I may possibly have tipped off the more observant of you that I am a massive Simpsons fan (fortunately, my love of Batman remains known to no one but me and my life sized Adam West cardboard cut up). So I decided to take a break from the Disney canon and look at the other towering achievement of American animation. So here is a list of my top ten favourite One Shot Simpsons Characters. What’s a One Shot? Well, here are the rules. A One Shot character:
a) Appears in only one episode.
b) May only appear in one scene for the purpose of one joke (with possibly a second for a call back).
c) Is not integral to the plot.
d) Is not voiced by a celebrity (or at least, not a celebrity who is a regular cast member.)
So, here we go.
# 10
Name: Homer Glumplich
Appeared: “Homer the Great” Episode 12, Season 6
Homer Simpson has lived his whole life on the outside looking in. It seems like wherever he goes there’s a big sign saying NO HOMERS. The final insult? It’s always NO HOMERS. Plural. Homer Glumplich is Homer Simpson’s Dostoyevskian double, always just one step ahead and taunting him with a single, dastardly “hyuck!”
#09
Name: Joey Jo Jo Jnr Shabadoo
Appeared: “The Last Temptation of Homer” Episode 9, Season 5
So many questions are raised by this character. What were his parents thinking? What’s with the bow tie? Why hasn’t he made peace with his name after thirty plus year or just changed it by deed poll? What makes the gag though is Barney’s anguished pleading “Wait! Joey Jo Jo!” as he runs weeping from Moe’s. Hey, lighten up JJJJS. You may have the worst name in the world. But you have people who care about you.
#08
Name: Doctor Colossus
Appeared: “Who Shot Mr Burns? Part 2” Episode 1, Season 7
Man, fuck the posers. Just because you’re rich and evil enough to buy a sun blocking machine to cast the entire city into perpetual night does not make you a super villain. My boy Doctor Colossus here is the real deal. Mr Burns and his ilk? Bah! Rank amateurs!
#07
Name: Unnamed Mob Member
Appeared: “Marge In Chains” Episode 21 Season 4
Number 7 on this list doesn’t have a name. We don’t even see the guy. But he’s on here because only he had the courage to say what we’ve all been thinking: That 39th US president Jimmy Carter is indeed, History’s Greatest Monster.
Look at him. Bastard.
#6
Name: Señor Spielbergo
Appeared: “A Star is Burns” Episode 18, Season 6
Everyone has a double in the Simpsons universe (Homer has, like, six). Stephen Spielberg’s is apparently the polite, softly spoken, Señor Spielbergo, his non-union Latin American equivalent. I like the idea that everyone has a non-union Latin American equivalent somewhere. It makes me feel…I dunno…less alone.
¿Has estado en Bahia, mi amigo?
#5
Name: Handsome Pete
Appeared: “Bart the Fink” Episode 15, Season 7
That’s Handsome Pete. He dances for nickels. In your nightmares. For all eternity.
#4
Name: Joey
Appeared: “And Maggie Makes Three” Episode 13, Season 6
Homer’s finally gotten his dream job, minimum-wage slavery in the local bowling alley. Eh. To each their own. But when Marge gets pregnant again, Homer has no choice but to return to the hell of the nuclear power plant, toiling for the rest of his days beneath the haggard glare of C. Montgomery Burns. Homer says goodbye to his friends at the bowling alley, including Joey. Why does a bowling alley employ a Depression era shoe-shine boy with an indomitable gleam of hope in his eye and two lungs packed with TB? What were he and Homer going to do when they got to California? We’ll never know. He’s almost certainly dead now.
#3
Name: Guy Incognito
Appeared: “Fear of Flying” Episode 11, Season 6
As I’ve already mentioned, Homer’s got a lot of doubles. Like a lot. There’s German Homer, Japanese Corporate Mascot Homer, Shelbyville Homer, Lady Homer, Tartar Control Homer…but the greatest of all is Guy Incognito. What’s with the top hat? Why does he talk like an American doing a bad British accent? We shall never know. But the greatest mystery of all, why would a man with such an impeccably groomed moustache still have Homer’s trademark stubble?
#2
Name: Hugh Jass
Appeared: “Flaming Moe’s” Episode 10, Season 3
For one brief, shining moment, Moe Szyslak had it all. After he steals Homer’s recipe for a new drink, his business takes off and suddenly he’s got a hot girlfriend and is hanging out with Aerosmith in a period of history where that’s actually something to brag about. Even his arch-enemy, Bart Simpson, can’t touch him. When Bart calls to make one of his trademark crack calls, he makes Moe ask for a “Hugh Jass”. But for once, the universe has Moe’s back. There really is a Hugh Jass. And he is wonderful. Seriously, he only appears for less than a minute and he is probably the most fundamentally decent human being ever depicted in fiction. Hugh Jass makes me want to be a better person. Where someone like Joey Jo Jo Jnr Shabadoo lets the pain of having a ridiculous name crush him into emotional wreckage, Hugh Jass is a center of warm benevolence radiating out into the universe. What does he do when he finds out that Bart has been using his name for crude buttock-themed japery? He wishes him better look next time, hangs up and says “What a nice young man.”
I love Hugh Jass. And I cannot lie.
#1
The Sugar Thief
Appeared: “Lisa’s Rival” Episode 2, Season 6
There is nothing, nothing I say, funnier than when Homer Simpson is right. When the universe reveals itself to be so batshit insane that Homer Simpson’s worldview is actually correct, it’s always comedy gold. Homer “acquires” a massive mound of sugar and takes to guarding it night and day, terrified that someone will steal it. Marge thinks he’s descended into paranoid lunacy…and maybe he has. But the point is, he’s right! And to prove it he reaches into the mound of sugar and pulls out one of my personal favourite things ever: The Sugar Thief. The Sugar Thief is the Anti-Hugh Jass. Where Hugh is the exemplar of everything good in mankind, the Sugar Thief is pure, motiveless evil. When Homer angrily demands to know where he got the sugar for the tea he’s just casually toting around the Thief calmly replies: “I nicked it. In the split second when you let your guard down. And I’d do it again.”
That, my friends, is evil that cannot be reasoned with.
***
Well that’s the list. If you’re wondering why there are no characters on here from any season past Season 10, I don’t have those episodes. See, I got all my Simpsons DVD’s during my time in the Bluthiverse, where the show ended gracefully after the creative team decided it should go out on a high. Also cancer was cured and there was no war. God I miss that place.
So, oddly enough, this blog devoted to reviews of Disney movies had its busiest day ever when I decided to talk about something entirely unrelated to reviews of Disney movies.
I mentioned before that I’d written a formal letter of “What the hell bra?” to the Indo complaining about this article and earlier this week I got a phonecall from XXXXX in the paper saying that they’d read my letter and they’d checked with the journalist who wrote it and that he confirmed that the scientists he’d interviewed had made the claims printed in the article. I could see right off the bat that we’d gotten our wires crossed. I explained that my problem wasn’t that I doubted that the scientists had actually said those things, but that the things they said were…how shall I put this? A clenched fist of bollocks. We then had this exchange. It may not be word for word but it’s a faithful gist:
“Well, that’s your opinion. But these are some very serious scientists.”
“They’re cranks.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you can’t use radio waves to create energised water that makes giant animals.”
“How do you know?”
How do I know. Well that’s the question, isn’t it? It’s a bit of a stumper. It’s like being asked, “How do you know elephants can’t get heat-vision from eating lemons?” Technically, I suppose, I don’t know they can’t. But there is such a thing as an educated guess. Well anyway, XXXXXX very kindly offered to let me publish a letter in the paper explaining my concerns with the article. This is what I sent them:
Sirs,
Thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts on the article “Wave Goodbye to Global Warming, GM and pesticides” by Tom Prendeville, which appeared on Independent.ie on 25 August. When I first read this article I was so flabbergasted that I ended up writing a critique of it online (entitled “Question: Has Ireland’s biggest national newspaper lost its goddamn mind?”) and within hours I was inundated with messages from people who were all wondering the same thing: “How did the Independent let this thing get published?”
The article, written in the best “breathless press release” style claims that Irish scientists have perfected a new technology, a device the size of a biscuit tin that converts 24 volts of electricity into a radio wave that can then be used to transform water into “Vi-Aqua” which is then used to treat vegetables. Then come the following claims (and I swear I am not making any of this up): Treated vegetables become 30% larger and are resistant to disease, rendering pesticides and GM foods obsolete. It converts excess CO2 into plant matter, thereby solving global warming. It makes “water wetter” (really), thereby reducing the amount of water actually needed. And in, a final display of not knowing when to quit, the author states that animals fed the energised water “turn into giants”. We can only assume that Mr Prendeville ran out of space before he was able to recount how Vi-Aqua fed a crowd of five thousand and then died on the cross for our sins.
Now this is of course flim flam, and obviously transparent flim flam*. The Independent may say “We published the article in good faith. We’re not scientists.” But you shouldn’t need to be. There is nothing here that should be able to fool even a moderately educated layman. If “making water wetter” didn’t tip you off, “giant freakin’ farm animals” should have done the trick. The science here wouldn’t pass muster on Doctor Who**.
But even aside from this, it’s frighteningly obvious that nobody checked this before it went to print. The basic facts stated in the article don’t stand up to even the mildest investigation. Warrenstown, the facility where these miraculous experiments supposedly took place, has been closed since 2009. That took all of three minutes with a search engine to find out. I should point out something at this point: I am not a journalist. I am a guy who writes reviews of Disney movies on the internet. When you cannot match the story-proofing and journalistic rigour of a guy on the internet who writes reviews of Disney movies, that is a bad day for you.
So why am I so upset about this? If the article is as ludicrous as I make it sound then surely no one will believe it? Well firstly, if you think that, then I have an internet to introduce you to and secondly yes, they absolutely do believe it and are sharing it because source matters more than content. I believe the Holocaust occurred and man walked on the moon. Why? Because I was there? Because these events were everyday, mundane and believable on their face? No. Because sources I trust, reputable historians and news sources, tell me that it was so.
Over the last few days I have watched this story metastasize and spread across the internet and I can tell you now with some authority that you have done the following;
1) You have opened up yourselves, the University of Limerick and the nation as a whole to ridicule and scorn, and have turned Irish scientific research and Irish scientists who do real, vital work in their fields into laughing stocks.
2) You have helped perpetuate the myth that there is some magical cure-all to the issue of global warming, the most pressing concern facing humanity in the modern age.
3) You have allowed yourselves to act as salesmen for a product whose scientific efficacy I will call (in deference to the delicate constitutions of this paper’s legal department) “a bit iffy”.
4) You have done serious and lasting damage to your own reputation as a trustworthy news source and this is by far the worst of all.
In the modern era, with the internet drowning us non-stop in a sea of never ending half truth, cons and sheer bullshit we need, more than ever, legitimate, trustworthy news sources. If I see “Asteroid Headed For Earth” on Mayanprophecy.net I won’t give it a second glance. If I see “Asteroid Headed for Earth” on the front page of The Times I’m running for my wife and daughter to hug them goodbye. We need the grownups. We need to know who we can trust, and who we cannot.
The Irish Independent has incredibly, spectacularly failed that test. With regard to this article there are now only three things you can do:
Recant. Retract. Remove.
Mise le meas,
Neil Sharpson
***
So I sent this off to XXXX and got a response asking me to edit it down to less than five hundreds words. I did, cutting a few “flim-flams” here and there and sent it back in. And then I got this response. I think the following email chain speaks for itself.
***
Dear Mr Pearson,
Thank you for your letter.
If you wish to write a letter challenging the merit of the piece, subject to legal and editorial constraints, we would welcome that.
However, this letter cannot be published due to legal reasons.
We are more than happy to publish a letter that challenges the content of the article, not the reputations of the scientists involved.
Kind Regards,
XXXXXX
***
Hi XXXXX,
Was this sent to me in error? I only ask because you seem to have gotten my surname wrong.
Regards
Neil Sharpson
***
Hi,
Apologies for that Neil – it was intended for you, but I got the surname wrong,
Apologies,
XXXXX
***
You’re kind of terrible at this.
***
So, there you have it. Nothing really left to say except that my article which mentions many concrete inaccuracies while not naming the scientists involved by name does not challenge the contents of the article and endangers the reputations of the scientists involved. My bad. Gonna try and take this up with the Press Ombudsman and see if I can get a sympathetic ear.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
All the best
Mouse
PS: I think I may have inadvertantly given the Independent a new slogan.
* Yes, I say “flim flam”. Yes, I AM a nineteenth century cotton baron, as a matter of fact.
** I love Doctor Who. But this is a show where DNA can be passed along by lightning strikes.
***
The third week of voting for the Blog Awards Ireland 2013 has now begun. If you have a minute, please click on the link below and cast your vote for “Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #8a: Song of the South. Thanks.
(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images and footage used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material. New to the blog? Start at the start with Snow White.)
Hello internet! Man, I don’t know about you but I’m back, feeling well rested and ready to review some goddamn Disney movies! Who’s…
…with…
…me…?
Santa Claus, Lex Luthor and Asian Nixon? But they’re mortal enemies!
Okay, is it just me or has the blog gotten…sorta…Communisty since I’ve been gone?
Comrade Mouse, how’s it hangin’ dawg?
Gangsta Asia?! What’s been going on around here?! Why does my blog look like May Day in Red Square?
I’m now Comrade Gangsta Asia. And your blog is the people’s blog now thanks to the glorious socialist revolution we had in your absence. Um…for rizzle.
Alright look, you can be a communist character or a gangsta character but not both, you’re not fleshed out enough to support two defining traits.
Yeah, this is really hard.
Second, who staged a communist uprising on my…why do I even need to finish that sentence?
Privyet, Mouse.
Oh heeey Comrade Crow. Look, I know I haven’t been featuring you much on the blog in the last…
Silence! As a remnant of the old regime you are considered an enemy of the blog. Take him away!
Dammit. See, this is why you have to be careful of offending communists. They tend to hold a grudge. Disney learned this the hard way when they financed Kundun, a biopic of the current Dalai Lama that kinda portrays China in a negative light. You know, like Ike always gets the short end of the stick in movies about the life of Tina Turner. So anyway, China heard that Disney had been talkin’ smack and didn’t think that China would hear it.
Yes, Hollaback Girl is about Chinese international relations. That songs has layers, man.
Suddenly, Disney found itself frozen out of what was rapidly becoming the most lucrative movie market on the planet. China only allows a limited number of Western films to be screened there each year and if you think Disney isn’t willing to bend over so far that its lips actually touch its own anus just to get a sniff of a chance of a shot of that market…well, you haven’t really been paying attention.
“Hello, Fan Bingbing? I’m just calling to let you know that China’s strength and prowess fills me with joy and contentment.”
“But of course, Mr Stark. China is well aware of its greatness. NOW DANCE!”
But back in 1997, Disney decided on a slightly more dignified way of currying favour. Mulan originally was going to be a short, straight to video animation called China Doll, about a poor Chinese girl who’s rescued by an Englishman and taken to live happily every after in the West. And that, from the offensive title to the paternalistic premise, pretty much sounds like the worst fucking thing ever. It was Robert D. San Souci, the children’s author and sometime Disney consultant, who suggested instead making a movie version of the Ballad of Hua Mulan (not to be confused with the Ode to Fa Mulan). You can read the poem here, it’s quite short and also pretty amazing. It’s a 1500 year old poem that simply and unabashedly makes the case for gender equality, depicting a young girl who goes off to fight a twelve year military campaign in place of her aged father, wins honour and prestige and returns home at last, revealing to her astounded comrades that she was a woman the whole time. So, we have a Disney movie that not only is going to delving into depictions of a non-European culture, but also dealing with the issue of feminism. Race and gender? Well surely this can’t go wrong?
Well…no. Actually. It didn’t.
You know, I’ve been doing this a while now and if I’ve learned one thing it’s this: Every movie has its defenders. No matter how little I, or the general consensus, rate any Disney movie, there will always be someone to fight its corner. There are Pocahontasfans, Black Cauldron fans, Aristocats fans and even Three Caballerosfans. Well, maybe “fans” is not the right word for that last one.
“Almighty Rooster, hear our prayer.”
Conversely, on the other end of the scale, no matter how highly a Disney movie is ranked and rated and praised, there will always be someone who doesn’t think it’s all that. I know people who don’t likeLion King, Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Hunchback…hell there are some sick fucks who don’t like Beauty and the Beast! But…not for this one. Honestly, I have never met or spoken to a single Disney fan who does not absolutely adore Mulan. Do I agree?
Fuck yeah I agree!
Sorry, you may have wanted me to string you along until the end of the review before revealing my opinion of this movie but…really? The fact that I composed a goddamn ode to the main character didn’t tip you off? Yeah, I love this movie, and I love Mulan herself, without a doubt the most badass character in the Disney canon. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the story of Mulan, or, as I like to call her; The Death Who Walks.
Yeah, I’ve been getting this question a lot (oddly enough, always with the same mocking supervillain laughter). So, will I be reviewing Pixar’s Disney’s You Take It! No, You Take IT! Okay fine Disney’s Planes. Hmmm…tough one. Will I be reviewing the tossed off, cash-in, almost direct-to-DVD spinoff to what is, without question, one of my least favourite animated movies of all time?
And while that is soooooo tempting, I think we’re all forgetting the rules. Remember, back when I embarked on this little saga all the way back in the mists of prehistory? Your grasp of archaic, 2012-era English may be a little rusty so let me sum up; No live action films, no straight to DVD movies and no Pixar films. Only the canon classics.
So, can’t. Love to. But can’t.
Also, that movie is not getting my money. Not when there’s less morally questionable enterprises to be giving my money to. Like blood diamond smuggling cartels. Or NAMBLA.
The 25 Things the Unshaved Mouse would do before reviewing Planes.
1) Desecrate a stained glass window.
2) French kiss a skunk.
3) Skunk kiss a Frenchman. (Don’t google it)
4) Act disrespectfully to a lady.
5) Kick a dog that wasn’t asking for it in some way.
6) Take a ball to the groin.
7) Take a groin to the balls.
8) Eat broken glass.
9) Eat Philip Glass.
10) Eat broken Philip Glass after a horrific plane crash where he broke every bone in his body and I had to eat him to survive and also his body was full of broken glass from the crash.
11) Get in a plane with Philip Glass.
12) Hire The Coachman as a babysitter.
13) Puppets. Just…puppets.
14) Stop using the phrase “Screw off”.
15) Say “Candyman” five times in a mirror while watching the video from The Ring while simultaneously having sex with Pinhead’s wife.
16) Marathon Pocahontas, Aristocats, Black Cauldron and Three Caballeros in one sitting.
17) Defenestrate a monk.
18) Tell local ex-IRA hardman Kneecaps “They call me Kneecaps because of all the kneecaps I’ve smashed” Malone that he looks “kind of English” today.
19) Michael Eisner was right. Traditional animation is no longer viable and it’s time for us all to just accept that CGI is the superior technique. Is a thing I would rather say than review Planes.
20) Review Planes. Yes, you read that right. I hate it so much I would rather review Planes than review Planes.
21) Climb into Rush Limbaugh’s house in the middle of the night and, while he sleeps, tuck myself in between two layers of flab, spending the night cocooned within him, slowly soaking in his sweat and odour.
22) Waxing of the barse.
23) Pistol whip a ferret.
24) Let you, my loyal readers, down in any way.
25) Unless not letting you down means reviewing Planes, in which case you can screw off.
In conclusion, no. I will most likely not be reviewing Planes. I will however, be reviewing Mulan, so I look forward to seeing you on the 5th of September.
Alright, so let me set the scene for you. I’m on Facebook, minding my own business, wondering what the hell “twerk” and “Miley Cyrus” are, when I see that a friend of mine has linked this article called “Wave Goodbye to Global Warming, GM and pesticides.”
Now, the first rule of any news story you come across on the internet is of course, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Some fourteen year old kid in Tanzania has discovered a cure for cancer in his garage? Yeah, I’ll believe it when he’s up on the podium accepting the Nobel prize. But this story actually gave me pause because it was on the Irish Independent’s website. See, the Irish Independent isn’t some fringe blog or rag like the Daily Mail that will publish literally anything because, fuck it.
The Indo is a Big Serious Paper, actually the second Biggest Seriousest Paper after the Irish Times. For an Irishman, seeing this headline would be like seeing it in the Washington Post or USA Today for an American. It’s not the NY Times, but still. This is a paper with some not inconsiderable prestige. So I think, okay, maybe the headline is a little hyperbolic but what if it’s true? What if they actually have discovered some new technology that will solve the problem of climate change, the single greatest challenge facing the human race? Hell, it’s in the Indo, it’s got to be true! So I clicked on the link…and entered a world of MADNESS.
I’m going to quote the article pretty extensively here, because I have a feeling once whatever drugs have worked their way through the systems of the Indo’s editorial board this thing’s going to get taken down right sharpish. I’ll take you through the article piece by piece and as I go I’ll leave footnotes as to what Google has been able to tell me about the various persons, institutions and “scientific”…no, wait, that needs another set of quotation marks “”scientific”” concepts mentioned. The article is written by “Tom Prendeville”(1) and is in the Business section. Not the Science section. Not the environment section. Not the “Hey hey I saved the world today” section. The business section.
“A GROUNDBREAKING new Irish technology which could be the greatest breakthrough in agriculture since the plough is set to change the face of modern farming forever.”
Holy shit! Really? Wow! I mean, I may not be a farmer, but I am WELL aware of the importance of ploughs. Without ploughs, what have we got, farming wise? Jack shit is what! Also, this technology is Irish?! We just revolutionised agriculture as we know it?! Excuse me for a moment.
Please, continue.
“The technology – radio wave energised water(2)– massively increases the output of vegetables and fruits by up to 30 per cent.”
Radio wave energised water? Tell me more! Also, nice choice of “30%”. It’s big, but not crazy big.
“Not only are the plants much bigger but they are largely disease-resistant, meaning huge savings in expensive fertilisers and harmful pesticides.”
Um…you do know pesticides don’t just protect crops from disease? That they also kill “pests”? As in, bugs and shit? And the only way they could be pest-resistant would be if the pests couldn’t eat them. Maybe the radio wave energised water renders them invulnerable like Superman?
“Extensively tested in Ireland and several other countries, the inexpensive water treatment technology is now being rolled out across the world.”
Several other countries, sure. But Ireland did all of the important work, don’t you dare hone in on our glory, Several Other Countries. Lookin’ at you Djibouti!
Fuck did I do?
“The technology makes GM obsolete and also addresses the whole global warming fear that there is too much carbon dioxide in the air, by simply converting excess CO2 into edible plant mass.”
GM’s obsolete?! But they’d just gotten back on their feet after the Obama administration bailed them out and now they’re one of the top car manufacturers in America….oh wait, you mean “Genetically Modified”. And not “Genetically Modified Food”. Just “Genetically Modified”. Anything genetically modified is now obsolete.(3). Also, I love how it addresses “the whole global warming fear”. That’s such an Irish way of putting it. “You know, that whole global warming thing. You know that thing?” Also notable that it “simply” converts excess CO2 into edible plant mass. That’s not simple. That’s fucking black magic, dark and eldritch. But who cares? Not only are we solving Global Warming, we’re getting a meal out of it!
“Developed by Professor Austin Darragh (4) and Dr JJ Leahy (5) of Limerick University’s Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science, the hardy eco-friendly technology uses nothing but the natural elements of sunlight, water, carbon dioxide in the air and the minerals in the soil.”
It’s not even a technology, man. The earth just,like,…provides.
“The compact biscuit-tin-sized technology, which is called Vi-Aqua – meaning ‘life water’ – “
Wow. That is the smallest technology I have ever heard of. I mean, digital technology is so big they have to keep it in a barn, and it’s one of the smaller technologies! Also, while I don’t doubt that “Vi-Aqua” means “life water”, is that in a real language or one you made up?
“…converts 24 volts of electricity into a radio signal, which charges up the water via an antennae. Once the device is attached to a hose, thousands of gallons of water can be charged up in less than 10 minutes at a cost of pennies.(6)”
If you have the antenna, why do you need the hose? To spray the water at the antenna? Or, is the hose used to transfer the now magically imbued water away to where it is most needed? Because then, why does it have to be a hose? Seems like a large pipe might do the job better.
“Speaking about the new technology, Professor Austin Darragh says: “Vi-Aqua makes water wetter.””
…
…
…
Again please.
“Speaking about the new technology, Professor Austin Darragh says: “Vi-Aqua makes water wetter.””
Last part.
“Vi-Aqua makes water wetter.””
I…I…I…I…have I gone mad?
“…and introduces atmospheric nitrogen into the water in the form of nitrates – so it is free fertiliser. It also produces the miracle of rejuvenating the soil by invigorating soil-based micro-organisms.”
It produces miracles. There you have it.
HE IS THE MESSIAH!
“We can also make water savings of at least 30 per cent. When the water is treated it becomes a better solvent, which means it can carry more nutrients to the leaves and stem and percolate better down into the soil to nourish the roots, which in turn produces a better root system. Hence the reason you need less water and why you end up with larger and hardier crops,” explains Professor Austin Darragh.”
30 per cent again. Marks for consistency. Fuck it, after the miracle of “wetter water” this paragraph feels like a beacon of rationality and cold scientific objectivity.
“Extensively tested in Warrenstown Agricultural College (7), the technology is being hailed as a modern day miracle.”
For I tell you most solemnly, the compact biscuit-tin-sized technology has given up the blind to see and the lame to walk. It has cleansed the leper and led the faithful to rejoice in the sight of Radio Wave Energised Water.
“Harold Lawler is Ireland’s foremost Agricultural Specialist (8). As Director of the National Botanical Gardens (9) and former Master of Agricultural Science at Warrenstown Agricultural College (10), he has carried out more research on Vi-Aqua growth-enhancing technology than perhaps anyone else in the world.(11): “In the bedding plants we really saw a difference in the results; they were much hardier and tougher. You could drop a tray of these plants on the ground and they would not shatter, like ordinary plants.””
Does…does Ireland’s foremost Agricultural Specialist think that plants shatter when dropped? Has he confused vegetables with fine bone china? Well, with Agricultural Specialists of this caliber, that must explain why Ireland has never had a famine.
“The iceberg lettuces were far superior with faster germination, and with carrots for example, the crops were on average 46 per cent heavier,” explains Harold Lawler.”
46%!? What are you doing?! The bullshit cannot exceed 30%! Dammit, there are rules!
“During recent successful tomato crop field trials in Italy, three of the country’s largest Agricultural Co-op’s were so impressed with the results that they have now decided to recommend the technology to the country’s farming community.”
“Elsewhere, the Indian government have now concluded their own tests, which confirm that they are able to boost tea (plant) production by over a third while using far less water.”
Elsewhere. Maybe…in India? Also, I’m so glad they were able to boost tea(plant) production as tea(plant) is my favorite drink(beverage).
“In recognition of the groundbreaking technology, the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, London, recently took the hitherto unheard-of step of granting Professor Austin Darragh and his team the right to use their official centuries-old coat of arms on the new technology – the first time ever that Kew Gardens has afforded anyone such an honour.”
Ahem.
Excuse me.
“The Kew Gardens botanists were not just impressed with the research; they used the technology to restore to life a very rare orchid which had been lying dormant and practically dead in a greenhouse bell jar since 1942. Amazingly, the orchid is now flourishing once again.”
Flourishing and hungry for brains! THE DEAD GROW AMONGST THE LIVING!
“Intriguingly, chickens and sheep fed the energised water turned into giants. . . but that’s another story!”
Giant farm animals, huh? May have buried the lede there just a bit.
“Whoops, outta time. We’ll tell you about this next week.”
“Limerick University off- campus company ZPM Europe Ltd (12), who are based in the National Technology Park, Limerick, is now manufacturing the Vi-Aqua technology.”
Soooo…
This is a joke right?
No, I’m actually leaning more in the direction of “con”. See, the ZPM Europe Limited site leads to a Vi-Aqua site where you can actually pay for a water radio energizer. With money. That you presumably earned. Oddly enough, on the Vi-Aqua site it simply markets the biscuit sized technology as a way to improve your garden, which seems kinda small potatoes for something that’s GOING TO SAVE EVERY ONE OF US FROM GLOBAL WARMING.
Okay, I’m cracking jokes here but I am actually, no lie, really freaked out. As I said before, the Irish Independent is not the Daily Mail. It’s not World Net Daily. It is a real, serious newspaper that people trust. This article has been shared over 20,000 times. Somehow, an obvious con artist has managed to get a clearly ridiculous scam and cloak it in the reputation and respectability of Ireland’s largest selling daily newspaper. That is fucking terrifying. In the modern era, with the internet drowning us non-stop in a sea of never ending half truth, cons and sheer bullshit we need, more than ever, legitimate, trustworthy news sources. If I see “Asteroid Headed For Earth” on Mayanprophecy.net I won’t give it a second glance. If I see “Asteroid Headed for Earth” on the front page of the The Times I’m running for my wife and daughter to hug them goodbye. We need the grownups. We need to know who we can trust, and who we cannot.
The Irish Independent has incredibly, spectacularly failed that test.
Thanks for reading,
Mouse
(1) For a journalist, he seems to have a very humble web profile. I did find some articles he wrote for Hotpress magazine with titles such as “September 11. Terrorist Outrage or sinister conspiracy ?” and “The World’s Secret Rulers are Coming to Town”. And yes, ladies, I hear he’s single.
(2) Searching “Radio Wave Energised Water” gets you plenty of results. All either this article, or people talking about this article.
(3) Side note. Number of people who have been saved from famine by Genetically Modified Food: Over 200 Million. Number of people who have been saved by “Radio wave energised water”: -52. I’m assuming some people killed themselves after reading this idiocy.
(5) Again, google takes you to what seems to be a University of Limerick site, listing details for a Dr JJ Leahy. But the more I look at it the more I think this is a dummy site that links to the real University of Limerick site. The main UL site seems to be a lot snazzier. And if this site is fake, who the hell is going to all this trouble?!
(6) That could be a problem. Ireland hasn’t used pennies since 2002.
(7) That was quite a coup for Warrenstown, considering it’s been closed since 2009.
(8) I don’t think he is, but I’ll bet he knows a lot about manure.
(9) The National Botanic Gardens of Ireland is a real place. Near my parents. Really nice, you should see it if you’re ever in Dublin. Free entry. Free of Harold Lawlers too. Harold Lawlor is a lecturer there though.
(10) Did teach there, apparently. “Rate My Teacher” opines that “This man takes all criticism personally and never listens to what really is being said” and “hmmm interesting fellow but has the personality of a pencil.” It’s not all bad. One past pupil says that Harold Lawler is “a true OG when it comes to planting.” Word.
(11) Undoubtedly true.
(12) This is their website. Which leads to this website for Vi Aqua. Behold the GeoCities hosted glory of our saviours.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get antsy waiting for the fifth to roll around so here is something I threw together with my friend, the incredibly talented Jeda DeBrí and my equally talented wife Aoife O’Donoghue. Yes, we do video here now! Like a real internet!
Okay, so now that I’ve lured you back to the blog I have to confess an ulterior motive. Let’s be honest with ourselves here. There’s no use fighting it. You feel it. I feel it. There’s something between us. Always has been. But I’ve been hurt so bad before. I just don’t know if I can trust someone again, to let my barriers down and let a community of internet commenters into my heart. What’s that you say? How can you prove your love?
Well…there is one thing, but…
No. I could never ask you.
What’s that? You insist?
Well…
So you remember I told you that I’d been nominated for the Blog Awards Ireland 2013?
Oh dear oh dear, did I leave this old thing lying around here again?
Well it turns out that I’ve also been nominated for Best Blog Post. (Twice technically, theSong of the South and Black Cauldon reviews both got nommed.) This one works a little differently from the other categories. You vote for your choice (you can vote once a week) and then at the end of the week the 5 posts with the fewest votes get eliminated. This goes on every week until there are only ten left, and the winner will be announced at the Blog Awards on 12th October.
So please. If you have a moment, pop over and vote here for Song of the South for Best Blog post. (I don’t want to split the vote, and honestly, the SOS review is the one I’m more proud of.) So go, exercise your democratic right and vote. Otherwise the terrorists win. By which I mean the other bloggers. Who are terrorists. Nah. I’m kidding. They’re great, it’s all in good fun and may the best man win. They’re not terrorists.*
Thanks guys.
*No, seriously. They hate our freedom. It’s us or them.
Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you thank you you. Merci. Danke. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
It is with great pride that I can announce that The Unshaved Mouse has been nominated for The Blog Awards Ireland 2013 in the Newcomer, Humour and Pop culture categories.
(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material. New to the blog? Start at the start with Snow White.)
***
Pff. Hercules. What a poser. You want to talk about impossible labours? Try writing a comedic review about a comedy while looking after a sick baby, fighting off a stomach bug, grappling with unreliable internet connection and only three days to write the review because you’re going on holiday. Now there’s a challenge. Especially if it’s a good comedy. And I’ll admit, this is a funny movie. Maybe it’s just because it comes right after three of the most serious movies in the canon (yeah, Lion Kingis light-hearted in places but nothing that has that death scene gets to call itself jovial) but fair is fair, it goes for the yuks and it gets them more often than not.
Production started in 1994 under the directorship of Ron Clements and John Musker, the directing team behind The Little Mermaidand Aladdin, the movie it most closely resembles. In fact, if I had to describe Hercules it would be, “Aladdin, but more.” Actually no, it would be “Aladdin, but too much.” Hercules sees Aladdin’s celebrity voice actors, heavy emphasis on comedy, deliberate anachronisms and pop culture references and raises the stakes like a wild-eyed gambler in a saloon who won’t listen to his wife pulling at his arm and screaming at him not to bet the farm, Lawence! The end result is that…that…
Aw hell, I can’t hold it in anymore…
ONE YEAR BITCHES!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Sorry, where were we?
Oh right, Hercules. My point is, while Aladdin is overall a very fun and light movie, they still treated the story as something that mattered. You care about Aladdin and Jasmine, and while the genie might seem like a joke dispensing machine, he does actually get some quite affecting character beats.
I’ve been chopping onions, shut up.
Hercules though? The whole thing just comes off as such a lark that it’s kind of hard to give a damn about anything that happens. It’s an easy film to be entertained by. But not really an easy film to care about.
This represents Disney’s first foray into actual mythology rather than fairy tales, literature or legends. And no, a legend and a myth are not the same thing. In fact, let’s do a quick crash course on terminology (please let me do this, this is literally the only time my degree in Folklore has had any, even slightly, practical use).
Okay, so a fairy tale (or as folklorists prefer, a wonder tale) is set in a faraway place, a long time ago. It’s not about a real place, and it’s not about real people. It’s a fictitious tale told purely for enjoyment and usually has fantastical elements and magic and what have you. A legend, while also fictitious, takes place in a real place and time and features real people. So, for example, Washington chopping down his father’s cherry tree is a legend. It never actually happened, but Washington was a real person and it’s set in a specific time and place, Colonial America. Finally, a myth is the remnant of a now extinct religion. Hercules is a myth because both he and Zeus were once genuinely worshipped as gods and the tales featuring them had the weight of religious belief behind them. Myths tend to be taken more seriously than legends or wonder tales and while wonder tales tend to be considered universal (which culture gave rise to Cinderella?) myths remain very closely linked to their native culture. This may explain why this movie is absolutely loathed in Greece, where its, shall we say loose, interpretation of the Hercules stories enraged the Greeks.
Whoah whoah whoah, hold the phone. The Greeks were pissed off about something?
(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material. New to the blog? Start at the start with Snow White.)
***
Hey, you know what I love? Long, angry flame wars. By which I mean, I do not love those. At all. I bring this up because…while I know that I don’t have anything to worry about (the followers of this blog were, after all, recently voted Nicest Commentariat on the Internet)…
There was a whole ceremony and an award presented by Tom Hanks and a crazy party after…did I forget to tell you guys?
…but nonetheless I’m a little nervous going into this review. Hunchback, man. People feel…”strongly” about Hunchback. There are those who will loudly and passionately proclaim this to be the unacknowledged masterpiece of the Renaissance, the best thing Disney ever did. And then there are the Hugo loyalists, who think that the movie is an absolute disgrace to the source material, the perfect case-study for the abominable practice of Disneyfication. And then there are some who don’t have any particular fealty to the source material and just hate it as a movie. My friend Moira, (bracketsandampersandsyoureadnow) has often told me she just finds the whole film to be downright nasty and unpleasant.
So, which camp do I fall into?
Alright, let’s be honest here. This movie has problems. Serious problems that run right to its very core. The source material, The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, quite frankly is not suited to being adapted into a Disney movie. Not because it’s dark, although it is. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Disney can do dark. It just can’t do bleak. Now, full disclosure, I haven’t actually read the novel…
Yeah. That’s right. I didn’t read the 200,000 word 18th century French novel to research my silly little cartoon blog. Scandal.
…but it ends with Frollo being flung from the cathedral by Quasimodo, Esmerelda being hung and Quasimodo mourning beside her body until he slowly starves to death.
Coupled with that, the book is an often scathing critique of religious hypocrisy and extremism…right?
“Hm? Uh…sure, why not?”
And that’s something that Disney is just not cut out for. So we get changes like Frollo being a judge rather than the Arch-Deacon of Notre-Dame which leads to all kinds of plotholes and general silliness. These two forces, the dark source material and the sunny demands of the Disney formula are constantly pulling this movie in different direction and often threaten to tear the whole thing to pieces.
And yet…and yet…
When it works? When the emotional power of the story comes together with the gorgeous visuals, the near flawless animation, some great voice work and an absolutely spine-tinglingly excellent soundtrack by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz?
Guys, when this thing works? It SOARS.
And it’s brave too. I mentioned the laicisation of Frollo (and you know what? Fair enough. Catholic parents shouldn’t have to deal with a Disney movie telling their kids what’s wrong with their faith any more than Aladdin should have a screed on the depiction of women in the Qur’an) but notwithstanding that, this movie goes to some pretty dark places. And in its portrayals of sexual obsession and prejudice it’s remarkably honest and unvarnished. And that’s really Hunchback all over. It’s a weird, misshapen, sometimes ugly thing on the outside. But inside it has such beauty, and heart and courage…it’s kind of like…um…
(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material. New to the blog? Start at the start with Snow White.)
***
“We’d been working it on it for a couple of months and then Jeffrey calls a “breakfast meeting”. And in the meeting, we have the whole crew from Pocahontas and Lion King. And Jeffrey said “Pocahontas is a home run! It’s West Side Story/Romeo and Juliet with American Indians! It’s a smash hit! Lion King on the other hand, it’s kind of an experiment, we don’t really know if people are going to want to see it.””
Rob Minkoff, Co-director of The Lion King.
Guys. You know me. I’m not a hatchet artist. I don’t enjoy tearing movies to pieces. I didn’t start this blog because I wanted to take cheap shots, I did it as a cynical promotional tool to advance my writing career because I love this gorgeous, hilarious, deeply weird gaggle of animated films we call the Disney canon. And I know a lot of you have been looking forward to seeing me feast on this thing’s entrails like a rabid boar but I honestly cannot think of anything more dispiriting to write and unpleasant to read than one long, unending rant.
So…
I’m laying down a few ground rules right from the start. Think of these as handicaps to give this movie a fighting chance so that it doesn’t just turn into a complete bloodbath.
I’m not going to mark this movie down for its inaccurate portrayal of Indians, Native Americans, American Indians, Amerindians, Native Peoples…
These guys.
Not that the movie doesn’t get a lot of things wrong (I have it on good account that it does) but it’s not like I’m an expert so I don’t really feel qualified to call the movie out on its failures in that regard. See, the thing is…it is damn hard to write a portrayal of Those Guys in any medium that doesn’t end up annoying somebody. There are just so many stereotypes and tired tropes floating around that it is almost impossible to write a character that doesn’t fall into at least some of them. (Actually, if there are any Native Americans or people of Native American ancestry reading this I would be very interested to know if there are any portrayals in TV or movies that you feel actually got it right. Let me know in the comments.) I am under no illusions that by deciding to make this movie Disney wasn’t setting itself up for a lose/lose situation.
Having said that, let’s be clear: They FUCKING LOST.
I’m not going to mark this movie down for its historical inaccuracy.
It’s a cartoon. Not a historical document. So I don’t particularly care that Pocahontas is not twelve and John Smith is not a forty year old ginger. I will still mock this movie like the dickens for comedic effect, but it’s not going to have an impact on the final score.
I’m not going to mark this down for failing to address the issues of genocide, forced relocations, slavery et al.
It’s a movie set in 1607. Short of one of the characters getting their hands on a time machine, how can the movie address events that wouldn’t happen decades or even centuries into the future? Granted, it hangs like a big black hanging thing over the entire movie, but that’s more history’s fault than the film’s. Besides. Do you really want to see a Disney movie that gave a realistic depiction of the Jamestown settlement? (Answer: No, no. Not even a little. No.)
I’m laying down these rules because, honestly, if this movie was good? If I cared deeply about the characters? If I was entranced by the story and thought the script was witty and emotionally satisfying? If I loved the art style and didn’t find the songs insufferably smug? None of the above would matter. You think I care that Mulan is set in the wrong dynasty or that Jungle Bookmakes no reference to India’s struggle for independence from British rule? Not a bit. So if it doesn’t matter to me when the movie’s good, why should it matter when the movie’s bad?
Oh yeah. The movie’s bad. Really bad. Like, a failure on all but the most technical level. Technically, it’s fine. The story structure is pretty much text-book. The animation is largely excellent if joyless and devoid of any real inspiration. But this thing is dead inside. It’s like someone killed a Disney movie and staged a macabre puppet show with the body. It’s the worst kind of formula driven, corporate movie making trying to hide its soullessness behind a vague veneer of empty New Agey spirituality. And it’s dumb. It’s really dumb. There are dumb movies, and there are smart movies and the great earth is big and rich enough for both but one thing I cannot stand is a dumb movie that thinks it’s smart.
So. How came we by this travesty?
Being Irish, I know a thing or two about booms and busts and when I read about the giddy optimism that was bubbling through Disney by the mid-nineties I can’t help but feel a little twinge of Celtic Tiger PTSD.
True story: Where I live was right in that thing’s crotch.
Under the guidance of the Katzenberg/Eisner/Disney triumvirate the Disney animation studio had gone from being a financial liability to a money making machine. Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdinand Lion King. One after the other.
“HEY! WHAT ARE WE, INVISIBLE?!”
Four of the biggest animated movies, hell, four of the biggest movies of all time in a six year span. Couple that record box office take with equally record breaking VHS sales and merchandising and you are talking about a billion dollar enterprise. I wouldn’t be surprised if years later it turned out that the real reason Katzenberg left was that Eisner kept cheating during their daily money fights. And, to their credit, Katzenberg and Eisner made sure plenty of that money got to the people who made it all possible. Suddenly, the animators’ parking lot was filling up each day with Bentleys and Jaguars. Generous bonuses were being lavished all around and the animation wing had a brand new state-of-the-art office building built just for them. But there was a cost to all this. Whereas the animation studio that Walt Disney had founded would slowly and methodically work on one film, release it, and then start on the next, Roy Disney had decreed that a new full length animated film would be released every year. As well as working on Pocahontas, the animation studio was finishing off Lion King, prepping for Hunchback of Notre Dame and working on A Goofy Movie and Nightmare Before Christmas. This massive workload resulted in long hours, stress and more than a few ruined marriages. And the toll wasn’t merely psychological either. Watch interviews and footage of the Disney animators of this period and you’ll see a lot of people rubbing their wrists, flexing and unflexing their fingers, squinting…we don’t normally think of artistic fields of endeavour as being physically gruelling but animation can put an absolutely brutal toll on the human body. Then of course there was the tragic death of Frank Wells, a huge psychic shock to the company made worse by the ugly fallout and Katzenberg’s departure from Disney.
It’s not possible to recount why Katzenberg left without getting into a lot of “he said she said” bullshit. From what I can gather Katzenberg’s version of events was that Eisner promised Katzenberg the position vacated by Wells but then withdrew the offer because he was jealous of how Katzenberg was getting all these press accolades for having turned things around at Disney. Eisner, for his part, says that the position was Katzenberg’s for the taking if he’d just waited a while and not been lobbying for it so soon after Wells’ death. Did Katzenberg resign? Was he fired? Don’t know, honestly don’t really care. The point is, halfway through production of Pocahontas Katzenberg had left Disney vowing revenge.
“Fools! I shall destroy them all!”
I think all these factors, the over-work, the shock of Wells’ death, the sheer weight of expectation to keep the gravy train on the tracks and the bad blood caused by Katzenberg’s departure all combined to make Pocahontas a thoroughly miserable experience for the animators to work on. I have no proof of that, maybe it was an endless merry go round of delight, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel that way. There is a sense of joylessness that pervades this thing, like everyone was just gritting their teeth and thinking of the paycheck.
unshavedmouse 