#finally started the legendary BOP

[jerrythebug]

I started reading Birds of Prey (1999) yesterday and even if it is for awful men reasons (I need my fix of Teddy) the main ladies are very compelling and I'm reading the whole thing, not just some random appearances of Ted. Dinah can get it! Oracle can get it! I gotta draw them soon holy moly!!!! Cool women kick ass!!! Yeah!!!

Also the art is very gorgeous and the comic itself is so fun and quick to read. So far I've made it to not-Guy appearance and Catwoman was there too. And the whole 'team' is just a duo for now which kinda surprised me. I thought there were more members? I think there will be more birds eventually? But even if there won't be, a homoerotic duo of Babs and Dinah is good too! I'm not complaining!

Of course Batman made an appearance too. Booo! What a loser! I don't want to see him again (he had that yellow belt on tho which was very cool but I'm beefing with him rn cause of overexposure, I'll get over it eventually)!! Nightwing was expected too, and he looked handsome as always. He had a nice moment with Babs but also I have mixed feelings about him. I wish him well though, I won't be as mad when he appears again, which he will for sure. Dick can also get it-what, who said that????

[matt0044]

So... “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is a bop, right?

It’s firmly supplanted “Let It Go” as Disney’s latest ear-worm until the next one comes along but it’s more than just a catchy ballard. It spells out how the Family Madrigal view him as a blight on their family name, especially when they’ve been a pillar of their community.

It also describes how rather than dealing with his problem and maybe helping him through it, they opted to just let him retreat into his room never to be seen again. Better to sweep it under the rug. However, this also proves to be a root in while the house is coming undone.

The message is clear: a family can’t stay as one so long as they can’t talk about their problems with each other. It’s why Mirabel doesn’t get a gift so she can be the outsider looking in.

Where is this going? Well... somebody just finished Voltron: Legendary Defender... and enjoyed it.

Here me out before you scroll away.

I had finished up to Season 7 along with Teen Titans three days before Season 8 dropped. I knew that fandom discourse would be a bear and opted to let the season simmer before I viewed it for myself a few Watch Lists down the road.

What I couldn’t have known was this overwhelming hate for Season 8. I was on Twitter where handles were being altered to include #FuckVoltron and the like. I glimpsed spoilers of what happened in the finale without getting into the dirty details.

Thus I decided to put it off until the heat died down. A whole half decade at that. With Fandom Drama down to near non-existent, I decided to return and engage with Voltron on its own terms from the start. No shipping drama, no expectations for how it should go, no accusations of problematic behavior and no Purple Lion conspiracies.

And... I liked it. I highly encourage those scared off by the drama or felt Season 8 did it dirty to give it a(nother) shot. It deserves a full on renaissance the way Twilight got.

Why? (spoilers ahead).

I was sold on Allura and Lance’s relationship. I loved how he went from being a flirt to genuinely admiring Allura as a leader and Paladin, encouraging her in the season 4 finale without trying to get anything out of it.

I liked the tonal shift around Season 7 where the ultimate Golion homage is made with the Space Explorers coming home to a war ravaged Earth.

I liked how human Lotor and Honerva were as villains coming after Zarkon. I can see why there’s a whole ass conspiracy framed around him actually being in Season 8. Also them taking that “Your mother was an Altean bitch” like and running with it for Hagger was brilliant.

Keith becoming the Black Paladin after Kuron’s reveal was well done and felt weirdly natural in retrospect. He feels like he can’t measure up to Shiro and learns more discipline from

Allura sacrificing herself to restore all realities felt a lot better with the knowledge of spoilers. It helps that the ending went with a more noble feel than angsty, showing how the Paladins strove make sure that her actions set an example for years to come.

I love that they got creative with the multiple alien species and kept the Alteans from being just humans in space like in the original. It really took inspiration from Vehicle Voltron with more aliens in the mix.

Shiro the Hero, as Crazy Coran put it. What can I say except that he’s the kind of character you call a Mary Sue if he wasn’t a guy. Always calm, always perservering, putting the mission first and being a pillar the team can lean on. He even creates his own Voltron out of the Atlas

Honestly, the whole Adam thing isn’t something I fully blame the writers given the producers pushing back. Mind you, I feel like Keith would’ve made a good endgame pairing with him if they had even out their ages when they first meet, both as teenage proteges.

Studio Mir was amazing, especially with the space battles. Honestly, if Robotech managed to make a comeback, I could totally see them being tapped to match the classic Anime style.

So... yeah. Voltron good actually.

[randomvarious]

German Trip Hop Playlist (YouTube)

Alright, folks, for the past couple Sundays I've been posting playlists comprised of German music from electronic genres that the country tends to be naturally associated with—trance and techno—but this week, to end this little Deutsch-centric foray I've been on, we're getting into some sweet cuts from a genre that Germany's not so typically known for: trip hop.

Now, maybe when you think of German music, you naturally assume some things. And probably because of Kraftwerk and krautrock and techno, you imagine stuff that sounds cold, mechanical, repetitious, and robotic. But this little playlist here, which really isn't even beginning to scratch the surface of Germany's trip hop landscape, should start to disabuse you of your very own wrongly held preconceived notions. All of these tracks here are a blend of smooth, blissful, and relaxing. Clearly and obviously, there’s far, far, far more to German music than sounding like an automaton, but maybe you never really thought about it all that much 🤷‍♂️.

So let's highlight some of these nuggets here, and start with a track that really seems to call back to trip hop's own Bristol, UK origins, when it was basically fusing Jamaican dub and hip hop in order to form sonic syrup in the late 80s and early 90s. The Frankfurt-based duo of Soul Patrol, who only ever released a pair of 12-inches, bring forth "Slow Groove," a sedative that served as their debut track when it appeared on a pair of compilations back in '95. This gem uses a sample that should sound *very* familiar to hip hop heads: Isaac Hayes' "Walk On By," a part of which was famously used in The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Warning," as well as another mid-90s trip hop tune, Belgian group Hooverphonic's "2 Wicky," which got a lot of burn on Pandora back when Pandora was still a big fucking deal. "Slow Groove" basically sounds like it was made by Portishead, but replacing Beth Gibbons on vocals is an American woman named Francesca Harper, who is actually now a world-renowned dancer. And it has a little over 43,000 plays across a few different uploads on YouTube.

Next up, from Berlin, we have a guy named Jiri.Ceiver, who in 1997 released a song called "Ycool" on a 10-inch single as well as his second and final album, Jig, Amble & Lisp, which were both put out on the legendary Frankfurt-based and Sven Väth co-owned Harthouse label. Harthouse had originally started out as a pioneering outlet for hard trance, trance, and techno in the early 90s, but by the latter part of that decade, and before they wound up closing their doors, they had expanded their palette with a bunch more electronic genres. And “Ycool,” a terrific piece of reconstructed trip hop-blues, serves as a sweet example of just how broad that expansion was getting. And it only has 169 plays!

And lastly, we have something beautifully dubby from another Berliner named Christian Kleine, whose 2000 tune, "Bitter Things," first exclusively appeared on a lovely double-disc compilation called Putting the Morr Back in Morrissey, which really had nothing to do with The Smiths' own frontman, other than the fact that a bunch of its songs had a reflective melancholy to them. However, despite "Bitter Things"' own title, this is a song that was really made to sync up with a sunrise. An organic, crunchy, and happy, boom-bappy bop, with cool, dubby effects employed all throughout. Over 36,000 plays across a few different YouTube uploads.

This playlist is ordered as chronologically as possible:

Nonplace Urban Field - "Universe" Jazz Con Bazz - "Wayz of Life" Knowtoryus - "The Revenge of the Bomberclad Joint (Kruder & Dorfmeister session, Part II)" Fon:Kin - "Montininja (Fauna Flash remix)" Hacienda - "Nightmare of Max" Soul Patrol - "Slow Groove (Soul Patrol original vocal)" Beanfield - "Charles (remix)" Jiri.Ceiver - "Ycool" Christian Kleine - "Bitter Things" Lali Puna - "Fast Forward (Flowchart Rmx)"

And this playlist is also on YouTube Music.

So with this start, we have ten personal German trip hop favorites of mine that appear on a handful of compilations that I've collected over the years. Totals at 53 minutes.

And next week we'll be staying in this chilly mode, but we'll be zooming out from Germany ⛄.

Enjoy!

More to come, eventually. Stay tuned!

Like what you hear? Follow me on Spotify and YouTube for more cool playlists and uploads!

[weneverlearn]

Dogs, a Poor Cow, and the wild life of Reminder Records

An interview with Reminder Records head, Jeremy Thompson

If your interest lies in the lost new wave (in the original sense of that overused term) of the late '70s/early '80s, you've no doubt heard of Reminder Records. For about four years now, the ever-busy imprint has been churning out high quality forgotten nuggets that bop around the peppier edges of the original punk explosion.

And this month brought their latest release -- previously unknown demos for Legendary Lovers, the fourth LP from the French punk band, Dogs. While the original 1983 album was well into the Dogs' cleaner new wave moment, these mangier demos show they were still doing the zippiest power pop with the best of them.

You can check out / order from The Legendary Lovers Demos right here.

Since he's always got another platter heating up in the Reminder microwave -- and he just went on a trip to Japan -- we figured we'd check in with Reminder head honcho, Jeremy Thompson.

Dogs, circa 1983 (photo: Bruno Trividic)

So first off, tell me how Legendary Lovers came about. Where'd you find the demos, how'd you clean them up, etc...

So the demos were recently found by Bruno Lecoeur. He was the original engineer for the sessions. I guess he thought he'd lost the tapes and just recently unearthed them and got in touch with me.

Did you know there were Lovers demos floating around before working with the band? 

I had first heard about them when I was putting together the first Dogs record last year. Robin WIlls told me that he remembered hearing them in the early ‘80's, and much preferred the sound of the demos to the LP. 

Your wife Mary (singer/guitarist for excellent modern power pop band, Baby Shakes) did the artwork, right? Did the band pitch in ideas? 

Yes! Mary did the art. She does all the Reminder stuff. We sent lots of drafts to Bruno Trividic (different Bruno) to keep them in the loop, but ultimately it was Mary's design.

While working on your Dogs releases, has anyone from singer Dominique Laboubée's family been involved? 

Yes, but indirectly. For this record Bruno Lecour has been in contact with everyone, getting approvals, etc. For the first LP, I was working with Lionel Hermanni, the owner of Melodies Massacre, and it was the same way. He'd communicate with everyone in the Dogs camp and get back to me with feedback, etc. I did send Catherine Laboubee, Dominic's sister, advance copies of the audio and art for this record to make sure she approved before going to press. 

Any more Dogs stuff in the Reminder pipeline?

Maybe yes, there is more stuff, but I need to go through everything and think about how to do it. 

Dogs, circa 1983 (photo: Bruno Trividic)

So tell me about your recent trip to Japan. What was the reason for going? 

We just went for vacation, for fun and to see friends. 

You DJ'd at Fifi's bar Poor Cow, right? How'd that go?

Note: Fifi was the co-founder of legendary Japanese garage punk band, Teengenerate, and other awesome bands. Oh, and did we mention that the amazing 2014 Teengenerate documentary, Get Action, is finally up at YouTube?!

It was really good! I brought a 45 box of some of my best stuff. Lots of people ended up coming, and I got to DJ with some really great people. Was great to be able to spend time with friends that we don't get to see very often. Poor Cow is a very special, one of a kind place. 

In 1995, when New Bomb Turks toured with Teengenerate, Fifi would lament how there were no late night bars in Japan, and how he was jealous of bars here and in some parts of Europe that stayed open until 2 a.m. or later. That was one of the reasons he started Poor Cow in his apartment. So, did he stay open until 2 a.m.? Admittedly, that was a long time ago we toured with them, and I haven't been back to Japan since – so did you see any other late night bars while in Japan?

Yeah [Poor Cow] were open really late. We did a separate DJ night in Osaka the night before, that was like an all-night thing, I think it ended at 5 or 6. Also very fun, the people we DJ'd with had really crazy records. A lot of super rare stuff I'd never seen in person. 

Really the only noteworthy bar we went to was Poor Cow. We spent most of our time [in Japan] sightseeing, record shopping. I did go to a few shows there, but the venues were very similar to places you'd see in NYC. 

Dogs, circa 1983 (photo: Bruno Trividic)

[styrmwb]

Favorite Final Fantasy Music (FFXIV - Stormblood)

I don't think the copypasta has reached Stormblood yet BUT ANYWAYS 2ND EXPANSION LET'S DO ITTTTTT! This is when I started playing XIV! Lots of fond memories of TP (0 fond memories of TP). Something Stormbloood does, very similar to XIII, is the main motif. That shit is EVERYWHERE. And luckily, it's Amazing, so I literally am not complaining about hearing it all the time (spot #1 on this list goes to the stormblood quest accepted tune).

Something I will preface with is a lot of the music I love here is in the Omegascape raids but it's all (mostly) remixes! I love all of those songs but it would be doing this soundtrack a disservice to put any of them in this list (That Dancing Mad version is fucking dope though)

5. Crimson Sunrise Easily my second favorite main city theme. I feel like I can't say much about the melody, cause it is The Stormblood Motif and I'm probably gonna say some more about it later down the list, but I will say I love the instruments used here. The flute and plucking (I think it's a shamisen) is really calming, and the slow tempo of the drums (taiko?) add to this, while also giving that grand nature befitting of a huge city.

4. Dangertek Completely different vibe from the last song. This was originally introduced in PvP, but I more commonly experience it in treasure maps. It's an absolutely banger techno remix of Hard to Kill, the FATE Boss theme, and it's my favorite version of the two. The melody is sick, the guitar playing it rocks, and that heavy beat is a bop. I also really love the interlude section that I can only describe with the BADADUNBADADUNBADADUN noise going back into the Hard to Kill riff again but from a distance, it's so coollllllll I love this song

3. Triumph Part 2 of The Stormblood Motif; but I think this version is the most stand out example. This also includes the Ala Mhigo anthem for an epic combination of both sides of the expansion, a lot of eastern instruments included. I love the start of this song with the japanese flute and the more middle eastern sounding guitar (I have learned that this is called an Oud!) again, showing that combination of two ends. The Ala Mhigo anthem played by the brass builds up the intensity of the song, and then The Stormblood Motif rockets it into pure hype. It's so hard not to sing along to it every time it plays! The finale of this song sounds like a spiral wind down while still keeping the energy. It's impossible to hate any dungeons in this expansion when you know you're gonna hear this at the end. (STORM OF BLOOD, BORN FROM BLOOD, OF OUR FALLEN BROTHERRRRRSSSS! BORN UPON OUR HANDS, CRADLED IN OUR ARMS, SWELLING IN OUR HEAAAAAARTS! RAISE YOUR WEARY HEAD, HEED THE CALL TO ARMS, RINGING IN YOUR HEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAART!!!!)

2. Amatsu Kaze Bringing in that classic Primals rock to this list in my favorite way, Amatsu Kaze is a song I literally liked so much I learned to sing to it despite not knowing Japanese (I'm sure my pronunciation is horrible don't worry I keep it private). That fucking bass at the start is legendary, not to mention the electric strumming and the strange vibraphone like pongs creating a super unique sound. It's not a very high speed intense rush song, but that slower deliberate nature is perfect for Byakko being this massive brutal creature. To the main meat of the song, I love how it's the first lyrical song in XIV to be in Japanese! I mean, like, I don't see why they wouldn't cause it literally takes place in the Far East, but I still love it. The verse sounds like he's holding in his anger, the refrain getting more angry, and then finally screaming in the chorus (I looked up music words for this I hope I'm using them right). The very end of the song before the loop sounds like an absolutely mindless rage, looping and spiraling before calming down once more. What else is really cool about the lyrics is it's actually telling Byakko and Tenzen's story (also shoutouts to the XI reference let's goooo), which the next of the Four Lords' song also does. This song is addictive to listen to, only getting more hype as it continues. In the Primals version, it even has Yoshi-P singing it which is fucking outstanding. (KAZE TODOROKE KAZE TODOROKE KAZE TODOROKEEEEEEEEEE)

1. The Worm's Tail COME DON THE MASK OF BLIND BETRAYAL E'ER DOES THE HEAD DEVOUR ITS TAIL AS IRON BENDS TO STEEL O'ER MY RIVALS I PREVAIL! This song has a beginning so fucking epic, they use it twice in the game (granted the second time was a medley BUT UHH SHUT UP). The Worm's Tail is my favorite final boss theme out of all of the XIV expansions. As you can probably tell, I fucking love that intro. The massive choir setting the stage as you fly into the heavens on a giant fucking dragon that you're literally trying to kill, the drums slamming to raise the song further, I hate using this word so much, but it's fuckin epic! The final note brings tears to my eyes. When the song actually starts, it goes into this really really cool melody that's very bouncy and I THINK it's waltz like? please feel free to correct me on this I need to expand my words but I hope you get what I mean. It's a very unique rhythm. I love the middle part between it looping, continuing to raise the song even higher, almost like that audio illusion that keeps going up despite not actually going up? It gives that illusion of height as it should. The entire way through, the orchestra continues to sound heavy and grand even during the "calmer" parts, which for the size of this fight and Shinryu himself, I think is perfect. Finally, we reach The Stormblood Motif Part 3. The finale of this expansion HAS to fucking have it. The melody itself already sounds uplifting, it already stokes the fires in your heart. Combine it with the sound of this song and the context of the fight, and it brings it to the highest level it could possibly go. Last thoughts, cause I couldn't put them anywhere else, but while the base version is mainly gibberish vocals, the official orchestral version actually adds lyrics (same with Ultima and Heroes), and this song is essentially sung By Zenos. It talks of rising above, it talks about being the beginning and the end, and it's even partly sung in latin, befitting the Garlean Empire. The entire song is Zenos's victory chant against you, but you almost combat him equally with Storm of Blood overtaking the entire song. It's fuckin poetic, man.

Honorable mentions are: Prelude - Long March Home, Heroes of Stormblood, Gates of the Moon, Beauty's Wicked Wiles, Answer on High, Wayward Daughter, eScape, Sunset, Sunrise, and From the Dragon's Wake. (and again like every song in Omegascape and Return to Ivalice (those songs are just straight ports but tactics music fucks))

[cecebookworm]

Anyway, I finished Everblaze like three days ago but then I had to process a few theories and reread the information bit of Unlocked so this is technically late. But besides all that, which will be coming on a “half way there” wrap up style post after Lodestar, here are my thoughts after my Everblaze reread!

NOTE: I will be going back to my previous KOLTC reread thoughts and adding this as well because I forgot to but SPOILERS! I will be discussing everything I felt/noticed regardless of whether certain things were revealed in this book or in later books. So if you haven’t read the whole series I wouldn’t recommend this. (And if you don’t care then go off)

- I feel like this books strength is that when it starts it doesn’t stop. From Fintan’s healing onward it’s just bam bam bam with action or drama or mystery.

- Sophie is so iconic in this book. The Blackswan told her no and then she said, “UNO REVERSE!”

- Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeffffffffffffffffffffffffffeeeeeeeeee He hurts me in this book. Like look, it gets worse. We’ve all witnessed Neverseen Keefe, Legacy Keefe, UNLOCKED KEEFE! *shudders* But this is his early on set trauma pain, and I hate it.

- Fitz is actually nice in this book. Yes he has a lot to make up for after Exile, but I found his care for Sophie amid everyone detesting over the healing extremely charming and sweet.

- B I A N A !!!!!! Finally, after two books of being absolutely horrible she can have her icon arc. I love her in this book. I mean, the scene where Edaline gives some of Jolie’s old dresses to Biana rather than Sophie brings me some, shall we say, pain. But, that was unintentional on all fronts so it’s fineeeee. Plus Biana going bop bop to Gisela on Everest is a personal favorite moment of hers for me in the whole series.

- Oh Dex, where do I begin… mannnnnnnn, that circlet plot still annoys me to this day. I mean seriously, Dex? Your father is talentless and you’ve SEEN first hand how poorly people treat him over it but you’ll subjugate someone else to that WILLINGLY? For shame.

- I always wonder what his family thought in this moment. Specficlly, Juline. While we don’t know that she’s in the Black Swan at this point in the series, nor do we even meet Squall yet, I can’t help but wonder how she felt about witnessing this. Given that she’s in the collective, I doubt she was even happy that Dex was working with the council to create weapons, and then she had to witness Emery swear that anyone associated with Black Swan would be hunted down (aka her, lmao), AND THEN, she had to witness Sophie (the Moonlark) literally be nerfed in-front of the nation. Yikes.

- Generally speaking, the circlet plot is still really messed up. I would argue it’s one of the worst things the council present in the series did. Regardless of how many people perceived Sophie to be a danger to society, considering the circlets first version left her litteraly unconscious, then it’s second attempt left her physically and mentally weak, I would argue that’s torture to one of your citizens. But oh well. This is the council we’re talking about so are we really surprised?

- Can we talk about all of the non-council adults in that scene? Oh my god, we all know how protective Grady is of her, but seeing protective Edaline, Tiegran, and Elwin is so legendary.

- Grady in this book is double the pain. Like he was going through it in Exile, but that’s honestly worsened in this book. While his blame shifts from himself/The Black Swan, it immediately goes to the mysterious pyrokinetic (aka Brant) who he KNOWS killed Jolie and tortured Sophie during her kidnapping. At that point, he’s suffering from the fact that both his daughters suffered at the hands of the same person but he doesn’t know who it is. Then it’s revealed to be Brant, aka the person him and Edaline have been taking care of like a son for the past sixteen freaking years. WHEN I SAY THIS SERIES HURTS! I MEAN IT HURTS!

- That whole sequence is still sooooooo good. Grady’s rage, Sophie’s protectiveness, Brants mania. MY GOD! (Then there’s that really really really messed up line where Brant basically says he’ll kill Sophie but leave Grady alive basically just to make Grady suffer even more is still probably one of the most horrible throw away lines in this series. And that’s saying something)

- Silveny’s role in this book will forever pain. Not as much as in Flashback but close.

- The whole aromark subplot makes no sense to me as a student currently in biology. This is my favorite series of all times, and yes, it is fantasy, but I don’t think Shannon Messenger entirely understands what an enzyme is…

- The Fintan healing scene still pains me to this day. Especially when you find out Kenric kind of knew he probably wasn’t gonna make it. Plus those scenes are just so well written.

- Kenric is still a character that baffles me, something we’ll touch on further when I get to my rereads of Unlocked and Stellarlune. I always find myself wondering if he GENUINELY cared for Sophie. His constant gentle teasings when he’s around her, the fact that he’s the councilor with her during her second inflicting session after her really horrible first one, you get the gist. Did he genuinely care for her and see her as a symbol of hope? Or is it simply that he looks at her and sees Oralie’s daughter? I doubt we’ll ever get the full answer to this given that he’s dead as of this book, but it’s still something to consider.

- Okay, here’s where my notes come in. FIRST NOTE! Page 89, and this one isn’t about future theories or anything, I just find it really interesting that one of the poems Brant writes to Jolie is both an ode to her an ode to fire. Again, at the end of this book we know WHY, he’s a pyrokinetic blah blah blah. I just never noticed.

- Pages 156-158 are both sad and cute. Seeing Sophie try to comfort Keefe about needing more of his skin melted off pains me. Worsened by when he’s later like, “My mom actually seemed like she cared about me this time.” (Not verbatim) PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAINNNNNNNNN!

- Page 189. Here begins cognates Sophie Foster and Fitzroy Vacker. From here on out dear Keepers, take a shot of Lushberry Juice.

- HERE WE HAVE A MADDDDD SKIP: 324-325. I’m sorry, but I could really use some somnalene. My restless anxious can��t sleep ass really needs somnalene. Why can’t this exist irl?

- Page 409. This is something that just, bothers me. Keefe says, “Though of course my mom told me I fastened it to loosely and insisted I repin it. Twice.” (Verbatim) So like, Gisela is 100% a horrible person who just didn’t want Keefe to lose the pin because that would mean they couldn’t find them. I HATE HER! *angry pillow punching*

- Page 482. Emery calling Sophie, “Not Normal” is so shitty. I don’t care if she technically isn’t. Shamming a thirteen year old in front of the world before maiming her? NOT COOL MAN!

- Chapters 43-44. Peak Sophie dumbassery. “Read the ogre kings mind!” Her dumb dumb brain said. “It won’t be that bad!” Her dumb dumb brain said.

- It went bad

Anyway, Everblaze was fun. But most of the mysteries presented here have been solved. The next book, Neverseen on the other hand, well, that’s just getting started isn’t it?

(I’m so melodramatic sometimes lmao)

[callgespenst]

Best of 2022 Media Post

I read/watched a whole lot last year! Here’s the summary of what I enjoyed the most.

Sing a Bit of Harmony: The best new anime movie I saw last year. Usually I try and watch everything I can subbed, but I caught the dub showing for this and it was really well done. Very lived-in and real-feeling near future setting, some wonderful stuff about AI, and just a really good coming of age story. A year later it’s apparently finally getting a US BD release so I’m excited to finally watch it subbed.

Dress-Up Darling: Found this show oddly relatable (or at least, the parts about making the costumes). Wholesome in a roundabout way, and has a very true to life portrayal of how horny teenagers can be, without being weird or gross about it.

Everything Everywhere All At Once: I haven’t been hooked by a trailer for a movie like that in a very long while. Just seeing the preview I knew I was in for a great time, and it delivered. A lot of other people’s favorite movie of 2022 as well, but it’s just that good.

Creamy Mami: One of the earliest magical girl shows, and yet, goes in directions completely untouched by any of its successors. Excellent funny little mascot characters, bopping tunes, and some of the funniest episodes of anything I’ve ever seen. An absolute must watch. Still have some OVAs to go through at some point.

Thrilling Bloody Sword: the summary said “a martial arts movie based on Snow White” and while that’s technically true, it’s so, so much more from that. When the opening credits played and the movie’s main theme turned out to -literally- just be a stolen reindition of the Space Battleship Yamato opening, I knew I was in for a good time. Bonkers battles, a completely unpredictable plot, and special effects that weren’t even good at the time combine into a flawless package. Also, the male main antagonist is weirdly hot and also an incredible actor. When the special effects are that bad, you gotta really give it your all to sell them.

Glass Onion: Another popular pick, but it’s damn good. Needs every second of its two and a half hour runtime. Has a great core message, a superb female lead, and the best use of celebrity cameos in any media I’ve seen in a good long while. Hope there’s many more Benoit Blanc mysteries to come.

Spy X Family: The first anime adaptation in a hot minute that got me to read the source material. A perfect mix of comedy, action, and good old fashioned spy thrills. My only complaint is that there’s not nearly enough Yor getting to do what she does best, but I think the next part of the manga I have to read will fix that.

Dragon Ball Super Hero: Went to go see this twice! Wasn’t sure how the 3DCG would go over, but it was really well done. Got me to finally re-read Dragon Ball all the way through like I’ve wanted to for ages, so that was good too. The action’s great, but it’s really the good ol’ Toriyama humor in full force.

Symphony of the Night: Not sure what I can say about one of the most acclaimed video games of all time, but it was a lot of fun! I could feel myself getting better as I went along, especially when I got into the Reverse Castle. Had to start using my entire toolkit to get by. Think I’ll definitely play another Castlevania game for Halloween this year.

Flying Phantom Ship: Like Creamy Mami, a massive inspiration for a lot of series that have come since, and yet, I saw almost nothing that happened in this movie coming. Only an hour, but with at least three hours worth of twists and turns. Nothing I say about this film can really do it justice.

Phantom of the Paradise: Tremendously well put together movie. Great music by the legendary Paul Williams with a story you probably already know, but put together in a captivating and engrossing way. Knows it’s a story and who the main characters are, and has them interact in ways that really show off all their strengths and flaws. That said, my favorite character might actually be the man only known as Beef, I think about him a lot.

That’s everything for 2022! I have no particular goals on the media front for 2023, but I’m excited to see what it brings.

[a-tale-of-2-sloths]

Day 1 - Pura Vida from San Jose!

As travelling days go this has been a pretty smooth one, starting with a lift from the legendary Craigo who dropped us off at Gatwick airport with plenty of time to spare. We cruised through check in, got slightly searched at customs (damn Bluetooth keyboard) and enjoyed a lovely breakfast courtesy of Pret and Spoons, where we spent the majority of our time waiting to depart. Every thing was going so well, but once Gate 13 was our designated number I knew it was only a matter of time before the fates would have a change of heart. And that moment came when a behemoth of a man was destined to sit next to me for 12 hours! To his credit he slept most of the journey and managed to keep his blubber on his side for the majority of the flight! The plane food was top draw and the entertainment even better, as I finally managed to watch the last season of Brooklyn 99! G opted for a film where Emma Thompson gets naked and we both enjoyed a bit of Fisherman’s Friends. But enough transit talk… Let’s talk first views.

As we got off the plane we were greeted by one of the most scenic back drops I’ve ever seen from departing a plane, a setting sun with mountains in the background - a fantastic snapshot of what Costa Rica has to offer (or so I’m told). After battling all the taxi drivers flogging their wears we finally found our hostel sign and hopped in a cab with a lady staying at the same place who was all too quick to tell us about her dodgy stomach from the night before. After checking in and shaking her off quite quickly we found our room, dropped off our bags and headed to the nearest bar suggested by the receptionist.

Said bar had sport on the tv and Latino music pumping complete with DJ. Turns out that even in Central America the DJs talk like they do at english weddings. You know the ones. It became apparent quite quickly that Georgie and I were the only clientele that were not locals! This became even more apparent to the bar staff when we fudged our way through an order of beer and rum and coke! (I really wish I liked beer, maybe one day!) Sub-par linguistic skills aside, me and G had a great time bopping away to the music, enjoying some strong beverages and watching the locals get up and Salsa! Talking of salsa… Despite having 3 square meals already, we even opted for some nachos with ‘mixed meat’ which despite the ominous description was extremely tasty and 2 hours later has yet to back fire! We’re now back at the hostel, ready to shower off (with no hot water!) and rest ready to tackle the public transport system to get us to our next destination - Cahuita!

G’s Highlights: Best Nachos Ever!!

[holocene-sims]

get to know me 2022

i was tagged by @crazykissim - thank you bestie!! 💍💗

🎨 favorite color

definitely green (especially dark green) and black!

📖 currently reading

right now, i'm reading an anthology of poems by seamus heaney, who is absolutely my favorite poet of ALL time

🎶 last song you listened to

i checked spotify for this and apparently, it's hyde by VIXX

(100% total classic. what a bop. iconic)

🍜 sweet/savory/spicy

definitely spicy! at this point in my life, i cannot consume anything without stupidly high amounts of spice added. my toxic trait is wanting to use an entire bottle of chili powder or some other spicy seasoning in every recipe

✨ currently working on...

quite a lot 👀 the main thing being story posts, though! i got some story content queued to start posting tomorrow :D the story poster is ready to go, along with the next scene

so i'm working on more story content after this, some lookbooks, finalizing some cc recolors to upload, AND on a non-sims note, i'm finishing up my playthrough of mass effect legendary edition

feel free to ignore if you aren't interested or have already done this but i'll tag 💌

@permanentleigh @bobapplesimblr @unicornianiasims @lady-lyricist @simmersofia @yesi-sims04 @sunflowerrtrait

[shinwhoohoo]

i'm so sorry i am back again 😭 the fan who made a comback here helloo

I need an opinion on whether or not bana twt is any good? I've followed a few on there and two followed me back lol but I haven't been that deep in bana twt to actually see the discourse/interactions regarding the split and those "ot5/jy forever" tweets. I saw on your answers (I am so sorry if it seems like I'm stalking you but you're literally one of the only ones who show up on tumblr when I search B1A4 hsjdhs) that you don't use twitter but for those who do? Should I do it? I'm doing it half to join once twt and half to join bana twt but only coming back bc I really missed stan twt (marvel b4). Anyways yeah I'm really just letting all of this B1A4 bana energy I've been keeping in and burrowing for so long that I just really want to find my people (cliché lol) and so far bana tumblr seems like the better bet bc it's a small tightknit community where many have solid opinions on the split and have a firm drive to see A3 succeed no matter what huhu I honestly just miss being a cnu bias and I'm glad he has the best intentions for chandeul as their hyung like the way he said in one interview that the songs he writes are for b1a4 and b1a4 only made me think "the shade towards jy omg" but also so soft because his songwriting is finally shining now? I mean I didn't like Nightmare at first listen back in 2016 but revisiting it now (w/o knowing it was cnu who wrote it yet) I found it so well written? Also Seoul? Basically just went through their entire discography in one week the past week and whenever I heard a bop I was so happy to sometimes see cnu in the song credits because the way he wrote/composed them is so full of heart and sincerity like he really puts it all out there and I feel so proud to be a cnu bias since the start like wow I have good taste.

Rambling again omg. But anyways Gongchan's growth from having like 4-6 lines in A Lie to being the opening to many present B1A4 songs is just so cool of cnu to give to him and for Gongchan to let himself have like we have Mr. Falsetto and Mr. OST here but Gongchan is SHINING in Origine like wow I only thought he was visuals back then but the split gave this positive shift to the group tbh. Like for sure I'll miss Jinyoung's hit bops and Baro's very very cool raps (A Lie was so cool I'd honestly do the hand-go-down-beat-drop things in the hwandang part of his rap like wow the power lol) but seeing B1A4 grow with CNU, Sandeul, and Gongchan going forward feels just right? Like I can imagine their songs still being hits and them being a legendary "surviving" band if they continue as 5, but the way the 3 of them now just fits? But tbh it's really sad that I don't see much raving about them as much as I did back in A Lie PLUS the fans who are clawing for ot5 like damn please show some respect? The 3 of them are great in their own subunit-style way like I really love seeing them coping with the split (even if it's been 3 years I bet it hit them again when the 10th anniv happened), and the way that you can clearly see CNU trying his best to keep it together and them together for their and the fans' (the real fans) sake. Also I hate how he has to apologize for not being able to keep them as 5 like no please don't carry the burden of the other twos' personal decision like,, I get he's the eldest but it just hurts to see someone blame themself for something that couldn't really be stopped (I read that the two of them brought it up unexpectedly) also about that unexpectedly part the least they could've done was to inform them at least a few months prior?? Like isn't that the meanest thing you could do to people who see you as a brother? Like yeah it might've broken their hearts during a comeback/fanmeet to appear as 5 but know that it won't be the case two months later... I mean I don't wanna dictate a person's actions but the least they could've done was let them down slowly so that the heartbreak didn't hit them like a truck so abruptly. AHHH I've been rambling so randomly for the past hour omg but yeah I'm on "protect them at all costs" mode right now with A3, they're doing so well and I hope CNU and Gongchan have fun bonding as eldest and maknae I can't wait for their vlogs and appearances together. Also can't wait for the time when I'm 30 and B1A4 still going at it like Super Junior/Koyote like yeah I'm 30 but I will wave this lightstick and scream out lyrics like a teenager if they ever concert where I am (or maybe I'll just go to SoKor for that lol) anyways if you've read all three of my lengthy and totally random ramblings I thank you so so much and I hope you have a wonderful day over there in nyc 😁💚

heehee hello again~

so from what I understand, I think we have a closer knit group here on tumblr vs. twitter. I think there's also more overall freedom in expressing opinions here? But I think users @cybercnu and @banacafe are fairly active on twitter and can give you a better idea? (lol sorry Emma and Chrissy to call you guys out haha I just really have no idea what the fandom is like on twitter since I only go on to get updates 😅-- or if anyone else is more active on twitter please feel free to respond for anon!)

But yeah, compared to Jinyoung, I think CNU divides the lines up much more evenly which has been great in allowing Gongchan to really step up and get his much deserved time. They've had so much growth though, so I think a lot of the 'ot5' comments you see on twitter come from the fact that there's more 'casual' fans on there that haven't followed closely the statements that CNU and Sandeul (and Gongchan, to a lesser extent) have made regarding where they stand with the split and how they felt blindsided by it.

There's been a few statements they've made about the 'unexpectedness' of it, Sandeul literally went onto the fancafe within hours of the initial news breaking that he basically was just as confused as the fans and was sorry for not being able to clear things up. And again during the fanmeet before CNU's enlistment-- they expressed how shocked they were with how things turned out so 😕

haha but you're in good company with the 'protect them at all costs' mode we def are all like that here as well lol and I think they'll be going strong now for a loooong time hopefully 🥰

edit: you can read banacafe’s thoughts here and anon’s thoughts here on bana twitter :)

[jason11max]

scans of all the teams

the scans online currently are shit, heres my better ones! (with translations, they are a little wonky but they seem kinda accurate)

(page1)

Participating Dancer Profile Dancers who are united in the "Dance Summit 2001". However, it seems that he really wants to monopolize "Groove Tron" ... Here, along with the introduction of the dancers, let's publish "the true usage of Groovetron".

SCHOOL MATES

Schoolmates junior high school unofficial dance club quartet. Infiltrate Queen's High Schooll to investigate a high school level dance club! But unfortunately that day is Sunday. There is no one in the school. At that time, a sheet of paper jumped into BANBI's eyes. "Dance Summit 2001 will be held! The winner will be given the legendary power" Groovetron "!" "Yeah! We will win the Dance Summit and make the dance club look like a junior high school !!"

BETTY: Have the Betty Dance Club become a junior high school official club.

CANDY: I want a macho boyfriend.

OLIVE: I want to collect cute animals.

BANBI: Make a boyfriend for a high school baseball player. (?)

DATA BE BOPS

A gamer team mainly active in GE-SEN "North 2001" run by the uncle of Data Bee Bop's 3D. All the games released so far have been cleared, and now he is addicted to the super popular dance game "Guest Hadave S °. Recently, he has mastered the original breaking and is motivated to participate in the real dance competition" Dance Summit 2001 ". ing. With the power of Grouptron, we are aiming to clear the Ultra Super Hard Mode of "Guest Ha Dave S". "I'll show you 50 consecutive steps of our flames!"

3D: Computerize your brain.

G-PAN: We all want to participate in the Jibapan Game Olympics.

SUZUKI: "Guest Hardave S" Clear Ultra Super Hard Mode.

HONDA: I want to ride an F1 car only once.

(page2)

CUSU-CUSU

KEI and ME go missing while traveling to Africa. CINDY and SAHARA go to Africa to find them! However, ME and KEI, who were finally found, had a strange appearance with a strange mask ...! "Groovetron" is required to break the curse of the two. Thus, the four will participate in the Dance Summit 2001. "Look, you guys dance together! It's not the case when you're cursed !!"

KEI: I want to spread the teachings of CUSU-CUSU to the world.

ME: I'm not sure because me is cursed.

CINDY: Break the curse of ME and KEI.

SAHARA: I want to live in Africa together.

FLOWER DANCING TEAM

Flower Dancing Team Four elite office workers from top-tier companies at dusk on Friday. To relieve the stress of the company, head to the 2-chome club "Hanazono". "I'm crazy about Cho! I wonder what that official is going to do !!" "Well, if you win, you'll get" Group Tron "!" "Oh, that's okay. Let's participate. I'm going to make the official a Gittan Gittan Gehyogehyo (?) !! " I mean, you guys are still in suits ... I'll just dance and forget about it. Oh yeah, there seems to be a dance competition next time.

SAFFRON: I want to start over as a woman.

MARGUERITE: She becomes the mistress of the super popular actor "Tamura Masar ☆ Kazu".

JASMINE: Transfers Jasmine's boss (CHERRY) to the Antarctic branch office.

CHERRY: Reborn with a look like a gorgeous younger sister.

(page3)

The four teams I'm about to introduce are mysterious dance teams that appear in team mode. You can't use them at first, but you can use them if certain conditions are met.

GALAXY4

A group of four who met as war refugee rescue volunteers on the remote planet "Damas". Each of them has a sad past due to the planetary war, but now they are active as a professional dance team of love and peace. One day, they received an invitation to "Dance Summit 2001". "What ... I'll give the winner a" Groovetron "... This is amazing !! If we eliminate the war from space, the number of people with a sad past like us will decrease. Alright, let's go, everyone !! "

PLANET: Eliminate the war so that lovers are not torn apart by the war.

ORION: Makes the universe peaceful and dances with various humans (?).

APOLLO: I want to make the universe peaceful so that I can farm with peace of mind.

MIRANDA Eliminate the War and make a memorial service for parents.

DISCO ESTRUS

Professional wrestlers who belong to the Lucha Libre group. At the order of the president, the orangutan UTAN has joined the group as a mascot from this season. However, the three wrestlers who love big animals are sorry for UTAN. With the power of "Groovetron", I headed to the dance summit venue just after the match to return UTAN to the Malaysian forest. "UTAN !! I'll return you to Mother Forest !!!"

TEXAS: Garlic Steak is eaten(?)

DRAGON: I want to save the Pander from extinction

UTAN: Rinkogo is eaten(?)

MICRO: UTAN is returned to the Malaysian forest.

JUMBO MAX

A group of four street gangsters I met in the back alleys of Jumbo Max Slums. (????) It is organized around BAT, a leader with strong fights. Dissatisfied with school and society, they have been violent on the streets, but they will participate in the "Dance Summit 2001" to gain real freedom at "Groovetron". "... I don't have a reason. We just want freedom and dance ..."

MEAT: Reconstruction of my favorite fast food restaurant "BURGER-DOG".

DUCK: Extinct humans to protect the earth.

JASON: I can't say ...

BAT: Get real freedom.

FAR EAST COMMANDERS

Four deadly future ninjas chasing the villainous space duo "Akdai Khan" and "Echigo Yarn" under the secret order of the future nation "Aba Kufu". However, just one step away, he misses the villainous space duo special collaboration technique "Sode no Geisha Mai". As a result, the four will be the centerpiece of "A Ba Kufu" general manager "Denchu". "Maro is messing around with Denchu. Chimi, next time, if you make a mistake, it's okay." The four in trouble decide to participate in the "Dance Summit 2001" in order to obtain "Groovetron".

IMAWA: Catch the villainous space duo.

HAMAMATSU: Get your own castle.

SHOGUN: I want to return to the original world.

TOMOE: I want to return to a normal girl.

-jason (have the scans too)

[taenuviel]

Ooh are you doing an ask game? 22 and 28 please 💕

OUCH sorry mica this ask must have slipped somewhere i didn't see it. if i'm not mistaken this one is for something music related and makes me happy, right? so this CD is it! one of the prettiest cd design i've ever seen, really this photo doesn't even give it justice. as a physical media supremacist this makes me SOOO happy. shinee coming back after 3 year military hiatus with an album so beautiful, literally bop after bop. i really miss that shinee style harmonizations and strong vocal delivery at the chorus and this album makes my wish come true. i like almost all songs in this, once i really want you plays mental ilness PAUSED!! we jamming. my faves are i really want you (!!!!!!), area, don't call me, body rythm, atlantis (and the MV is so pretty!), attention, heart attack, and kind (the live small desk concert-ish version is even better). so this got long i'm putting the love gushing under:

anyway shinee never slacks on the vocals they sounds so good back in 2008 and they have grown so much on that department. jinki have always been a golden vocalist™ but this year he sounds even better, which i thought wasnt possible before. straight up heavenly. kibum is serving absolute cunt harder than ever and he doesn't seem to ever run out of his youthful energy even now that he's 30 (not that 30 is old but he literally doesn't ever look tired even in 3 hour long concert, which is baffling). i'm also LOOOOVE the fake reality design he did, it's a shame that they didn't include it in the MV. minho my ming FINALLY get some lower notes, seems like they start paying attention to baritones. ming also wrote area and it got greenlighted without editing, a fact which makes me so happy. taemin's vocal transformation is probably the most dramatic and satisfying in the entire industry from having 0 lines at the debut and now he's strong enough to cover jonghyun's legendary high notes and he shows it so well in this album. someone said that taemin is probably jonghyun's greatest legacy, and ngl that makes me tear up a bit. jonghyun really did raise that kid well. i'm not very sure what jonghyun did in this album but he did spectacularly, as always. aside from that i love how they honor him, like making space for him in the choreography and giving them 5-gated entries at music shows.

also this just in: the album is nominated for album of the year, the only boygroup (manband?) album in the list (4 others are female soloists that i also like, this is what i mean when shinee is a honorary girlgroup. because girlgroups never slacks on the music and shinee is one of the few boygroup that also does). in short, i love shinee <3 can't wait for them to be back <3 <3 <3

[popculturebuffet]

Goof Week: Goof Troop: Forever Goof Review (Everything’s Coming Up Goofy, Good Neighbor Goof, Gotta Be Gettin Goofy) (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Yahhahhooooeeeey all you happy people!  WELCOME TO GOOF WEEK! Now normally when a character who got their start in theatrical shorts has a birthday, I do a marathon of them. I have since last year with Donald and it’s one of my favorite things: it allows me to explore Disney’s rich history of them I was largely unaware of till Disney+, and allows me to revisit the shorts I grew up with in the case of The Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry while discovering new favorites. SO naturally with Goofy’s birthday in two days I intended to do the same for him, especially since I’d covered Donald and Mickey the same way.

But fate had other ideas. Not thinking about this tradition, Kev, my patreon, friend and the guy who commissions a LOT of reviews from me ($5 an episode if your curious and I WILL make room on the schedule so your commission gets done as soon as possible), suggested reviewing the Goof Troop pilot movie Forever Goofy, later split into the episode Everything’s Coming Up Goofy and Good Neighbor. I loved the idea since I genuinely loved Goof Troop, and decided to do both that week.

It’s then I got a great idea.. why limit myself to JUST doing two things? I hit my 15 dollar patreon stretch goal, so a review of the Goofy Movie was on the Horizon anyway, and for it’s anniversary year Kev has been commissioning House of Mouse Episodes, so it wouldn’t be THAT much of an ask (and it wasn’t) to simply randomly select from a pool of Goofy-Centric episodes instead of all the episodes. 

Thus GOOF WEEK was born, and Kev once again proved vital to all this by suggesting the special Sports Goof from the 80′s. I’d like to give him special thanks as outside of the Shorts Special, which as a patreon he still got to pick one and if you’d like to pick one for Donald’s special, sign on up even one dollar patreons get the honor. , this week is either entirely paid for by him or in the case of A Goofy Movie, is partly thanks to him. I wouldn’t be able to do NEARLY as many reviews nor make money off this without you bud, so thank you. 

So naturally given the idea to do this two parter gave me the idea for this week and that Goofy Movie makes a logical finale for said week, it only made sense to start the week with Goof Troop. Bop-dop-da-da-do-bop, YEAH. 

Goof Troop is the first Disney Afternoon show I ever watched and the only one I watched when I was younger, as Disney Channel used to play it ocasinally when I was younger and Toon Disney would do the same and I even got to Marthoon it when Disney XD did a weekend marathon. Given it starred my faviorite Disney Character, Donald hadn’t worked his way up to tying with him quite yet, I loved what I could grab of it. And as an adult.. it still holds up. It has problems i’ll get into, but it is a real good time so I was exastic to get an excuse to watch some of it and much like with Darkwing wish I had sooner. 

Before I can h-h-h-hit it though, I have to talk about the series history. I ALMOST didn’t find anything: much like the other Disney Afternoon shows there really wasn’t much on the Disney wiki nor wikipedia, google turned up nothing... it wasn’t till I went to the Tv Tropes Trivia Page for the series, where i’d remembered reading about some early versions of the show, that I hit gold: A two part behind the scenes blog post by series co-creator Michael Peraza. You can find part one HERE and part two HERE. It’s a short but fascinating read. 

Speaking of fascenating Peraza himself is someone i’d never heard of till reading this article but damn if he isn’t a legend. Seriously the guy’s career is as an unsung hero, starting work under the Legendary Nine Old Men, and working on some of disney’s greatest films: The Great Mouse Detective, Aladdin, The LIttle Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, along with live action cult classics Tron and Return to Oz via concept art. And concept art is where he’d hit his stride: he did conceptual work for all the big Disney Afternoon shows apart from Gargoyles, being one of the key guys in the early days of Disney Television animation. He didn’t stop at just designing things either as he worked as Art Director for Ducktales, The Proud Family and of course given how vital he was to it’s creation, Goof Troop, and to this days gives lectures with his wife to aspiring animators. He even did some guest work for the 2017 Ducktales Episode “Treasure of the Found Lamp!”. So yeah dude’s awesome

So how did he come to be a key part of this show’s creation? Well he’d just finished up some concept work on some other Disney Afternoon shows, and being a company man was glad to report to the Goof Troop..ers to help as the show was having trouble getting off the ground. The reason for this was the creative exec, who Peraza didn’t name out of kindness as the guy wasn’t a BAD person.. just a clueless one, this being his first job in film and tv.  As such rather than work hard to develop around goofy or focus on his strengths the kid threw out one concept after another: The series got it’s name from a pitch that had Goofy as a scoutmaster, something I was glad to finally know. To quote Peraza

“ Although while I was doodling versions of the show that were destined to never see the light of the TV screen,  the pitch date remained etched in stone and kept creeping closer. Various versions would find their way to the surface only to sink again into the wasteland known as the roundfile (trashcan). One moment Goofy was the Captain of the Fire Department, the next day a detective out of the Maltese Falcon mold, or a swash buckling hero fighting The Flying Dutchman. 

The supporting cast he came up with really wasn't very supportive when you consider they sometimes included alien dragon babies with wings along with a large gorilla. Somebody at Walt Disney Television Animation must have really had a thing for giant gorillas around this time as they were plugged into almost every concept we  assembled.”

It was clear that while Goofy COULD fit into just about anything, this exec was just throwing everything at the wall, nothing was sticking, and rather than try to refine his supporting cast, they kept having to throw them out and start over. And dont’ get me wrong, cartoons go through a lot of development and changes as they go.. but it’s usually born from a concept and usually by this point, they at least have what the show will be ABOUT in stone. While i’ve had the same creative changes and what not when coming up with projects that ultimately never saw the light of day, and currentlly some I hope to but might not, I’m not being paid by a studio to do this nor had a hard deadline. I was just spitballing trying to get something anything off the ground before reviewing gave me a steady outlet for my creativity and thus ballanced me to take my time with stuff. Peraza WAS turning out amazing art, like this concept art for the fireman pitch that honeslty makes me want to see it as a series. Who DOSEN’T want to see 9-11 with Goofy as the main character? Throw in Donald and grown up versions of Max, PJ and PIstol (And even not THAT much for the former two, as they did go off to college and all), don’t forget Roxanne this time out and you have a worthy goofy movie sequel. 

So yeah this wasn’t working and the latest pitch was not great: Putting Goofy in ToonTown as a cabbie driving the Cab from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As Peraza TRIED to point out to the exec, putting Goofy in a naturally goofy setting didn’t really play to the characters strength, his whole shtick being a goofus in a normal world. Enough of an every man to root for but also a slapstick joly weirdo. 

The executive’s INCREDIBLY douchey response, especially since Peraza was a Disney Vetran at this point and had spent quite a lot of time on Ducktales, so he knew what he was talking about was “Do it anyway and leave the “Visionary” part to me”

As you can tell by MR. OOC there, this might be one of the most punchable sentences i’ve ever read. 

So Peraza wasn’t in a great place and was naturally terrified when he got a call from Gary Krisel, president of Disney TVA, asking about the show and to see him about it. 

Turns out though Krisel was a nice guy who already had a great working relatinship with Peraza, and genuinely wanted to know what was going on there and wanted his honest opinion. It’s why i’m not AGAINST executives in animation as sometimes they can come in when somethings clearly not working or allow a smooth transition of power if a propelmatic creator has to be booted off their own show so the show and i’ts crew don’t suffer as a result. It’s just more often than not they cause headaches or cancel shows for entirley stupid or self motivated reasons. But I will give credit where it’s do and point out times where there NOT stupid or homophobic or what have you and this is indeed one of those times. 

Peraza was indeed straight with him: pointing out all the concepts they’d gone through, and like with the other guy honestly gave his opinon the ToonTown Pitch wasn’t working.. and he not only agreed but asked Peraza himself, actually respecting his experince instead of yelling at him that he has a vision that wouldn’t last the end of the day probably. 

Peraza was HOPING this was where this was going and gladly gave him a far less high concept pitch and one truer to the character, quoted in full bellow:

“ My spiel went as follows, "Goofy is a recognized star of Disney animation, so why re-invent the wheel? His son is an average kid dealing with many of the usual issues they face: peer pressure, young love, grades, school bullies, and so on. On top of all that, he has the zaniest, wackiest GOOFIEST dad to live down. No matter how insane the situations get though, they will always love each other. They're a family." Gary asked how I would pitch it and I replied, "It's ONE day in  the life of Goofy and son. From getting up in the morning to fixing breakfast, we see their difference side by side as his son tries to distance himself. No matter what though he knows deep inside that his father will always be there for him, whether he likes it or not."

If your wondering if Peraza noticed that that original pitch line is basically the peremise and emotioinal core of The Goofy Movie down pat.. your extremley correct and he notes that the film was based on said pitch even if he had no involvment with it that I could tell. The series would still use this but the whole embarasment aspect was toned down, and honestly fit a teenager better than an 11 year old.. 

So the exec loved it and Peraza shaped the core of the series: the idea of having Pete as his nemisis, pete having a nuclear family including a gorgeous wife, and the show being more slice of life and what not. He made some great sketches, got roaring approval and then pitched it to rousing success and the rest is history. Goof Troop was a moderate success and The Goofy Movie after it is a classic beloved by all. We have this wonderful man to thank for all that and I also thank him , on the offchance he ever sees this, for bringing Goofy into modern times in a way that did the man-dog justice.  It’s thank to you we got this fun series, two great movies, and a goofy the way he is today: the best of everything about him rolled into one. Thanks man, free review.. not htat you NEED It since you’ve worked on things i’ve covered and what not, but I feel like I should offer.  Outside of Peraza, I found one last bit of making of stuff before I get to the premiere proper. These two early concept shots:

The first has Max who both looks older and has red hair like he did in the shorts. Honestly I see a lot of his Goofy Movie self in thiis design, the only diffrence obviously being the red hair which was wisely changed to make the boy look more like goofy, something kept for the movie. 

The more intresting one is this shot of the Pete’s. Starting with Pete he’s more athletic and has a perfectly tacky outfit. While changing him to be a bit more slovenly honestly fit this version of the character better, I do wish they’d kept hte outfit as the tacky gold and green jacket, the gold chain, the open ollar.. it all fits this version of pete so well, as well as his illusion of being a big shot when he is in fact a medium one. Peg is both slightly younger looking and far more doting and is so different I swear this picture looks like Pete remarried after the divorce and got some lipo. Pistol has about the same design but with a vastly different, more Isabella-ish outfit. Finally we have PJ who looks the same, but has a diffrent outfit and a far more sour demeanor, probably meant to be a bully. My best guess is sthis stuff comes from the pitch, and was likely made to simply get the basic premise across before fine tuning the characters for series

So with all of that out of the way i’m calling eveyrone to join in the fun under the cut and report to the Goof Troop. 

Everything’s Coming Up Goofy:

Our first episode opens in a small but cozy trailer, where Goofy’s cooking up lunch as only goofy could: by making osme meatballs then serving them to his son over a game of table tennis, with Max doing the same. It’s really freaking adorable, and a dynamic i’m not used to since i’m more familiar with Teen Max. Seeing Max genuinely get into his dad’s hyjinks and enjoy them.. it just warms the heart and adds weight to The Goofy Movie by knowing there was a time the two really were thick is thieves before the stygian hole that is high school drained all that out of him. 

So the two are like buddies and pals until the Mailman arrives, not even phased at this point. Turns out it’s a Diploma, and with this Goofy can get a job he’s been up for in Spoonerville and plans to move immediately. Max is devisated he’ll loose his friends and runs away to use a magical mystery box to keep them together only to end up in a land full of frogs with an old man who sounds like his dad minus the drawl and two other tinier frogs and ... I may have the wrong show. In fairness you try dislodging a finale where Keith David runs a 13 year old through with laser sword and then talk to me. 

Goofy is sympathetic though: While he seems a tad oblivous to Max’s worries, it’s very clear he’s jumping on this job and this move so far to give his son a better life. Sure he runs through all the cartoon moving away talking points that don’t work in real life or most other cartoons such as there being a nice lake and that max can make new friends, and Max accepts it weirdly fast because this episode is only 22 minutes and they don’t have time for that subplot... but it’s clear the idea of a better paying job, a secure home not in an alleyway, and some stablility for his son is the real reason Goofy’s doing this, and he probably wants to simply give the boy the childhood he had growing up. 

Meanwhile in Spoonerville, we meet Pete. To my shock this is where Jim Cummings took over the roll he was born for and has played since and with good reasons as Cummings is just amazing with Pete no matter the incarnation and excels here  his penchant for playing jerks, hams and gravely voiced guys all coalesicing. Pete is planning on building what modern toxicly masculine weirdos such as himself would call a Man Cave on his lawn, because Pete is a very SPECIAL kind of douchebag. He also plans to stretch it into the neighboring property, tear down the house there and set it up. 

This is news to his wife Peg, played by fellow voice acting Legend whose stillg ot it, April Winchell in her star making role. Peg is Pete’s strong willed wife who dosen’t put up with her husbands crap.. you know that trope that infected sitcoms for kids and adults of the doofy husband whose either a manchild , a skeevy self serving quipy asshole or some horrible combination of the two. The kind that has still been so prevealant the wife from one of said sitcoms helped produce a show about the wife finally doing the logical thing and plotting to kill the bastard. No really.. that’s an actual thing that’s happening. It’s even got a Little Bit of Alexis as Anne Murphy plays the poor, poor wife. 

And why yes the series is called Kevin Can Fuck Himself. And why yes said former sitcom wife was the same one on a sitcom called Kevin Can Wait who was fired because they wanted to retool the show with the wife from Kevin James other sitcom. That also is very really a thing that happened. Payback is a bitch aint it? Fun too. 

But yeah from minute one Pete is a terrible husband: Peg is a realtor and thus is trying to sell the house because it’s her fucking job instead of letting her husband throw their family deep in debt to very likely illegally demolish a house so he has a giant yard to play in. I mean even if this is all played for jokes i’ts just not funny enough to not make him an utter bastard. The fact his response to her VERY valid criticism and subtextual worry he doesn’t’t take her career seriously is to fake a panic attack, from a very REAL tendency he turns out to have giant breakdowns under stress, to try and guilt her into letting him have his giant public man cave just backs this up.. as does the fact she simply glares at the camera as he’s clearly DONE this before. 

Since I have to put up with this version of him for the rest of this episode, the next, AND a portion of the movie, i’m proudly introducing the Pete Sucks Counter. This will carry over to any other appearances of the guy from here on out. So that’s one for his insane plan, one for disrespecting his wife’s career and one for faking a panic attack to try and win an argument Pete Sucks Counter: 3

So because this episode ran short Peg caves and compromises: He can have the property if it isn’t sold by 9. So Pete does what ANY husband would do: uses his spy camera and booby traps he’s set up in the other house to try and scare away prospective buyers. 

Yeah.. while the show TRIES to have Pete not as his old-timey villian self.. they traded in for him being fucking MODOK. I mean he is a grotesque monstrosity who has a nuclear family and spends all his time in a chair thing and can barely function as a Husband or Father. Though at least I can belivie MODOK LOVES his family which not so much with Pete. 

To prove this Pete tries using a fake spider to scare some buyers then CALLS THEM TELLING THEM PEG IS A CON ARITST. I.e. something that if they mention to her bosses could get her FIRED. He respects his wife’s autonomy, what she wants and what she’s asked him for, which is a fair shot to sell the place before he tries to wreck the place, as well as likely what his neighbors want. I mean I can accept breaks from reality for comedy, snakebird is my boy. 

So I can accept pete has this stuff.. I just can’t find it funny when these shenanignas very transparently show that while he surface level loves his wife he dosen’t respect her or actually listen to her except when she gets angry. He IS the villian so he’s still a slight step among monst sitcom dads but i’ts not great. I can find it funny that his den also functions as a super villian lair though. That shit will never not be great. Also Pete Sucks Counter: 6 For the record: one for the spider itself, one for having traps set up in a property hat both isn’t his and his wife is trying to sell and another for threatening her job and her self esteem as she is baffled at what she possibly did wrong. 

So Goofy and Max get on the road, leaving moving the rest of their stuff to an old coot whose a friend of theres. So it’s goodbye Duckburg, Hello Spoonerville! And yes I headcanon this as Duckburg. Goof Troop is one of two shows that very clearly happened in SOME form, the other being Tailspin, the only difference being the time period (Goof Troop taking place in the 90′s and Tailspin in the 30′s or 40′s) and any adjustments for clashes with the 2017 verse. So going off that, we also know Donald and the boys KNOW goofy and didn’t remotely question his presence, as did the rest of the cast. 

So figuring out the timeline, Goofy likely met Donald in college, even if he never finished college as per an Extremley Goofy Movie, which may not happen the same exact way given Goofy still has his old job and may not loose it in this timeline, though i’d like to think he still meets Sylvia. But point is he drops out, possibly to marry Max’s mom, they end up moving to Duckburg for her work, she sadly dies, and Goofy is left raising Max alone. Donald and Goofy likely bonded as single parents struggling in low paying 9-5 jobs. Goofy left here, likely said goodbye to Donald and the 5 or so year old boys offscreen , and left. As for how anyone else knows him that’s simple: he probably visits whenever he can.  He’s a good friend, genuinely loves Donald like a brother in all continuities, and of course would show up with a progressively more then less grumpy Max every time. As for what I think the rest of the cast would think of him: Scrooge would hate him for his disaster area ways, but at least respect him as a hard worker, he just wouldn’t personally hire him which is.. it’s fair. Beakley would be aggravated by him. Webby would of course like him because she’s essentially him but competent and gay, and Launchpad and him .. god that’d be a joy to see. And drive up Scrooge’s insurance. Della would also like him obviously. I”m really disappointed we didn’t get a season 4 if for nothing else the fact we probably would’ve got another Goofy episode. It also feels weird he’s not in the finale in any way shape or form you know? Why have such a big guest spot for him and then just not bring him or Max back? GIVE ME MORE MAX DISNEY DAMN YOUUUUU So they move right along with Goofy excited to get back to where he once belonged, and to call Pete with the good news on his 90′s cell phone. Pete is utterly TERRIFIED finding out Goofy Comin and tries to send him off course to prevent it. Naturally despite nearly running into a truck, Goofy makes it to Spoonerville by evening anyway and we get a delightful bit that shows off BilL Farmer’s comedy skills as he rapidly lists off all the things in town while driving Max through town. It’s so damn smooth. This also is notable since before this farmer had just played the character in some DTV music videos, which stands for Disney not Denton but god I now want Shock Treatment with the Disney Crew. I mean who wouldn’t want Donald as Brad, Daisy as Janet, and Gladstone as Farley Flavors I ask you. Not sure who every one else would be i’m sorting that out. And if you don’t know what Shock Treatment is, here have this trailer with a nightmarish opening. 

Dammit now I want to watch Shock Treatment again... so I am. Found it in full on YouTube, and I feel no shame in sharing that as it’s not on VOD, nor any streaming service, the DVD, which I own, is out of print, and the Blu Ray is a UK exclusive. This film both needs to be seen more and needs another proper US release damn it!

So naturally Goofy somehow finds Pete’s house.. I dunno maybe Peg’s been sending him letters. Can’t blame her for having a wondering eye long as she dosen’t act on it. She’s married to a walking lump of ego, selfishness and cholesterol and likely only held on as long as she did for the kids. Which for the record Peg as a child of divorce whose parents got divorced rather than keep up a sham marriage or anything.. it’s not worth it. I was MUCH happier that way in the long term. 

Anyways Peg and Goofy happily reunited while they awkardly try to get the kids to meet, with Goofy and PJ not warming up to each other at first, likely because Max just lost all his friends, and PJ clearly had none going into the series from context we’ll get later in the pilot. We also get a hilarious bit where Peg alternates between warmly greeting the goof’s and hilaroiusly shouting at Pistol to not play with worms.. in what honestly sounds like a protype for Miss Finster’s voice. 

Meanwhile the kids try to hide a small crack in Pete’s boat.. which he notices as he’s just about to steamroll the house despite NOT having asked Peg if she sold it yet and just assuming, possibly opening himself and her to a lawsuit

Pete Sucks Counter: 7

Discovering his boat is trashed, he has a comical panic attack, which I can forgive since this was 1992 and they weren’t as well known as a serious problem. Seriously while pete is a bastard man.. the animation on him is GORGEOUS as it is HILARIOUS, while Jim Cummings brings the hell out of it. He’s kept the roll for three decades as of next year for a reason. Goofy ends up accidently destroying his boat in the process of trying to help him as you’d expect. 

So Pete reluctantly lets the goofs sup with them.... and by reluctantly I mean he don’t wanna but Peg’s forcing him, which is pretty much the other half of their relationship in a nutshell: When pete isn’t lying and betraying her, Peg is forcing him to do stuff. As you can probably guess by how harsh i’ve been this aspect has aged INCREDIBLY poorly for me. This is your standard sitcom setup: asshole or dumbass or both dad, put upon wife who has to keep him in line.. but it’s just not how a GOOD marriage works and got so damn draining over time. Again and again we got things saying marriage is awful, comitting sucks unless your young, again and again. It’s why i’m REALLY happy we’ve been getting far better sitcom dad’s and marraiges lately. Bob’s Burgers is naturally the example, with the wife being the less sane one but both having their quriks and neither being so entirely dysfunctional you ever question the marriage. The Louds are another good example: Lynn Sr. And Rita NEVER right with each other that i’ve seen, have a perfectly happy relationship despite 11 kids, and wholly support each other, with Rita happily giving her husband the go ahead to quit his soul draining desk job so he could pursue his deream as a chef, and later letting him take a massive fincial gamble and open up a restraunt, purely because she belivied in him. Finally we have the Williams from Craig of the Creek who are easily one of the best married couples i’ve seen in western animation and one of them’s played by Terry Crews so that shoudln’t be a shock. I could prabobly find more but my points made: this trope REALLY ages the show poorly, more than any of hte 90′s specific tech or swinging theme song I just realized I forgot to talk about. Eh i’ll save it for the next episode. 

I have NEVER liked this trope anyway: only simpsons has really made it work for me and Family Guy did until they just stretched it too far, and with Simpsons at least they freqeuently have episodes pointing out how unehalthy it is. It dosen’t help this trope somehow STILL isn’t dead, as evidenced by the fact Rick and Morty has it in spades and for SOME damn reason got them back together.. I mean they don’t fight anymore but it dose’nt fix the problem. So yeah while I’m not holding against the show TERRRIBLY as this trope wasn’t as widespread at the time, it still dosen’t make it GOOD even at it’s core. 

Things get worse for Pete though as while Goofy praises him (And the Pete Kids rightfly wonder if Goofy is from space given the logic of ANYONE being that fond of pete. ) Pete finds out GOOFY bought the house he was going to demolish and will be staying with them till they move in. I have only one response to his misery....

Max also futzes with the tv which you THINK would lead to Peg finding out her husband is the antagonist of a Blumhouse movie but instead just does nothing. 

So then we have Dinner where we find out SUPRISINGLY, Pete actually has a somewhat valid reason for resenting Goofy: Goofy cost him the big game in high school as Goofy and Peg were on the cheerleading squad together and Goofy accidently kicked pete in the face at a crucial moment, which Pete got the blame for. Granted I did say SOMEWHAT: Goofy is genuinely apologetic and says Pete shouldn’t of been blamed and Pete’s apparently been hiding the truth from his kids this whole time. I do call bullshit on that as while admittedly i don’t get into local football or any sportsball, Pete works at a dealership. At least one asshole would bring it up to either rile him up or out of genuine rage at something that happened at the very least a decade and a half ago. Pete hasn’t let go of this footbullshit DESPITE owning a successful dealership, having two wonderful children, an even more wonderful wife, and a friggin nice boat.  But really.. it speaks to Pete’s character in any version: His ultimate undoing is his greed, his tendency to keep going and never settle. It’s something he oddly shares with Donald but Pete lacks Donald’s’s heart or redeeming moments. Pete just wants and wants and wants no matter who gets hurt because he’s inehently selfish and will simply TAKE It if he can’t get it. But it’s why he’s miserable, and ultimately ends up divorced: He can’t be satisfised so he often looses what he has. 

So with Pete on the rampage Peg sends the boys upstairs. It’s here we get PJ’s first Woobie Moment: He has a room FULL of cool toys, comics and what not but his dad is such a greedy asshole he refuses to let the kid actually use them. He even knows this isn’t normal but is just resigned to it. Rob Paulsen is phenomenal as PJ, being funny and energetic, snarky and off to the side or depressed and fearful all with grace and ease and all making this all feel like the same sweet kid. 

I mention this because Paulsen’s action is so good it highlights an issue with PJ: the writers lean way too hard into how much a hardass Pete is, to the point the series, likely intentionally, HEAVILY implies he physically abuses pete and the stuff on screen isn’t over the top enough, at least for tehse episodes, to get away with how he emotionally abuses him either. He talks down to him, doesn’t let him play toys and as seen by various episode synopsis and the next episode, uses mind games to keep him in line. THIS is why I can’t stand this version of Pete. He’s an abusive monster to this poor boy and I won’t stands for it, nor it being played off as a joke, especially since they try to ping pong between using it for comedy and using it seriously which just.. doesn’t work. 

So Max earns his future best pals’ friendship by trying to help him.. and succeeding by pointing out that while he said not to use the Tank anywhere on the ground.. he didn’t mention the celling or walls and has the tank going up the walls. And clearly by the fact PJ is seen sleeping with it later, despite Petes’ss anger at this, Peg presumably ripped him a new one once she found out about the toys thing. 

So that night Pete can’t sleep with Goofy tromping around the house and tries to whack him with a Golf Club. I’d give him another sucks count.. 

But given my brother lives in the basement and I sometimes accidently wake him by tromping overhead without meaning too, I DO get getting a bit fed up with someone clomping around and waking you up, and it is a slapstick cartoon so trying to physically assault someone is less of a crime here and more a setup for a punchline. 

So get an UTTERLY hilarious scene as teh combination fo tripping on golf balls and Goofy singing his family lullabye, camptown races with lyrics

So Pete proceeds to have another freak out this time RUNNING ALL THE WAY TO DUCKBURG, THROWING THE OLD MAN OUT OF THE CAR AND THEN BRINGING IN THE GOOF’S BEDS AND BOXES BEFORE TOSSING THEM IN THE HOUSE. It is truly an amazing combination of Jim’s utter talent as he babbles hialriously and the animators as they just make it sing. It’s a great climax to part one. So with that the goofs are home and Pete semeingly gets to go to sleep.. until they start working on unpacking. 

Final Thoughts On Good Neighbor Goof:

This is an excellent start to the series. The jokes are really well paced, the characters well introduced and the humor top notch> I had my complaints obviously.. but i’ts more systemic issues with the series, and stuff that honestly it dosen’t hamper my viewing experience for the most part. The PJ stuff does, but it’s not as big a deal this episode as he barely interacts with his Dad, but otherwise it’s stuff that just hasn’t aged well and they can’t be faulted for not seeing a deluge of terrible sitcoms a comin. The cast is top notch: I didn’t get to them in the proper review so Dana HIll deserves praise as Max, giving just the right amount of 90′s TV Kid mixed with real honest emotion and i’ts a tragedy she’s gone. She would’ve been right up there with the rest of this amazing cast in history. Though at least she got a worthy succesor.. but that’s not for now. For now we’re taking an interlude to look at the wonderfully 90′s music video that was aired along with this special:

Gotta Be Gettin Goofy:

This was my raw reaction to this video. Now is it bad? No the song has great flow it somehow manages to scratch Bill Farmer’s goofy vocals with the beat, the rapper makes the cheesy lyrics work, and the chorus of “gotta be getting goofy�� backs a great bit. It’s not a bad SONG.. but the video is a hilariously insane mess. We have two of the poor dancers forced to wear just.. HORRIFYING looking Goofy costumes that look like the Dog based sequel to cats that thankfully only exists in my nightmares

I pityt hose poor dancers. Meanwhile the rest of the dancers are wearing Goofy Baseball uniforms and letterman jackets for some reason. is it beause Goofy likes sportsball. I thoguth they just had them lying around but now I see the g’s on the uniform. They CHOOSE to do this. Max also does a shredding guitar solo, not the max up there the animated max. Combine that with LOTS OF random clips from the show and you get this thing.. and i’ts worth a watch> it’s just hilarously what the shit.. not the most hilariously what the shit thing i’ve seen.. not even this week... that would be this thing from the Eurovision Song contest...

Your welcome. So moving on because this is already badly behind. 

Good Neighbor Goof:

So our second episode opens with the Goof’s trying to move in and pete being upset their being loud. Now being upset your neighbors are being loud is one thing: Mine set off fireworks all week around fourth of July. Granted Pete would probably be the one doing such nonsense but still, I get it.. but it’s fair to have a lot of noise when your moving in and in Goofy’s case also trying to patch up a massive hole in the place. 

So he does what any reasonable man would do and activates the earthquake machine he hid in the basement. 

I wasn’t kidding about the MODOK comparisons. Granted the thing uses a belt to somehow do this.. but it’s designed to SIMULATE AN EARTHQUAKE AN DDOES SO WELL. The only reason Goofy’s not dead is that pete uses a low setting that instead ends up unpacking everything. IT’s a neat gag but again... PETE HAS AN EARTHQUAKE MACHINE.

Which Goofy accidently destroys his boat with. Meanwhile the boys try to talk over tin can phones only for Pete to notice and try to stop it because he’s a dick and doesn’t want his son to be happy because he hates Goofy. So Pete’s idea of a punishment is for PJ to wear the family shoes to go crush cans while wearing a helmet and given Pete mutters to himself about this keeping PJ away from Max i’ts likely something that he made up to torture his son soooo..

Pete Sucks Counter: 8 Max being a good pal agrees to help his friend crush the cans down to recycle for money and comes up with a zany scheme to do so

Meanwhile we get a few scenes of Pete trying to eff with Goofy’s day: Peg is making food for Goofy like a good neighbor/someone planning for their eventual divorce, so Pete makes him some too with tons of hot sauce. By the laws of classic cartoons, naturally Goofy loves it and wonders if Pete has hot sauce, while Pete trying it explodes his head Scanner’s style. 

He then tries giving Goofy a chainsaw loaded with some kind of explosive or something... so yes he’s esclated to MURDER over.. Goofy annoying him a bunch as he’s apparently given up on the whole taking over that lot thing. 

Pete Sucks Counter: 9 But it is hilariously petty and naturally backfires again by cartoon law as Pete ends up starting it for Goofy who can’t get it going. 

Meanwhile PJ and Max inact the plan which is to drop a bolder with a rope on the cans, but end up having to ride the cans down when PJ lets it go too early and it ends up sweeping both boys on top of the box. They have fun though, with PJ actually getting to enjoy life for once and loving having a new friend.

So as his lot in life Pete has to ruin it by yelling at PJ for getting diryt, then for hanging out with max as he can SMELL the goof on him.. which means he’s either exaggerating or he knows what goofy smells like. 

So he forbids PJ to see him insluting max.. while Max is hanging out the window and ends up crying. Oh and Peg never gets involved in any of this across both parts, likely because she dosen’t know.. which makes it even MORE horrifying as it gives off the implication Pete gets away with his abuse of his son because he hides it, like a real world abuser. But even then some things like trying to break up his and Max’s friendship or the toys thing you’d THINK she’d notice. 

So we get more untetionally telling stuff as PJ says he’ll treasure this day and the only time he was happy.

Pete Sucks Count: 14 2 for the last scene, 3 for ALLL this one implies. But Max won’t give up the ghost no he won’t give it up. They haven’t the strength to hold on for long but if they both hold on together they can make each other strong. So he has a plan: have Goofy throw a Luau and invite the petes.

Peg naturally forces him to attend and Pete is a dick about it at first, but eventually enjoys himself when they do a conga line. The pets, Waffles and Chainsaw get into some antics. I do love Waffles because I love a kitty. Chainsaw is okay even though I love me a good doggo. Especially this one.

You are a Good Boy, Good Boy. But eventually while playing a party game about passing coconuts, Pete considers the coconut and considers the trees but dosen’t consider Goofy kicking him in the face AGAIN

So Pete is naturally a dick about this despite it being you know, an accident. But he takes it a step further by insulting Max Pete Sucks Count: 15 So Goofy gets mad. But here’s where a rather sizeable flaw shows up in the episode as Goofy.. acts exactly like Pete does about the insuing feud. He forbids Max to see PJ makes up rules and is generally petty and vindictive. And look Goofy could be in the shorts. He’s endlessly adaptable.. but here nothing about his character has shown he’d sink to this and it feels forced to bring abotu the climax. 

Thankfully said finale salvages thing: That night Max pulls PJ into his room via the cans, and comes up with a plan.. weirdly asking PJ to hit him with a muffin to save their friendship... but it’s not random it turns out. His plan.. is brilliant. While I really don’t like these types of feud between neighbors make our kids suffer by making them not be able to be friends because we’re being petty children plots, this one has a REALLY clever solution to that: Max and PJ FAKE an oversclated fued similar to their parents, starting with insutls and throwing mulch and escalting to taking down each others fences and then throwing food at each other, before injuring their dads with planks and stuff, nothing serious just slapstick stuff, all to get both to settle down and try and get the boys to stop fighting.. it works like a charm, it’s full of great bits like Peg offering the boys pie only for Max to use it as amuination and i’ts just a great way to end one of these episodes. Not that I WANT more of these episodes but if your going to do this stock plot you might as well be creative with it.

So we end on the Petes and Goofs having a BBQ, all friends again, with Pete having his marina and Goofy nearly burning Pete’s house down and us getting a photo to end the episode.

Final Thoughts:

This one was a step down. Pete’s abuse is REALLY highlighted here and the plot is very paint by numbers and forces Goofy to be out of character for the last act for it to work at all. He just strikes me as too genuine and noble to hold onto a grudge this easily. Peg is also reduced from her usual feisty self to being oddly useless, not stepping in at ANY point to stop any of this depsite it being grossly otu of character. There’s a few great gags and a great climax, but the whole product is just okay

Later Today: Goof Week and Goofy’s birthday continue as I complete the trilogy of Shortstaculars with one about my boy! Featuring Goofy’s first apperance, his first short and the first apperance of what would eventually become Max! 

If you liked this review, follow me for more and consider joining my Patreon which you can find RIGHT HERE. Even a buck a month helps me keep doing these and more gets me to my stretch goals, the next one up being the two remaining ducktales mini series, a darkwing duck episode a month and a reivew of the danny phantom film the ultimate enemy. And even a buck a month gets you access to exclusvie reviews, my patreon exclusive discord and to pick a short any time I do one of my shortstaculars. My next one is for Donald’s birthday next montha nd there’s only 6 days left to get on that pay cycle so if that sounds good to you get on in NOW while you still can and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[randomvarious]

Hyper-Go-Go - "High" Some of These Were Hooj… Song released in 1992. Compilation released in 1993. House

Plays: 3.5M+ on Spotify // 1M+ on YouTube

Classic, yet somewhat polarizing UK house track here from the Colchester, England-based duo Hyper Go Go, who managed to successfully break out and cross over onto the UK pop charts with this one all the way back in 1992. Some of the more purist types thought that this tune was too cheesed-out and basic to be enjoyed, and I definitely see where they were coming from, but this still ended up being a legendary record that would go on to set up powerhouse UK dance label Hooj Choons for a whole lot more success in the near future, with a pretty infectious string of light, bouncy, and blissful tracks that more or less took some of the best parts of Eurodance and eliminated some of its most embarrassing excesses and god-awful rapping.

So Hyper-Go-Go started when a pair of guys named Alex Bell and James Diplock met at school and decided to make music together. They debuted in 1990 with This Is Go Go, a 12-inch on German label CBS Dance Pool, and then launched their own tiny label the following year, Zap Communications, in order to release more of their own music.

Now, the way that the rest of this story appears to usually be told is that they then landed on Hooj, put out "High" in '92, and then it was picked up by much bigger label Deconstruction, who, prior to this, were probably best known for releasing a bunch of material by world-famous Italo-house project Black Box—the group that gave us commercial dance smashes such as "Ride On Time," "Everybody, Everybody," and "Strike It Up." And then "High" reached #30 in the UK.

But this narrative actually appears to be missing one crucial step, because before getting on Hooj, another label that Hyper Go Go released music on was Ocean Record. And it was on Ocean that they seemed to have quietly operated under a handful of other aliases too, including Metroid.

So before "High" was released on Hooj in '92, it looks like the song actually appeared on a Metroid 12-inch called Digital NRG that same year, sitting as the third and final track on that record's A-side. And what's kinda funny about this particular fact is that Hooj themselves don't seem to have ever been aware of it, and still weren't in 2021, when they made their "High" 12-inch digitally available, and left this in the writeup on its Bandcamp page:

…' High' was one of those demos that turned up and you listened to it, and just had to double - treble check that it hadn't already been released, that it wasn't already out there doing what it was so obviously destined to do.

So I guess they should've quadruple-checked then, because while the tune was obscure when they received the demo and it hadn't carved out any legacy for itself yet, it looks like it'd already definitely been released! 😅

But anyway, this song may have rubbed some of the serious dance music lifers the wrong way when it first came out, but I still think that it's a bit of a super catchy and quality, carefree bop. If you especially love late 80s-to-early 90s house anthems that lead the way with uplifting piano riffs, then this was one of the most iconic jams to do so. Pair that piano with a breakbeat, sample the lyric off of a track by commercially successful UK group The Beloved, and then briefly roll your own damn tune into a sudden minute-long throwback to *the piano track of piano tracks* in Rhythim Is Rhythim's "Strings of Life," and you kinda have something with a whole lot of mass appeal on your hands.

A tune that ended up representing the start of something briefly big for Hyper Go Go themselves, who'd follow this one with another entry into the UK charts in '93 with "Never Let Go" on the just-opened Positiva label. And good thing that they submitted a demo of "High" to Hooj Choons even though they'd seemed to have already released the song as Metroid, because if they hadn't, who knows if Hooj Choons then goes on to unleash a full torrent of absolute 90s house bangers afterwards? 🤔

[harketspetter]

From “Man In The Mirror” to “Echoes”

It has been 12 years since I fell in love with music. It was an interesting journey on discovering artists that meant a lot to me. 

Here’s a small timeline of artists have a special place in my heart. 

April 2008 - I was 10 years old when I discovered Michael Jackson and it all began there.

Michael Jackson was pretty much the only thing in my childhood that stood out to me. I was going through a difficult time in my school and his music was the only thing that motivated me to get on with my life. His charisma, his dance moves, his fashion statement and his music - was just amazing!

First Song : Bad

Favorite Song : Man In The Mirror

Then came so many artists from the legendary Motown label - which included The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Riche and so on --- 

March 2014 - I discovered Coldplay during my High School years. It was a massive shift from old school music to Contemporary. But when i started listening to the later albums such as Mylo Xyloto , i realized that i was more into contemporary rock than contemporary pop. 

First Song : Paradise 

Favorite Song : Everything from the album “Viva La Vida’ and “A Rush Of Blood To The Head” 

Coldplay’s music further drew me into Imagine Dragons, One Republic, Maroon 5 and all the contemporary stuff we may have encountered with, during the 2010s. -- out of all the bands apart from Coldplay, Imagine Dragons stood out to me the most. 

First Song : Radioactive

Favorite Song : Shots, Gold 

Some time during my final years in my high school - for some reason, i reverted back into old school and for some reason  i felt young and fresh - listening to them . 

And thanks to Coldplay, i discovered one of the most misunderstood bands in the world.

On November 2015 - I discovered a-ha. 

And honestly, it was like a new dish which eventually became my favorite.

 This band impacted me so much that ‘ I started developing feelings for that one particular guy’. I had a proper crush on that guy for years - it coincided with my college years, my studies in literature and psychology -- to such a point that, he made me understand my sexual orientation. 

Morten Harket. 

Never in my life, i had that thought that i would feel emotionally and spiritually connected with him, his music and his wonderful voice. 

By the time i have reached my final year in my undergraduate course, I began to understand the philosophical aspect of a-ha’s music - just to realize how much the world has lost the ability and the chance to witness the beauty of their creations. Dismissing them as a teeny bop band and reducing them into one song was a massive mistake. 

I was glad that i discovered this band. It was beautiful. 

First Song : Hunting High And Low

Favorite Song : East Of The Sun West Of The Moon 

a-ha made me discover other synth pop bands such as Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode, The Cutting Crew, Spandau Ballet.

a-ha’s 4th album - East Of The Sun further sparked my interest in Progressive and Psychedelic Rock and guess which band a-ha introduced me to.. 

This is soo insanely beautiful , I can’t :’) 

And yes, I had a thing for Jim Morrison.

First Song: Light My Fire

Favorite Song: Riders On The Storm , Strange Days, Break On Through (To The Other Side) 

My sophomore year was defined by Psychedelic and Progressive Rock music. Thanks to The Doors to begin with. 

I was introduced to the OG of Progressive Rock way before I started listening to Michael Jackson. Sometime in Feb-March 2008, there was this guy in my class who sang “WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATION” as a silly protest for more recess and playtime hours - and i kept humming that tune for quite a while (without knowing anything about the background of the track). In fact, that song ( Another Brick In The Wall pt 2) was the FIRST ENGLISH SONG I HAVE HEARD IN MY LIFE.

It took me 10 years to finally learn the name of the artist and actually listen to the discography. 

 Around March 2018 , a friend of mine told me to listen to ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ by Pink Floyd. 

And IT BLEW MY MIND - like crazy. 

PINK FLOYD OFFICIALLY ENTERED MY LIFE DURING MY SOPHOMORE YEARS IN COLLEGE. And being an Arts students, I was drawn into the philosophy of their music.

I also had a platonic crush on the guitarist lol. 

The COVID-19 Pandemic also introduced me to the Psychedelic roots of the band as well, and Syd Barrett. 

First Song : Another Brick In The Wall (pt 2) // Astronomy Domine

Favorite Song : Echoes // Apples And Oranges, Paintbox, Everything from Meddle, The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals , The Wall , The Division Bell

Out of everything I have listened, some of the most amazing songs to ever exist was -- Man In The Mirror, A Rush Of Blood To The Head,  East Of The Sun and Echoes. 

Damn, Echoes was just like -- OG of Music and symbolically my current favorite song of all time. 

[jafreitag]

Grateful Dead Monthly: Gaelic Park – New York, NY 8/26/71

Fifty years ago today, on Thursday, August 26, 1971, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Gaelic Park in New York City.

Gaelic Park is located at West 240th Street and Broadway, five miles north and east of Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. In 1926, the Gaelic Athletic Association purchased it to host the Gaelic Games. What are Gaelic Games? I’m a sliver Irish (just learned that a few years ago from a cousin who did some DNA stuff), but I didn’t know about such games until I asked the Google machine. Here you go, from the Wiki:

“Gaelic games (Irish: Cluichí Gaelacha) are sports played in Ireland under the auspices of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They include Gaelic football, hurling, Gaelic handball and rounders. Women’s versions of hurling and football are also played: camogie, organised by the Camogie Association of Ireland, and ladies’ Gaelic football, organised by the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association. While women’s versions are not organised by the GAA (with the exception of handball, where men’s and women’s handball competitions are both organised by the GAA Handball organisation), they are closely associated with it.”

Some to unpack there. What’s Gaelic football? It’s basically rugby. (The rules are probably way different, but this is a music blog, so don’t judge.) And hurling? Rugby with a small ball and sticks that look like sporty pizza paddles. (Again, don’t judge.) Gaelic handball? Racquetball, except you use your hands and you’re outside, not in some bougie health club from the ’80s. Finally, rounders? It’s actually alot like baseball. Pretty cool.

Why were the Dead there? A 9/2/71 piece in the Village Voice by Carman Moore, now archived on the Grateful Dead Sources blog, said that Gotham promoter Howard Stein, a Bill Graham competitor who booked the Dead to play at the Cap Theater in Port Chester, NY and the Academy of Music in NYC, had turned “the drab little Riverdale soccer field … into a summer rock mini-festival.” (Check out the poster above.) Moore’s writing has an early-70s sizzle, and he refers to his colleague, now-legendary rock scribe Robert Christgau. Here’s an excerpt:

“Last week’s Grateful Dead concert up at Gaelic Park was a usual Dead session, meaning that the band-to-fan-to-band electro-chemical process for which rock music is famed was on like high mass at Easter. Although I think I know most of the time what they are doing musically (Christgau will like this notion); I don’t quite understand them electro-chemically. Like the New York Knicks of two seasons ago, they can do excellent things together though they are not a group of deathless superstars. Garcia gets his songs across, but he can’t sing, and Bob Weir’s voice rises to about average…maybe better when he gets to screaming and the music sweeps him along. I still find it difficult to recognize the Dead songs that aren’t “Truckin'” or “St. Stephen” one from the other. I am not one of their fans, but seem to be one of their admirers. Their music speaks in a special language to their live listeners, and that language has the vocabulary of everybody else, but a convoluted syntax all its own. The note sequences are not completely dependent upon musical factors but are also dictated by how involved the band feels and also upon what kind of heat the audience is giving off. I’m trying to get to some essences of this thing.

The drama of a Dead concert revolves around the fact that wherever the band plays they know that a certain number (several tons) of their partisans will be there and that their crowd knows the Dead potential to excite them, but they also know that the Dead may not get into gear until the crowd begins to apply some heat, and so forth. Both parties also know that the concert will be long enough and informal enough for anything to happen on either side of the footlights, and so audiences improvise (smoke, go to the hot dog stand, kiss and snuggle, cheer, dance, listen like star-struck fools) just like their musician friends on stage (who play light and funny for awhile, retire backstage awhile, stand around, or get lost in a piece and turn on the heavy jets). Like good lovers, the Grateful Dead know the secrets of good foreplay, taking your time, surprising the partner for awhile, and then just reacting for a spell.”

The timing of the show seems odd. The band was on the East Coast in July, but began August back in Cali – LA, SD, Berkeley – before a three-night run at Chicago’s historic Auditorium Theater. Then they trekked back to NYC. Our resident Deaditor ECM explains that aspect: “This show was supposed to be played the day before the Yale Bowl concert on July 30, but some issues with the equipment trucks and/or weather prevented it from happening from the scheduled date. There are a few stories on the web about people who didn’t get the message (no twitter back then!) and dropped some acid only to show up to an empty stadium. Haha!”

Moore said that the show reminded him of “a high school stadium I used to know – low stands, unfulfilled infield grass, mud holes here and there, beer sold at one end in some quantity.” He continued:

“The formal shape of the concert was a general crescendo, light at the beginning and heavy-groovy at the end – not a shooting-star, call-the-law finale, just a heightened physical-emotional climate…the goods delivered as promised…sort of like good preaching in a church known to be a happy place. I did not enjoy their country-westernish opening tunes; maybe they didn’t either, because the pieces were awfully short. But by the three-quarter mark they had involved themselves, the crowd, and me too.

First they got the rhythm engaged and finally, courtesy of Jerry Garcia’s lead and interplays with Lesh and Weir, they went into the soloing and jamming which are the real magic music territory of this band. Much is made of the Dead soloists, but it became clear to me by last Thursday that bassist Phil Lesh plus those two drummers create the atmosphere that makes the Dead thing possible. The drummers were exceptionally understated, but Lesh kept bopping and thrumming away, heavily at all times, until his patterns were consistently getting the other players off. In the middle of “St. Stephen” there was a special coming together: Lesh had found a nice ambiguous but compelling set of licks; Garcia eased into a solo; Weir strummed a cross-time lick over all of it; it built; it quieted; Garcia started to play strange classical kind of lines; the drums dropped out; the audience got quiet; nothing at all could be predicted for a minute or so; then Lesh began to grope his way out with two chords and rhythms which began to regularize; audience began to jump and then to clap; guitars began to straighten out; the band came home to the cheers of the fans. Good music-making. The listener goes home without a little tune to whistle, but he hears music. As if they were finishing off some personal solos based over the last riffs heard, the fans went out of Gaelic Park without a thousand encores and without a lot of fuss on the streets outside.

It’s all very interesting, surprising, and I guess mystifying as before. All I know is that the Dead, or their fans, or the combination of both lure you into planning to return when they’re all assembled and back in town again.”

Apparently, there was some grief about bootlegs at this show. The GD Sources blog has a post that archives a 10/6/71 piece by the excellently-handled Basho Katzenjammer (Basho, the 17th Century Japanese haiku master; Katzenjammer, the German word for hangover) that gripes about an army of 200# “muscle freaks” at the direction of tour manager Sam Cutler liberating a handful of tapes from 100# weakling Johnny Lee. It’s a truly fun read. An excerpt:

“The biggest piece of shit spewing from Cutler’s mouth is about the reasons the Dead have for being so pissed off: they don’t like the quality (remember Garcia’s line in “I Got No Chance of Losin”? He says, “I’m only in it for the gold.” Yeah, music has a way of being more honest than the artist intends it to be at times…) The “quality”? Anyone who has bought a bootleg recently will know and agree that the bootleg stereo album called “Grateful Dead” is one of the best underground products yet. The tape was taken from a concert the group did at Winterland, on the coast a few months back. Yeah, Garcia fucks up a bit on “Casey Jones,” and Pigpen’s ego may have been deflated a bit by his voice coming over poorly on “Good Loving” but that was a concert. You do a concert and you stand by your performance, good or bad. That’s show business.

This effete artistic bullshit doesn’t matter anyway … When you’re out to get all the money you can out of your gigs, like the Dead seem to be (like all the groups seem to be) you might be accused of being a bit piggish; when you use strong-arm shit to insure that you get every last penny that you deserve — by making Amerikan standards — you are a Pig. Jerry Garcia, is that you?

Nobody buys that anti-bootleg shit about the artistic integrity of the artist in saying what goes out. One, you stand by your performance; two, even if you don’t want to, Jerry, somewhat, and say “all your private property is fair game for your brothers (especially when they sell records of concerts that don’t compete with coming releases) and your brother (who’s gonna continue to dig you as we live off your comets we’re gonna keep ripping you off because it is possible. As simple as that.” If you and Cutler and Stein continue your shit, though, we’ll just have to sing the song the same old way, you guys being put in the position of being the same old reactionary establishment that we’re all ripping off. It’s all around. You break your back playing gigs for ten years and suddenly success is staring you in the face. Bread: lots and lots of bread. You turn your back on your poor, ripping ’em off roots and start to tighten up. You’re in the biggest rip-off industry around, but no one cares as long as they’re having fun.

Money. That’s the whole story, isn’t it? If these were other times, in another land under a different set of rules maybe you could justifiably complain about the people who want to give your recorded performances out free because you didn’t screen them and pick out the sections you didn’t like and do them over for the cat, ’cause no one charges for their music, and because the means of production belong to the people, and they can turn out all the good sounds they can, and you have a natural right to screen all releases. But we’re here. Now. You guys are making millions — or soon will be. Money is power, especially as the concept of money is crumbling nation-wide and power freaks like Stein are cornering the market on it. The channels that the green-power the Dead bring in travel aren’t the healthiest for the generations of revolution to come. Stein is one of these hopeful images of a freak with a chance to change things positively gone sour, who uses all his power to consolidate his power; who’ll go to any extremes to insure the natural expansion of that power. Fuck him. Fuck you.”

Speak, Basho! Quaint that the beef about bootlegs back then was sound quality, rather than copyright. Stuff got figured out at some point, I think. Like when Bobby shut down the LMA, lmao.

Ed featured part of this show in the 2016 edition of his epcot 31 Days of Dead project. Here are his listening notes, which are typically spot-on (and better than than the not-quite-on-the-bus commentary from Mr. Moore): 

“Less than three weeks after Pigpen’s definitive performance of Hard To Handle at the Hollywood Palladium (8/6/71), the Grateful Dead play the final date of their summer tour in 1971 at Gaelic Park in the Bronx. It will be Pig’s last show until December and the last time the band will ever perform in their original quintet configuration of Jerry, Phil, Pig, Billy and Bobby. By September, Keith will be rehearsing with the band to assume a full-time role on the keys. Perhaps anticipating his absence, Pigpen leads the band through 6 of his songs including the rarely-played Empty Pages and the last Hard To Handle. It is also one of the last performances of Saint Stephen, until the band revived it in 1976 with a major facelift, never to be played the same way again. When you consider these historical milestones along with the departure of Mickey Hart and the closings of the legendary Fillmore East and West earlier in the year it makes you realize that this concert carried a little more weight than anyone could have ever foreseen at the time. It truly was the end of a chapter in the life of the Grateful Dead. As you listen to each song you can’t help but feel a certain degree of nostalgia.

For me, the hidden gem of the show is the outstanding version of Uncle Johns Band. Jerry’s first guitar solo is an absolute joy to hear. His notes sing with irresistible melody and happy sunshine which perfectly capture the nostalgia of those carefree early years. If you listen closely you can hear Pigpen playing the wood claves.”

Speaking of Pig, this show features the second and final performance of Empty Pages. The NYS Music blog, which has a nice write-up of this show, describes it as a McKernan original that “pairs his traditional crooning style with a slow blues jam that’s nicely peppered with fiery guitar licks from Garcia. It’s a true rarity and a shame that the band wouldn’t be able to further develop this one.”

I feel like this was a try-hard post. It might be tl;dr, idk. Here’s the true goodness…

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE.

More soon.

JF

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