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I Never Knew I Loved Brent Spiner!

27 Feb

February 27, 2013

Who knew?

I’m a big fan of the original Star Trek. The Next Generation? Not so much. (Kirk rulez!) While I appreciate it on an intellectual level, the show is too stodgy for me, the people too plain, the fictional world too genteel. The characters? Riker was all beard. Man of action-lite. Worf? Stick up his butt. Data? Interesting but not exciting.

But Brent Spiner? Well now…

As I said, The Next Generation is not my show and I have no involvement in any of the characters. (I did like DS9 after Worf joined, but it was just a ripoff of J. Michael Straczynski’s plan (which would later become the fantastic Babylon 5).

But Brent Spiner…

I was over on YouTube doing some research (if you count watching Harlem Shake videos research) when I saw in the sidebar a picture of Harry Anderson from Night Court. That caught my eye since I was a HUGE Night Court fan (and no, I will not apologize for the final season). It is still one of the funniest shows broadcast. But next to the picture of Harry Anderson, there was the heading “Brent Spiner in the role that made him famous.”

Brent Spiner… OH MY GOD I NEVER MADE THE CONNECTION! Brent Spiner was the hysterical Bob Wheeler! 6 appearances!

 I had NO IDEA! But wow, now that I see him in that old sitcom I can’t believe that I never placed him. I guess that is a testament to how much he made Data a real, rounded character.

But no matter how famous he became or how big Star Trek became, Brent Spiner was never above reprising his Bob Wheeler role. Here is in the Next Generation episode “Your Honor, All The Pigs Died.”

Data_in_cowboy_hat

He wasn’t the only Night Court actor to make it to Star Trek. While he may not have ridden the gravy train nearly as far as Spiner, who can forget John Larroquette in Star Trek III?

Maltz

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TV is Sick and Twisted and Full of Murderers

25 Feb

February 25, 2013

keyes

Am I the only one who notices how disturbing some innocuous commercials really are?  Kids- children – the future of this nation – are being encouraged to commit all sorts of violent and depraved crimes by cute animated characters! And you thought G.I. Joe was violent! (Or if you thought I was a hack, you win!!!) Anyway, check this one out:

So a LIVING, SENTIENT Pop-Tart doing his best impression of Fonzie jumping the garbage cans at Arnolds, accidentally falls into the toaster and DIES. And it’s all yummy yummy fun. Subtext: THE POP TART DIED! HOORAY!!   I mean jeeze, imagine if Fearless Fonzarelli’s stunt ended with him falling into a toaster instead of a fried chicken stand (and then Pinky Tuscadero turned it on)

If fact, if you watch these Pop-Tart commercials, you’ll see a theme-  that they all basically end with nice, loveable living pastries who think and dream and feel either falling into, or getting tricked into the toaster, to their deaths. I mean look at this one:

This is flat out murder for god’s sake!

It’s not limited to mediocre breakfast treats either. Check this out:

The M&M doesn’t want to be eaten for goodness sake! And I’m sorry, but look at the last couple of scenes: She’s trying to shove the loveable M&M into an oven against his will. And then it’s a group of women eating him alive. This one gave me nightmares, NO JOKE.

This one is slightly better, as the murder/eating alive aspect is subtle and played for laughs (ha. ha.) And these pretzel M&Ms present a whole ethical dilemma unto themselves. The pretzel and the M&M are presumably living beings, (and of similar sizes) yet they are happily expected to have one crawl up inside the other one (where exactly? M&Ms aren’t usually depicted with a chocolate chute if you know what I mean) to be eaten. Who’s the demented candy Frankenstein (or maybe a confectionary Mengele) making this happen? It’s like demanding the ingredients of the turducken (if you don’t know consider yourself lucky) assemble themselves so fatsos like John Madden can eat them alive.

Now I like this one. This one is interesting. There’s nobody trying to eat/kill them, no message of “Hey kids! Eat me alive and suck out my blood with your breakfast milk!” but the silly frosted mini wheats think absolutely nothing of cavorting in front of boxes and boxes filled with what I presume to be mini wheat corpses. The new slogan for this product: “It’s a mini-wheat holocaust! Now with berries!”

Gary Larson was a prophet. Check out this classic far side cartoon and see what I mean….genius. Pure genius.

cows

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