Detritus of the Mind

The best description of nostalgia I've ever heard (no idea where) is the sweetest poison you'll ever taste.  That's pretty accurate.  I was recently hit with a wave of nostalgia for the very hit-or-miss output of one French animation studio, Marathon.  First, there was the announcement of the horribly named but otherwise promising new series Lolirock,  followed by a rumor making its way through the Toonzone forums that their flagship series Totally Spies is due to return to CN in the fall.  I would dismiss the latter but (a) it was confirmed by one of Marathon's main execs and (b) Jenn Hale's interview on Talkin' Toons confirmed that she was indeed recording new episodes sometime last year.  So that one may get a... fifth or sixth chance.  I lost count. I won't pretend Marathon's works were fine art - in fact, they were anything but.  But they had a very appealing pseudo-anime aesthetic, and the general tone of their series even at their worst ...

Right.  This is my epic declaration of war against wangst, against the Comedy Ghetto, and against the pomposity of Tom Batiuk in particular.  I'm particularly proud of it, as it sums up my complaints about everything from the fallacy of "true art is angsty" to the fetish-culture the media has built around cancer to why my favorite movie is what it is.  This was originally written on Livejournal on 9/16/2009.  Enjoy.  Oh, and for the record, let's all wait for Batiuk to try & get this blog shut down for somehow infringing on his copyrights by criticizing his work - that's his #1 tactic for dealing with negative feedback. This is a long, long piece of work. Consider its title to be the "too long, didn't read" version. Otherwise, please, press on. Let me start with a personal anecdote. My favorite movie is The Producers - the original version with Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder where Hitler was played by an overbaked hippie. I can quote whole ...

Don't ask me why, but I find history of TV as a medium rather interesting.  The early days of cable are particularly fascinating, since the commercial realities and availabilities are totally alien to today's market.  The difference between my area, which was a sort of "early adopter" of cable TV, and other regions where you think there'd be a rush to get it (like Chicago, as you'll see) is also interestingly baffling.  I can't see anyone putting up with a station that (a) required an extra payment, (b) was only broadcast part-time over a UHF signal, and (c) required a special piece of equipment just to receive it & it alone like OnTV did.  And they definitely wouldn't cotton to a limited-time-even-for-recordings service like Tele1st, which is truly the oddest of the bunch. This was originally written on 5/2/2008. --- I was home sick, again, most of Monday and all of Tuesday. Usually, when that happens, I wind up goofing off on YouTube (sinc...

(Welcome to the first true Archival entry.  This one will cover several entries, with new commentary being provided, as per tradition, in colored italics.) Disney's W.I.T.C.H. was a series that I had an odd relationship with - I liked the concept & designs more than the execution, and the TV adaptation proved to be as uneven a mixed bag as the source material, just in different ways.  I still have a weird fondness for the series, even if it's no longer available in English anywhere (heck, the English publications from the Phillipines stopped mid-story arc).  Maybe it's because I really, really wanted a big company like Disney to prove that magical girls can be done for our market; after all, it's still going strong in its native Italy, and they're second to Japan as far as loving the genre.  With that, I present three musings on W.I.T.C.H. & my relationship with the franchise before Disney decided to leave it in Europe for good. --- (Original date: ...

No, not a real update... again.  I just want to give everyone a head's up as to what's coming. Y'see, I've been looking back through my Livejournal and have decided to post some of my older, better posts here, along with commentary if necessary.  I talk about some weird, random shit (no surprise there), and it'll be nice to give it a public venue that won't be lost in a sea of ONTD clones & Russian spammers. So keep an eye out for Archivals, coming sometime soon-ish.

NOTE: The following was originally written on 4/17/10 under "kakapotrainer" for my That Guy with the Glasses blog.  Since it addresses what I feel is the finest comic strip of my lifetime, I am reposting it here. As a fan of the comic medium, I'm quite fond of comic strips of all stripes. While this field is in largely sad shape (with only a few I actively read because they're good but most read just to mock them a la "The Comics Curmudgeon"), there thankfully are reprints always available from various sources. Having gotten The Complete Bloom County V.1 as a Christmas gift, I was reminded how awesome my all-time favorite comic straip was in its heyday. I was also reminded of the dangers of going back to the well. As much as some people might lament the loss of strips like Calvin & Hobbes or The Far Side , their creators deserve a lot of credit. They knew when to quit, then knew not to let lesser hands handle them after their retirment, and they...

Note: This was originally written on 5/6/10 under "kakapotrainer" for my That Guy with the Glasses blog; since it was the exact moment when I realized I was in love with another "boy's club" field, it is worth reposting here.  Sad to say, with the loss of Dwayne McDuffie (the last great champion of quality action-animation writing over toy sales), the apparent dumbification of Greg Weisman on the unwatchable jerk fest that is Young Justice , and nearly all of the current slate of Cartoon Network's programming (only exceptions being Batman: Brave & the Bold and the new Thundercats , I would argue things are worse.  Nick and the Hub are making some strides towards appealing to girls again & both are succeeding, but CN has more or less owned the action-animation field & continues to make it more insuffrably fratboy than even gaming.  So, yes - still angry. Since I'm a fan of comics and said I was an animation fan in my profile, it should be n...

NOTE: The following was originally written on 7/24/10 for the blog I had under "kakapotrainer" on That Guy with the Glasses.  This will be the first in a new tag series, one that focuses on the limited amount of video games that I can play anymore (they are either for the DS, the PSP, or much-derided "casual" games on the PC, since I no longer have the time or resources to fully enjoy a regular gaming console), and I wanted to move it here so it would last.  I have another essay for another tag that I will also be using, but for now, enjoy the first entry in my game reviews. - Mela I play a lot of DS games, and after I finished the edition of Chrono Trigger for the system (BTW, that's my all-time favorite game), I looked for something new. Amazon recommended Nostalgia by Tecmo, and after perusing the Internet & hearing that it was mostly up my alley, I bought it. Having just finished it, I've decided to review it here. There will be spoilers, so if you...