Captain Planet

That's right, I revisited this eco-centric cartoon from the nineties. Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad in retrospect as I thought it might be. The quality of animation is high, and while everything from the voice acting to the themes to the villains and storylines is a bit over the top (read: beating you over the head with green ideology), its solid. I mean, its a cartoon, aimed at a younger audience--not really looking for subtlety.

So, some observations from those first two episodes:

1) Mother Earth (Gaia) is of indeterminate race, but talks like a black woman just shy of ghetto (voiced by Whoopi Goldberg, in fact--a few big name actors and voice actors on staff, not sure how they wrangled that . ..) and dresses like a Greek goddess. She also enjoys napping, and has a huge rack.  This photo doesn't do it justice. 

2) There's a Yu-Gi-Oh connection:

Wheeler: The comic relief Planeteer with a temper, Wheeler is a  fire-wielding lad from Brooklyn, complete with accent. Voiced by Joey (note: Joey) Dedio

Joey (note: Joey) Wheeler: The comic relief best friend with a temper, he is a fire-breathing-dragon wielding lad from Brooklyn, complete with accent. People have said that Joey's (Jounouchi in the Japanese) dub-name is an intentional nod to Captain Planet

3)Bad guys are usually deformed, and the environment is being destroyed by villains (not by regular people). 

4) Mullets are heroic. For reals. Lets take a look at the heroic mullet hall of fame here: 

Captain planet's mullet is not just a mullet. I would classify this as an Epic Mullet, spit curl included. 

More hero mullets: 

Macgyver

Rambo

Superman circa 1993

Aquaman

Chuck Norris

Togusa

Words and phrases from fiction we need to use in daily life

Totally going to let my inner geek free here today and list off some of my favorite words and phrases from science fiction and fantasy which I think should be applied in daily life. What got me thinking about this was the new Syfy show Defiance, which makes use of a number of loanwords transferred from alien tongues into English.

So, lets begin with Defiance:
Jaja - money
Shtako - Shit
Uses: "Keep your jaja, I don't need that shtako"

Rhapsody Trilogy:
Hrekin - Shit (exclamatory)
Uses: "Hrekin!" *spits*

Firefly:
Shiny - Little harder to define, but I'ma go with "cool" or "good" or "just fine". Others have defined it as meaning "valuable".
Uses: "Everything's just shiny here"

Wheel of Time Series:
Blood 'n Ashes - generalized curse-phrase
Uses: "Blood 'n Ashes, we'll never get there on time"
Light - Another generalized exclamatory, akin with "God!"
Uses: "Light will it, we will be home for dinner"

Harry Potter Series:
Merlin's beard - An exclamation of surprise
Uses: "Merlin's beard! I've lost my Knuts"

Warehouse 13:
Whammied - An expression for what happens when an artifact is used on you/backfires on you.
Uses: "I just got whammied; the top came off my blender"

Doctor Who:
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff - a phrase denoting something which is too complicated to be easily explained at that time.
Uses: "Daddy, what are you doing with the engine?" "Wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, son"

That's all I got. Can anyone donate more?

Who is Clara (Oswin) Oswald?

Not gonna bother explaining Doctor Who or the current season here . . .it wouldn't make any sense if I tried. It barely makes sense if you're familiar with it. So, this post is targeted directly at my Whovian friends:

Who is Clara (Oswin) Oswald?

first of all, she's a very pretty girl

There is an epidemic of theories flying around the internet--everything from Rose somehow driving Clara into the Doctor's path for unknown reasons, to Clara being a creation of the Great Intelligence as a lure to the Doctor. My favorite, though, is that Clara is a relative of the Doctor's. A granddaughter, or great granddaughter.

Reasons Clara is The Doctor's Granddaughter:

1.) Rings of Akhaten: In the Rings of Akhaten, Clara asks The Doctor if he had ever been there before. He responds that yes, in fact he had visited with his granddaughter, once. That he has a granddaughter at all is mentioned little enough, and Moffat is subtle enough, that this was likely not just a casual drop.

2.)Families Across Time:  In Hide, the notion of family across time is introduced 

      Doctor:  No, you can’t have met but she can be your great, great, great, great, great granddaughter. Yours too, of course. But you guessed that already, didn’t you. Oh. Apparently not. 
      Palmer:  The paradoxes 
      Doctor: Resolve themselves, by and large. That’s why the psychic link was so powerful. Blood calling to blood, out of time. Not everything ends. Not love. Not always.

It makes sense, given this rather heartfelt statement on the part of the Doctor, that if he has family drifting through time (perhaps family unknown to him, and unknown to them) they would be drawn together. . .again and again. . .

3.)Gallifreyan Ties: Journey to the Center of the TARDIS: This is the episode most rife with suggestions as to why Clara could be the doctors great/great great granddaughter. One of the major ones (as was pointed out to me) is that Clara was able to read the book of the Time Lord Wars . . .presumably written in Gallifreyan , the only language (?) which the TARDIS cannot parse for its passengers. That Clara can, unaided, read Gallifreyan perhaps indicates that there is some of that blood in her. 

Also, and this is just a silly girl intuition thing. . .Clara stated that the hug the Doctor gave her towards the end of the episode felt quite nice. I don't think this was in the typical "companion irresistibly attracted to the Doctor" sense, I think this was in a girl looking for Family sense. Or that's sort of what her expression implied. 

4.) Other things:

      - Clara can give the doctor a run for his money, intellectually, in all three of her timelines. Who else has been able to do this, apart from other Time Lords? Not many. 

      - Of all of the companions, Clara is the one who matches the doctor most in personality. Her thirst for adventure, cleverness and comprehension, and sense of self sacrifice (in many ways, the children she nanny's for are microcosm of The Doctors relationship with humanity) match The Doctors almost exactly.

      - Self sacrifice, death, and rebirth.I know that Clara's rebirths are not pure regenerations like The Doctors, but there has to be some reason this is happening, and I can't think of what it is apart from some sort of Time Lord heritage. 

      - The TARDIS doesn't like her. Okay, stretching here, but we know from The Doctors Wife that the TARDIS is as possessive of her Time Lord as he is of her. The TARDIS did not really view the other, human companions as a threat, but for some reason Clara is. Perhaps the TARDIS fears that Clara, as the new Time Lord on the block, will take over the controls. 

      Which, in fact, she does. The TARDIS allows Clara to drive her, in Hide, when the Doctor (for once) needs saving. (Come to think of it, The Doctor has needed a lot of saving lately, hasn't he?). The reason I draw attention to this is that the fact that Clara was able to operate the TARDIS at all, singlehanded, after so little time aboard, is no mean feat. Oddly, this piloting occurred off camera. Could Clara's Time Lord genetics have played into her piloting abilities?

To be fair, I'll present a big glaring huge affront to my theory. Clara has parents. We have seen her grow up. She does not just regenerate, fully formed, sans memories. Although, if she *is* the Doctor's granddaughter, I'm sure this apparent birthing through human parents can be Moffated into something that sort of makes sense. 

Anyway, happy pondering, Whovians!

Food Fever

Having spent the day marathon watching Hell's Kitchen, I find myself wondering why I am so attracted to this show, and other "reality" cooking shows, when I have such a deep pre-existing hatred for reality television at large.

I think the reason I enjoy it so much is pretty straightforward. Its not because I think Gordon Ramsey is cool (though I think he is), its not because I find watching a group of poorly matched people flap around in a series of increasingly ridiculous petty arguments funny (though I do) and its not because I find it amusing that these experienced chefs cant seem to bend their heads around a risotto (lol). No, I think the real reason I am so bizarrely in love with this kind of show is plain and simple: I like food. 

Moreover, I like cooking food. These cooking competition shows, moreso than ordinary "this is how you cook dish A, B, and C" shows make the culinary arts seem absolutely achievable. I mean, if these clueless assholes can manage to put together beautiful, elegant, tasty dishes worthy of Gordon Ramsey (in between not being able to cook scallops and fucking up steaks), maybe there is hope for me. 

I love the little mini-competitions where the contestants must figure out how to put together an appealing dish with a set of totally random ingredients. Its sorta inspiring, for anyone who has ever had to deal with a fridgeful of mismatched foods. 

Good books, good movies, good television, makes you feel something. Shows like Hell's Kitchen successfully make you feel hungry, excited about cooking, and innately superior to the cast of dipshits they inevitably get to compete on these shows. And it is good. 

I think I might have just hit on the appeal of reality television in general. Making us feel better about ourselves through the folly of others. Human beings are terrible . . .

:D 

Primeval

Decided to poke around in a British TV show featuring one of my favorite English cuties, this guy:

Derrrrrp! 

And a less derpy screencap of Andrew Lee Potts:

Also featuring this gal: 

So what's not to love? (Well, apart from the poor animation of the "monsters", and rather bland writing). 

The story revolves around the opening of a number of wormholes to prehistoric times, which allow various kinds of scaleys and creepy crawlies through to wreak havoc upon human kind. Our heroes, a professor on a quest to find his missing wife, his assistant, a conspiracy theorist geeky student (guess who plays that), and a girl with a way with reptiles (see pink undies above) work along with government agents to study these critters, and keep them from doing harm. 

While not overwhelmingly *good*, its not overwhelmingly *bad* either. And, I'll admit it, its kinda addictive in a lighthearted sorta way. 

Anyway, more screencaps! 

My two favorite characters 

Plus the other two

Pan Am

I told Scott this morning that I was going to watch the pilot of Pan Am, the "period drama" about Pan Am airline stewardesses in the early nineteen sixties, during the American golden age.

His response: "Oh eww. . .don't do that. That's like prime time soap opera"

I watched it anyway.

He was right.

But he was also wrong.

What is attractive to me about the notion of Pan Am, as a television series, is the topic itself. Airline stewardesses at the dawn of an age. What the pilot calls a "new breed" of women. What is really interesting about this concept is the unspoken history it attempts to tell. Women's histories were an emerging idea for the period the show describes, and the show itself seems to strive to capture the essence of women coming into their own, stepping up in the professional world in a pattern that would continue through the sixties and the seventies. If the show is to be believed, early second wave feminism has a face, and it is under a jauntily tilted powder blue cap.

This may or may not be true, but regardless, the attempt at portraying an otherwise unspoken female history is in itself admirable. Trying to do it on prime time television, even more so.

The second thing that struck me was the way the show truly captured the feel of 1960's America, with all of its glorious golden dreams of a bright future, but still tied down by all of its past prejudices and conventions. The nation, like the Pan Am stewardesses themselves, is held within the confines of its own metaphorical girdle.

Yeah, I went there.

Overall, I think this show has the potential to be utter crap and I doubt I will watch more of it. As Scott says, it is prime time soap opera. But, it is also more than that and, despite being disinterested in the romantic entanglements that no doubt make up the entire meat of the plotline as the season progresses, I really do admire what Pan Am is trying to do. This is blunt force trauma postmodernism at its best: the insistence on making visible the invisible. The medium is surprising, and the effort is admirable.