The Joy of Life and Love

The joy of life and love... that's the promise of the world!!

Cheburashka!

The fuck?:

Cheburashka (Russian: Чебурашка), also known as Topple in earlier English translations, is a character in children's literature, from a 1965 story by the Russian writer Eduard Uspensky. He is also the protagonist (voiced by Klara Rumyanova) of the animated film series by Soyuzmultfilm studio, the first episode of which was made in 1969.
[...]
In the 1970s a series of children's television shows, radio shows, records and magazines were produced in Sweden featuring the characters Drutten and crocodile Gena. These two characters were based on a couple of Cheburashka and Gena dolls purchased on a trip to the Soviet Union, so they were visually identical to Cheburashka and Gena. "Drutten" is a fairly good approximation of a translation of "one who tumbles down," as one meaning of the Swedish colloquial verb "drutta" is "to fall or tumble down."
But that is where the similarity ends. The two characters sang and told different stories from those in the USSR, lived on a bookshelf rather than in a city and are hand puppets operated in live action rather than stop motion. Only occasionally Swedish state TV would broadcast a segment of the Russian original, dubbed in Swedish. So, while many Swedes may visually recognize Cheburashka, they will generally not associate these characters with the ones Russian children know.

Fucking state TV. Was everything from my childhood covert communist propaganda?

YouTube: Gena singing in Swedish and coincidentally FREAKING ME OUT! Goluboy vagon! Same shit in Finnish! Kukdrutt!

Currently Reading #49: Other Mother

Get Me the Head of the Balrog

Random linkage is the best kind of linkage.

Balrog monument (Merchandise)

Don't tell me what I can't do (Lost tattoo)

Egyptian Deity Kuk (only funny in Swedish)

Redesigning the Stop sign (YouTube)

Obama Ero-Manga

Megan Fox nose job

A Jury of Our Peers

Grimace Project

The eternal question

Obama icon

Presidential Debate

Joe Blow

Christian Bale Soundboard

Hilda the Hippo eats dwarf (pwned!)

Groundhog Dreams (Strangest ad campaign evar?)

The Hoaxmaster

Q: Pink -- why feminine?

Norm MacDonald on Conan and also Norm Macdonald - Outtakes (Bob Saget roast) part 1 (of 3) (YouTube) (p.s. Norm MacDonald file sharing)

Insipid Tales

If my name was Mahershalalhashbaz Gilmore I would definitely change it to Mahershalalhashbaz Ali. It's easier to say.

Sad Trombone

Currently Reading #48: Learn 2 fucken spel!

Currently Reading #47

Watchmen Fun Linkage

It's easy to make fun of Watchmen but it still has to be done.

Saturday Morning Watchmen (video, also on YouTube)

I dit it!

Nite Owl & Rorschach in Presidential Trouble!

How The Studios Would Have Ended 'Watchmen' (A Storyboard) (yes, a storyboard)

Dr Manhattan condoms (actual promotional item)

104 Ways to Hilariously Ruin the Watchmen Movie (photoshop contest)

Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating Watchmen

Social Media's Watchmen (brilliant)

10 Reasons the Watchmen Movie Will Suck (I really should have posted this before the movie)

Avenue: An illustrated history of Watchmen from page to screen (not humor either)

Producer Don Murphy calls Alan Moore "a hypocrite" and "a liar" (hilarious news item)

Evil has a New Face

Contrary to popular belief, super-bastard Chevy Chase is not dead yet:

Just when the entertainment media was about to prepare one of its bi-annual "Hey, remember Chevy Chase?" reports, Mr. Chase is popping up again, in a sitcom pilot. The show is called Community, and it's about a lawyer [...] who learns that his degree is invalid, and has to return to community college to get the credits he needs. There he meets Chase, another non-traditional student working towards gettin' that paper.

Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is most famous for getting into a fistfight with Bill Murray on the set of Saturday Night Live. Chase said Murray had bad acne scars, and Murray claimed Chase was unable to satisfy his wife in bed. Both were probably valid criticisms. Also: Caddyshack.

King Kang

Kang** is from the future* where he has got it made but he can also travel through time so get ready, 1977. He's taking over!

*A time period commonly understood to contain all events that have yet to occur.
**Read more about Kang on page 21.

Currently Reading #46: "Throw Up, or I'll Slit Your Throat!"

Continuation of 38.

Currently Reading #45: Fhtagn

Sensational Scoop: 3 Nerds 2 Watch Watchmen!

Said nerds are pictured above, in white. Did you know SUPERBLOG!! first wrote about this fucking movie over 4 years ago?:

[A film adaptation of] Watchmen is on its way [but the original graphic novel] is unfilmable, as the most interesting thing about it is Moore's use of formal techniques unique to the comics medium, stuff that is literally impossible to transfer to the big screen. That one of the main characters is naked throughout might also be problematic...

What a sad and naive fanboy Koala Mentala once was! Totally different from the sad and cynical grey-haired gentleman you now see before you. Or would see, if you and I were communicating face-to-face instead of through the Internet. Anyway, as you may have heard, the film is finally here, and the time has come to be massively disappointed. Or pleasantly surprised! (Fat chance.) Look for a review at some point in the very near future.

Hat tip: Picture intercepted by Nerd nr 2, Happy Harry.

What in God’s Name Happened to Uncle?

I have returned! WHATIN gOD'S NAME HAPPENED TO ME ? tHE WEB IS FULL OF RUMOURS! Yes, and well. Like I said last time back in 2005.

Regular visitors and everybody else may have noticed that my blogging has been somewhat weak lately. How come?

I also said:

Being the best dad in the world takes some time and that's why I've been slacking off more than usual lately. I guess it will take a couple of weeks/months before I'm back in full blogging force again....

So now we know! Uncle became Daddy Uncle again but now it's Double Daddy Uncle! All right!! when I master being a double daddy I'll get back to blogging every day!

Banned Father & Son

Learn Swedish and then watch the awesome REA interview with Sigge & Fredrik on internet piracy.

Via.

Currently Reading #44

Mo' Moz Bats

Hey! The same day I read the conclusions to Moz*/Quitely's ASS** and Moz' Bats*** come the first images from Moz/Quitely's followup: Batman & Robin (presumably named after the awesome motion picture). That's synergy or synchronization or whatever. Supposedly Quitely's just on for 3 issues, though, and then maybe 3 more in a year or so. Why am I telling you this?

*Morrison, as in Grant
**It's an abbreviation.
***RIP

Currently Reading #43: "Zur-En-Arrh"

Continuation of 9.

Currently Reading #42: "The Fundamental Forces are All Yoked by Thought Alone"

Currently Reading #40-41

2008: Movies That Ruled

Here's my personal top twenty list of films released in 2008:

1. The Dark Knight
2. Synecdoche, New York
3. Happy-Go-Lucky
4. The Wrestler
5. Låt den rätte komma in / Let the Right One In
6. Rachel Getting Married
7. 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile / 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days*
8. In Bruges
9. Frost/Nixon
10. Gran Torino
11. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
12. WALL·E
13. Los Cronocrímenes / Timecrimes*
14. Transsiberian
15. Doubt
16. Paranoid Park
17. Recount**
18. Iron Man
19. Surfwise
20. Tropic Thunder

*Originally released in 2007, but whatever. It's my list.
**TV movie I think, but again I say "whatever".

(I was going to write about what I liked about each of these movies but then I remembered it's Saturday and SUPERBLOG!!'s readership drops quite a bit during the weekend and nobody reads old posts (right?) so it's not worth the effort. Wait, that's insulting to the people actually reading this. Shit, I've failed again. Now I feel bad.)

If it seems like I left out some great movies (release list on Wikipedia), it is either because I haven't seen them yet (Burn After Reading? Vicky Cristina Barcelona?) or, more likely, because they actually suck and you just don't realize it (I told you about Billy Butt-Head and Slumdog). Or else, actually the most probable scenario, I kind of liked them but didn't really like them (Milk, Pineapple Express, Wendy and Lucy, many others).

So what do you think? I assume I'm right about everything?

Lost Tales of the Hum Dinger

Okay, enough is enough. But he ruled, right?

Do note that this one takes place right between Hum Dinger's origin and his first SUPERBLOG!! appearance. They should have just placed them in sequence and made it easier for everyone.

Currently Reading #39

U R Dumb

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2008: Movies That Sucked

A month or two or so away I was going to write a post called "The Oscars Suck Like Always" in which I was going to critique this year's Oscar nominees and award them Michael Keatons according to their placement on the Universal SUPERBLOG!! Scale of Suckitude to Ruliness (USSSR). But time flew and now the Oscars are over and there's little to be gained by pointing out that, say, The Krazy Kaze of Billy Butt-Head was beautifully photographed but essentially vapid and banal and overly sentimental and stupid. Or that it was much too derivative of the vastly superior Forrest Gump (adapted by the same writer), as seen in The Curious Case of Forrest Gump. (The linked video would perhaps have been revelatory for you back then, as Billy Butt-Head had recently been released, but now it's old news. Anyway, everything I could have written about Billy is said better here.) So I won't.

But while I'm on the subject: I know every single person on the planet except me loved Slumdog Millionaire but... well, I kind of liked it too, but I also found it contrived and brainless. Did you know that in the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? contestants are allowed to leave the studio after hearing the question? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Also:

Plot holes: The original TV show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" is recorded in studio some days before the actual broadcast. The show that we see in the film is broadcast live, which raises the incongruence that the person from home can easily see the question on TV having plenty of time to come up with an answer before receiving the actual call.

There were several (and too many) assaults on common sense in the film, and I found them needlessly distracting. Obviously, the filmmakers wanted to use a game show with pop culture cachet but were too lazy to use it in a consistent and logical way. Somehow, these little stupidities in overhyped but otherwise fairly benign movies annoy me more than complete shit like Wanted or Hancock. Why is that?

Next time: Movies that ruled.

What They Made Me Watch in February, 2009

Here's a list. Extra recommended in bold:

Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films (1964-1992)
Coffy (1973)
Roxanne (1987) (R)
The Addams Family (1991) (R)
La Sindrome di Stendhal / The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)
Perfect Blue (1998)
The Limey (1999)
The Terminal (2004)
Match Point (2005) (R)
Container (2006)

Changeling (2008)
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) (R)
Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) (R)
Role Models (2008)
Vals Im Bashir / Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Columbo: Try and Catch Me (1977) (R)
Battlestar Galactica: Season 1 (2004-2005, 13 episodes)
Battlestar Galactica: Season 2 (2005-2006, 20 episodes)
Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 (2006-2007, 20 episodes)
Battlestar Galactica: Razor (2007)
Arrested Development: Season 1 (2003–2004, 22 episodes)
Arrested Development: Season 2 (2004–2005, 18 episodes)