Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Quick Question

There are hundreds of filmmakers out there who love the idea of making those "women in prison" movies. You know the type — with the dyke guards and the shower room scenes and the desperate escape plan at the end. How many do you suppose are currently being developed which have a character not unlike Paris Hilton as the new inmate?

• Posted at 10:25 PM · LINK

Tuesday Morning

Just heard that the Reverend Jerry Falwell has died. In his honor, let's all think of some way to exploit this sad event to advance our causes and line our pockets.

• Posted at 11:02 AM · LINK

Guessing Game

Quick: What former member of the cast of Saturday Night Live is currently in jail? Not which one(s) should be in jail but which one is? And don't feel bad if you don't get it. I wouldn't have if someone had asked me, either. Here's the answer.

• Posted at 2:38 AM · LINK

More on Colletta

Once again, a fine comic artist has stepped up to defend Vince Colletta, the controversial inker of so many comic books from the fifties into the beginning of the nineties. In this case, it's Stuart Immonen. And once again, I've written a piece responding to something he says and I've posted it elsewhere in my vast Internet Presence. In this case, it's here.

• Posted at 1:15 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

In 1964, the Warner Brothers cartoon division — which was by then producing no cartoons — sold a package of old WB classics to ABC where they aired under the title, The Porky Pig Show. The new animated titles were "outsourced" (that word didn't exist then) to Hal Seeger's animation company where they were produced at a somewhat lower standard than had been the norm for those characters. Back in this post, we showed you the opening titles and told you more about this.

Here's a look at the closing animation of The Porky Pig Show. As was then not uncommon in cartoon show closings, the premise of the ending is that it's a sad, tearful fact that the show is over and the characters must cry and weep as if Grandma just died. But they can all cheer up and dance when they realize that it'll be on again next week! Cartoon characters in the sixties spent a lot of time bawling because their show was over.

That's a pretty dismal bit of animation and I don't think much of the theme song, either. But for some reason, the whole thing's kind of fun in Spanish. Take a look...

• Posted at 1:10 AM · LINK

Cold Shoulder

Justin Peters goes a bit overboard with a takedown of Cold Stone Creamery ice cream...but I'm linking to the piece because I wasn't impressed the few times I went to a Cold Stone. (This was before I pretty much gave up eating things like that at all, as I did around a hundred pounds of me ago.)

It seemed like such a good idea. You pick a flavor of ice cream, then you pick one or more items to have mixed into it and the counterperson does so. Every time I tried it, it was better in theory than it was in the dish before me. First off, even the smallest portion was too much and I quickly reached the stage where I was eating more out of obligation than delight. And secondly, even with my favorite ingredients blended in, it never tasted as good as it should have. I eventually came to the conclusion that if you have a scoop of ice cream and it can be substantially improved by adding more goodies, then it probably wasn't very good ice cream to begin with.

• Posted at 12:05 AM · LINK

May 16, 2007 • Current • May 14, 2007