The Kinks "Dead End Street" Unsderstands Me...

Understands me so well...

Venture Bros. Renewed for Season 5 AND Season 6!!!

 

In what is the best news I'll hear all week, Adult Swim has renewed, the animated show that I swear is written specifically for me, for 2 seasons plus a 60 to 90 minute special.  They won't be starting production until this June so, there's no dates set yet for the Season 5 premiere.  Although  I know whatever they come up with will be awesome in my book, here's a couple of things that I'd like to see more of:

Hello, I'm David Bowie.

Vhat?  I was never in de Stooges!

Make Way for the Homo Superior!

David Bowie is my all-time favourite male artist.  I've seen him in concert 8 times and would still go see him even if he was pushed out onto the stage in a wheelchair and all he did was clap farts into his seat.  When he showed up as the Sovereign, the head of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, I was thrilled!  Not just because I love him but because when  was a little kid, I used to draw my own cartoons featuring a busty redheaded super spy named Lucy Lane, whose chief nemesis was...Rod Stewart!  Yeah, I made Rod Stewart a supervillian some 20 years before Bowie showed up as the Sovereign so that's just one of the ways I felt like Hammer & Publick not only on the same wavelength as me, they were also reading my mind! Now if only Bowie would agree to actually voice himself!

Did You Get Herpe From Kissing Your Wife's Ass?  After I Put Herpes in it?

 If I could see more of the gang from the episode Self-Medication I would be grateful!  It was one of my favourite espisodes of Season 4, if not my favourite, and I would love to see the original Wonderboy, the Hale Bros, Ro-Boy and especially Action Johnny team up again.  Not only was it well written and provided Dr. Venture with some significant character progression but it also included great vocal performances from Seth Green, John Hodgman and Patton Oswalt.  There's nothing to hate here in my book!

Make it Stop: It's Wonder Woman's New TV Costume :(

Great Hera, Suffering Sappho, Merciful Minerva, Jesus Christ & WTF!!!

If only Wonder Woman's Golden Lasso of Truth actually existed so I could beg someone to wrap me up in it and command me to forget that I ever saw this photograph!  The only thing this production has done right so far was to hire Adrianne Palikci, who was great on Friday Night Lights and is a beauty, to play Wonder Woman.  She's the perfect choice but for the love of Zeus!  Why are they doing this to her?  Why are they doing this to us, for that matter?  Pleather Pants?  I sort of get that the recent redo of her costume in the monthly comic book was to "update" her and make her look less like an American Flag but what exactly is the intent here?  To let her enemies know when she's coming? Because that outfit is going to squeak like a bear daddy sitting in a leather chair...

Or The World's First "Analrapist"

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time Hollywood types have gotten the costume wrong.  Just take a look at the badly miscast blond tennis champion Cathy Lee Crosby in a 1974 TV movie that was based more or less on the WW who had no powers but was a kung-fu feminist.  This was the result:

I'm Wonder Woman: Fly Me!

Surprisingly, costume designers don't always get it wrong, even when the project itself is far off the mark.  A god awful pilot was produced in 1967 that featured WW as an old maid who lived in the suburbs with her shrew of a mother (and who's desperate for grandchildren).  What really made this production sad was that  although WW was portrayed as having power, she wasn't physically attractive. Although, at least in her own eyes she was because when the "unattractive" actress (Ellie Wood Walker) looks into a mirror, her reflection is played by a different, "hotter" one (Linda Harrison).  I guess it's supposed to reflect the pre-feminist idea that if you're better than a man, they won't want you ot that beauty is all that matters.  All I know for sure is that it's shit.  The pilot is on YouTube and I've linked to it.  Watch it and weep...

You notice what they got right?  The costume is a replica of WWII WW's shorty shorts and despite the fact that her tiara looks like it was cut out of cardboard, at least it was accurate!

Needless to say the 1970's TV with Lynda Carter did it right. Yes, it was a hokey show, but who cares? Look at her...

Pictured: Perfection

Another production that gets the costume right is, inexplicably, Justice League: A Hardcore Parody.  Can someone please explain to me how Chanel Preston, a professional tramp, looks less sleazy than Palicki's pleather?

This is Depressing!

This Woman's Rework: Kate Bush to Release "Director's Cut" Album

I love Kate Bush.  I have loved her since 1982 when my sister and I were shopping in a now long gone record store in Montreal called Phantasmagoria.  We were perusing the stacks of vinyl in the store's almost all wood interior when this song came blasting out of their sound system, shrieking and braying like a banshee warning me, not of a impending catastrophe but of the placement of a musical bar so high, I would judge every single female (and almost every male) artist  I would ever listen with this one woman for the rest of my life:

My sister and I pooled our money and bought The Dreaming right on the spot. Up until that time, my knowledge of Bush was fairly limited.  Having been a big Pat Benatar fan, I knew her version (which I had loved) of Wuthering Heights that was featured on Benatar's second album Crimes of Passion, was written by Bush that first appeared on her 1978 debut album The Kick Inside but I hadn't actually heard her until the above posted Sat In Your Lap but once I heard Kate, I was hooked: 

But Pat Was My Gateway Drug.

I have all of Kate's albums and like just like the rest of her fans, I have to wait many, many years for her to release a new record.  I had to wait 4 years from the Hounds of Love to the Sensual World and another 4 years for The Red Shoes.  But that all time pales in comparison to the 12 years me and her fans waited between TRS and 2005's Aerial.  

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part.

 She had pretty much retreated from the public eye after she had a child in 1998 and wanted him to have a normal upbringing.  As if her upbringing was normal. If being raised on an English country farm by your doctor father and your artist mother, teaching yourself to play piano by the age of 11, writing songs by 13, having David Gilmour of Pink Floyd help make your demo, getting a record deal by age 16, have your first #1 song by the age of 19 and having never, ever held a part time or 9 to 5 job is totally normal, then I and everyone I know must be freaks of nature who has strayed far, far off the path of normality.

Because Parading Around in an Outfit Like This is Totally Normal!

Especially if You're This Woman!

As much as I'm happy that she's only taking 6 years between Director's Cut and Aerial, this release is not going to contain much new material.  Not unlike a director's cut DVD that re-edits or adds  to a previously released film and makes it into something closer to an intended ,original vision, Kate has re-recorded songs from The Sensual World & The Red Shoes and possibly a new song but I've yet to see anything confirming that fact.  Normally, I would find the retreading of old songs an iffy prospect for the majority of artists and in a very notable case, it's the worst possible thing an artist could do.  When The Police recorded their hit song Don't Stand So Close To Me in 1986, the result was so unlistenable that it seemed they made it solely as  their justification for disbanding:

So Awful, I Don't Dare Link It.

But in Kate's case, I'm prepared to make an exception mainly because her output in so minimal that I'm happy to accept anything she's willing to dish out.  I only have one word of advice, This Woman's Work is not broken, so please don't fix it!

Jury Duty Purgatory!

Sheriff's Office in Toronto

I’ve been sitting the Sheriff’s office in downtown T.O. for two days now, waiting to see if I get picked for a jury.  The process is exactly like working as an extra on a film or TV show, except there are no famous people(or even the quasi famed), they don’t give you any food (not even free coffee) and at the end of a long day of waiting, they don’t pay you anything for your time.  It’s frustrating because I have respected the justice system and our society’s laws all of my life and this is the thanks I get for it. Obviously, without laws we  would descend into chaos.  Chaos is fine for nature but for us, being natural doesn’t always come naturally and we crave order and a certain degree of conformity (even if we don’t care to admit it).

 But for Christ’s sake, why do they have to waste potentially a week of my time or more to do this?  I assume that my name ended up on a jury selection list because, so far in my life, I’ve been a good citizen but because of that, should I not be able to perhaps choose a time where it’s more convenient for me to do my civic duty?  And that’s a phrase that I’ve been overhearing in people’s conversations in tones that ring of the highest level of sarcasm.  “Civic Duty”.

Pictured: Your Civic Duty

 If there’s one thing I’d like anyone reading this to understand it's that, since childhood, I’ve wanted to serve on a jury.  Maybe it was too many dramatic court shows or perhaps it was because I thoguht it was really cool when my Father was called as a witness during the trial of a suspected arsonist that sparked my interest and I have dreamed of the day that I could sit in a jury box with 11 total strangers and ladle out some hot, steaming justice to a worthy party, but I don’t want to do it just right now!  

My Childhood Dream: Minus All That German Expressionism!

I may not be currently employed but despite that fact, I’m just too busy.  I’m looking for work every day, I’m in school part time so I’m not exactly sitting on my hands but that’s just the reason that I don’t need to be sitting around,...waiting.  I have to ask, why, as a law abiding person, am I not allowed to choose the time that’s best for me?  If they sent me a summons for next month, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing out complaints and trying to avoid the conversations of people who are so horribly bored because they didn’t have the hindsight to bring something to read.  And what high minded travails of discourse they are!  Because if there is one more thing the world needs, it’s yet another opinion about Michael Jackson’s death, sexual perversions and his child rearing skills.  Here are some other exciting topics of conversation I’ve been overhearing during my tenure:

• ·         The Weather
• ·         When will the weather get better so that I can start gardening?
• ·         The Weather
• ·         Are you done with that magazine?
• ·         The Weather
• ·         Civic Duty
• ·         The Weather
• ·         Boy, this coffee sure is expensive.
• ·         The Weather
• ·         I’m going outside to get a coffee and enjoy the weather.

Holy shit you guys!  Did you hear about the weather?  It’s all anybody talked about all day!  

Oh. My. God.

 When I arrived here yesterday, I thought I’d be here a day at the very most and brought the book I was currently reading with me.  By the time it was 1:00 PM and they let us go for lunch, my book was done and I had to find something else to bring back with me until the released us for the day (That book being Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw) my civic duty ended up costing me nearly $30.00 that I can’t really afford to spend since I’m on EI and my income is fixed.  At least today I brought my laptop and homework so that my time isn’t completely whittled away by my civic duty.