21C house

My good mate Graham brought back my DVD of The Tick last night. When Wendy is away, the TV is open for animation, and strange comedy (usually I have to wait until after she has gone to bed). After Graham and I had watched The Incredibles (really good, probably the funniest and best mainstream animation I’ve seen), we sat down and watched an episode or two of The Tick.

The Tick is in the vein of Mystery Men, and My Hero. Strange and quirky comedy about dysfunctional superheros. The Tick is the hero- a hero who is naive, probably slightly demented, and whose origins are unknown. His naive sidekick Arthur has left his day job to try his hand at the superhero business. They spend a lot of their time hanging out at the local chinese restaurant and bar with Bat Manuel and Captain Liberty, and sometimes fighting perils (”Apocalypse Cow”) and supervillains (”The Terror” who is so old he suffers a heart attack during the fight). Slightly surreal and offbeat, this comedy series was just too good for US TV and it was cancelled during its first season.

Once supercomputers are cheap enough, the cult TV fans of the future will make up new episodes of The Tick (fanscenes), by character modelling the episodes made, and creating new episodes using simulacra of the characters and sets. Until then we’ll just have to be happy with the 9 episodes we have.

The Tick (live action) came from The Tick (animated), which came from The Tick (comic book)

PS If you think making up “fanscenes” of movies and TV shows (as fans used to write fanzines) is crazy talk then you don’t know what is happening today with filmmaking! Doing 3D modelling of real actors and scenes in order to change the way a scene was shot is already being done, it’s just a bit pricey for home use right now.

Is it just me? Or does someone else in the world see that building a desalination plant for Western Australia in order to alleviate the effects of less rain caused by climate change, a plant that will consume lots of electricity and generate greenhouse gases that cause climate change- is a little bit like paying off one credit card with another? A deepening spiral of stupidity instead of genuine action to change the way we use water, and to promote decentralised recycling and conservation of water.

“The biggest in the southern hemisphere.”

Makes you want to ask, the biggest what? The biggest disaster, the biggest cost, the biggest dumbest thing you can imagine?

If you enjoyed the surreal comedy of Monty Python, the Goodies, and the Goons, then you’ll kick yourself that you missed the repeats of The Mighty Boosh on SBS TV (Australia).

You can bug your friends with TIVOs and good taste in comedy (ahem!) to let you watch it, or order the CDs of the radio series from the UK.

The Mighty Boosh are two zookeepers in a small zoo. A place closer to an op-shop zoo than a boutique zoo. Bob Fossil- american of no fixed IQ- runs the zoo on behalf of the nefarious moustachioed owner Dixon Bainbridge.

Adventures include a trip to death and back (via Monkey Hell and Death’s Minicab company), a search for a missing zookeeper (complete with Mod wolves on Lambretta scooters), and a trip to the North Pole in Gary Numan’s personal jet.

Watch for the DVD of the series. Available in the UK later this year. International infamy can be yours- become a criminal “copyright pirate” in your own house by legally buying importing the DVD from the UK, and then bypassing “copy protection” by playing it in a different DVD zone. Naughty!

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start

So sang Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

I know, because I was forced to watch it while on the 40 hour bus trip from Perth to Melbourne. Over and over again. Then again on the trip back to Perth- just out of Melbourne the bus swapped the new movies that were on the bus as we left Melbourne for the same ones we had coming over to Melbourne.

I also know the Muppet movie, The Dirty Dozen, and that I will never again go on a long distance bus trip.