A long while back, Nimrod sent me a link to some stand-up routine with the premise “I was the Superfriends’ filipino maid”. The butt of the jokes was the man in the orange shirt. Apparently, he wasn’t amused:
Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas, Has Fucking Had It With You, Man. (at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency – see also Back From Yet Another Globetrotting Adventure, Indiana Jones Checks His Mail and Discovers That His Bid for Tenure Has Been Denied).
The Covenant looks like a pretty peculiar movie – one reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes described it as Harry Potter re-cast with underwear models, another says it really wishes it was Lost Boys; it’s like one of those teenage supernatural horror movies with sexy young actors, except with kewl powerz, romance and homoerotic high-school rivalry replacing the horror. The official site proclaims it is from the producers of Underworld
, which would explain a lot: it has a similar feel of relentlessly harvesting all the cool bits from a roleplaying game, of shame and guilt-free revelry in genre tropes worn smooth by constant fanboy groping. It looks to have none of Lost Boys‘ humor and charisma, and no sign of Kate Beckinsale(*) in black vinyl.
The bit with the car looks neat, though.
It’s so unoriginal that someone’s claiming they stole the script from him. On an internet forum.
* – Speaking of Kate Beckinsale, I recently saw her in this. Black stockings, white apron – you’d think she picks her roles based on their fetishistic appeal.
Dungeons and Dragons in the Dungeons
Erik Mona (the editor of Dragon) – The Lock Down:
Dragon receives several letters from prisoners every week. I renamed Dungeon’s mail column “Prison Mail” as an inside joke because of it. Part of the charm is that almost no one else sends letters. I get plenty of mail, but almost all of the hand-addressed envelopes are from guys on the inside.
There are thousands–probably tens of thousands–of prisoners playing Dungeons & Dragons right now. Just like in the military, the game has a strong hold anywhere groups of young men are trapped with a lot of free time. We get letters asking for campaign advice, letters apologizing for implicating D&D in crimes committed in the 80s at the height of the gaming scare, and letters with questions, criticisms, and praise of the latest issue–or sometimes and issue from months or even years ago.
The Non-Adventures of Wonderella – it’s a web comic without too many strips. And funny.
Lou Anders: The Power of Cool: Arthur Fonzarelli as Archetypal Shaman. A very interesting discussion of both the shaman archetype and the history of the Fonzie the character:
Can you imagine a Fonz whose cool isn’t strong enough to stake him out a space in a band of nerds? Surely, this can’t be the Fonz we remember? Something big must happen to transform him into the personification of cool that looms so large in our consciousness.
Well, yes, something does happen, and it fits perfectly with our guidelines for shamantic initiation. In the episode “Fearless Fonzarelli, Parts 1 and 2”, a Fonzie afraid of “losing his cool” decides to jump fourteen garbage cans on his motorcycle for the TV show “You Wanted to See It.”
…
But a shamantic journey is not complete without a battle with a spirit from the Upper Realm. And so here it is – and for any of you that don’t believe me, this then is my final proof – Mork from Orc made his debut on Happy Days. In Episode 110, “My Favorite Orkan,” the space alien (i.e. Higher Spirit) Mork comes to earth with plans to abduct Richie and take him back to his planet for experiments (the Orkans want to study someone “hum-drum”).
(actually, I found that linked to in passing by someone linking to this analysis of Mary Poppins as horror).