Griff's Village

I was a huge fan of  The Simpsons  growing up. Then, shortly before I began high school, Matt Groening created a new show:  Futurama . I fell in love with it from the first episode, and eagerly watched it throughout its twenty-some years of irregular existence. I stopped watching  The Simpsons  over a decade ago, but  Futurama  has a special place in my heart. Still, I was cautiously optimistic when I heard it was being brought back again. I think that Futurama has been top-notch until now, but every show will eventually dip in quality if it goes on long enough. Would season 8 be the year that does Futurama in? The first episode of the newest revival, "The Impossible Stream," involves Phillip J. Fry's decision to set a life's goal for himself: to watch every TV show ever made.  Despite the daunting set-up, much of this episode focuses specifically on the FINAL show that Fry has to binge: the in-universe soap opera,  All My Circuits, which ...

Do you finish what you start? Do you read to the last word of every book, or sit through the credits of every movie? If you start a video game, do you finish it? I used to. I'm more flexible now, though; the older you get, the more you worry about time.  I still finish every novel I being, and I still don't like to walk out on movies--seeing these through to the end gives me a sense of closure. But I can read a book in a few weeks, and watch a movie in a matter of hours.  TV shows and video games are a much longer commitment, so my newfound flexibility is mostly to accomodate them. If I start to watch an episode of a TV show, then I finish that episode. I may or may not move onto the next. If I do, then how I proceed depends on what kind of show I'm watching. If it's something with a strong emphasis on continuity, like Arrested Development  or Breaking Bad , then I try to watch the show at least once a week, if not more, to make sure I don't forget where I am in th...

Looking over some of my previous blog entries, I noticed that previous topics have included: the Roald Dahl, Pokémon , Looney Tunes , and the Walt Disney Company. Rejected blog topics have included the Sailor Moon manga and the Super Mario RPG remake. It wasn't my intention make make a blog that leans so heavily into children's entertainment, but then I guess that I'm just a big kid at heart. I've been a life-long fan of animation, I'm a retro-gamer, and I have a soft spot for fairy tales. There's a stereotype that people in their thirties are too fixated on books and movies for younger people. The  implication  is that our generation cannot handle more mature works of art. I used to feel insecure about some of my tastes, but reading C.S. Lewis' "On Three Ways of Writing for Children" has cured me of that. Now, I believe that art made for children's can have just as much merit as that for adults. Paddington is a great movie. The Wind in the W...