A Raccoon Eating Grapes Whilst Sitting at the Dinner Table

It is as I say. Dina tells me that the man is saying "Are you done eating the grapes? No, there's one left." Fascinating.

What I wish the man was actually saying: "And here is the place card for our special guest, Mister Mitts. DO NOT REACH ACROSS MISTER MITTS'S FOOD. HE DOES NOT LIKE THAT."

Steven Universe Is Beautiful, and Here Are 40 Reasons Why

I watched the first episode of the new Cartoon Network series Steven Universe, which premieres tonight at 8, and I’m happy to report that I loved it. Steven Universe could become a big deal for Cartoon Network. I hope it does, at least. It looks beautiful. It reminded me of Ponyo in the way it smooshes goofy and serious together onto a colorful landscape, and the character design suggests a world that Osamu Tezuka might have dreamed up — lanky Pearl in particular.

In case you need convincing about how great Steven Universe looks, here are 40 stills from the pilot that show off the majesty and hint at what it may be capable of.

Also? Happy to report that I approve of Estelle as a voice actress. Singers do not always make for good voice actors, but Estelle does as Garnet. Also also?I have investigated and discovered that “American Boy” holds up pretty well. Your day will perhaps be better if you give the original take on it a spin right now.

The End of the Game

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve re-encountered some half-remembered childhood thing as an adult and reacted with horror and amusement at what the younger me had actually seen without realizing it. Today, it’s the Capcom arcade game Black Tiger, the promotional art for which was what you see below.

via

It’s not just that the artist chose to emphasize the hero’s butt. No, it’s that the artist clearly relished the opportunity to depict an idealized, Mount Olympus bottom that’s just barely covered by a flap of loincloth in a way that’s almost teasing.

— “Hey, what if we just showed the barbarian hero character’s whole naked butt, for no reason?”
— “Well, you can’t actually see his butt in the game.”
— “Yeah, but gay kids.”
— “Oh, all right.”

That’s how I imagine it, at least. For the record, barbarian warriors and homoeroticism have gone hand-in-hand (or dick-in-hand) since the days of the first pixelated loincloth. It’s also worth mentioning that there’s an alternate version of the Black Tiger arcade flyer that skews slightly less homoerotic by virtue of a more substantial buttflap, though the tagline “The more you play, more exciting it gets!” kind of sounds like an ESL endorsement for masturbation.

via

Guess which one I remember!

Here’s the game in action. Please enjoy the relatively little amount of butt the game has to offer, regardless of what that first flyer might indicate.

Sexy video games, previously:

• Old-school video games box art with heroines who aren’t oversexed
• Metroid and Kid Icarus and old-school Nintendo feminism
• Reassessing a fondness for Golden Axe’s Gillius Thunderhead
• Choosing your sexuality in Bahamut Lagoon
• Video games for girls (but only sexy girls)

Ted Baxter Meets Norman Bates

Long before Ted Knight became Ted Baxter on Mary Tyler Moore, he played a policeman in the last few minutes of Psycho, and I never noticed despite having seen Psycho dozens of times and despite the fact that young Ted Knight looks almost exactly like Mary Tyler Moore-era Ted Knight.

And that is neat, and not just for my weirdo crossover fanfiction plans.

Psycho, previously:

• A midnight swim with Anthony Perkins
• A boy's best friend is Vera Farmiga
• What's so gay about Psycho II (the book, not the movie)

Things That Go Bump in the Night / Give Me a Terrible Fright

Please celebrate the coming holiday by watching the video for the 1976 rock song “It Came in the Night,” by the improbably named band A Raincoat. It’s a good track — Dangerous Minds calls it “one of the most insanely catchy songs of all time” — but it’s fairly obscure. That’s too bad. It’s dark but fun, much in the way the animation used in the video treads the line between scary and funny. In short, it’s perfect for the spirit of Halloween. In fact, it should be the official anthem of Halloween. Enjoy.

The songs biggest claim to fame is being featured in abridged form in Kenneth Anger’s “Rabbit Moon.”

I’m not sure which makes for a creepier visual accompaniment.

Anyway, because I think it’s a song more people should know about, I’m posting it for your downloading pleasure. Click here to download.

Creepy, previously:

• The scariest scene in any movie ever, says me
• The female response to “Hey There, Little Red Riding Hood”
• “Beware the Ragman if you stay up late!”
• The case of the creepy campus carillon
• That part of the Twilight Zone movie where Nancy Cartwright gets eaten by a cartoon and foreshadows her voice acting career
• Wait for it — just wait for it — and potato salad gets all kinds of scary

Three-Dimensional Death in a Two-Dimensional World

Back in Donkey Kong, Mario died by spinning in a circle and landing flat on his back, with a little halo floating above his head.

However, he died differently by the time he got his second starring role — Mario Bros., which isn’t Super Mario Bros. but is instead the game that dumped him in the sewers, introduced Luigi and for the first time pitted them both against a host of creeping turtles. When one of those turtles got too close, Mario leapt to his death, more or less. It’s weird when you think about what you’re actually seeing: In a game where Mario spent the whole time either facing left or right and scurrying along a two-dimensional plane, he died by facing the screen and jumping off the platform, toward the screen.

This style of video game death wasn’t invented in Mario Bros. A year before, Nintendo released the direct sequel to Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., where the main ape died in a similarly theatrical manner: making bug-eyes at the screen, flailing his hands and then plummeting down with a cartoony slide whistle noise. But Mario did it in Mario Bros., and Nintendo used it again in Super Mario Bros., and that’s the game that hit big. Perhaps as a result of the popularity of Super Mario Bros., it ended up everywhere in video games from that era — mostly Mario-style platformers, of which there were many, but some other genres too. Your character died, and he or she looked at directly at the screen — at you, effectively — before they spasmed and leapt into oblivion. It’s like they were saying, “Hey. Fuck you. You killed me.” And then the leap. It seems strange, given that it ads a z-axis into a world that often only had an x and a y previously. But that’s how it happened.

I don’t know how many games featured characters dying in some kind of variation on this Mario-style death, but I think it’s interesting how prevalent it once was in video games. And so I did a little look-through of NES sprites to see what I could pull find. What resulted is the eight-bit Halloween celebration you see below.

Enjoy it. This time, it’s not your failure.

A few notes:

• Yes, this began with this post.
• For all I know, the Mario-style death could have originated in some game other than Donkey Kong Jr. Anyone?
• Yes, the collection is quite Nintendo-heavy, I know. This is perhaps not a coincidence.
• I don’t doubt that there are other games that featured this style of death. This is just what was available at the retrogaming sprite sites I could find.
• Since it’s been forever since I laid hands on some of these games, I kind of had to trust the sprite sheets. Most of the time, these aren’t labeled as “death animation.” I had to guess sometimes.
• Here’s where everything came from, left to right, top to bottom: Little Nemo, Kid Icarus, DuckTales, Wai Wai World, Adventure Island, Adventures of Lolo 3, Doki Doki Panic, Doraemon, Bomberman II, Donkey Kong Jr., Mickey Mousecapade, Balloon Fight, Super Mario Bros. 3, Clash at Demonhead, Gyromite, Doki Doki Panic, Kid Dracula, Donkey Kong 3, Balloon Kid, Adventures of Lolo 3, Pitfall, Doki Doki Panic, Darkwing Duck, Mickey Mousecapade, Magic of Scheherazade, Rainbow Islands, 53 Stations of the Tokaido, Super Mario Bros. 2, Tiny Toon Adventures, Super Mario Bros. 2, Magic Forest Champion, Wario’s Woods.

Video games, previously:

• Strains of feminism in Metroid and Kid Icarus
• Full House meets Dragon Warrior meets African wildlife
• The weirdness that is The Krion Conquest
• Nintendo’s well-documented hatred of eggplants
• The terrific typos of Super Mario Bros. 2
• Square’s awkwardly racist Tom Sawyer RPG
• “Decisive Battle (of Music Trivia)”

Typography-Inspired Superheroes That I Demand Exist

Not that there needs to be typography inspired superheroes, but I’d imagine at the very least that the people who put comic books together would get a kick out of them.

Heroism! Surprise? Yes, make way for... THE INTERROBANG!

And to a lesser extent, maybe also make way for...

Boldface

Strike-Through

The Full Stop

The Gothic Centurian

Interpunkt

The Arabian Star

Zero Width and The Non-Joiner

Bastarda

Drop Shadow

Solidus

Solidaryca

Lucida Grande

The Descender

Twip

The Prestige Elite

Boustrophedon

Grawlix and The Quimp

The Double Dagger

Mistral

The Pilcrow

That last one… I can’t really explain. I just think pilcrow is a neat word. (Image modified from Captain Marvel art found in a post on this nifty superhero Tumblr.)

EDIT: So the guys at The Bionic Broadcast actually thought through these and came up with what their superpowers might be. Check it out, and if you want to skip to this part, fast-forward to 31:20.

Superheroes, previously:

• “That’s Miss Public Enemy No. 1 to You, Batman!”
• The time Nick Fury sex was too hot for Marvel
• The clunky symbolism of Dr. Chase Meridian’s name
• Why Jean Grey is one of the least awesome names in superhero-dom
• Eight Batman women whose names make them sound like soap opera villains