Animation for adults

I find it interesting that animation has come full circle. In the early days, it was intended for adults (think of Max Fleisher and Tex Avery's early works) but by the mid-70s and into the 80s animation was kidstuff -- Scooby Doo, Transformers, even former primetime animation like the Flintstones were aired during kid-friendly afterschool time slots.

In the 1990s, the Simpsons brought animation back to primetime and right on the Simpsons' heels, Ren and Stimpy changed everything. Ren and Stimpy might have run on a kids' network (Nicholodeon) but it was aimed at teens and young adults. It was crass and surreal -- everything the early Avery and Feisher cartoons had but with a big dose of toilet humour. At the time, it was too crass for me but now it looks positively tame.

Most of the cartoons that run in the Adult Swim timeslot on the Cartoon Network (and on Detour, the Canadian equivalent) owe a lot to Ren and Stimpy -- everything from Robot Chicken (which also owes a debt to SNL and Kids in the Hall) to Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

If spend any time with me, you know I am a sucker for animated shows, cartoons and movies. I hope I never outgrow that.

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Classic Betty Boop animation from the Internet Archive:



Ren and Stimpy episode via Youtube:




Controversy over the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie:

The Ex List

I haven't started many new shows this year but there was really nothing else on before Numbers tonight so I am watching The Ex List. I am guessing the pitch went like this "My Name is Earl meets How I Met Your Mother -- relationship flashbacks through elimination!"

So far it's not too bad, but I'm only 15 minutes into it....

What happens when you take the Channel out of A-Channel?

Apparently you get something that looks like FOX:



On the right is the new logo for "A" which is Global's rebranding of both A-Channel (on the West Coast) and ASN (on the East Coast); on the right is FOX television's logo. You tell me if FOX should call their lawyers.

No wonder it was cancelled...

I would have blogged angry last night, but I was too tired. Why blog angry? Because I now understand why Studio 60 was cancelled.

Consider this... it was sucking in the ratings... NBC was debating where they could safely tuck it away to die a quiet death (you, know, like the Friday night at 10 timeslot...) then they took another look at the scripts for the upcoming episodes and thoughtfully pulled the plug.

I'm all for story arcs, but so far the episode K&R has been split into three parts, with a fourth to hopefully finish it the hell off. Not only is it ridiculously longwinded, but it bounces back and forth in the timeline from the present to 2001 plus the whole plot is a GREAT BIG BUMMER. There are actually two arcs in the mega-sized "episode" -- one related to soldiers being kidnapped in Kandahar (one of whom is the brother of one of the Studio 60 stars) and the other is the oh-so-soaptacular pregnant-woman-in-peril thread. Give me a break!!!!

Someone find me Mr. Sorkin's email address; I'd like to give him a few pointers on how not to piss off his fan base. At any rate, next week is apparently the last episode. That's it. Curtains closed. I'll be watching... but odds are I won't care.
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Litigious Bastards....

I never thought I'd say this but, "Poor Gordon Ramsay." If you don't recognize his name, you probably don't watch the Food Network or his prime time network show, Hell's Kitchen. At first, I couldn't stand him -- I thought he was just a soccer hooligan turned kitchen hooligan. After watching him in action though, his passion for cooking shines through his, well, "rough" personna.

So... what went wrong? He tried to bring his show, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, to the U.S.

Kitchen Nightmares is a little like Restaurant Makeover, but with Ramsay bellowing at head chefs, kitchen help, waiters and owners alike. He frequently makes people cry, and more than once has suggested owners fire people who are not working in the best interest of the restaurant.

That's exactly what happened in one of the restaurants to be featured in the American show, and now Martin R. Hyde, a former general manager at Dillons in Manhattan, is suing Gordon Ramsay.

Hyde "claimed Ramsay, known for foul-mouthed outbursts as the star of Fox's reality competition "Hell's Kitchen," humiliated him and forced him to quit his job to avoid further abuse."

He asked for millions of dollars in damages and a court order to stop the show from airing.

Hyde is also claiming that much of the reality show is "faked" or at least exaggerated, which seems like sour grapes and is pretty much irrelevant since the show's goal is primarily to entertain viewers.

I really hope the judge throws this one out... but just in case, I also hope that Ramsay's producers had good legal advice to begin with and can produce whatever waiver Hyde may have signed.
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Chalk one up for the Fans

After a huge campaign (and many nuts), fans have convinced CBS to renew Jericho as a 7 episode mid-season replacement. I just hope they re-run the original episodes (at least the critical ones) before the new ones so that viewers aren't totally lost.

Yay.

Life in a nutshell...

Tonight I am pleased with myself: I whipped up an extra curtain panel for kiddo's room in a little over an hour. She had been complaining that with the lighter evenings she was having trouble falling asleep (it wasn't the light in particular, but the knowledge that it was still light outside and therefore not night; she sleeps with two small IKEA lights on over her bed).

Anyway, the panel I had was juuuuust barely wide enough to cover her window (a little light still bleeds through one side), and a little longer than needed. I hemmed both ends then folded the top down four inches and added grommets every four inches along, about a half inch from the top. I strung the full width along a cord which I attached by nails at the sides, for now.

I will go back later and install a curtain rod (I have one waiting) and hang the panel with some nice old shower curtain hooks or something similar, but tonight I just jurry-rigged it in there. Once it's up properly, I'll share photos.

...In other news...

I want to go to this conference: the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. I've asked my supervisor and my manager (and his manager), and I should find out soon but I am not holding my breath; it's pricey, even though it's being held in Vancouver this year.

We're all season finale-d out around here and I thought I could reasonably be expected to leave the TV off, but then I found out that NBC is playing out the last half-dozen existing episodes of Studio 60. Um.... hooray? I'll watch... but it's going to be tough, knowing there aren't any more.

Speaking of not any more; the idiots at CBS killed Jericho after closing the season with a cliffhanger. Apparently fans have sent in three tons of nuts to CBS executives in protest. Awesome.

Oh, there is one show we are still watching: the last of The Sopranos. It will be interesting to see how the writers wrap it all up (only two episodes left to air here) but I think they should have mothballed it a couple of seasons ago. However, I am neither a network executive nor an Emmy-winning writer or producer, so what do I know?

CH-CH-CHEK it out....

Looks like Victoria's CH will be getting its other letters back this fall. From Channel Canada:

CanWest MediaWorks To Bring E! to Canada

On September 1, 2007, CanWest will bring one of the world’s definitive entertainment brands to Canadians across multiple platforms including broadcast, online, mobile, video-on-demand and satellite radio. As part of this agreement, CanWest’s current CH Network will be rebranded as E! beginning this fall.

...

Each station will also continue to serve its local audiences via local news and information programming. Concurrent with the E! launch, each station’s local content will relaunch with a refreshed on-air image under the banner of their historical call letters (CHCH News, CHEK News, CHBC News, CHCA News and CJNT Montreal). This is an acknowledgement of the depth of the connection that the stations have with their local communities – some for over 50 years.

This could be interesting, or it could suck. I guess it can't be any worse than what's there now...

Slice of Life?

I missed the hoopla... but on March 5th, Life Network disappeared off the dial* to be replaced by (rebranded as?) Slice, which allegedly is aimed at me:

SLICE™ will cater to the highly sought-after target of viewers 18 – 49, with a core demographic of women in their thirties. With guilty pleasure viewing, SLICE™ brings an unapologetic attitude to topics that matter to women – family, fashion, relationships, celebrity, finances and gossip – to name just a few.

Mostly, it's trash TV... and looking through their programming, there's not too much to lure me over to Slice... though I did enjoy Beauty and the Geek, and have been known to watch Project Runway (they are airing the UK version, Project Catwalk) but I can do without Party Mamas (about women who go overboard planning parties for their spoiled children) and Newlywed, Nearly Dead (marriage counselling for newly married couples). Bottom line, I'm not likely to program the channel out of my presets, but I probably won't pause there too often either.


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*hahah, "dial" I'm so old.

Second Chance Television...

If you missed HBO's Carnivale when it ran on Movie Central in Canada, you can catch the series when it runs on History Television, starting later this month.

Like many of my favourite television shows in the last decade, Carnivale was cancelled before it had a fair chance. It lasted two seasons, though, and every episode is worth watching. Basically, it's good versus evil, but with a sideshow. No, really, it's a great show. It's set in the Depression Era dustbowl... there's Old Time Religion, strange dreams, fortune tellers, and a mother-daughter peep show. Yeah, it's a little tilted, but so am I.

A dose of surreality

Surreal news. How weird is the news of Anna Nicole Smith's death? I found it stranger still that my initial reaction to the death of one of the biggest tabloid trainwrecks of my generation was a twinge of sadness. It passed, but ... still, odd. My brain makes no sense to me sometimes.

Surreal sight. I have to say that the weirdest thing I saw this week was when I settled into the dentist's chair on Tuesday. There on the tray, in a little plastic jewelery box (you know the ones? clear but with a little blue "velvet" covered cardboard platform in the bottom?), was a gold version of one of my teeth. Not the whole tooth (and nothing but the tooth... ::groan::... sorry) but a crown. So now I have a pimped out molar. It's very odd... but it is way at the back of my mouth, so the only time you can see it is when I am laughing like a mad scientist. And then the gold kinda adds to the effect.

Surreal concept conspiracy. Being somewhat insane, I have decided that the recent spate of nuclear annihalation on television (Jerhico, 24, Heroes) is actually due to pressure from Big Oil. Bear with me a moment... here's the thing, people are starting to talk about alternative energy; scientists are starting to remind people that nuclear energy may be our best "bang" for our buck (e.g. takes up less space than windfarms; generates more energy than solar, etc....); Big Oil does not like this concept and is reminding people that nuclear energy means nuclear accidents and death.

Yeah, I am a nutjob.

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Queen Rantypants (TM)

So I haven't blogged much the last few days, mostly because I have been grumpy, sleep-deprived, and pretty miserable to live with (sorry, family). Just a few points....

Re: Aqua Teen Boston Bullshit. Are you KIDDING me?? I can't believe a city is both that blind and that panicky but I blame the media for blowing it out of proportion. On one hand I think Turner was stupid to pay $2M in restitution ($1M to the City of Boston; $1M to Homeland Security), but OTOH, every television viewer in North America (and many around the world) now know what ATHF is and that there is a movie coming out. Talk about brilliant promotion.

Re: Local news disappearing. We have two local television stations. Last year, A-Channel Vancouver Island (formerly the New VI) abruptly ditched its morning news show. As of last Friday, CH-Victoria (formerly CHEK6) delivered its last noon newscast. So... now the only way to get local news before 5 pm, is to buy the paper (owned by the same people who own CH-Victoria) or listen to C-FAX ("Victoria's News Authority" -- owned by the same people who own A-Channel).

Re: Daily Show Jumping the Shark. Last night we consiously turned off the Daily Show. It pains me to say this, but we saw several punchlines coming from so far away that it was worse than a rerun. I think without Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell (each doing well in their own endeavours), Jon Stewart is starting to rely on staff writers with... less punch. Jokes are continuously recycled, and I only laugh when I'm so tired that I am almost drifting off to sleep. I'm calling it now, but I'm pretty sure that sometime around the start of September, the Daily Show officially Jumped the Shark.

I did get one BIG laugh this week; on Heroes last night, Christopher Eccleston's invisible man character delivered a line that perfectly summed up my mood:

"People suck, friend.
Every last one of 'em."

Indeed.

Maintaining Order....

Part of the formula for "finishing projects" in 2007 is reclaiming our time. Part of reclaiming our time is not letting housekeeping get away from us. One of the first things I did off the giant to-do list was to (finally*) make a chore chart. We all chip in and mark down things like taking out the garbage, doing laundry, filing papers, and feeding pets. Some of it is stuff we do every day... some is the stuff that tends to get put off to the point where we end up having to spend an entire day just cleaning.

Kiddo has been very motivated by the chore chart and she now helps by feeding pets (the cat and the sea monkeys), setting the table, and tidying, after which she eagerly marks her initial on the chart.

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*Hubby suggested a chore chart some time ago... but apparently I rejected the idea. Oh well. .... Better late than never?
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Now I am watching one of those shows that boggles the mind when I imagine how they pitched it to network execs: "How Clean Is Your House?" Two British women, Kim and Aggie, who find the scariest, filthiest houses and go in to help the owners clean up and learn some housecleaning tips. Generally, the owners "don't realize" how disgusting their houses are until it is "too late" and then it's hard to care. It is stomach-turning to watch (they found a dead mouse at the back of a drawer in tonight's episode) but pretty good at keeping me vigilant as to the state of our own home.

::shudder::