ThunderCats are on the move

[austin_dern]

Whilst poking around downtown for interesting things I discovered that ThunderCats has been released to DVD. This doesn't surprise me, inherently; at this point I'm more surprised by the things I used to watch that haven't been released to DVD. What caught my eye was among the listed special features was commentary from fans, like ... Wil Wheaton. This, by my calendar, marks the first time since 1987 that the participation of Wil Wheaton in a project has been deliberately advertised.

And I know, yeah, he has a blog and he's established enough nerd credentials that the people who have opinions on Linux kernel revisions have been desperately retconning their 2,038 messages calling for Wheaton's beheading in alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die to explain that they always admired what Wheaton was doing, they just didn't like the character. Me, I'm on record as liking him, and his character, before the Slashdot community forgave him. And I wish him success in whatever it is he's doing particularly. I just feel mighty strange that Wil Wheaton might be, you know, a fanboy, and find odd the assumption that people who haven't decided whether they'd buy a ThunderCats DVD would find themselves more likely to buy one if an interview with Wil Wheaton is part of the package, which already has that neat tilted-angle changing-image false-depth thing. And I'm really not prepared to hear whether Wesley Crusher ever had an impure thought about Cheetara. I didn't buy the set, although the store clerk had me surprisingly well-pegged by wondering if I'd care to buy any of the Transformers DVD sets, which were part of a strangely themed National Day discount package.

In other news, there's a report of the death of Mel Welles, who played Gravis Mushnik in the original Little Shop of Horrors and the lyrical Digger Smoken in The Undead. According to rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc he had a PhD in psychology from Columbia University, he produced and directed concerts in Australia, and he directed Lady Frankenstein. You know, the usual sort of life.

Trivia: Snoopy's birthday is (arguably) 28 August. Source: Peanuts strip of 28 August 1951, reprinted in The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, Charles Schulz. (The arguable part is the other time Snoopy's birthday was mentioned it was a different day, and there's no a priori reason to suppose a strip depicts things of that day, though the 28 August 1951 strip was not part of a storyline.)

Currently Reading: Special Deliverance, Clifford Simak. Simak just pulls together a couple characters, drops them in the middle of nowhere, and sees if a plot develops. It doesn't quite, but there's some interesting characters anyway.

Comments

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

I don't think I even have to do the next lyric, as the song you have picked is pretty darn obvious.

You know, someone on SpinDizzy did a Thundarian description for me, but unfortunately I didn't get it down at the time. Now I can't remember who came up with it! Darn it...

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I supposed this wouldn't be a very difficult song cue for you. As for being Thundarian, it does seem like it ties your health into the well-being of the Sword of Omens itself, in that when the Eye of Thunderra got something stabbed into it it just left the ThunderCats collapsed and waiting for death. That seems like a very odd thing to do; I have to suppose the ordinary benefits of tying your health to that of a sword that Lion-O's surprisingly prone to just tossing around overcome this weakness, in a big way.

[bluerain.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute. That corpse-song guy from The Undead was Mr. Mushnik?

Dude.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, that was my reaction. But the Internet Movie Database says he was, and thinking about the faces I suppose yeah, that would be.

Still, I haven't felt like this since I learned the Klingon Judge in The Undiscovered Country was the particularly disgusting Wisconsonite ``You've been hittin' the BOOZE again, Ev'' guy from The Giant Spider Invasion.

[bluerain.livejournal.com]

Or that Road Rash from Hobgoblins was the bearded gun-store rapist in Pulp Fiction.

Well, except that one makes some sense. I just found it startling that anyone from Hobgoblins was ever in a good movie.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

He was? Sheesh ... had no idea. It's mighty hard to imagine anyone from Hobgoblins turning up in a real movie, or from outside the underneath of a rock.

[buran.livejournal.com]

On the video case, you're referring to lenticular 3D, whereas this icon is anaglyphic 3D.

(3D is cool!)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Ah, lenticular. Thanks; I didn't know the word for it, and was this close to falling back on ``the kind they used for that old Halfsies breakfast cereal,'' which nobody understands.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

Lenticular is cool 'cause you can scratch your fingernails across the ribbed surface and get that wicked sound effect, like plugged-in corduroy. *fwip fwip fwippa fwiiiip*

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, corduroy is cool on its own, but yeah, the sound effect's marvelous. I was always wary of dragging fingernails across it -- it seems like it should scratch -- but my thumb is pretty good for getting sound.