Wocka wocka. Who wants to hear a funny-ass joke?

I have several things I want to write about, but I'll start with last night's animated lineup, while it's still fresh in my mind. I think the basic premise for last night's Simpsons episode (a documentary film about residents of Springfield) wasn't really used to its full potential. I think it might have worked better if they'd done it more like "22 Short Films About Springfield," focusing on different characters, rather than simply using it to come to the conclusion (yet again) that Homer's life really isn't so bad. Another geekier problem I had with it was how they suggested that all of the people in the film were about the same age, even when other episodes said otherwise. Flashbacks in "Mother Simpson" showed both young Homer and Wiggum, and Wiggum was a quite a bit older. And there's no way I'm believing the Crazy Cat Lady is only around 40. I had the same problem with "The Blunder Years"; Smithers was mentioned in another episode as being in his early forties, so he should have been OLDER than Homer in the flashback sequences. I realize that the non-aging makes things tricky in this respect, but I think the characters should generally be about the same ages relative to each other. Also, everyone having known each other as kids is a little too Muppet Babies or Flintstone Kids for my taste. I don't mind SOME of the characters having been childhood friends (I liked the fairly recent "The Way We Weren't," where Homer first meets Lenny, Carl, and Moe at summer camp), but recent episodes have sometimes had a tendency to go a little overboard.

The preview for the Simpsons movie was better than any of the other ones I'd seen, if only because it showed stuff other than Homer getting hurt or dumping pig waste. Nothing in it produced an "OMG, I can't WAIT for this movie!" reaction for me either, though. I don't doubt that the movie is going to have enough funny stuff in it to make it worth watching (I'll be REALLY disappointed if it doesn't), but I hope the story is good. I'm kind of dreading watching it and thinking, "Well, they could have just cut out the filler and made this a regular episode" or "Okay, this is a little too far-fetched for a Simpsons plot." (I also don't want it to be episodic like the Family Guy direct-to-video movie, but since that was specifically made so that it could be cut up and shown as regular episodes, I really don't expect it to be.) I'm also curious as to what guest stars will feature in it (come on, you KNOW they're going to have some), and whether we'll see appearances by infrequently used characters. I did notice Gabbo in the trailer, so that's a good start.

Okay, on to Family Guy, which really wasn't that great. It wasn't bad either, and some parts of it were funny, especially the Muppets with the wrong voices, but it didn't do much for me overall. Oh, well. Not every episode can be a classic. As of late, it sometimes seems like they're putting more effort into American Dad, and the most recent episode of THAT was definitely a good one. The whole peanut butter conspiracy thing worked really well, and "Illuminutti" was a pretty clever play on words. I never actually thought George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, but then, I DID do a report on him back in the sixth grade. It often seems like, when someone is credited in popular culture with having invented something, they really didn't. I mean, James Watt, Betsy Ross...I could go on, but those are the only two examples that come to mind offhand.

I'm sorry I haven't really been keeping up with my friends page recently, but I do intend to catch up at some point. At present, though, I'm just getting into The Sims 2, so most of my computer time will probably be devoted to that for a little while longer.

Live or die, make your choice

The seventh Monster-Mania Convention was held this past weekend. This convention is being held increasingly often, and becoming increasingly less interesting. It's pretty much not worth it to go any day except Saturday, which is good because it means spending less money, but I have no clue why they've stopped having events the other two days. This time, the first event bethje and I attended was a panel with Tom Savini, Kane Hodder, and Gunnar Hansen. As happened last time Gunnar was there, someone asked him (who played Leatherface in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre) what he thought of the TCM remake. It's pretty well-known that he didn't like it, but this time he had a few points to add to his complaint that they basically made Leatherface into a kid from Columbine. I'm not sure I'd mind a panel made up entirely of Gunnar complaining about the remake. {g} He mentioned that he hadn't seen the recent prequel, on which there's more later in this post.

We stuck around for the Devil's Rejects panel, featuring the always entertaining Sid Haig, this time accompanied by William Forsythe. Bill Moseley was also supposed to be there, but he'd been detained at the airport. We didn't attend the Monster Squad panel, since neither of us had seen it, and watched part of The Devil's Rejects while sitting in front of a probably-drunk guy who kept yelling at the characters in the film about dying with honor. He was eventually thrown out, and we eventually went back downstairs to get seats for the Saw panels. These were the Big Events this time around, but they weren't anywhere near as well-attended as other Big Events in the past. I suppose the stars of Saw just aren't the draw that Robert Englund is, which is definitely understandable. Still, they were interesting enough, although Beth said she thought Tobin Bell (who played Jigsaw, and actually talks like the character) came across as self-important, which I could totally see. At the end of the session, a producer took the opportunity to hype Saw IV, which strikes me as somewhat unnecessary. I mean, I guess it was pretty much inevitable that they'd make it, since the franchise has become a cash cow, but it really did seem to be a self-contained trilogy. The producer's spiel on the movie (which was something along the lines of, "Lots of twists and turns! More twists and turns than you'd ever expect! You think you've seen lots of twists and turns in the past? Well, I guarantee you haven't seen this many twists and turns!") didn't really help to sell it either.

After the Saw panels, we went to eat at an understaffed Friendly's, and then came back home. There isn't much more to say about that, but I will go back to Friday night and say that we watched the aforementioned TCM prequel then. Gunnar had complained about how they explained Leatherface in the original remake, and the prequel was even worse in that respect. Leatherface, the chainsaw, and the new round of victims were almost secondary players, though, with the most significant role being R. Lee Ermey's corrupt, brutal sheriff. In this movie, it's revealed that he got that job by killing and stealing the identity of the actual sheriff. Why this explanation is necessary is beyond me. Maybe the real Travis County Sheriff's Department insisted upon it. Nor do I know why it was necessary for Leatherface to have been adopted. In addition to the explanations being pointless, there really wasn't any suspense or actual horror at all. Besides, the kids were supposed to be going to Vietnam, and compared to that, I don't think murderous hicks with chainsaws are all that scary.