Friday Ephemeraren’t
Because I’ve been assured that making your own is always more satisfying. I’ll set the ball rolling with, via Damian, some scenes of human cunning; a search tool for film stills; life skills for ladies; a brief history of ketchup; a museum of antiquated electronic games; and, via Elephants Gerald, the thrill of Lego gear ratios.
Oh, and this, it seems, is a thing that exists.
My contributions for this week include an architecturally elegant public convenience:
https://twitter.com/CharlestonArchi/status/1366750882235375617
I will follow it up by posting this externally unremarkable mid-terraced house with an extremely quirky internal feature:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/76533279#/
Finally, I will end by linking to this Twitter thread of all of the classical music featured in the well-known Warner Brothers cartoons:
https://twitter.com/NonsenseIsland/status/1366449816042102787
And I think that’s quite enough to be going on with.
Our public school system: Student ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA. Let’s give the teachers unions a round of applause.
I saw it, so you must too.
Please be gentle.
Happy #WorldBookDay everybody!
Koeiendans: When the cows dance.
Let’s give the teachers unions a round of applause.
There are plenty who should share in that round of applause including the boy and his mother. From the article:
Also from the article: “we can see in his first three years at Augusta Fells, he failed 22 classes and was late or absent 272 days.” He passed three courses in 4 years and earned 2.5 credits and the mother thinks he’s doing okay and believes he’s really trying.
What’s happened to this kid, what he has done to himself and what the system and his mother have allowed to happen is inexcuseable. I appreciate her cry for help but nothing will change until she and her son accept some level of accountabiity. If her son can’t be bothered going to school nobody is going to care.
I suspect that the system once policed and punished truancy but it was probaby seen to be racist so I’m sure it’s now applied with a very light touch if at all. I fear that the current environment is such that this problem can’t be fixed. Even a good charter school can’t help a child who won’t go to school and a mother who lets it happen. One can’t help but notice that there is no mention of a father either.
Iowahawk puts a NSFW rating on a clip from a 1937 movie.
“How about a nice game of chess?“
Iowahawk puts a NSFW rating on a clip from a 1937 movie.
“Finally, I will end by linking to this Twitter thread of all of the classical music featured in the well-known Warner Brothers cartoons:”
Thanks to Carl Stalling. Silly Symphonies (including Steamboat Willie). “Mickey Mousing”. Merrie Melodies. Looney Tunes. One of the three people credited with the invention of the click track. And the greatest musical quoter and punster who ever lived.
He’s the reason you know this tune, even if you’ve never heard of Raymond Scott. Stalling used it all the freakin’ time.
I’m confident that in years to come he’ll be recognised as vastly more important than most of the unlistenable smartarses feted by the cognoscenti during his lifetime.
antiquated electronic games
Oh, I had a Master Merlin as a tad. Got a lot of use, and I’m sure my parents appreciated that there was a mute setting.
a search tool for film stills
[ gasps ] I didn’t know there was a film adaptation of The Black Swan! [ googles ]
https://www.myheritage.de/deep-nostalgia
I generally hate comic books, but for this one*, I’ll make an exception.
*(Shamelessly
stolenfortified from Ace)Animieren Sie Ihre Familienfotos!
Es tut mir leid aber das ist schrecklich.
There are plenty who should share in that round of applause including the boy and his mother
Potemkin schools. It’s all just for show.
If this were just one kid, I’d expect this to be soccer mom clickbait of the “aspiring rapper” variety, but if “0.13 GPA, 62/120” is true – and that bell curve isn’t massively slanted to the right – then I’m not sure there’s any coming back from this. So many different parts of the system (and I include the parents in that) have to have all failed so many students for so many years that nothing short of razing it to the bedrock and starting over will suffice, and that will never happen.
Still, though, the biggest factor in a child’s academic success is parental involvement – more than socioeconomic status, language barriers, school district, school budgets, etc., etc.
Well, not only is that a thing that exists, but it’s also now something in my YouTube watch history. Thanks a bunch, David.
the thrill of Lego gear ratios.
Genius or lockdown madness?
Morning, all.
One can’t help but notice that there is no mention of a father either.
To even enquire would be taboo. It’s a convergence of pathologies and all but unshiftable.
not only is that a thing that exists, but it’s also now something in my YouTube watch history
No refunds. Credit note only.
Genius or lockdown madness?
He’s not going to able to use that coffee table for quite a while.
I generally hate comic books
It’s really quite brilliant. The writer takes the premise stone cold seriously and leans into it and produces something genius.
Too many comics are written and edited by people who hate the medium or think there’s something wrong with it that needs “correcting”. Taking what ought to be a faintly ludicrous premise and selling it has become all too rare a skill.
Too many comics are written and edited by people who hate the medium or think there’s something wrong with it that needs “correcting”.
As I think you said recently, there are a lot of supposedly ‘edgy’ writers who seem to assume that the readers of superhero comic books don’t understand the conceits required to make the genre work, and will therefore be thrilled by their subversion. Despite them being subverted, generally in the same way, for most of my lifetime. From Mad magazine spoofs to Marvel’s own What If…? series, which I first saw as a wee seedling back in the 1970s. Long before the more recent production line of nihilism, gore, and scowling grittiness.
Iowahawk puts a NSFW rating on a clip from a 1937 movie.
Heh. It’s quite a thing.
“Take that, conservative people!”
This, via Ace of Spades, is one of the greatest “guy thing” videos ever. Me, I was in tears by the end. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/lqx907/filling_a_hot_air_balloon_with_fireworks_what_you/
Those throws came up a bit short.
https://www.reddit.com/r/maybemaybemaybe/comments/lxkiyh/maybe_maybe_maybe/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
It’s really quite brilliant.
Absolutely, the way all the Loony Toons characters are rendered as humans is indeed genius.
Meanwhile, however, female George Burns tells us at the Washington
RedskinsInnominates games, no longer will gloriously hot cheerleaders be a thing but instead viewers will be thrilled by an NBA flavor with hard hitting hip hop choreography performed by a co-ed team.Gimme a W
Yo!
Gimme a A
Yo!
Gimme a P
Yo!
That other team
Nothin’ but hos!
“5 yard penalty for twerking in the endzone”.
I suppose I should denounce myself yet again.
No mention of a father
I liked the comment from 2010 suggesting that White Privilege was having a father.
Loony Toons characters are rendered as humans
It’s not obvious at first, but the 2007 film Shoot Em Up is claimed to be a real-life Bugs Bunny cartoon (but with sex, guns, baby-in-peril, a tank, etc).
Finished the slog of WandaVision.
Meh.
The lack of diversity in color is disturbing.
Only 85 imperial dollars.
Spasiba for beating the spam filter.
Meanwhile, Bach’s Cantata No. 140, and related.
There are plenty who should share in that round of applause including the boy and his mother.
Agreed. Also the people in their neighborhood.
I suspect that the system once policed and punished truancy but it was probably seen to be racist
That is indeed true. Strict school discipline used to be the norm, but it was condemned by the left as racist and as insufficiently theraputic. And so black kids will fight teachers and will riot in protest when black punks are disciplined for fighting or even for robbing. Teachers stop trying to maintain order, much less teach, and instead look for opportunities to go to better schools which were not populated with savages.
Strict school discipline used to be the norm…
Did you know that New York public schools used to be the pride of the nation? And public housing projects (which also had strict rules) were good places to live?
Potemkin schools. It’s all just for show.
If you remove the normal consequences of bad choices and bad behaviour, this will tend to have rather dysgenic effects.
If you remove the normal consequences of bad choices and bad behaviour, this will tend to have rather dysgenic effects.
And that was what the left intended to happen.
tend to have rather dysgenic effects
Well it’s been about 5 years since that post, is Tim Newman a complete and utter misogynist yet?
Marvel’s own What If…? series
While it started out as a something of a lame title where the low-end talent got stuck, What If… got a retooling in the 1990s with better writers and artists. The result was some very good alt-universe stories, including my favorite: Stephen Strange gets lost in the Himalayas and fails to find The Ancient One. He does, however, find The Hand.
a real-life Bugs Bunny cartoon
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum contains a number of scenes which are live-action versions of the kind of visual gags you get in Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
Finished the slog of WandaVision
I’ve been watching Superstore, mostly because I was curious how sitcoms were doing these days. Despite being cut and paste – you can see the parts lifted directly from The Office, Parks & Recreation, and Community – and every fourth episode being a blatantly political screed, the show still works, and it’s because the writers really understand timing and pacing. For a long time, SNL and its various sitcom progeny had a habit of dragging out a joke/sketch long past the point of being funny, presumably on the belief that “OMG they’re still going” was itself funny. Superstore does the exact opposite – not only will they cut a scene immediately after the punchline, they’ll sometimes cut a scene before the punchline, because they’ve telegraphed it, they know you know what it is, and they don’t need to follow through.
At least one writer on staff isn’t on board with the agenda, though – in the middle of an episode about how evil
WalmartCloud 9 is for unionbusting and not providing better pay/benefits to its employees, one of the tertiary characters points out that everyone at the store is easily replaceable because their jobs are very, very simple.but for this one*, I’ll make an exception.
Inspired. Made my day.
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum contains a number of scenes which are live-action versions of the kind of visual gags you get in Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
Shhh. You’ll give David ideas.
the system once policed and punished truancy
Good riddance I say. The only thing worse than forcing people to fund horrible schools is then forcing them to attend. At least the truant are not at “school” dealing drugs and starting fights.
Re: WandaVision – it isn’t totally awful. Bits of it are quite good – a short scene here, a few seconds there – and it does pick up a little in the last two episodes. Things are revealed, albeit underwhelmingly and in a way that’s morally perverse. Apparently, you can imprison and torture an entire town, including children, for weeks, and not be expected to face any legal or moral consequences. You just fly away to be sad. It’s the Marvel way, apparently.
And by the end, the slog of what has gone before – the slow pacing, the boredom, the reliance on clever-clever nods and unfunny sitcom gags, and a basic conceit that’s overstretched and just doesn’t work anywhere near as well as it needs to – had all taken their toll on my interest levels. The final episode is the most engaging, I think, certainly the busiest; but for me, the investment of time and attention wasn’t worth it.
Ambitious, yes, but never compelling.
https://youtu.be/NBGOryiqZZI
Courtesy of Ace of Spades.
Considering how bad bbc comedy shows tend to be it is surprising that bbc Scotland manages to come up with some very decent stuff (as proved by the excellent “At home with the Thunbergs” – get a look on YouTube if you haven’t seen it).
Ambitious, yes, but never compelling
TV writing has long been constrained by its delivery medium: episodic for syndication, or padded to 23 episodes for a season. Streaming ought not to be, given that a “season” and individual episodes can be exactly as long as they need to be, and yet streaming services seem to have converged on ten episodes as the New Normal. Regardless of whether there’s enough material to fill ten hours.
WandaVision really feels like a movie that’s been stretched (it probably is, given the MCU reshuffling that’s happened over the last few years). And Supernatural managed to do the exact same plot in only 47 minutes.
The phrase ‘ugly as homemade sin’ comes to mind.
WandaVision really feels like a movie that’s been stretched
As I said a few weeks ago, the structure and pacing, and the weekly release format, haven’t done the actual drama, the core of it, any favours. As you say, the thing feels as if its been stretched to fill a schedule. The first three episodes are almost bizarrely uninteresting. You sit through a flat, unfunny recreation of old sitcoms, complete with flat, unfunny jokes. That’s 90% of the first 90 minutes. The sitcom conceit and the ironic nods to comics lore – which I’m guessing we’re supposed to find terribly clever – aren’t in themselves particularly engaging. It’s just surface decoration. And whatever its cleverness, or imagined cleverness, the thing still has to work dramatically, with pace and tension, and a sense of narrative momentum. And it doesn’t – at least, nowhere near enough.
It seems to me that the writers were so busy being meta, they forgot the basics.
life skills for ladies
YouTube recommended that after I watch women play the cum-on-my-face game, Nicholas Fairford’s “My Tips For A Special Mother’s Day Breakfast.”
At times like these I try to remember the wisdom of E.Costello: “I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused.”
I pity the poor soul in an upstairs bedroom who has to pee in the middle of the night.
It seems to me that the writers were so busy being meta, they forgot the basics.
Watching The Script Doctor dissect the recent Star Trek offerings, including the lower decks cartoon, on YT has been an entertaining lesson in the basics of storytelling.
It’s what you get when you hire for diversity instead of skills, and the result of taking a society that had some elements of meritocracy and wiping it out completely.
As a society, we’ve fulfilled the Peter Principle.
Did someone say Peter Principle ?
Holy frijoles, this isn’t parody
[random obscenities here]