Category: TV

seeing red

It’s Thursday once more. Which means it’s time for some Themed Things. This week’s Thursday theme is red folks, to follow up on those blue folks. Red-furred, red-skinned, red-shelled, or red cardboard, this post is red all over.

  1. The Devil. The big bad red dude. Frequently portrayed pitch fork-wielding, with pointy horns, and a long pointy tail. And also very red.

    devil_pd.jpg cute_devil.png

  2. Hellboy (2004) A movie starring Ron Perlman about a big, strong guy. Red. Looks like a demon but files down his horns. Based on a comic book character.

    3. hellboy.jpg     frylock.jpg zoidberg.jpg

  3. Frylock, from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The guy, or technically, the animate red-faced box of fries, with the brains and know-how.
  4. Dr. Zoidberg. The lobster-like alien doctor (from the planet Decapod 10) on Futurama. Fun to quote (note that Fry is a human male):

    Dr. Zoidberg: Now open your mouth and lets have a look at that brain.
    Dr. Zoidberg: No, no, not that mouth.
    Fry: I only have one.
    Dr. Zoidberg: Really?
    Fry: Uh… is there a human doctor around?
    Dr. Zoidberg: Young lady, I am an expert on humans. Now pick a mouth, open it and say “brglgrglgrrr”!

  5. Clifford, the Big Red Dog. A dog. Who is both big and red. A favorite book character from my childhood. Now a franchise with oodles and oodles of Clifford books and merchandise. And a TV show, apparently.

    6. bk_clifford_deluxe.jpg elmo.jpgwilt.png

  6. Wilt, from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Tall, skinny, and red.
  7. Elmo. The fuzzy annoyingly squeaky-voiced Sesame Street character. (Here’s an Elmo link to click at your own risk.)

    8. a_akadouji-kasuga-shrine-1488ad.jpg

  8. akadouji

    Literally “Red Youth.” Also often called Kasuga Akadouji 春日赤童子. A mysterious human figure said to have appeared on a rock immediately in front of the Kasuga 春日 Shrine gate. He often is shown as a youth (Jp. = douji), colored red (Jp = aka), standing on a rock, and leaning on a staff.

    9. redlionjacket.gif

  9. The Red Lion: A Persian folktale and book based on the same by Diane Wolkstein. About a prince who must learn to face his fears and fight a lion. Who is red. (The flag of Iran used to have a red lion on it, too.)

—

So them’s the red folks. Want more color than just red? Feast your eyes on the latest Carnival of Colors.

on kicking ass

I’ve been working for some time on an endeavor that I have dubbed “the kick-ass women project.” So far, the project has involved putting together various lists of movies and shows that have prominently featured women characters who, in my opinion, kick some ass.

However, I have yet to either define the term kick-ass or really describe what it is that I mean by the expression kick-ass woman. So here goes a try.

A kick-ass woman is a woman is more than ordinarily strong, courageous, and intelligent. Kick-ass women (or for that matter, kick-ass people in general) are those who face up to challenges that are beyond the ordinary, stand up for themselves and for others, and demonstrate their stength, courage and intelligence.

What do I mean by strength? Well, strength of character, primarily. Courage to stand up for her beliefs, for her rights, or even for her wants. Plus the brains to figure out what needs to be done.

Of course, I also enjoy the action genre, and added to these fundamental kick-ass qualities, I appreciate additional qualities. A kick-ass woman should ideally have some physical strength and the ability to hold her own in a fight. And I do have a penchant for women who can show off some martial arts skills, and literally kick some asses. Or other bits. In action or suspense movies, a kick-ass woman should also be able to outwit her opponents.

In some ways, a kick-ass woman character can also be defined by things she is not, things she does not do. For example, she doesn’t wait around for some man. To rescue her. Solve things for her. Notice her charms. Send her flowers. Marry her. She is not just the “love interest,” the prize, the trophy. She is not helpless. This is not to say that she can’t be a love interest, or accept some help, or be noticed for her charms. She can like getting flowers. She can even have romance, love, sex, marriage, whatever. More power to her. But these things are not the extent of her worth, her self worth, her role in whatever movie or show we’re watching.

I like to think of women as fundamentally strong, courageous and intelligent. This is the baseline. Sure, some women are stronger, others wimpier. Some brilliant, some not as bright. But generally, women have the potential to kick ass. It’s just that all too often in the media that is served up to us, whether it’s the more traditional male-dominated action and suspense movies, or the “chick movie” type romantic comedies, the women characters are overshadowed or underdeveloped. Watered down, or just gussied up.

Like many others, I want more movies and TV shows to feature women who demonstrate their strengths.

So, where am I going with this project? Well, I’ll probably put together a few more lists. It has come to my attention that I should put together lists of movies where the ass-kicking is more figurative than literal. While heavy on the action genre, my existing lists do include some such non-action movies, but there are certainly more out there.

I’ve also come across a number of other resources (books and websites) that discuss, rate or list kick-ass women movies and shows. I’ll get around to writing about them. At some point.

I also still have this plan of reviewing and actually scoring individual movies (or shows), based on the kick-assedness of the women characters.

I even have plans to write more about the expression kick-ass, and why I’ve chosen it over terms like sheroe or heroine.

Al Gore rocks.

Al Gore made a guest appearance on the Daily Show this week to talk about his book, The Assault on Reason. (I didn’t get to see it when it was on TV, as we suffer from a cable deficiency, and don’t get Comedy Central.) You can see a pretty complete transcript of the interview here, but the clip is worth watching:

Gore has some interesting things to say about the media, and also about The Daily Show¹:

Actually, if you want to get through a lot the nonsense, and get to the heart of the most important news of the day is, this is one of the places to go to get the straight story. And it’s ironic.

He also goes on to make an analogy to court jesters of the Middle Ages, who were in a unique position to criticize the court through jokes. And he uses the term highfalutin, which I just don’t get to hear often enough.²

One point that comes up (by both Gore and Stewart, who also rocks) is that the internet is a means by which the money-driven zombie-producing powers of TV news can be counteracted. Gore says of the internet:

It is the single greatest source of hope that we will be able to fix what ails the conversation of democracy.³

So, here’s to the conversation.

And here’s to Al. (Ah, how different the world might have been…)⁴

———————–

¹ Please note that Jon Stewart did not hound Gore with questions about the horserace.

² And by the way, the spelling of this etymologically mysterious word seems to be not terribly conventionalized. We also get high-fallutin’, hifalutin and high faluting, to name some of the possibilities.

³ Please also note that the first 3 comments on this YouTube post are apparently written by 12-year-olds. Which demonstrates some of the flaws of the internet as a medium for serious discourse.

⁴ I like to use footnotes in my posts. Footnotes are cool.

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sinking my teeth in

I’ve decided I need to organize my things. I have a tendency to make lists of things, willy-nilly, whenever the urge strikes. Any old day of the week. Whether it’s blue dudes on a Saturday, balls on a Friday, or pigs on a Sunday, or cheese on a Tuesday. Willy-freakin’-nilly, I tell you.

So I was all like “hey, I should pick a day. Have a thing day. A themed thing day.”¹ So to go all out with the alliteration, I’m going with Thursdays. Thus creating the Themed Thing Thursday.

So in honor of the onset consonant of the words theme, thing and Thursday, the voiceless inderdental fricative, my first official theme of things for this Themed Thing Thursday will be teeth. Because without teeth, it’s really hard to say things.

teeth.jpg

A few things toothy

  1. ϴ or theta.
    The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for the voiceless dental (or interdental) fricative. This sound is usually written “th” in English, though the sound is nothing like a t followed by an h. (Note also that not all instances of “th” are stand-ins for theta: there’s the evil twin ð, too. Sometimes called the “eth.” It’s the voiced dental fricative. You know, the one in the.)
  2. The Tooth Fairy
    A legendary individual who pays children for losing their teeth. In the version of the myth I grew up with, when you lose a tooth, you put it under your pillow when you go to bed. In the morning, you wake up to find a coin in place of the tooth. The explanation for this phenomenon is not that the tooth has metamorphosized, but that a strange woman, possibly with wings, sneaked into your room while you slept, and felt around under your very head for the tooth, grabbed and pocketed said tooth, and then left you a small payment. This was supposed to be a comforting tale.
  3. The Wikipedia Tooth Fairy page has a whole bunch of fun popular culture references to the tooth fairy by the way, such as the episode of the Simpsons where Bart loses his last baby tooth, or Darkness Falls (2003), horror movie about an evil tooth fairy.
  4. The movie Toothless (1997)
    I had actually never heard of this movie until some soul out there tried desperately to find quotes from the movie. I have no idea why. I’m assuming it was the same person, trying variations of “quotes from the movie toothless” and “toothless movie quotes.” And they kept getting my post on movie quotes where I quote the “tough and ruthless/rough and toothless” bit from Kentucky Fried Movie. Anyhow, the movie “Toothless” was a TV movie from 1997, and looks to have been pretty sucky. Kirstie Allie played a dentist turned tooth fairy.
  5. Speaking of dentists, there’s the movie Marathon Man (1976) (And also the novel by William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride.)
    The story features a famous (or infamous) torture scene involving an evil, sadistic dentist. (“Is it safe?”)
  6. Little Shop of Horrors. A 1960’s B movie that was later adapted to a Broadway musical which was later adapted to another movie. The main story is about an alien man-eating plant, but it also features a sadistic dentist. (Clearly, some people have issues with dentists.) Steve Martin plays the dentist in the 1986 movie.
  7. Just in case you fear that all pop culture portrayals of dentists are unfavorable, Monty Python offers this counter-example, featuring heroic feats performed by a member of the BDA. (“It’s a man’s life in the British Dental Association”):

  8. And speaking of Python, what list of teeth could be complete without those big pointy teeth from the Holy Grail. You may be happy (or dismayed) to learn that you can now purchase associated merchandise, such as slippers and hand-puppets featuring rabbits with big pointy teeth.

—————–

¹ I’m also inpsired by some folks I admire who have their own weekly theme days, like KC’s Medical Advice Mondays and Sage’s Word Wise Wednesdays.

spam spam wonderful spam

Here’s a post about spam to follow up on all of last week’s cheese.

WordPress has a pretty decent comment spam filter, and not too many spam comments see the light of day. (According to my stats page, over 2500 spam comments have been caught by the spam filter in the 6 months I’ve had this blog.) I do still sift through my caught spam periodically, just in case something legit has gotten trapped. Often, I’ll see boring lists of links for hotels or celebrity photos, or prescription drugs, or drug scandals about celebrities who share names with major hotels. Sometimes I see links for porn sites that I really, really didn’t want to know existed. (I’m greatly disturbed by the non-consensual ones…) Anyhow, spam, when it’s not disturbingly offensive, can be downright dull. But lately, I’ve been seeing a trend that makes the task of sifting through the spam box a bit more entertaining: some spam that makes me laugh. I thought I’d share a few with you, though without the links to whatever it was they were trying to sell, and a few of my thoughts in response. (Mind you, these are supposedly left as “comments” on posts. Generally the “comment” has nothing whatsoever to do with the post it’s left on.)

Some spam comments that made me laugh

hot old babes

Hey, I’m not that old. Am I? But thanks for calling me hot.

bangers booty fat intro article

Yes, I’m starting some research on bangers booty fat, and I feel I need a good overview on the topic.

Books about spy cam upskirt.

Ah, yes, those would be in the spy cam upskirt section, which is between the section on booty fat and the books on hot old babes.

wholesale interior door intro

It’s definitely the way in. All the way in.

Fresh news on bag laundry.

Wow! I can hardly contain my excitement!

News about skinny big boob.

Not just big, but skinny big. I can just see the headlights headlines.

Good information source for tushy massage movie.

Wait, are we talking about a feature-length movie of butt-rubbing? Or just a short? I guess that’s why we need a good information source.

Variants of sweet ass.

I’m writing a poem for my true love, and I don’t want to overuse the expression “sweet ass.”

Fresh information about naruto hentai wallpaper.

All the information I can find on naruto hentai wallpaper is so damn stale, and I want to redecorate my dining room with an anime porn theme.

big gay bear introduction

I always suspected that there was more going on between Yogi Bear and Booboo than just stealing pic-a-nic baskets.

Good information source for bowling party bag.

Thank god I finally know where to go for this!

Actual news on car rental toyota category.

Yes, this is the news the masses crave. Hasn’t FoxNews stepped up to the challenge?

Hhgghhg kdfgdg sdgfgt sd gdsgdgsdg gd sdgdgsdg

I found this one to be a bit…gdtfgdgd cryptic. You know what I gsgsf?

:) Hi everybody! Does anybody know what is propecia? What a shirt? I go crazy about this!
I found it here:

Can I just repeat, “What a shirt?” What the hell does that mean? I go crazy about this!

Hi
You are The Best!!!
Bye

As for this one, I was sorely tempted to let it pass through. Gosh, thanks!

——————-

And here, in case that wasn’t enough spam for you, have another helping of spam, spam, spam, python and spam:

extra cheese

You know what really cheeses me off? When I finish a list and realize I’ve forgotten something.

It’s like going to the grocery store to buy bread, eggs and milk, and then remembering I need cheese too as I’m driving on my way there, but I figure I’ll wait to add it to my list, since it would be hazardous to write while driving, even if it is only one word, and then when I get there, going into this trance as I wander the aisles with my shopping cart, and wondering what it means that supermarkets now play music that was actually popular when I was in high school, and feeling up the melons and squeezing the toilet paper, then browsing the cereal aisle and feeling nostalgic for the days of my youth when lucky charms were an exotic unattainable bowl of cereal at the end of the rainbow because my mother insisted on having us eat healthy cereals like wheat chex and when I finally tried them, they really weren’t that thrilling, and resisting the urge to buy cookies and redi-whip and donuts, and before you know it, I’ve filled up the cart and then I head home with my bags of groceries, and after I put away my bread and my milk and my pint of organic blackberry sorbet, which seemed like a healthier choice than the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, but screw it, I bought that too, and bananas and maple syrup and zucchini and oatmeal and frozen peas, and then find a crumpled up paper in my pocket, and it’s my grocery list with its three measly items (bread, eggs and milk) scribbled on it, and realize that I’ve forgotten the eggs, and (crap!) I also forgot to get more cheese.

You know what I’m saying?

Anyhow, I realized that I left off some key pieces of cheese from yesterday’s cheeseful bounty. Such as:

  1. Richard Cheese, a musician who, along with his band Lounge Against the Machine, provides cheesy lounge music reinterpretations of so many your favorite contemporary songs. Also in the music category is the band The String Cheese Incident. Then there’s the apparently sadly now-defunct Cheese Patrol, a

    yearly homage to all the songs that people vociferously hate but secretly know all the words to. These are the songs we grew up with; overorchestrated. overwrought, oversynthed, over the top.

  2. Somehow I also managed to leave off the appearance of the cheese guy in the Buffy episode “Restless“, as well as a few other cheesy references. And in my research I came across this brilliant essay “An Analysis of Cheese as Metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Apparently, the layers of cheese in the Buffy series run far deeper than I’d realized.
  3. For more on cheese philosophy, you can check out this essay “on the non-existence of cheese.” Is there proof of the existence of cheese in the universe? Perhaps not.
  4. Then there’s the Cheese Burglar. But I’m not really a big fan of the cult of which he is a member. So instead I offer this cartoon mouse classic, The Cheese Burglar (1946). (You can even see it on YouTube. Though I admit to not having watched anything close to the whole 7 minutes.)
  5. I actually like the animation of this (shorter) shortThe Cheese Trap better, which features a cg version of the board game Mouse Trap, one of my childhood favorites.
  6. Do you hanker for a hunka cheese? Do you remember this rather creepy cartoon psa from the 70s? You might also be interested in the hunk-hankerers guest appearance on the Family Guy.
  7. Yesterday’s cheese did not include much in the way of cheese activities for those of you with too much time and not enough cheese on your hands. Options include: a quiz to let you know what kind of cheese you are. (There’s also a similar-veined one-step cheese “comparator,” but the reviews are not stellar.)
  8. There’s even an experiment with cheese that you can perform at home on your own. (However, the author does recommend exercising caution if you are lactose tolerant.) (And no, my dear seester, this is not the same cheese experiment you tried with me that one time when we were little. I’ll write about that later.)
  9. Most thrillingly, you can actually watch cheese *live* online. That’s right, you can watch watch cheddar cheese aging. Not only is it just as exciting as it sounds, it is also apparently the cool thing to do. (If you don’t have the months to spare to see the change in progress, you can also check out this time-lapse video encapsulating 3 months of the cheese-aging process.)
  10. And even though I offered it up yesterday, no cheese list would be complete without The Cheese Shop sketch. This time, I serve it up in its youtubiful glory:

say cheese

swiss_cheese.jpgYou might think you need to go to the grocery store to find cheese, but I have found cheese in a variety of unexpected places: books, movies, music and more. (And yes, it can get messy. Let me tell you, camembert is not something you want to find in an unexpected place.) I’ve come across so much cheese that there’s far too much for just me. So, I offer up to you this delectable platter of assorted cheesy goodness. Get your crackers ready.

  1. “The Big Cheese”: an expression meaning “the top banana” or “the head honcho.” (Please note that the “head cheese” means something totally different.) Here’s something I did not now about the origins of the expression “big cheese“:

    This use of the word probably derived not from the word cheese, but from the Persian or Hindi word chiz, meaning a thing.

  2. Little Miss Muffet This nursery rhyme girl not only sits on her tuffet, but she eats her curds and whey. That’s cottage cheese, my friend.
  3. “The Cheese Alarm,” a song by Robyn Hitchcock. This is a song of many cheeses:

    Roquefort and grueyere and slippery Brie
    All of these cheeses they happen to me

  4. “the cheese stands alone“: a line from the song “The Farmer in the Dell”. The title of I am the Cheese, a young adult book by Robert Cormier, and also a movie based on the same, references this line of the song, and the loneliness of being cheese.
  5. Cheese has long been used as a bait in mousetraps, and is especially good for trying to catch cartoon mice. Recently, this cheesy bait concept has been extended to motivating office workers with the book Who Moved My Cheese. This irritating-looking parable appears to have spawned a slew of cheese parody books, at least three of which are entitled “Who Cut the Cheese?”
  6. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by the illustrious Lane Smith. This picture book features, among other things less cheese-oriented, a cheesy reinterpration of the gingerbread man fairy tale. Catch it if you can.
  7. “Cheeses of the World Series“: Jefferson Mint’s series of hand-painted collector’s plates featuring the cheeses of the world. Available only as an extra on the Austin Powers DVD. This is funniest deleted scene I can remember. It’s part of the overview that Number Two (Robert Wagner) gives of the activities of Virtucon, the “legitmate face” of Dr. Evil’s evil empire.
  8. Wallace and Gromit, Grand Day Out. Wallace loves cheese. Enough to go to the moon for it. And as we all know, the moon is made of cheese. (The other W&G features also feature some cheese, at least I know that The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave do. I have yet to see The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but I would be sorely disappointed if it was cheese-free.)
  9. You know, there just aren’t enough movies featuring cheese. Paul Davidson, whose blog I found while doing my takehome final, offers a solution to this perennial problem by suggesting “ten movies whose plotlines would change by simply adding the word cheese to their titles.” An excellent proposition. (cf. “A Touch of Evil Cheese” and “Stand by Me Cheese”)
  10. The Cheese Shop sketch. In the land of the cheese, this sketch reigns supreme. John Cheese, I mean, Cleese and Michael Palin perform this legendary Monty Python gem. Hey, I was just making a joke about the John Cheese thing, but check out this slice of trivia from the John Cleese Wikipedia entry:

    John Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England to Reginald Francis Cleese and Muriel Cross. His family’s surname was previously “Cheese”, but his father, an insurance salesman, changed his surname to “Cleese” upon joining the army in 1915.

    Anyhow, the Cheese Shop Sketch features 43 kinds of cheeses. Well, the names of 43 kinds of cheeses. Whether you’re looking for Cheddar, Brie, Wensleydale or Venezuelan Beaver Cheese, you will find no better place not to buy it.

so blue

Feeling a bit blue, folks? Well I’ve got blue folks for you. A whole list of blue folks. Some serious, some silly. Blue-skinned, blue-furred or just blue in the face. Some people, some people-like creatures. One sort of blob. Plus one god.

A List of Blue Folks

  1. Smurfs. (By the way, I’m actually very disturbed by the Unicef Smurf commercial. Which is I guess the message they were going for.)

    smurf.jpggrouchy.jpg-ette.jpg

  2. Sesame Street offers Cookie Monster and Grover.

    3. tv_sesame_street_cookie_monster_interested.jpggrover.jpgbloo.png

  3. Then there’s the more contemporary Bloo from the cartoon Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.
  4. Blue Man Group. A group of men who are blue. Well, who paint themselves blue to perform some sort of performance. In the show Arrested Development, the character Tobias, a blue man who has aspirations to be a Blue Man, spends several episodes painted blue.

    5. bmg12_tn.jpgthe_tick.jpg

  5. The Tick. Mighty blue justice. A big blue superhero from the animated and live action TV shows.
  6. Various X-Men characters. The movies add one new blue mutant with each sequel. The first had Mystique, the second added Nightcrawler, and the third added Beast.

    m.jpgn.jpgb.jpg

  7. The Wee Free Men and other books by Terry Pratchett featuring the Nac Mac Feegle. Little blue people based loosely on the Picts of Scotland, who would paint their skin blue before battle. (See also Braveheart, which depicted blue face-painting that may or may not have been historically appropriate.)
  8. The Blue Fugates. An Appalachian family prone to methemoglobinemia, a medical condition causing the appearance of a bluish tinge to the skin. You can read more about them and other historical and mythical blue figures, like
  9. Blue Moovians. Ancient blue humanoids. Who knew?
  10. The Tuareg, a Berber ethnic group. Not actually blue, but

    The Tuareg are sometimes called the “Blue People” because the indigo pigment in the cloth of their traditional robes and turbans stained the wearer’s skin dark blue.

  11. The Hindu deity Krishna.* You can also learn more about why Krishna is colored blue.

    12. krishna.jpg

*(Note: I hesitated to include Krishna in my list, even though he is so very blue, seeing as he is an actual god and all. I don’t want to be disrespectful. However, upon remembering that he is often depicted as a playful god, I hope that his inclusion in my playful list will not offend. (cf. This line from a story in Shri Shyam Katha: “Then the playful Lord Krishna said. ‘First you promise me and then I will ask for a boon'” (Note: I must share that the preceding quotation made me giggle, as my most recent encounter of the word boon was about something else.)))

I’ve got a lot of balls

I’ve got balls. Bouncy balls. A whole lot of ’em.

Here’s a list of some bouncing balls I’ve encountered. A list of 5 things of the bouncy ball persuasion. And a whole lot more balls than that. On with the bouncing!

  1. The Sony Bravia commercial. My sister sent me a link to this ad, which I hadn’t seen before. It features a whole lot of bouncing balls, bouncing down a street in San Francisco. And through the wonder of YouTube, I can bounce it to you here.

    The making of video is fun to watch, too. You can also read more about it, and see some cool photos. And want to get some balls of your own? Get a bunch of downloads.

  2. Want to know more about the bouncing of balls? Learn about the physics of bouncy balls, or about bouncing ball simulations.
  3. Here’s another bouncing ball commercial, this time for a museum in Mexico. Features a pair of balls.
  4. “Follow the bouncing ball.” Old-time TV (and movie?) sing-alongs used to feature a bouncing ball that would bounce along the words displayed on the screen. It’s a bit hard to find examples of this, though I came across a version someone random made and put up on YouTube. Or if you don’t mind being forced to watch an irritating ad, you can sing along with some old TV show themes songs with the help of a bouncing ball.
  5. My favorite balls of all are from the Futurama episode “War is the H-word“. (By the way, this is also the episode where Leela dresses up as a man, and where Fry buys his ham-flavored gum. For “breath as fresh as a spring ham.”) This episode features a planet of bouncing balls. And these fabulous ball-bouncing quotes, from the treaty negotiations with the head of the balls:

    We demand bouncing, followed by rolling, followed by rolling of the third type.

    and

    We cannot condone bouncing of the seventh variety.

    and

    The Elders tell of a young ball much like you. He bounced three meters in the air. Then he bounced 1.8 meters in the air. Then he bounced four meters in the air. Do I make myself clear?

    and let’s not forget when Leela says:

    We’re here. I followed the bouncing balls.

bouncy_balls.jpg

This post is being submitted to the //engtech 5 things contest, which strongly advocates bouncing of the 5th variety.