April 30th
Today is National Raisin Day, so I'm going to have to talk about the California Raisins. The California Raisins was an ad campaign produced by Will Vinton studios for the California Raisin Advisory Board. The ads, which featured musical stop motion raisins, were popular, but a mix of cost, declining popularity and raisin politics were all factors in the characters becoming mostly retired. but you can still find them around to this day if you know where to look.
One particularly odd thing about the California Raisins is that they had a video game that was finished but never published."The California Raisins: The Grape Escape" was Developed by "Radiance", and planned to be Published by Capcom for the NES before the aforementioned popularity and money problems made it so the only legal copies of the game ever produced were for review. The game itself is a side scroller where your raisin walks, jumps and moonwalks through five levels. That being said, this game is found media, so you can find videos and ROMs of it online.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This game also has one of the NES’s finest victory screens.]
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May 1st
Today is the birthday of everyone's favorite blob of clay. Gumby is a stop motion character created by Art Clokey, who started in a series of Animated shots for a few decades but then they tried giving him a movie and it's been nothing but comics and failed revivals science. That being said, I enjoy watching Gumby cartoons on occasion and I have a few on DVD. I even have a Gumby that came with one of those DVDs.
The thing about Gumby shorts is that they are pretty weird, just conceptually. You have a little guy made out of clay who's friends with a talking horse, a dinosaur, and a blobgirl. He fights malicious block heads and can walk into any boom he finds and interact with their characters. Very rarely are these books actual litteratary settings and most of the time Gumby's just in the abstract void of a toy store he lives in. Just compare most other living kids toy series to Gumby and Gumby is far more dreamlike and inconsistent and I think that's a big factor in the show's charm.
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May 2nd
Today is a grab bag day, and today Pim has "The only Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review that matters".
Hello, site readers. It's Pim again, and I have taken over Tom's website, but instead of hijacking it for torture and other malevolent purposes, I'm hijacking it to complain, which is also a malevolent purpose. That's right. I'm here to complain. Because I want to talk about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds today.
Strange New Worlds (Or SNW) is a direct prequel to The Original Series, taking place roughly a decade or so before Captain Kirk takes command of the USS Enterprise. Instead, we follow Captain Christopher Pike, first officer Una Chin-Riley (AKA Number One), and the rest of their crew. (You may remember them from the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", from 1964.) From what I can tell, the reason this show exists at all is because they cameo'd in season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery, and became so popular with the fanbase that they clamored for a series to be made about them. And so they did. And then I watched it. And now I have opinions about it.
It's actually a fun premise, it helps flesh out the timeline. While there's a lot of new characters, there's a good amount of familiar faces aside from Pike and Number One, namely Uhura, Nurse Chapel, Dr. M'Benga, James T. Kirk and his brother Sam, and obviously, Spock. (I'll come back to that later.)
My first gripe is the set design. Something I hate about new sci-fi is that yes, everything looks very modern, but it's not futuristic! It looks like an Apple Store! Captain Pike's house looks like some Airbnb in the mountains. The Enterprise also lacks the charm of the original. But I guess that's a given, it's been a really long time since TOS and TV production has come a long way. I guess I'll just have to live in a world where my idea of futurism doesn't line up with the general public's idea. Ain't that sad?
Anyway. As I watched more and more of the first episode I found I actually liked the characters and the adventures they got up to. Then I realized what I disliked about this show the most was Spock.
Hear me out. I don't hate Spock, I love the guy really, I'm just one of those people who think no one will be able to live up to Leonard Nimoy's original rendition. I don't know what they're trying to do with the character now, but I don't like it. Nothing against the actor, (although I feel he hasn't quite mastered Spock's mannerisms either) I'm just mad with the way he's being written. It just feels off.
The first time we see him in SNW, he's sucking face with T'Pring, which is weird since last time I checked they're Vulcans and Vulcans don't show affection like that. They don't feel like aliens, it feels like they're being written as humans, just with pointy ears. And yes, Spock is half human, but T'Pring is not. So, what's up with that?
And ok. Yeah. I only watched the first episode. It's midterms season and I'm busy, ok? Anyway. I want them to focus the show on literally anyone else but Spock. I'm not liking this rendition of the character and I think they should leave him alone. But everyone else seems fantastic. And I'd specifically love for Uhura and Chapel to get the character development that the 60s didn't give them. I might continue watching in my free time because I think this has potential.
Also, they should've given people goofier hairstyles. I like the bold shaved hair some crew members have, but there's also not a single beehive in sight. That's kind of lame, especially for a TOS prequel.
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May 3rd
Today is the first airing anniversary of a cartoon I feel is fairly underrated. The Looney Tunes Show was an animated sitcom featuring the Looney Tunes characters living in the suburbs, With Bugs Bunny as an on and off straight man and Daffy Duck as a self absorbed man child. I watched this a lot when it was on the air but I don't hear about it as much anymore.
The thing is I feel like the show captured the energy of the original Looney Tunes while being its own thing. A lot of Looney Tunes was contemporary at the time parodies, so I feel like going for a beyond off the wall sitcom fits the characters better than you'd probably guess. While not 1-1 with previous appearances, all the characters are pretty constant within the series, to be honest the character that changed the most was the big orange monster Gossamer, who's now like, 7 and in elementary school with human kids. That being said, the show is definitely absurd enough to live up to the Looney Tunes, and if I can find where to watch it I might have to give it a rewatch.
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May 4th
Today in 1959, the Grammy awards happened for the first time. Originally known as the "Gramophone Award", the Grammys were started when the people behind the Hollywood Walk of Fame when they were getting their list of potential musical professionals to receive stars, they found they had far more musicians than they could feasibly give stars. And the Oscars and Emmys were already going on, so the obvious path was to create an Oscar for musicians.
Also I'm writing this article between the Grammy nominations and award ceremony, but the ceremony will have already passed by the time this gets published. They Might Be Giants are up for an award this year and I hope they get it [Webmaster Note: They lost to the Grateful Dead, oh well]. The only other band I'm that into that I know has even been nominated for a Grammy is Daft Punk, and I know they did really well that one year. You just got to love seeing Cyborgs take over a live television event.
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May 5th
Today is the birthday of a classic tower defense game I know I've personally completed at least twice. Plants vs Zombies is a 2009 game of simple premise and wonderful execution. Developed and published by PopCap Games, the developer of classic PC games like Peggle, Bejeweled, and the Bookworm series, you find yourself faced with hordes of zombies, but thankfully you have a green thumb, a crazy neighbor, and access to magical plants that will do everything they can to protect you.
Personally, I think Plants vs Zombies is an extremely fun game. The gameplay is simple yet very strategic, and even if you get good at it, there's going to be levels that take you a few tries. The mechanics of the game compile together well, and a number of wonderful minigames both in the story mode and off the main menu.
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May 6th
Today is the last day of the April Thumbnail, and I have to admit I've trying some new things with my new weekly article format, so this article week has been my first monthly transition week. I'm going to debut next month's thumbnail on the first of the month, and it will receive its first use tomorrow . Next to that, I'm liking this new format so far and I already plan to do May, June and July in this format. I hope everyone else likes it too.