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Dinosaur Comics June 3rd, 2009

[OPEN BRACKET! The first few sentences of this comment are adapted from my Twitter feed CLOSE BRACKET!]

This reminds me of how utterly stupid my piano teacher in high school was. He was a large fat man obsessed with musicals. He was mainly the chorus teacher and gave not two shits about teaching us piano, nor did virtually anyone in the class care to learn piano. I myself wanted to learn piano but was not so much interested in doing it the right way, particularly after I found I lacked the same aptitude for keyed instruments that I had for stringed ones. After a few months of trying to at least make sure everyone in the class was making some sort of progress, however glacial, the teacher gave up, most everyone else reverted to chattering to one another or to friends on the phone (texting wasn't as ubiquitous then but I think there may have been some of that going on as well) while I resolved to play the Tetris theme over and over until I was AWESOME at it. I also practiced a song I was writing, entitled Tinfoil Helmet, which there's still a crap recording of on one of my Soundclick accounts. Then I combined the two to play a Russian-esque version of Tinfoil Helmet. But I digress.

As our teacher didn't seem to give a crap and neither did any of us, frequently we'd not even go to the piano lab and we'd stay back in the chorus room because Fatty McFlamingpants had some sort of chorus business to attend to and we'd watch a movie, always a musical, always with some kind of unecessary introduction from Pudgy Van Idiotstein who would pontificate about some or another element of this particular musical film he thought was interesting.

So one day the film in question and the subject of his speech was My Fair Lady, and Fatty's speech proposed that the film was the second in four generations of the same story, the first being Pygmalion (obviously), the third being Pretty Woman, the fourth being (here's where the stupid kicks in) She's All That.

I think the only adaquate response is a series of exclamation points and question marks:

!!??!??!????!!!!?!?!?!??!??!???!!?!!?!?!?!

Okay, so I have a lot of problems with that statement. FIRST, My Fair Lady the film is obviously based on My Fair Lady the stage musical, which is based on Pygmalion the play. I only watched My Fair Lady because my jackass teacher was showing it in class and I was not allowed to leave, and I haven't yet happened to read or see a performance of Pygmalion, so I don't know for sure how wildly My Fair Lady's story diverges, but the point is the film is in fact an adaptation of an adaptation. Based on my research My Fair Lady sticks so closely to Pygmalion's plot and characters that it can't even be considered a separate version of the story in my opinion, it would be like taking Mel Brooks' original film The Producers, which was then adapted into the stage musical and then the stage musical was adapted into a musical film, also The Producers, and calling them two different stories: it's the same story in a different format.

SECOND, and more importantly, while it's difficult to deny the cultural status of My Fair Lady and the apparent staying power of Pretty Woman (nowhere near the cultural milestone of the first but still considered by the less snobbish a major film of that generation), She's All That by no means represents a notable film of its generation, or even a well-liked film. Most people of that generation have taken great pains to distance themselves from the likes of She's All That. In twenty years it will likely not be remembered at all, partly due to the fact that its teenage audience will have grown out of it and the film appeals to that shallow subset of teenagers who won't be interested in a film so grossly outdated.

Third, as T-Rex states in the comic, the Pygmalion story is "as old as time" and has been told and retold over and over. She's All That is by no means a notable adaptation (nor are most of the ones listed on Wikipedia, SOMEONE EDIT THE PYGMALION ARTICLE PLEASE.) Pygmalion itself, as Señor Norte points out in the alt text, is inspired by a Greek myth which has been adapted hundreds of times over the millennia since it was first written. Even mentioning She's All That as if it is a significant part of this legacy (thus proving that he's probably actually seen it, which is even more embarrassing) shows a devastating lack of cultural literacy and sophistication.

Anyway, I hated My Fair Lady. The Music Man, now THAT'S a musical I can get behind. I mean it's still ridiculous but in a more entertaining way.

Anyway, has Señor Norte ever considered writing something major, a book or something, as T-Rex, utilizing his uniquely unsophisticated voice? I think that would be a heck of a thing there.

Oh, and happy June 3rd to anyone who knows what that means. (You don't though. No you really don't.)


The Flowfield Unity, May 4th 2009

An odd thing that has happened on this site is that the comics themselves have become secondary to the discussions going on in the comments. Traditionally each comic will come along with a little blog post by Adam which asks a question or requests some kind of input and then it all blows up from there. This particular page discusses the recurring theme in Hollywood movies of having characters in the face of total annihilation fall in love and start having sex. It was an excellent opportunity for me to dust off my old complaint about the improbability of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese having sex in the first Terminator movie. "There's a killer robot chasing us, but let's take a break from making pipe bombs and get nekkid!"


Gunshow, whatever day that was, 2009

I LIKE THIS! DOG TIME MOTHERFUCKERS!

So Horribleville ended which I'd be more sad about but Gunshow's been consistently making me laugh since it started. This one in particular is funny to me because it reminds me of when I had to move back in with my mom after my brother (and roommate) suddenly left town and they'd given away my room to...well no one actually, my mom's new husband was using it and didn't want to give it up, so I had to sleep in the living room until I got a new place, which I might not have done right away but I can't stand not having my own space (like, say, a bedroom) so I moved into the famous Trailer, as seen in my comics as the T.R.A.I.L.E.R.

Did I say that was funny? Oh, it's really not funny. I'm still a little pissed off.