Blogs

From the Pages is back and this time JD tackles the Avengers... just probably not the version you're thinking of.

Leave comments. Did I overreact?

Love to hear feedback.

If you missed Part 1, click HERE.

So many emotions and memories of our childhoods can be evoked via one minute musical and animated snippets. We watched these opening and listened to these themes so many times they're now burned into our brains. But which animated television theme songs do I think are the best? Have a look and find out.

This is the inaugural presentation of The Nykk Show. Part 2 is coming soon.

I didn't exactly forget this when I did the article on the main show. I just couldn't quite figure out how to fit it in.

See, Red Green's Duct Tape Forever was a telefilm based on the Red Green Show. The plot was that the Canadian environmental protection service had fined the lodge again, this time for all the crap they'd wound up putting in the lake over the years, amongst other such shenanigans. The total fee was something like $7000 that had to be paid by the end of the month.

If you can not view this player:  

If the references are going to live rent-free in my head, I might as well try to make a few dollars off of them.

This was something I said earlier tonight with some friends during a conversation about the sources of our modern type of side-gag and referential humor. It didn't start with people like Doug Walker, it's been a growing force coming from animated sitcoms, Mel Brooks, The Zucker-Abrahams movies, Weird Al, and the list goes on. 

I spend most of my days having my mind triggered to recall various forms of media and music by any and every personal interaction, occurrence, observation, and overheard snippet of human behavior I experience.  This is more than simply being reminded of something, but is rather a vivid and "loud" experience behind my eye balls.  On one side this can be a lot of fun as I mostly enjoy this aspect of residing within myself. On the flip side these triggers can also lead to referencing my own real experiences, for the good or for the bad.

This is why my show is structured in the fashion that it is.  Because I feel as though this is a method to portray a little piece of me in such a way that maybe a few of you out there might understand.  My "character" is certainly an exaggerated example of me, but one that is pretty rooted in reality.  Or whatever is my particular brand of what we call reality. 

So in a way, as strange as it seems, this show has become a far more personal expression than most of the things I do or say in everyday life.  I write these episodes hoping mostly that people will laugh, and I'm pretty confident in this ability to do just that.  But if you want, if you're interested, you can look between the interlace lines and see just a little bit of a soul that sticks to the sightless boundaries of perception.  Thanks for reading, and thanks for watching. 

Dan Schneider sails Nick Coms ship to the edge?

I will begin this post admitting that I enjoyed Nickelodeon series since cable tv arrived to Peru. I was, back then, a little kid, and those were really funny sitcoms back then. Of course I can admit that ‘All That’ was stupid, full of Giant Hams, but still funny for kids. I am even following Nickelodeon now days and they still make me laugh a bit, but when you spent so much time of you life following the content of a channel, you get the eye and ability to recognize certain elements that classifies all the series by style and producer.

So let’s talk about Dan Schneider right now.

Good old Dan, making kids laugh since 1994 and reusing actors again and again. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing, since it’s a way to determine his next lead on the next new series and most of these kids are very talented actors (although they get a lot of marketing makeover over their images… hey, money has to flow and they are products, you know it’s true). You can certainly recognize a Dan Schneider production if it has:

This is going to be another short one, I'm afraid. That's mostly because a lot of what happened in this show could just as easily happened in my own life and vice versa.

The show focuses mostly on the daily life of Hyacinth Bucket and her patient yet tortured husband Richard. As these two are a relatively ordinary upper-middle-class couple, with a son supposedly in college, I would assume this is the sort of life that quite a few of this article's readers have dealt with.

Probably the best way to explain why Keeping Up Appearances is going to be a little hard to do an article about is to start off by talking about the show's main running joke. See, our dear Hyacinth insists, correctly, perhaps, that her last name is pronounced “bouquet”, as in a bundle of flowers, like the thing thrown by brides at weddings, while it's spelled “bucket”, as in the five-gallon things I've got outside my front door that I keep stuff I want to burn in.

Hello, everyone, it's time for another Top 10 list.  I know, I know, you guys are probably getting sick of my lists.  Rest assure, I am working on something a little bit different but in the meantime here are my Top 10 Opening Themes.  Sometimes an opening theme can make or break a show.  When you think of Gilligan's Island, what's the first thing that comes to mind?  "Three Hour Tour."  Or the Star Trek: The Next Generation theme, heck we could all probably hum the theme to Dawson's Creek in our sleep.  The point is that a catchy opening theme can draw in viewers even if the rest of the show is shit (I'm looking at you, Melrose Place).  So I'll be counting down my Top 10 TV opening theme shows.  The benchmarks that I'm setting for this list is lyrics, melody, and how well the theme fits with the actual show.  Please understand that this list does not dictate how I feel about actual shows, just the opening theme.

So with that said, here are the Top 10 TV Opening Themes.

(Apologies to Todd in the Shadows for stepping on his schtick)

10.  Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego - If you only know Rockapella from the Folgers commercial, you are truly missing out.  Four men turn a barbershop quartet PBS game show opening theme into one of the most catchy numbers I have ever heard.  Even now, almost two decades after the show gone off the air, I still remember the theme.  And how many opening themes can actually teach you stuff?  I would do anything to find a full version of the song as every time I start to listen to the theme, it cuts out due to time.

9.  King Arthur & The Knights of Justice - If you've read my Top 10 Non-Japanese Animation list, then you already know how I feel about the show (if you haven't read it, I suggest you do so a.s.a.p.).  From the first guitar riff, I could tell this was the perfect hero charge type song.  And I also like how they use an instrumental version whenever the knights transform into their armor.  I wonder if this is the Lasserman effect that Linkara often speaks of.

Last night on British television, a show aired called Planet Dinosaur, which claims to be a follow-up to the 1999 series Walking With Dinosaurs, showing us creatures that have been discovered in the 12 years since. It follows largely the same formula, with John Hurt filling Kenneth Branagh's slot as narrator. Hurt brings a certain gravitas to the table and really captures the weight that comes with the subject matter of giant animals adapting to their habitat. I will say that Hurt's narrations were by far the best part of the show.  And, indeed, the only part of the show that's any good.

Where Walking With Dinosaurs succeeded, in my eyes, was by blending animatronics and CGI to tell a narrative around a specific dinosaur.  The use of animatronics made the dinosaurs look and feel real, while the CGI was convincing and merged with the real-world environments effectively. In Planet Dinosaur, there's no animatronics at all, so we have to rely entirely on the CGI, and the CGI is somehow worse than it was back in the late '90s.

Seriously, it's really bad. The environments particularly stand out in their cheapness, the viewing angles doing nothing to hide that they're clearly just flat surfaces with some cardboard trees and rocks propped up. There's never any reflections on the dinosaurs themselves, making them look awkward and obviously fake, and I'm pretty sure they never actually come into contact with each other when they're shown fighting one another. And when they are shown fighting one another, their movements are so stilted and mechanical, which, when combined with the erratic camera swinging around and changing angles like the Saw ride at Thorpe Park, makes it difficult to follow the programme.

What also makes it difficult to follow is the constant cutting away to a chart showing each and every creature in size next to a human, and reminders that we know about this from recently unearthed fossils. Don't we know everything about dinosaurs from fossils? You've already said as much in the trailer and all these interruptions breaks the flow of the programme. If I was interested to find out about the fossils, I'd look them up myself. I know you're used to 'show, don't tell', but this is a case of 'tell, don't show' if ever there was one.

So that's Planet Dinosaur, which I won't be watching again next week. At least it's only half an hour long.

We all knew Ned Flanders was not who he seemed to be.

So apparently, it’s the hot new thing have your TV show set in Ohio. It’s been a trend in media since Bye Bye Birdie and Rain Man, but it’s getting worse. Like some sort of bizarre trend amongst writers. I suppose they’re trying for “quintessential Midwest”. Which is hardly what I consider Ohio to be. Ohio is a pit of bland mediocrity and dirt. To escape from Ohio is a little like reaching Mordor: you better have a fucking ring.

Did I mention that I live in Ohio?

But okay, I could set aside the fact that Ohio is barely the Midwest anymore. I could deal, so long as they actually got it right. Which they don’t.

Take, for example, the bane of the NBC Monday lineup: Harry’s Law.

Caitlin and I have started a Buffy The Vampire Blog where we discuss what we think about the series. We didn't watch it that much back in the day and recently decided we wanted to watch it and see what we think.

Anyone remember this show taking up their after-school television time?

Well, it over 20 years since it's release, so lets take a look back at Duck Tales!

Every year since I started my blog I've given Christmas a boost, and this year I need some help.

Hi everybody! In this new blog series "Better than Reality TV" My team at Evil Ralph and Friends share with you some footage from our daily lives. This first blog contains 5 exciting videos in the life of Evil Ralph and Friends. From cleaning to cooking to video games to more video games to more cooking to eating old things, this blog series JUST GOT REAL.

Wherein I look at the first of a bunch of TV pilots I'm interested and fearful of all at the same time. This time, cheerleaders!

I talk about/review a variety of Stephen King books I have read.

I revew the best treehouse ever.

Doctor Who, a landmark of British television, its revival is probably one of the most successful in history. Why? Well I'll be taking a journey through the last five series (and 2009 Specials) to find out why....