If you do not yet know who the Nac Mac Feegles are, be grateful for your uneventful life...
You'll have to scroll down to the full-sized photo I cropped down, but could someone tell me why there's a Nac Mac Feegle in the 'Smurfs' movie? Please tell me the little bugger'll be smashin' th' other wee blue heads together, y'ken? And while I'm no Smurf purist, I did watch that show a ton as a kid (a love of D&D + any cartoon in a medieval setting = me watching everything including Biskits. Shut up). Yes, Terry Pratchett did describe the Feegles as "Scottish Smurfs who have seen Braveheart altogether too many times," but if I catch wind that one of these cyan CGI creatures said, "crivens!" I'll feel like I was robbed of a much better movie. Also, from the names of the various Smurfs they list, I do have some questions:
- Was Hefty Smurf renamed as "Gutsy" because they feared a lawsuit from the Glad company over their trash bag trademark? Or were they afraid that he'd encourage kids to get tattoos on their arms? And if he's Scottish (how can a single Smurf village have any ethnic diversity at all, anyway?), wouldn't it be "Gootseh?" Wait, my "obvious internet joke" is going off on that one...
- So there's one Smurf named "Greedy" and one named "Baker," but in the cartoon, they were both the same Smurf. Really, did they need to make more of them? By the end of the show I think there were enough named Smurfs to get them off of the endangered species list.
- "Panicky Smurf?" What was wrong with Scaredy Smurf? "Scaredy" makes me think of an easily frightened or jumpy person, while "panicky" makes me think of a Smurf that has to go to Papa Smurf for his anxiety meds every couple of hours and spends his nights in the rafters with a Smurf-sized shotgun.
I eagerly await their remake of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" with the beloved diminutive characters we all remember: Bubbly, Abrasive, Narcoleptic, Allergy, Introvert, Doofus, and the Chairman.
In my defense, it was late, I was tired, and I'd missed dinner, so I went by Taco Bell... and found Domo-Kun! This blog post has a photo of the poster with all the items, but I went for the "media holder." It's a tight fit, as I have an extended battery, but as you can see, Domo is up to the challenge of keeping my old G1 phone upright. A pity the buttons are behind his face, but that's just how Domo rolls, I guess. I'm thinking he can probably also be used to keep an eye on a couple of flash drives, a short-ish remote control, or even a candy bare (in cool weather). That's a lot of value for 99 cents, and can be purchased separately from any products that might cause intestinal distress.
So Marvel comics has announced that a member of the Fantastic Four is going to die. This is both a possibly intriguing event or not a big deal, depending on several factors (the main one being if the FF member in question actually stays dead or not). Here's what I think will happen when one of the FF bites it:
- Reed Richards: I don't think he'll die (unless they're planning a major overhaul of how the FF works). A ton of their adventures come from Reed scanning something in the Negative Zone or opening a portal to another dimension while trying to invent an cell phone that can break through Galactus' call waiting. Reed is also the go-to guy whenever Doctor Who can't be found and someone needs to come up with a technobabble solution to a crisis. Unless the FF wants to become a task force, getting its orders from a government agency like the Avengers do, the stretchy scientist guy has to stay. Besides, Doctor Doom would just resurrect him so he'd have someone to argue with.
- Sue Storm: Her death would probably be the hardest-hitting, at least for the other characters. You almost expect Richards to die before Sue, just because of the weird crap he creates in his lab. This would also be the most Disney-esque death. Disney owns Marvel, and everyone knows that mothers/wives don't have the greatest life expectancy when it comes to their stories. The big question would then be who Reed would start dating? It'd be like "My Three Sons," Marvel-style.
- Ben Grimm: He can go. His life has been mostly misery anyway, and as a tank-type character, he can (and has been) replaced in the past. As readers of ps238 will know, Strength and Invulnerability are two of the four more common powers out there, and The Thing can't even fly. Other than the pathos of being a rock-dude, there's not a lot left for the guy to offer. Plus, if he's beaten into the great beyond, there's a chance for some truly gross artwork featuring what's under his rock-like skin.
- Johnny Storm: Sure, he can fly, he can toss fire around, and he's kind of invulnerable (his fire offers him some bullet-proofiness), but there's Sunfire, Firestar, and several other energy-based flying metahumans with ranged attacks that could fill the void. Plus a youthful (and this is a stretch to call him that, since he's been around for decades) character dying is sometimes seen as more tragic, though his pal Spider-Man might get pushed into depression again and sell his twelfth birthday to Mephisto in order to bring the Human Torch back. On the plus side, Marvel would finally be rid of any remaining worries that the character would inspire any kids to set themselves on fire.
But as stated, the question is: Will they die and stay dead? I'd respect a Named Hero(TM) being around forever, so long as every so often, someone new filled the uniform (when appropriate). DC has done this, kind of, but they keep bringing everyone back to the point where you have multiple versions of a hero running around. I think it's a toss-up between The Watcher or Galactus as to who is most likely to bring the late Fantastic Four member back from the grave.
So this holiday has already gotten off to a banging start for the Williams household. We've got an infant with a fever (under close care with loads of medical advice from the "Call A Doc" hotline), a dinner to prepare for eight (three of which are under the age of 10), a house to clean, snow on the way, and... a possible science project. I want to try to make an elevated train track for our Christmas tree. It's N-Scale, so it's nice and light, and if it does work, it'll look like one of the slap-dashiest Christmas ornaments ever, but if it pans out, I think it could see improvement every year. I'll post some photos of the final deal (if it works), though instructions might be hard; some of the parts come from a bunch of bits and pieces that came from a workshop that helped keep arcade games running (and no, I'm not using the cool stuff like the "insert coin" slot covers for this, just some metal parts to hold things together), so finding duplicate hardware might be tricky. I'm also using a Roto-Zip as I apparently bent my jigsaw's blade and didn't have time to go to the hardware store. Now that I think of it, I may have watched too much "A-Team" and "MacGyver" as a young'un, and this sort of thing is the result. Ah, well, there are worse things that could happen, like:
- I'm old enough to have watched what was called "Syndicated TV" as a lad, and I remember the voice that did the intro to "The Lone Ranger," but I never knew his name. Fred Foy passed away at the age of 89.
- The Taiwanese have been taking YouTube by storm with their CGI "re-working" of news stories. This time, they take on the injury-plagued Spider-Man musical.
- Our long, national nightmare is over. Someone has finally invented a machine to wobble Jell-O so you don't have to.
- Not that it's a huge surprise, but Megatron looks unlike anything he's ever resembled before in the next Transformers film. Design aside, I've never liked cloth items made as solid plastic parts, but that's just me.
- Shift: Freedom is a successor to the previous "Shift" game. Pull and push objects, get keys, and (most importantly) shift between positive and negative space to alter the landscape of each level.
- How the internet made ugly Christmas sweaters a phenomenon. It bled over into "Have I Got News for You" recently, and I'm amazed they didn't cite Wil Wheaton's famous clown sweater as helping things along.
- I admit it. I've done this.
- A former Wizards of the Coast employee is charged with raiding his opponent's graveyard for $45k worth of cards. And by "opponent" we mean "employer's storage facility."
- Metafilter has a posting with just about everything you could want to know about the old video game, 'Starship Titanic', including how to play it for free (with a bit of work), or you can just follow the YouTube links provided there to watch the playthrough.
- The innovative ways that people are hacking their XBox Kinect devices continues with the ability to make your own 80's music video. I don't have one, so instead I have to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveray-ay-ay...
- From Alert Reader Brent comes A Very Zombie Holiday, your guide to getting your holiday activities done right while dealing with the living dead.
- Topsy-Turvy is a game where gravity is whichever way "down" currently is, and you need to change your orientation to solve every level.