Scenes Out of Context: The Raven (Part 2)

Hooray it's my first part two of the series.  Anyway as you may have gleamed from the title, we are re-visiting The Raven because it is just too awful not too.  Please join me on this journey down memory lane and please subscribe.

Scenes Out of Context: Phineas and Ferb

That's right, as the title says, this episode of Scenes Out of Context is taken from one of my favorite cartoons Phineas and Ferb.  Enjoy! Oh and subscribe.

 

Scenes Out Of Context: Dr. Who

In this episode of Scenes Out of Context, we take a look at the beloved British series Dr. Who.  Don't forget to check out my You Tube channel so you never miss a new episode.  Enjoy and have a merry Christmas.

Scenes Out Of Context: Next

In this Saturday's Scene's Out of Context we will take a look at the epic that is Next starring Nicholas Cage.  Please enjoy and remember to subscribe to my you tube channel here. 

 

 

Scenes Out Of Context: She Likes It Sloppy

It's Sunday and as promised here is a new episode of Scenes Out of Context.  Please enjoy and remember to subscribe to my You Tube channel and check back here next Saturday to see new episodes first.

 

Scenes Out Of Context: EMILY!

This is the first installment of a new ongoing series I will be doing both here and on YouTube called Scenes Out of Context.  I think the title pretty much says it all so please subscribe to my You Tube channel here and check back every Saturday and Sunday for new episodes.

 

Lollipop Chainsaw

 

 

Wait, what? Where the fuck have you been? Where's the rest of the Fantastic Four reviews?  Who do you think you are nonchalantly waltzing back into my life as if you didn't leave a gaping whole in my heart?

 

Okay so maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, but I do feel like I should explain myself.  After a while I just felt like I had to write these blogs because I was obligated to and it wasn't fun anymore so I stopped for a while.  Then I got a job and that's been taking up a lot of my time too.  but I do miss it, so I will be posting more blogs now just not as often.  Now that that's out of the way let's get into it shall we?

 

Lollipop Chainsaw is a zombie action game that came out in 2012.  What interested me in it was not only the plot, which was appealing, but also the creator.  The creative director of the game is Suda 51 and if you're not familiar with his work, he has worked on Killer 7, the No More Heroes series, Shadow of The Damned and most recently Killer is Dead.  He always adds this twisted black sense of humor to his games that I am a big fan of.

 

 

 

There is not much of a story to Lollipop but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I don't know about you but when I go to see a zombie movie, I don't go for the plot.  The game opens up with our heroine Juliet Starling on her birthday, heading to her high school to meet her boyfriend Nick Carlyle.  On her way to school she gets ambushed by a horde of zombies.  Juliet seems un-phased by this, pulls out her trusty chainsaw and proceeds to kick all sorts of zombie ass.  As you can see from the image above, by the time she gets to Nick, he has already been bitten.  Just when we think this star-crossed romance is over,  Juliet says she thinks she can save him.  Nick then wakes up and is just a decapitated head.  Juliet confesses that she cast a spell on his disembodied head to keep him alive and she comes from a long line of zombie hunters, please don't think she's weird.

 

Before Nick can even accept any of this Juliet begins wearing him like a purse and rushes outside to find some emo douchebag trying to open the gates of Hell.  This guy decided to start the apocalypse because he was picked on in school!  Well anyway, he summons five super zombies that will be the boss fights for the next five levels.  Each one is really unique and plays differently.  Also they are all music themed.  There is the hippy chick zombie who plays folk music as you fight.  Then there's Funky Zombie who's voice is entirely auto-tuned and Juliet accuses him of mocking Stephen Hawking.  There's the Viking death metal zombie who eventually just turned into a giant head bouncing around the stage.  The final boss was no different.  When you defeat all of the five zombies you learn it was all just a plan to summon the zombie of zombies Killabilly.

 

 

I'm sure you can tell from the Image above but Killabilly is basically just a giant zombie version of Elvis.  When I say giant I mean giant.  Like Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man giant.  The stage begins and you have to make a bridge out of the cars he is throwing at you.  After that, you have to hide behind cars and buildings to avoid his eye lasers.  Oh did I forget to mention that Killabilly has eye lasers 'cus he totally has eye lasers!  When you finally reach him and fight him, you then need to climb inside him and defeat him.  That is how you do a boss fight ladies and gentleman.

 

One of the main reasons I didn't pick this game up when it first came out was the character of Juliet.  Whenever I saw a clip of the game, she seemed to be just a blonde ditzy bimbo.  I am happy to say that I was wrong.  Juliet has ditzy moments but she is such an awesome ass kicker and with Nick as the helpless character, it really reverses the usual male/female roles.  The humor in this game is great.  As I said before, Suda 51 always puts in twisted jokes and this is no different.  My favorite joke in this game is when you change Juliet's outfit Nick will make comments like, "Man I wish I had my penis."

  

Hickman's Fantastic Four Part 5

 

 



We finally get issue one of FF.  It begins with Reed watching a recorded message left by Johnny in the event of his death.  His basic message is that they cannot stop what they are doing just because he has died and they should just replace him with Spiderman because Franklin would love that.  Spiderman shows up on the roof of the Baxter Building and is greeted by Susan who is wearing the new black and white uniform.  She shows him around the building and fills him in on what's been going on in case people just picked up the first issue of FF without reading Fantastic Four.  She gives Spiderman his uniform and then the security alarm goes off.  A group of AIM soldiers are attempting to break out the Wizard.  By the time they get there, they are unable to stop his escape but the Wizard tells Reed that he has something of his (referring to Bentley) and that he will be coming for it soon.  They return home in time for Nathaniel to cook his famous roast beef.  After dinner, Nathaniel and Val tell Reed about the deal Val made with Doom and Doom just happens to be in the Baxter Building.

 

 

 

Issue two opens with Ben discovering Doom hiding out in their home and he is not pleased.  He storms out with Dragonman to the nearest bar.  Susan goes after them because she is also upset with her husband.  The remaining Future Foundation members head into the classroom and try to fix Doom's brain damage.  They eventually figure out that they need a back-up of Doom's memory to transfer into Doom to repair the damage.  Doom eventually remembers his son Kristoff who Doom, conveniently transferred his memories and powers into.  So they build a big brain switching machine and swap Kristoff and Doom's minds.  Doom then, at full Doom power, tells Reed about the other part of Val's deal.  He needs to defeat Reed Richards.

 



 

 

This issue begins with the FF team travelling around to several of the Fantastic Four's classic villains inviting them to a theoretical discussion on how to defeat Reed Richards.  Once everyone has arrived and gotten comfortable Val begins explaining what happened.  She went through the bridge and several Reeds followed her back through.  The bridge seals behind them so they can't get back home.  The Reeds decide they need to use Sol's Anvil to power their trip back to their universes.  The Reeds separate and each take on their own specific evil task to help power Sol's Anvil.  One Reed orchestrates a civil war between the races of the new Atlantis.  Another attempts something similar among the inhumans but is killed when a telepath reads his mind and discovers he is lying.  The third makes a deal with Mole Man to destroy the city that has been stealing his moloids; and the final Reed made a deal with Annihilus to open the portal to the Negative Zone and keep it open so that Annihilus' armies can attack Earth once again.  How Valeria knows all this happened is beyond me.

 

 

Ok in this issue all the super villains are in the classroom discussing how to destroy these perfect Reeds when Susan's Atlantis conch shell alarm goes off.  She and a few others go to check it out and discover the Mole Man helping out the traitorous Atlanteans and he is being commanded by Reed.

 

 



Spiderman and Alex (he's another character I don't talk about much because I don't know who he is) are fight the armies of Atlantis and the Moleman as Sue flies up to talk to Reed.  There's a great moment where Reed just removes his goggles and Sue instantly realizes that he is not her husband.  Reed shoots Sue with a laser gun but Spiderman saves her.  The traitor army blows up the entire new Atlantis city and Sue, Spiderman and Alex escape in the fantasticar.  Sue mentions that she is going to call Namor to help clean things up.  Back at the Baxter Building, Reed examines Sue and she questions him about the alternate Reed.  He breaks down and tells her that he made a terrible mistake and he looks genuinely scared.  The issue ends at the High Evolutionary's city where the mole people there have come to an agreement with the Mole Man.  Just then, the Inhumans invade.

 

There are still six issues in this story so I'm just going to end it here.  Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

Scooby Doo and The Mask of The Blue Falcon

I saw this movie was playing on Cartoon Network a few months ago so I set my DVR to record it because who watches commercials now-a-days, am I right people?  I thought that I would have a few laughs at how bad it was, delete it and then never think about it again.  I never expected it to be blog-worthy.  Boy was I wrong!

Before we get into the story we should explore some of the background of these characters.  As you may have guessed, the Blue Falcon is a major feature in this movie, as well as his sidekick Dynomutt.  If you're not familiar with those two well don't worry my baby birds mommy's gonna feed you.  Dynomutt, Dog Wonder was an old Hannah-Barbera cartoon along the same lines as Space Ghost or Birdman.  Blue Falcon was Dynomutt's master and friend and together they thwarted crime.  The duo had several team ups with Mystery Incorporated on their original series Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Later in their career they appeared on Dexter's Laboratory.

Now onto the movie itself.  Shaggy and Scooby convince the gang to go to the San-de-Pedro Comic-Con-Apalooza.  It's held every July and this year they want to enter the costume contest with their Blue Falcon and Dynomutt costumes.  Freddy wants to see the trailer for the new, darker, edgier Blue Falcon movie.  Daphne has become dangerously obsessed with collecting these stuffed animals called "little fuzzies." The only reason Velma agreed to go is because there is apparently a monster haunting the convention.  The monster is known as Mr. Hyde and is a classic villain from Blue Falcon's past.  All signs point to Owen Garrison, the actor who originally portrayed the Blue Falcon and is now bitter and angry about the reboot.  It turns out that it was actually a friend of his who was attempting to frame him.

The actual story of this movie is not important.  What is important is all the inside jokes made within the dialogue.  At the convention, there are several cosplayers who are dressed up as other Hannah-Barbera characters.  I think the reason I enjoyed this movie so much though, is because of the character of Owen Garrison.  This movie came out in 2012, just two years after Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated premiered.  Owen Garrison is a man angered because they took something that he helped shape and create but bastardized it and made it darker for a new audience that he just doesn't understand.  This movie is not just about the Blue Falcon.  It's about Scooby Doo no longer being the show it was when it first premiered in the 1960's.  At the end of the movie, the evil movie producer realizes that it takes more than special effects to make a good movie.  They end up paying tribute to the original Blue Falcon in the sequel film.  This is their way of saying that even though Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated may not be the show you were expecting, it still respects where it came from.  This movie surprised the hell out of me.

Hickman's Fantastic Four Part Four

This is it.  This is the story that really drew people into Hickman's run on the Fantastic Four.  This is when one of the Fantastic Four will die.  This is Three!

Issue one opens with Val discovering the bridge.  If you're confused to what the bridge is, then go read part one.  Val crossed the bridge and discovered the army of lobotomized Dooms, the celestials and the other Reeds who, thanks to Val now had an exit.  When Franklin from the future visited Val, one of the many mysterious things that he said to her was, "All hope lies in Doom." Now that Val has released several people as intelligent as her father on an unsuspecting public, she could use some hope right now; so she uses a teleporter, which I assume she built using a paper clip and two rubber bands because she didn't have it a minute ago, to visit her 'Uncle Doom.'  Once there Val realizes that Doom has recently suffered brain damage in another story arc that I have not read.  Doom and her make a deal, she will restore him to his previously evil, awesome self and he will help Reed save the world from the other evil Reeds.  Elsewhere, the silver surfer discovers the corpse of Galactus buried beneath the Baxter building. Uh-oh.

Three part two... Yeah that's right.  Three part two begins with Susan leaving to do more political stuff for Atlantis but we'll get to that, what's important now is that Ben drank the potion that the Future Foundation brewed for him and his Thing exoskeleton broke off.  Johnny decides to actually be a pal for once and take Ben out on the town as just two regular guys.  This was a great scene, until they go and grab beers with 'old friends' and Stan Lee is there.  Damn it Stan Lee can't you stay out of my comics.  They end the night at Alicia's house.  If you don't know, Alicia has been Ben's girlfriend for forever and she's also blind so he was able to feel comfortable with his appearance around her.  They were never able to be together sexually though, until tonight.  This scene could have been really corny or just poorly done in a hundred different ways but because Hickman has such a great handle on these characters it was actually really beautiful.  The issue ends with Reed alone at home with the kids, stargazing when the silver surfer comes asking questions, and he brought his friend Galactus.

Three part thr... You know what screw it.  Issue 585 begins with Ben and Johnny returning home to find Galactus floating above the Baxter Building.  Galactus doesn't want a fight though, he merely wants Reed to join him in his giant planet eating ship as they go for a little trip.  While all this is going on, Susan is organizing a meeting between Namor and the old kings of Atlantis.  We also see more of those bug people from the negative zone planning an attack on the Baxter Building, but right now let's get to the meeting in Atlantis.  Namor kills most of them with a trident and the issue ends.

586 starts off with Sue still in Atlantis and both sides are trying to summon back-up but she's not having none of that so she throws up a force field trapping everyone until a peaceful solution can be found.  We go back now to Reed who is informed that Galactus has brought the others who are also responsible for the Galactus' death.  Of course, it is some of the characters from the Nu-World issue.  I don't know these people's names and I don't care.  I would go into more detail on these people but they really don't matter.  The only reason I'm mentioning it is because Reed is there and Reed matters but I hate everyone else involved in this.  Galactus is great, Reed is great, the silver surfer is great so why does this whole plot suck so much cock?  Okay back at the Baxter Building, Johnny and Ben are playing cards when the Annihilation wave invades (the bug people).  Johnny figures out that they will be headed to the negative zone portal in Reed's lab where Val and some of the kids are.  We get some more scenes of Reed and then back to Sue where it's apparently been a day.  Anyway Namor tells Sue that the old Kings were a bunch of dicks and used to kill the people that they put in Sue's position.  Back to the Baxter Building where Val is explaining to Johnny that 'cus of science the shielding may not hold and of course, as soon as she says that the shields fall and the Baxter Building gets invaded.

Okay things are looking pretty bleak for everybody right now.  Susan is still fighting for peace between two very different peoples, everyone at the Baxter Building is being swarmed by the armies of Annihilus, and Reed is off doing his stupid thing with Galactus.  So the Baxter Building is being torn apart but there's a big fix everything button on the other side of the room.  They just have to get through all the bug people.  Seems impossible until Franklin God's up some bug spray and kills all the monsters to Johnny's amazement.  No time to dwell on it though, gotta hit the easy button.  Once that's done Val informs Johnny that the shields will not hold much longer but there's another big win button on the other side of the negative zone so someone has to go and activate it.  Johnny, Ben, God and a few other kids decide that they are going to have to invade the negative zone before the negative zone invades Earth anymore than it already has.  So now that we're putting several children in danger let's check in on Sue shall we?  She asks the remaining old Atlantians if what Namor has accused them of is true.  Well, it's not.  In fact, when Namor murdered the old King with a trident, Sue inherited the throne.  Back at the good old Baxter Building the members of the Future Foundation that went through the portal quickly discover that Reed's win button is malfunctioning.  Their best chance is to just set off a giant bomb destroying the annihilation wave and the portal to Earth with it, but somebody will have to stay behind to set it off.  For some reason Val, who just four issues ago built a teleporter out of bits of string and a torn up sheet of paper, cannot possibly design a bomb with a timer!  Ignoring the plot-hole that I could drive a train through, we catch back up with Sue who has finally decided to drop the shield.  She informs Namor that he can either honor the deal that they agreed upon or face her womanly, sexy wrath.  After a good beating and somebody cleaning up his pants, he agrees.  At the Baxter Building, time is running out before the annihilation wave gets there and Ben says that he is staying behind no arguments.  Ben just had the greatest week of his life thanks to Johnny and he doesn't want to go out owing him.  Johnny begins leading the kids through the portal to safety but then trips Ben, shoves him through the portal and activates the shield so he can't come back through.  Ben tries to get the shield back open but there's no time, annihilation has arrived.  Johnny just has time to lock down the portal so that even he can't open it back up and say goodbye to Ben.  Johnny then turns around to see his certain death and says, "A billion to one, you think I'm afraid of that?" First he says it quietly. Then he screams, "YOU THINK I'M AFRAID OF THAT?!" As if he needed to convince himself, he wasn't going down without a fight.  He then shouts, "FLAME ON!" And takes on as many as he can before he is finally overwhelmed.  While all of this is happening, Ben's Thing power had begun to come back to him.  So he can see all of this happening through the shielded portal as his rocky outer skin re-grows.  He just keeps punching and punching the portal as his powers come back to him but it's just not enough.  And he now has to live with the guilt that, maybe if he didn't take the cure, he could've saved his best friend.  Finally, the portal closes completely putting Ben out of his misery and the issue ends with him and the kids just collapsed in a pile dealing with what they just saw. I must have read this issue a half-a-dozen times and I still get chills from it.

The first thing you will notice about this issue is that there is no dialogue for the first twenty-three pages.  In this sequence we see the avengers arriving to help but realizing they're too late.  Susan begins to close herself off from Reed.  Reed opens the portal to the negative zone to confront Annihilus with the ultimate nullifier but all he does is rub Reed's nose in Johnny's uniform.  Doom abdicates his throne to his son Kristoff because he is concerned about his brain damage.  Doom even shows up to Johnny's funeral either to pay respects or meet with Valeria, it's unclear.  Ben goes out and picks a fight with Thor and the Hulk and the Hulk just let's him pound on him for a while to let him get out all the shit he's got bottled up inside.  Reed is looking at a list of threats to Earth and has decided that he needs to reform the council which is also one of the threats to Earth.  Reed's father appears out of literally nowhere and says, "Hello son I'm home."

This issue was broken up into parts so I'm going to do that here.  This story is called Uncles.  Franklin is sitting on top of the Baxter Building when Spider-Man drops down next to him.  He takes him for a swing around town and they talk about Johnny.  They go out and get a hot-dog and then return to the rooftops.  Spider-Man tells Franklin that he also lost his uncle when he was younger and because of it it made him a better person.  When he thinks about him now, he only remembers the good times and he's not sad anymore.  Franklin tells him that he's sad because he thinks he could have saved Johnny but Spider-Man tells him that he knows he could have saved his uncle.  This story is only a few pages long but it is absolutely perfect.  A few times Franklin mentioned that Spider-Man was his favorite hero and because they both lost their uncles it is just a nice little story.

Anyway the issue completely ends with a little message from Jonathan Hickman asking us to join him in FF.  I don't know about you but I will be there.

Hickman's Fantastic Four Part 3

After Prime Elements, we get four stand-alone issues, and since this blog will probably end up being the length of a novella let's get right into it shall we?  The first issue is called The Future Foundation and if that sounds familiar, that's because the Future Foundation gets its own book down the line called FF.  This issue opens with Reed at a conference called Singularity.  It is apparently a forum for like minded people and scientists to get together and share thoughts on how to make the world a better place founded by Reed himself.  Reed closes the conference with a speech so cruel and evil that I was convinced that he was either drugged, possessed or a Skrull but no he's just normal creepy old Reed.  After that we get some scenes of the army of children living at the Baxter building.  The Moloids are setting their room up, Val is fixing up Dragonman as Franklin spars with Leech and Artie.  I still don't know who Artie is but now he can create matter with his mind.  While all this is going on Reed goes to visit the Wizard.  The Wizard won't stop babbling about the second coming of Christ or something so Reed gives him his helmet back, I'm sure that won't come back to bite him in the ass.  The main reason that Reed went to see the Wizard is to tell him that he has adopted his clone Bentley and he is going to raise him to be a normal person, not a freak like either of them.  In the final page of the issue, we finally see what the Future Foundation actually is.  All of the kids are sitting in a classroom including Dragonman, and two atlantians with the help of Susan's influence.  Reed tells them that there is nothing that they cannot accomplish together.

In The Frank-Tastic Four Franklin and Leech are bored so they get Uncle Johnny to take them to this great new toy store because Reed is too busy with a project from the Future Foundation.  Once they get their Johnny bumps into Arcade and Impossible Man.  He is about to cause a scene with Arcade but Impossible Man vouches for him saying he's his new business partner so he gives Arcade some leeway.  Arcade shows off some of the new Impossible Man toys and once everyone has one he sets off the trap.  All of the toys come to life and begin attacking people, SHOCKER!  Leech gets knocked out which upsets Franklin, so he makes a giant stuffed dinosaur come to life and attack Arcade... *sigh* Look I know these are not my best details here but I kind of hated this whole scene.  I mean we go from gathering a group of the most intelligent group of children to solve the world's problems to an issue about a bunch of shenanigans in a toy store. WHAT THE FUCK?  Anyway, they beat Arcade and we finally get back to the Future Foundation.  We learn that the first problem that they want to tackle is Ben.  Ben has been stuck as The Thing for years and Reed has never been able to cure him but the kids have found a solution of sorts.  All the other members of the Fantastic Four have had sort of an on/off switch with their powers but Reed has always been trying to turn Ben's completely off.  It doesn't work that way though, so they have come up with a way to make The Thing human for one week a year.

When Everything's Lost, The Battle Is Won, is the next issue and it is a doozie.  It opens with Franklin Richards from the future falling through time.  He lands in some pocket dimension with Valeria from the future and Nathaniel Richards, Reed's father.  Franklin tells them that his mission to his past self's birthday party was a success and then begins building a self-sustaining universe for them to live in when the shit hits the fan whatever that shit may be.  Val leaves on her particular mission and their grandpa leaves on his.  Turns out Nathaniel needed to go to the past State University, whatever state that may be, where Reed and Victor Von Doom are classmates and Victor is still a douche-bag (HA spell check just told me to put a dash in douche-bag).  Anyway, Reed is happy to see his father but rightfully so, has questions like why does he look exactly the same after all these years.  Nathaniel explains that, during events that we didn't see, (I'm pretty sure they take place in S.H.I.E.L.D.) Nathaniel is now almost immortal, and he was forced to play a game with all of the other Nathaniel Richards from alternate universes where they were forced to kill each other until one remains.  ALL THAT HAPPENED OFF PANEL!  Anyway only this Nathaniel and one other remain and he needs Reed's help to take him out.  Reed asks Doom for help and Doom can't resist the opportunity to show Reed his toys.  He gives Ben Grimm (Reed's roommate) a robotic armor suit similar to his Thing persona.  Ben states, "I could get used to this."  Oh poor, poor Ben.  Victor puts on a prototype of his Dr. Doom helmet that allows him to read and dominate minds.  Before they go to battle though, we take a break to see future Valeria's mission was to visit present day Susan, her past mom.  So now that nobody's confused, back to Reed and the gang.  They teleport through to the other Nathaniel's universe and see his fortress of solitude.  He pops out to greet them and the issue ends.

The last issue of the bunch is called Because of All These Things That I've Done.  The titles run into each other as do the issues.  The first thing that evil Nathaniel does is throw The Anachronauts at them.  I don't know if we've ever seen these characters before in Marvel but man I need some more of them.  There's like a space-man dinosaur, a Roman soldier robot, a cyborg monkey, a cave-man with a baseball bat and a genius midget pirate.  These guys are in this issue for about three pages but it was a marvelous three pages.  After the best characters ever get killed off, they have evil Nathaniel cornered but regular Nathaniel can't kill him.  Doom can though and he has his evil villain monologue about how the Richards could not have won this battle without Doom!  After that father of the year Nathaniel Richards takes off on his son again promising to see him again the next time he needs someone executed.  We now see Val and Sue sitting at the table sipping tea and talking.  Val explains that because Nathaniel, an immortal time traveler, has killed all other Nathaniels the time stream is collapsing.  Franklin and Val are going to stay in the time stream and rebuild it because Franklin is basically God.  In so doing, they will most likely die.  While this is happening, Nathaniel returns to Franklin who is preparing for the time stream's collapse.  Franklin throws Nathaniel into the time stream because he is confident that he can escape and he shouldn't be there when it collapses.  Val tells her past mom that dark days are coming and she needs to hold the family together in these dark times.  She leaves and returns to Franklin standing alone in his universe.  They begin to discuss options for survival but it doesn't seem to be looking good.  There's a really sweet moment where Val tells Franklin that he has always been her favorite hero as their world collapses around them.

Well that does it for those issues.  Next up is the story arc Three, and if you know your maths you realize that three is less than four so that means that one of the Fantastic Four will be dying in that arc.  Stay tuned to find out who.  That is if you don't know already I mean it's a three year old issue.

Monsters University

So I think we could all use a little break from the Fantastic Four, don't you agree?  Recently I saw two new movies that I really enjoyed; Man of Steel and Monsters U or Monsters University I'm not quite sure.  Really though, you can go to any blog and read about Man of Steel you come here for something different and edgy.  So here is my summary and review of Monsters U.

 

 



The movie opens with one of the main characters from the first movie Mike Wazowski as the cutest little kid ever, and look at the gif I found of him above good luck reading this blog without being creeped out with the knowledge that he's WATCHING YOU!  Anyway being cute isn't exactly a good thing when your a fucking monster so he gets picked on a lot.  My favorite scene of him as a child is at one point they're picking buddies for a field trip to Monsters Inc. but nobody acknowledges Mike.  He asks another monster if he wants to be partners but he doesn't seem to recognize Mike.  Mike says, "Come on we carpooled here." Still nothing so then Mike adds, "We're cousins!"  After all that Mike ends up partnered with the teacher, with whom he is on a first name basis, and they are off to the scare floor.  Mike manages to sneak into one of the doors linked to the human world and watches one of the best scarers scare a child.  The scarer was so impressed that he didn't see or hear Mike that he gave him his MU baseball cap and Mike was so impressed by his performance that he was inspired to become a scarer.
 



 

 

This brings us to our title setting Monsters University.  We jump forward ten years or so and see Mike Wazowski once again stepping off a bus, this time as a college student.  First thing Mike does after checking in and all that is go and meet his roommate.  Now I know what you're thinking, his roommate is going to be Sully and they're going to be fast friends roll credits.  Well you're wrong losers!  M. Night Sheldon must have been a writer on this because get ready for a twist.  His roommate is actually Randall, the villain from the first movie.  Sully doesn't show up until they get to scaring class where he is a hands down favorite due to his Sullivan family legacy.  Also he's really big and scary where as Mike is more small and cute which causes them to butt heads when Mike begins to get better grades.  Mike is always studying with the help of Randal and Sully is more of a slacker who believes he shouldn't have to work to be the best because that's what he has always been told.  Finally the final exam rolls around and the stakes are high because if a monster fails they are out of the scare program altogether.  Of course due to Mike and Sully's constant fighting, they both fail the exam and are forced to leave the scare program.  However, there may be another way in.

 

 



Every year at Monsters U an event is held called the scare games.  Any fraternity or sorority that enters the scare games will face a series of challenges where the last place team will be eliminated until only one team remains.  The reason this is important is because the dean was so certain that Mike and Sully would lose that she promised their entire team a spot in the scare program if they won.  Mike and Sully got a spot on the only fraternity that would accept them, Oozema-Kappa, the worst fraternity on campus.  Let's take a moment to talk about Mike and Sully's frat brothers.  First up we have Don Carlton, a father figure to the group who is now basically a professional student, also he's in sales and a tentacle monster.  Second and third is Terry and Terri Perry, a two headed creature in which one of them wants to be a dancer and the other couldn't care less so it leads to some awkward situations.  Next up is Art, a purple fuzzy archway who was in prison at some point.  And finally, the piece de resistance, Squishy.  Squishy is this light pink, jelly monster that can go from adorable sidekick to the stuff of nightmares in a matter of seconds and he steals the movie. 

 

Now at this point in the movie I know what you're thinking, this team of misfits has to learn how to get along to overcome the obstacles.  Well you're pretty much right.  There's a montage of challenges showing them all growing closer as friends and as a team.  What is interesting though is that they don't actually win.  In the last competition, Sully cheats because he doesn't think Mike is scary enough and wins it for the other team.  When Sully confesses to Mike, it prompts Mike to go through a door to the human world to prove that he is scary.  The only problem is he isn't scary.  It turns out the door led to a cabin on a campground full of children who monsters believe to be toxic.  When Mike tries to scare them away they laugh at him and imitate him because he's just so cute, I mean just scroll up and look at that gif, he's so cute!

 

Anyway Sully feels responsible so he forces his way through the door to find Mike.  He comes out to find all the humans outside the cabin talking to the police but no Mike in sight.  However the window is open so Sully follows a path to where he finds Mike sitting at a lake feeling down.  They share a heart to heart because Mike can never be the scarer he always wanted to be and Sully doesn't feel like he'll ever get out of his father's shadow.  After they bond for a moment they return to the cabin to find that the door to the other side has been turned off for the safety of the monsters.  Mike realizes that if they scare the people enough, they can power the door from this side because if you saw Monsters Inc. you know that screams in the human world are energy in the monster world.  So Mike and Sully wait for the police to come in and investigate and then they begin.  By using fishing line, hiding in the rafters, Sully picking up and dropping Mike and the big Sully monster reveal they set a genuinely terrifying scene.  The door on the monster side of the world exploded and revealed Mike and Sully safely back home.  Unfortunately, because of the damage caused they were expelled, the rest of Oozema-kappa was re-inducted into the scare program because of their impressive performance in the scare games.  Mike and Sully instead get a job at the mail room of Monsters Inc. and work their way up to scarers where the movie ends.

 

This movie had some truly great elements to it.  In Monsters Inc. the human character Boo was a big part of the story so in Monsters U it seemed like they intentionally stayed out of the human realm as much as possible to explore more of the monster realm.  Whenever they were in the human world they didn't clearly show any one person's face.  It was as if they weren't even characters just set pieces and it was a good way of separating itself from Monster's Inc.  The one criticism I really have with this movie is that all of Sully's characterization and growth comes from the fact that he wants to prove something to his father, a character who is never in the movie.  It's like going to a party and hearing about that one really cool guy who couldn't make it to the party, and then you hear all those great stories about that guy and then you notice that your girlfriend couldn't make it and then you hear some guy say that the reason that cool guy couldn't make it is because he's nailing some skank in the back of his van and DAMN IT SHARON!

 

 

 



 



Hickman's Fantastic Four Part 2

Okay now where were we.  I believe when I last left you true believers, we were at Franklin Richards' birthday party.  Franklin from the future crashed the party and unlocked present day Franklin's powers to create entire universes.  Franklin's sister Val recognized future Franklin as he gave her a mysterious message.  Nobody else in the family could figure out who the strange man was and he left as quickly as he appeared.  Okay, has everybody got it who's gonna get it?

The next is a four issue story entitled Prime Elements.  I hesitate to call this a story arc because the only thing these four issues have in common are the titles.  These issues are all purely set-up for things to come.  The first issue is about the mole man asking the Fantastic Four for help.  It turns out the high evolutionary inadvertently created a machine that evolves the mole people to a super intelligent state which has been causing them to abandon the mole man's army.  So the mole man is losing his army of slaves and they are gaining intelligence; so what's the problem?  Well it turns out that these new intelligent mole people are so ashamed to look at their children that they abandon them in the sewers and have stopped reproducing altogether.  Needless to say the Fantastic Four swoop in just in time to save the remaining children right before the mole people raise the city to the surface for an unknown purpose.

Prime elements issue two takes place entirely in Antarctica.  Reed and Sue have been funding a research facility that, in 1973, discovered the largest suspended body of water beneath 13,000 feet of ice.  Anyway none of that's important.  What is important is that now they discovered some kind of enormous structure within the body of water.  The evil science organization A.I.M. also came upon this information so it's a race to the bottom of the sea.  Once they descend into the water they cannot communicate and they come upon some strange sea life that is not friendly.  This whole issue felt like the horror movie The Thing and this was a great, intense scene.  Eventually, a small spongy creature gets attached to all four of the main character's heads and they can then communicate telepathically.  They get overwhelmed by these shark people who lead them to a throne room.  There are three thrones and the green, fish, humanoid, thing that is seated on the middle throne introduces himself as Ul-Uhar and welcomes them to the kingdom of Atlantis.  Of course, they are all a bit surprised considering they actually know the king of Atlantis, Namor but they don't bring him up just yet.  Ul-Uhar asks for the one who represents man.  A representative of our species.  Reed tries to explain that that is not the way humanity works but before he can Susan speaks up and says that she will represent man and be the emissary for all humanity. 

Issue three brings us back into the cosmic area of the Fantastic Four.  Reed picks up a photo from a surveillance satellite of some sort of alien craft landing on the blue area of the moon.  Of course I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the blue area of the moon is the favorite hiding spot of our favorite freaks, the inhumans.  The Fantastic Four head up to the moon where they promptly meet an old man just chilling on the moon.  He invites them inside for the meeting.  On the way, the man tells them the story of the inhuman's origin.  They were early humans experimented on by the alien race the kree.  They received amazing powers when they were exposed to terrigen mists (alien thingies).  The twist is that there were other species of inhumans throughout the universe that gained different powers from different things and now they have found each other for the first time in history for one goal; to exterminate the kree.  Black Bolt seems to be the only male inhuman because there are now four different species of women throwing themselves at him.  there's the hairy lizard lady, the chick from avatar, the horse chick and the red lantern but their names aren't important.  What is important is that to wipe out the kree they're going to need a base of operations and they have their eyes set on Earth.  So we're fucked.

The final issue of the arc begins with Johnny at a bar picking up a chick.  I would just like to take a moment to say that this not your average bar.  There is a man with a forehead tattoo preaching about death on stage which makes sense later in the story but raises the question, WHY THE FUCK IS JOHNNY AT THIS BAR!?  But I digress; Johnny manages to pick up a girl and bring her back to the Baxter Building.  She then promptly turns into a bug and opens the portal to the negative zone.  Johnny chased her in but was only able to seal off the portal.  Cut to Susan with the kings of Atlantis.  Andromeda Attumasen has brought them a message from Namor telling them that they are not the kings of Atlatnis and if they want a meeting they have to come out of hiding.  And on the moon the strongest army of inhumans attack the negative zone and the war of four cities begins.

Well that just about wraps up Prime Elements.  I did leave some things out of these summaries but nothing too important like future Franklin telling Val about the war of four cities or Reed scolding Johnny for letting that bug chick into the Baxter Building.  I don't think I left out anything too important and if anything comes up again that I just forgot about I will explain it.  Okay well that's it for part two see you next time!

Hickman's Fantastic Four Part 1

Jonathan Hickman is a comic book writer who wrote the Fantastic Four from 2009 to 2012.  In 2011 He introduced a second book to the Fantastic Four family, FF.  At the time, I was reading this book as it was coming out; and it takes a lot out of a comic to get my money.  But due to monetary issues, as in I was fucking broke, I had to stop buying comics altogether.  I recently decided though, that the new story arc in Fantastic Four and FF sounds interesting enough for me to try out, but not until I finished learning what Hickman had to say about Marvel's first family.

Hickman's first story arc was actually a tie-in to a Marvel event called Dark Reign.  If you're not familiar with Dark Reign it's basically when Norman Osborn (the green goblin) gets control of a SHIELD-like agency and causes all kinds of whacky shenanigans.  It's also essentially just a lead in to another Marvel event called Siege.  I usually ignore tie-in story arcs because they usually suck cock but then I decided to write this blog so I went back and read Dark Reign: Fantastic Four.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the Dark Reign tie-in story arc.  I read it after I read all of Hickman's other Fantastic Four work so I knew I would like it but I still thought it would still be a tie-in.  It's not.  It is a Fantastic Four story that Norman Osborn happens to be in for about five minutes.  This is also an important story arc that introduces a lot of ideas that Hickman uses down the line.  This arc is called The Bridge, referring to a Stargate-like device that Reed Richards builds in order to allow him to see all other alternate universes in order to hopefully find a world of peace so that he can "solve everything."  At the end of the story, reed looks through the universes to find how many other 'bridges' have been built and when he finds out, he sees the silhouettes of people who want to help him.  The only other really noteworthy thing that came from this story arc is this one earth that Reed discovered while looking for his perfect Earth.  It was deemed unimportant in the context of the story, but on this Earth Reed Richards had killed all the members of the illuminati (a secret society of the most intelligent people in the world that make decisions for the rest of the world) because he knew that no good would come of it.  The reason I found this so interesting is because Jonathan Hickman is currently writing New Avengers and it's all about the illuminati making terribly difficult decisions that they believe are for the best of everyone.

Solve Everything is the story that spun out of The Bridge and it's also the first Fantastic Four story that I have ever read.  It opens up with a moving scene of Reed as a child on a high ledge above his father Nathaniel who is encouraging his son to jump.  Nathaniel is reassuring Reed that he will catch him but Reed is still scared until he says, "It's okay to be afraid.  It's okay to fail.  But to say you're not even willing to try... That's unacceptable." (*insert weeping noise hear* I'm sorry, gimme a minute) So we learn that the people on the other side of the bridge were other Reeds who had also built bridges and discovered each other and decided to work together for a better tomorrow.  Unfortunately, though their intentions are good, and they do accomplish incredible things, these Reeds also end up lobotomizing every Dr. Doom in the universe.  It also turns out that these Reeds throw themselves into their work so extremely that they have no more time for their friends or families.  Our Reed needs time to decide if he wants to join this 'Council' but the next time he visits the council, one of the Reeds has done something to offend the race of space gods known as the Celestials.  The Celestials want the power of the bridge and start unleashing Hell on the Reeds.  Our Reed escapes to his universe and returns with weapons but the others tell him to go home because of his family.  He barely makes it out alive, we get some more flashbacks of his father and learn that he abandoned Reed for the greater good when Reed was a teenager.  Reed realizes that he wants to be a better father than his own and destroys the bridge.

After Solve Everything, we got a couple of stand alone issues.  The first one involves Johnny and Ben on vacation in what was supposed to be a beautiful alternate dimension called Nu-World.  This issue picked up on a Fantastic Four story that had come up before Hickman's run.  As I had not read this issue or story arc I was a bit lost here, but I got the gist of it.  This rather odd cast of characters that reside on Nu-World are there because at some point, Reed and perhaps the rest of the Fantastic Four helped them murder a Galactus and use its energy to send them off Earth to Nu-World.  Apparently they did not want to be on Nu-World because they return later in Hickman's run but I'll get to that.  Anyway the next issue is about Franklin Richard's (Reed and Sue's son) birthday.  Reed and Sue invite Leech and some kid named Artie to stay with them.  I've read this entire run and I still have no idea who Artie is.  In the first issue of Solve Everything, Reed adopted a child clone of his villain The Wizard in hopes that he would have a better future.  So at this point you should realize that Reed Richards is gathering up more awkward, unhappy little boys then your average unhappy middle-aged man with a van.  Anyway, a strange man crashes the party and tells Franklin to, "remember who you are." He also talks to Franklin's sister Valeria who immediately recognizes him as Franklin from the future.  At the end of the issue we see Franklin playing under the covers, making a new universe.

Well that's it for part one.  I was going to do this all in one shot but this is already longer than any post I've done before and I'm not even half-way through this.  Hope you're intrigued enough to stick with me through the rest of it so stay tuned for part two some time next week!

Rob Plays A Game Part 2

Watch me play Disney universe and talk about my thoughts on PS4, Xbox One and E3 2013.

Rob Plays A Game

So I'm hoping that this will be a new ongoing thing that I will continue to post let me know what you guys think.  First I'm going to be playing Alan Wake and here is episode one.

Alan Wake

Alan Wake is an Xbox 360 survival horror game released in the long long ago time known as 2010.  It did not do very well when it was originally released but was a bit of a cult classic and went on to sell over 3 million copies.  Survival horror is a dying genre in video games and I heard that Alan Wake was not the worst game on the market and it is currently $4.99 on XBLA so I promptly bought it and began to play.

Let's begin with the story, oh and spoilers.  Alan Wake is a best selling author who is suffering from writer's block.  He and his wife Alice decide to go to the small town of Bright Springs for vacation.  They have to take a ferry ride over Cauldron Lake to Bright Springs and on the ferry they meet a local radio personality who admits to being a fan of Wake's.  Here we see Alan's famous bad attitude as he blows off the man saying that he just wants to be left alone.  Something this game does really well is that every character in the game feels like a real person.  Alan occasionally seems like a stuck up celebrity and will fight with his spouse at times, he is far from perfect but that kind of makes you root for him more.  Also while on the ferry, Alice mentions a creepy man watching them and Alan gets a call from his agent Barry.  All of these people become important characters later on in the game.  Later, when the Wakes get to the cabin, the power goes out and we learn of Alice's fear of the dark.  Alan goes and turns the generator on by way of a quicktime event that will be used many more times throughout the game. (Now let me just take a moment here and say that I know it seems that I am focusing a lot on the first hour or so of the game but that is just because they did a brilliant job of setting up future character interactions.) Alan makes his way back inside and finds out that Alice has set up a typewriter in the hopes of getting him writing again.  She has been speaking to a local doctor, Dr. Hartman who specializes in artists and wants to see him.  Alan is offended and storms out.  He then hears her scream and returns to the cabin to find it empty.  He makes it down to the lake and sees Alice sinking.  Alan jumps in after her and wakes up a week later in a car with no memory of what happened.

This is where the game really begins.  Alan begins finding pages to a manuscript that he has no memory of writing but it is titled Departure which is the same title that he was planning on using for his next book.  What's even stranger is that the pages seem to predict the future.  The police are after Wake and he begins seeing these shadows in the shape of people that are attacking him.  Wake is not even sure if he is sane anymore but the one thing that he does know is that Alice is still alive somewhere.  Alan begins to hear tales of another writer who went through something similar named Thomas Zane.

Alan discovers that there is a dark presence living in Cauldron Lake and it does something to the artists here.  It uses their work to become real and gain power.  It did this to Zane years ago and it took his wife in order to make him write and now the darkness was doing the same to Wake.  During the week that Wake could not remember, the darkness came to Wake and told him to write a story and that would bring back Alice; but in reality all it would do would make the darkness stronger.  Somehow Alan realized this and wrote Zane into his story.  Zane busted into the cabin in his awesome big daddy flashlight suit and freed Wake.  Wake crashes a car escaping from the cabin and that is the game's beginning.

Since Wake never finished his manuscript his and Alice's story doesn't have an ending.  Alan fights his way back to the cabin and sits at the typewriter.  He tells us that the reason Zane never got his wife back was because a sacrifice must be made.  Zane just tried to write a happy ending where he and his wife walked off into the sunset but it was never going to be that kind of story.  Wake realized this and wrote something that would bring his wife back.  We then see Alice swim to the surface of Cauldron Lake and climb onto a nearby dock.  She struggles for breath and asks for Alan.  The last scene of the game is Alan typing away at the typewriter surrounded by darkness.  He then seems to come out of a trance and say, "It's not a lake it's an ocean."

Wow this was a long one but thanks for staying with me those of you that did.  While playing this game, I knew that I was going to write this blog. And I thought after I summarized the story I would talk about what the game got right and then go through the long list of things they got wrong; but the longer I played that list of this they got wrong got shorter and shorter and the list of right got longer and longer.

So first off what did they get wrong.  This game is supposed to be a survival horror game where you play as a regular joe.  As I said before the story line does a really good job of making you feel like your just a regular guy; the gameplay, however does not.  At one point in the game Alan says he has never even carried a gun before a few days ago.  If that is true why is it that whatever he points his flashlight at he hits without issue.  Alan Wake is the greatest natural marksman in history which also takes out a lot of the horror.  The enemies or, the taken as they are referred to in the game, are decently scary looking but they are not threatening in the least since Alan never misses any of his shots.  And the last thing that I disliked about this game was the way the voices matched up with the facial animations.  The graphics still looked great today which is saying a lot since this is a 2010 game but when it came to editing in the audio, it's like they didn't even try.

Which brings me to the voice acting.  At first I hated it and rightfully so, it's awful but I think it's supposed to be terrible.  You need to remember, the entire game you are playing through a horror novel written by a man who has never written a horror novel and who hasn't written anything for a couple of years.  The dialogue is corny and it sounds like something you would hear in a bad movie or horror book.  A good example is the Night Springs television show that you can find on TV sets scattered throughout the world.  They are essentially homages to old Outer Limits episodes except they are laughably bad.  At one point when Alan puts on an episode of Night Springs Barry will say that Alan used to write for the show.  At another point in the game, Alan comes across a man who is dying. He tells Alan that it was his best friend who did it to him.  He then says something along the lines of, 'this is like a bad movie sequel, when they make the best friend the bad guy.  Who writes this crap anyway?'

Maybe I'm giving remedy studios too much credit but for $4.99 I had a lot of fun.  I know that this post wasn't very funny but there really wasn't that much for me to joke about.  The story is complicated as hell but  it still fit the tone of the game well.  I don't know what else to say.  The game is five bucks if you haven't already go and buy it... GO!

Fallout New Vegas

It took me three years but I finally beat Fallout New Vegas.  Notice how I said beat and not completed.  I took a long break somewhere in the 2012 era to explore other video game venues but I always came back to good old New Vegas.  In case you have not played the game I will fill you in on some of the broader details because this game has just so much in it that I could not possibly fill you in on all the hidden treasures in New Vegas.  Warning for a three year old game spoilers abound.

Every Fallout game takes place in a post-nuclear "fallout" world where the human race has survived by staying inside massive bunkers called vaults.  Inside the vaults you have no access to the outside world so the society does not know whether it is safe or not to exit the vault.  If you were not lucky enough to make it into a vault then you are either dead or mutated beyond recognition.  Despite the gruesome appearance of most mutations some of these mutants are perfectly well adjusted people.  So now that you have a decent handle on the Fallout universe, our story begins.

The game opens up with you being shot in the head; but don't worry you get better.  Apparently, although the Earth literally exploded we've made marvelous medical advances since the nuclear holocaust.  The doctor who heals you asks you some questions about yourself which is a clever way to implement the character customization screen.  I made my character look like Samuel L Jackson and I think I named him Coffin because that's what I normally do but for the life of me I can't remember.  The doctor mentions that that's a strange name and the rest of the game you're referred to as the courier.  Well why the fuck did you let me name my character in the first place?  Anyway, since your shooter thinks your dead you need to track him down, find out why he did it and see that justice is done.  As you may have already gleamed from the game's title you need to make your way to the big city New Vegas but it's never about the end point is it?  It's about the journey; and boy is this a journey!  Along the way you meet a colorful cast of companion characters who will assist you on your quest as long as you remember to never break the cardinal rule of only one humanoid companion and one "other."  Though I worked with as many of the companions I could find in order to gain experience the team I used the most was a woman named Veronica and a floating eye robot named Ed-e.  I liked Veronica because she worked for the Brotherhood of Steel, an organization that was set on collecting all dangerous technology in the world and making sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands.  I remembered the Brotherhood from previous games and always thought they were an interesting group.  Also Veronica had a great ass and I was hoping there would be a sex scene with her but alas my hopes were dashed.  The reason I picked Ed-e was because... Well he's a fucking flying robot that shoots lasers.  Later in the game I got a cyborg-dog named Rex that I used to replace Ed-e but I got him so late in the game that I may have well have just stuck with Ed-e and skipped Rex's quest entirely.  Aside from the Brotherhood of Steel you also come across two other factions, The New California Republic (NCR) and Caesar's Legion.  The NCR represents the good side of the game by representing the last hope of an army in the wasteland that has become America and most likely the rest of the world.  Caesar's Legion represents the evil side by literally crucifying people, keeping slaves and doing things like holding lotteries in random towns to see who gets to live.  This is one of my biggest problems with the game.  There is absolutely no gray area in New Vegas between good and evil.  You either join the army like you ma and pa or fuckin' crucify people.  What if I just kind of want to be a dick to people?  Or what if I want to be a conscientious objector (you know a coward)?  Well unfortunately I would die pretty quick if that were the case because you stumble upon either an NCR camp or a Caesar's Legion hideout pretty often and if you don't pick a side fast you're going to die fast.  So I chose NCR, I'll be evil next time I play in two years, but at the end of the game it doesn't even matter.  You essentially get to choose which groups of people you want to destroy and which groups you want to live but you can NOT choose the NCR!  They die no matter what.  I also noticed that I could NOT choose Caesar's Legion which means that my next play through will have only a slightly different ending.  But like I said before it's not about the ending it's about the journey.

It may not sound like it but whatever I had to complain about I had to really dig to find.  New Vegas is a great game.  It's published by Bethesda the same company that brought us Skyrim and in all honestly I liked it a bit more than Skyrim.  I do plan on playing through it again someday and seeing what other options open up to me depending on the different paths I take so stay tuned for that post some time in 2016.      

In Case You Missed It The First Time Around!

Not much to talk about today so here's the video of me doing stand up at the Stress Factory in NJ.  I'm sure at some point I will post more of these.  Enjoy!

WHAT TIME IS IT!?

Adventure Time has got to be my favorite show and has been for quite some time and I know that it's incredibly successful as well it should be; but I still feel it gets labeled as that silly cartoon when it is much, much more than that.  Whenever I try to explain Adventure Time to somebody it will usually go something like, "It's the story of the last boy on Earth and his dog in a post apocalyptic world.  Where the world is now divided into kingdoms.  There's the Ice Kingdom, the Flame Kingdom and the Candy Kingdom where all the people are made of candy... Hey where ya going?"

As I said before, Adventure Time gets labeled as that silly cartoon when in reality the fact that it's a cartoon should not matter at all.  It is written so well that it should be thought of as a comedy first and foremost.  Unlike most comedies that I have been a fan of, Seinfeld, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Adventure Time actually gets better with age.  Nearly every episode is better than the last and yes it is good enough to compare to Seinfeld.

Now I know what some of you may be thinking, 'Why all the love for Adventure Time? What about Regular Show?'  Well shut your mouth holes imaginary critics I was getting to that.  Regular Show is a show that started shortly after Adventure Time on the same network and has a similar comedy style and it's also pretty great.  The only criticism I have with Regular Show is that all of the episodes have the same formula.  The main characters, Mordecai and Rigby are either at the park or the coffee shop, they then discover they need to accomplish some seemingly normal task, some sort of supernatural force shows up to stop them but they succeed in the end.  Although I just described nearly every Regular Show episode that is not necessarily a bad thing.  The situations may not be entirely original but the jokes are always fresh and entertaining and it's fun to watch the characters interact.

I realize in this post I talked about Regular Show about as much as I did Adventure Time but they go hand in hand in my mind.  And everything that needs to be said about Adventure Time has already been said by others who are much more fanatical than me.  All that's left to be said is that it is one of the best written shows on television with true character development and satisfying story lines.      

The Name of The Doctor (Spoilers)

Recently I watched the season seven finale of Doctor Who entitled "The Name of The Doctor".  First off I would just like to say that this was a really solid episode that I really enjoyed. However, the entire second half of the seventh season just kind of left me feeling empty and wanting more.  It all seemed like a big drumroll leading up to the fiftieth anniversary special.  One of the biggest problems I have with season 7.2 (as on demand calls it) is Clara Oswin Oswald.  Now I wanted to like her I really did and she has some moments when she really shines and she seems like the perfect companion for the doctor but that's kind of the problem.  Aside from a few scenes here and there where she questions the doctor's humanity she seems to just follow him blindly expecting everything to turn up roses and of course we know it will because he's the doctor but why does she know that?  We are supposed to accept this relationship that seems rather forced all because the doctor has seen her die and she is the "impossible girl."  Alright I'll admit that the mystery was intriguing and had a really satisfying ending but when the doctor met the original Clara she really had no reason to trust him or go with him.  Think about it, Amy was the girl who waited for the doctor so of course she would go with him and Rory would follow Amy anywhere.  Donna actually tracked down the doctor to become his companion and I'm sure Rose had something too but whenever I think of her I see her stupid face and forget any plot line she was in; but Clara has none of that.  The doctor just shows up and shows her his box and off they go!

I think maybe I should talk a little about the episode now.  It opened with Clara traveling through time and interacting with all the past doctors.  This was a really cool scene and certainly grabbed my attention.  Long story slightly shorter the great intelligence is going to kill all the people that the doctor currently cares about unless he goes to Trenzalor (yes I know I probably spelled that wrong).  So why Trenzalor?  Well it turns out that is where the doctor is buried, y'know cus time travel.  It is then revealed that when a time lord dies there is no body just a manifestation of their timeline which the great intelligence promptly enters so that he can fuck with the doctor throughout history Reverse Flash style.  Clara goes in to save the doctor and then the doctor goes in to save Clara.  Now quick point here, the doctor entered the room with his timeline and because there were events unfolding that he had not yet experienced he collapsed from pain due to the time paradoxes; but then he goes into his own time line and he's like, "Yeah I'm fine high fives all around!" Well anyway while in the timeline we learn of another regeneration that the doctor wants to keep secret and is ashamed of.

So yeah pretty big reveal at the end and Clara saved the doctor and since the doctor is responsible for entire galaxies she saved them as well so that's cool... Why do I still have this empty feeling? Oh maybe it's because in an episode entitled "The Name of The Doctor" we didn't learn the name of the doctor!  I did a little bit of digging on this subject because I honestly thought I just missed it.  I mean there's no way Stephen Moffat would spend years telling us the name of the doctor is the most powerful secret in the universe then name an episode the name of the doctor and then not tell us the name of the fucking doctor!  What I found through my research is that either this episode was to teach us that the doctor's name is unimportant and that he has so many other secrets that it doesn't matter.  To the people who believe that I say DUH they made fifty years of shows without telling us his goddamn name that wasn't the point.  What I think the title was referring to was the acts committed in "The Name of The Doctor".  The current doctor even says this to the new big reveal doctor.  So I am still holding out hope that we will learn his name.  I mean we have to right? Right?