So months back (I think it was actually late last year), Joshua Jackson (who's still Pacey in my book) was being interviewed on Attack of the Show when he said that the joke behind the scenes on Fringe was that Walter was making his own drugs and that's what all that lab equipment was really for.
Well, the last two episodes of Fringe, the creators have decided to stop being subtle about anything and have just come out and said, "Hey, people, Walter's high as a kite. Anybody care?" Two weeks ago, it was limited to a single line by Walter when he offhandedly mentioned that his marijuana was superior to what they'd found at a crime scene. This week, we actually heard Walter sucking up his homemade "Brown Betty" through a bong made out of a lab canister.
We still didn't see the drug use, mind you, but, just like on That 70s Show, it was brutally obvious what was going on. I'd ask why we still didn't see Walter toking away, but I know that's a whole Standards and Practices/ Censorship B.S. thing that's both vague and yet absolute in what they do and do not allow.
Instead, I'll just say that I liked this addition to the show. Drugs are apparently a major part of Walter's character, they should thus be a big part of the show, despite what the censors don't want us to see or imply. Also, if the end result of more drugs on Fringe is more awesome episodes like the latest one, I wouldn't have a problem with that. It was a mixture of noir and sci-fi and the characters of Fringe with some music thrown in, in a story that could only come from someone who was tripping balls while he told it, which Walter was.
So my message to the creators of Fringe is this: Say Yes to Drugs!
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
South Park + The Handicapped= Classic
Ah, good ol' South Park. Fresh off receiving thinly veiled death threats for depicting someone who was supposedly the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit, they spent most of their season finale showing Jimmy and Timmy at a summer "cripple camp."
Knowing that no matter what they did with the mentally and physically handicapped or how they treated them they were sure to offend someone, Stone and Parker decided to pattern the handicapped off of classic cartoon characters. We had a stuttering Porky Pig, a forlorn-looking Droopy Dog, an Elmer Fudd lookalike who couldn't pronounce the letter"r" to save his life, we even got a kid who bore a striking resemblance to that idiot vulture who popped up as a villain trying to eat Bugs Bunny once or twice. And for the villains in this episode, we got Nathan and Mimsy, a duo who were apparently meant to be Rocky the dwarf gangster and his moronic partner Mugsy.
The episode was set up like the show Intervention, which I've never seen, mostly because using someone else's tragic life for the sake of ratings somewhat disgusts me. What surprised me most about this set-up though, is that, unlike what one would expect from South Park, the episode wasn't so much an outright parody (as they've recently done to reality shows Ghost Hunters and Whale Wars) as it was just ridiculous how serious everyone seemed to be taking everything.
Though I guess that is mockery in its own right, with Towelie's scenes being almost laughably serious and his drug addiction reaching ludicrous heights. I still really liked the show, it's just that the show was shocking to me by not being more shocking by bluntly insulting Intervention.
Anyhoo.... Oh, hell it's the prophet Muhammad! Everyone put your heads in the ground!
Knowing that no matter what they did with the mentally and physically handicapped or how they treated them they were sure to offend someone, Stone and Parker decided to pattern the handicapped off of classic cartoon characters. We had a stuttering Porky Pig, a forlorn-looking Droopy Dog, an Elmer Fudd lookalike who couldn't pronounce the letter"r" to save his life, we even got a kid who bore a striking resemblance to that idiot vulture who popped up as a villain trying to eat Bugs Bunny once or twice. And for the villains in this episode, we got Nathan and Mimsy, a duo who were apparently meant to be Rocky the dwarf gangster and his moronic partner Mugsy.
The episode was set up like the show Intervention, which I've never seen, mostly because using someone else's tragic life for the sake of ratings somewhat disgusts me. What surprised me most about this set-up though, is that, unlike what one would expect from South Park, the episode wasn't so much an outright parody (as they've recently done to reality shows Ghost Hunters and Whale Wars) as it was just ridiculous how serious everyone seemed to be taking everything.
Though I guess that is mockery in its own right, with Towelie's scenes being almost laughably serious and his drug addiction reaching ludicrous heights. I still really liked the show, it's just that the show was shocking to me by not being more shocking by bluntly insulting Intervention.
Anyhoo.... Oh, hell it's the prophet Muhammad! Everyone put your heads in the ground!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
I Clearly Have Too Much Time on My Hands
MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT!!! DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU HAVE NOT READ WATCHMEN AND SEEN AND/OR READ KICK ASS!!! AND IF EITHER OF THOSE ARE TRUE, GO OUT AND READ/ SEE THESE FILMS/ COMIC BOOKS! THEY ARE AWESOME!!!!
Watchmen is the ultimate deconstruction of the superhero myth. Alan Moore took the archetypes that we were meant to idolize and worship as paragons of purity and justice and ripped back the layers, asking, "What kind of person really would dress up in a ridiculous costume and mete out vigilante justice," and "What would it be like to be an actual superhuman on a world where there's no one else like you?"
His answer was that these people would be sadists and fetishists; lunatic fascists and naive yet violent idealists; individuals who, believing themselves to be above the normal laws and limits of society, take the safety of others into their own hands and personally decree what is best for humanity.
The problem being, where do you draw the line? Is fighting purse-snatchers enough when you're not doing anything to stop the poverty that drove someone to be a criminal? Is stopping a local "super-villain" any different than killing a brutal, foreign dictator? In Watchmen, problems and solutions arise because the "heroes" decide that there is no line, that there is no limit to what they can and should do. Dr. Manhattan averts the energy crisis by using his powers to create the parts needed to make all-electric cars, powered by publicly-available electric hydrants (in the comic, not the movie); he also serves as a one-man nuclear deterrent and wins the Vietnam War (along with The Comedian, who's really just there for the fun of it); and then there's Ozymandias, who decides to take all the problems of the world and solve them in one broad stroke that just so happens to include killing millions. And it works.
Ozymandias effectively saves a world on the brink of nuclear holocaust by tricking world leaders into thinking that an alien invasion is imminent (again, comic not movie). It just so happens that his method to doing this requires him to kill most of New York City. But, again, it works. The comic which is somewhat an attack upon what kind of personality it would take to really be a costumed vigilante, upholds the methods those same flawed personalities use by having it all work out in the end.
Kick Ass does a similar thing. While Kick Ass the character is a satirical joke at the expense of every geek who ever dreamed of putting on a costume and fighting crime, Hit Girl isn't. Hit Girl and Big Daddy are Punisher-style vigilantes out for brutal revenge, with some of The Comedian's sadism added in for good measure. However, unlike Kick Ass's laughable attempts at heroism, Hit Girl and Big Daddy's uber-violent approach to crime fighting actually accomplishes something. In fact, Kick Ass isn't really much of a hero at all until he joins up with Hit Girl and copies her "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" tactics.
While one can argue the long-term affects of Kick Ass's costumed vigilantism (Red Mist's Joker moment at the end of the film is clearly an homage/ allusion to the end of another Batman film, Batman Begins), one can't argue that in the short-term, the bad guys have been defeated, the good guys won, and all is right with the world.
So while both Watchmen and Kick Ass ask the question of what kind of person would believably put on a costume to save the day and come up with some horrifying and ridiculous answers, the heroes in each save the day nonetheless.
Watchmen is the ultimate deconstruction of the superhero myth. Alan Moore took the archetypes that we were meant to idolize and worship as paragons of purity and justice and ripped back the layers, asking, "What kind of person really would dress up in a ridiculous costume and mete out vigilante justice," and "What would it be like to be an actual superhuman on a world where there's no one else like you?"
His answer was that these people would be sadists and fetishists; lunatic fascists and naive yet violent idealists; individuals who, believing themselves to be above the normal laws and limits of society, take the safety of others into their own hands and personally decree what is best for humanity.
The problem being, where do you draw the line? Is fighting purse-snatchers enough when you're not doing anything to stop the poverty that drove someone to be a criminal? Is stopping a local "super-villain" any different than killing a brutal, foreign dictator? In Watchmen, problems and solutions arise because the "heroes" decide that there is no line, that there is no limit to what they can and should do. Dr. Manhattan averts the energy crisis by using his powers to create the parts needed to make all-electric cars, powered by publicly-available electric hydrants (in the comic, not the movie); he also serves as a one-man nuclear deterrent and wins the Vietnam War (along with The Comedian, who's really just there for the fun of it); and then there's Ozymandias, who decides to take all the problems of the world and solve them in one broad stroke that just so happens to include killing millions. And it works.
Ozymandias effectively saves a world on the brink of nuclear holocaust by tricking world leaders into thinking that an alien invasion is imminent (again, comic not movie). It just so happens that his method to doing this requires him to kill most of New York City. But, again, it works. The comic which is somewhat an attack upon what kind of personality it would take to really be a costumed vigilante, upholds the methods those same flawed personalities use by having it all work out in the end.
Kick Ass does a similar thing. While Kick Ass the character is a satirical joke at the expense of every geek who ever dreamed of putting on a costume and fighting crime, Hit Girl isn't. Hit Girl and Big Daddy are Punisher-style vigilantes out for brutal revenge, with some of The Comedian's sadism added in for good measure. However, unlike Kick Ass's laughable attempts at heroism, Hit Girl and Big Daddy's uber-violent approach to crime fighting actually accomplishes something. In fact, Kick Ass isn't really much of a hero at all until he joins up with Hit Girl and copies her "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" tactics.
While one can argue the long-term affects of Kick Ass's costumed vigilantism (Red Mist's Joker moment at the end of the film is clearly an homage/ allusion to the end of another Batman film, Batman Begins), one can't argue that in the short-term, the bad guys have been defeated, the good guys won, and all is right with the world.
So while both Watchmen and Kick Ass ask the question of what kind of person would believably put on a costume to save the day and come up with some horrifying and ridiculous answers, the heroes in each save the day nonetheless.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
It Just Sounds Wrong
So, I keep seeing commercials for American Idiot, the Broadway musical derived from the Green Day album of the same name. I also watched (or, at least, tried to watch through pure morbid curiosity) the Green Day performance at the Emmy's that featured the cast of the show. And it just doesn't sound right.
I've had this reaction sometimes to Glee (All-American Rejects' "Gives You Hell" is meant to be partly a joke, not belted out by a jilted girly-girl) and always to those awful Kidz Bop commercials (which would reach new heights of horrendousness whenever they featured a song whose meaning is considerably more adult than the producers would like to imagine).
Now I know that the creator of American Idiot: The Musical, is picking instrumentation specifically designed to remain true to the original songs, and they aren't changing the songs themselves that much; but I just can't help but think that it doesn't sound right. It's like just hearing an entire chorus of highly trained singers prettying up songs that are meant to be yelled out by punk veterans, untrained singers Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool automatically misses the point.
Keep in mind, I'm not really much of a purist (the version of Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself" that the kid in the wheelchair on Glee did, I really liked), but I feel as if these songs are somehow less genuine by taking the band out of the equation and supplanting them with attractive people with all their lovely voices.
Also keep in mind that there's no way I (or anyone reading this) will ever be able to afford to see American Idiot in its Broadway run. So there is that.
I've had this reaction sometimes to Glee (All-American Rejects' "Gives You Hell" is meant to be partly a joke, not belted out by a jilted girly-girl) and always to those awful Kidz Bop commercials (which would reach new heights of horrendousness whenever they featured a song whose meaning is considerably more adult than the producers would like to imagine).
Now I know that the creator of American Idiot: The Musical, is picking instrumentation specifically designed to remain true to the original songs, and they aren't changing the songs themselves that much; but I just can't help but think that it doesn't sound right. It's like just hearing an entire chorus of highly trained singers prettying up songs that are meant to be yelled out by punk veterans, untrained singers Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool automatically misses the point.
Keep in mind, I'm not really much of a purist (the version of Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself" that the kid in the wheelchair on Glee did, I really liked), but I feel as if these songs are somehow less genuine by taking the band out of the equation and supplanting them with attractive people with all their lovely voices.
Also keep in mind that there's no way I (or anyone reading this) will ever be able to afford to see American Idiot in its Broadway run. So there is that.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Re: WTA Stars
I forgot to mention something in reference to my last post. The reason it's so important for the WTA or ATP to create specific stars is because tennis is a one-on-one (or two-on-two) sport so there's not an entire team to root for. Nor is there a team's structure and PR people to make stars of the players for the league, that's all up to the players' and their people themselves.
Also, tennis is an international sport, so there are often not the instant connection one might have for the local team. While some countries or nationalities have gotten fully behind their players (the Serbians for their few top players, the English for Andy Murray, and now the Chinese are rallying behind their women), as a whole, it comes down to one player making a connection and becoming famous for tennis fans around the world. That has, sadly, not always equalled mainstream fame and success.
Also, tennis is an international sport, so there are often not the instant connection one might have for the local team. While some countries or nationalities have gotten fully behind their players (the Serbians for their few top players, the English for Andy Murray, and now the Chinese are rallying behind their women), as a whole, it comes down to one player making a connection and becoming famous for tennis fans around the world. That has, sadly, not always equalled mainstream fame and success.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
"Stars" of the WTA
During the 08 and 09 seasons of women's tennis, there was constant talk of a lack of "big name stars" on the women's tour: the Williams sisters only really gave their all for the Slams, and didn't (and still don't) play a heavy schedule anyway; Maria Sharapova went out with an injury and couldn't get back into top form (and still hasn't); the Serbians Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic rose quickly to the top of the game, gaining attention and fans, but then plummeted back down almost as fast (only Jankovic has been able to come back while Ivanovic has continued to fall); and no one seemed to care too much about top-ranked Dinara Safina, who mentally crumbled on the biggest stages.
But then a light of hope shone upon women's tennis. And it came from Belgium, of all places. First Kim Clijsters and then Justine Henin, both former world number ones and Slam champions, announced they would be returning to the game many felt they had left too soon. Their returns were lauded and praised as the second-coming and a return to consistency for the women's game, and suddenly the duo were celebrities again before they'd done anything.
Their fame has been ironic for two reasons. Firstly, while "Aussie Kim" was always a fan-favorite and much liked on the tour, she was too private and too quiet a personality to be the big cross-over star that the tour sees her as now. Also, Henin, while a perennial favorite among the French, was easily one of the most ignored number one players in recent memory. It was practically expected at the Slams that Henin would get the least press, but quietly and effectively progress into the later rounds regardless. So it is fitting that both of these players are getting so much attention for their "second" careers when they didn't always get it for their first.
Secondly, the consistency which many (including myself) were hoping would return with two of the more consistent players hasn't actually been seen, yet. Henin, with a specific dream of winning Wimbledon and completing her Career Slam, has been playing a more aggressive, offensive game which can lead to strings of unforced errors. She is also going for more on both of her serves, sometimes yielding double faults. Finally, both Henin and her coach have said that she wouldn't really get back into full champion form for several months (despite the fact that she made two straight finals to start her return). As for Clijsters, she has specifically lightened up her playing schedule (once one of the most intensive among the top players) to avoid the exhaustion that she felt the last time. By her own admission, this has led to her having problems getting into the consistent form that she once had, as she's now unable to find her game and just keep playing it week after week.
Keep in mind, I'm a huge fan of both of these players, and I really do want them to reach the consistent heights of excellence they once did. This is just a reminder of where their games still need work, and how insane the concept of "fame" really is, especially for sports stars.
But then a light of hope shone upon women's tennis. And it came from Belgium, of all places. First Kim Clijsters and then Justine Henin, both former world number ones and Slam champions, announced they would be returning to the game many felt they had left too soon. Their returns were lauded and praised as the second-coming and a return to consistency for the women's game, and suddenly the duo were celebrities again before they'd done anything.
Their fame has been ironic for two reasons. Firstly, while "Aussie Kim" was always a fan-favorite and much liked on the tour, she was too private and too quiet a personality to be the big cross-over star that the tour sees her as now. Also, Henin, while a perennial favorite among the French, was easily one of the most ignored number one players in recent memory. It was practically expected at the Slams that Henin would get the least press, but quietly and effectively progress into the later rounds regardless. So it is fitting that both of these players are getting so much attention for their "second" careers when they didn't always get it for their first.
Secondly, the consistency which many (including myself) were hoping would return with two of the more consistent players hasn't actually been seen, yet. Henin, with a specific dream of winning Wimbledon and completing her Career Slam, has been playing a more aggressive, offensive game which can lead to strings of unforced errors. She is also going for more on both of her serves, sometimes yielding double faults. Finally, both Henin and her coach have said that she wouldn't really get back into full champion form for several months (despite the fact that she made two straight finals to start her return). As for Clijsters, she has specifically lightened up her playing schedule (once one of the most intensive among the top players) to avoid the exhaustion that she felt the last time. By her own admission, this has led to her having problems getting into the consistent form that she once had, as she's now unable to find her game and just keep playing it week after week.
Keep in mind, I'm a huge fan of both of these players, and I really do want them to reach the consistent heights of excellence they once did. This is just a reminder of where their games still need work, and how insane the concept of "fame" really is, especially for sports stars.
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