Episode 82: slash… slash… slash…

Arrr, I love me some pirates:

Episode 80: “Grrr…”

Octopuses in love. Need I say more?

After seeing a couple of other people post their results on Flickr, I thought I’d give a go of FaceYourManga. It’s an manga-avatar creation website, where you can choose from a whole range of different features to build your own manga face. Here’s what I came up with:

So… does this look like me? In my opinion, kind of. I wished you could specify your own colours (I mean , how hard can that be?). My hair and eye colour aren’t right at all; they’re a much warmer brown, while this is just bland. Anyhow, it’s a nice little app to play with.

Check out some other people’s Manga Faces: Cristiano, Alper, Dan, Eelke and Jo.

In the last week I’ve watched the entire first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender and initially this post was going to be about why you should watch it (which I’ll cover in a future post). Strange enough though, thinking about this new show (for me at least it was new) has given me a major eye-opener about myself: I had totally lost faith in the creation of good great cartoons.

Looking back, I realized that I hadn’t seen a single animated tv show since high school (six years ago), casually dismissing all series without even trying them. During that time I did consider myself an animation lover, but just believed that nothing that was produced now could ever reach the standards of previous shows. I did keep watching animated films, but subconsciously just disregarded new animated tv series. I’m really only fully realizing that now and I’m still in shock by it; how could I not watch potentially addictive material?

I guess I do understand where this in part comes from. In the years before I stopped watching, you couldn’t exactly say that the quality of the then-new shows were any good. On the other hand, it could also have been that only bad ones were being shown on Dutch television (if that was the case, why the hell didn’t they broadcast any good stuff?). Or alternatively, that my standards were just way too high. No matter the reason, somewhere along the way I started believing that all new cartoons were bad and that from that moment on only bad cartoons would be created.

What was I thinking?! How could I ever be so halfwitted to even think there would never be a good animated tv show ever again? I’m still amazed, baffled, flabbergasted that my mind (no, scrap that, I shouldn’t be giving my mind the blame) that I could ever believe such a thing. And yet, it is true. I’ve lived under this weird illogical delusion. Me, someone that prizes herself for being a logical person. It’s as if never reading another book in your life again, just because you read a couple of bad books, even though you read hundreds of great books before that. It’s a fallacy, an utterly faulty reasoning, a down-to-the-core wrong deduction.

I’m still in shock. I just can’t believe it. It’s not about Avatar. It’s not about not watching cartoons. It’s about realizing that there’s this weird little part of my mind that’s been influencing my choices in life (even though it’s something as simple as tv-watching) based on a reason that is so out of sync with the rest of me. It just feels so very, very weird.

Maybe I’m overreacting, but then I’m writing this in the wake of my illumination. And very late at night, after 2 days of sleep deprivation. Yeah, not the perfect time to blog, I know. But I know that for me this has just been a revelation and my mind it still trying to cope with it. Hey, blogging is supposed to be therapeutic, right?

My last post got me wondering. When I was a kid, I used to have this custom/game/tradition/(not sure what I’m supposed to call it) with my brother and sister. Whenever we watched something, be it a tv show or a movie, we would have to pick one character out of the show, which we would have to “be”. We couldn’t be the same person and if you called it first, the other had to pick some one else.

When the show wasn’t on, we wouldn’t actually do anything with the chosen characters. They only had meaning when we were watching the show. Besides rooting for them during an episode, you got to “be” them in the case that there was some special song or special sequence. For instance, in the case of Captain Planet, I was Linka. So whenever you had the Captain Planet summoning scene (which of course happened every episode), I got to shout “Wind!”.

For most TV shows I can remember exactly who me and my brother and sister were. For Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, I was Donatello, my brother Leonardo and my sister Michelangelo. With Samurai Pizza Cats, I was Polly Esther, my brother was Speedy Cerviche and my sister Guido Anchovy. For Power Ranger, I was the Pink Ranger (”Pterodactyl!”), my brother was the Red Ranger (until he decided the White Ranger was cooler), and my sister the Yellow Ranger. With X-Men, I was Rogue, my brother was Wolverine, and my sister Jubilee. Need I continue?

Am I (and my brother and sister) completely crazy? Looking back, it’s seems such a silly thing to do and I can’t help but wonder if other kids used to do this too. I was talking to Cristiano about this tonight and he never did such a thing when he was young. So please speak up; I want to know I wasn’t a complete crazy kid with these actions.

Episode 35: “Gonna help him put asunder, Bad guys who like to loot and plunder”

One of my favourite cartoons from when I was a kid was Captain Planet and The Planeteers (I was 7 when it first aired). Besides a catchy theme song, the cartoon had some great easy-to-hate villains and lovable main characters, each with their own special magic ring. Theme Song! Villains! Magic powers! What more do you need from a tv show as a kid?

The show revolved around 5 kids, the Planeteers, with the task of defending Earth against disasters and pollution. They were chosen by Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, who gave them magic rings, with which they each can control an element. Kwame from Africa controls Earth, Wheeler from the US controls Fire, Linka from the Soviet Union controls Wind, Gi from Asia controls Water and Ma-Ti from South America controls Heart (telepathy). When needed, they can combine their powers and summon Captain Planet, a Green terrestrial Superman (Green as in environmentally friendly, not as in skin color).

I was always Linka when I was a kid, despite her being blonde and me brunette (if you don’t know what I mean here check out my next post). For some weird reason though, in my mind I remember her being from Sweden. Don’t ask me why, I just know that I have that memory “Linka is from Sweden”. Maybe I somehow made a faulty link as a kid that Sweden = Soviet Union, and, while I now know that that isn’t true, the memory of Linka was never updated.

Fun Facts: Most people know that Gaia was voiced by Whoopi Goldberg and Kuwame by LeVar Burton (the blind/visor guy in Star Trek: The Next Generation). But did you know most villains were voiced by well known actors?

Hoggish Greedly - Ed Asner
Dr. Blight - Meg Ryan (1990-1991)
Sly Sludge - Martin Sheen (1990-1993)
Duke Nukem - Dean Stockwell (1990-1992)
Verminous Skumm - Jeff Goldblum (1990)
Zarm - Sting (Season 1-2), David Warner (Season 3), Malcolm McDowell (Season 4)
Rigger (Hoggish Greedly’s henchman) - John Ratzenberger
MAL (Dr. Blight’s evil high-intellectual supercomputer) - Tim Curry

So as the video for today, here are the fantastic end credits of Captain Planet and The Planeteers:

I’ve even got the lyrics here for those of you who want to sing-a-long:

Captain Planet, he’s our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero
He’s our powers magnified
And he’s fighting on the planet’s side

Captain Planet, he’s our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero
Gonna help him put asunder
Bad guys who like to loot and plunder

“You’ll pay for this Captain Planet!”

We’re the Planeteers, You can be one too
‘Cause saving our planet is the thing to do!
Looting and polluting is not the way
Hear what Captain Planet has to say!
The Power is Yours!

Here’s also the opening sequence of Captain Planet and The Planeteers:

These photos from Annie Leibovitz are just stunning. They belong to the Dream Portrait Serie, an advertisement campaign from Disney featuring celebrities as traditional Disney characters. The first three images came out in January 2007, the second batch of three in October 2007 and the latest four came out this week. I’ve featured the photos I like the best first; while most of them are cool, there are a couple that just don’t work for me.

Where Every Cinderella Story Comes True

Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella

Where You’re The Fairest Of Them All

Rachel Weisz as Snow White

Where Dreams Run Free

Jessica Biel as Pocahontas

Where You’re Always The King Of The Court

Roger Federer as King Arthur

Where You Never Have To Grow Up

Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan, Gisele Bündchen as Wendy and Tina Fey as Tinkerbell

Where Imagination Saves The Day

David Beckham as Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty

Where The Magic Begins

Julie Andrews as the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio and Abigial Breslin as Fira from Disney Fairies

Where A Whole New World Awaits

Jennifer Lopez as Jasmine and Marc Anthony as Aladdin

Where Wonderland Is Your Destiny

Beyonce as Alice, Lyle Lovett as the March Hare and Oliver Platt as the Mad Hatter

Where Your Every Wish Is Our Command

Whoopi Goldberg as the Genie

(Photos courtesy and copyright of Disney)

When I was in highschool, Dragonball Z was immensely popular, especially under the “cool” non-geeky kids. In part, that is one of the reasons I never got into it; why bother myself with something everybody was already a fan of? It’s way geekier to like and know things about the things nobody else likes, right? Besides I’ve never really gotten the whole shifting hair colour thing anyway.

Skip forward to the present day where rumours about a Dragonball Z live action movie are slowly spreading. So what’s the scoop? Apparently Stephen Chow from Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer fame is producing the DBZ movie and James Wong (Final Destination) is directing it based on a script he wrote. Meaning cool writer/director/actor guy is this time only providing the money (=no real creative input) and the “genius” (please don’t overlook my sarcasm here) behind a teen horror movie with Death as the slice&dicer has all the reins of control.

Add to that mix, Justin Chatwin as Goku and James Marsters as the villain Piccolo and I’m not sure what to expect. To be honest, I’ve only seen Chatwin as Tom Cruise’s son in War of the Worlds and that entire movie was quite forgettable. Judging on looks only, he could pass for a Goku, I guess. James Marsters as Piccolo though worries me. Are they going to keep the white turban? As much as I love Spike, I’m not really sure how they are going to pull this off. Hell, I’m not even sure how they’re going to pull this entire movie off!

(Side note: Wouldn’t James Marsters and David Anders (Sark in Alias, Takeshi Kitano in Heroes) just be perfect as brothers? They both have that same bad-guy-you-hate-to-love-love-to-hate-have-to-have attitude.)

I haven’t seen much of the tv show, so I can’t really determine the wowness/bleghness of it all. To me though, Dragonball Z just doesn’t seem one of those cartoons that would be easily translated to the big screen. Any old fans out there?

By now you may know I’ve been a geek for almost my entire life. What you might not know is that my first obsession geeklove passion was for animation series. When I was about five (maybe even four), I used to get up every morning at 6:00 to watch tv. Looking back, the weird part is that I didn’t need an alarm clock or anything; I just woke up everyday at the exact same time. What I would give to be able to do that again.

This addiction to kids tv series gradually turned into an addiction to normal tv series, but left me with an insane amount of memories of those tv shows I used to watch. To put that knowledge at least to some use, I’ll list a couple of shows you might have forgotten about.

So in no particular order:

20. The New Archies: Not really one you would have forgotten due to the comic, but not eveyone knows there was a tv series. Are you a Betty or a Veronica?

19. The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin: I just loved the world they created here; all the different types of creatures.

18. Gummi Bears: Who didn’t love the magical bears that bounced?

17. C.O.P.S.: I loved the cool nicknames: Mace, Sundown, Nightshade.

16. Captain Planet and The Planeteers: I still know the lyrics of the themesong (which by the way is from Phil Collins). A lot of known actors did (guest) voices for this (Whoopi Goldberg, Levar Burton, Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen).

15. Police Academy: I loved the running gag with the goldfish.

14. Pandamonium: Pandas!

13. M.A.S.K.: First time I realised what an acronym was.

12. Dino-Riders: My brother had a Dino-Riders Triceratops set; I loved playing battles with the Transformer against the Dinosaur.

11. Captain N: Is it weird to have a crush on a cartoon character? I completely adored Kevin when I was 7.

10. Bobby’s World: I only just realise now that that Howie Mandel is the Deal or No Deal Howie Mandel. Then again, I’ve never actually watched the US Deal or No Deal.

9. Mysterious Cities of Gold: This had the most catchiest theme song ever; I still get goose-bumps every time I hear it.

8. Pound Puppies: I had a two-sided jumper with on one side a cross-word puzzle pattern with one of the puppies and on the other side a big version of that same puppy.

7. Muppet Babies: Cute in a very creepy way.

6. Ewoks: I remember watching this before ever consciously having seen Star Wars. When I did see Star Wars, I remember thinking: “Cool, they’re using real life ewoks in here!”

5. Babar: Royal elephants! What more do I have to say.

4. Beverly Hills Teens: I was too young for the real Beverly Hills, but this was one of those real girl cartoons.

3. Kissyfur: I only remember that I watched it, for the rest I’m drawing a complete blank.

2. The Littles: This was just so cute!

1. Ghostbusters: I don’t mean the Ghostbusters animation series based on the movies with Dan Akroyd and James Belushi. No, I’m talking about the other Ghostbusters. The one with the gorilla.

Just follow these simple steps: