Tumblin'

So I caved and got a tumblr.  No clue how often I'll update it, but feel free to check it out.

How my mind works sometimes

Checking out the images from the MLP blind bags over at Equestria Daily, I spot this:

And instantly think:
Meadow Song is so musical!  How musical is he?  He's so musical, he can make an instrument out of blanks.
*doot doot doo doo doot de doo doot* <---Match Game music
Feel free to fill in the blank, btw.

Wild West VBS Tropes

Once again, I spent the time during rehearsals for this year's VBS skits making a list of the various tropes I noticed playing out, but since the theme this year is the Gold Rush, I had a little help coming up with some.  And while the VBS itself was set in the gold rush, the skit is actually set in 1860, in a boom town called Discovery City that's seen better days.  Each day followed the lives of its inhabitants: incompetent lawmen Sheriff Theodore Tweedle and Deputy Otis Henry, Sadie Brown, who runs the Hard Time Cafe (later Good News Cafe), Caleb Foster, a prospector who spends more time spreading the gospel than searching for gold, Petunia Periwinkle, a starlet hopeful who got off at the wrong stop, and Dr. Marvel, a snake oil salesman.

Tropes found in the skits include:

(Some of the tropes are spoilery, so don't read this list if your church is putting on this VBS)

• The Wild West - Naturally.
• Anachronism Stew - Quite a bit.  Despite being explicitly set in 1860, movies are mentioned in one skit, Home on the Range is sung (it wasn't written until ten years later), Sadie runs an outdoor cafe, and many idioms that likely didn't exist at the time are used in the dialogue.
• All There In The Manual - The character descriptions in the Drama Guide give bits of information that are not even hinted at in the actual skits, such as Sadie opening her restaurant after her father died, and Dr. Marvel having been a con artist since he first cheated on a test in first grade.
• Heterosexual Life Partners - Theodore and Otis.
• The Sheriff - Theodore.
• Clueless Deputy - Otis, though the sheriff isn't much better.
• The Missionary and a Prospector - Caleb
• Bird Oil Salesman - Dr. Marvel hawks an all-healing "potion" made from the oil of a pink-striped albatross.
• The Outlaw - Jake "The Snake" Jackson, meanest outlaw in the west.
• US Marshal - Dr. Marvel is caught and waiting for the marshal by the end.
• The Ditz - Petunia, Otis, and Theodore.
• Surrounded By Idiots - Sadie, though she rarely expresses this directly.  "The closest those two could get to a brainstorm is a light drizzle."
• Offstage Crash - While trying to hang up a sign, Otis ends up crashing through the door of the Sheriff's office, with a rather excessive sound effect.
• Your Other Left - Theodore tells Otis to raise his right hand so he can be sworn in as a deputy.  You can guess what happens.
• Donut Mess With a Cop - Once he's sworn in, Otis suggests they go celebrate by getting some donuts.
• Cucumber Facial - In one skit, Otis gives Theodore a fancy spa treatment, complete with mud mask and cucumbers on the eyes, which Theodore agrees to only when he hears it will help his luck with the ladies.
• Took A Level In Kindness - After Caleb shares the gospel with her, Sadie becomes noticeably nicer, and the narrator comments that her biscuits even taste better.
• I've Heard of That, What is it?/Global Ignorance - Hearing that Petunia is from Ohio, Sadie comments that she's originally from Kentucky.  Petunia seems to know, but then asks how far away it is.  Hearing that the two states share a border, she blames her ignorance on not being good at "biology."
• I Know You Know I Know - After hearing about a recent bank robbing by Jake "The Snake" Jackson, Theodore is not worried about Jake showing up there, since "There's a new sheriff in town, and he knows it!  And he knows that I know it."  Otis asks, "But does he know that YOU know he knows that you know it?"  "That's the only thing we don't know," Theodore replies.
• Giftedly Bad - Petunia.  She fancies herself as someone who just needs her big break to become world-famous, but in truth her acting is terrible and her singing even worse.  
• Hollywood Tone Deaf - Petunia. The script mentions her voice making glass break and coyotes howl, but sadly these are not included as sound effects.
• False Reassurance - The reason Petunia thinks so highly of herself is that no one tells her point blank that she's terrible, instead saying things like "We've never heard a voice quite like yours," and "What you did to those notes has never been done before."
• Medicine Show - Dr. Marvel puts on a show (all in rhyme) to sell his potion.
• Never Trust a Hair Tonic - Petunia takes some of Dr. Marvel's potion, and it turns her hair purple (in our version, anyway.  The script just says "the crazier, the better").
• Different As Night And Day - It turns out Caleb and Dr. Marvel are twins.  As Sadie puts it, "He's a giver, and you're a taker."
• Acting For Two - Since the two rarely show up on the same day, Caleb and Dr. Marvel are played by the same person.  Their only actual interaction is offstage.
• Pie in the Face - Mistaking Caleb for Dr. Marvel, Petunia lets him have it with one of Sadie's pies as payback for her hair.
• Too Dumb To Live - When Jake "The Snake" Jackson comes to town, he's able to tie up Theodore and Otis by simply asking them to put their hands together and sit back to back.  Once he's done, the two wonder how they got tied up.
• Stuff Blowing Up - Jake plans to use dynamite on the sheriff and deputy after robbing the bank, but didn't bring any matches.
• Completely Missing The Point - While tied up with the dynamite, Otis laments their imminent explosion, since it means he won't be able to go the square dance next week.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall - Jake has trouble opening the bank door, so Otis tells him that it's just painted on, and he has to go around the side (i.e. back stage) to get in.
• Ten Minute Retirement - After the humiliation of being outwitted by Jake, Theodore quits being the sheriff, to Otis' dismay.  He returns to the job after Jake returns and turns himself in.
• Heel Face Turn - After reading a bible that Sadie slipped into his money bag, Jake realizes the error of his ways and turns himself in.  Also, by the end, Petunia decides to give up on show business and learn about Jesus.
• Get Out of Jail Free Card - Averted, as Jake does indeed go to jail.
• Leitmotif - Anytime Jake "The Snake" Jackson shows up, a rattlesnake sound plays.  After he repents, the sound isn't heard.

And of course, it wouldn't be a VBS skit without a little bit of Fridge Logic:

Why did Petunia drink the potion, anyway?  And when did Sadie find the time to sneak a bible into Jake's bag?

Our version also had a bonus trope, Samus Is A Girl.  Since we had more female actors than male, we decided to make Jake "The Snake" Jackson a girl, and after much discussion, came to the conclusion that it would be funnier for everyone to think Jake was a guy until she actually showed up.  Technically, the Drama Guide says to use another outlaw mentioned, "Calamity Kate," in that scenario, but there's so much in the script with the rattlesnake leitmotif that it just made more sense to do what we ended up doing. 

Tropetastic VBS skits

Sorry for the lack of posts this month.  Besides the usual things that keep me busy, most of my evenings these past few weeks have been devoted to practicing for, and then performing in, the skits for my church's Vacation Bible School, The Egypt File.  Of course, being me, I spent a good chunk of time that I wasn't on stage taking note of the various tropes that appeared in each day's skit.
The overall plot takes place in a museum being opened in Egypt by Claire and Percy Sedgwick, a brother and sister from England fulfilling their late grandfather's dream.  Along for the ride are their butler, Albert, and the summer intern, Mackenzie Ross.  When the money box is stolen, the Sedgwicks call on Detective Carson Hughes to investigate, and all signs seem to point to Joe the janitor.

Tropes found in these skits include:

• An Aesop - Each day's skit has a bit of dialogue (usually delivered by Mackenzie to Claire) that ties in with the lesson presented by the rest of the program.
• MacGuffin - The stolen money box
• Screwy Squirrel - Percy is always playing pranks, especially on Albert
• Sour Supporter - Albert constantly complains about how much he hates Egypt and wants to go back to England, but continues to serve the Sedgwicks faithfully.
• Defrosting Ice Queen - Claire starts off rather no-nonsense, but thanks to Mackenzie's aesop-spouting and her rediscovered Bible, by the end, she's much nicer.
• Amateur Sleuth - Mackenzie states that she always seems to end up in places where there are mysteries to be solved, and spends the skits investigating the missing money box.
• The Stoic - Joe the janitor is a man of few words, and comes off as a little creepy.
• Parental Abandonment - Claire and Percy's parents died when they were young, in an unexplained accident.
• Eek, A Mouse! - Percy catches a sand rat that gets loose.  Whenever Claire hears that it's near, she climbs onto a table.
• Bond, James Bond - Detective Hughes introduces himself in this way.  Percy immediately makes fun of this. ("Nice to meet you, 'Hughes, Carson Hughes.'  My name is Sedgwick, Percy Sedgwick.")
• Donut Mess With A Cop - Albert offers to get Detective Hughes a donut or pastry since "I know you people like that sort of thing."
• Mystery Magnet - Mackenzie is implied to be one.  In her own words, "It just seems that wherever I go, there's a crime to be solved, and I just can't resist getting involved!"
• How Much Did You Hear? - After giving herself a Rousing Speech, Mackenzie turns to find Joe standing nearby.  She asks, "How long have you been there?"  "Long enough," he replies.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous? - Mackenzie (rather amused) assures Albert that having his box of fudge-striped cookies eaten by a "wild animal" (presumably Percy's pet rat) is truly horrible.
• So What Are You Saying? - Albert uses this twice in the same skit, once while speaking on the intercom to Mackenzie, and then again when calling Detective Hughes.
• Insistent Terminology - Joe prefers "custodian" to "janitor."
• Mummy - Percy dresses as one, complete with Zombie Gait, to scare Albert.
• Crouching Moron Hidden Badass - Scared by the mummy, Albert beats him up (offstage), making Percy later compare him to Chuck Norris.
• You Never Asked - Albert on his kickboxing skills.

The next few tropes are a little spoilery:

• The Reveal - the following three tropes:
• Red Herring - Joe
• Detective Mole - Carson Hughes turns out to be an artifact smuggler pretending to be a cop in order to search the building for a hidden treasure.
• Reverse Mole - Along the same lines, Joe reveals himself to actually be an undercover cop named Nick Raines.
• Spotting The Thread - Mackenzie gives out the clues that lead her to realize Carson Hughes wasn't really a detective: she found his hotel key card, he didn't know where the post office was (instead telling her to have the hotel mail it for her), and a threatening letter she received had the hotel's stamp on the back.
• Noodle Incident - When asked how she knew Nick wasn't really a janitor, Mackenzie replies that when she saw him using the floor buffer, she figured something was up.  Nick concurs, adding that it was quite amusing.
• Saving The Orphanage - The Sedgwicks bought the orphanage next door in order to tear it down for parking.  The director, Miss Brown, comes over in a few skits to ask for more time to relocate the orphans, but the demolition crew is on a tight schedule, and the museum really needs the parking.  By the end of the week, Claire has a change of heart, mostly due to Mackenzie paraphrasing James 1:27 ("helping widows and orphans in their distress"), and tears up the demolition contract, making the orphanage The Sedgwick Children's Home instead.  Which kind of brings up the question, what are they going to do about parking, then?

There are more, of course, but those are all I could find and/or think of.  Also, despite the characters' name, no one has a Sedgwick Speech.

AiCaL revisited - Lots of Big Brain

With the release of every Adventures in Care-a-Lot DVD, I have scanned the list of included episodes, patiently waiting for "Rebooted" to show up.  Mostly so I could make good quality screenshots of Big Brain.  That DVD finally came out at the beginning of the month, though it took Blockbuster until the end of the month to actually get it to me.  And so, to celebrate, here are a few of the screenshots I took:

Dewmocracy

As you probably already know, Mountain Dew recently released three new flavors, one of which will become a full-time flavor, as voted by the people.  They did the same thing a few years ago, with the winner being the blue raspberry-flavored Voltage (which was the one I liked the best, and I still get it from time to time).  When I saw that it was happening again, I was all over it, and I've tried each one at least a couple of times.  However, at the moment I am still undecided.  There are 16 days left to vote, though.

The three contenders are Distortion, White Out, and Typhoon, rather dissimilar flavors and colors, unlike the last time, where the three types seemed to go together well, as they all had a berry kind of flavor (raspberry, strawberry melon, and wildberry) and two blues and a purple.  This time, though, gives us lime, citrus, and punch in green, white, and red respectively.  As I said, I'm still undecided, despite trying each flavor more than once, but I do know for sure that I do not want Distortion to win.  For me, its lime flavor is too strong, giving me the feeling that I'm tasting my fingers after squeezing a lime, which isn't exactly what I want in a drink.  However, neither White Out nor Typhoon has really wowed me, which is kind of a shame.  I really liked all the flavors last time, and while I'm glad that Voltage won out in the end, I would have been happy with any of them.  That's not the case this time.

If I absolutely had to pick, I guess I'd say I'm leaning more toward White Out at the moment, but my husband would prefer I give my vote to Typhoon.  I'm sorry, but Typhoon just tastes too "red," for lack of a better way of putting it.  It tastes okay, but after a few sips it starts to remind me of the generic red drink we had as kids at preschool and VBS.  But White Out hasn't completely won me over, just because, unlike the others, its flavor is too subtle for me.  I drink it and think about how much it tastes like nothing in particular.  In a way, I guess it's like a caffeinated, caloried Fresca, which is a drink that I enjoy from time to time, but with slightly less flavor.  Right now White Out is leading the overall vote, though Typhoon is leading (by an extremely small margin) in my home state, so I sort of feel like voting Red just for that.  But when you get right down to it, I don't want to give my vote to a flavor I only feel halfway about.  In the end, I may not vote at all this time around.  After all, I'll always have Voltage and the original Mountain Dew.

Tidbits

Just a few little things that have been on my mind:

• One thing I don't really get in the Schoolhouse Rock! song, "Little Twelve Toes": part of the song purports that if man had six fingers, we'd be counting using a base-12 system, not base-10. However, what I don't get is that the song's narrator says that we'd end up with three new numbers, dec, el, and doe, with doe being the new ten. But why wouldn't ten stay ten? Even if it's really twelve (dec, el, ten)? I mean, why come up with new terms when you don't have to?
• Going back to the Strawberry Shortcake episode, "A Princess Called Rap," I find it interesting that Rap's song of existential quandary mostly lists her physical abilities as the unprincesslike behavior, but what convinced her professor to lighten up was Rap displaying the knowledge she possessed (although I guess the physical side enters, too, considering she had to steer the raft).
• Whenever I listen to "The Wizard and I" from Wicked, I always want the line "This weird quirk I've tried to suppress or hide" to end with "is a talent that could work..." instead of "is a talent that could help me meet the wizard." I think it's the emphasis that Idina puts on "quirk."

Blockbuster Blues

Unlike those folks who use Netflix, I get my movies-in-the-mail from Blockbuster, which goes back to when I was in college and had at least five Blockbuster stores I passed regularly when traveling by bus, and I used to get two free in-store rentals per month as part of my subscription. Now, there are only two or three stores nearby (and none of them any closer than fifteen minutes drive), so I've dropped that part of my subscription. But I still get the movies by mail, and for the most part I enjoy what I see, except for the odd occasion where I completely forget why I put a movie in my queue by the time I actually receive it (not that I don't enjoy it, but I do wonder about myself sometimes).

Lately, though, I've been faced with a slightly frustrating situation. You see, over this week, I've received three DVDs, but none of them are the ones I put at the top of my queue. What bothers me about this is simply that I put two movies at the very top, so as to get them next. Both are listed as Available, so availability shouldn't be a problem. And yet, as each DVD was returned and new ones sent out, those two were skipped. I understand that there's more to the DVDs being sent than just running down a list, but still, it's very vexing. One, I could understand, but both of them being skipped three times?

Now, my subscription is the three-at-a-time variety, and yet, I was surprised to get two discs in the mail today, since I already had one and had just put one in the mail to go back. Well, earlier this week, I reported that a DVD I had returned hadn't shown up on my profile page yet, and I'd sent it in two weeks before (and another DVD I'd returned since then had already shown up). So they sent the next DVD (but not, you know, the next DVD. Or, come to think of it, the DVD of Next, although they did send that to me once by accident) that day. So now I'm guessing that the DVD I returned finally made it back there, and so they sent another DVD anyway. Except, they sent a DVD that they already sent (the same one, I think, that they sent when I reported that DVD missing in the first place). This could be an indication that the computer system over there has gotten slightly messed up, which could very well be why the two DVDs I want keep being skipped over. But really, I'd better get those movies soon.

Fill in the Blank

This is sort of inspired by a Writer's Block from LiveJournal. It was a few weeks ago, but they asked about our favorite commercials. Out of the blue yesterday, I suddenly remembered this commercial for Poptarts Crunch (a cereal that didn't last very long, although Poptarts are still going strong):



This commercial lives in infamy with me and my sisters because we discovered one day that you could substitute any word in the song for "poptart" and it became hilarious (in that 'we were kids' way). I specifically remember that the first thing we used was Gargoyles, which should give you an idea of when exactly this was.

Gaia - The Lonely Star

Gaia seems to be getting RIG (random item generator) happy as of late, having just released their third one this summer. But I don't mind so much as the ratio of not-store items seems to be higher than usual. Although I'd like to stop getting so many Star and Moon Lanterns. That would be nice.

On a related note, I can't stop playing with my Avatar lately. Seriously, I've been putting together different combinations of the past couple days, and I like to think that the only up there is the best one so far.

In a World...?

Lately I've been watching a lot of movie trailers, older ones in particular. That is, trailers narrated by Don LaFontaine, the undisputed king of voiceovers. He died last year, but during his lifetime, he spent 60 years working as a voiceover artist. Now, the reason that I've been watching so many trailers is because Don LaFontaine is best known for using the phrase "In a world..." in many of them, so much so that it's been parodied time and again, even by LaFontaine himself. And yet, I haven't been able to find a trailer that actually uses that phrase (non-ironically, I mean). Nor have any webpages been able to point me to one. If any of you know of any, please let me know. I'm putting my search on hold for now, but in the mean time, here's a video about Don LaFontaine:

And here's a video of him and four other movie trailer announcers (the only one I recognized was the guy who does the Disney movies):

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.

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

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.

The Zany Bishojo Finally Gets Around to Answering You - Part One

Prudence asked, "Your thoughts on the Rainbow Brite remake?"

Frankly, I don't really have any thoughts on it.  The original Rainbow Brite series was slightly before my time, so I don't have the same nostalgic feelings for it that I have for some other series currently making a comeback.  So far it looks like it's going to be a toy-only comeback, and I'm really not that interested in dolls and the like without having some other media to back them up.  I might get more interested once the online content debuts, but Rainbow's new look seems kind of generic to me, so we'll see.  I do like the look of that wand in the first image there, but I probably wouldn't buy a toy of it, though.

Late Night Video - Island Princess/PotC mash up

I didn't really intend for this to become a series or anything, but if I'm going to be up this late, I might as well share the videos I come across. This one is a song from Barbie as the Island Princess set to clips from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies:


It cuts off a couple of seconds early.

Late Night Video - Computer Warriors Rap

This one is really quite strange. It's like they filmed a normal 'behind the scenes' featurette for Computer Warriors (I never heard of the show, nor the corresponding toy line, before seeing this video), and then somebody made it into a YTPMV (Youtube Poop Music Video). Still, I find it kind of interesting to see old school computer animation work being done. (But I couldn't take the rap for more than three minutes at a time.) Oh, and that guy Bill Kroyer? He directed Fern Gully: the Last Rainforest.

Late Night Video - Early Mel Brooks short

Watch this, it's funny. Of course, it's Mel Brooks, so that almost goes without saying. It's from 1963, which means that it was made before The Producers, just FYI.

Alice in Wonderland - Lots of Famous People

One of the mainstays of my childhood was the 1985 tv-movie of Alice in Wonderland, which my father taped when it first aired, and my sisters and I watched for years afterwards.  However, it had been quite a while since I last saw it, and after noticing it show up a few times while browsing through the IMDB, I checked out the whole cast list and realized that there were a ton of people in it who I had had no clue who they were when I was young, but I did know now.  So I decided to watch it again, especially since it's on DVD, with the intent of taking screenshots and writing up who I knew and how I knew them (as there are a few people in it that I only know from doing this).

Well, that was my original plan, only, in the process of taking the screenshots, I got a new DVD player program, and unbeknownst to me, every time the program was opened and screenshots were taken, it saved them under the same numbers, deleting the shots taken previously.  And since I watched the tv-movie in chunks, the majority of the screenshots I took from the first half were deleted.  But I didn't realize this until I'd already sent the disc back.  Now, I might have re-rented the disc and taken the shots again, but I also realized just how boring the entry I originally planned would have been.  I mean, it would have basically just been a fairly dry (and long) list of roles.  So instead, I say to you, go to the IMDB page for the tv-movie and see who's who for yourself.  Then, if you feel so inclined, give it a watch.

One thing I will say about this version of Alice in Wonderland is that it is very faithful to the books -- in parts.  There was one part toward the end of the second part where I thought the plot dragged terribly, but then I went back and reread the book, and it was almost word-for-word.  But there are also parts that are strangely unfaithful as well.  For instance, when Alice meets the Mock Turtle (played by Ringo Starr), he does not sing a song based on the three(!) pieces he had in the book, but an anthem to nonsense.  Also, this is one of those specials that thinks that what makes a musical a musical is that every character introduced gets a song.  Not that the songs are bad (I particularly like the Queen of Hearts' song), but it does get to be a bit much.