(no subject)

I just remembered one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes. It's the one with William Shatner, but not that one.

A travelling couple stumbles upon a diner with a little fortune cookie dispenser. They ask it a few trifling questions about a promotion, which end up true. Then, somehow, it tells them they won't be safe if they leave the town when they want to. They try to leave and get in a minor accident, and the husband spends the next hour pouring pennies into the device, trying to get permission to leave.

At some point, the wife points out, even if it's real, then that makes it worse than if it were fake. For, to follow its advice to the exclusion of all other decisions, would mean surrendering their free will. So the husband agrees, and delivers a little defiant tirade to the device that he's prepared to deal with whatever random consequences Fate has in store, and they storm out, and leave the town.

And then in walks another couple. They sit at the same booth, and put pennies in the machine, and ask if it's safe to leave. It becomes apparent that they have been slaves to the fortune teller for years.

Oh, oh, that reminds me of an even better Kids in the Hall sketch. Essentially, it's a psychic sweatshop. Desperate people come to a psychic for advice, and they're told they're in grave danger. The psychic enters a trance, and a package falls out of the ceiling. The client is told that they must deliver the package in order to restore balance to their lives. And thus the streets are filled with desperate old women delivering packages, for free.

(no subject)

I keep seeing links to Loonatics, another re-imagining of Looney Tunes.

In the late 80's, every cartoon that had ever been popular had a "babies" or "and son" version. There was Muppet Babies, Popeye & Son, Flintstone Kids... so Warner Brothers invented Tiny Toon Adventures. And it was actually pretty good -- they made characters based on the old WB menagerie, but vaguely teen-aged, and for the first time, a substantial quotient of female characters. And they mapped very well into the social setting of junior high school. And there were occasional cameos by original WB characters, who were still well-known to kids at the time, because Bugs Bunny cartoons were on more channels than Disney cartoons. Mickey who?

Then one day I was flipping channels and saw a superdeformed Bugs Bunny. He was talking to a superdeformed Lola Bunny, whose Looney Tunes résumé consists entirely of Space Jam, in which she had no purpose but to be the Token Chick. And I looked at the channel guide, and lo, they had made "Baby Looney Tunes". Yes, even though WB already did this WAY better with Tiny Toons, they decided to explore what it would be like if Hanna Barbera owned Bugs Bunny back in 1988. I didn't give it much of a chance; I already watch Fairly Odd Parents every month or so, that's enough cartoons for me most of the time.

And now all the blogs are abuzz about Loonatics.

Hey, this is what happens when copyrights last more than 50 years, and corporations get to capitalize on characters created before they were born. If you're lucky, they'll do something cool with it. But eventually, they'll ruin it. It took even less time for Paramount to ruin Star Trek.

I'm sure that if all the copyright extensions since 1980 never passed Congress, Bugs Bunny would have fallen into public domain, and immediately become a Disney feature film.

Bugs Bunny talked like he was from 1930's Brooklyn. I saw the trailer, and Buzz Bunny talks like a voice actor trying to evoke Bruce Willis. He ends up sounding like Stinkoman. 20X6!