Better get a perm.
I Got Most of These
This show ain’t so hard.
Suck it, Trebek!
Agent Elvis
So silly it could work? We’ll find out in March!
This ten episode, Netflix adult animation series from Sony Pictures Animation is an irreverent action comedy starring Matthew McConaughey as Elvis Presley and follows Elvis as he lives a double-life as a secret agent. The show was created by Priscilla Presley and John Eddie, and was developed by Co-Showrunners Mike Arnold and John Eddie, who also serve as Executive Producers along with Executive Producers Kevin Noel, Matthew McConaughey, Priscilla Presley, with Fletcher Moules serving as Co-Executive Producer and Seranie Manoogian as Producer. Jamie Salter, Corey Salter, and Marc Rosen with Authentic Brands Group also served as Executive Producers. Vancouver-based Titmouse served as the animation studio with Chris Prynoski, Shannon Prynoski, Antonio Canobbio, and Ben Kalina serving as Executive Producers and Gary Ye as Supervising Director, Chris Thompson as Art Director, and Josue Sanchez as Editor. Robert Valley created original character designs, and Agent Elvis’ wardrobe was designed by John Varvatos. Music and original score was composed by Tyler Bates and Timothy Williams.
Bus Problems
Anybody remember In The News, the current events segments shown during Saturday morning cartoons?
Let me guess, Monkeystador didn’t watch cartoons.
Exit Interview
And not even the first time!
(apologies for screen orientation set to swashbuckling)
It’s been great having you, Conrad.
Don’t Blame Conan
Letterman rules.
Remember all this?
Two Assholes Lost In The Woods
For your Friday distraction, here’s a fascinating oral history on possibly the greatest Sopranos episode ever, which aired 20 years ago today.
Two mobsters chase a seemingly invincible man through the South Jersey forest. Then he vanishes, leaving only a trail of blood. As day turns into night and cold turns into much colder, the gangsters give up their search and go into survival mode. They bond, bicker, and threaten each other, until they’re finally rescued in the light of the next morning.
This gets me every time.
Monorail!
Production-wise, the show hadn’t worked out how to achieve these bigger, more spectacular episodes. The writers loved them and the producers loved them. We all loved them. But there were people at the animation studio who were like, “We have to tell them to cut back. These are too complex.” Part of me is thinking, ‘We’re asking for a lot.’ But the artist, or even the kid, in me is thinking, ‘No, these are fucking awesome and we just have to figure out how to do them.’ I always leaned more that way, because I liked the ambitiousness of the episodes and where it took the show. From just a family comedy to these big, overwhelming animated pieces. They were like little movies.
– from An Oral History of ‘Marge Vs. The Monorail’, a great read. Season 4 is now regarded as peak Simpsons, but at the time there were already complaints that the show had lost its way.
My own town has toyed with the idea of a monorail as a solution to the mass transit problems that will only get worse.
The Virgin Hyperloop seems to have everone’s attention now.
But as I learned in a fantastic article here, we are basically re-inventing technology that already exists and not doing it well. Lemme transposplain to ya:
In a vacuum (a figurative one: an alternate universe in which the rest of the post-industrial world were not absolutely goddamn bursting with operating networks of authentic high-speed rail; where high-speed rail were not already such a well-developed form of transit that the TGV system, which routinely moves huge numbers of day-to-day commuters across large distances of France at speeds well more than twice that achieved by this sad two-person billion-dollar pod going from nowhere to nowhere across a tiny patch of worthless desert, were not both infinitely better and more sophisticated than any presently available commercial rail in the United States and fairly outmoded in comparison to newer [yet still not all that new!] systems in China and Japan and elsewhere) the Virgin Hyperloop could almost look like an impressive accomplishment.
What He Said
Finished the second season of The Boys last night. It wasn’t nearly as great as the first, as this guy so helpfully explains. Here’s hoping the next outing recalibrates.