Popeye Comic Strip, December 26, 1937
Olive Oyl Wants to Be Wrecked
May 17th, 2012Mystery Popeye
May 16th, 2012Okay, look. I’ve been really busy lately. I’m recapping Game of Thrones and House, plus I’ve got a day job. So I don’t have a lot of spare energy, and that means I don’t always have pithy observations to make. So I’m instituting a new policy, which is that when I don’t have a post, I’m just going to put up a completely mystifying image from the Popeye comic strip.
I should explain that the Popeye comic strip is completely insane. The cartoons you’re familiar with are pretty formulaic. The comic strip was the opposite. It’s full of baffling events and people behaving like nobody ever does. And these collections from Fantagraphics contain all of them.
So be warned! From now on, there are going to be things I call “Mystery Popeye.” They won’t contain any context.
The Smash Subplots, Ranked
May 15th, 2012Who Will Play Marilyn?
Tom Has a Boyfriend
Ivy Is Sleeping With Derek
Ellis Is Ambitious
Who Poisoned Rebecca Duvall? (It was Ellis)
Eileen Has an Ex-Husband
Ivy’s Mother Is Bernadette Peters
Julia’s Husband Doesn’t Want Her Working
Julia Is Cheating
Julia’s Affair Won’t Back Off
Karen’s Boyfriend Is in Politics
Karen’s Boyfriend Has a Different Girlfriend, But Then He Wants to Get Married
Julia’s Son Smokes Pot
Julia Wants to Adopt (but Might Be Pregnant)
The Crooked Hinge
May 14th, 2012John Dickson Carr wrote The Crooked Hinge in 1938. I read it in 2012. And I’ve got some things to say, because this book is NUTS. I should warn you that this will contain spoilers, so if you were planning on reading it, you should go do that first.
At first, the plot centers around the question who the real John Farnleigh is. See, when he was a child, John Farnleigh was the black sheep of a distinguished family, so he was packed off to the United States… on the Titanic. And after it sank, he was recovered at the last second. A couple decades later, everyone in the distinguished family had died, leaving him as the heir, so he came back to England to become Lord Farnleigh. And then a year or so later, someone else claims to be the real Lord Farnleigh. His story is that the guy who’s been claiming to be John Farnleigh for the last twenty years attacked him when they were both on the Titanic and assumed his identity.
Okay, so it’s already pretty complicated. But this isn’t a Downton Abbey- style story about long-lost heirs. It’s a John Dickson Carr murder mystery, where someone is going to be murdered in a seemingly impossible fashion. This time, it’s not in a locked room; it’s in the middle of a garden that no one could get into or out of without being seen.
Oh, and there’s a subplot about a coven of witches. And another subplot about an automaton that can play the zither.
Halfway through the book, it’s revealed that the new claimant is the real John Farnleigh, and the guy who’s been called by that name for twenty years isn’t really him. Also, he’s the one who gets mysteriously killed.
About ten pages before the end of the book, it’s revealed that the real John Farnleigh has no legs. They got crushed in the Titanic’s sinking. He’s been going around on artificial legs the whole time. The reader was supposed to figure that out from a brief mention of a limp toward the beginning of the book. And also by the presence of the zither-playing automaton, which (like the real-world chess-playing automaton) had to be operated by someone with no legs hiding in the machinery.
Anyway, it’s usually included as one of the greatest “impossible crime” mysteries. If you ask me, the solution is extremely silly.
NBC Does or Does Not Cancel or Renew Shows
May 11th, 2012It’s Upfront Season, which is when networks make their announcements about what shows are being renewed. Back before the Internet, you’d find out what shows were on when you opened that week’s TV Guide. “Huh!” you’d say. “It looks like Mork and Mindy is still on the air!” But now, if you know where to look, you can get up-to-the-minute reports, which frequently contradict the ones you read two minutes earlier.
The shows I’m most interested in are NBC’s Thursday Night Lineup, which for these purposes are 30 Rock, Community, The Office, and Parks and Recreation. I realize that other shows have appeared on Thursday this season, but I didn’t watch them. And yes, I’ve heard that some of them were funny. Sorry.
Now, as I write this, the current word is that Parks and Rec is getting 22 new episodes; 30 Rock and Community are getting 13 episodes each to wrap up the show; and The Office has gotten some of their leading actors to sign back up. But Mindy Kaling has a new show and Rainn Wilson has a spin-off, so nobody’s sure what The Office would look like. I mean, it’s not like Kelly Kapoor was the most important character on the show.
I personally would be okay with The Office going away. The season ended with a Dunder-Mifflin branch being closed, leaving a bunch of clients up for grabs. And Andy Bernard invented his own paper company, stole the biggest client, and somehow parlayed that into getting to be Manager again. And the company’s no longer part of Sabre, which you’d think would raise questions about what exactly Gabe’s job is. The whole thing is sketchy and does not hold up to close scrutiny, although I guess it’s interesting that Andy’s fake personal paper company did a lot better than the Michael Scott Paper Company. I’ve felt for several years that the only characters I’d ever hang out with in real life were Dwight and Angela. I realize they’re ridiculous caricatures, but I don’t care.
I talked about Parks and Recreation yesterday, and I’m glad it’s coming back. I think it’s a really good show. But I don’t think it needs to be made just because it’s good. Almost nobody watches it, so I couldn’t really blame NBC if they’d decided not to pay the millions of dollars it takes to make a television show.
As for 30 Rock and Community…well, look. I enjoy watching both of them about equally. I think 30 Rock is very, very funny. And I think Community is very, very clever. It’s my opinion that the Internet gets more excited about Community because “clever” is something that appeals to the Internet somewhat out of proportion to how important it is.
Anyway, there have been a lot of conflicting reports over the last forty-eight hours. Twitter is great for spreading rumors. I’m not going to believe any of it until the official announcement on Monday, because I like the pomp.
Why I Love Parks and Recreation
May 10th, 2012When I say I love Parks and Recreation, I should be clear that I mean the television show. I have nothing against actual parks, and I’m not averse to the occasional bout of recreation. But I don’t love them the way I love the show.
I recently had to convince someone to watch it. They’d seen the first season and given up. If you’re in that situation, I assure you that starting with the second season, it’s like a whole new show. Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler’s character) is vaguely incompetent in the first season, which makes her feel like Michael Scott, giving the whole enterprise the feel of a knockoff of “The Office.” But in the second season, she’s incredibly good at her job, while still being squirrelly and weird at everything else. This makes her a much more interesting character, and the show got a lot better as a result.
The thing that I particularly like is that all the characters basically like each other. And there are built-in reasons for just about any pair of characters to interact, and when they do, they have things in common and things to come into conflict about. It’s all very organic. It means that an episode can throw different groupings together and let them provide entertainment.
I Miss Browsing
May 9th, 2012Don’t get me wrong. The Internet is great for finding the thing you’re looking for. If there’s a book I want, all I have to do is go to Amazon or ABEBooks or something, and it’s on my doorstep a couple days later. And that’s fine. It’s like living in the future. But here’s what I miss:
Those are some bookshelves at Powell’s Books, the enormous bookstore in Portland, Oregon. I went down there for a road trip without a specific book in mind. Because it’s hard to replicate the feel of browsing through giant stacks of books. That “People who bought this book also bought these other books” list does not really do the job of helping me organically run across things that look interesting, you know?
Thoughts on Game of Thrones
May 8th, 2012I already write thousands and thousands of words about Game of Thrones every week in the form of episode recaps for Television Without Pity. But I have some thoughts that don’t fit into the recap format, so they go here. Note that I’m talking abotu the television show as it stands right now on May 7, 2012.
Who Should Be King?
The thing is, I don’t care about the overall plot. You know, the actual game of thrones? Where there are a bunch of people declaring themselves to be king? They’re all terrible. Right now (on the show), we’ve got:
Daenerys Stormborn: Her claim to being king is that she’s the only surviving heir of the guy who was king before the last coup. This is a pretty strained claim, in my opinion. And there’s no hint that she’d be a good king. Queen.
Joffrey Baratheon: The official son of the last king, although everyone knows he’s a bastard. Makes a terrible king.
Stannis Baratheon: The oldest brother of the last king, so he would be official heir if you discount all of the children Robert Baratheon had with Cersei. Kind of a jerk. There’s no hint that he’d be a good king.
Robb Stark: Doesn’t claim to be king of all of Westeros, so his claim isn’t that relevant. There’s no hint that he’d be a good king, although he seems pretty good at winning battles.
Balon Greyjoy: Also doesn’t claim to be king of Westeros. There’s no hint he’d be a good king.
There’s also Gendry, who’s apparently the oldest known bastard of Robert Baratheon. But he wouldn’t be a good king either. None of these people would make a good king, in my opinion. So I don’t have anyone to root for in the overall plot. And I don’t really care about the Divine Right of Kings, so all the squabbling about who’s a bastard and who isn’t kind of falls flat.
The individual moments can still be fun. But I don’t get much from the main story.
Burn Down Saturday Night Live
May 7th, 2012I don’t have anything against Saturday Night Live, in principle. I’ve enjoyed it in the past, and I’ve read Live From New York so many times that I could plausibly impersonate a cast member from one of those seasons no one remembers. But I haven’t really been into the last few seasons.
And it’s not like I don’t like the people involved! Bill Hader? Funny! Andy Samberg? Funny! Fred Armisen? Love him! Jason Sudeikis? Kristen Wiig? Kenan Thompson? Sure! Absolutely! I’m happy to see any of these people when they’re guest-starring on a different show. But I mostly don’t laugh at the current Saturday Night Live.
So I’m pretty pleased at the rumors that Wiig, Samberg, and Sudeikis are going to leave when they hit the end of their contracts this year. They’ve all got thriving non-SNL careers. Wiig has gotten nominated for an Oscar already. They’re clearly Ready for Prime Time. I’ve even heard entirely unprovoked rumors that Fred Armisen and Kenan Thompson might leave, presumably to concentrate on Portlandia and Good Burger 2, respectively.
If they do a huge shake-up of SNL, I’m totally in. Let’s make Bobby Moynihan the giant star. He’s funny, right? I liked him on “Comedy Bang Bang” where he played a stabbing-obsessed urchin. And if they bring in a whole new cast, maybe I’ll get in on the ground floor of all the running jokes. Because at this point, when I watch an episode of SNL after missing a season or two, the crowd is mostly just cheering the appearance of characters they recognize.
The Hulk in The Avengers Is the Best Hulk
May 4th, 2012I saw The Avengers tonight. It was great! Full of extremely comic-booky action scenes and quippy dialogue. And the dialogue wasn’t too quippy, which is sometimes a problem I have with Joss Whedon. The humor was entirely appropriate to the situation, and the quippiest character was Tony Stark, which makes sense.
But what I want to talk about is how great Mark Ruffalo was as Bruce Banner. In previous Hulk-centric movies, much of the runtime has been taken up by Dr. Banner being a whiny emo jerk, always complaining about how he doesn’t want to turn into the Hulk. That stuff isn’t entertaining for very long, since the fun of the Hulk is usually seeing him go nuts and smash things.
But in The Avengers, Mark Ruffalo gets to be an interesting character when he’s not being the Hulk. He’s not even that worried about Hulking out! Sure, he’d rather not, but his attitude mostly seems to be that if SHIELD accidentally looses the Hulk on themselves, it’s their own fault. He gets to do actual scientist stuff and have a sense of humor. Unlike with most movie Hulks, I liked this Dr. Banner.
And then the actual Hulk was fun, too. He got to face off against things as strong as him early in the movie and late in the movie. He was established as a super-monster and showed it off. What I’m saying is: good times.