Sushi Pack - Where No Truth Lies

A lovely Tako/Maguro-shippy episode, slightly marred by a lame villain. Sorry, but it had to be said. I'll get more into detail about that after I write up the episode, though.

Where No Truth Lies - "I'm a Mayor, not a Librarian."

At a ski lodge out somewhere, Mayor Martin loudly laments the loss of his "priceless collection." Chief Flume arrives on the scene with some of her muscle officers, and the Mayor shows her the note left by The Prevaricator, which basically substitutes the opposite word for what is meant at random intervals. Rather strange, but more on that later. Regardless, the Mayor throws himself on Flume's mercy, and she promises to get everyone possible working on the case, although the Mayor points out that she really just needs the Sushi Pack.

Apparently it snows in Wharf City, too, as the scene cuts to a snowcovered Green Donut (so I guess that means it's not in California). Having heard about the Mayor's predicament, the Pack is hurrying to get out the door in B.O.B. (from No Clowning Around, which I'll be blogging soon) to track down the Prevaricator. As the rest of the Pack heads out, Tako grabs Maguro's knapsack, accidentally dumping all its contents on the floor. As he leaps from the table he was standing on, he lands on Maguro's lucky crystal necklace, breaking the crystal in two. Tako hastily cleans up the evidence, stashing the necklace in his pocket (thoroughly confusing me. Isn't that his skin?) in the hopes that Maguro won't notice it's missing. Unfortunately for him, once they're out in the frozen wastelands, she notices pretty quickly. And since Tako brought her knapsack to B.O.B., she figures that he must have something to do with it's disappearance. Tako plays it cool, but Maguro continues to needle him. Kani tells her to get back to working B.O.B.'s foot, but without her crystal, Maguro is not a happy camper.

Ikura suggests she look around for it, so she does, somehow managing to look all the way over to Tako's foot, and notices the chain of her necklace peeking out of his pocket (I still don't get how he has one in his skin...). She pulls it out (without leaving her foot? I'm confused again) and Tako flails to cover his tracks, even going so far as to tell her "it was just a little lie." This incenses Maguro more than the necklace being broken. She tells Tako that she can't trust him anymore and forces Ikura to trade seats with her. Ikura reassures Tako that Maguro will get over it eventually, but Maguro promises to hang onto her anger for ages to come.

Waiting for the Pack in the snow gave Chief Flume a bit of a headcold, so she doesn't recognize the Pack when they show up (granted, they are in B.O.B.). She fills them in on The Prevaricator's plot: turns out he's been after the Mayor's collection for years. She neither knows what "prevaricate" means ("These bad guys keep coming up with weird names.") nor what the Mayor's collection entails, but it's important to get it back, since the Mayor can't stop crying about it. After a brief chat with the Mayor, the Pack is on the move! Kani spots some footprints in the snow, but since Ikura's not used to working a foot, B.O.B. ends up crashing into a tree repeatedly, and Kani calls for Maguro to take her original position. As Maguro returns to the foot, Tako tells her that he knows she's still angry, but they have to work together on the case. Maguro knows that he's right, but in her anger, she can't help but snipe at him. Tako knows he deserves it and that he should be the bigger man, but taunts her right back regardless. Kani tells them both to knock it off and get a move on. As the feet get going, Maguro hears a squeaking sound and asks Tako if he lubed the joints before the trip. Tako says he did, but both Maguro and Kani doubt him, thanks to his lie about the crystal.

Following the trail gets more difficult as a storm blows in, so the Pack takes a pit stop at a nearby cafe. The proprietress pours B.O.B. a cup of tea and fills them in a little on The Prevaricator. Seems he is a master liar (which Maguro uses to snipe at Tako once again). Kani asks how she knows so much about him, but the proprietress refuses to say, just telling them, "it's a long story." She also warns them not to trust anything the Prevaricator says. And with that, the Pack is off again.

Still hearing squeaking from the knee joints, Maguro leaves her position to check them herself. Turns out Tako did oil them, but with her missing in action, B.O.B. takes a tumble, slides across the ice, and lands facefirst in a snowbank. The Pack pops out, only to be faced with some kind of abominable snowman. No, wait, it's really the Prevaricator. Seriously, he is one unattractive dude, and that is saying something on this show. The Pack chases him on foot, listening to him contradict everything they say. Seeing that they're getting nowhere, Tako theorizes that they have to make the Prevaricator lie about lying in order to stop him. After a bit of bantering with him, Tako asks him to tell a lie. The Prevaricator is caught in this logic trap, and forfeits the Mayor's collection just so he won't have to think anymore. With the Mayor's collection in tow, Tako apologizes to Maguro properly, and they patch things up, both so happy that they make B.O.B. skip all the rest of the way back. The Mayor, of course, is overjoyed to have his collection of prized bottle caps back, but the Pack is not impressed, and leave him to geek out alone.

So, yeah, the resolution to this one was really lame. I mean, honestly, there's a difference between lying and just contradicting everything point blank. But, I have a theory about this: the Prevaricator that the Pack went up against was not the actual Prevaricator, but an imposter. When I first saw this episode, (and before the Prevaricator showed up on screen) there was no doubt in my mind that the Prevaricator was actually the proprietress of the cafe the Pack went to. Basically, once she clammed up on how she knew the Prevaricator, I knew it was her. Watching the episode again only confirmed it in my mind. It even fits with the whole "the Prevaricator can only lie" bit. She says "it's a long story" because it's actually a short story: she is the Prevaricator. Thus, if she's telling the truth about the Prevaricator being a liar, it's because she's lying about being the Prevaricator in the first place (plus, she, like everyone else, refers to the Prevaricator as a "he," which is a lie if she is indeed the Prevaricator). So what's up with the male Prevaricator having the Mayor's collection? My theory is that the female Prevaricator hired a random thug to get the Mayor's collection, since she'd been after it for years with no luck, and told him how to be the Prevaricator (that is, lie all the time). But he took her instructions a little too literally, which is how he got trapped in Tako's logic puzzle. After all, the real Prevaricator knows that there's more than one way to tell a lie, and wouldn't have gotten trapped by Tako. Also, is it not true that she told the Pack they'd find the Prevaricator at the top of the hill, yet he was really at the bottom? Obviously, she was throwing them off the trail, since she knew that he would be coming to meet up with her at a location in that bottom-of-the-hill town. Conveniently sending the heroes off in the wrong direction while she makes off with the goods? Now that's what the Prevaricator should be.

Blithe Spirit Twitter-style

Blithe Spirit is a play by Noel Coward, currently playing on Broadway until July 19th. And the guy from Broadway Abridged recently put up his version of it, only instead of his usual style, he put it up ala Twitter. I was very amused.

Sushi Pack - Disappearing Act

This one gets right down to business with some kind of glowing Jack-in-the-Box robbing a bank. It's about to make off in a fire truck, but the Pack shows up to apprehend it, only for it to disappear without a trace. Chief Flume shows up to commend the Pack on a job well done, but instead they have to admit that the perpetrator escaped. She's not surprised, as the same thing has been happening all over town: various weird items holding up stores, then disappearing when caught. At least the money didn't disappear, too. As Chief Flume drives off, Kani tries to figure out what could possibly be going on with these robberies, and hypothesizes that holograms may be the answer. She'll figure it out, with SCIENCE!

When the Sushi Pack gets back, Ben has dinner waiting for them (kind of a cop-out dinner, if you ask me: fresh fruit, tofu, and carrots cooked in honey), but Kani opts to skip it and get to work. Ben warns against it, but Kani trusts in her crabby exterior to get her through the night. All through the night, it turns out, as she works at her tiny laptop, munching on something (looks like those after dinner mints I like :d), and falling asleep a couple of times. Maguro checks in on her, and Kani shares what she's figured out so far: with a powerful enough computer, you can make a hologram that can manipulate magnetic fields, or something like that. Maguro heads to bed, and tells Kani to do the same, advice which she does not heed.
Elsewhere, Sugar Jimmy uses his own small computer to manipulate a lamp character in his bedroom. Despite being unmasked in his last appearance, he's back in his usual look, with his mother hounding him to get to bed. Y'know, there might be a reason he masqueraded as a 9-year-old for years. Anyway, he claims to be creating characters for his TV show, which his mother conveniently reminds him he no longer has. Jimmy claims his new characters will make him enough money to buy his own network for his show, all while chowing down on some candy, which his mother also points out is not good for him. He gets annoyed by all her nagging and tells her first that the candy gives him energy and second to just go to bed already and let him work in peace.

The next morning, the rest of the Pack walks in on Kani, who worked all night long checking out police reports from the previous night. While Tako examines them, Maguro gets curious about what the heck Kani's eating. Turns out they're jelly beans, which Kani, like Jimmy, claims give her energy, although Maguro derides them for being pure sugar. And eating them all night? Bleh. Tako notices that one of ten of the robberies the night before were at candy stores, and Kani berates herself for not noticing that herself. The others tell her to get some breakfast and take a nap, but she doesn't want to take the time out of her investigation. Wasabi asks if he can get her anything, and she requests soda and chips. Again, how she has the stomach for anything after eating jelly beans all night long, I have no clue.

While Kani works, the rest of the Pack eat Ben's crazy granola for breakfast, and then Wasabi and Ikura start to head out to get Kani some chips, since Ben doesn't stock any junk food (not after the episode "Sweet Tooth," anyway). Ben, of course, is not having any of that, or rather, not letting Kani have any. Instead, he decides to make her something involving carrots and pineapple (???). Before he can get down to cooking, Kani arrives, looking much worse than before, so he offers her an orange slice. She turns him down, but takes Tako up on his offer of a seat and fills in the rest of the Pack on her activities. In the past fifteen minutes or so (however long they were eating breakfast) she looked over all the police reports, candy store locations, and travel tickets purchased from the night before, but she's too tired to make heads or tails of them. She's so tired, in fact, that she collapses right then and there. The others take the print-outs she made and split the work between the four of them so Kani can rest.

After a quick montage, the Pack tries to figure out the culprit from the clues: most of the robberies were done by human-sized versions of toys and half the candy stores in town were hit. Putting together "a big kid" and "a sweet tooth" leads Wasabi to make the obvious conclusion: Sugar Jimmy! Kani can't figure out why she couldn't put it together herself, and Ben tells her it's because she didn't get enough rest. He also offers her the orange again, and this time she takes it. With the location of the next candy store to be hit, the Pack takes off to stake it out. Sure enough, Jimmy shows up with his lamp hologram in tow. The Pack heads in after him, but Kani is still tired and can't quite roll like the others. In fact, she falls asleep mere footsteps from the Sushi Craft. Fortunately, Wasabi notices and calls the others' attention to her. They abort the mission to get Kani home for some overdue sleep in her own bed.

Two days later, Kani wakes up feeling fan-freaking-tastic, and owns up to the fact that she should have known better than to skip eating real food and sleeping. The Pack, meanwhile, took advantage of her downtime to figure out Jimmy's next step: a visit to the Wharf City Sugar Exchange (what the?). At the Exchange, Jimmy pulls out all his holograms and briefs them on their mission, giving the exposition that the Sugar Exchange is where "adults trade money for sugar." He apparently hasn't slept this whole time, but since his holograms are programmed to rob the exchange, he doesn't really have to be all that alert. He and his holograms storm the Exchange, only to find it devoid of any people. But not devoid of the Sushi Pack! Kani even confronts him directly, but he just kicks her away. So she pinches him right on the nose, causing him to flail around and drop his laptop, breaking it and degenerating the holograms. Jimmy melts down, but is cuffed by the police and lead to jail. So much for his big showbiz plans. Kani caps off the episode with the lesson one more time, promising to "eat right and sleep tight" from now on.

Health food is weird. Sugar Jimmy is weird. So all in all, it was kind of a weird episode. But I gotta say, even when she's horribly sleep-deprived, Kani is still cute! It's just a different kind of cute, perhaps even a weird kind of cute. And definitely an aesop for our times, eh? So all in all, not too bad.

Cryptoquote Time

In cleaning, I found an old cryptogram that I wrote up many years ago. I was a huge fan of cryptograms when I was in high school, but this is the only quote I ever felt like making. The first person to post the correct quote wins a prize:

JDFYW QSPP JUBA TA; FA'J WHSPPSUGI. S'T UIIHUDIAC IX WHSPPSUGI TAG. IFA PUIA FUHBAE FXXBAH FXXNAH QUJ WHSPPSUGI - SG U HUIFAH JIYNSC QUE, XZ DZYHJA.

- DXHU FXXBAH FXXNAH

What I Watch - Land of the Lost

The Husband and I went to see Land of the Lost a few days ago, and while it wasn't my first choice, it did turn out to be fun time. And there were three things in particular that made the movie for me.

1. "God, I Hope I Get it," from A Chorus Line being used liberally ^_^ I know it's mostly a joke, but that doesn't stop it from being awesome.

2. Anna Friel, aka Chuck from Pushing Daisies (and the fact that I recognized her before seeing the end credits).

3. Adam Behr, aka Titanium Chef! as one of the sleeslak elders/skulls. His part was too short for me to catch it the first time around, but when I saw his name in the end credits, I was like, "I know that name, but why?" until it hit me. So that bumped the movie up a notch right there.

After Love Actually

I was watching Love Actually with my sister the other day, and since it had been a while since I'd last seen it, I was hopping on the IMDB every now and then to look up what else the actors had done. Thus, I was very amused to find that Sam (Thomas Sangster) and Joanna (Olivia Olson) both went on to be voices in the cartoon Phineas and Ferb. I don't think their characters have interacted, but it's still amusing to me.

The Sky's the Limit!

There's finally a release date for The Strawberry Shortcake Movie: Sky's the Limit! According to amazon.com, it'll come out on DVD on September 15th. Now, according to the agpbrands website, the movie is also getting a theatrical release, which for them generally means screenings through KidToon Films. And since they have the movies listed for June, July, and September, I'm guessing that we'll be seeing it come August.

Tony Awards 2009

Overall, a fun show this year, although I think I had a better time watching it because my sister and her friend were there watching, too.

• 20:00 2009 Tony Awards!
• 20:01 "Why must I be tortured by Elton John" asks my sister (she hates Elton John)
• 20:02 Answer: he wrote the songs for Billy Elliot, one of the nominated shows.
• 20:02 Why can I hear the people in the audience?
• 20:04 This opening is lots of fun, but kind of confusing
• 20:05 Is that Stockard Channing? (It was)
• 20:09 My sister's reactions are very amusing. "Liza? But she never does anything anymore!"
• 20:13 Wow, Neil Patrick Harris' suit is shiny
• 20:29 Best part of the Shrek performance: the Wicked spoof at the end or Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey watching in the audience?
• 20:30 That knee-dancing was kind of impressive, though.
• 20:30 Oh, Jeff Daniels looks old.
• 20:31 Yay for Angela Lansbury!
• 20:45 Ah, the [tos]ers are going to be mad that it didn't win best book.
• 20:46 I haven't heard too much from Next to Normal, so I don't know whether it deserves Best Score or not.
• 20:52 Is it just me, or is Maria (West Side Story) awfully white?
• 20:59 I was kind of hoping the "other" Matthew Warchus would win.
• 21:05 Heh @ everyone waving their cellphones during the Rock of Ages performance
• 21:13 I admit, I'd rather have Liza win than Will Ferrell.
• 21:14 (Special Theatrical Event, that is)
• 21:18 Oh, mike fail... (Guys and Dolls performance)
• 21:18 What's up with the projected background?
• 21:50 As usual, technical difficulties cropped up just when I wanted to say something most.
• 21:50 In short: Good for Karen Olivio, and what was up with Carrie Fisher?
• 21:51 Also, that Next to Normal performance looked like it would be hard to sing.
• 21:51 I'm just glad the memorial montage wasn't set to Memory.
• 22:02 Is there another Marcia Harden out there? If not, why is she parading her middle name like that?
• 22:06 Man, is he dancing, or constipated? (Billy Elliot performance)
• 22:07 Are there going to be lyrics sometime soon?
• 22:16 Legally Blonde is always fun ^_^
• 22:16 It's Harvery Fierstein!
• 22:29 Lovely, lovely Jerry Herman tribute
• 22:33 I thought that Wall-E was going to show up during the Jerry Herman tribute? That's what Jim Hill said, anyway.
• 22:38 Hair cast seem to be having fun. My mother doesn't think she'd pay money to see it
• 22:38 Hey, Kristin Chenoweth!
• 22:39 I was guessing West Side Story, but Hair won Best Revival of a Musical
• 22:46 Also David Hyde Pierce
• 22:46 Sutton Foster looks like Rachel Ray
• 22:47 And Alice Ripley takes Best Actress in a Musical, of course.
• 22:51 Aw, the three kids won for Billy Elliot
• 22:51 They're so cute in their awkwardness!
• 22:55 Pretty cool bringing in all the different Frankie Vallis from the different tours of Jersey Boys
• 22:59 Best Musical time
• 23:00 Billy Elliot takes it, which is no surprise given how many other awards its won overall.
• 23:01 As Mom puts it, "The kids are no longer bored, they are on stage."
• 23:03 And Neil closes out with a song.
• 23:03 (And Mom is amazed at how well he sings)

Video - The Googling

Sorry that postings have been light as of late. I'm currently moving into a new apartment, so once that's over and done with, I'll be back with some more posts of substance. In the meantime, check this out:


This is actually part of a series that uses various Google functions with a darker twist, but this is the one I like the best.

I Feel Old Now

I was on the Homestar Runner website trying to find the first Cheat Comandos short, and noticed that it first aired a lot earlier than I had thought (2004).  A lot of the cartoons and shorts did.  I mean, I remember when most of them were posted, but it doesn't feel like it was that long ago.  I  realized that I've been checking out the site regularly for six years or so now (it was either late 2002 or early 2003 when I first learned of it).  I do feel kind of proud that I was already watching when the sbemails Japanese Cartoon and Dragon originally aired. 

I need to dig out my Strong Bad Sings CD now.  Also, Flashfight is my favorite Cheat Commandos character now.  I totally forgot that he originally showed up in the first short, though, until I rewatched it today.