Spider Pig

My daughter has been a Simpson’s fan since she was 3.  I recall at the time thinking, “she shouldn’t be watching this stuff”, but if you see the crap kids watch nowadays, the Simpson’s might as well be the new Sesame Street.

Over the years we have accumulated the entire Simpson’s DVD collections and while there are untold numbers of excellent episodes, it was only just recently that I realized the genius that is Season 5.  From top to bottom I don’t think any other show has ever had as good a season as that 1993-94 season.  For what it’s worth, season 4 did have Mr. Plow, which I consider to be the greatest episode of all time, but Season 5 was 22 episodes of comedy gold.

Here is just a smidgen of the funny: Methuselah’s rookie card.  Cape Fear.  Chocked full of heady goodness.  The all syrup Squishy and Ernest Borgnine.  Think unsexy thoughts, think unsexy thoughts.  Mr. Burns, germs, and the Sproose Moose.  The Inanimate Carbon Rod.  The nacho hat.  Precious antique cans.

Epic win.  The likely reason for this uber season was that most of the writers for the previous four seasons had left the show and Season 5 was a whole new team of writers.  Whether these guys were just that much better than the previous guys, I dunno.  Maybe they were just in the right place, at the right time, doing the right drugs.

Chuck Heston

Decided to pass on the Will Smith, 4th of July movie this year and opted instead to see James McAvoy in Wanted.  I don’t know who that guy is either, but not only does it have that guy, you get to see Angelina Jolie’s butt crack and hear Morgan Freeman say, “mother fucker”.  How could this movie be full of anything but win, amirite?

Wanted combines the ultra cool fight scenes of The Matrix with the style and blood of Fight Club.  Instead of kung fu, they use guns.  Instead of bullet time, they curve bullets.  Instead of moral fiber, they have fabric that decides who dies next.  Most importantly, instead of Keanu, they have actors.

Maybe not Oscar material here, but a fun, adrenaline-rush-action-romp of a movie none the less.

P.S. I am aware that neither The Matrix nor Fight Club contain any moral fiber.

Photograph

After a couple of days fighting with the Fotobook plugin for WordPress, I am finally victorious.  As it is now my vanquished foe, it is required to do anything I wish.  Unfortunately, all it seems willing to do is fetch my Facebook photos, but it does do a well enough job of that.

The fighting was based upon the fact that the 3.1 version just wouldn’t work for me.  I dug through the code, reset/re-installed the plugin, tried a little voodoo, nothing worked.  As I was about to give up, I decided to give an older revision a try.  Luckily, the 3.0.7 version appears to work flawlessly.

The whole reason I even bothered with any of this is because the Fotobook plugin allows me to easily import photos from my Facebook albums directly into this site.  As such, I have now replaced the old gallery I was using with this one, which can be accessed through the Photos page.

Lies

Took the kids to see WALL•E this weekend and while it is a good film, though a tad too slow to keep it’s target audience fully interested, the opening short was excellent.

As is customary of every Pixar movie, they open with an animated short film. This one was called Presto. To sum up, it is about a magician who has two hats with a magical connection that allows objects to pass through one to the other. Through these hats, and with the assistance of his rabbit, he performs his magic.

If the creators of Presto ever come out and state that the game Portal was an influence, I wouldn’t be surprised. If they ever claim the opposite, much like the cake, they will be full of lies. The short plays out just like I’d envision a movie based on the Portal technology would with limitless applications of the Portal’s portalness. Because it is a short, the film’s concept never becomes tired and leaves you wishing it would keep going, much like it’s gamesake.

In other Portal related news. Someone has actually created a Portal inspired, custom voice file for specific models of Garmin GPS’s. GLaGPS

Just a Bill

Lets keep the grumpy old man theme going.

What the hell happened to Saturday Morning Cartoons?  When I was young, my whole week was built around waiting for Saturday morning to come around.  I’d sleep on the couch in the living room on Friday night just so that I wouldn’t have to waste any time getting to the TV the next morning.  From 8 to 12, if it was animated, I was watching it.  I’d even watch the crap like the Gummy Bears or the Monchichis just because I knew something good was coming on next.

Dungeons and Dragons, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Looney Tunes, Mr. T.  OK, I didn’t actually watch Mr. T and his gymnast friends, but I pity the fool that doesn’t know why pittying fools is funny.

Nowadays, my kids could give two shits about Saturday Morning.  If they watch anything, it’s just dvr’d Spongebob or Simpsons episodes.  I must admit however, that I do really enjoy the new Spectacular Spider-Man series.