Challenged to Post, "Without Comment"

[It's been a minute since I wrote something here, but I thought I'd put this out there so I could easily reference it later should it become needed.]

Someone has challenged you over the next X days to post on some media platform pictures of:

 - Your favorite albums of all time.

 - The movies that were most influential on you.

 - The books could you read over and over.

 - The [some way of pretending to get random things] photo(s) on your phone. [1]

 - The food you blah blah blah . . . 

 - The place(s) you would yadda yadda yadda . . .

 - etc, etc, etc.

Let's be clear, I'm not opposed to these sorts of things.  I most likely am interested in what you might have to share.  After all, the reason we are ostensibly friends on whatever social media platform this is occurring on is because we both chose to be.  Thus, I probably care some amount about you and am interested at least on some level about who you are, what you care about, and other parts of you life.

But here's the supposed kicker, you have to post them, "without comment".  

Though I'm probably reading more dramatic emphasis into it than is really there, I always imagine it more like:

"I was challenged to post this, WITHOUT COMMENT!"  [Dum, dum, dummmmmmm!] [2]

But the question is, why?

Why wouldn't you comment?  What point is there to the whole thing if you don't comment?

Oh, here's some photo that seems important . . .

 . . .but I've no idea why.

Hey look, they like a movie that 90% of people like . . . 

 . . .  what a non-surprise.

They've read that famous book . . . 

. . . that millions of other people have read too.  

Complete non-shocker, and honestly, I don't care.

Of course if you were to comment then suddenly I do care.  Because now I know that the reason you picked that photo was because of [something meaningful and/or interesting].

Or maybe it wasn't.  Maybe you just like the way you look in that photo.  Or you just want to show the world your cute kid(s).

Maybe you just like that movie because of that one fight scene.  Or that one line.  Or because of that hot actor/actress is in it.  

And I suspect that's one of the real reasons people are so pleased to post "without comment".  Because they have nothing to say beyond, "I liked this."  Because their 10 things are completely banal and in truth uninteresting. 

A second reason is probably that after posting and commenting on 1 picture of their kid/dog/self/whatever that fulfills the requirement of this supposed challenge, they would really have nothing left to say on days 2 through 10.

A third reason, and most likely to most applicable is that people are lazy.

So, before I wrap this up.  Let me actually challenge you.

The next time someone "challenges" you to post pictures of whatever "without comment", I challenge you to completely ignore the lets 'o', 'u' and 't' in the word "without" and to post them WITH comments.

Because let's be honest.  One of the main reasons you accepted this "challenge" is that you were hoping people will think the things you picked are cool/interesting/say something about you, and/or that you want people to talk with you about it.  

There's nothing wrong with that, so skip the hoping someone will take the lame bait of a pic with no comments and start the conversation yourself.  

I for one will be way more likely to: 

 - pay attention

 - think about what you've posted for more than half a second

 - post a comment

And if the person who challenged you complains about your changing the rules, just reply to them with a link to this post.

Challenged to Post "Without Comment": D-

[1] - This is "Pretending to be random" because: A) if the randomly selected picture isn't something you want others to see; or B) isn't cool enough; or C) you really want to pick some other picture, we all know your just going to pick whatever you want.

[2] - That's a bad attempt at dramatic sounding music.

What's New Scooby-Doo? (Seasons 1-3)

What's New Scooby-Doo: Complete Seasons 1-3: As previously stated, we here at Mr. B-Grades love us some Scooby-Doo.  Which is why I was pretty excited to get all three seasons of What's New Scooby-Doo [WNSD] for my birthday. [1]

WNSD season 1 came out in 2002, which makes it a little over thirty years older than the original.  Despite the passing time, the gang looks essentially the same.  If you are a Scooby purist and you can get past a few minor changes, these three DVD's will serve you well.

One of the biggest changes is that Daphne and Velma don't sound the same [2]  Which initially I was disappointed about, but quickly got over.  I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, 'c'mon, it was thirty years ago.  You really think they could get the same people?"

While I didn't actually think that, that is what you partially get, because both Fred and Shaggy are played by the same actors who did their voices for the original series. [3]  But really I just wanted voices that sounded reasonably close.  And for the two girls, especially Velma, I don't think they even tried.  But again, you quickly didn't notice the change.

The plots are slightly better. [4]  They do all make at least some logical sense, which can't necessarily be said for some of the originals. They aren't necessarily possible or really that believable, but they at least make sense.  And all of the characters have at least a little more depth to them. [5]

Perhaps the biggest change is that Daphne isn't completely useless.  She's still fashion/beauty conscious, but she can also pick any lock with the random contents of her purse and she's much more athletic.

Best of all, the show has many honest to goodness laugh out loud moments.  Many of the other characters names are references to other movies/books/shows or are bad puns. [6]  There are a few recurring gags, some of which are possible because the characters have more depth.  And lots of fairly famous guest actors.  Enough that you end every episode by pausing on the voice credits to see just whose voice that really was.

In truth, the thing about the show that made me the saddest is that there was only 3 seasons.

What's New Scooby-Doo? (Seasons 1-3): A-

[1] - Or possibly Christmas.  I'm bad at remembering things like that.
[2] - As they did before, not the same as each other.
[3] - Fred Welker and Casey Kasem, respectively
[4] - I said 'slightly'.
[5] - Fred's a big Elvis fan.  Daphne's a big surfer.  Velma loves Hockey.  Shaggy is a putt-putt champion.
[6] - Like, Owen DeCastle.  He's the owner of a spooky castle.  Or Sonny Les Martines.  "Ding Dong Ding".

IMDB

IMDB: I've mentioned IMDB in several posts so I figured I should talk about it a bit and give it a grade.

In a word this web site is simply awesome.

Okay that's two words, but whatever.  The point holds true.

For those of you unfamiliar with this website, IMDB stands for Internet Movie Data Base.  It is a collection of all of the information you could ever hope to need about every movie or TV show ever.

It is for anyone who's ever been tormented by trying to remember who was the actress that was in that movie about dancing and welding back in 1983.  For IMDB that's no problem. [1]

Didn't that guy from Dallas do a weird TV show in which he could breathe underwater?  IMDB will tell you that he did indeed. [2]

Type in the name of any movie, actor, director, TV show, producer or just about anything else you might think of and IMDB has you covered.

It also has trailers, reviews, trivia and more as well.

After hearing about the new Die Hard movie coming out next year, you begin wondering if they are ever going to make a new Lethal Weapon.  IMDB can tell you.  [3]

Wonder who was born today?  No problem.  Assuming you are talking about October 28th the answer is Julia Roberts, Joaquin Phoenix and Dennis Franz among others.

I could go on and on, but you get the point.

If I could, I would thank the person who thought up this brilliant idea, but I can't.  Because it was thought up by every person who's ever seen a movie since computers could do more than add numbers.  And it was wished for by everyone who saw a movie before then.

IMDB succeeds at what Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert used to try to do with their instantly outdated movie books and then multiplies the goodness by 1000.

On a scale of 1 to Gary Bussey, IMDB scores a Chuck Norris. [4]

The only real question is why hasn't this been copied by the music industry?  It can't be that hard.  Media Play [5] used to have a little terminal in their stores called "Muse" that had a workable database for basic searching by artist, album title, etc.  Somebody just needs to step up and put it online.

UPDATE: Turns out I was just not paying attention.  IMuzDB.com has got it all covered.

IMDB: A+

[1] - It was Jennifer Beals in  Flashdance.
[2] - Patrick Duffey starred in Man From Atlantis back in 1977-78.
[3] - Apparently it's in the writing phase and could possibly be out as soon as 2015.
[4] - Semi-inside joke, but you get the point.
[5] - The loss of this store still makes me sad :(

The Olympics

The Olympics: If, on a regular basis, you do anything other than contemplate your navel, you're bound to hear people ranting about politics and about how the other guy[1] is a horrible person and how they're going to ruin America.  In fact, patriotism, or the lack there of, seem to always come up in some form or other.[2]  Similar arguments are heard when things like immigration, manufacturing and getting involved in other countries problems are discussed.[3]

And so we come to the Olympics.  For as much as people shout and rant about how much they love America, Patriotism, the Flag and anything else that is symbolic of our great country, you would think that the Olympics would be a Super-Mega-Gigantic-Huge!!!! Event.  But some how the Olympics get dismal ratings every time they come on.

Which simply stuns me.  What more could you want?  You would be hard pressed to come up with any way to better show how great a country we are than the Olympics.  In fact, the Soviet Union found the Olympics to be so important that in a country that struggled to keep people fed, they gave their potential Olympic athletes the best of everything so that they could win and rub our noses in their superiority.  In America, people watch the opening ceremonies and then once the parade of nations starts they flip back to the reruns of American Idol they have saved on their TiVo.

In case you haven't guessed how I feel about the Olympics let me quit beating around the bush.

The Olympics are beyond awesome.  A competition between people who have essentially dedicated their lives to trying to become the best in the world in their sports, competition, etc.  And for the most part why do they do this?  Not for the money, that's for sure.  No they do it so that they can represent their country and hopefully stand proudly, just a few inches higher than the guy who came in second while our national anthem plays and our flag is flown.

And it really doesn't matter what kind of sports you like, the Olympics has you covered.  Just about every team sport is represented.[4]  There are races of every variety: on foot, on a bike, on a boat, even on a yak and that's just the summer Olympic.[5]

Needs some violence?  Okay how about boxing, or judo, or taekwondo.  This year they even added in girls boxing.  There's weight lifting.  There are several events that involve guns.  There's two types of volleyball.  Countless things that are thrown, flung or shot through the air.  Need something a bit prettier?  How about so much gymnastics you think you're going to puke?  Or synchronized swimming?  


There's even Olympic Ping Pong.  Seriously ping pong.  And as silly as that sounds, go watch them play, it's astounding.  Same thing with badminton.  Yeah, I know you play badminton in your back yard and you think you're lord of the shuttlecock.  Trust me, compared to these guys you look like Slow-Poke Rodriguez.[6]


Maybe you simply don't like sports.  That's okay too.  It's the Olympics!  There's enough pageantry to overload even Morningside and Fields.[7]  Plus they spend plenty of time telling you all about the athletes, their successes and their trials and tribulations, that you practically feel like you've been rooting for them since they first picked up a racket, baton, oar, reins or whatever.

And how does this great nation do?  This nation that everyone seems to think is falling apart at the seams.  This nation that compared to some nations practically ignores its Olympic athletes.  We totally kick butt, that's how we do.  Out of the 16,321 medals awarded in the modern Olympics, we've taken 2,549 of them.[8] For those of you afraid of math, that's a little over 15.5%  The second highest has 1204 and that's the Soviet Union.[9]  How about on an individual Olympic basis?  Still dominating.  We usually end up with most medals and often the most gold medals.

Anyway my point is this.  These people spend their lives getting up at the crack of dawn to run, swim, ride, work out, etc, etc for essentially their entire lives.  The least you could do is sit on your butt and watch them. As they represent our country.

Now if you'll excuse me, some guy I've never heard of, from some country I'm never going to visit, is about to compete and I've got to go listen to Bob Costas make it poignant for me.


The Olympics: A+

[1] - As opposed to whoever it is you are listening to rant at the moment.
[2] - I know this post was supposed to be about the Olympics, hang on I'm getting there.
[3] - Heck, Glen Beck could probably use your liking Ketchup as a means to prove you're a commie, but then again he's an idiot.
[4] - Granted there's no football or rather American football.
[5] - Okay, I made up one of those.  But then you realize I was pulling your leg when you read the word 'boat'.
[6] - It's Speedy Gonzales' cousin, but you've probably never heard of him, because in a fit of PC stupidity, Warner Brothers caved and hid him in a closet somewhere.
[7] - IMDB it.
[8] - Not counting this year.
[9] -  And you don't have to worry about them getting any more

The Infinite Quest & Dreamland

For some reason the creators at Dr. Who decided to make a couple of animated episodes* starring David Tennant as the 10th Doctor.  Hold on . . . .

. . . . the Interweb has informed me that both of them were created as serials** and released on several different websites and the like over the course of several weeks.

Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest This one has Martha Jones travelling with the Doctor on a quest to find a space ship (The Infinite) that can apparently make your "greatest desire" come true.  There's actually very little to do with the ship and mostly it is a series of vignettes in which the pair track down the four pieces that will lead them to the ship.   Now that I know it was released as a serial it makes much more sense as each piece is pretty much a stand alone mini-adventure.  Nevertheless they do a good job of giving it that "Doctor Who" feel.  The animation isn't bad, though a lot of the time the Doctor doesn't really look like David Tennant at all.    Also the main bad guy is kind of a tool bag.  In the sense that I kept thinking to myself, why doesn't the Doctor just trick him into falling into a hole or something.

Doctor Who: Dreamland This one has the Doctor travelling alone.  He ends up in the desert in Roswell, NM looking for some chili from a roadside diner.  He ends up running around with the waitress and an American Indian*** guy.  They save the Earth from being taken over by aliens.  Of the two this one has much crisper writing and the plot flows better.  But of the two this one is much less a series of small episodes.  The animation in this one is unfortunately a little worse.  Mainly in the people.  They are clearly computer animated and they move with that stiffness that cheap animation gives people.  Though on the plus side the Doctor looks much more like David Tennant.

Both episodes are relatively short (~45 minutes) but if you like Doctor Who at all they are worth watching.

The Infinite Quest: B+
Dreamland: A-

* - There are apparently three other animated episodes, but they came well before these two and star other Doctors.
** - Meaning, released in small snippets over time and having nothing to do with breakfast
*** - Though at times it's hard to tell that's what he's supposed to be.

Scooby-Doo: Where are You? (Seasons 1, 2 & 3)

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete First and Second Seasons  
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete Third Season

My childhood memories are replete with cartoons.  Cartoons after school were good but nothing could touch Saturday mornings.  My younger brother and I would get up at stupid-o'clock in the morning, fill our bowls with sugar saturated cereals and watch until we couldn't stand it any more or until the show "Timeout" started.*  One of the highlights of this gluttony of animation was always Scooby-Doo.  Over the years Scooby and the gang have returned and been reinvented dozens of times in dozens of different combinations and with the exception of one stretch of anathema** my brother and I would gladly watch them all.  Scooby-Doo and the Laff-O-Lympics?  We'll give it a try.  Scooby-Doo and Don Knots?  Um, sure?  Scoody-Doo and the gang are all little kids?  Fortunately this version came out well after I stopped watching. Scooby-Doo and a nephew called, he-who-shall-not-be-named?*** Forget it, turn the channel.    But even if you discount these wide ranging variations, there were still several different versions that were just the standard group of five characters, driving around in the Mystery Machine, solving mysteries.  And on Saturday mornings when Scooby was about to start, you would wait for the opening credits to start hoping that what you would see was the bats coming out of the spooky looking house that signified the beginning of the original and best, Scooby-Doo: Where are You?

Recently I received season 1 & 2 as a gift and not long after that, I bought Season 3 for myself.  As and adult, I've been able to see again many of the shows that I watched as a kid and sometimes it's quite painful.  Some shows simply do not hold up and you are better off leaving your fond memories of them alone, because attempting to watch them again means risking seeing just how horrible they really were.****  I'm glad to report that in general, Scooby-Doo: Where are You? holds up wonderfully.  The Bear and I quite enjoyed watching them together.

Season 1: This is where it all began and truth be told this is where the show is at its best.  The villains, while not really creepy or scary are still "bad" enough that you can suspend disbelief and feel like the heroes might actually be afraid.  Scooby is still essentially a dog***** and the plots, while simplistic at times, make sense.  These are the seasons in which Fred is always trying to trap the villain with some strange version of a Rube Goldberg machine that even when I was very young I knew would never work in real life.  (But then again they rarely worked on the show either.)

Season 2: There are really only eight episodes in season 2 and it is almost as good as season 1.  The biggest difference is that the opening credits have been re-recorded with a new band playing/singing and that band has a song in every episode that plays during the chase sequences.  The songs aren't bad, but they rarely (if ever) have anything to do with the plot or what's going on.  They're more of a sudden side jaunt than anything else.

Season 3: In truth this isn't really the third season of Scooby capers.  In between Season 2 and 3 six years or so have passed.  During that time, Scooby-Doo came out with twenty-four more stories that appeared during the Scooby-Doo & Dynomutt Hour and some that were shown during the Hanna-Barbera Laff-O-Lympics shows.  These all followed the traditional mystery format, but for whatever reason where not called "Scooby-Doo: Where are You?".  After those episodes, they went back to having Scooby and the gang on their own show and went back to calling it Scooby-Doo: Where are You?  The passing of the years did not improve the show.

Some of the villains in season 3 are so moronic that they are more laughable than anything else.  As two examples, the villain in the episode of The Diabolical Disc Demon looks like a reject from the band Kiss and the warlock from the Warlock of Wimbledon looks more like the Disc Demon's sad side-kick than a villain. You really expect Fred, Daphne and Velma to fall over laughing and certainly not to run in fear.  Gone are Fred's odd traps, instead in season 3 more often the villain ends up trapping themselves while chasing Scooby and Shaggy.  Most of the plots make absolutely no sense and Fred and Velma make insane leaps of logic when they later describe what was going on.  Physics which was flexible in season 1 & 2 is completely tossed out the window****** and Scooby is now more a person with dog-like qualities than a dog that's slightly anthropomorphic.  I enjoyed a Scooby that could say "Rutt ro, Raggy" in season 1.  The Scooby that can operate a fishing pole and talks as well as Fred Fenster******* in the Usual Suspects isn't nearly as fun.  In an effort to expand the villain options that gang is often in other countries: China, Italy, Spain and Puerto Rico******** to name a few.  But the best part of them going to other countries are the accents.  None of them sound in the least like the accents of the country they are supposed to be mimicking.  I'm pretty sure the casting call for the parts went something like this:

Director: Are you French?
Potential Voice Actor: No.
Director: Well, have you been to France?
PVA: No
Director: Have you ever heard a French person talk?
PVA: No
Director: Do you even know where France is on a map?
PVA: No
Director: Why should we hire you for this part?
PVA: I had French Fries for lunch?
Director: You're hired.

If you are looking to indulge in a little childhood nostalgia, let me strongly recommend Seasons 1&2.  And unless you are a die-hard Scooby fan, leave season 3 on the shelf

Scooby-Doo: Where are You?  Seasons 1&2: A-

Scooby-Doo: Where are You?  Seasons 3: C+


* - which was at noon, the official end of the cartoon goodness.
** - see below
*** - Sorry Hanna-Barbera, we were willing to endure Johnathan Winters, but there has to be a line somewhere and with this you've gone way over it.  Also, I'm pretty sure they knew this and they just added the "S" to the front of his name in an effort to hide the obvious.
**** - Sadly the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon is one example of this.
***** - More no that in a minute.
****** - I realize it's a cartoon, but even as a young child suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain when people are falling out of airplanes with no consequence.
******* - Benicio Del Toro's character.
******** - Yes, I know Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.

Sherlock (Seasons 1 & 2)

Sherlock: Season One
Sherlock: Season Two

Steven Moffat (one of the geniuses behind the revamping of Doctor Who) decided to work on a small side project with a friend of his, Mark Gatiss.  As they were both big fans of the originals, they thought it might be fun to try and make a modern version of Sherlock Holmes.  The result is the BBC TV show, Sherlock.  In a word it is brilliant.  It's everything you could possibly hope for from such an idea and more.  All of the characters are cast perfectly.  The modernization doesn't lose any of the Holmesiness* of the originals. And the stories while not exactly like their inspirations are pretty darn close.  As it happens, I had just read A Study in Scarlet, before watching the first episode of season 1, A Study in Pink.  The story line is different but large portions of it are nearly exact copies, except modernize.  There is a bit of liberty taken here and there.  Sherlock's brother Mycroft is little more than a side note in the original stories and is a much larger part in the series.  Similarly, Moriarty shows up much more than the stories.  But you couldn't ask for a better characterization of a villain who's so bored with life that he helps others commit crimes just to spice things up a little.  Andrew Scott plays the part brilliantly.  Season 2 picks up where season 1 leaves off (both literally and figuratively) and while there are a few changes in how things are done in season 2, they only serve to make the show better.  If I have any complaint with the show, it would be that a "season" is only three episodes.  And while the episodes are ninety minutes, it doesn't seem enough.  Though if the price of keeping the show so great is the small episodes per season, I guess I'll learn to suffer.

Sherlock (Seasons 1 & 2): A+

p.s. - The U.S. is coming out with its own modern version of Sherlock Holmes called Elementary.  A made for TV movie that should be broadcast sometime this year (2012).  I hope it will be as good as Sherlock but I'm not holding my breath.

* - Technical term

Torchwood (Season 1)

Torchwood: The Complete First Season:  If you haven't heard of Torchwood, it is a spin-off from Doctor Who*.  If you haven't heard of Doctor Who, please stop reading and go away.  Seriously.  In the series, Torchwood is the name of the government** agency that deals with aliens, weirdness and anything else that tends to show up in the Doctor Who oeuvre .  It first showed up in several episodes of Doctor Who.  In the series Torchwood is headed by Captain Jack Harkness, who also was originally from the Doctor Who series.***  Like most new series, I started out expecting some rough edges while the writers/creators figured out what they were doing and the actors figured out who their characters are.  Well, I got it.  Though these rough edges were less like something that needs a little sand paper and more like the Himalayas.  For the first half of the season, I'm pretty sure the director spent every scene telling John Barrowman (Captain Jack) that he needed to "Emote More!!!!!!"  I've seen worse over acting, but never so much packed into so few episodes. Kind of reminded me of that SNL skit with the Master Thespian played by John Lovitz.  "My finger has been cut off! ACTING!!!!!  Only in this case you don't have anything so dramatic as a severed finger.  It's more like.  "My Shoe's Untied!!!!!!!!!!!! ACTING!!!!!!!!!"  The other main character is Gwen.  Who's fine, except she does have a mighty big gap in her front teeth.  So the first several episodes, every time she's came on screen all I could think was, "Mind the gap".  Actually, that's both mean and untrue.****  After several episodes you really don't notice it as much and she has a great accent.  Other characters are: Owen, who despite acting like a complete jerk and looking vaguely like Willem Defoe is the super, mack-daddy of his ZIP Code*****;  Tosh, an Asian lady who's good with computers; and Yanto, who's weird and whose stilted underacting is a stark counterpoint to Jack's overacting.  And if you think those descriptions are too brief and undeveloped, then you've gotten as much about them as the show tells you.  Fortunately, everything gets better as the season progresses and by the end of season 1, the Pook didn't want it to stop and is now asking for season 2.******

Torchwood (Season 1): B-

* - In fact, the name Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who.
** - British government.  Not everything happens in the USA.  Quit being so Amerocentric.
*** - If you don't remember him, he's the guy who can't die and isn't picky about who he's sleeping with.
**** - Mostly.
***** - Except they don't have ZIP codes in the UK, but you get the point.
****** - At the beginning of season 1, she just wanted to make it stop.

John Stossel

John Stossel: For those of you who don't know who he is, John Stossel used to be one of the reporters on 20/20.  He evidently didn't get along so well with ABC.  Mainly it appears because he wanted to produce show that questioned things like the idea that the government knows what it's doing.  Despite his shows getting great ratings eventually it became clear ABC was going to fire him and so he quit and now works for FOX.  And while FOX doesn't necessarily agree with the things he says either, they don't mind the people who work for them having and expressing such things.*  He's a devoted Libertarian** and is outspoken on lots of topics.  And while I don't necessarily agree with all of his viewpoints and opinions, I do like his shows and interview style and truth be told, I do agree with quite a few of his viewpoints and opinions.  I recently had the pleasure of meeting him in person.  My main concern with this was the following.  You read books by people or you see them on TV or in movies and you start to feel like maybe you know them or at least you have a sense of who they are.  And then you meet those people and they turn out to be big jerks.  Suddenly all of the things by them or containing them that you had previously liked are suddenly tainted.  The goodness of the book/movie/show suddenly ruined by the jerkiness of the author/actor.***  It's for this reason alone that the Pook often will refuse to go to venues and meet such famous/semi-famous people.  Well, I'm glad to report this is not the case with Mr. Stossel.  He was every bit as nice as you would expect from his shows and interviews.  In addition to that, he generously gives away a lot of free material to teachers to use in their classrooms.  Which gives him bonus points in my book.

John Stossel: A

* - Especially when it makes them money.
** - People who want as little government as possible in all aspects of life.
*** - As an example of that, I once met the author Robert Jordan and he turned out to be a bit of a turd.  In his defense maybe he was having a bad day or something, but it definitely soured me on him.