Category: Idiot Box

TV, movies, etc.

One Truth Prevails… Nobody Thinks Much of Americans

December 7, 2009

My favorite anime is “Case Closed”, about brilliant 17-year-old detective Jimmy Kudo who got poisoned and transformed into his 7-year-old self under the pseudonym Conan Edogawa, and is living with his girlfriend Rachel and her detective father Richard (coughElectraComplexcough) though they don’t know who he really is, and when Richard is trying solve a case, which he never can because he’s a dumbass, Conan knocks him out with a tranquilizer dart and uses his bowtie gadget to mimic his voice and solve the case for him. It’s basically several hundred episodes of that, with everybody acting like Richard is so brilliant even though never noticing he’s unconscious and that his lips aren’t moving and that he never remembers solving anything. Haha.

Anyway, since the show is of course originally made in Japan, and only about a quarter of the total episodes have even been reversioned into English so far, I figured some things besides language must have changed. Names like Jimmy and Rachel and Richard sounded a bit English.

Yeah, looked it up, just as I figured. In the original Japanese version, Jimmy is Shinichi, Rachel is Ran, and Richard is Kogoro, as well as a lot of other differences in other characters’ names. The only one that’s the same is Conan Edogawa, but that’s because in the second episode he made it up on the spot from Arthur Conan Doyle and Ranpo Edogawa after glancing at some books on a nearby shelf.
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Wicked Sweet

April 30, 2009

Apparently, people who are “sweet” should stay out of the rain. They’re so sweet because they must be made of sugar. Water melts sugar. So sweet people melt in the rain or when otherwise wet.

But then how come the Wicked Witch of the West melted when water got sprinkled on her? She wasn’t sweet… or was she?

Now that I think about it, maybe the Wizard, Munchkins, and Witch of the North weren’t as “good” as we might believe. Maybe the Wicked Witches of East and West were actually the good ones. Is it out of prejudice for green-skinned women that they are dubbed evil?

Or is it because the Witch of the West kept trying to kill Dorothy?

Then again, that’s not a mystery. If you crushed my sister with a house, I’d want to beat you to a pulp, too!

Brian Loves Lois

March 23, 2009

So for perhaps the billionth time, the Family Guy episode “Brian in Love” was on the other night. From the second season, the episode begins with Stewie allegedly having a problem peeing all over the house, and no one believes him when he denies it. We soon learn it’s actually Brian the dog doing it involuntarily and allowing Stewie to take the blame. This is revealed when he pees in front of them at a supermarket, so he is sent to a psychiatrist after it’s apparently determined the problem isn’t physical. The shrink suggests Brian go out and see the world, which he does and the problem seems solved! But Stewie’s annoyed for taking the blame before, so he pees all over the house for real, and sure enough Brian takes the blame, and he laments that he doesn’t even remember doing it. So he returns to the shrink where Brian mentions a time Peter and Lois were getting romantic with each other, so when Brian describes Lois some more after the shrink asks him to, the shrink tells him it means he must be in love with her, and when Brian denies it, the shrink says “who are you trying to convince, me or you?” at which point Brian is convinced it is true. So he tries to come on to Lois, and fails miserably, but Stewie notices what’s happening and decides to troll him with it by pretending to be all affectionate with his mother. Brian decides he’d better confront Lois, and she picks up on what’s happening and tells him their friendship is great and there’s no reason for anything more, and Brian seems satisfied with that.
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Little Drummer Warners

December 19, 2008

Now, for a divine, animated edition of…

Here’s to You!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, Animaniacs!”

I made of mention of this in last year’s Secular Specials entry, where I mentioned the reasons some Christmas specials tend to not touch the story of Jesus’s birth much (or it at least might seem that way). Basically, it’s safer not to. With all these oversensitive Christian morons running around, one false step on the sacred ground that is the nativity story could have like 5,000 midwestern churches wanting your head on a platter. Yet you might have these same people also whining that Jesus is being phased out of Christmas, a doublespeak typical of evangelicals. They want Jesus to get more of a mention, but if you try, they pipe up with “YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!” And because doing the nativity story can have the side effect of coming off as proselytizing, makes it all the more appealing to just stick to other Christmas stories.
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The Little Tree

December 9, 2008

So I was watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas last night and noticed something. What’s the “moral” to the story? The thing about Linus telling about Jesus and all. Perhaps. My dad sure likes to talk about how great it is that it focuses on Jesus like that, taking the time to go into another ignorant diatribe about how “the Jews are making it illegal to mention Jesus!”.

But the story continued after Linus’s soliloquy. Charlie Brown was now smiling as he took the tree out of the auditorium, and then came the real moral to the story, one that rings true for a lot of people during the holiday season. When he said this line: “I’m not going to let all this commercialism ruin MY Christmas!”
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Trix Wisdom

April 28, 2008

Now for a teasing, fruity version of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

Something I can say for sure that has irked me for pretty much my entire life are Trix cereal commercials. You know, you’ve got a bunch of kids enjoying Trix and the rabbit wants some, but he is denied time after time because of the classic retch-inducing line: “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”

So ever since I was a tiny little kid and on through to today, on the rare occasion I still watch anything early enough in the day for a Trix ad to come on, I’ve watched that poor animated rabbit suffer the jeers and taunts of the animated people refusing him a cereal he has desperately wanted. He’s had to resort to outright stealing to entering contests on the quick to disguises to whatever else, all of which could be avoided if the kids would learn to fucking share. I mean, it’s kids these ads are aimed for. But what does it teach them? Entitlement based on superficial factors. Bigotry. Selfishness. Arrogance.
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Language of Coffee, Addendum

February 28, 2008

Alright, I’m ranting about the same thing twice in a row. I must be out of ideas! Or I just have more to say the subject. Whatever.

As I’m writing this, I’ve got a venti (that’s right, venti, suck it, Dunkin’ Donuts) white mocha next to me, nice hot tasty drink on a cold day like this! While in Starbucks, I thought some more about the ridiculous ads Dunkin’ Donuts is running. Seriously, you’ve GOT to be majorly mindless to not understand the menu! That “your mouth can’t form these words”. What is this, the 1950’s? I mean, if anything, those ads are running at least a couple decades too late, if their whole campaign is, as I said a couple days ago, that Starbucks is bad because their menu isn’t American enough. Despite the fact that Dunkin’ Donuts’s menu isn’t THAT different.
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Language of Coffee

February 24, 2008

Now, for a caffeinated, beany version of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Someone shoot whoever made those mind-numbing Dunkin’ Donuts ads with all the idiots looking at what they’re implying is the Starbucks menu with a bunch of weird sounding names, and acting like they can’t understand what it’s saying. “Lulz, is it French or is it Italian… or perhaps Fritalian?”

First of all, it’s Italian, morons. I don’t know where you’re getting French from.
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Secular Specials

December 21, 2007

So the other night, my dad was commenting about the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and how it’s different from all the other specials in that it mentions Jesus. This was, of course, accompanied with some whining about “oh noes, Jesus can’t be mentioned because the Jews and Muslims would complain!”
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After Us

December 17, 2007

I’m seeing a disturbing trend among people around my age, and it is something that has always been expected of us, and it happened to every generation before us. It is the disregard for what came “after our time”.

I grew up on the cartoons of the late 80’s and early to mid 90’s. Good stuff. Or at least we say so now. Our old Saturday morning shows and after school specials now sit among sitcoms on the shelves of Best Buy as DVD collections. Nice.
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