I never really got to experience Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood – as a child, I was more inclined to NOT watch creepy dudes emerge from behind train sets. In fact, I really didn’t know all that much about the show until I watched this clip which, let’s be honest, is awesomecrazy terribad. The show itself ran from 1968 to 2001, and can best be summed up like so:

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was characterized by its quiet simplicity and gentleness. Episodes did not have a plot, and consisted of Rogers speaking directly to the viewer about various issues, taking the viewer on tours of factories, demonstrating experiments, crafts, and music, and interacting with his friends. The half-hour episodes were punctuated by a puppet segment chronicling occurrences in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

I dig that the premise of this show was a cool old dude in a sweater just hanging out with you. But that’s also the premise of the Saw films. At least, I think it is, having never bothered watching beyond the first one. They’re all about make believe and old guys in sweaters, right?

Right? Right. Time to do some actual research. Brb.

OH GOD I’VE BEEN LIVING A LIE

/Paul

Here is PMT acting his dick clean off in order to depict THE HORRORS OF DURGS.

And here is PMT singing his dick clean off in order to (inadvertently) depict THE HORRORS OF DUUURGS.

How you feeling? Pretty rough, huh? Yeah, me too.

Me too.

/Paul

Seriously, the Princess wanted to marry him? Although, if I were Bowser, the prospect of that guy coming after me would be vastly more terrifying than a regulation fat Italian plumber giving it a shot. I mean, look at him. He’d rip your eyelids off as soon as look as you. For those of you who have no idea what on Earth is going on, Lou Albano was a wrestler who also just so happened to play the role of Mario in the kids TV show Super Mario Bros, which aired from 1989-1991. I was 5 at the time, and even at that age I can remember being dazzled by exactly how crap it was. If you want a succinct example of exactly what level of crapness we’re talking about, then behold the single take glory that was the closing credits:

Two comments:

1. “Swing you arms from side to side” and “take one step, and then again” does not a dance make. Although it does look like the only kind of dance a man of that build might be capable of attacking.

2. Was Lou Albano drunk? I’m almost positive he fluffs the landing at the very end. And there’s really not that much of a landing to fluff either.

Not that the general air of mediocrity dissuaded me from watching it. I ate the show up with the same fervour with which I consumed my morning Cheerios (I was in Canada at the time) in the hope of procuring another Mario sticker. Stickers, man! Wasn’t that just the highlight of your 5 year old day? Ah, I wish I had some stickers now. Anyway, it’s sad to see him go. It was too soon. Another couple of years and the world probably would have been ready for a remake.

Now we’ll just have to make do with Weekend at Mario’s.

[via Boing Boing]

Now, I really just don’t know how this makes me feel. On September 17, NBC is premiering a new show called ‘Community‘ that just so happens to be directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, the dudes who directed Arrested Development. Which is itself a show that, in terms of human achievement, I generally rank up there alongside the Moon landing and the invention of Pop Rocks. And I will monkey knife-fight anyone who says different. Especially about the Pop Rocks.

So, the dilemma. On the one hand we have a new show by two of the people that were presumably instrumental in creating the single most convincing reason that television has ever had for its own existence. But on the other hand we have a preview that looks slightly less than convincing and the lingering doubt that the directors of Arrested Development may well have just been the window dressing to Mitch Hurwitz’s giant plate glass window of genius. It’s a… confusing time.

But, on the third hand (AHHHHHH! MUTANT!) it does star an incredibly aged looking Chevy Chase. Which is cool and all, but also comes with a hint of “Woah, what happened to you man? You used to be Fletch. You got old… But that means… that means I got old. Oh GOD! Look at my withered hands! I’ll never be pretty again! I’ll never be Fletch!”

And with that I cross off another childhood dream. Sigh.

/Luke

Trope was one of those words you discovered in your first year of Uni and then abused to within an inch of its life in every piece of assessable writing you had to churn out over the next two years. Why use technique when you can use trope? Why use method when you can use trope? Why use and when you can use trope? I think it goes without saying that my academic essays were torturous literary beings. From Wiktionary:

1. A figure of speech, such as a metaphor, in which a word or phrase is used other than in a literal manner.
5. (literature) Something recurring across a genre or type of literature, such as the ‘mad scientist’ of horror or ‘once upon a time’ as introduction to fairytales. Similar to a cliché, but not necessarily pejorative.

TV Tropes is an – as they always are – terrifyingly detailed wiki that sets out in a very readable, highly interlinked manner all the tropes its various authors have identified in TV, cinema, fiction, games, everyday life and more. Shit be extensive. I’m not going to spend all that long talking about it though, because unless you have the self-discipline of Li-Mu Bai from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (well, that analogy just derailed the sentence) this website will destroy whatever hope you may have had for a productive day. Unless you planned on having an unproductive day, like me. In which case I may as well start running you through my favourite lines from Everybody Loves Raymond, in chronological order. Oh, sorry, that’s right. There weren’t any funny lines in Everybody Loves Raymond. You know what its trope was? Shitness. In my honest and obviously educated opinion, Ray Romano could charitably be described as a tax on the world’s natural resources. Don’t even get me started on Deborah. That paragon of blandness, that succubus of…

Oh. Um. TV Tropes. Enjoy.

/Luke

For fans of Futurama (and I’m assuming that applies to each and every one of you), some good news.Very good news, in fact. I’m giggling like a retard monkey right now.

Taking a page from the “Family Guy” resurrection guidebook, the canceled Fox animated comedy is returning with an order from Comedy Central for 26 new episodes to run over two seasons. “Futurama” creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen already are working on stories for the new batch of episodes of the sci-fi cartoon, slated to premiere on Comedy Central in mid-2010.

So not only did we recieve several straight-to-dvd films (which, believe it or not, I’ve somehow not seen yet on account of crippling apprehension about their quality), we’re getting two new seasons. This gives me hope for other shows cancelled by Fox before their time was really up, such as Firefly. But holy shit, another two full seasons of Futurama? There’s so much to look forward to! I hope. They’d better not screw it up. Like that Mussolini guy did.

Oh, and incidentally, don’t ever try and google image search for Futurama. Over half of what comes up will be badly drawn Futurama porn. I’m not saying look at it, I’m just saying people who are mildly adept at Microsoft Paintbrush seem to be reaaaaally big Leela fans.

/Paul

I never really got Alf. Granted, there was an extended period where I ate cats, but it was the early nineties. I was so coked up I could barely see straight.*

Alf, if you’re not in the know, was a show that ran for four seasons, chronicling the misadventures of a furry alien from a planet called Melmac. An earth family, the Tanners (no relation to the Saget-helmed Bradyesque nightmare that was Full House), pretty much took him in and hid him from the government and douchebag neighbours. Here’s a quick synopsis.

Unsure what to do, the Tanners take ALF into their home and hide him from the Alien Task Force (a part of the U.S. military) and their nosy neighbors Trevor and Racquel Ochmonek (John LaMotta and Liz Sheridan), until he can repair his spacecraft. He generally hid in the kitchen. It was eventually revealed that ALF’s home planet, Melmac, exploded because of a catastrophe involving nuclear bombs. In episode four of season one ALF tries to convince the president of the USA to stop the nuclear program as he is afraid that Earth might share Melmac’s fate. He became a permanent member of the family, although his culture shock, survivor guilt, general boredom, despair, and loneliness frequently caused difficulty for the Tanners.

So try and imagine The Omega Man meets A Muppet Christmas Carol. Once you’ve recovered from profusely throwing up, you’ll probably be asking the same question I did last last night, after spending a solid hour (post-Reggie Watts) watching Alf clips online: how did this get made? Well to be honest, novelty and a smidgen of comic charm fuelled it throughout its four year run, and largely explains the massive run of comics released by Marvel, and to a lesser degree the TV movie. What it doesn’t explain, however, is Alf’s Hit Talk Show.

I won’t go into detail, largely because I can’t bring myself to because last time I tried, I couldn’t seem to stop haemhorraging blood. Sufficed to say, Alf’s Hit Talk show was:

- Not a hit,
- Ran for a grand total of seven episodes,
- And starred Ed McMahon as Alf’s sidekick, who introduced the show, and fought down bewilderment at how he landed a gig introducing a cat-eating puppet.

Below is a clip from the show. Again, there have been far worse things on television. But not by much. To be fair, the premise is awesome (puppet based on the Fonz has his own talk show with crusty Ed MCMahon) but it doesn’t, and probably couldn’t, follow through. Oh, and it ran in 2004. Which is probably why I remember being so cripplingly enui-ridden that year.

*cough*

/Paul

*I spent most of the Barcelona olympics partying with the Boston Celtics, totally out of my gourd. Granted I was around ten years old at the time, but hell, I was wild.

One of the things I love about World of Warcraft is the inability to cheat. Sure, people find tiny pointless exploits, but all in all, it’s all about earning the good stuff. Which I’m aware makes me sound like gaming dad, but… shut up.

Anyway, someone has apparently gotten into deep shit for cheating in World of Warcraft, though to be fair, the circumstances are far from simple (or unamusing). In a nutshell, a gnome warrior named Karatechop and his guild, The Marvel Family, have been wiping out Ulduar and its hardest achievements with relative ease. And by relative ease, I mean effortlessly. A look at Karatechops DPS revealed his highest hit was for 353,892,967 damage. Which is almost 354 million. Apparently several Blizzard employees are still having their eyebrows retrieved from the corpses of birds which were flying in the vicinity. Beign impaled by a hairy semi-circle of surprise is no way for an innocent pigeon to die, dammit.

So, how did Karatechop and his guild obtain this terrifying item? Well, turns out Karatechop shuffled up to his mailbox one day and found THIS.

So basically he was carried through Ulduar like that kid who discovered the flat taco, one-shotting Blizzards newest and most fearsome creations, caring not a whit for lore nor pants (with that kind of power, you really need to go pantless). How could this happen, you might ask? Well, every item in WOW has at least five ID digits, and this had only two. So this is either the result of a typo, or it’s some sick social experiment to see how people handle power.

Which makes this exactly like Sammy’s Super T-Shirt*, which had a happy ending of course. This, however, didn’t; the entire guild have had their accounts banned, Which just goes to show you: T-Shirts are evil. Like their namesake.

/Paul

(Link via Wowinsider)

*Sammy’s Super T-Shirt was a movie from the 80’s which stuck in my head far easier than it should have. It concerned a nerd who found a shirt which gave him powers, enabling him to become a super-strong athlete and ladies man. During the final race, his mother had washed the shirt (against his express wishes), forcing him to run using his own skills. THE POWER WAS INSIDE HIM ALL ALONG! Ahh. Sweet, pointless magical tailoring.

Yes, the new Star Trek film has premiered, and there have also been various press screenings. So in spite of the fact that it doesn’t come out until May 7th (I believe), there are individuals who have seen it. Myself and Luke are two of those individuals.

Now I’m not going to give anything away, because I’m not willing to be kidney-punched for a straight month in the nerd equivalent of the Hague. But I will say this: go and read Star Trek Countdown. It’s a four part graphic novel that links post-Nemesis Trek continuity and the beginning of the new film, and not only is it a well told story, it also fixes much of the profoundly stupid shit Nemesis did to Star Trek in general. And it’s considered canon, too! After the jump you’ll see probably the awesomest thing a Trek fan could see. They really did make things right with this one.

It is also worth noting that five minutes into the film, Luke said “is this the one with all the Jawas?”

/Paul

CAPTAIN DATA! TAKE THAT, NEMESIS!

Battlestar Galactica is finished! For nerds, there are few things as satisfying as ranting and arguing online about finales. Just as a warning, this blog will be SPOILER-HEAVY, so if you’re planning on watching the show but haven’t, please don’t read it. I’m stressing this point because sooner or later, you will want to watch it, and this would absolutely ruin some perfect television for you.

And I love you all way too much for that.

The finale aired recently, and was absolutely gorgeous. I’ve always been a sucker for closure, though. And whilst certain characters got absoulutely perfect endings that they deserved (Helo Athena and Hera, Baltar and Caprica, Starbuck), I felt a little unhappy with the fate of Bill Adama. If he’s in a state of mourning, I get that, but I refuse to believe that he’s going to live out the rest of his life as a hermit on a cliff somewhere. I can understand Lee; exploring will give him an outlet to have adventures, run into the other settlers, etc, but I can’t really abide the idea of the old man and his vague fate.

So what did I do? I went trawling for some kind of resolution. And I think I found something:

(This is from the Discover Online blog, and is an excerpt from an interview with Ronald D. Moore and David Eick)

“I’m curious about a few characters’ final fates. You very easily could have gotten away with Helo sacrificing his life so Athena could go after Hera, but they got the happy ending in the end.

There were two things. One, originally when we were breaking the story, Athena and Helo were both going to die to save Hera. And then I felt sort of unsatisfied about that. I really wanted that family unit to survive to the end. So in the script, when Helo gets shot in the corridor and he’s left, I didn’t intend it to be a cliffhanger of “is he going to die?” I just kept writing it, and there wasn’t a moment to establish he was okay. And when Tahmoh read the script, he got that point and said, “Oh, (bleep), I’m dead.” And when he got to the end, he was surprised.

And then it becomes this tearjerking moment when you see the three of them off in the distance (on Africa) and you realize he survived and they’re intact.

And when Tahmoh had that reaction, I decided, “Well, now I definitely don’t want to establish that he’s okay,” because I wanted people to have that same reaction.

Well, did anyone else almost die and then you gave them a reprieve in the end?

We did talk, for a long time, that Adama and Laura were going to get in a Raptor together and fly off into the stars, and Adama was going to show her the universe, and that would be the last we see of them. And before I ever even wrote it, Mary got wind of that and called me and said, “You know what? In our very first conversation about the show, we agreed Laura would die. I feel it’s important to actually show it,” and I said she was absolutely right, so she died on camera and Adama lived on camera.

Because when he said goodbye to Lee like that, I assumed he was going to wait for Laura to die and then crash the Raptor or something.

I knew people would have that reaction.

So he’s going to be like Tyrol, just live off by himself?

He’s going to build that little cabin, and who knows what.

Aaron Douglas keeps saying, “Well, you know what? They’re going to get a message. Someone’s going to trudge up the hill to Adama and hand him a note, saying, ‘Tyrol needs you in Scotland!’ And Adama will put on his pack and go off to Scotland!”

So there you go. Moore seems open to it. In the interest of keeping my dream alive, what are your opinions? Has anyone heard anything on the subject of the ongoing tales of these characters we’ve grown to love?

/Paul

(Interview from Alan Sepinwalls interview with Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, at NJ.com)