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Superman

In… Superman! Part II

At the end of this section you’ll know:

1. What is the best way to ward off a Laser Attack?

2. In a battle between Superman and a stalk of celery, who would win?

When Lois is captured we’re given our first look at “The Mad Scientist”. He has a Mohawk, but with sideburns, and wears eyeliner. Apparently our “Mad Scientist’s day job is as a front man for the Gothic Metal band “Suicide Scientists”. And of course he’s wearing a lab coat. Remember, all scientists wear lab coats. All of them.

Meanwhile with Lois tied up the Mad Scientist begins to destroy the city. Everyone seems to be exceptionally happy about this. Well at least I guess they are. They’re all smiling. Maybe they’ve all just been tazered.

At this point, what is to become the most over-used joke on the planet, is seen for the first time. Clark Kent jumps into a supply closet and changes into Superman. Nobody seems to notice, not even the janitor that was stuck in the closet with him.

As the scientist continues to pound on the city tearing the foundation out from underneath a building, superman quickly swings into action to put the building upright. Now, I know that some of you think that after you remove the foundation from under a building that there’s no way that you could get it back up. Well those of you who think that are wrong. It is completely logical to have a building stand with no foundation. Back me up structural engineers.

After pushing the building back up, where it stays, Superman begins punching the beam back up to the scientist’s lair. I hate to be the one who has to bring this up to the writers of such a fine show such as Superman!, but you can’t punch a laser. Hell, you can’t punch the water coming out of garden hose with any degree of success, so what is the point of sucker punching an energy beam?

Now I slept through most of my Physics class in High school, but I’m pretty sure that I never had a test that asked me to “Prove the Energy to Jell-O Ratio”. But a bunch of animators and Superman can’t be wrong, right? Remember, lasers and energy weapons can be punched.

Ignoring this slight technical oversight, Superman continues to make headway towards “The Mad Scientist” who we get to see at least 7 or 8 times flipping switches and looking peeved. As the scientist turns up the power to his Electrothenasia Ray it begins shooting rocks, which totally makes sense. We are also treated to yet another few shots of wildly pulsating nothings and some dials that, for all we know, show that the scientist’s wash is now in the spin cycle.

Superman eventually reaches the Ray-gun and ties it in a knot. The gun goes crazy and steam starts shooting out of it. It seems that “The Mad Scientist” was using a water powered laser gun. He may be evil but he’s planet friendly.

Then, as Superman bursts through the wall, The Mad Scientist in true bad guy fashion, yells out “Superman!”. Like we at home got confused. We thought that it was going to be Al Roaker. “There’s a 20% chance I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Then the building blows up and Superman saves everyone even the Gothic Mad Scientist who gets put in jail. The jail scene slowly fades to a newspaper that reads “SUPERMAN’S IDENTITY STILL A MYSTERY” on the front page. When was the last time you saw a front page article confirming something we already new was true? You’d seriously consider changing publications if you picked up the paper tomorrow and the cover story was “News Flash! Wood Still Comes From Trees! Details inside!”

In the end though, Superman wins, nobody gets the woman, and another villain with a retarded plan goes to jail. Remember, Superman always wins. Even against a giant steam-powered Jell-O gun.

Superman

In… Superman! Part I

At the end of this section you’ll know:

1. What is the best disguise you can wear?

2. All journalists have a part-time job. What is it?

From what I gather from the back of the DVD case, this episode of Superman is the first of the animated Superman Series to be broadcast in the early 40s. Like most bands first albums, this episode is self titled and the music sucks.

The show opens with a shot of Superman’s home planet, represented by a balloon, and a brief narration provided by the same guy who does the Superfriends. He explains that Superman’s dad realized that Krypton was about to explode so he built a rocket to take Superman to Earth. Superman’s dad was apparently a Geologist and a Rocket Scientist who had the intelligence and time to master both Tectonics and Interplanetary Travel, but sadly lacked the ability to call the Kryptonian Local News.

Superman’s rocket landed on Earth and Superman was taken in by an orphanage that the animator couldn’t be bothered to color. This orphanage, that didn’t seem too interested in asking questions about why infants were falling from the sky also gave Superman his great disguising skills. Superman changes his look from guy in blue with red underwear to guy in suit with glasses and hat. That outfit couldn’t fool my grandma.

I’ve had practical experience with the Superman School of Disguise. I remember once when I was streaking and the police were chasing me. I stopped and put on a pair of glasses and a hat, and they still knew it was me. Remember, a new hat and glasses makes you completely unidentifiable to even your closest friends.

The story itself opens to Thing calling Lois and Clark Kent into Mr. White’s Office. Using my super powerful deductive reasoning skills I determined that Mr. White was the Managing Editor. No, I used super sleuth skills, I did not just read it off his door.

Inside Mr. White’s Office Lois and Clark are read a letter written by a mad scientist, who is appropriately called “The Mad Scientist”. Ten yard penalty for no originality. It reads “My Electrothanasia-Ray strikes tonight at 12. Total destruction will come to those who laughed at me and failed to heed my warnings. Beware I strike at midnight!” Those of you who have written a few threatening letters (probably to me) will quickly identify the poor construction of this ransom note.

First of all, every bad guy from terrorists to General Zod to the bully on the playground knows that you always end your threat with “Unless you give me ____.” You ALWAYS demand something, be it money, a helicopter, or French toast. Especially if you want French Toast. They have to buy it and cook it, and that takes a long time.

Also, we’re left with several questions. Like: What the hell is an Electrothanasia-Ray? or What does it do? or Does it come in red? All important information that we the viewers need in order to accurately assess the Mad Scientists situation in comparison to that of our protagonist are unfortunately non-existent.

After reading the letter Lois accepts the assignment, runs off, jumps in a plane and flies to the “Mad Scientist’s” house. There’s a real important scene here where she puts on a flight helmet. From what I understand, it was supposed to shore up some sort of continuity error. Apparently the test audience didn’t believe that she actually put on her helmet. They also didn’t believe that as a journalist she had the credentials to fly a plane, but of course they do. Remember, all reporters are also part-time flight instructors.

Lois makes a few passes around the Mad Scientists lab, for good measure, and lands in front of it. But when she goes in to interview the scientist she’s captured. [Insert Fake Surprise Here]. This happens every flippin’ episode: Lois puts herself in avoidable danger, where she gets tied up at some point. This makes me think that Lois is some sort of bondage freak.

This does raise yet another interesting question: If everyone knows where the scientist’s lab is why don’t they dispatch a SWAT team or bomb the place? Heck, I’d just send two drunk guys and a bulldozer. Tell them to just take out the first floor, leave the others where they are. They’ll destroy the building (the scientist will have no weapon) the drunk guys will die (so you don’t have to pay them) and the bulldozer will be destroyed (a tax write-off). It’s foolproof. I really should be a consultant.

Flash Gordon

Akim the Terrible Part II

The show fades to Commissioner Alec using a pen that his son made for him in art class at his desk in front of a wall of flood lamps with letters of the alphabet on them. Immediately the Commissioner is greeted by the happy robot on his desk and informed that Flash Gordon and Dane are coming in. I was hopeful that this Commissioner was finally going to be the one normal character in the show. Just to clarify what I’m talking about check out the inset to the right for a breakdown of where we stand in the story.

As you can see, commissioner Alec was my best hope for someone that was normal. But that all fell away as soon as they did a close up of his face.

To say that Alec’s eyebrows were horrifying would be a tragic understatement. Commissioner Alec has eyebrow parasites attached to his face that are slowly eating away at all the hair on his head. A better description would be to say that they it like a pair of long skinny caterpillars crawled up onto his face, latched onto his forehead and died. After the close up of Commissioner Alec’s face everything went black.

When I awoke I was greeted by Flash’s gay lover, Chris (or possibly Kurt, I can’t tell) who is on his way to the planet Karen as a welcome wagon. What exactly he is sent there to do is never quite make clear. But luckily the writers didn’t let that get in the way of progressing the story and after a very telling discussion between Flash and Chris, he’s on his way to the planet of Akim the Weird.

After Chris lands in the spaceport on Karen, he walks through to customs and is pounded senseless by two guys in unitards and a train conductor. The conductor calls the throne room to inform Akim that the GBI spy has been caught. This is a pivotal scene as you can see in the background that the spaceport door is actually made of bamboo chutes. This means that Akim’s scientists have discovered one of nature’s best kept secrets: Bamboo is space-proof.

Again we are taken to the throne room of perpetual laundry with the GBI spy Chriskurt. Most of the dialogue in this scene is by the king, meaning that I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on. This made me lose focus and I started trying to see pictures in the clothing in the background. In this Tide-inspired Rorschach Test I found a camel and a monkey.

Being that I can only truly understand one side of the conversation, I was at a bit of a loss as to what was going on. Apparently Akim wants Chris to kill Flash, but he won’t do it. So they tie him in the spring mounted bathtub which gives him an orgasm inducing massage which turns him into a killer.

After he’s had his fun in the Raffle’s hot tub, Chris is taken back to Akim and is questioned about his loyalty to Flash. Chris responds by promising to kill Flash with a knife. The most important thing to note about this scene is that in the laundry you can clearly see both a buffalo and a human hand.

Back at GBI headquarters the Commissioner plays himself like a bagpipe as they wait for word from Chris, the happiest spaceman in the galaxy. This scene is the final nail in the coffin over Chris’s sexuality. This guy is queerer than Richard Simmons while sucking on a popsicle. Finally, after waiting for what seems like 3 or 4 lines of dialogue, Chris beeps them and explains how much he wants to see Flash. The wild thing is that Flash doesn’t act like its strange at all that Chris REALLY wants to see him after being away for so long.

The next important scene takes place in small room where Flash is planning out some cruise to visit a crab. Drawn on the board is also an intergalactic Family Circus with Jeffy’s path drawn all across it. Here Chris or Kurt or whatever the hell his name is tries to stab Flash, but ultimately fails as Flash slaps him in the stomach and takes him down immediately. To his own credit, Chris completely deserved that one. In a future of interplanetary travel, stun guns, and spring-loaded mind obliterating bathtubs, if you’re still trying to kill people with pointy things then you deserve to have the ever loving crap kicked out of you. You damn dirty ape.

The show then fades to Dr. Zarkov’s laboratory where he is examining Kurt/Chris’s brain with his glowing Magic Eight Ball from the future! Zarkov determines that Kurt has the brainwaves of a homicidal maniac. The Dr. says “It looks like he’s had a frontal lobotomy.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t a frontal lobotomy make you docile? I thought that was the whole point behind it giving them to violent mental patients.

At first I was skeptical that you could determine someone’s mental health from a lightshow or that lobotomies made people fly across the galaxy and try to murder people with knives. My fears were quickly relieved when I realized that Dr. Zarkov has a beard. If there’s one thing that TV has taught me, it’s that you don’t argue with doctors that have beards. You’ll probably wake up one day as a head in a jar.

Dr. Zarkov Determines that in order to keep them from falling to the same fate, he’ll need to put a celinite tape on their frontal lobes. And to do that, they’ll need to shave their heads and put wigs on them. I know what you’re thinking. They just pretended to cut their hair and pretended like they were going they put on a celinite tape and then pretended to put a wig on afterwards that looked EXACTLY like their original hair. But that is WRONG. They really did all that stuff, because the crew of the Flash Gordon TV show were committed to excellence.

Flash Gordon

Akim the Terrible Part I

Before I give you the rundown of what the show Flash Gordon : “Akim the terrible” (pronounced ‘Ah-keem’) is about, I’d first have to throw in some Trivia:

- Steve Holland plays Flash

- Irene Champlin is Dale Arden

- No, I didn’t just steal that from the opening credits.

The show opens with a description of the planet Karen, which is the stronghold of Akim the Terrible (who later will be called Akim the Moderately Irritating). He is a horrible man who, if the intro is to be trusted, rules a marble floating in space. This may not be entirely true, as the world resembles a nut as well. It could go either way.

With the narrator droning on about the despicable person Akim is, the camera fades in on a destroyed city on this horrible planet, represented by a very lost cat and bunch of paper. Nothing screams horrible ruler more than a bad sanitation department. The narrator informs us that on this particular planet “Robbers and cutthroats lurk around every corner” while showing us an old guy trying to escape the planet with everything in his possession: his physics lecture notes, his lunch, and a his Monopoly money. The man is quite serious about his Hasbro games.

As the pre-escapee walks down the street, he is assaulted by (1) Robber and (1) Cutthroat, who both are dressed in unitards. They wear unitards because they are in the future. In the future people have advanced beyond the need for fashion sense, but not the need for briefcases. At this point the old guy struggles to keep his lunch while the two men tickle him. Then, out of somewhere off-screen a Vatican priest shows up and attempts to defend the old man by giving the Cutthroat (the bald one) a noogie. This works relatively well seeing as how no one knows how to fight on this planet. Akim somehow turned the entirety of Karen into a bunch of fourth graders. That’s not really Terrible, that’s just kind of weird.

On this planet that King Akim rules it seems like train conductors are policemen as well, but only if they’re wearing a cummerbund. I say this with a great degree of certainty because when the priest, the robbers and the old man are roughhousing, a conductor comes out of nowhere and breaks up the fight. Saying he comes out of nowhere is kind of a lie. He clearly sees the fighting from a train station downtown and uses his superpowers to run all the way to the fight in a matter of seconds. He quickly breaks up violent pushing and shoving that has erupted and arrests the priest for being a nice guy on a planet that is supposed to be Terrible. Vatican guy didn’t get to go to the “How to be Bad” seminar like everyone else and for that he will be put in a spring powered bathtub, but more on that later..

The show then cuts to Akim in his throne room where it is apparently laundry day. Everywhere hanging from the ceiling and walls are clothes drying. The throne room is ridiculous, but it’s Akim’s clothing that take the show. King Akim’s headdress is a cloth reproduction of a cherry pie accented by Fruit Rollups that are hanging from it. His gown is made of fishing net. Not fishnet, it’s fishing net, like the kind you use to catch dolphins.

Of course, his assistant is no better dressed. This poor guy is donning an British policeman’s cap and a shellacked kimono. He looks like he’s either late for his Legend of Kung Fu audition, or he’s wearing 50 ponchos at once.

I took quite a bit of time checking out the background of this throne room as well as Akim and his assistant’s clothing since I haven’t the faintest idea what Akim is saying most of the time. The man has an accent heavier than the box of porn under my bed. [Movie Clip 1.7 MB]. In case you are on Dial-up and 1.7 Meg is too big for you to download (Welcome to the new millennium, get with the program), here is a brief synopsis of the dialogue:

King Freshly-Baked: Der haff been improovmen.
Assistant Poncho: Bootifool Bootifool
King Freshly-Baked: Is goo to haff you bag [something] Ow goez hour campin?
Assistant Poncho: Sumsvay vey well you magisty. Buh as long as the galazy have [something] We canno make happy de sire.
King Freshly-Baked: But their leeders have a prize. Everyman haf a prize.

What I gather from this conversation is that they want to go camping, but Akim has set up some galaxy wide raffle and he can’t go. I didn’t see raffle ticket one through the entire rest of the episode, so my translation is probably wrong. It’s probably better that there wasn’t a raffle since he’s so terrible it would probably be rigged anyway. Luckily for us English speakers, it doesn’t seem to matter what the hell Akim is talking about as long as one comes away from the conversation with the impression that Akim is bad, and he wants to destroy Flash Gordon. Which is a plot twist that surprises only one-celled creatures and a few really dumb plants.

After the wonderful banter about the raffle and destroying humanity as we don’t know it, the priest from before is brought in to be put on trial. He is introduced as John, which with a name like that solidifies him as definitely being an alien. John the alien is sentenced by Akim to “have his mind changed”. According to the owner’s manual you need to do this once about every 80,000 miles.

John is then grabbed by two guards, whose uniforms are made out of Glad trash bags, and tied into a hot tub with springs all around the inside and a bunch of floodlights at the bottom. At first I thought this was the raffle item they were talking about earlier but it turns out that this retrofitted tub is actually a brain scrambler. This device gives the subject a good massage and then turns them into a bad person. John, who’s name suddenly gets changed to Jorgo, is given a hippy-style headband, turned bad and released back into the planet of stray cats, lines of trashcans, and 8.5×11 sheets of paper. [Movie Clip 800K]

After Jorgo/John is led out of the throne room, another man in a shiny duct tape hat enters to report that a spaceship from GBI is on its way to Karen. GBI or the Galactic Bureau of Investigation is never clearly explained in any of the episodes I’ve seen. As my guess, which is always accurate, they’re a collection of 20 or so humans that go around the galaxy aggravating aspiring dictators, destroying robots, and getting captured. They do that last thing extremely well. And I think King Akim summed it up the GBI’s function when he so succinctly said to his funny-hatted messenger: “Ah Geebee eye mahn fum earf. Ery vell owl dahs is a peasent sopize.” You can’t argue with that.

This is a special message from Fred Phelps which may be a parody. Learn the whereabouts of Carlin as well as what classifies a fool.

What I fucking hate about fucking commercials. Just a tad bit of anger here.