Thread "Happy 2023! General Discussion Thread" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 7:02PM, Feb. 7, 2023

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Nope. "Werewolves of London" and "Don't Fear the Reaper."

I listen to those at least once every month or so.

Posted at 8:02PM, Feb. 7, 2023

I always thought of Don't fear the reaper as a summer song

Posted at 7:02AM, Feb. 8, 2023

Me too. It would have to be Fear The Reaper to make my Halloween list.

Romeo & Juliet
Burn together in purgatory
We can scream like they are
So fear the reaper…
Etc

The cowbell is quite scary if you're afraid of cows, and you should be.

Posted at 8:02AM, Feb. 8, 2023

I despise the song "Don't fear the reaper" it's a song encouraging suicide. So into any suicide prevention center and you'll hear a story of the song playing in the background of calls or people quoting the song when talking about how they want to die.
It's been called "the anthem of teen suicide."

Werewolves of London on the other hand is one of my favorites. It's a year round song like most of Zevon's catalog.

Posted at 9:02AM, Feb. 8, 2023

Between the two, I've always considered Valentine's day to be the scarier.

Posted at 9:02AM, Feb. 8, 2023

According to Blue Oyster Cult, it's not a song about suicide, even though it's often been mistaken/misinterpreted as such; the song was meant to be about how because death is inevitable, it shouldn't be feared. The songwriter did admit that he was inspired to write the song after he thought about what would happen if he died at a young age, but I believe many of us have wondered similar things - I can attest to this myself, because in my nearly lifelong struggles to lose weight, it's been a lingering concern in the back of my mind that what if my weight problems contribute to an early death in me? I mean, look at the likes of John Pinette, Dom DeLuise, John Candy, Chris Farley, and others . . . they died at either young or reasonably respectable ages, and their weight played a factor in their deaths . . . I really don't want that to happen to me.

But anyway, heard yet another "Halloween" song at random today: Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein." Granted, listening to it, you wouldn't think of it as a Halloween song, you'd think it was some kind of psychedelic instrumental that you'd hear on the beach or something. Similarly, listening to Bob Marley's "Dracula" certainly wouldn't put you in the mind of Halloween either, but that's often played as a Halloween song too.

Posted at 8:02PM, Feb. 8, 2023

Pixar is now coming out with a TOY STORY 5. That's right . . . a TOY STORE 5.

Pixar has now officially lost all credibility.

Posted at 8:02PM, Feb. 8, 2023

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Pixar is now coming out with a TOY STORY 5. That's right . . . a TOY STORE 5.

Pixar has now officially lost all credibility.

I have always, always, always been more curious to know how Sid Phillips has been handling adult-life as his upbringing (as shown by the aged interior of his house, the parent asleep surrounded by empty aluminum cans, and his odd fixation of taking apart toys and putting them together again). Years ago, when Toy Story 3 came out, it was rumored that he was the garbage man with the headphones.

I want to know More. What has Sid been up to all these years?!?

Posted at 8:02PM, Feb. 8, 2023

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
Years ago, when Toy Story 3 came out, it was rumored that he was the garbage man with the headphones.

He was; that was actually confirmed.

Posted at 12:02AM, Feb. 9, 2023

My college roommate was one of those overweight people who died young. Massive heart attack at 40.

Posted at 6:02AM, Feb. 9, 2023

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Pixar has now officially lost all credibility.

What about the Buzz Lightyear movie?
UGH…
It was supposed to be what the original kid loved as his his fave movie and why he liked the Buzz Lightyear toy. But it had NOTHING in common with the sort of space adventure film that the boy would have watched back then.

It SHOULD have been stylised, traditional space opera action thing. Very stylised and heroic…
Instead what we got was a very serious and very modern 2022 story about the dangers of travel at relativistic speeds and making the best of things as they are etc.
In its own right it was an ok movie. Standing on its own it wasn't horrible.
But in relation to Toy Story is stupid.

Posted at 1:02PM, Feb. 9, 2023

…
Toy Story 3 was enough {for me}.

Ju- just stick to Buzz Lightyear of Star Command + Toy Story Treats instead. Put all the new 'toy stories' away in your storage room.

Posted at 2:02PM, Feb. 9, 2023

Back in the day, and as a fan of the first Toy Story - and the second…why not - I couldn’t wait to see Toy Story 3. The story wasn’t over. The third movie promised to answer the question ‘what happens when Andy grows up?’

The movie delivered spectacularly - as for Toy Story 4, I couldn’t have cared less. The story was over. Sure, there was the promise of seeing Bo Peep again. Not quite enough, haha. I guess it did well enough to greenlight a fifth. Surprising! All the best to them - I ain’t going. I guess not having kids I’m not representative of the audience.

Posted at 3:02PM, Feb. 9, 2023

Honestly, the whole plot of TS4 sounded more like one of those "What if?" kinds of fanfics that people write when there's a certain character or plot element they felt didn't get enough of the spotlight in the canon of what they write about, and in this case, it seems like a fanfic that would've also been written by a Woody/Bo Peep shipper.

Also, TS3 has wrapped up the whole story so beautifully, and looked as though that Woody and the gang would've lived happily ever after with Bonnie (or at least until she grew up) . . . then TS4 comes along and showed that Bonnie was an ungrateful little snot who didn't even care about Woody anyway.

Posted at 8:02PM, Feb. 9, 2023

I still haven't actually seen a single Toy Story film XD

I have Disney+ now so I could I suppose, and I've watched all of the other Pixar things, even Cars, which I didn't think I'd like, though the sequels and shorts were arse. But I just still haven't yet. I suppose the crappy early CGI is a bit of a turn off at this point.

Posted at 9:02PM, Feb. 9, 2023

From a technical and artistic standpoint, no, unfortunately the original TOY STORY has not aged well at all. It's amusing to think that once upon a time, that was such a big, groundbreaking deal, at it was the very first full CGI movie ever made. Of course, this was back during a time when CGI was still new and advancing rather rapidly, not to mention not everybody was doing it; Pixar certainly laid out the foundation, but then DreamWorks came along specifically to compete with Disney and Pixar (mainly because Jeffrey Katzenberg was ousted from Disney because he tried to make TOY STORY all dark, edgy, and raunchy), so both of these studios had to continually bring their A-game to try to top the other . . . then Blue Sky came along with ICE AGE, so that just raised the bar even higher, and the competition became more fierce.

Fast-forward to today; there are now umpteen different animation studios who put out movies all the time, almost all animation is CGI now, the novelty has long died, studios are no longer bringing their A-game because there's practically no competition anymore.

Posted at 1:02AM, Feb. 10, 2023

TS4 ? How can it be worth anything with my two favorite character voices gone? No Don Rickles or R. Lee Ermy? Who cares.

Never liked Buzz or Woody, I was there for Mr. Potato head and the Green army men.

Posted at 8:02AM, Feb. 10, 2023

I loved Mr. Potato Head too, but then again, Mr. Potato Head was one of my very favorite childhood toys.

But from I understand, they apparently had enough archived material recorded of Don Rickles voice that they were able to manipulate it into whatever brief dialogue the character had in TS4 without having to recast him altogether . . . and some people were upset about that, considering TS3 completely recast Slinky Dog due to Jim Varney's death (though, to be fair, Blake Clark was good friends with Jim Varney in real life, and did his best to capture Varney's essence when voicing Slinky).

Posted at 11:02AM, Feb. 10, 2023

What is the point of a fifth one if the fourth one was unnecessary?

If you think the first Toy Story's CG is off-putting, look up Tin Toy: one of Pixar's earliest animations.

One last thing: how many people know that there was an officially sanctioned Potato Head comic strip? It didn't last very long, and was made by the same team that made Garfield.

Posted at 12:02PM, Feb. 10, 2023

elektro wrote:
One last thing: how many people know that there was an officially sanctioned Potato Head comic strip? It didn't last very long, and was made by the same team that made Garfield.

Holy crap! I remember that! I read it everyday when it ran in my newspaper!

Posted at 10:02AM, Feb. 12, 2023

There's some controversy online (I know, it's hard to believe!), with YouTube Star Trek commentators and season 3 of Picard.

I'm hearing some enthusiasm for the season that's got me very excited! And some understandable cynicism as well.

For me, I'm going to avoid as many spoilers as possible and go in with hopeful optimism. It would be very nice to see the Next Generation crew get a satisfying sendoff; they deserve it.

Posted at 10:02AM, Feb. 12, 2023

(Granted, they HAD a satisfying sendoff in their TV series - but hey, I'll take another one xD)

Posted at 7:02PM, Feb. 12, 2023

I don't remember them having a satisfying send off from the Next Generation series… I mainly remember a stupid two part episode with a fat Q trying to squeeze into his costume from the first episode.
UGH, I hate hate hate those episodes where a character sits in judgement over the regular cast, it's so annoying. That ending to such a marvellous series was nothing short of insulting I felt- All that progress and interesting stuff happening for so many years and they gave us a lame attempt at a circular ending.

That is if the Next Gen actually ended that way. My memory for shows and movies sucks.

Is Picard actually worth watching?

Posted at 8:02PM, Feb. 12, 2023

ozoneocean wrote:

Is Picard actually worth watching?

Not at all.

But the enthusiasm some early reviewers have for season 3 have me interested in
seeing it. It's being billed as the final season.

I quit season one after about episode 8. I kept tabs on season 2 but only watched a tiny bit. Horrible.

There's still enough love in me for those characters that
I may check out season 3 but I won't ever touch seasons 1 or 2 xD

Posted at 12:02AM, Feb. 13, 2023

Ozoneocean wrote:

Is Picard actually worth watching?

Season One was bad. Second season got a lot better but I left around episode six because it was going in too many directions.

Both had some great Easter eggs for fans but after awhile it seemed like that was the only reason I was watching it. So I just subscribed to a YouTube channel that lists them.

And since I do the occasional Star Trek tribute in my comics I feel a certain obligation to keep tabs on this stuff.

After all ST:Disco did finally get good.

Did I mention I have a Star Trek:TOS crossover tribute plot line coming up in Interstellar_Battle_Girls? It'll be hinted in this week's pages. Did I just work in a plug for my comic? You bet I did.