zustifer: (Default)
I just reread Galactic Pot Healer (it'd been... uh, since college?) and unlike the somewhat unsympathetic reviewer at PKDfans (trying to find an inspiring message in a PKD book? Are you quite serious?) found it rather unusually accessible and generally pretty terrific and fun. The thing that it made me want to do, though, was to take the community college ceramics course I was meaning to take (is it too late to sign up? I guess not!) and make the Public Service Announcement pot the protagonist encounters. (This pot is found as an artifact underwater, but it shows in sequential panels the protagonist's actions. The last panel has an explicit written warning in a speech bubble or something - which may end up too long to actually fit on the pot and which I might just skip - and also a little note at the bottom reading 'This has been a public-service message.' [metaparenthetical note: when I just now went to check the exact wording of the message, I opened the book immediately to the right page. This is the most PKDian thing that has happened to me in recent memory, which means I totally should sign up for the ceramics course. That and also the empire never ended, and I should keep an eye out for hot 70s teenage girls who will tell me what to do via complex symbols.])

The pot was awful.
zustifer: (Nivlem says See Here)
So I figured I should mention that the latter (at least up through #4) seasons of Justice League (the animated series) _do_ eventually get good. The third season (really the first season of 'Justice League Unlimited'; loads of DC heroes are added to the Justice League instead of the seven usual ones focussed upon in the first series, 'Justice League') has some real clunkers (I am looking at YOU, 'Hawk and Dove'), but eventually finds its stride and does not try to cram a two-parter's worth of material into a twenty-two minute episode anymore. I was really, really discouraged, before we got to the stride-finding, to the point that I almost gave up on Unlimited. But the wise chmmr suggested we continue to give it a shot, and I am pleased that we did.

The first two seasons especially (and bear in mind that we have not yet watched the fifth and final) were just excellent, in part because each story was given two episodes in which to play out (at least after a little ramp-up time. Also needing some ramp-up is the writing of dialog for the Flash, but that really does pick up). Very well-handled. They essentially standardised the length of a story as two episodes long. Now suddenly all kinds of things can be fit in. There's fightin', there's character development, and there's some really clever letter-of-the-law evasions of the rules we're all used to from Batman the Animated Series: no blood, no dismemberment of organic beings, only trauma allowed is blunt-force (teeth can't be lost), explosive, or electrical (meaning: no disfigurement). No killing, period.

The series is especially good because it knows the rules and just - just bends them a little, every now and then. Implied blood. Frozen evil dictator. Moral ambiguity all over you screen. Sometimes, not all the time. There's a great ratio of Good Clean Punchin' to Whoa, Did That Just Happen? The context is impeccably constructed and maintained.

And for Unpleasant, Green Arrow _does_ get a part, albeit with a chunk of it in a weird episode where everyone is a complete dick and utterly unsympathetic. Wildcat's in there too. Just power through the Supergirl and stuff should improve.


(This avatar is Nivlem, scanned from an early MAD Batman parody. He's doing not just Explaining Hand, but Explaining Hand With Helpful Pointing. He's very smarmy. But it would be wrong to use my Marvelly other superhero avatars to make this post. I'm not a big DC person (outside of Batman's rogues' gallery (inside of Arkham they keep it too dark to read comics), Sandman, and Books of Magic), but Justice League does somewhat flatter me by allowing me to be all 'Isn't this guy [something something] because of his [backstory]? I THINK he might be...' and then it turns out that like any child of six, I am right. Yay.)
zustifer: (green puyo)
[JOKE]

If you cannot maintain a Blomby Car article, then you should not have created a Blomby Car article.

[/JOKE]





[BREAKDOWN]
(by request)

There used to be, I'm told, although I can't seem to find it on the net (perhaps I have the wording slightly wrong) an ad campaign or common saying about Jaguar (cars) that went something like 'If you cannot maintain a Jaguar, you should not own a Jaguar.' Apart from one time about ten years ago seeing it modified to 'If you cannot maintain a jaguar head, you should not own a jaguar head,' about something, uh, different, I also said it myself or read it about Blomby Car. Blomby Car was some old racing game I really enjoyed the name of (seriously, who can resist?), and you can see the inherent comedy gold. So I just now decided to check the wikipedia entry for it, since JP had virtual consoled up an old racing game and I wanted to be snappy with my Blomby Car Trivia, but seemingly the article has been deleted for lack of relevance or who knows what. Anyway, the plaintive wikipedia talk entry about how the guy worked to make entries for arcade games probably won't last forever, so this joke is ephemeral and this is no more than it deserves.

[/BREAKDOWN]

Profile

zustifer: (Default)
Karla Z

February 2012

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
26 272829   

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 07:16 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios