phamos | Entries tagged with vox

This morning, my husband came across a scintillating article on the widespread use of hand sanitizer by poltical candidates. Is it good hygiene, or a contemptuous disgust for the germy little people they're shaking hands with? My husband referred to it as a "Bart's People" story, which made me laugh. And then I realized that particular episode of The Simpsons will be included on the 9th season box set that comes out in December.

The Simpsons used to be one of my favorite shows, second only perhaps to Buffy. But I honestly haven't watched a new episode in about two years. I had become so disillusioned with the show that I found it upsetting to watch subpar episode after subpar episode, especially as the later episodes began to dominate the syndication special to the exclusion of seasons 6 and 7. The last episode that made me laugh at all was the "Land of the Jockeys" episode, and that was simply because of the sheer awful ridiculousness of it all.

Season 9 is really the show's last gasp at relevance. It is thoroughly uneven, with one brilliant episode ("The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson"), a number of episodes with hilarious parts that peter out towards the end ("This Little Wiggy", though it's redeemed by the last minute appearance of the pyromaniac leprechaun, and "Trash of the Titans", which thoroughly wastes Steve Martin), and some real stinkers (...gonna use oil-based paint cuz the wood is piiine!). So it's not an immediate must-buy for me as the last 8 seasons have been. And that makes me sad. But it's going on my wishlist, where it will linger until someone either decides to buy it FOR me, or I break down and realize that my desire to see the Canyonero ad whenever I want overrides my dislike of the rest of that episode (the one where Krusty becomes an alterna-comic and hangs out with Janeane Garofalo -- god, that could have been so good).

Season 10 was my first year in college, and I watched it pretty much every week with everyone else on my floor in our RH's apartment. I'm looking through the episode guide now and I don't see a single good episode. The only funny line that's even popping out to me right now is from the Mark Hamill episode: "Guys and Dolls, we're just a bunch of crazy guys and dolls, oh yeah yeah yeah yeah guys and dolls..." And that's not even that funny. *sigh* At least season 11 has the Tomacco episode. Season 12 has Comic Book Guy's bootleg tape of Mr. Rogers drunk. ("What do you mean I can't take off my sweater? I'm HOT!") In season 12 there's literally only one episode I can remember at all (the one where they go to Brazil), and after that I honestly don't think I'd seen any until this year's Halloween episode, which I saw on YouTube and didn't laugh at once. Not ONCE. So sad.

There was also a clip from the Simpsons movie on a DVD we recently rented. It was very, very random and not particularly funny (Hower gets attacked by his sled dogs). I'm expecting this movie to be worse than the Dark Crystal sequel, which I'm pretty depressed about, too.

Tower Records recently filed for bankruptcy, again, and this time their stores are actually going out of business. I have a real soft spot for Tower Records. Unlike many music nerds, I did not learn about indie rock by going to some tiny store, flipping through vinyl and having some grungy clerk tell me about Television or XTC. I learned about music through a combination of a friend with a very hip older sister, subscriptions to Sassy and Spin, and a dad who would go with me to Tower and buy me a handful of CDs that I'd never heard before every time we went to Chicago. So the Tower Records on Clark is where I bulked up my knowledge along with my collection. Tower Records was also where I first bought a Sandman book. (There was also a comic book store downstairs where I bought my first Cerebus book, but that's neither here nor there.) When I lived in Chicago, trips outside of Hyde Park often revolved around going to Tower. I very specifically remember buying double albums by Tori and Trent on their first day of release my second year -- that took a bite out of my wallet! The last batch of CDs I ever bought at the Chicago Tower included an album by Mandalay that was in one of their listening stations, saying it was Madonna's new favorite album. It's a great, great record.

I never had the same connections with either of the Tower Records stores in New York, but in my first couple of years here the Tower by Lincoln Center was a fairly regular destination on my Upper West Side outings. So today, we decided to go down there and scout out their "Blowout Sale" to see if there were any remaining Battlestar Galactica DVDs to be had for cheap. MAN, was that place ever torn to shit. It was the dregs of popular culture to be had at that store today, though if you're looking for a copy of the Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds, you'd be in luck. And the prices weren't even that great! A blowout sale where almost everything is only 20% off? You could buy this stuff for cheaper any given day on Amazon!

But I realized, when Tower closes, and when Kim's inevitably closes (and it will soon, have no doubt), there will be hardly anywhere to buy DVDs in the city -- certainly nowhere with any decent selection. There are the Virgin megastores -- I haven't heard how they're doing. According to rumors floating around the Kim's staff, Blockbuster will soon be closing, so their paltry retail selection won't be available. Barnes and Noble sells DVDs at some of their stores, but their selection is small and expensive.

I buy the vast majority of my DVDs and books on Amazon. Their prices are the cheapest, and if you spend over $25, the shipping is free. (The free shipping may not work so well for people in more isolated areas, but in New York, it's actually faster than UPS.) So I realize I have personally contributed to the downfall of brick and mortar stores. I suddenly regret it. I will miss the ability to wander through a store, leisurely considering items and making impulse buys. Sure, I can (and often do -- beware late-night Ambien induced Amazon shopping, folks) accomplish the same thing online. But the depersonalization of it is suddenly very unsettling. As a matter of fact, I do almost all of my shopping online -- I hate trying on clothes in stores and would rather do it at home and then take back the things I don't like to the physical stores. I bought my new phone online. When I buy a new computer, I will likely do it online. I buy furniture and gadgets online. But I always did it with the understanding that if I wanted to go to a store and do it, I could. And soon, I won't be able to. I love shopping on the internet. I've never been a great window shopper. But I always reserved the right to window shop if I so desired. That's ending.

When I was 5 years old, I made a video tape that had Frosty the Snowman and the Irwin Allen two-part celebrity-studded Alice in Wonderland special (which came out on DVD about a month after I bought a boot of it -- bogus). Alice in Wonderland was absolutely awesome. I made Segev watch it the other day and he thought it was awful. Which it is. But also awesome. What beats Sherman Helmsley in a mouse costume swimming in a river of tears singing about how much he hates dogs and cats? Nothing. Except maybe Carol Channing turning into a goat. The special also scared the bejeezus out of me, with the giant roaring lightning-flashy Jabberwocky that periodically appears. But then Lloyd Bridges sings a song and everything is all better. Sigh of relief.

I held onto the tape for a long time. I had it all through college. When I made the switch over to DVD completely, it had to go -- the only cassette I still have is The Jungle Book. Well, that and the Cher-fitness workout tape. But we won't talk about that.

But the tape was such a beautiful time-capsule of TV during my childhood. Part of that capsule-effect was the advertising. Two ads in particular stood out in my memory -- they were played every Christmas, and they were both on that tape. The first is Ronald McDonald and the badly-animated deer helping up the little boy who falls while ice-skating. The second is the son-coming-home-from-college Folgers ad. And thanks to the magic of YouTube, they're both readily available.

Commercials really stick with you -- it's kind of horrifying, but true. I'll try to think up some other good ads and post them. The only thing that's springing to mind right now are the Micro-machines commercials, but that was more a marketing campaign and not any one particualr really well-crafted ad that stands out. Thinking Micro-machines for some reason makes me think of Wacky Wall-walkers, which of course makes me think of Dr. Fad, the worst show ever to run in that really early Saturday morning slot (yes, worse than the Fraggle Rock cartoon OR Alf Tales. Did you know that Alf Tales is out on DVD? That's nostalgia taken to a ridiculous level.) I looked up Dr. Fad on YouTube, but it's so bad I can't even bring myself to post anything from it. I may have to do a separate post on Saturday morning television once Gummi Bears comes out on DVD (November 14th) -- I'll rent it and see if it holds up. The theme song certainly does. It's beyond compare. They are the Gummi Bears. They are the GUM-MI BEARS!

I've added the newest Doonesbury book, "The War Years", to my books sidebar on Vox. It is actually just a compilation of two earlier books, "Peace Out Dawg" and "Got War", but it's all nice and hardcovery and shiny shiny. I like buying the Doonesbury books when they come out in larger format, as it...well, it just looks nicer on my shelf, and I am anal and obsessive compulsive like that. Why buy coffee table books if they're not going to look nice on your coffee table?

I think another reason I am invested in the large-format Doonesbury books is because that's how I first read the strip. My parents had a copy of the very first large-format Doonesbury book, "The Doonesbury Chronicles", when I was a child. Honestly, I think my mom got it as a present or something, because I never saw her reading it, but I picked it up at some point and loved it.

Of course, I only got half the jokes. I remember very specifically asking my mom "What's Turkish Hashish?" after reading one strip in particular. And "What's a honky?" So I've been invested in the strip for a long time. I think it goes through strong periods and fallow periods, though I'm pretty much always happy when it focuses on Alex, Mike's teenage daughter. She's been a hoot for years now, starting with calling her mother's boyfriend "Uncle Stupidhead". It's so dumb, and yet something about the way Trudeau phrases it every time makes me laugh.

A couple of years ago, B.D., one of the main characters since the very first strip, lost his leg in Iraq. I remember that I happened to read the strip online that day, even though I hadn't read it in months, and I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. And yet what was really shocking, and really hit home, wasn't that in the last frame his leg was missing. It was that his helmet, which you never saw him without, was off. It was just this incredibly fragile moment, rendered really beautifully, that was designed to particularly affect people who had been reading for years. And I was so afraid he was going to die. I really was. Trudeau hasn't killed off a character in quite some time, and given that he's been doing the strip since the late '60s and the characters, though their ages have certainly been fudged quite a bit, are firmly in middle age now, they're due to start dropping if the strip keeps going. The only people that have died are Andy, a very minor character who appeared briefly in the late '70s as the token gay character and was then brought back in the late '80s to die of AIDS, Lacey, the congresswoman who was in her 80s even when she first appeared, and Mark's father, who was probably around 80 in the strip when he died. No primary characters. I fear for Joanie -- she's about 70 now. Yikes. 70. That seems impossible, but I was just reading strips in the book from 2002 and she cops to being 66. So yeah, 70. I kinda dread the potential for total baby-boomer angst as these characters age even further, but it will be interesting to see what develops. In the meantime, I will continue to laugh at Uncle Stupidhead, Zonker, and even Duke, though his prominence irritates me a lot of the time.