Monday, December 21, 2015

A Claymation Christmas Celebration

Do any of you guys remember this?

No, of course you don't.  What you remember is the California Raisins singing "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer," which is on this special from 1987, but strangely enough that's not the only segment of this show.

Strap on your boots, this is a pretty wild ride.


Friday, December 18, 2015

Top Eleven: Avatar Characters & Their Best Moments

It's the last day of Avatar Week here (did I forget to mention that was a thing?) and I decided to end it with something I haven't done in a while: picking apart a huge selection of things and sharing my own personal favorites for reasons that only I can really understand.

I mean, seriously, I put "Santa Claus and His Old Lady" in my top eleven Christmas songs and I went so far as to say that the Purple Man wouldn't work in the Marvel Cinematic/TV Universe.  I also said Man-Ape would be a great addition to the Cinematic/TV universe.

Clearly I often have no idea what I'm talking about.

However, be warned, there are spoilers ahead (naturally).


Thursday, December 17, 2015

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Series Notes

So, I've pretty much said without saying that Avatar: The Last Airbender is probably going to be right up high in my top ten favorite animated series of all time, along such luminaries as the Batman/Superman/Justice League run (in my eyes, they're one long series, and if you go back and watch it all in one run, you'll understand why), Animaniacs, Gargoyles, and Jem and the Holograms.

...what?  C'mon, that show was insane, even by 1980 cartoon standards.

Do I need to do an episode by episode review?  Because I've been itching to start something else or go back to doing more Marvel Disk Wars.

But there are things that are spread across the entire series that are hard to discuss in a single seasonal review, so I'm taking advantage of this post to highlight some of the things I found really interesting about the production of the show.

(A lot of information is pulled from the Avatar Wiki, so take it with a grain of salt, but anybody obsessive enough to fill out an entire Wiki for a show is either truly obsessed or so focused on their own fan fiction that it's fascinating anyway)

There are some mild spoilers below.


Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Season Three

Okay, so Monday was my introducing people to this random series I started watching.  It was the blog post equivalent of telling my friends, "hey, I met this woman, and we sorta hit it off a bit, so we might hang out a bit more.  She seems all right."  Tuesday was my going, "Wow, guys, you won't believe this woman.  She's funny, smart, gorgeous, athletic, and just knows the perfect thing to say or do at any time.  I mean, I'm -looking- for flaws, but I think this might be the one!"  Now it's Wednesday.  Does the fixation remain, or have things cooled off a bit in this weird metaphor of relationships?


Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Season Two

Yesterday I talked about season one (sorry, "book one") of Avatar: The Last Airbender.  I said I liked it, but that it had a bunch of problems.  The primary villain wasn't that interesting, the story ran slow, and it jumped around a lot before it managed to pull stuff together towards the end.

Now it's time for season two ("book two"), and I'm going to take each one of those complaints, hold them up to the light, and tear them into pieces.  They have no place here, because this season of the show is quite possibly my absolute favorite in terms of second seasons, placing it above some of my favorite television shows of all time.

And a lot of it has to do with this crazy girl right here:


Spoilers follow after the cut, needless to say, so if you haven't watched season one yet (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, BUDDY) then go do that.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Season One

Have you ever heard about something that's insanely popular, but you just avoided it anyway?  Maybe you think that things the "masses" like are invariably low-brow and for people without good taste, like Transformers movies, or the music of Ariana Grande, or (ugh) 50 Shades of Gray.   Perhaps you're just dissatisfied with the "big, huge" events that become movies, TV shows, or music, and you prefer simpler things.  Maybe you're a hipster.  Maybe there's just so many amazing things out there that you just don't have time to see them all, so when you do finally decide to give it a chance, you're hopelessly behind and can't catch up (see: my experience with Lost).

Whatever reason people have, it means that sometimes you miss out on something that's actually really good.  For example, during a brief "pfft, how good can a cartoon for kids be these days" phase some years ago, I found out that a lot of people were really into this series called "Avatar: The Last Airbender."  I was convinced at the time that every cartoon that was something adults would like tended to be something akin to Dragonball Z, Squidbillies, or Aqua Teen Hunger Force, namely bad animation with weak stories that were often just links between dumb action sequences or stupid jokes.

I didn't really realize just how huge it was until I heard a movie was going to be made based on it, at which point I went "okay, maybe there is something to it if it's going to get a movie franchise like The Hunger Games or the Harry Potter series."  This was, of course, before we would learn just how much a movie can disappoint fans of a large franchise that wasn't Star Wars.

But after putting it off for years, I finally decided to give the show a shot.  I figured I owed it to myself to know what I was talking about if I said something didn't interest me or wasn't along my personal tastes.

Silly me, sometimes things are popular because they're actually really good.


Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Let's Talk: Yankee Swaps and White Elephants

People, we need to talk.  I know people like having fun around the holidays, I really do.  I like having fun as well.  But we, as a collective species, need to stop the horror that is the Yankee Swap.  I, personally, have a theory that there is alien life watching us, and every year they see people start to celebrate togetherness and caring, whether it's from Christmas, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, or those random people who are just really, really into Boxing Day.

They debate whether or not to invite us into their galaxy-wide community, thinking that maybe, maybe we're emotionally and intellectually ready as a people to accept life beyond our little blue marble, one of the aliens on the review board will state, "well, at least they don't have any events around the holidays that encourage people to be mean-spirited to those they care about and act out of spite and selfishness during what's supposed to be a moment of giving."

Then the aliens who suggested Earth be included in their society get really awkward looks on their faces and shuffle their feet a bit, and the review board alien states "Oh, krazlop (it's a real alien swear term, look it up), they still do that Yankee Swap thing, don't they?"

And thus, once again, our place among the stars is denied us.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

A few months ago, while skimming through Hulu, I realized that Brooklyn Nine-Nine was now free to watch.  I knew this because every time I tried watching anything, I had an ad that somehow incorporated the show.  Either it was a "bunch of clips as a commercial" ad to advertise it was there, or they'd do one of their (admittedly pretty clever at time) montage commercials listing shows, and there would always be a clip or two from that in there as well.

I was not impressed.  There was lots of screaming, wackiness, and physical comedy, and very little sense of any kind of characterization or plot.  I didn't see anybody I recognized in the quick cuts of scenes, and the one actor I knew was in it was from Saturday Night Live, a show that I enjoyed for a while a long time ago but haven't really watched since.  But when I did, I wasn't really entertained.

I also knew that it won a Golden Globe and was nominated for a bunch of other awards, but I still wasn't impressed.

But I figured I could watch an episode, so at least then I could say "yes, I did try it, and I still didn't like it" so that I wouldn't simply be one of those people who complains about stuff without having any supporting evidence to back it up.

Darn it, I enjoyed it.


Monday, December 7, 2015

Review: Rifftrax: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

Every now and again one wonders "how did this get made?"  I used to wonder it about major motion pictures, like Battlefield Earth or yet another Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, but no more.  I know how those get made.  Studios get talked into trying to bank on a star's success by making a big budget production with them, or they hope to get the next Star Wars, Hunger Games, or Harry Potter.

But I have no idea how Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny was made without someone looking around at the film production, sighing, and doing their best to combine a tank of gas and a match.  I have spent the last four days pondering this mystery, and I am no closer to an answer.


Friday, December 4, 2015

Captain America: Civil War & Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice Trailers are out!

And I could not be more "enh."

Don't get me wrong, I'll probably see both movies, but I have to say, watching the trailers reminds me why, for the most part, I don't watch trailers.  They either reveal way too much or they don't reveal anything and leave you guessing.

Let me go into a bit more detail.


Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Thoughts on Tomb Raider

I never played the original Tomb Raider games.  I wasn't a big fan of action 3D platformers, and there were enough other games to keep my attention besides "that one with the woman with the big chest."

I did play some of the later games by Crystal Dynamics, though.  Tomb Raider: Legend, Tomb Raider: Underworld, and the reboot Tomb Raider were all games I enjoyed, but there was something that bothered me about Lara Croft in particular.

In the end, she's always alone.

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the- okay, now you go!
Oh.  Right."

Monday, November 30, 2015

Let's Talk: "Slave Leia"

I'm not a woman.  With that in mind, you can probably just skip this entire article and go back and read my rant about my least favorite Christmas Carol.  Everything I'm about to say is purely from my perspective, and if anybody would like to discuss it with me, I'm more than happy to sit down with them, listen to what they have to say, and compare their perspective to my own to see if there's a middle ground or if I need to press my case or if I'm completely wrong and need to just shut UP already.

We good?  Good.

Let's talk about Princess Leia's slave bikini.


Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Review: Saints Row 2

People might remember that I've already reviewed the last game in the Saints Row series, which might make it kind of weird that I'm going back and reviewing the second game in the series.  Well, I was going to go back and replay the first one, but to be honest, I don't really remember liking it that much.  It wasn't until I played the second one that the series really "clicked" with me.

Copying the infinitely more profitable (and, in my eyes, lesser of the two series) Grand Theft Auto, the Saints Row series took what made the GTA games fun, figured out what dragged the entertainment down, and promptly threw out everything that didn't work and just let you, the player, go nuts.

If GTA is the Martin Scorsese of sandbox crime games (just not to that level of quality), then Saints Row 2 is the Quentin Tarantino version.  Saints Row 4 was the Michael Bay version (except infinitely better).



Thursday, November 12, 2015

Galerians (or: The Video Game I Gave Up On The Fastest)

I like to think I give anything I try a fair chance to impress me.  In fact, I've gone above and beyond in at least one instance.  However, there is a game that I never really got into despite it ticking off many check boxes on my list of things I like:

Weird psychic powers.
Science fiction-y sterile hallways.
Survivor Horror
Heavy Japanese influence

And yet, I never got more than two rooms into the game play.



Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Erik's Favorite Things: The Death Gate Cycle

Every nerd has their favorite fantasy-based book series.  For some, it's a classic like Tolkein's run of Hobbit-based books.  Maybe they were really into the Christian analogies of Narnia.  It could be something newer, like Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson, or, if they're like me, they got their start on David Eddings' Belgariad series, or perhaps Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance series.  There are so many series out there now, staring magical detectives, heroic knights, orphans with mysterious destinies, and twisted schemers that it can be hard for someone to pick just the right series to latch on to and claim as their "favorite."

I didn't have that problem, because my father was (and still is) a big-time reader, and introduced me to so many series that I had my pick of among some of the best.  He got me into David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Raymond E. Feist, Dan Simmons, and so many other authors, but I think (hope) he'd agree with me that the ones I loved the most to the point that I bought the pretty terrible video game tie-in would be The Death Gate Cycle, the seven book series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman that, for some unexplainable reason, isn't bigger than their Dragonlance stuff.




Monday, November 9, 2015

Podblast! You Must Remember This

It's been a while since I've talked about any of the multitude of podcasts I have sitting on my mp3 player to help me whittle away the hours at my day job.  I try to be discerning and make sure the things I listen to are both interesting and intelligent (a rule I put in place after my abysmal experience with The Walking Eye).

Enter Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This, a podcast that embraces my love of classic Hollywood as well as putting together connections I never knew existed between the major stars who shaped an industry.


Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

When I try to think back to the things I loved watching the most when I was young, I tend to think back to what my family had on VHS.  Y'see, way back in the 80s, large plastic tapes were the only way to watch something more than once unless you got lucky and the show you liked would air reruns.  This almost never happened when it came to things like most kids cartoons or TV specials.

Here's a real confession, up until I was almost ten, I had no idea how television worked.  I didn't know about "seasons" of a show.  I just knew that sometimes a show I liked was on, and sometimes it wasn't.  Sometimes there would be new episodes, and other times they just aired the same ones again.  Eventually I started to put together that maybe they just wanted to air each set of stories more than once in case somebody missed one, then they could resume airing new ones so everybody would be caught up.  I was so naive.

Which is why, when I was young, I would get so upset when a show I liked was taken off the air.  For example, I distinctively remember being a fan of the Battletoads cartoon, but one day it was just gone, replaced with, if I remember correctly, was the Country Bear Jamboree cartoon.  I tried watching it for five minutes and then left in disgust.

What does this have to do with anything?

Well, one tape I remember us either owning or renting all the time was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

D'aww.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Mario's Picross

I'm not sure how I haven't yet talked about my love of the Picross series of games from Nintendo.  The concept is surprisingly simple, yet amazingly difficult to master.  There's a simple grid, anywhere from 5x5 to 15x15, and there are numbers indicating how many squares in each row or column need to be filled in.  A "15" would indicate the whole row is filled in, while a "0" means nothing gets filled in.  However, a "3 4" indicates there's a group of three and a group of four that need filling, but when you have fifteen squares to choose from, it can be difficult to figure out which ones are right and which ones aren't.

The later games in the series increased the size of the puzzles and even took them into the third dimension (because adding a z-axis to everything makes it harder), but having just wrapped up a recent play through of the original game, I figured I'd talk about it.


Holy Cow, You Guys, You Gotta See This Art

So I held off on posting this, because I wanted to right by the artist I'm about to spotlight.  My normal means of sharing artwork I really like (with one or two slight exceptions) is to share the work and then link the living daylights out of the person who created the art in the hopes that people will go and view the rest of his art themselves and perhaps share it with even more people.

I've been told by various online sources that this doesn't technically make me a jerk on the Internet, since I am being sure to share where it's from and not claiming any of it as my own.

But I could do better.

In this instance, it didn't really feel right to just grab a few images and say "hey, guys, go look here and see more!"  I wanted to do right by this artist, so I sent him an email and asked him if he minded my sharing his artwork and encouraging people to visit his site.

Normally, when I try things like this, I get no response.  Which is fair enough, we've established before that I tend to be late to the party for many things, but in this case I got lucky.  Within a few hours I got a response where the artist gave me his blessing with the following two caveats:

"Use the images unedited."  Not a problem, anything I could possibly do to them would diminish the entire reason I'm sharing these to begin with.

"Only use my earlier series."  More than fair.

So with this entire sentence acting as the first (but not the last) link to his site, I hereby encourage all of you to go visit the site of Jirka Vinse, aka Jirka Väätäinen aka (?) Jonatan Väätäinen.

Oh, and prepare to have your mind blown.


Friday, October 30, 2015

Happy ... um, er....

Okay, so it's not Halloween.  It's Halloween Eve?  All Hallow's Eve Eve?  Is there even a word for today?

There is.

That's right, to end Halloween month we're getting EDUCATIONAL, people!  And truly, that's the scariest thing of all, unprompted learning!


Thursday, October 29, 2015

What The Heck Am I Doing With This Blog?

You know, sometimes I wonder what my goal is with this blog.

Originally I was going to review Succubus: Hell-Bent, a dopey-looking movie that came in a three-pack with Vampires: Out For Blood and Blood Angels.  I'll admit, the first movie was bad, but my having been a huge Vanessa Angel fan for years gave me an actual reason to want to watch it.  It was bad, but it was enjoyably bad.  I wasn't expecting masterful acting from any of the cast, but the movie actually managed to surprise me with a few clever ideas and gave some hints as to how it could be much better given a real budget, a few better actors, and some cleaner writing.

I realize that's like saying "Dirty Dancing 2 could have been The Artist with some better writing and an entirely different cast" but work with me here.

Blood Angels shook my faith in everything I'm doing.  It reached deep into me and left me lying in my bed in the middle of the night staring at my ceiling going "...is this really worth the time and investment I put into it?  Am I even really enjoying myself when I do movies like these?"  There were no actors in it I was eager to see, miserably awful writing, terrible special effects, and a plot that was so transparent it had to be kept away from areas where lots of birds would fly around, lest they die immediately on impact.

So why would I expose myself to that again?  I can't think of a single reason to, and now I find myself idly looking around for something to do so I can finish this month and move on.

Blood Angels, you made me start to hate Halloween.  I'll never forgive you.

Maybe...maybe I need to look back at something nostalgic, something that I loved when I saw it when I was little.  Maybe there's something out there that I can remember that helped me get more "into" Halloween, something that made me appreciate it more than just "that holiday where people get scared and then eat candy."  For a long time growing up I was so convinced that all "fear" was bad that it took my slowly exposing myself to different kinds of fear to understand what I liked and what I didn't like, and I can really only think of one thing that threw so many references at me that I was able to explore each and realize "hey, some of this stuff is really good."



That.  That is what I remember.


Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Blood Angels

At a certain point in any bad movie you just know what you're watching is absolute garbage.  Maybe it's the first time Tara Reid opens her mouth in Alone In The Dark (if you haven't seen it, replace that with "anything Tara Reid has been in besides The Big Lebowski).  Maybe it's the first time bad CG effects show up.  Perhaps it's when you first realize how much they've diverted from the source material.

This is, I think, the first time I ever got a strong indication a movie was going to suck because of the DVD menu.

It's the lack of special features that's the biggest hint.  Not even a director commentary?
See, in the lower left, about a third of the screen is taken up with a small "screen within the screen" showing segments from the film.  While the scenes were playing, I did some research on this movie and found out two things.  First, the title Blood Angels isn't what it was called here in the United States.  In the United States, it was called Thralls.  Blood Angels is its Canadian name.

Second, the video clips being shown are just the trailer for the movie done on loop.  Plus, the rest of the screen is just the same video with bad CG clouds washing over it and weird light effects from the letters.

When your only option for a DVD menu image is the movie trailer for the movie someone is already going to watch, that's a really bad sign.

But let's get into it.


Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Bullet Witch

I shouldn't love this game as much as I do.  The controls are twitchy and not very responsive, the story line is laughable, the voice acting is cheesy (and in some cases almost unbearable), and save for the lead character all the other people you interact with are absolute garbage, including the other good guys.

So why do I love this game so much?


I dunno, man.  I just can't explain it.


Monday, October 26, 2015

Mall of Horror

One of the very first board games I went out and bought when I decided to get serious about board games (which is, admittedly, a weird thing to get "serious" about) was a small game created by Asmodee.  It was in the clearance bin for 25% off, but I snatched it up and bought it without a second thought.



The game is a mixture of horror and strategy as you try to not only figure out your own moves, but also everybody else's moves.  Alliances can be formed and broken in minutes, and eventually you know you'll have to stab an ally in the back and sacrifice them to the zombie horde.

It's quite simply put the second most terrifying game to take place in a mall setting.

There's nothing scarier than fiscal irresponsibility.
This is Mall of Horror.


Friday, October 23, 2015

Erik's Favorite Things: The Haunting

In 1963, a movie came out that started to generate a lot of buzz as to how terrifying it was.  Movie theaters held contests to see who could get through a midnight showing of it.  Reviewers claimed that people they saw it with climbed out of their chairs in terror.  It wound up on the favorite horror movie lists of people like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and many other respected film-connected individuals.

And yet, if I tell you the title, you're going to remember a sub-par movie with Owen Wilson, Liam Neeson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, because it came out in 1999 during a flood of lackluster horror remakes and it cranked up Catherine Zeta-Jones' sex levels to 11.

But we're not going to talk about that bucket of chum so rank and stale that not even a starving shark would be drawn to it, we're going to talk about the original.  We're talking about The Haunting.



Thursday, October 22, 2015

Betrayal At House On The Hill

So far this Halloween Month I've discussed movies, video games, and comic books, but I've left one hobby of mine woefully under-represented.  I'm talking about board games.  Spooky, scary board games that can reach into your psyche and mess with what's there, even as you're just moving a plastic token around a cardboard layout and rolling dice.

The one I've played that's, in my opinion, the most fun is Betrayal At House On The Hill, a game that somehow manages to be cooperative and extremely paranoia-inducing.


Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Dead At The Gates Redux: The Walking Dead: Season 2

Imagine, if you will, that you're trapped in a dungeon somewhere.  Sand covers the floor, strange liquid drips from various areas, and you're never able to get a decent night's sleep.  Every now and again a figure shows up with bread crusts for food.  He drops them on the ground and waits for you to crawl forward to cram them into your mouth, but the moment your fingers get close, he brings his boot heel down and crushes them into the sand, breaking them apart into mere dust.  And if you try to be aggressive when you grab the bread, you just wind up with broken fingers.

Then, each time, the figure kneels down and lifts your chin up.  He looks you over, observes the bloodshot eyes, the sunken cheeks, and the cracked lips you have.  He smiles kindly for a moment, and asks, "I'm sorry...have I upset you?  Here, let me go get you some bread."

The cycle continues.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the experience playing The Walking Dead: Season 2.

The only thing more emotionally draining than that experience is the fact that behind you in the cell is an open door that leads to freedom.  All you have to do is take it.  But you won't.  Because, somehow, you've convinced yourself that it's not as bleak as it appears, and that if you can just last a bit longer, that one piece of bread you get will be worth it in the end.


Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Hellboy

I need to be honest here.  Up until today, I've never seen the full movie Hellboy.  I've seen snippets of it here and there.  I know that it's one of the movies that really helped launch the career of Guillermo Del Toro (along with Blade II and Pan's Labyrinth).  I know it's the movie that returned Ron Perlman to his "several hours in the make-up chair" roots that stemmed from Beauty and the Beast.

But being able to genuinely discuss the plot?  ...not so much, because I had no idea what happened in it.

I know what you're saying.  "But Erik," you're exclaiming in disbelief, "didn't you say you loved Hellboy in your blog post about giant robots and giant monsters?"  Yes, I did, and I acknowledge that sentence could very well be misleading, so I'm asking for permission to take it back.  It should have been "I loved what I saw of Hellboy, and the fact that he's embraced strange stories such as that and is willing to elevate them to another entertainment medium."  That line in that blog post was an unintentional lie, and a blemish on my record.

But that's all changed.

...because I've watched it.


Okay, this intro has pretty much stalled, let's get into the movie itself.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Erik's Favorite Things: Koudelka

Okay, I've mentioned Koudelka before.  In fact, I think I spoke pretty highly of it.  If I was to keep talking about it, I might mention how, if I sat down and thought about it, it'd wind up on whatever my "favorite games of all time" list would wind up being.

But...just why do I love this bizarre little RPG so much?

Let's dig a bit deeper.


Sunday, October 18, 2015

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Invisible Archie

Okay, everybody, this is it.  So far we've had killer potatoes, twisted wishes, possessed cars, and giant teenagers.  Now we're getting into a more "classic" movie monster homage, with Archie Andrews, eternal teen, becoming the Invisible Man.

Now, I know what a lot of teenage boys would like to do if they were suddenly invisible, and none of them are not creepy, and most are illegal.  Let's see if this cartoon series holds true to Archie being the most pure and noble person on the planet (who has already seen one of his girlfriends naked this season) or is human like everyone else.



Thursday, October 15, 2015

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Attack Of The 50-Foot Veronica

What else is there to say about Veronica Lodge?  Well, I don't think I've discussed her friendship with Betty that much, but watching this program and thinking back to some of the comics I used to read, I can't help but wonder if the relationship between Betty and Veronica is more than just "friends when convenient" but probably the strongest relationship about of any two characters in Archie Comics history.

This is a friendship that survives multiple backstabbing attempts as both girls attempt to win the heart of Archie, and if I remember correctly, there were multiple instances when the two of them realized that "if anybody is going to get Archie, better one of us than anybody else."  The two really are friends in the truest sense, with both of them constantly hanging out together, traveling together, scheming together, and generally helping each other be complete people.  Betty would probably never take as many risks in life without Veronica encouraging her, and Veronica wouldn't be as grounded and would probably be an even bigger snob without Betty around.

However, that's probably a full essay for another day, so instead let's look at Archie's attempt to do an homage to Allison Hayes' finest work.



Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Driven To Distraction

You know the one thing I never understood about Archie Andrews?  Why does every young woman who's single decide he's the absolute best dating material to ever live?

I mean, sure, he's a nice guy, but he constantly has two women jumping in and out of his life (well, okay, only Veronica really jumps "out" of his life, Betty just moves into the background for a bit, biding her time).  His car is a classic junker, he never really seems able to hold down any kind of summer job, he's continuously broke, he's clumsy, goofy, and always getting into trouble.

There's a lot of other guys in town who are probably dating material (and in today's modern age we can even include boys who aren't the same race.  And yet, Archie's had five serious girlfriends that I can think of off the top of my head, and lord knows how many girls as simple "one-offs."

So what does that have to do with today's episode?  Well, when the inspiration for the episode is pretty blatantly Steven King's Christine, except the car is in love with Archie, it makes you wonder.


Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Me! Me! Me!

Veronica Lodge.  Sometimes girlfriend, sometimes nemesis, sometimes enabler, sometimes de-enabler- okay, this sentence is going out of control.  The point I'm attempting to build to is that while Archie is almost always the "nice guy," Jughead is the "lazy, hungry guy," and Betty is the "nice girl," Veronica has a lot more variety to her roles.  In one story she might be attempting to help raise awareness for the needy or an endangered animal, the next story she's having her jet personally fly her a new purse because her other one is ten minutes out of style.  Sometimes she dotes on Archie Andrews, sometimes she and Reggie work together to set him and Betty up for failure.  Then, in the next story line, she and Betty are best friends again.

What I'm trying to say is that in the comics, Veronica is either an amazingly complex character with many layers to her...or is one of the most inconsistent characters ever written.

So, I hope you like her, because you're going to get an awful lot of Veronica in this episode.


Our story opens at Riverdale High, where eternal "nice guy" Archie Andrews is carrying a stack of approximately sixteen books out of the building.  He gets partway to the parking lot when Veronica's voice exclaims, "Archie! The door!"  Archie, apologizing, comes back to open it for her.  It appears Veronica's in full on "lazy rich girl" mode, but hold on, it gets better.

While Betty, Reggie, and Jughead bond over a) critiquing Veronica's behavior and b) joking about how broken Archie is that he just keeps doing whatever she says, we find out that Veronica only has all those books because "taking them home each day is easier than memorizing a locker combination."

Okay, let's address the first thing here.  Archie can't be there every minute of every day.  We've established he hangs out with other people and has other activities, so the idea that Veronica would always have Archie there to carry her books not just to and from her house each day but between classes is insane, even for a show that last episode gave us potato aliens.

Second, she has sixteen books.  When I was in high school we didn't have that many books.  What the heck is Riverdale High trying to teach kids that they need so many books?

Veronica begins massive amounts of whining for the next few minutes, and between complaining that Archie needs to put the top up on his car so her hair doesn't get mussed, her spoon landing on the ground and needing a new one, and the phone being inches out of reach because leaning slightly is for peasants, I say, peasants, well, Veronica becomes by far the most obnoxious character on the show, and is in a strong running to catch up with Orko and Snarf.

Fortunately, Mr. Lodge is watching the whole thing, and he is not amused by his daughter's antics.


First off, I don't think it's ever come up before, but Hiram Lodge there talks like he understudied for Thurston Howell the Third.  Second, I've always liked that Archie Comics has a somewhat contradictory back story when it comes to Hiram.  Sometimes his family were the original founders of Riverdale and he comes from old money, other times he attended public school and earned his money before marrying into even more money.

Here, he's just rich and has a touch of Locust Valley Lockjaw.  Perfect.

Veronica gets a call from Archie to hang out at Pop's, but Hiram interrupts by telling Archie over the phone that Veronica has "chores."  Hiram lectures his daughter on the fact that "one day all this will be yours" and how staying rich is hard work.  It's almost like the more money you have, the more problems you see have. 

So what sort of chore does Veronica Lodge get assigned to teach her that hard work is important?  Balancing her checkbook?  Donating clothes to charity?  Cleaning up the mess from the last party Archie invariably broke something during?

If you guessed "pack exotic artifacts for a museum to pick up and exhibit while the butler supervises her" then man, I just don't even know how your mind works.  You are right, however.

"This room belongs in a museum!" - Hiram Lodge, attempting to be cute.
Meanwhile, at Pop Tate's, Jughead, Reggie, and Betty (really?  Do those three EVER hang out by themselves?) enjoy a few burgers, by which I mean Jughead enjoys a few burgers.  Archie shows up and updates everybody else that Veronica is "still" packing things, which I guess is the script's attempt to let us know that time has passed.  Betty just happens to have a pamphlet about the upcoming exhibit, and something the gang notes is a statue to ... I have no idea how to spell this guy's name, because it's said strangely by Archie.  "Snakebah?"

Anyway, Snakebah is a statue, and the name translates to "granter of wishes," according to Betty.

Personally, I think it translates to "raise the roof!"
This just happens to be the last object Veronica has to pack (naturally), and after Smithers attempts to once again get Veronica to consider other people for a chance, she retorts with "I wish everyone else was just like me."  This causes the statue's eyes to glow and an actual earthquake to tremble the land, but Veronica doesn't notice either because...well, being whiny apparently makes you immune to feeling things?

Later, when Mr. Lodge is looking over the packed boxes with Smithers, the doorbell rings.  Hiram asks Smithers to get it (extremely politely, I might add), and Smithers is quick to retort with a "ooooOOOOoooh, I don't wanna!"

Stay with me, folks, it sounds like this is going to get awful, but it gets fantastic instead.

At Pop Tate's, Veronica's wish is spreading, as Pop Tate, previously happy to serve burgers to eager customers, is now whining about needing to cook and insisting people "cook their own burgers."  Archie decides to call the doctor to come see Pop Tate and steps outside to use the pay phone (remember, this came out in 1999, cell phones weren't HUGE yet).  This means he doesn't see the huge flash of light behind the counter, but he does bump into Veronica.  He leads her in, explaining that things are strange, when this site meets his eyes:


That's right.  Overweight, middle-aged Pop Tate has turned into another Veronica.

This, of course doesn't phase Veronica at all, as she complains about being double parked.

Anyway, Archie now gets to deal with two Veronicas fighting over him and arguing over which one is the "real" Veronica.

"This should be a lot more fun than it's turning out to be."  - Actual quote from Archie Andrews
Can we discuss the fact that not only did Pop Tate's body and personality change, but his clothes reshaped themselves to be tight on a teenage girl's body?  This Snakepah-whatever thing doesn't do anything by halves.

While Jughead and Reggie keep Pop Veronica safely stored away in, well, the storeroom, Betty, Archie, and Veronica decide to investigate this mystery further.  Things aren't any better outside, though I find it interesting that either all the women in town decided to wear yellow dresses that day and all the men wore lavender shirts and jeans, or the character designer got REALLY lazy when he decided to dress up a city of Veronicas.


Veronica spots another "her" about to steal her car, and takes off into the crowd of duplicates, which, let's face it, is probably dumbest thing she could do at this point in time.  She tries to get a Veroni-cop (see what I did there?) to get involved, but the cop simply whines that the thief is too far away and it would involve chasing her and then catching her and then filling out paperwork.    Veronica starts to realize how she acts around others around this point, but it helps that she meets a Veronica mail carrier who complains about lugging a heavy bag of letters around.

The icing on the cake, however, is the Veronica mime.  You read that correctly.  Veronica.  Mime.

Glorious.  Just glorious.
The Veronica mime starts complaining about needing to mime things, wondering why she can't just "tell people what she's doing."  In a moment of comedic gold, the Veronica Mime starts pushing at the air around her while yelling "Look at me, everyone, I'm trapped in a box!"

Then the crowd turns on Veronica for....reasons?  She finds herself running away from a small mob of identical clones of herself, but manages to catch back up with Betty and Archie.  She, again, not being the brightest bulb in the box, laments that just a few hours earlier she was wishing that everybody else would be "just like her."  Betty, being a pretty bright bulb when it doesn't come to snuggling on couches, catches this and asks her to explain.

The trio are able to connect the strange happenings to the statue of Snakebah,  They call the Lodge household to have Hiram get the statue back, but both Hiram and Weatherbee are too busy sitting by the pool with the phone just out of reach.  The three need to go to the museum and find the statue themselves.

Remember how I've been promising this episode gets amazing?  Well, here it is.

Betty reads some more of the pamphlet and notes that the idol used to be kept on a high pedestal surrounded by death traps.   So whoever the Indiana Jones of this world is, he had to bust in and steal the idol from where it was being stored.

The amazing part?  The Museum has faithfully recreated the pedestal the statue used to sit upon, including all of the death traps.  This, in itself, is absolutely fantastic, because nobody seems shocked that a museum, a place that receives public and private funding, would go so far as to risk murdering a visitor who wants to see one of the prized exhibits.

Seriously, Archie, I think we found your next "weird mystery" and it's "what the hell is going on with the museum board of directors?"

At the museum, things start going from bad to worse as Archie takes off down the hallway towards the exhibit.  Betty and Veronica start to follow, but partway down there's another flash of light and Betty starts whining about, well, everything.

Veronica tries to rush ahead to catch up with Archie, but doesn't pay attention to where she's going and runs headfirst into a low stone archway.  Because if a museum is going to equip a place with death traps, it may as well make people crouch to avoid traumatic head injuries.


May I just point out that this is twice in a row that a female lead character has been knocked unconscious by a blow to the head?

Veronica wakes up hoping it was all just a bad dream, and upon seeing Archie stand over her offers her hand to him to help her up.  He turns her down flat, whining that her hands are probably dirty and sweaty.

I know it's a negative trait of Veronica we're dealing with here, but I kind of agree with Archie there.  Sweaty hands are the worst.

Veronica is left on her own to deal with the problem, and instead of trying to do a long, flowing narrative of how she avoids the death traps, I'm just going to show you the things that a MUSEUM, an honest to god MUSEUM that doesn't even charge the people at the front door to come in and see things, built to add "realism" to an exhibit.

First, the giant stone that can crush you upon entering.


Then there's the pressure plate that triggers the deadly darts to shoot out of a wall.


There's the giant column (seen two pictures above) that rolls forward to flatten any intruders.


Finally, there's the giant spiked pit with the rope dangling over it.


HOW DO YOU EVEN APPROVE THIS STUFF IN THE BUDGET?

Veronica finally gets her hands on the idol, and I have to admit I chuckled some at her attempts to bond with an inanimate object.  "Veronica Lodge here.  We had a moment a few hours ago.  You, me, and the box?"   She manages to reverse the wish, the population of Riverdale returns to normal, and Archie and Betty rush in to make sure Veronica's okay.

I love this little moment towards the end when Veronica starts to walk towards them and then remembers the giant spiked pit's still there.  "Could you help me get across?  ...oh, never mind, I'll do it myself."

Um, Veronica, I know the whole point of the episode was to show you just how needy and whiny and selfish you are, but when it comes to dealing with SPIKED PITS you're allowed to ask for help.  Lesson learned, but NOT in the appropriate manner!

Apparently nobody in town remembers "being" Veronica, and Archie wraps up with the standard "be careful what you wish for" lesson, but it ignores the bigger issue here: THERE IS A STATUE IN THE RIVERDALE MUSEUM THAT GRANTS WISHES.

What's to stop some child from (somehow) avoiding all the deathtraps and wishing that there weren't any adults, or that the world was made of chewing gum, or just their step-brother Toby would vanish and never come back?

I just- I don't even- man.  Why not use that statue for good?  "I wish nothing weird would ever happen in Riverdale again.  I wish doom upon the alien potato people.  I wish all vampires were instantly turned to dust."

Then again, maybe I'm just over thinking this.

Monday, October 12, 2015

Archie's Weird Mysteries: Attack Of The Killer Spuds

I think I've made it abundantly clear over time that I have a huge appreciation of all things Riverdale.  In fact, the only reason why I haven't done lengthy reviews about  Afterlife With Archie or Archie vs. Sharknado or Archie vs. Predator (yes, these are all real things) is that if I put all of them into individual posts, well, I'd immediately fill up three things on my Top Eleven list for the end of the year.

But man, the Archie's Weird Mysteries show was something absolutely amazing, and I've been itching to get back into reviewing episodes of it.  So, with a simple 10-pack of episodes on one DVD picked up on the cheap from a small store, I'm ready to go.  We're going to see Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, Dilton, and the rest of the gang face the unknown.

First episode on the list?


Okay, so it's not as immediately grabbing as "Veronica Lodge: Vampire Hunter" but stick with me, folks, it'll be worth it.


Friday, October 9, 2015

Review: Moon

In the future, mankind has managed to shed its dependence on oil and gas.  Helium-3 harvested from the dark side of the moon supplies a majority of Earth's energy needs,  You might remember Helium-3 as being the reason astronauts landed on the moon in the movie Iron Sky, but this isn't going to get anywhere near as ridiculous.

Today, we're talking about the movie Moon, a movie I never knew existed until just recently, and one that I'm kicking myself for having never seen before.


Thursday, October 8, 2015

Devil Seed

You know what would be a great title for a movie?  "The Devil Inside."  In fact, it was a horror movie back in 2012, and a pretty huge success of one, considering it cost one million dollars to make and brought in over one hundred million dollars.

I think it might have been the impromptu success of that movie that caused Devil Seed to change its title from its original name, "The Devil In Me."  This movie also came out in 2012, and unlike the former movie mentioned, this one only brought in... well, it cost... huh.  I can't find any of the information regarding this movie online.  In fact, this movie doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.

Truly we are in for a delight.


Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Review: Wytches

Looking back at last year, I saw that I covered a lot of different sources of Halloween delight, but I didn't really cover anything from comic books.  Today, that changes, as I actually found a horror comic that's well-crafted, well-written, and well drawn.


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Danganronpa 2

Yesterday I discussed a video game that I think might have had one of the most profound emotional impacts on me since the time I tried to foolishly save everybody in a video game about the zombie apocalypse.  Today I discuss its sequel, which handles being a sequel better than most games I've played, and still manages to be one of the most amazing game experiences I've had in a long time.

We're talking Danganronpa 2.



Monday, October 5, 2015

Danganronpa

There have been a lot of attempts at capturing the surprise success of the series Battle Royale from Japan, a story set in a (somewhat) dystopian future where students are selected to battle each other to the death for the "entertainment" of the masses.  It's actually a cautionary tale about overpopulation, and the lengths a government might need to go to in order to keep the population from growing too quickly.

There have been a lot of similar stories that have emerged in the last few years, not the least of which is The Hunger Games.  Now, I can't say for sure whether or not the person who wrote this series ever heard of Battle Royale (and Steven King seems convinced it's actually a The Running Man knock off), but I can say that The Hunger Games has inspired his own massive flood of knock-offs and imitations.  Everything from The Maze Runner, the Divergent series, Slashers, and- wait, hold on, I think my timeline got messed up in there somehow.

But while you can shift the world setting and mix up some of the characters and genders, in the end it always feels like you have a bunch of young people being killed off for the amusement of older people, and I still maintain that The Cabin In The Woods messed around with that idea the best.

At least when it comes to movies.

Enter Dangan Ronpa (also known as Trigger Happy Havoc), a game so amazingly good that several months later I finished the sequel and I'm still thinking about the original.


Friday, October 2, 2015

Review: The Martian (The Book)

So yesterday I said, and I quote, "...I can proudly say I've never seen all of Ernest Scared Stupid."   This has absolutely no relevance to today's topic, but I just wanted to point that out again.

What I also said was that today we would "explore what I'd probably describe as my greatest fear of all."

What does that have to do with Alan Weir's magnificent book The Martian?  They both involve being alone.


Thursday, October 1, 2015

Halloween Month Begins!

It's October!  As anybody who read my blog last year during this time knows (or anybody who casually strolls over there now to take a quick look...it's okay, I'll wait...) I'm a huge fan of Halloween.  I carve up pumpkins, I decorate, and I get deep into the idea of scary movies, TV shows, video games, books, and everything else.

Which is surprising, because when I was young I hated scary movies.  I've talked about the first thing that I remember scaring me on TV (which my father insists wasn't the first thing that ever really scared me, but it's what I remember).  What I haven't talked about is the fact that I grew to hate scary things so much that once, at a party at my own house, a group of my friends decided to watch Ernest Scared Stupid.  I knew that Ernest movies were dumb.  I watched his TV show when I was young, and looking back now, I have no idea why anybody thought he was funny.

But instead of watching a movie that might have been "dumb scary" and "probably not funny," I instead excused myself to another room and...you know, I don't even remember what I did in there.  Played a board game by myself?  Read a book?  Playing my Game Boy?  I remember sitting on the floor doing something, but I can't for the life of me remember what.  But when the movie was over, I came back out and rejoined my friends.

I'm still embarrassed by that, but I justify it by saying that I can proudly say I've never seen all of Ernest Scared Stupid.


Monday, September 28, 2015

Halloween Month Is Coming. In The Meantime...

Enjoy this absolutely wonderful piece of television history.  The nicest guy in the universe acknowledges the hard work a young man has put into his dance moves.

In other words: Mr. Rogers learns to breakdance.

Seriously, this is a thing.



Yeah, I'm just doing some happy, simply things before we get into the horror again.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

It's National Punctuation Day!

And to celebrate, I'm just sharing this.

Enjoy!

...seriously, that's it.  Go on, click it.  You'll like it.

Really.

And yes, I'm aware I missed National Talk Like A Pirate Day.  This is better.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Thoughts From A Road Trip Across America

Last week I was on a car trip ride from Portland, Maine to Puyallup, Washington.  It was me, my father, and a Volkswagen Jetta wagon with a roof rack.  I had a general idea of what to expect from the experience.  I knew there were would be long stretches of road in the Midwest where there wouldn't be much to see.  I knew that there would be long stretches of highway where the speed limit would be higher than I think I ever drove before.  I knew there were plenty of places to get good food, but it would be important to remember to eat healthy sometimes since "sitting" doesn't burn a lot of calories.

I almost wanted to blog about each day, but I decided it would be best to instead actually try to enjoy the trip without worrying about how I would word things immediately after I experienced them.  Every now and again I posted an update on Facebook if something particularly interesting (and one meal) was happening, but there were days I just didn't post anything because I was just taking the time to look around.

So below I'm posting thoughts I remember having while on this trip.  Some might be deep, some might be shallow, some might be slightly controversial to people I know.  They're just my thoughts, feel free to engage me in a debate over them if you want.  I'd probably enjoy it, I like discussing and considering alternative opinions on things.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Shutter

Shutter is a very hard book to describe to people, and I should know.  I've been trying to describe it to people I know ever since I picked up the first volume about nine months ago, and I'm still reduced to just throwing the book at people and shouting, "HEY, READ THIS."

It's a great way for me to behave like a complete hipster when it comes to comic books.  "Oh, yes, I could read the MAINSTREAM stuff like Batman, Spider-Man, or Superman, but it's all been done to death.  I want the more independent stuff."  There are, however, two problems with my doing that.

One, Shutter is printed by Image, which may not be a multimedia juggernaut like either of the Big Two, but is hardly "independent."  Second, mainstream books really are kinda lame these days.  After having some characters be around for some 80 or so years, I really find it difficult to care what Batman or Spider-Man are up to, because I know there's no permanent consequences any more.  Characters can be killed off, changes can be made, but these characters will still be around next year, or the year after that, or the decade after that.

This brings us back around to Shutter, in that it's a book where you genuinely feel like any character can be put in serious danger at any time and won't, necessarily, come out of it unscathed, if they come out of it at all.


Thursday, September 3, 2015

Dork Tower

Every now and again I have to go through my stuff and decide if I want to keep it or not.  Some things I've held onto for years I finally decide to part with, while other things get sold or given away and I spend the next few years trying to get it again.

Usually just so I can hold onto it for a short time and then get rid of it again.

However, there are a few things that I keep in particular boxes that I have such fun with on a regular basis or have such fond memories of that I'll probably still have them until I'm old, wrinkly, and (hopefully) yelling at kids to get off my space-lawn.

One such thing is my collection of the works of John Kovalic, primarily my collection of his comic series Dork Tower.