Crossing Swords

Those of us who love South Park will be happy to know that Season 23 will be forthcoming, the sooner the better.  In the meantime, Hulu is giving us some original programming in the form of a similar animated show, 10 episodes just under 30 minutes each, of “Crossing Swords”.  It features the adventures of Patrick, a squire in a mythical/fictional village.  As a squire his job is to protect the royal family, including the impulsive and high maintenance Princess Blossom, from its own consistently poor judgment. 

The characters have spherical heads, square bodies, and despite the absence of arms, no trouble manipulating objects.  There are also mythical beasts such as fairies, goblins, and a Minotaur, to name a few.

Characters (Voiced By…).

Patrick (Nicholas Hoult).  Arguably the only normal person with anything close to a decent character, and thus – to me – the only actually sympathetic character.  I hope for his sake he becomes a knight.

Sloane (Jameela Jamil).   Patrick’s love interest, a maid in the castle.  It turns out she may well be more.

Broth (Adam Pally).  Another squire, more enthusiastic than bright.  He trips on something hallucinogenic at the music festival.

Coral (Tara Strong).  Patrick’s sister, a pirate queen.

Blarney (Tony Hale).  Patrick’s brother, a clown.  Just as cynical as Krusty.

Ruben (Adam Ray), Patrick’s other brother, a Robin Hood type – in direct competition with Robin Hood himself.

King Merriman (Luke Evans).  The King.  Kind of a jerk.

Queen Tulip (Alanna Ubach).  The Queen.  Kind of a bitch.  Also highly sexually adventurous.

Princess Blossom (Maya Erksine).  The Princess, as noted above, extremely annoying and high maintenance as a matter of principle. 

Blinkerquartz (Seth Green).  The Wizard, somewhat of an average Merlin.  He also acts as the King’s de facto advisor, marginally more savvy than the King himself.  Not sure I recall him actually doing any magic.  The magic I did see performed was by the queen’s sister. 

Glenn (Brecklin Meyer), Patrick’s father.  Not particularly good as a father, but competitive with King Merriman, to the point where a movement erupts to replace the King with Glenn.

Doreen (Wendi McLendon-Covey), Patrick’s mother.  Very similar to Queen Tulip.  In fact, it reached the point where it seemed the King and Glenn, and Queen and Doreen, were essentially copies of each other.

Guests?  Alfred Molina (Doc Oc in the recent Spider Man film) voices Robin Hood, and Natasha Lyonne voiced Norah, the Indomitable Snowwoman.  

Indulgence.  Warning, like “South Park”, the language is consistently foul.  Like “South Park”, they can get away with lots of situations which would be pornographic if done in live action.  That includes the titular “crossing swords”, intimate interaction between two male characters, fortunately not a regular occurrence.  You have to have tolerance for this kind of stuff to enjoy it, though I have to say I do, and I did enjoy it.  That included a music festival at which Blossom falls in love with an ill-fated member of a death metal band. 

Season 2 is on its way, so we can expect more.  Oh, boy!  If “The Simpsons”, “South Park”, and “Family Guy” are any indication, we may expect more celebrities to show up…..  

Rick & Morty

As promised, here’s my R&M blog.

With food, I like things simple.   No Big Mac or Whopper, with their cacophony of discordant tastes, including mayonnaise:  just the burger, the bun, and ketchup.  Pizza?  Plain.  Subs?  Just steak or chicken, provolone, and the bun.  When I went to Egypt, I just ate pita bread.   When it comes to food, I have zero tolerance for weird shit.  Well, my preference for ghost peppers and habaneros might be a little weird – make that LOW tolerance for weird shit, in the food department.

When it comes to many other things, like music and TV, I’m the opposite:  count me as High Tolerance for Weird Shit.  Woohoo!

Case in point: Rick & Morty, a three season animated TV series.  It began loosely based on Doc & Marty from “Back to the Future” and rapidly generated into something far stranger.   Rick Sanchez, the Mad Scientist, is Morty’s grandfather, the father of Morty’s mother Beth and often a nemesis to Morty’s father, his son-in-law, Jerry, while Morty has an older sister Summer who is fairly normal.  I only watched it recently, initially turned off by the crude animation – which had originally turned me off South Park as well.  Like South Park, once you get past that you can actually enjoy it. 

Rick is usually involved in some bizarre scheme for which he drafts Morty.   Time travel, other worlds, dimensions, you name it.  Nothing is too weird or bizarre.  In fact, you can count on it.  An entire dimension full of nothing but Ricks and Mortys?  Gotcha.  Meet up with Ice-T himself (the rapper)?  Yes. 

South Park criticized The Family Guy as having its joke pattern be diversions into irrelevant tangents – and even went so far as to elaborately speculate on exactly how those tangents are developed (hint: manatees).   R&M has its own pattern, which is Rick being able to have a normal conversation or discuss mundane issues, or to hold that conversation, with whoever, while all sorts of bizarre stuff is going on.  Not quite the same, but I’d say equally entertaining.  Another amusing feature is that Beth, Jerry and Summer frequently wind up participating – usually less than enthusiastically – in Rick’s adventures to other dimensions.   

It was originally on Adult Swim, from 2013 to 2017, consisting of three seasons of 10 episodes each, with more coming up in the distant future – 70, which implies 7 more seasons.   If you share my High Tolerance for Weird Shit, you may well be advised to see what I see and enjoy it yourself.  

TV

It’s been around longer than I’ve been alive (41 years) and still going strong, in fact now available in HD.  For the purpose of this blog, I’ll include cable TV, not simply broadcast.  Here are my thoughts.

 B&W.  Plenty of TV shows from the mid-60s and early were originally in black & white, but I recall us having a small black & white TV in the guest bedroom in the 70s.  Europe switched over in the 70s to color TV, with Romania and Albania being the last (1978).  I can’t really think of many early 60s and earlier TV shows I really cared for – including “The Honeymooners”.

 Cable.  Growing up in the 70s, we knew NO ONE who had this.  In fact, we were unaware it even existed until the early 80s and MTV.  By far, MTV is what put cable TV on the map.  This was back when they actually played music videos (if anyone can remember that).  I was never that impressed by HBO, though the new Pacific series has me vaguely tempted.

 FOX & UHF.  Back in the 70s, there was no “FOX”.  We just had the big three: ABC, NBC, and CBS.  There were various UHF channels, plus PBS.  PBS mainly gave us “Sesame Street” and “The Electric Company”, and also showed “Benny Hill” and other British shows.  The UHF channels mainly showed offbeat movies.  The prevailing wisdom was that no one could compete with the big three.  WRONG.   Fox gave us “Married With Children” and “The Simpsons” and has been going strong since then.  

 Game Shows.  I prefer “Jeopardy”.  I like to play along at home.  If I don’t know the answer, I’ll come up with something.  “He invented mustard.” “Who is...Madonna?”  The “$64,000 Pyramid” was also damn good.  Sometimes I wonder if the point of “Let’s Make A Deal” was specifically to ridicule and lampoon game show contestants – “Jerry Springer”, ahead of its time.

 Sit-Coms.  Usually these are stupid beyond words.  But “Two and a Half Men” is hilarious, despite its dull and unoriginal premise.  Is it my imagination, or did the sit-coms get duller and more wholesome in the 80s?  I’m thinking of “Family Ties”, “Growing Pains”, “Full House”, all those family shows with annoying little morals and squeaky clean kids.  Not that “Roseanne” was really any better.  Back in the 70s, the shows were more cerebral and pretentious: “The Odd Couple”, “Rhoda”, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (check her out in the opening credits wearing a purple Vikings jersey, #10!).

 Soap Operas.  Daytime, I never watch – usually I’m at work anyway.  These are clearly for people who stay at home during the day.  I am catching up on “Dallas”, and follow “Desperate Housewives” (as mentioned earlier).

 Late Night.  First there was Johnny Carson.  ZZZ – humor for the WWII generation, of which I’m not.  Leno, in that respect, was a big improvement (plus he’s a huge car guy).  Letterman I never liked: he’s an uptight doofus pretending to be a cool guy.  Conan is probably the best of the three, very real but funny.  And remember Arsenio Hall?  Or Chevy Chase?

 TV nonstop.   I am not one of those people who watches it nonstop, putting it on as soon as I get home from work and leaving on all the time, even while I sleep.  I watch it when I have something I want to watch.

 “Reality” TV.  Whether it’s “Jerry Springer” or “Survivor”, I zone out.   What annoys me about the “Survivor” shows is that it’s 30% “actual survival” and 70% “stupid office intrigues, personality conflicts, ratting people out”, things of that nature which never interest me.  The same with “Biggest Loser”, which seems at least as much of this backstabbing and personality conflicts as about... losing weight?

 Drama.  I tend to ignore most of these.  I don’t watch “Grey’s Anatomy”, any “CSI” or “NCIS” show where they cleverly solve all sorts of crimes with advanced technology.  Give me “CSI LONDON 1888” where clever Scotland Yard detectives FINALLY tell us who Jack the Ripper was.  And please bring back “Life on Mars”.

 Crime/Cops.  I never watched “Miami Vice”.  I wasn’t really into “Starsky & Hutch” (though the car was cool), “Knight Rider” (it was on when I was in France, I only got into after I bought my black Firebird), “Baretta”, “Mannix”, “Hill Street Blues” (talk about a bewildering array of characters on that one), “The Rockford Files”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, etc.

 Sports.  Usually I watch NFL and soccer (including the World Cup).  I ignore most of the Olympics, ESPN, baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis – and GOLF is dull to watch, only marginally less dull to play.  I’ve finally got RedZone, but haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.  But I am not one of these guys who zones out in front of the TV for a game, which during football season would be 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sunday, with a break between the end of the 4 p.m. game and the beginning of the Sunday night game for dinner + Monday Night Football.

 HD.   FINALLY I got an HD TV, and scroll down past channel 702 to get all the HD channels.  The resolution is astonishing.  It simply has to be seen to be believed.

 The Best.  If I had to name the best, I’d say here are a few:

“Two and a Half Men”.  Charlie Sheen plays Charlie Harper, a jingle writer, single with no kids.  His brother Alan (John Cryer), is a divorced chiropractor who moves in with Charlie after his wife Judith kicks him out.  He has a young son (the same actor all this time).  The humor is astonishingly adult for a sit-com, and Sheen’s real life is mercilessly ridiculed. 

 “My Name is Earl”.  Quality insanity from Jason Lee.  He’s got this list, see?  And he has to keep crossing off the bad things he’s done and make up for them, one by one.  His brother Randy isn’t too bright, his ex-wife Joy clearly uses those white trash bags, but the latina maid is very hot.  I like the odd mix of low-class & deep philosophy.

 “M*A*S*H”.  I’ve already gone on about this at length.

 “Friends” was OK. I got into this because it came on after “Seinfeld”, and continued to watch it after “Seinfeld” ended, following it until this show itself ended.  With “My Name is Earl” gone, Thursday night is basically “The Office”, which while good doesn’t compel me to set aside the evening for TV.

 The Office.  No laugh track, simply humorous situations, particularly Michael Scott (Steve Carell) who is (of course) consistently unintentionally funny, which is the whole point.  I loved the one where Dwight (Rainn Wilson) “catches” Oscar playing hookie, oblivious to Oscar’s much more controversial secret, his special friend (!).  Or when Michael is unaware he’s wearing a suit designed for Hillary Clinton.

 “The Simpsons”.  Remarkably, this has not “jumped the shark” (peaked) but is still getting better.  Matt Groening is the Steven Spielberg of TV.  I don’t know how they keep coming up with new ideas, but somehow they do it.

 “Seinfeld”.  This show was fantastic.  You never knew what was going to happen, it was completely unpredictable.  And they would run with stuff – George didn’t lose his Yankees job in the next episode, nor did Elaine’s job with Peterman fizzle out by the end of the episode.  About the only thing you could predict is that whatever idiotic scheme Kramer and Newman had, it would end up badly. 

 “South Park”. Winding up the three S-shows.  Although it can be extremely offensive at times, Parker and Stone leave you wondering: did they deliberately try to mess with us, or is this just their twisted sense of humor?  No one is tackling delicate and controversial issues more directly and more humorously.  And this is a crudely animated cartoon show about 4 10 year olds in Colorado.  Sad to say it, but “Family Guy” – as clever and funny as Seth McFarlane may be – is simply a tagalong copycat. 

Colorado

This will be considerably shorter than my New Jersey blog, as compared to New Jersey (which I’ve been to several times, and several different parts of it) my experience in Colorado was one weekend in Boulder.  As limited as that is, I’ll add in some Colorado-themed issues which deserve note but not their own blogs.

 I visited my best friend from high school, Phil, who lives in Boulder with his female life-companion and two pre-adults.  I was surprised to learn that half of Colorado is mile-high plains, as flat as the eye can see, and only the other half is mountains.  Boulder, Denver, and Colorado Springs lie along the Front Range of the Rockies.

 Boulder itself is trendy, liberal, and New Age.  It’s about 30 minutes northwest of Denver.  It’s the home of the University of Colorado.  Mork & Mindy, the TV show from 1978-84, with Robin Williams and Pam Dawber, took place there.  There’s even a one-off Mexican place called Illegal Pete’s, that has steak soft tacos ALMOST as good as Chipotle (which they do have in Boulder and Denver). 

 We also visited the Rocky Mountain National Park, which features spectacular views of yet more mountains, and some trails you can walk around without being mauled by bears or elks.  Nearby is the Stanley Hotel, built by the Stanley Steamer man (ask Jay Leno, he has one) and the featured location of “The Shining” (Jack Nicholson film way back). 

 Later on we visited Golden, Colorado (just south of Denver), home of Coors, the brewery (largest single-site brewery in the US, if not the world).  They have a free tour, which is very informative – and even includes 4 free beers for those of us 21 and over.   Recall “Smokey and the Bandit”: $80,000 to transport 400 cases of Coors east of Texarkana to Georgia in 18 hours or less.  Adolph Coors was born in 1847, and started the brewery in 1873, so if anything the Austrian dictator was named after him, not the other way around.  The most famous Austrian since him would have to be the Governator of California…get in line, Bruno.

 South Park.  I like this show, but not enough to devote an entire blog to it.  The 4 kids are Stan (blue knit cap), Kyle (green Russian hat), Cartman (fat kid in knit cap), and Kenny (mumbling kid in orange parka).  Stan and Kyle are relatively normal (Kyle is Jewish) while Cartman is obnoxious and unpleasant; Kenny tends to be killed in each episode (“those bastards, they killed Kenny!”).  Other important characters are Chef (voice of Isaac Hayes), Mr. Garrison (gay school teacher with puppet friend Mr. Hat), the blue-haired female Mayor, Officer Barbrady, Ned & Jimbo (Vietnam veteran hunters), Jesus (yes, Himself), Mr. Hankey (a talking piece of poo who comes out at Christmas) and Mr. Mackey, the school counselor (“umm’kay?”).  The theme song is done by Primus (Les Claypool) – who often play it in concert.  Count on the show to tackle sensitive and controversial issues head-on in a very direct and “we don’t care who we offend” manner.  Oddly, I saw the South Park movie (“Bigger, Longer, Uncut”) ages ago with Phil, who predicted (incorrectly) that his unfamiliarity with the show would prevent him from enjoying it: far from it, he was practically falling out of his seat laughing.  I’m really not a fan of “offend people for the sake of offending people”, but don’t mind if there’s some decent message hidden inside for us to find and enjoy – and understand.  Others might not enjoy it, but to me South Park definitely qualifies. 

 Mork & Mindy.  This was Robin Williams’ big break.  He was so spectacular in adlibbing that they let him write much of his own material and adlib much of it.  “Mork” was an alien from Ork, who reported to his superior “Orson” every night.  His assignment on Earth was to investigate the planet and report back.  Mindy was the delicious and attractive Pam Dawber, with whom he lived first as a roommate, and eventually they got married.  I found the other characters (Jonathan Winter, Gina Hecht, etc.) to be nowhere close to as entertaining as Mork and Mindy themselves. 

 Denver Broncos.  I’ve never been a Broncos fan.  I recall watching the Redskins maul the Broncos in the 1988 Super Bowl (42-10), and recall the Cowboys beat them in 1978, the first Super Bowl I remember.  Finally in 1997 they changed their uniforms to the current style, and beat the Packers – John Elway finally got his Super Bowl Ring.  Asked, before the game, what he thought of the Packers’ boasts, Bronco Bill Romanowski simply replied, “we’ll see what happens on the field.”  Sure enough, they beat the Packers that year (w/Brett Favre) and the Falcons the year after…then Elway retired.

 In Phoenix, the city appeared to be a broad plain, amidst a desert, with mountains surrounding it on all sides, but always far, far away in the distance.  In Las Vegas, the city appeared to be in on a desert plain, with mountains lined up on along the West.  In Boulder, the urban areas appeared to be on desolate wintry plains (in December) with a line of huge mountains along the West.  

 There are many other things to do in Colorado, not the least of which is catch a Broncos game, or ski, which will have to wait until my next visit.  I’m long overdue to visit my sister in Phoenix, Arizona, so stay tuned. For now, my verdict on Colorado is: MOUNTAINS and BEER.  

Brian vs. Snoopy

Yet another X v. Y comparison blog. Two white dogs from two different times. This is more a comparison of "Peanuts" vs. "The Family Guy" using Brian and Snoopy as the common link.

 Snoopy, from "Peanuts". Never talks, just walks around doing human stuff, including his Red Baron act. Clearly he’s intelligent, but his silence seems less like an attribute of being a dog – because he doesn’t act like one – than some arrogant contempt for the children around him, even his own "master", Charlie Brown., who he never accompanies as a dog does his master. His real friend is Woodstock, the little yellow bird. Charlie Brown is more like his caretaker than his friend (similar to cats’ views of their owners).

 I never liked "Peanuts". The humor and issues were dry and existentialist, the equivalent of a cloudy, rainy day with nothing to do. The children are self-absorbed and precocious; Charlie Brown, the main character, experiences little more than grief and frustration. These do not appear to be happy children, although they’re not poor or abused, more like simply bored with a dull, meaningless existence devoid of any excitement, fun or joy, children deprived of the innocent joy of childhood because they’re trapped in a boring world created by a sadistic cartoonist with nothing important to say.

 Lucy’s behavior is particularly obnoxious. Not only her stupid little psychiatric help stand (what is such a thing doing in a strip for children?) but her constant taunting of Charlie Brown with the football. Each time he’s sure she’ll pull the football away at the last moment, and each time she manages to persuade him that time it will be different (for a different reason) yet each time she does exactly the same thing. Ultimately her point seems to be, "I always pull it away at the last moment, you should know it by now and ignore whatever particular rationalization I give you". It’s a cruel game for her. If these were adults she’d be making sexual advances at him and always pulling away after he bought her dinner and brought her back to her place for "coffee" – a nightcap, a pleasure, she will never give him. What is this stupid insanity doing in a children’s comic?

 Fortunately, Lucy is repaid by Schroeder, who consistently rejects her advances, which are explicitly romantic in nature. Is he gay? Or more likely, he simply doesn’t like her – hardly surprising given her petulant arrogance and thoughtless cruelty. Perhaps there is some measure of justice in the Peanuts universe.

 The jazz music (Vince Guaraldi) is somewhat appropriate: it gives the cartoon an additional quality like the characters were cynical French beatniks smoking cigarettes in a coffee house. So much is absurd: Linus’ unsuccessful stalking of the Great Pumpkin; the swiss cheese ghost costume; the pathetically small Christmas tree. No one gets what they want: Charlie Brown doesn’t kick the football; Lucy doesn’t get Schroeder; Linus doesn’t see the Great Pumpkin, etc. Nothing happens.

 Brian, the Griffin family dog from "Family Guy". He can talk! He can drink! He can date stupid girls! And hell, he’s much smarter than Peter. He actually talks to Peter, Lois, Stewie, and the others. He’s arrogant, but not annoyingly so (this is Stewie’s angle). Aside from Lois, he’s probably the most well-adjusted member of the Griffin household. Unlike Snoopy, he doesn’t remain silent and aloof from all the humans around him, as if they’re beneath him; he’s an active member of the household.

 This show is, well, interesting. The bizarre tangents are entertaining (though it’s a bad habit that gets old quickly), and it certainly brings up alot of very delicate issues and deals with them in a tasteless – but nonetheless humorous – way. Though from this perspective South Park has them beat: all well and fine to bring up a topic (homosexuality, racism, homelessness, handicaps) for discussion, but once you’ve done so, what are you going to say? Or are you simply doing so to shock people and get credit for broaching the subject (Marilyn Manson’s angle)? With South Park at least a statement is made, a position is taken. Not only do they bring up the issue, they address it – in a colorful and bizarre fashion. By the time the episode is over you can perceive the message. I suppose I’d resent it more if I didn’t agree with it so often. "The Family Guy" is a step below that. "The Simpsons" are somewhere in between.

 In this case, though, the only "child" is Stewie, as intelligent as the Peanuts kids but considerably more twisted. Apparently Brian is the only one who can communicate with him, as the other characters consistently ignore whatever blasphemy he spews out. I find him mildly entertaining but mostly unlikable, unlike Brian who is imperfect but about as decent as any of these Quahogg people are going to be – an imperfect world full of imperfect people, to put it mildly, but certainly far more entertaining and comic than the Peanuts world. The others are mischievous in a mildly endearing way, like cute children who get into trouble. Peter is by far the worst. Quagmire is debauched, the buddies are just kinda there, and Meg and Chris are not that interesting. Put me down as being a fan – with Brian as my favorite character.