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August 14 Wait, You Mean Stewie's Gay?Earlier this week, "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane semi-confirmed that Stewie is gay after it being pretty much a running joke for most of the series.
Next thing he'll do is tell us Peter's fat, Brian's a dog, Cleveland's black and Quagmire tries to have weird sex with as many women as possible.
In other "FG" news, Karl Rove is set to play himself on an episode this upcoming season. I'll give him credit for being a good sport, particularly when in "Family Guys" sister cartoon "American Dad" he was portrayed as a force of darkness who would catch fire if he entered in a church and whose name was always accompanied by a wolf howling.
- posted by Raoul July 29 'Family Guy' Episode About Abortion Won't AirThose wacky funsters at "Family Guy" tried to do an episode about abortion entitled "Partial Terms of Endearment." Not entirely surprisingly, FOX shut it down.
I'm not sure if I'm more surprised at the fact that the "FG" producers would try to do an episode on the subject or that they would get as far as they did before getting shut down.
After all, abortion is one of the most taboo subjects on TV. It's something that is all too common, but shows mostly go out of their way to avoid having characters even talk about the a-word, let alone having a main character actually choose one and not have deep-seated regrets about it.
I guess producers are generally too afraid of the protests they'll face.
I'm sure it won't be too long before that scrapped episode finds itself online or on DVD, so we'll see if Seth MacFarlane and crew were crazy, clever or something altogether different in taking the subject on.
- posted by Raoul June 09 What Other Cartoons Should Be Revived?It's been rumored for a while, but now it's official: "Futurama" is coming back.
The show got cancelled by FOX and is due for a new season on Cartoon Network. This makes the second show that FOX killed that has been brought back to life.
Which gets me thinking, and not just about how FOX execs have cancellation fingers that are too itchy. What other cartoons should be revived?
Here's my list of the top 5 that I'd like to see:
1. Justice League Unlimited: Actually, just about any in the DC family of cartoons -- Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond, Teen Titans -- would be good. But I think that there's much more mileage to be gotten from the entire DC universe.
2. Daria: I think there's a lot of things that it would be cool to see her cynical take on.
3. Star Trek: With the success of the new movie, maybe appetites have been whetted enough for an animated version to succeed. Plus the animation will be miles beyond what was possible when the original was out.
4. The Boondocks: Both the seasons of the show that I watched were hysterical. I'm presuming that it's dead, and don't know if that's because of Aaron McGruder, Cartoon Network or what. All I do know is I'd love to see more Huey, Riley and Grandpa.
5. Buffy: I remember seeing a few minutes of the cartoon prototype and it looked darned cool. Too bad it never got off the ground. But with news that the people behind "Buffy" are thinking of bringing her back to the big screen, I'd suggest they set their sights lower first.
- posted by Raoul March 30 The Cast of 'Next Generation' (Not So) Boldly Goes on 'Family Guy'I'm a big fan of "Family Guy" and I'm a big fan of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." So I was expecting last night's "Family Guy," which featured the entire main cast of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," to be among my all-time faves.
Sadly, it wasn't.
The joke was the Griffins went to the local Trek convention. Stewie wanted to ask the cast a question, but because fans wasted the time with non-Trek related questions about artesian wells and so forth, he got frustrated. So he builds a working transporter and forces the stars to hang out with him, only to find that the stars are a little clueless. Jonathan Frakes wants a Shamrock Shake from McDonald's even though it's September in "FG" time, Patrick Stewart wants breakfast even though it's the afternoon, and Michael Dorn wants a McDLT. And Stewie gets a little frustrated.
I just felt like they could have done a lot more getting all the "Next Gen" players than they did. Compare the episode to the "Star Wars: A New Hope" parody and you'll see the difference between when the "FG" writers go all out and when they settle for hit-and-miss humor. Combine that with the "Trek" people really being the B-plot and the main plot having to do with Meg becoming born again and trying to convert Brian, and I have to say I'm less than impressed. About the only things that amused out of the episode was God as Flash Gordon, LeVar Burton's visor making everyone seem like KKK members andn Quagmire being accidentally beamed over while in mid-tryst.
- posted by Raoul August 26 'Buffy the Animated Series' to Make A Comeback?One of my favorite series of all time is "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I'd known that there was an attempt to make a cartoon version of it that died on the vine.
Now, through the magic of YouTube, a pilot for that is available. And Jeph Loeb, a comics writer who has had a fair amount of success also writing for TV shows like "Smallville" and "Heroes" and "Lost," seems to think that the series could be brought back from the dead, not unlike Buffy herself.
I'd heartily welcome that for several reasons. More "Buffy" is inherently a good thing. Also, the animated series would be set in the more innocent Season One era. So no magic-addiction storylines, no Spike, no junior Slayers. The world of animation would allow bigger and better sequences than were possible in live-action. (Loeb talks about Buffy fighting an actual army of vamps, and the pilot features her taking on a dragon.) And much of the original cast would probably be available and interested in reprising their roles, with the exception of Sarah Michelle Gellar. (I'm pretty sure Aly Hannigan would make the time to do her part as Willow, despite "How I Met Your Mother").
Anyhow, if you're curious, take a look and see what you think.
- posted by Raoul
July 10 'Click & Clack' ... ClickedWednesday marked the premiere of PBS's "Click & Clack's As the Wrench Turns." I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.
I'm not a fan of their radio show "Car Talk," which is about the two brothers joking around and dropping the occasional bit of car knowledge. Maybe it's because I don't care about cars. Maybe it's because I find their voices somewhat annoying. Not quite sure.
But the cartoon -- at least judging by these first two episodes -- are less about cars and more about random issues.
In the first outing, the show took a swipe at elections and campaign financing. The plot was that because the brothers sucked so badly at pledge drive times, they had to raise $5 million or the network and their show would go under. So they enlist a James Carville-type who suggests that they run for office and use the sweet, sweet federal matching funds to pay off the public-radio debt. But their campaign fails to attract even one vote when the brothers and everyone else fail to back them. Fortunately, they had campaign contributions to fall back on and public radio is saved.
In the second, the brothers decide to outsource their show to India (which amused because it was "revealed" that Rush Limbaugh, Garrison Keillor and Howard Stern had all beaten them to it.) When the outsourced version of "Car Talk" outperformed the regular version, the brothers take an extended vacation. But their producer feels like she's unnecessary and is on the verge of quitting. That is, until the real "Car Talk" crew creates a situation where following the Indian "Car Talk's" advice leads to a huge lawsuit.
Along the way, we got to meet some of the other characters: Beth, the show's producer; Crusty, an old intellectual; Fidel, a Latin Lothario; along with a few others.
All in all, there were enough amusing moments to make it worthwhile. (if politicians named Phil Lander and M. Bezzle don't make you smile or wince, then maybe the show is not for you.)
Of course, with Wednesdays currently being a TV wasteland on broadcast, the bar wouldn't have to be that high.
- posted by Raoul June 11 Strawberry Shortcake: The Next GenerationThe New York Times has an interesting article about how dowdy old Strawberry Shortcake is among a number of toons getting a 21st-Century makeover.
The illustration of the new version is at the link. Basically, it looks like someone took the old-fashioned Strawberry Shortcake and ran her through whatever machine produced those Bratz dolls.
Also, the makers of her upcoming cartoon are emphasizing that she'll be "fruit-forward" -- she'll be more about actual strawberries and less about sugary snacks.
Mixed up with this news is that Warner Bros. is going to let people produce customized versions of some of its characters online. The Times quotes one WB exec as saying, "You want a dark, Goth version of Tweety Bird? Have at it."
The Care Bears aren't going to have big ol' bellies.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are going to have more muscles and less 'tude.
And Disney is even thinking about revising Mickey Mouse, for whatever reason.
These actual and proposed changes make me feel like the crabby old man Dana Carvey used to play on "Saturday Night Live." Back in my day, Strawberry Shortcake didn't have a cell phone. And WE LIKED IT!
- posted by Raoul May 05 Holy Crap! 'Family Guy' Mastermind to Become TV's Richest Writer-Producer!I just came across this story about how Seth MacFarlane of "Family Guy," "American Dad" and soon "The Cleveland Show" fame is set to become a $100 million man.
What a turnaround from just a few years back when FOX prematurely canceled "FG," huh?
I'm very happy for Seth as a huge fan of both "Family Guy" and "American Dad." But I can't help wondering: could he possibly deserve to be the richest writer-producer in TV?
Aren't there people who are more clever, who get better ratings for their shows, who deserve a bigger payday? Shonda Rhimes, for example? The brains behind "Lost"?
Here's hoping FOX gets its money's worth.
- posted by Raoul October 08 'The Boondocks' Is Back!Today marks the return of "The Boondocks" on Adult Swim, a show that I've been anxiously anticipating. And to get you in the mood, here's some of the results of a conference call I was in with the creator of the show, Aaron McGruder. Enjoy! On his initial goal for "The Boondocks": My goal was to get a job, and to do the kind of thing and the kind of humor I wanted to see, which wasn't out there very much, black political satire. I think when you go down that road and you get any kind of success, shaking things up goes with the territory. No one starts with the goal of shaking things up. It's more, I've got an idea, I think it's funny and I want to share it with people. I didn't expect the strip to be as big as it was as quickly as it happened. ... That sort of thing takes a long time even if you're really lucky. When the trouble started early, that was a little bit of a surprise. On the "n-word": I use the word in the show because I'm a bad person. I cannot in any way defend what I do. (Laughs) On Samuel L. Jackson: We try to be really respectful to Sam and not put his name out there. We didn't promote it during the first season either. But yeah, he's in an episode this season. On the animation changes between Seasons One and Two: When we finished the last script of the first season, none of us had actually seen the first episode come back from overseas yet. So we'd written the entire season blind, essentially. None of us knew what the show looked like. So just knowing what the show is, obviously, played a huge role in how we shaped Season Two. I think we had much better control over the animation, which really allowed you to tell the stories in a proper way. When you're fighting over the animation or the animation's controlling you, you're limited in what you can do. .... As we got more comfortable with the animation, I think we got more ambitious in terms of some of the scope of what we were doing and some of the action sequences. There's a lot of fighting in the show this year. A lot of the comedy is more sophisticated because we can get better performances out of the characters with better animation. So in the first season, we tried to push things in terms of what you could see on TV and sometimes we succeeded and sometimes we didn't. I think we succeed a lot more often in Season Two. On the ending of the comic strip: I do think the show played a pretty big factor in me having to walk away from the strip. I didn't want to do both badly. In the first season, I tried to do both but it took a huge toll on me. ... I constantly play with the idea of coming back, not to newspapers but online, wireless or something. It's something I think could happen. Whether it happens after the show or maybe even while the show's still running, depends on how everything goes. ... I can't meet [newspapers'] schedule. Seven days a week is just too much and they don't let you go, "I'll let you go for two or three." They make you go all or nothing. I can't meet that kind of deadline situation. A weekly perhaps, but as of now, I just feel however it happened if the strip were ever to come back it would have to be under my terms. Over the last year and a half when I was working on the show, I couldn't even handle the weekly. On the freedom of TV: There absolutely is much greater freedom. There's the freedom of storytelling that comes from animation and having all these people work for you and you can go way beyond the scope of what a strip can do. And then in terms of content, newspapers are a very conservative and very sanitized medium. So just in terms of the expression of ideas, we're allowed a lot more range on television. The impact is what it is. The show is a pretty different thing from the strip, and the end of the day, a lot of the stuff we did last season, take the M.L.K. episode, would have just been totally beyond the scope of a newspaper strip. You're limited in not seeing it come to life like you can on TV. ... I have free rein to do what I want. [Adult Swim has] never said no to anything. On the MLK episode and other scandals: You'll be happy to know there will be no controversial storylines this season. (Laughs) We went in a totally different direction with the show. Yeah, Al [Sharpton] came after the show and I'm a big supporter of Al. I also went after the show. Unfortunately, the whole second season, we had to write that. That's all written now. I feel terrible about it, 'cause now it's coming on and I can't change it. It depends on what you think is controversial. Some people thought the Martin Luther King episode was controversial. I didn't think so. Everyone draws that line in a different place. There may be some episodes that some people think of as controversial. For me, I don't know. It's hard for me to say. On how current the show can be: It's amazing how we write these things, it takes a year, a year and a half, and somehow they all become relevant again. We've done a lot of stuff, Gangstalicious Part II. There's a lot of going on socially and politically that for one reason or another, they've become news stories recently. So I feel like even though we wrote it a long time ago, it's all going to seem on top of things. ... You have to be careful in terms of what specific items from the news you try to play off of. .... No matter what happens in the world, this has to be funny a year or a year and a half from now. With the strip it was like seven days. But the rule is still the same. - posted by Raoul September 16 Lucky I Saw 'Family Guy Live'Saturday night the cast of "Family Guy" breezed into Chicago to do the latest of their "Family Guy Live" shows. They packed the Chicago Theater with fans who loved every off-color minute of it. And I was loving it right there with them.
Disclaimer: The following contains spoilers for the season, as well as potentially offensive jokes. You've been duly warned.
I got to chat with three of the four main cast members before they took the stage. Mila Kunis, the voice of Meg, didn't come out to play, at least not while I was there.
First up was Seth Green, who provides the voice of Chris Griffin, the family's overweight and clueless son. I have to say that I've interviewed a lot of people, but few of them made me feel like a nervous fanboy in the process. Green definitely did. That guy's got some charisma going on.
He explaned how the live shows work. The cast performed one in Montreal for a comedy festival and then moved on to do them in New York and Los Angeles. The cast reads from a script on stage and show some video clips. Then they answer some audience questions. "Mainly, [we] try to be incredibly entertaining," he said. It's a different vibe from doing an actual show, because they often are performing in isolation in the studio. Doing things live, they have the energy of the crowd to feed off of.
He talked about how people request particular bits, and how as a viewer of the show, he's been stunned by some of the jokes make it to air, particularly the digs against celebrities.
I asked him what all to expect this season.
His reply: "I have no idea. You know what's funny? Because of the way the show's recorded, I never read the scripts in advance. I go in, I perform it. it's recorded line by line so I get the inference of what's happening in my scene and I don't get any of the rest of the script. That way, when I watch it on television, I can watch it like I'm a fan, because I'm a fan of the show."
He listed the combination of episodes the cast is performing tonight as among his favorites.
"Meg has a job at a convenience store and then Chris winds up working there and befriending the guy who runs the place and ends up being a better employee than her and she gets fired so he has to get her rehired," he said. "But I think there's some interplay between characters that's really funny." I asked him about how he gets in the mindset of Chris, because he seems like the anti-Seth Green, uncool, unmellow, etc.
"I kind of get into a core reference to get in the voice, and I just perform," he said. "It's fun. It sounds really obnoxious, but I'll shut out the lights in the studio when we're recording and I'll separate myself as best as possible."
As I started to ask about the chance of a big-screen "Family Guy" movie, he got distracted by the arrival of Alex Borstein.
"Alex Borstein is wearing a Bears jersey with no pants on," he said. "She's going to be the big hit of the night. She said she was going to do it and I didn't believe her." He laughed and then turned to my question.
"'The Simpsons' took over 20 years to get to their on-screen debut, so I don't feel a tremendous amount of pressure. 'The Simpsons' have been getting it right for years and years and years, so their path to feature films was a careful and well-plotted one. I hope we'll do the same."
After he plugged "Robot Chicken" DVD sets (the first two seasons are available now) and mentioned that he's tired all the time, he said he didn't know if any movement was happening for a fourth "Austin Powers" movie.
"I heard Mike Myers mention something when he was doing press for 'Shrek,' but I don't think he was serious," he said. "I'm always last to hear about it anyway, so I don't worry about it."
Next up was Seth MacFarlane. In case you don't know, MacFarlane's normal speaking voice is essentially that of Brian, the family's talking, martini-loving dog, so it's odd to hear him. Besides being the show's creator and executive producer, MacFarlane provides the voices of Peter, Brian, Stewie and Quagmire. He mentioned that the FCC has had somewhat of a chilling effect on the raunchy misadventures of Quagmire and said he hopes a Democrat wins in 2008 to give him a break.
He said the protracted fight between Peter and the giant chicken will continue this season. "I've got to be able to pull off commitment in some form," he said.
As for what's up this season, he said, "The season premiere is our hour-long 'Star Wars' episode, so that's going to be pretty big. It was done in conjunction with LucasFilm. A two-parter, our hundredth episode, comes in November. Stewie kills Lois."
He was totally nonchalant about this, by the way. After all this time, Stewie kills Lois??!?!? What he means he doesn't say. "Those are the big ones," MacFarlane continued. "There's some fun stuff in the works later on, but those are the big ones." Ideas for gags, he said, can come from anywhere: things that happened to one of the writers recently, or as a child, from stuff in the news, or some crazy thing that's popped into our heads. "It's really just whatever neurons happen to be firing in our heads that day."
On the subject of people recognizes his voice. "If I'm on the phone, ordering a pizza, sometimes I get that, people say, 'Oh, it's Brian.' But generally no, for some reason."
I asked MacFarlane what's the one gag you wish you could have done. He replied with a sigh. "Ahhhh. There's so many. There was the Last Supper gag, where Jesus says, 'Drink this, all of you.' And the disciples put the goblets to their mouths. And then he says, 'For this is my blood.' And they all do this huge comedy spit take, which is pretty funny. They said it was inapprorpiate. It's been 2,000 years. Let's move on, for crying out loud."
MacFarlane also talked about how he knew a million Peter Griffins while he was growing up and that of the various celebrity parodies he's done Ellen Cleghorne stood out as the only one to make an angry call to the studio. He added that LucasFilm signed off on the "Star Wars" parody that's going to kick the season off next week.
When the subject of a "Family Guy" movie came up, MacFarlane said talk about it had heated up in recent weeks. But the difficulty, he said, would be trying to find the free time to actually do it.
If I had gotten more time, I would have asked about the possibility of a "Family Guy"/"American Dad" crossover episode, or maybe tried to get him to let me record him doing an answering-machine message. That would have been wicked cool. But MacFarlane had to go.
Finally, Alex Borstein had her say.
She too explained what "FamilyGuy Live" is about. "Most of what people are paying for is to watch Seth MacFarlane do different voices. The rest of us sit there and hope he stays healthy so we get to keep our jobs." She said the live shows can get pretty wild with Mila Kunis prone to perform naked. (Sadly, I went to the early show). She adopted her Lois voice to say, "Lois Griffin is very thankful to the fans."
A Chicago-area native, Borstein said she's glad to be back home and able to perform in a big venue like the Chicago Theater. "This is a nice way to do it without having to actually audition and work hard like a real actor."
She elaborated a little on what to expect this season. "We already had an episode where Stewie gets his comeuppance against Lois. The 'Star Wars' episode is coming up, which is near and dear to so many of our hearts because we're all such nerds. That's the most excited one for me. We're doing several of them. I don't know if you know that. we're doing a 'Star Wars' one, we're doing 'Empire,' and we're doing 'Return of the Jedi.'" And what about the prequel trilogy?
"If it were up to me, I'd forget it ever existed," she said. "That was like an exercise in green screen. It's tough to do a prequel because everyone already knows what happened. It's hard to tell a story creatively because everyone's always second-guessing. I personally was like, 'We know they're going to screw, we know they're going to make Leia and Luke. Stop running in the fields and get on with it.'" It's sometimes tough to be Lois. "The hard thing about playing Lois is you see some of the guy characters have a little more fun," she said. "It's really hard being Lois, (slipping into her Lois voice) because I'm married to a fat idiot who could crush me. (Back in her real voice) But as a character it's hard being sane in the center of all that madness. Playing Lois is a treat because most sitcom moms are really boring. They don't like sex. They hate cooking. They fight with their husband. We have so many scenes of their having pure joy together, the two of them against the world. People like that."
So is victory really Stewie's this season?
"Lois does get killed by Stewie," Borstein said. "That's why I have to do all the other characters. I do Tricia Takanawa and I do Loretta because you never know when you're going to get killed off the show. It's like the final week of 'The Sopranos.' Anybody can get whacked. Stewie does shoot Lois. That's the only thing I can tell you. He shoots her. And then there's a trial. And somebody goes to jail."
The writers range from people barely out of college ("fresh meat," Borstein calls them) to people in their 50s, so they have a range of experiences to draw from. A lot of the writers spend a lot of time on the Internet. So if some of them have found this blog, "Hi writers!"
"We like to make a nice, strong living out of other people's mistakes and failures so we're always looking," she said. "Poor Britney, huh? Britney and Paris have given us a lot of fabulous material."
Her plans for her stay in Chicago: "Eat. I'm going to fill this jersey. That's my plan. I'm going to tub it out." She was also planning to see the Bears game and see if she could get backstage and take Rex Grossman out. We wondered why coach Lovie Smith still has Grossman starting. "What is he? He thinks it's a movie and the kid's got heart? Bull----. I don't care about heart. We need an arm and good choices. Somebody who knows to throw it to his own team."
Aside from "Family Guy," Borstein said she's developing a couple of live-action projects and a series of animated shorts for "MadTV" based on a character she did there called Miss Swan that'll be called "Swanime." I asked her about how weird it is that the show was cancelled and now it's back on the air and doing live performances. "It's like Jesus. We're Jesus. We've arisen, and we're going to make everything alright. People are saying 'He's coming back,' but they don't realize he's here and his name is Seth MacFarlane."
Then it was showtime.
MacFarlane introduced his cast one at a time. Mike Henry, the voice of Cleveland and dirty old man Herbert, got a great reception when he did "Party over here" in Cleveland's voice. And the audience liked Danny Smith doing his "Wacky Waving Inflatable Arms Flailing Tube Man" bit.
But Borstein got probably the most enthusiastic applause, as Green predicted. "What the f--- is up with Rex Grossman?" she asked in Lois's voice to even more applause. Then returning to her regular voice, she said "I actually think it's wonderful that the NFL would have a mentally retarded person. I think it's a big step."
The cast performed three story arcs: Peter blows his fingers off with firecrackers and Lois has to come in to his work to prevent him frm being fired; Chris gets Meg fired from the convenience store where they both work and Brian gets ribbed from Stewie and others over his bimbo girlfriend who says things like somebody should get around to stopping that awful Hitler.
A screen occasionally shows the performers close-up, and it's kind of neat to see how they change their facial expressions in the process
The crowd's not the only ones laughing. A bunch of times Kunis cracked up.
Then a singing-and-dancing MacFarlane performs "Shipoopi," and Henry does a ballad to Chris in his Herbert voice. But he forgets a bunch of the lyrics towards the end. Then MacFarlane and Borstein do a Peter-Lois version of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" that gets pretty darn nasty, with lyrics that include, "You don't cup my testes" and "You don't bite my nipples."
After that, they screened some of the "Star Wars" parody. The Star Destroyer chasing Leia's ship at the beginning has a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. When the Imperials don't bother to shoot down a ship because it has no life signs on it, one says to the other something like, "What, are we budgeting by the laser now?" A sampling of jokes: Herbert-as-Obi-Wan Kenobi takes out a flaccid light saber which stiffens up when he sees Chris-as-Luke-Skywalker. Cleveland-as-R2D2 pulls a gun from his body and shoots a TIE-fighter, gangsta-style.
Then the floor gets opened up for questions.
One audience members asked, "How do you get a girl like Mila, who's hot, to play a girl like Meg?"
Green said, "I'll tell you exactly how it happened. 'Hey Mila, want to be on TV?'" He held out a dollar. She snatches it and puts it down her blouse. The audience laughed and clapped. Later, Green talked about another gag that got cut: In an episode in which Meg was experimenting with being a lesbian, he recalled, "there was a montage sequence with her doing all sorts of lesbian things. In the midst of that, there was a scene of her and another girl going to a carpet store."
And that's as good a place as any to call this post quits.
- posted by Raoul July 30 'Simpsons Movie': Woo-Hoo!The results are back from "The Simpsons Movie": nearly $72 mil in its opening weekend. Choose your Simpsons character catch-phrase to describe that take: A) Excellent B) Scrumpdiddilyumptous C) Ha ha! D) Ay Caramba! E) Hot Diggity! F) Take 'em away, boys! G) Thank you, come again. H) OH YEAH! I saw the movie Friday and despite my worry that it would just be no different from a bunch of regular episodes stitched together, thought it well deserved that kind of take. And as Maggie says toward the end of the film, the audience reaction and the box office mean just one thing: "Sequel." - posted by Raoul July 02 Kwik-E-Mart Kraziness!You may recall that a certain number of 7-Elevens would be converting themselves into Kwik-E-Marts to promote the new "Simpsons" movie coming out shortly.
Well, that conversion has taken place. And since one of those locations happens to be in Chicago, I decided to go across town and check it out.
It was a very cool scene. The parking lot was packed. People were taking snapshots of the front of the store, which had both signs changed to Kwik-E-Mart along with Simpsons characters on top and in the windows.
Inside there were a ton of people. One of the people, I'm guessing the manager, was wearing the name tag of "Apu" and kept using his signature line of "Thank you. Come again."
Mesmerized like Homer, I picked up a bunch of the "Simpsons" tie-ins: a box of Krusty-Os, an official Simpsons sprinkalicious donut, a can of Buzz Cola and a blue vanilla Squishy. I did manage to stay strong and not get the t-shirts or other knick-knacks that they had on sale.
Over at eBay, it looks like a bunch of people are trying to flip some of these Simpsons goodies. Best of luck with that. I haven't cracked the Krusty-Os open yet. While the Squishy was alright, neither of the other things were much to write home about. D'oh!
But that could just be the sugar rush talking.
- posted by Raoul June 05 May the Farce Be with YouWith a tip of the hat toward TV Squad, I found this "Family Guy" spoof of the original "Star Wars" pretty funny.
Lois gets recast as Princess Leia, Peter as Han Solo, Brian as Chewie, Stewie as Darth Vader and so on.
Have fun!
- Posted by Raoul
May 04 When Jack Bauer Met Bart Simpson
The crossover ep, which also serves as "The Simpsons'" 400th episode and the animated show's season finale, airs May 20 on Fox (8 p.m. ET), and finds "24"-ers Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brian (voiced by stars Kiefer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub), making an emergency run to Springfield Elementary. Why? Turns out that the Springfield Elementary CTU--the Counter-Truancy Unit--is hot on the trail of a stink bomb, and needs Jack and Chloe's help in disarming the foul bomb. Of course, it's not really a bomb at all … Homer just left behind a container of yogurt that has since spoiled. Clever, clever, clever, no? - posted by Kim March 20 Weird Al's R. Kelly SpoofHere it is, Weird Al Yankovic's spin on the oh-so-spoofworthy R. Kelly saga "Trapped in the Closet." Al's version: "Trapped in the Drive-Thru":
- posted by Kim December 26 This'll Get You Through the Slow Holiday Workdays …
My faves: "What's Opera, Doc?" "One Froggy Evening" (the 'toon that launched Michigan J. Frog, and, eventually, a whole TV network) and, perhaps my no. 1 fave, "Duck Amuck," the clever little classic in which the difficult Daffy Duck wars with his animator. What's your fave, and what do you think is missing from the list? - posted by Kim December 15 New Animated 'Star Trek' Heading to the Web?Trek Movie has a long article about a potential project that would bring a new variation of "Star Trek" to hungry Trekkies everywhere.
The proposed show would be set in 2528, the future of the "Next Generation"/"Deep Space Nine"/"Voyager" shows. The Federation would be still reeling from a major war with the Romulans and a mysterious technobabble-particle attack that left its territory essentially hard to traverse. The Vulcans have pulled out of the Federation, the Klingons were -- at least for a while -- conquered by the Romulans. Andor has been destroyed. And Federation ships do little more than border patrol.
But Captain Alexander Chase wants to stick to the Federation's founding values of exploration.
The idea, according to the article, is for the show to be somewhat of an allegory for post-9/11 life.
Yeah. Because they did that so well in the last two seasons of "Enterprise."
Seriously, I mostly like the idea. The designs seem pretty cool, and more "Star Trek" is almost always a good thing. I'd probably prefer to have a series set in or around the established time frames, with some of the characters we already know. Something more modeled along the "Justice League Unlimited" series where one episode might feature Riker, Troi and Tuvok on the Titan and another might feature Janeway and Kira at Deep Space Nine. But you take what you can get.
One potential issue is that they are talking about bringing it back in six-minute segments, and that seems like a mistake. It works for, say, "Clone Wars," because such a cartoon is mostly about action. An animated "Star Trek" should still be mostly about ideas, IMHO. I say if you're going to do it, go all the way for half-hour episodes.
- posted by Raoul December 12 It's a 'Scrubs'/'Peanuts' Hybrid, Charlie BrownMy Christmas just got a little brighter, thanks to Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune and the cast of "Scrubs."
They went back and put dubbed over dialogue in the voices of their characters from the NBC sitcom and put it over scenes from "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
The results: hilarious!
J.D. is of course Charlie Brown. Dr. Cox is Linus. Elliott is Sally. Turk is Schroeder and Carla is Lucy.
I'd spoil some of the jokes, but you really should see it for yourself.
You will never think of the dance scene quite the same, though. Enjoy.
- posted by Raoul November 20 Bully for You, Charlie BrownTonight was the 50th "Peanuts" prime-time special, and the last script to have been written by late creator Charles Schulz, "He's a Bully, Charlie Brown."
As you may have intuited from the title, the bully gets taught a lesson. (I'd love for there to be a twisted children's special where the bully wins out in the end. That'd go over well.)
At summer camp, ReRun gets victimized by Joe Agate, who hustles little kids for their marbles. With training from Snoopy, Charlie Brown gets good enough to beat him out.
Yes, the show wasn't the same for me as when I could watch Peppermint Patty and Marcie holding hands and not read anything into that.
And yes, it wasn't going to make anyone forget the high points of the "Peanuts" specials.
And yes, I figure that some day someone in the Schulz estate will greenlight more "Peanuts" specials just because they can.
But for now, I like it that the perpetual loser gets to ride off into the sunset a winner. Don't you?
- posted by Raoul November 13 D'oh! Did You Miss the new 'Simpsons' Movie Trailer?- posted by Kim |
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