example in my memory is the growth of the The Daily Show after Jon Stewart took over for Criag Kilborn.
• Deadpool. Just a hilarious read.[1]
• Villains like to brag and show-off, but sometimes they bite off more than they can chew — say, an evil frog who wants to be an ox — and end up paying the price. Derived from an Æsop fable, this gets my love for its real world example of Reggie Miller!

Miller is a guy who posted game winners over Michael Jordan, utterly annihilated the Knicks, and even taunted Spike Lee with a choking gesture... but the Pacers have never-ever-EVER won a championship.

PONÊD!

[1] Honorable mention to the Candlejack entr—...

What Measure is a Trope?

In the vein of the last post, here are 5 TvTropes entries I like:[1]

• You enter a dungeon, get past several devious puzzles, and avoid all sorts of nasty traps through your psychic powers and reflexes. As you you walk through the final door you find... your love interest lying on the ground and her kid brother on crutches mourning over her. How did they get there? They Took A Shortcut.
• You can shoot fast-moving vehicles with you missiles, but can't attack stationary buildings. Some building time and resources later, You Have Researched Breathing, and you can do that. Also prone to happen in any other type of game with character customization or unlockables (you can't wear boots until you play enough...).
• A seemingly trivial obstacle cannot be circumvented or removed with brute force. There are several variations of the Insurmountable Waist Height Fence, such as: The Adamantium Door,The Impassable Forest, The Gentle Slope of Unlclimability, and The Ledge of Instant Death.
• No matter how urgent your quest is, you can always take your time achieving unnecessary goals before finishing the main one. On a smaller scale, even the most pressing, immediate tasks, such as rescuing a fellow character who is dangling off a ledge at five hundred feet in the air, can be done at one's leisure.[2]
• Hot Skitty on Wailord Action (HSOWA). Any work of fiction in which two grossly dissimilar species are somehow capable of interbreeding. This pretty much misses the point of the term "species", which is supposed to indicate which animals can breed successfully.

My interest in the site actually derived from the HSOWA entry on Bulbapedia.

[1] In general I avoid TvTropes because it is the most sticky of wikis.

[2] But see: Timed Mission

The Good PokeShip Hippop[otas]

For a while I've considered The Muppet Wiki as the world's best fanwank after Das Trekkers' Memory-Alpha. But Fuck Yeah PokeMeme has me reading Bulbabedia a lot lately, and I gotta give those kids credit.

Following are my five favorite entries (ephhwiyi: I find these genuinely interesting p_^;;; )

• Legendary PokéMon, A to Z. DYK: The Weather Trio is based on the Old Testament?
• Cartoon characters' clothing. DYK: Ash pretended to be a girl to enter Celadon Gym?
• 130+ romantic relationships. DYK: 13 of the entries feature people/PokéMon pairs?
• CODs/Characters of the Day. DYK: Ash's combatant in EP076 was Pete Pebbleman?
• PokéMon World & Universe. DYK: Most game locations can be mapped onto Japan?
• A Catch Rate for a PokéMon. DYK: Rarity of finding a PokéMon is unrelated to this?

How could you NOT love that? I mean, besides not being a dork. But, if you're not a dork, how'd you even find this? Mad suss, son...

Top Ten Tea Em

Google's new database of court cases is pretty sexy for those of us without WestLaw or LexisNexis. But even more importantly, it has some ridiculous IP-infringement cases.

Carson v. Here's Johnny Portables (6th Cir. 1983)

For all you kids out there, Johnny Carson was a more sedate (and successful) Conan O'Brien. Ed McMahon — he's was akin to an untalented Max Weinberg — would announce Carson's coming onstage, by saying "Hereeeee's Johnny!"

Well, as you may or may not know, "John" is another word for toilet[1]. So a portable-potty company took the name, and appended "The World's Foremost Commodian," in order to make "a good play on a phrase," which was the 80s equivalent of "see what I did there?"

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it didn't violate ™ acts because nobody in their right mind would confuse a "Here's Johnny" chamber pot with the actual Johnny Carson (the same could not be said of Ed McMahon. Hi-ooooh![2]). However, the company did violate Carson's "right of publicity" which is a thing that was made up. Lawyers call that "common law."

Cher v. Forum Int'l Ltd (9th Cir. 1982)

This is actually a pretty boring case, something about magazines "exclusives." The ∆ again failed on "right of publicity." I'd just like to point out the document really listed just the one name for Cher. This is actually a good segue into...

Abdul-Jabbar v. General Motors Co. (9th Cir. 1996. [En Banc, bitches!])

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a basketball player who converted to Islam back when it was cool. He didn't even have to go to jail first! About 30 years later, GMC aired an ad comparing its 88 Oldsmobile[3] Consumer Digest[5] award to Kareem's awards in college. But, see, Kareem's name wasn't "Kareem" then; it was "Lew." GMC figured when you change your name you lose your rights to it.

GMC lost on account of douchiness.

The New Kids on the Block v. [Star & USA Today] (9th Cir. 1992)

Two newspapers ran 900-number polls on which was the hottest New Kid. NKotB sued them both, arguing that it looked like they were sponsoring the newspaper polls. Judge Kozinski absolutely tore into NKotB, saying they were a "blitzkreig" trying to create a "hegemon," and proclaiming they don't have "the right to control their fans' use of their own money."

The case also cites a bunch of interesting ones I won't abstract, including the Kellog/Nabisco "shredded wheat" debate, the landmark Disney/Air Pirates satire case, and Nintendo's unsuccessful fight against the Game Genie.

FYI: USA Today and Star made a combined $2500 from the phone lines, and USA Today donated its profits to the Berklee School of Music. And people wonder why I hate NKotB.

Sid & Marty Krofft Television[6] Prod. v. McDonald's Corp. (9th Cir. 1977)

The makers of H. R. Pufnstuf sued Mickey Dees for stealing their aesthetic to make McDonaldland. Again, for the kids, H. R. Pufnstuf was like 'Saul and the Mole Men,' but sincere and, thus, more frightening. McD's ad agency had been calling the Pufnstuf people asking them to license the rights, then suddenly stopped, hired people that used to work on the show, and went ahead with the ad campaign anyway. The Pufnstuf characters were actually replaced by the McDonaldland ones in the Ice Capades.[7]

McD's tried to use the 1st Amendment as a defense! More like Mc'Dicks. Hi-oohhh!

Nat'l Comics Publ'n v. Fawcett Publ'n (2nd Cir. 1951)

Ohhh shoot, it's the mid-century 2nd Circuit, aka The Judge Learned Hand[8] Show!

Nothing really cool happens in this case. Basically Fawcett made a bootleg Superman called "Captain Marvel," so DC sued them. All Hand did was remand it because the District Court somehow didn't understand the concept of plagiarism. Eventually DC ended up owning Fawcett, leading to the awesome fight embedded at the right, and setting precedent for...

Warner Bros. Inc., v. ABC (2nd Cir. 1983)

During the 80's had a show called 'The Greatest American Hero,' about a man given a super-powered suit by aliens. How could they remake 'V' and ignore this‽‽‽ Anyway, the 2nd Circuit affirmed a ruling against DC, which had felt TGAH was onein a long line of Superman bite-offs. It's likely the greenlighting of 'The Greatest American Hero' was precipitated by the cinematic success of the Christopher Reeves Superman films, but that'd be like if Fox sued Universal for making 'Battlestar Galactica' after Star Wars. Oh, wait, they did? NM lawl

Sidebar: The Greatest American Hero had The Greatest American Theme Song.

Parks v. LaFace Records (E.D. Mich. 1999)

Rosa Parks sued Outkast because they made the song "Rosa Parks." The court ruled that nobody would think she sponsored it, because, y'know, people don't sponsor songs. ...Yet. Roc Nation, get on that.

Universal City Studios v. Nintendo Co. (2d. Cir 1984)

Universal sued Nintendo because people it was afraid people would confuse Nintendo's "Donkey Kong" with movie character "King Kong." Because, of course, King Kong was about 10' ape that threw barrels at plumbers in succeedingly complex — yet always incomplete — architecture. Nintendo actually ended up suing Universal for licesning King Kong to Tiger to make a bootleg Donkey Kong.

At the end of the case, the court compares Universal's claim unfavorably to the Cowboys' against Debbie Does Dallas. So, if you wever wanted to make that connection in your mind, go ahead.

Finally we come to my all time favorite number one case[9]:
Univ. of Notre Dame Du Lac v. 20th Century Fox (N.Y. App. Div. 1965)

Notre Dame sues Fox for optioning a book involving the school's football team. Since Notre Dame lost this case, I wonder what happened to the film. I feel if it had come out, we'd all have heard of it. Here is the plot description:

The Muslim king of a fake Arab state sends his son to Notre Dame, but the kid doesn't make the football team. Lusting for revenge, the king, forms his own team to defeat the Fightin' Irish. He hires — and this is where it gets cookin' — John Goldfarb, a Jewish CIA operative on his way to Russia who accidentally lands in the kingdom. Somehow the king parlays this into blackmailing the State Department to send Notre Dame over. Once they arrive, the Irish are rendered sick by a meal of spiced mongoose and lose the game (which, for some reason, was being ref'd by the CIA's Director). A female American reporter on the king's side ends up scoring the winning TD when — at the last minute — oil springs from under the field and pushes her past the goaline.

You're going to sit there and tell me you wouldn't watch that? While I didn't find it on IMDb, I did find 1998's Goldfarb: "A team of high school idiots are hired by a suburban mad scientist to track down and destroy a rogue zombie." I can't decide which has the better plot, probably because both are far too fabulous for me to comprehend.

Sadly, the "50 Cent v. Mexcian Club Promoters" case is not in Google's database. Anyone with WestLaw can hit up 2008 WL 4648999 (S.D.Fla.)

[1] I'd tell you to look it up on UrbanDictionary but I imagine the first hit would either be about prostitutes or some disturbing sex act.
[2] Ed McMahon:Hi-Oh::Mike Meyers:That's What She Said. nOrly.
[3] For people from the future[4]: The 88 was not the year: it was the flagship "full-size" Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile was a line of vehicles that GMC bought in 1908 and phased out in 2004. GMC was a car company in Detroit. Detroit was a city in America. We now know America as the half of the Obama Socialist Kingdom of Kenya that allows slavery.
[4] I totally stole this gag from Bill Simmons. Sosumi.
[5] Who remembers Zillions? I loved those CD/mutual fund/bond racetrack charticles.
[6] The Bluebook has abbreviations for "telegraph" and "telephone" but not "television."
[7] About 20 years after first hearing about them, I now realize "Ice Capadaes" is a pun on "escapades." Like they said in the 80's that's "a good play on the phrase."
[8] Yes, that was his real name. One time he was cited by Judge Minor Wisdom, and it totally blew the minds of a bunch of Boalt burnouts.
[9] Not counting cases that involve "loss of consortium." ::giggles::

When I Say "Sexy Robin" I Don't Mean Thicke

Hating on Halloween costumes is old hat. "Oh no, they made something not-sexy sexy. I can't believe how offensive that is." Still, I saw a few recently that really made me worry.*

1. Sexy Tin Woman

I'm as big a fan of slash as the next guy, but this just ruins Wicked for me. Also, everyone knows Tin Man didn't have a brain, so imagine how much of a bimbo this person has to be.

Plus the Tin Man was made_of_tin. Tin Woman shouldn't be showing flesh; this isn't "Sexy Cyborg." Which reminds me, is Lee Thompson Young ever coming back to 'Smallville'?

2. Sexy Ms Voorhees**

From Supergirl to The Next Karate Kid to Episode II: Attack of the Clones, female-version films fare pretty poorly. However, the Friday the 13th franchise STARTED with a female villain: Jason's mom. Why not make "Sexy Pamela Vorhees"??

And since when did slashers walk around with logos like NACAR drivers? You know your costume concept is weak when you have include more labels than an editorial cartoonist. This outfit is closer to "Sexy Anaheim Might Duck."

3. Judy Jetson Adult Costume

They don't even have the guts to come out and say, "Sexy Judy Jetson" with this one. No, she's "adult." Now, there are cartoon characters that are supposed to be sexy, like Josie & The Pussycats. Some are supposed to be sexy but we're not supposed to be okay with that, like Lola Bunny. A few accidentally end up sexy, like Velma Dinkley. Judy Jetson fits none of those categories. Even "Sexy Pebbles" would be better, because you have the "Maybe they mean Pebbles Flinstone-Rubble" excuse.

Does Judy Jetson ever grow up? For all we know about the Jetson's timeline, the earth explodes before then. Anyone wearing this is doing nothing but advocating ephebophilia, at which point they just dress up as Miley Cyrus and get some social commentary value out of the evening.

4. Sexy Spongebob Squarepants

...Never mind, this is legitimately hot. ::drools::

*I'm giving Sexy Wednesday Addams a pass because she has been depicted as a grown-up. Similarly, Sexy Robin isn't so shocking since the character has been a woman, but I can't help thinking about Seduction of the Innocent.

**Do you think Lark Voorhies had to endure ribbing when the Friday the 13th films got popular?

Spoilers, Sex & Songs

Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is the backing track to a love scene in Watchmen. Although considering it a sexual song is not a novel concept, there is now a very specific scene which I will forever associate with it.

• "Rock Lobster" - B-52's (Knocked Up)
— Near as I can tell, this song is gibberish (unless a "rock lobster" is some weird phallic reference), but it plays when Seth Rogen performs the titular act upon Katherine Heigl.

• "Faithfully" - Journey (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby)
— Back before anyone was enchanted[1] by Amy Adams, she delivered one of my favourite movie-motivation speeches to Will Ferrell as Journey's "Faithfully" demi-diagetically plays in the background. It's not so much that this isn't a love song, but what Ferell and Adams do during it is...not quite romantic.

• "Street Lights" - kanYe ('Grey's Anatomy')
— kanYe's lamentations on his inability to reach a point in life that he's already paid his dues at which to arrive becomes an excuse for Sandra Oh to impersonate Marilyn Monroe.

• "Crazy On You" - Heart (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle)
— Unlike "Faithfully," the manic meter of "Crazy on You" matches the fervor of the...affection...of this pair The scene merely happens to feature a gigantic, anthropmorphic bag of weed. One can debate whether more obvious choices would have been better.

• Honourable mention: "How To Say Goodbye" - Paul Tiernan (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist)

[1] No level of irony can mitigate how horrible that was, so I will just apologize. (._.)

Joe Kelly Likes Pablo Neruda Puns

In the last episode of 'How I Met Your Mother', Ted -- while nude -- cites the following poem as being his favourite:


Get it? 'Cause it's about being nude!

Somewhere there must be someone else blogging about this. Not because HIMYM has a sizable Spanish-speaking audience[1], but because its Nielsen sample ratings among 18-49 year-olds consistently put it on par with 'The Office.' Those are the bloggers, right?

Or maybe the bloggers are the people with DVRs that can over-analyze every frame. Does that mean somewhere there is a dedicated '90210' online fandom like for Chisme Chica and SPN?

[1] Tangentially, it has a very white cast for a show set in Manhattan.

The City's Spoony Bard

14 years ago[1], there was a Saturday morning cartoon about a blue superhero who used "spoon" as a battlecry. Even now — for a certain class of people — "spoon" conjures up images of a valiant warrior going into battle against villains with chairs for faces, Mad Bombers What Bomb at Midnight, and Soviet-made computers that speak like vaqueros.

Suffice to say, it was one of the best shows ever made in the history of showmaking, and you can tell by the fact that someone, somewhere, typed spoon out to 97 o's[2]. Here's a graph of Google hits yesterday for "sp[o^x]," where 3≤x≤100[3].

[1] Judging by the fact that I was watching Saturday Morning Cartoons only 14 years ago, would you guess that am I young , immature, or both?
[2] I accidentally skipped 63 Os when I was making the graphic, so if you count backwards from 100 Os you'll get the wrong number. /")_("\
[3] Google hits where x=2 were ≈31.6 million, at x=1 it's ≈7.4 million and for x=0 it's ≈10.8 million (S.P.N. is a surprisingly popular name.)

Where Was Kang? OR Token July Post!

I slapped together Box Office Mojo's separate lists of TV-to-film adaptations -- Cartoon-to-Cartoon, Cartoon-to-Live Action, and Live Action-to-Live Action[1] -- to see how The Simpsons Movie stacks up. At current estimates, it has the highest opening-weekend gross[2]:

The Simpsons Movie $71,850,000 7/27/07
Mission: Impossible II $70,616,300 5/24/00
Mission: Impossible $67,641,300 5/22/96
Scooby-Doo $61,332,500 6/14/02
Charlie's Angels $48,988,100 11/3/00

Even more surprising, of the 56 cartoon-to-film transitions BoxOfficeMojo's tracked since 1980, The Simpsons Movie already has the 14th-highest total gross[adj]:

The Flintstones $205,477,300 5/27/94
Scooby-Doo $173,610,300 6/14/02
Casper $151,760,800 5/26/95
George of the Jungle $150,900,300 7/18/97
The Rugrats Movie $139,477,700 11/20/98
Inspector Gadget $126,163,900 7/23/99
Popeye $121,872,000 12/12/80
Pokemon: The 1st Movie $110,927,500 11/10/99
Rugrats in Paris $92,925,900 11/17/00
Beavis and Butt-Head $92,1877,00 12/20/96
SpongeBob SquarePants $90,357,400 11/19/04
Scooby-Doo 2 $89,234,600 3/26/04
Garfield: The Movie $79,860,200 6/11/04
The Simpsons Movie $71,8500,00 7/27/07
South Park $67,403,000 6/30/99

A few things about that list (and f00 things about the data set):
1) The Simpsons Movie made more in its first weekend than Bigger, Longer, Uncut made in its whole run.
2) Popeye, Beavis & Butt-Head Do America, and George of the Jungle made a lot more than I remember.
3) Box Office Mojo doesn't think Transformers ($287M) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ($210M[adj]) count as TV-to-film adaptations.
π) MST3K ($1.5M), Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy ($3.95M), and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm ($8.9M), made less combined than the opening weekend of the 1994's Little Rascals ($15.8M).[3] In fact, MST3K has the fourth lowest overall gross of the 117 movies in the set.[4]

Given how much of its gross was due to upfront demand, The Simpsons Movie is a longshot to surpass The Flinstones, so there's no way it's getting to the dataset's overall leader: The Fugitive ($292M[adj]). I'd go into where its chances stand in terms of animation-in-general, but then I'd have to contemplate the possibility of Shrek the Third grossing 150% of Ratatouille,[5] and that's just not right.


[1] Why aren't there Live Action-to-Cartoon adaptation? I would argue that 'Clone Wars' was better than AotC, Fox Kids' 'Godzilla' was better than Tristar's G.I.N.O., and I have fuzzily fond memories of 'Teen Wolf.'
[2] Inflation-adjusted, 'natch.
[3] All Ibid.
[4] カウボーイビバップ 天国の扉,, 劇場版ポケットモンスター 水の都の護神 ラティアスとラティオス,, and Gumby bring up the rear.
[5] Not counting foreign box-office, which is going down in my list of future-entry-ideas, along with comparing the Marx Bros & Cary Grant Monkey Business-es and concocting an "Everybody Votes" Omnibus.

Biting the Onion

Let the record show that I am not a 'Family Guy' hater. At the very least, it has the most interestingly named creative staff of any American TV show. Case in point: tonight's episode, written by "a.bo." That's my favorite non-nom de plume since "Jennifer 8 Lee"[1].

Unfortunately a.bo also seems to be kinda a copycat. The following joke about women being unable to serve as politicians because they'll be too busy visiting their Aunt Flo is a lot like "Rich Durban"'s quote in this Onion article.

It's possible that:
1) a.bo has never read the article
2) In shades of 'Studio 60'[2], a.bo actually wrote the original article. A similar thing happened when Mike Henry got his "Kicked in the Nuts" character on an episode in 2005.[3]
3) There are a gajillion other bloggers making the exact same connection right now (my housemate might be one of them, since we both caught the similarity).

Maybe one of them can make sense of all of this, because I would rather finish my game of imaginary baseball. Go fake RedSox!

[1]Link chosen solely for irony
[2]Whoever made this graph is inspiring me to make more charts. p_^
[3]That doesn't explain away these, though...

Making Meta-Meta on Metahumans

The forthcoming Aishwariy...Ashwary...Naveen Andrews movie serves as a good excuse to deconstruct another Kal Penn performance, since one Desi dude deserves another. While waiting for Epic Movie to "arrive from Netflix" I fought my TiNo inclinations and caught up on some 'Smallville.'[1] I started with 'Noir,' which sets itself up as an homage to films like The Big Sleep, which made me want to review The Big Sleep.[2]

First I had to make sure nobody else had tried this, because I hate being one of those people who attempts to be insightful but really retreads commonly held pop-cultural sentiments.[3] I fired up the ol Technorati, and I didn't find a straightforward Sleep v 'Smallville' comparison, but I found enough other entries to make me not want to try:
A running commentary (and an ironical use of the word "irregardless")
Screencaps galore (and an Erica Durance/Rita Hayworth comparison)
Iceman References (and different text from the TwoP site)
Pointing out that Philip Marlowe isn't Sam Spade (and the least text taken to spoil a plot ever)
Hair hangups (and synergy)

My favorite, however, has to be Smallville Guide's dueling reviews + transcript. That's love.


[1]You would hard pressed to find a sadder sentence in the English language.
[2]Si le haces una fiesta a una cerdita...
[3] Reason #[limit n—>∞((1+1/n)^n)] that I should never get a PhD

The Alien Costume: Part 1

Why I Wanted to See it: In anticipation of Spider-Man 3 I rewatched the beginning of the 94 cartoon's alien symbiote saga. Why this series isn't on DVD in its entirety, or why I don't know of a blog devoted to it is beyond me.[1] Granted SM[:TAS?] lacks the groundbreaking seriousness of the Timmverse Batman, the convoluted comics wonkery of FOX's 'X-Men'[2], or the animation fluidity of post-Saturday Morning ghetto superhero shows like 'Teen Titans' but it had its own charm and, in any case, is likely the source text for the movie.[3]

Why I'm Glad I Did: Much like Spider-Man's origin, there's no way to explain his black costume that's not stupid.[4] That doesn't matter, though, because it's simply awesome: shape-shifting, strength augmentation, turning one into a jerk and, I mean, look at it: it's black! How is that not enough?

The best part is the nightmare Spidey has when the not-yet-revealed as a symbiote takes over his body as he sleeps: he envisions the suit and his original red-blue-threads battling it out 怪獣, style. Once the black suit wins by shoving the original on some power lines, it swallows Spidey-as-Peter Parker, and then he wakes up hanging upside down in the "emo" outfit. If that sounds familiar, it's because the movie trailer clearly swipes it. Whichever of the six writers[5] for this episode came up with that, you better get your residuals.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: Every animation misstep in this episode has stuck in my mind for the past 13 years because it vacillates between excellent — Message to Sony Imageworks: this is what Spider-Man looks like swinging webs — and blatantly cost-cutting. No other series so shoddily reused animation: when the super-villain Rhino fights Spidey in a space shuttle teetering on the edge of the GWB[6], they used the same footage of the shuttle tilting back and forth a half-dozen times within two minutes.

'Alien Symbiote' is actually one of the better episodes in that regard, so my main problems are little script issues. Why does Peter Parker just leave his Spider-tracer-locator in his closet? How did transforming the symbiote into a police uniform let Spidey escape, when he did so in the middle of daytime traffic? I don't see how the security guarding "the specially enhanced control rods" the Kingpin was stealing for Alistair Smythe expected to stop The Rhino[7] by (irony of ironies) randomly charging.

Why I'm Ambivalent: Spider-Man's voice actor is really unconvincing as someone with edge, and this approaches ludicrous heights in the next episode. It's very uncomfortable to listen to, but haunting in its own way. Picture Greg Brady maniacally screaming "I'll tear you limb from liiiimb!" and you should get my point.

[1] Given how large the comic sub-blogosphere is, there might be lots, but I'm just not indie enough to get into that set. I do follow a decent blog on the Spider-Man newspaper strip, though.
[2] They revealed that Immortus was the main character behind this huge time/reality traveling story arc...except they never explained who Immortus was.
[3] Simply because there's no space for either the Beyonder or Richard Parker in a movie already packed — Batman & Robin style, it seems — with three villains.
[4] I don't know what was worse: Todd McFarlane's rationale in Spider-Man #13, or Bendis' rationale post-Civil War.
[5] Stan "The Man (aka The King's Second Banana)" Lee, Avi "Got Out While the Gettin Was Good" Arad, Len "Wolverine" Wein, Meg "I'm Sorry But I've Never Heard of Her" McLaughlin, Stan "Paul Dini Don't Run This" Berkowitz & John "Oh Shoot, He's Black!" Semper
[6] An equally awesome and unreasonable setting
[7] Wow, y'know, the cast list for this episode actually seems to be a lot longer than the movie. There's hope yet.