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...

My dirty little secret is that I've always loved crossovers.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit  was one of my favourite movies as a kid.  Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein  is one of my favourite movies as an adult. I've been thinking more about crossovers lately because of the Walt Disney Company's upcoming short film,  Once Upon a Studio , which is said to include characters from every one of the company's animated features. The idea has potential. We've already heard that Olaf will interact with the Genie. What else? Will Hercules meet Maui? Winnie the Pooh meet Kenai and Koda? Peter Pan meet John Silver? Obviously, this isn't the first time Disney characters have crossed over with each other-- House of Mouse  and  Kingdom Hearts  both come to mind. It's not even the first time that the portion of the Walt Disney Company responsible for theatrical animation, Walt Disney Animation Studios, have created their own crossover-- Ralph Breaks the Inter...

I recently saw a production of the world's longest-running play: Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap . Its twist ending (which I shall not spoil here) is a closely-guarded secret, to the point that Wikipedia has drawn criticism for spoiling it, and TV Tropes refuses to give it away at all. Though I am merely a casual theatre lover and a neophyte Christie reader, seeing  The Mousetrap  has been on my bucket list for years, so when I learned that Phoenix Players were staging a production at The Gladstone, I bought a ticket. The play is set at a newly-opened hotel called Monkswell Manor. The owners, Mollie and Giles Ralston (played here by Monica Maika and Austin Beaty) haven't had time to hire any employees, and are clearly still figuring out the hotel business. Nonetheless, the rooms quickly fill with guests--the most cantankerous being Mrs Boyle (played by Lorraine Hopkins, who really sells how miserable her character is). Other guests include the eccentric Christopher W...

Like a lot of people born in the 80s and earlier, I grew up watching LOONEY TUNES. THE BUGS BUNNY AND TWEETY SHOW, and similar compilation programs, aired regularly on TV, and decades-old cartoons were readily available on VHS tapes. Of course, as any animation affictionado knows, most of these cartoons weren't created for televsion: they were created for movie theatres. Animated shorts before features is a treat rather than an expectation these days, but if you want to see a classic cartoon in a cinema, you can still sometimes find them at festivals or revival houses. I recently attending a screening of various LOONEY TUNES shorts at the Bytowne Cinema in Ottawa. The lineup opened with Chuck Jones' RABBIT SEASONING, closed with Friz Freleng's BIRDS ANONYMOUS, and included a great variety of cartoons in the middle. The biggest surprise for me was the inclusion of a few computer-animated cartoons from the 2010s: the musical short I TAWT I TAW A PUDDY TAT (which is essentiall...

I hate taking my blood pressure. I'm fine with dentists. I'm fine with needles. I'm not fine with blood pressure monitors. Haven't been since I tried to donate blood in 2013, and wound up in the hospital for stage 3 hypertension. Now it's ten years later, and there doesn't seem to be much left for me to complain about, blood-wise. I've lost about 100 pounds since then, and I'm able to keep my blood pressure under control with only a little medication. I've been checking my blood pressure every two-to-four weeks since then. I have a decade of experience taking my blood pressure, and my doctor is generally happy with my readings. I still get anxious every time I have to take it. My heart rate jumps up, sometimes as high as 140 BPM or more. I have spoken to my doctor about this. He's told me that there's nothing to worry about, that he doesn't think that my blood pressure will increase again without a change in my lifestyle, and that, even i...