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Third Attempt is going on a brief hiatus. Terribly sorry.

A Pinky and the Brain Halloween

The first special I'll be taking a look at is “A Pinky and the Brain Halloween”. If you're unfamiliar with “Pinky and the Brain” and are too lazy to look it up, it's a show about two genetically altered lab mice who want to take over the world. Well, one wants to take over the world. The other is pretty much just along for the ride. It started off as a segment on a show called “Animaniacs” and received its own spin-off when the WB network was launched. As such, we get the episode we're looking at today.

The episode begins in the middle of one of the Brain's plots to take over the world. It's Halloween, and he's invented a device which allows him to transmit via Jack O'Lantern and control the minds of children. The trick-or-treating scene is pretty nifty, what with the costumes and all:


Of course, the plan fails, and the Brain laments that he's tried everything short of selling his soul to take over the world. Usually, this would elicit no response, but since it's a Halloween episode there's a glowing red breeze and a man calling himself Mister Itch appears. The man knows an awful lot about the Brain, including the fact that he once decided to chuck it all in favor of a failed rhythmic gymnastics career, and wants to help him take over the world. In order to prove his sincerity, Itch gives Pinky a trial wish. Pinky wishes for a radish rose whatchamwhozits, and Itch complies by turning the Brain into a melon ball thingamabob. The Brain seems convinced, but changes his mind and storms back to the lab. Itch thinks there may be another way...


Later, Pinky returns to the lab as well, and wonders if Itch could really do all the things he promised. The Brain sarcastically replies that yes, Itch probably could, but the Brain can just wave a magic pencil and suddenly the world will be his.

To his surprise, he waves a magic pencil and suddenly the world is his.

As it turns out, this is not because of a magic pencil, but rather because Pinky sold his soul. To the Devil. At this point, I think I should tell you that the spin-off aired in prime time. I doubt they could get away with Pinky selling his soul to the Devil on Saturday mornings, at least not as overtly as this. Mister Itch takes Pinky away to Hades, and while Brain seems initially upset that Pinky is gone, he thinks his newfound status will get him through it. Why shouldn't it? He has everything he ever wanted: the affection of the world's population, supreme control, and his nemesis Snowball acting as his jester.


Not all is well, however, as the Brain continues to miss Pinky, trying to mask this feeling by claiming he just wants to know where Pinky kept the food pellets. Snowball suggests he go to Hades, and gives the Brain a map which guides him through the Department of Motor Vehicles and into the Underworld. Brain makes it into Hades after masquerading as a fatally malnourished Rush Limbaugh, and after exclaiming “YES!” at the gates, wonders why he's celebrating since he's now in Hell.


Pinky, meanwhile, is enjoying all the tortures Mister Itch can throw at him. He claims that the only real torture is being separated from his best friend, and who should choose that moment to show up but the Brain? He demands Pinky leave Hades with him, citing his need for food pellets, but Itch won't let Pinky go without a fight. The Brain challenges him to rhythmic gymnastics, and Itch calmly insinuates that he invented that “infernal sport”. What's more is that, if the Brain wins, he'll get Pinky but lose the world and forfeit any future attempts to take it over. The Brain still accepts the challenge.


While the Brain does well, earning a perfect ten, Itch gets an eleven, claiming that while he promised the Brain a challenge, he never promised that it would be a fair one. Pinky and the Brain have a tearful good-bye, but Pinky take solace in the fact that he'll get the radish rose whatchamwhozits promised to him by Itch. As it turns out, Itch doesn't know what a radish rose whatchamwhozits is, and so the contract for Pinky's soul is null and void. Itch takes affront at this, turns into a more traditional demonic Devil, and chases Pinky and the Brain out of Hades. They manage to escape back to the lab, where Snowball is displeased, having also made a pact with Itch. With that, the Brain vows to try to take over the world again the following night, and all is right with the world.


With this synopsis, I've managed to completely eradicate most of the actual humor from the episode. That's the problem with reviewing something that's actually good: you can't make snarky comments along the way. Well, you can, but it's futile. This was an exceptional episode of the show, and a pretty good Halloween special to boot. Really, though, with a cartoon about a lab mouse who sells his soul so his friend can rule the world, it either has to turn out really well or really terrible. I'm happy to say it's the former. If you'd like to see the actual episode, it's on DVD, the link which follows. I suppose you could also find it through other, nefarious means as well. Just don't sell your soul.

Halloween!

Well, Halloween is now less than a month away, and I've decided to get into the holiday spirit by reviewing Halloween episodes of TV shows. What makes a Halloween special, you ask? Well, the first clue is that it'll usually have "Halloween Special" in its name somewhere. However, very few of the shows I have on DVD saw it fit to have Halloween specials, so I shall have to get creative. The criteria, as thus, is that all shows must fall into at least one of the categories below:
1) They have to have the word Halloween or something in the title of an episode
2) They have to be an atypically spooky episode. This means that I could review that episode of "DuckTales" with all the classic Universal monsters, but not an episode of the "X-Files" as the majority of those episodes were spooky.

I'll make no promises about how often these will get posted, but I hope to have at least three up by Halloween.

Quickly Running Out of Ways to Title These

Another episode of Fringe, more letters in the sky! Hm... perhaps I should start actually talking about the episodes, as well? Well, so far, we've got two FBI agents and a father/son science team as the protagonists. In previous weeks, they've dealt with some guy who made explosions and chemical weapons, some sort of clone, and mentally broadcasted terrorist attacks. All well and good. The father/son scientist team are pretty decent, I think. The father (Doctor Walter Bishop) was in an asylum for seventeen years and is somewhat responsible for a lot of the fringe science stuff going on. The son is a shiftless wanderer who is, nevertheless, really smart. I think his name is Peter. The FBI agents are Olivia Scott and Astrid. We know nothing about Astrid. Olivia is new to investigating the fringe science things. She's going to end up with Peter, most likely.

Ah, the most current episode introduced the Observer, who is a man who seemingly can't feel or taste. He's in the photos of a lot of fringe science cases (referred to on the show as "The Pattern" cases) and he has no hair or eyebrows. I like him. Ah, there's also a bunch of rigmarole involving a vibrating cylinder and a guy with a really powerful gun. Oh, and the Observer might be psychic or something. A decent episode, really. Well, that's my muddled synopsis/review. Here's the letters in the sky:

Less Backlog

First off, I've gotten a new laptop. This only concerns you on a primary level, as with this new laptop, I can get images from DVDs. So I can review movies and whatnot now. This is spectacular news for me. Now, my backlog:

Books:
Foundation's Edge (Isaac Asimov)
20th Century Ghosts (Joe Hill)
The Collected Words of Edgar Allen Poe
The Last Days of Krypton (Kevin J. Anderson)

Comic Books:
Those ones I bought a while ago and posted about. Still haven't read any of them.

Movies:
Prey

Video Games:
Final Fantasy III (Nintendo DS)
Finishing a bunch of minor objectives for a bunch of games

In case you're keeping track, I finished a book and two movies. I also bought Mega Man 9 and Kirby Super Star Ultra, and finished both of those.

The Letters Keep Coming

Another episode of "Fringe", more letters in the sky. Only two in this week's episode, though, which is disappointing.

Pleasant Surprise

Quite some time ago, before the Internet and before I had a subscription to Nintendo Power, whenever a game would come out I would have no knowledge of it doing so until I would see it in an ad. These ads would always be placed in order to get you out there (or have your parents get out there) and get the freaking game. The first time it happened was with "Kirby's Dream Land" for the original Game Boy, which became the first game I ever bought with my very own money.

Several years later, I was reading a magazine days before my birthday, and was delighted to see that Kirby's Dream Land 2 had come out! Indeed, several Kirby games had come out in the interim, but for some reason I didn't take any notice of them at the time. With Kirby's Dream Land 2, however, I went from having no knowledge of this thing existing to wanting it more than anything in the world. Unfortunately, this was the last time I would feel this... or so I thought.

More Kirby games came out, and I bought most of them, but having a subscription to Nintendo Power and, later, the Internet allowed a quick burst of excitement which simmered with the long wait involved each time. There were no longer any surprises in life. At least, no good surprises. Everything is now heralded months before it comes out, as if it was a king leaving a foreign battleground. By the time the king has finally arrived at his castle, everyone is sort of unexcited. Thus is life. You get hit with girlfriends dumping you and surprise expenses, but never any fun surprises. And then, salvation!

Or, at least, an e-mail. I went into my Hotmail account and saw that Nintendo had sent me a message with the subject line: "What's super, tuff, and pink all over?"

I have not picked up a gaming magazine in months, or more than perused a gaming website for just as long. So I had no idea what to think when I saw that subject line, thinking maybe there was some Kirby thing on the Wii Virtual Console. I opened up the e-mail, however...

Kirby Super-Star Ultra. For the Nintendo DS. Release date: September 22nd.

There are some good surprises left in the world, it seems. You just have to know where not to look.

More Letters in the Sky

Well, another episode of "Fringe" was on earlier in the week, so you know what that means? More floating letters! Yes, I've decided to post pictures of all the floating letters from every episode. I like them, you see. I like them a lot.

Backlog

I have a backlog of entertainment-related things to work through. Unlike other backlogs, this one is remarkably pleasant. What do I have to do, you ask? I shall tell you, as it fills a blog post and makes me feel better for posting more than once a week.

Books:
Second Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
Foundation's Edge (Isaac Asimov)
20th Century Ghosts (Joe Hill)
The Collected Words of Edgar Allen Poe
The Last Days of Krypton (Kevin J. Anderson)

Comic Books:
Those ones I bought like, two weeks ago and posted about. Still haven't read any of them.

Movies:
Prey
Grizzly Park
Next Avengers

Video Games:
Final Fantasy III (Nintendo DS)
Finishing a bunch of minor objectives for a bunch of games

This is going to take a bit of time.

Letters in the Sky

So I decided to watch that new "Fringe" show. It shows some promise. I especially liked the cow and the bits where the show was like, "Look! SUPERPOWERS AND CYBORGS!" Fantastic. What I liked most, though, was the floating letters. They were magnificent. Hey, you know what? I shall post all of them here! You poor, poor people. I guess spoiler alert, too, maybe:

My oh my, how I enjoy those letters in the sky.

Foxy Lateness

It's been a week and I still haven't read any of those comics, nor have I done anything particularly blog-worthy. Soon, though, so hold out! For now, in lieu of putting up a comic strip panel, I bring you something else. I briefly played "Lord of the Rings Online", and at one point I saw the greatest thing:The reason I post this is because it represents one of my favorite moments from the Lord of the Rings. At some point after Bilbo Baggins leaves the Shire and before his nephew Frodo does the same, Frodo, Sam, and either Merry or Pippin are traveling and sleep under a tree. At this point, a random fox shows up and thinks about how odd it is to find a trio of hobbits to be sleeping under a tree. At no other point in the book does JRR Tolkien express this sort of whimsy, this random sentient animal.

As you can see from the above screenshot, I'm not the only person who liked that bit. Also, you can play as a chicken sometimes.

Fifty-Cent Bin Excursion

Thursday was a good day. I won't go into details about why, but it was. I liked Thursday. I had class, and halfway through my classes I thought, "You know, I think I'll go to that convient comic book shop that's a brisk walk away from here."

So I did.

The only problem was that I only had five dollars to spend. Conventional wisdom tells me to buy a one-shot, maybe an issue of Spider-Man Family or that Spider-Man Summer Special thing. Both, however, cost a penny under five dollars as do all one-shots. So I start looking at the monthly things, and everything has a little banner on it and I don't really want to put up with some cross-over right now. Trades are right out, as are most back-issues. Then, however, salvation!

Or, at least eight or nine boxes of back-issues priced at fifty cents a pop. With glee, I began to kneel down and look through them, hoping to find a hidden treasure in what would most assuredly be a lot of dreck, most of it from the nineties. One of the very first books I saw was this one:A silver-age style DC book featuring Robby Reed and the Martian Manhunter? Magnificent. Perhaps not as bizarrely magnificent as the next book:
They don't look like any Seven Soldiers of Victory I've ever seen, but I'm willing to give them a chance. I can't wait to find out how these guys got teamed-up. It's sure to be quite a tale. The next three are pretty self-explanatory. I think. A reprint of an issue of "Swamp Thing":

Something trying to be funny. We'll see if it succeeds or not:And an issue of "Hitman" which you can read more about here:

They actually had several issues of "Hitman", but I only bought the one because the others were all part of a larger multi-part story. These next three are things I've been idly curious about for the longest time, and despite hearing repeatedly that they're terrible, I bought them anyway because they look like they could be fun:It's a mini-series where they put the Avengers and other Marvel heroes into a Dungeons and Dragons-type setting. When I saw they had the entire mini-series in the fifty-cent bin, my heart skipped a beat. When I saw they had several copies of each issue, I became somewhat wary, but I still wasn't to pass this up.

When I started looking through the bins, there was some rules I had in mind. If I saw any Aquaman, Firestorm, or Resurrection Man in there, I was going to buy them even if it meant putting something else back. Any old Howard the Duck, too, and while they had every issue of the somewhat recent MAX series in there, which they had no old Howard the Duck. Anything that looked somewhat fun would remain in my mind, especially comics from the eighties. Rambling rules aside, there was one thing I thought I had no chance of finding, but I did:
"ROM: Spaceknight". Magnificent. In any case, I shall be continuing this practice of going through fifty cent bins and looking for treasure. Who knows what my searches may weild? I'll also be reviewing a lot of these, including the Avataars thing.

Heck, especially the Avataars thing.