Bender's Back, Baby!

2013-06-20, 8:36 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Comics, Stream of Consciousness, TV

"Guess this is your lucky day, Pimparoo."

That would have been my one-sentence reaction to the returning Futurama, but then the third act happened. (I haven't watched Fry and Leela's Big Fling yet, just 2-D Blacktop.)

There are a lot of great Futurama episodes. The best have an emotional core to them -- Jurassic Bark, Luck of the Fry-rish, Godfellas. Other great episodes experiment with the format of the show -- any of the Anthology episodes, for example. (Well, I wouldn't describe the Holiday Spectacular as great, but all the rest.) Some are deftly-written time-travel stories, like Time Keeps On Slippin', Roswell that Ends Well, The Why of Fry, Bender's Big Score, and The Late Philip J Fry. Some are biting political satire, like any episode with Nixon in it. And some of them do clever things with the medium of animation -- like Reincarnation. And this one.

The Professor's hypercube was a nice touch. The Mobius strip played with the concept a little more. But the actual segment where they're caught in the Second Dimension is fucking ingenious. The writing -- the Professor explaining how everything works here -- is brilliant, and the design is even better.

This is an episode that did immensely fucking clever things with science fiction and with animation. I've never seen anything quite like it -- the closest thing I can think of is Homer3, which played on the same premise in the opposite direction.

The show's had its ups and downs. But as this just-started thirteen-episode run is the last we'll be seeing of it for awhile, it's great seeing it fire on all creative cylinders and do shit that I've never seen it or any other show do.

Also: the latest issue of the comic is legitimately great too. Zoidberg becomes unstuck in time and has to prevent a catastrophe from happening while still trying to piece together just what exactly is going on.

Nigeria

2013-06-19, 8:47 pm
Categories: TV

DEAR TO MY FRIEND THE MISTER PHILIP MORRIS

I AM WRITING ON BEHALF OF THE HON. MGUMBU D'CHINBE, DUKE OF LAGOS. AS YOU MAY WELL KNOW THE ROYAL FAMILY WAS DEPOSED IN THE GREAT COUP OF 2006. THE DUKE IT IS BARELY ESCAPED WITH THE CLOTHES OF HIS BACK AND SUBSISTS NOW IN POLITICAL EXILE.

PLEASE TO BE ADVISED THAT THE DUKE THROUGH LOYALISTS STILL IN THE CAPITOL HAS REASONED A DEVICE BY WHICH TO RESECURING HIS VAST FORTUNE AND WEALTHS BUT HE IS UNABLE TO PROVIDE THE FUNDINGS FOR THE DEPOSIT OF MONIES. WE NEED BUT A SMALL CASH ADVANCE OF TEN THOUSAND (1,0000) BRITISH POUNDS (LBS) AND WE WILL BE PROVIDE ALL THE DUKES MONIES ONCE MORE.

I BESEECH THAT YOU HELP US TO IN OUR TIME OF THE NEED AND PLEASE ASSURANCES THAT IN RETURN FOR YOUR GREATEST OF GENEROSITYS WE WILL REWARD YOU WITH THE DUKES 3 TONNES COLLECTION OF OLD FILM INCLUDING NINETY (90) LOST EPISODES OF DR WHO.

GOD BLESSING TO YOU

YOURS IN CHRIST

BENJAMIN JONES

Originally posted at Bleeding Cool, last night.

And if you want to know just what the fuck that was all about, you should probably read some Bleeding Cool.

The Zappas on Video Games

2013-06-18, 9:09 pm
Categories: Books, Cartoons, Games, Movies, Music, Politics, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

The benefits of being a pack rat:

Sharkey posted this on his blog in...according to the date stamp, November of 2002.

I remembered it a couple days ago and I thought, you know what? I bet I don't even have to dig through old hard drives to find it. I bet my obsessive process of backing up data and copying it over from old computer to new has survived two new computers, four different Linux distributions, and I don't even know how the hell many hard drives. (I am, after all, the guy who corrupted his hard drive when he installed Windows 98 and recovered the data in 2008.)

Anyhow, I was right. Sitting right here on my current computer, after all those moves.

(And then I get to thinking, "Wait...I've only gotten two new computers in the last decade?" But then I remember no, there's also the Mac Mini I used to have hooked up to my TV and now use as a backup server, the Win7 desktop I currently have hooked up to my TV, my laptop, my phone, my tablet, and assorted old towers that have managed to pile up in my office and get used occasionally for various purposes. Plus my wife's desktop and two laptops.)

You know, just the other day my coworkers were talking about Hoarders, and I commented that the nice thing about being a digital packrat is that the data I've been holding on to for decades doesn't take up a hell of a lot of space. My comic collection, on the other hand...

Anyhow, not the point. The point is, here's Innerview: The Zappas on Video Games, by Merl H Reagle, JoyStik, January 1983. Scanned by, and from the personal collection of, Scott Sharkey, and preserved through over a decade's worth of computer migrations by packrat Thaddeus R R Boyd.

Innerview, Page 1Innerview, Page 2

Interesting, but not altogether surprising, that games were already being scapegoated by politicians and the media for juvenile delinquency as far back as 1983.

I also love the story of Frank recording the noise in an airport arcade and then listening to it on the plane. I think he also tells the story in The Real Frank Zappa Book -- that or I've been misremembering where I read it for the past decade.

(Christ. An interview from 30 years ago which I've been copying from hard drive to hard drive for one-third of that time...)

Props to Perry

2013-06-18, 8:44 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

There's a lot I don't like about Rick Perry -- about his state, its legislature, his party.

But as I noted a few weeks back, that legislature just passed a landmark E-Mail privacy bill.

And last week, Perry signed it.

Obviously, in the intervening weeks there have been some stark reminders about why government snooping on E-Mail should be reined in. And I'm sure that informed Perry's decision.

But the bottom line is, he did the right thing. At this moment in time, the governor of Texas has a better record on E-Mail privacy than the President of the United States.

There are moments -- they're rare, but there are moments, like this one -- where I see the Republican Party live up to its promise. Where it demonstrates that it can defend individual liberties from runaway government. That I think, y'know, maybe they've got something here. Maybe they can be a force for good.

And then I see a photo like this one
Pat Robertson and Donald Trump
and I'm like, "Oh, right. Republicans."

But what the hell -- Jonathan Strickland, the guy who sponsored this bill and, I assume, the son of Hank Hill's boss, is 29 years old. He'll be around long after those two assholes are dead. If guys like him and Derek Khanna represent the future of the Republican Party, then it's a future where I could maybe someday see myself aligning more with the Republicans than the Democrats.

They're really gonna have to do something about that whole anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-minority, anti-poor people, anti-science thing first, though.

(And I really should be careful about that "Republicans I'd consider voting for" label. I voted for McCain in 2004 and look how that turned out.)

(I also voted for Jan Brewer in 2006. Though in my defense, I was misled into believing I was voting for Janet Napolitano.)

(Come to think of it, the "Democrats I'd consider voting for" list hasn't gone so well for me either.)

Photo courtesy of Talking Points Memo, as linked by Mark Evanier.

He's So Gay/Tinseltown Rebellion/Oh No

2013-06-17, 10:29 pm
Categories: Music

Found something neat to post but for some reason I can't access SFTP to my site at the moment. (Probably related to the move a few weeks ago.)

So while I'm getting that straightened out, here's a selection from a Hollywood show in 1984. Uploaded by Steve Sparx.

Newsroom

2013-06-17, 6:42 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness, TV

I never got around to watching West Wing, but I know Aaron Sorkin's work well enough to say yup, Newsroom sure is an Aaron Sorkin show.

It's a show where snappy patter gives way to self-congratulatory political bombast; it's probably the most sanctimonious liberal wankfest you'll find on TV now that Olbermann's gone. And I say that as a liberal, a guy who generally likes Olbermann, and for that matter somebody who's been enjoying The Newsroom. Mostly.

But man it does get pretty over-the-top.

And that's when I like to picture Jeff Daniels with frozen snot caked to his face and his piss-soaked pants stuck to Jim Carrey. It helps to deflate the hot air a bit.

The show's also written around not one but two (and, spoiler alert, three by the end of the first season) annoying damn will-they-won't-they office romances: one between the two principals, and another between a couple who bear at least a passing resemblance to Jim and Pam on The Office.

And when I say "at least a passing resemblance", I mean the Jim Halpert character is named "Jim Harper".

He's not as fun as Halpert, though. He's more of a joyless workaholic who nevertheless is more appealing than Not-Pam's current boyfriend. While Not-Pam is less charming than Pam, makes poorer life decisions, and is frankly a little dumb in a way the show repeatedly plays for laughs. In short, the whole thing reeks of the network demanding that the writers stick some romantic tension in between all the political monologues, and the writers put about as much effort into it as changing "Halpert" to "Harper" would suggest. ("So, 'Poochie' okay with everybody?")

In their defense, they know it. There's a whole episode devoted to how the show-within-a-show has to cover Casey Anthony because it's getting clobbered in the ratings by focusing on shit that's actually important instead. The message is pretty clear: look, sometimes you have to put crowd-pleasing bullshit on your show to get people to watch the important parts. And I have faith that the writers are smart enough and have a strong enough grasp of irony that the connection is intentional.

Magic Fingers

2013-06-14, 10:00 pm
Categories: Games, Music

Speaking of covers that might not be as good as the original but can still be plenty of fun: Magic Fingers as performed by Katie Jacoby, Eric Slick, Eric Svalgard, CJ Tywoniak, and Matt Rothstein, posted by Eric Slick.

I'll be honest: it's a lot better than Ancient Stone Tablets.