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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Saturday Morning - Darkwing Duck

One thing that we can count on in the world of pop culture is that there are going to be huge successes and major flops.

And some things become so popular that in some cases, producers may devise something called a 'spin-off' or a 'crossover' that takes one or more of the characters from the original series to star in or kick off a new series.

Sometimes, this works out great. With all three versions of the CSI series, at least one of the main characters have appeared in Las Vegas, Miami, and New York City (Gil Grissom, Horatio Caine, and Mac Taylor have done crossovers at least twice thus far). Saved By The Bell had two spinoffs, one lasting longer than the other. Diff'rent Strokes launched the successful spinoff The Facts Of Life. Even the Mary Tyler Moore show had a couple of spinoffs, including Rhoda and Phyllis.

Some spinoffs just simply don't work out. Friends was a successful sitcom that lasted ten seasons. When Joey got his own spinoff, it barely registered on the Neilsen ratings scale. After the successful run of Three's Company, John Ritter tried his hand at a spinoff called Three's A Crowd, which barely lasted one season. The Golden Girls may have had a fantastic seven year run together, but when Bea Arthur left, and the other three moved into the Golden Palace, the show didn't do quite as well, but the Golden Girls did inspire the long-running sitcom Empty Nest, which later spun off another sitcom, Nurses.

Those are all fantastic examples of live-action shows which have had spinoffs and crossovers that have either succeeded or bombed.

But what about animated crossovers?

Certainly, Family Guy spawned a couple of successful spinoff series. Some celebrities and live-action characters have been put into animated format as well. Camp Candy is one example. Others include Muppet Babies, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, Hulk Hogan's Rock 'N Wrestling, and Rick Moranis in Gravedale High.

And then you have rare instances in which a cartoon character from one show will pop onto another show for a cameo appearance, such as Ren and Stimpy appearing on The Simpsons, or Josie and the Pussycats appearing in Archie Comics. Even more rare is when you take a cartoon character that was established on one cartoon show, and take them and give them a huge role in a different program.



Yet that's exactly what happened on the Disney cartoon Darkwing Duck.

In particular with the character of Launchpad McQuack.



When Launchpad was first introduced in the world of Disney, he initially appeared on the television series DuckTales, which premiered on September 18, 1987. Launchpad's role in the series was that of Scrooge McDuck's personal pilot. Although on the series, he ended up crashing his plane every time he tried to land it, he always manages to do so without injuring any of his passengers. As someone with a huge stature in comparison to the other characters on DuckTales, Launchpad sometimes took on the role of personal bodyguard to Scrooge McDuck, and in most cases, he's seen as a friend to Scrooge's nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

But on Darkwing Duck, he took on a completely different role. He wasn't involved in as many action scenes in Darkwing Duck as he was on DuckTales, but he still provided a fairly important role on the series, and I'll get into that in just a little bit.

Right now, I want to talk about the show itself, and how it came to be.

The year was 1991. That was the year that Darkwing Duck was first conceived. The show was made especially to be a spin-off of the DuckTales series, which had ended just before the 1990 holiday season. The show itself was inspired by a DuckTales episode, which was entitled 'Double-O-Duck', which portrayed Launchpad as a secret agent. When Tad Stones was approached to come up with a series around the episode, because a Disney executive seemed to like the title of 'Double-O-Duck'. While Stones was unsure of the premise, as he felt the idea lacked heart, and didn't have any sense of family surrounding it, he pitched the idea using a character named GizmoDuck (who was introduced in DuckTales' final season).

That first idea was rejected, but Stones was given a second chance to come up with a better idea. Taking the idea of Double-O-Duck, and turning him into a separate character rather than the alter ego of Launchpad McQuack (Launchpad would become the sidekick of Double-O-Duck). The new show idea would have Double-O-Duck as a 'man of mystery' with a fleet of duck-headed vehicles designed after similar ones used in Batman and Judge Dredd. The character would also be a father to a preteen daughter named Gosalyn, which was basically a plot device used to complicate his life, and play havoc with the sophisticated self image he was proud of.

A problem arose when the title 'Double-O-Duck' could not be used, as the Ian Fleming estate had trademarked the Double-O name from the popular James Bond series of films. A contest was held between staff members of the Disney TV Animation studios to come up with a new name for the superhero. A lot of names were suggested, but Alan Burnett came up with the winning name of Darkwing Duck.



As a result of the new name, Darkwing Duck's appearance soon changed. Initially he was to be designed as wearing a white tuxedo and black domino mask. Instead, the colour purple was brought in, and Darkwing Duck wore a purple mask instead of a black one.

So on March 31, 1991, Darkwing Duck first premiered on the Disney Channel and in the Disney Afternoon cartoon block. The show took place in the city of St. Canard, and depicted Darkwing Duck and his sidekick Launchpad (who had quit working for Scrooge McDuck in the first episode) fighting against the criminals who kept wreaking havoc on the town's citizens.

Like most superheroes, Darkwing Duck had a civilian identity. In this case, by day, he was Drake Mallard, adopted father to nine-year-old Gosalyn. When Drake was younger, he was considered to be a major dork in comparison to some of his classmates, and by his senior year, had developed an interest in crime-fighting. Although he had finally achieved his goal of fighting crime through his alter-ego (which does count as a mini life lesson that if one tries hard enough, they can achieve their goals), he really didn't end up becoming grounded until he adopted Gosalyn and befriended Launchpad.

When Launchpad came to work for Darkwing Duck, he had been a huge fan of his from the get-go, even designing a vehicle for him for over a year because of his obsession (which became the Thunderquack). While Darkwing found him annoying at first, he grew to appreciate him as a friend. He didn't even mind that Launchpad called him 'DW' most of the time.

And then there's his daughter, whose grandfather was murdered by Taurus Bulba. Gosalyn is described as being a bundle of energy, and shares her father's love of crime-fighting, but because Darkwing's biggest fear is seeing Gosalyn hurt or worse, he would often become a little too overprotective of her, which lead to some humourous conflict .



There's also some minor characters in the Darkwing Duck universe. Gosalyn's best friend for instance, Herbert J. “Honker” Muddlefoot, happens to be one of the few civilians who knows that Darkwing Duck is really Drake Mallard...which definitely is another plot device, as the rest of the Muddlefoot family has no idea. GizmoDuck makes a few appearances in the cartoon, as does a sorceress named Morgana, a foe turned romantic interest for Darkwing.



Of course, a superhero cartoon can't exist without villains, and for Darkwing Duck, they come in the form of a quintet known as the Fearsome Five. At least one of these enemies appear in each episode...sometimes even more than one. The Fearsome Five include...

Dr. Reginald Bushroot was a scientist who attempted an experiment to fuse animal DNA with plants so that they may be able to feed themselves through photosynthesis. However, the experiment turned Dr. Bushroot into a grotesque creature that was half-man, half-plant, lovesick, and desperate to find a girlfriend. He has the ability to control plants and use them against people who try to stop him.

Next comes a character named Bud Flud, a slimy salesdog who tried to push bottled water onto consumers. During a battle with Darkwing Duck and Launchpad, Bud fell inside a contaminated vat of water that was manufactured by his competitor, and he mutated into a dog that was made of one hundred per cent water. Dubbing himself 'The Liquidator', he could control all of the water in the world, while speaking in advertising lingo. While 'The Liquidator' would work with the other masterminds in the group, there was one that he didn't mix well with...

...Elmo Sputterspark was a rat and a high school nerd who developed an unhealthy obsession with lightning and electricity. He ended up gaining the ability to control electricity when one of his science experiments was sabotaged, coming up with the alter-ego name of Megavolt in response. He was actually a former classmate of Drake Mallard, and ended up being the first villain to take on Darkwing Duck in a battle at their senior prom in high school.

Then there's Negaduck, who could be considered Darkwing Duck's mirror image. Coming from a parallel universe called the Negaverse, Negaduck is the exact opposite of Darkwing Duck. Where Darkwing is kind and fights against crime, Negaduck is evil, and serves to commit as much crime as possible. Negaduck is actually the founder of the Fearsome Five, and has no problem with hurting people to get control of both universes.

The last of the five is Quackerjack, a former toy-maker driven to insanity, and uses a deadly arsenal of toys and games as weapons in bank robberies and other misdemeanors. He never goes anywhere without his favourite doll, Mr. Banana Brain, which can double as an explosive device. He usually teams up with Megavolt in some capacity whenever teamwork is involved.

Certainly the Fearsome Five isn't the only faction of evil in St. Canard. There are other criminal organizations in St. Canard. There's F.O.W.L. (The Fiendish Organization for World Larceny), an organization devoted to terrorism, and their plots to foil Darkwing Duck along the way. Members include Steelbeak, Ammonia Pine, Ample Grime, and Major Synapse.

Taurus Bulba has also made appearances in the cartoon, which made sense, given that he killed Gosalyn's grandfather. Professor Moliarty is a mush-mouthed mole who plots to put the whole world into eternal darkness. Tuskernini, is a walrus, whose schemes usually involve the world of film and entertainment, and many, many more enemies after that.

With so many bad guys in the show, each causing Darkwing Duck to work overtime, you'd think the writers would have original ideas that could feasibly help the show last years. Alas, this was not the case, as the last original episode of Darkwing Duck aired on December 12, 1992. But the show did have some notoriety worldwide. It was one of the first American cartoons to air in syndication in the former Soviet Union, and the show did run for 91 episodes (despite one episode entitled Hot Spells only airing once on Toon Disney due to the subject of Gosalyn unknowingly makes a deal with the devil which causes Darkwing to lose his soul).

At any rate, Darkwing Duck was quite the interesting cartoon, and I almost decided to go as Darkwing Duck for Halloween one year (before I decided that I really wanted to be Jughead Jones for Halloween instead). I think that it should have gone on a couple of more years, because it really was a cartoon that wasn't like any other.

And to think that if it wasn't for DuckTales and Launchpad McQuack, Darkwing Duck wouldn't have come to be.




Friday, October 14, 2011

TGIF: The Addams Family

I'm sure that most of us have seen at least one traditional family sitcom in our lives. Heck, they were a mainstay all throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Although the genre was kicked off by such programs as I Love Lucy and Leave It To Beaver, I would say that some of the more popular ones came out of later years.

I think most of us have seen at least one episode of shows such as The Cosby Show, Full House, The Brady Bunch, and Happy Days. By each of their own rights, all of the shows were entertaining enough, and each of these shows lasted at least five seasons or more on the air. But the thing is that if you really take a look at these sitcoms, they weren't really all that much different from each other. The families featured in the sitcoms were of all different races, religions, and configurations, but yet if one were to really list all of the similarities between each of the shows, I reckon that one would find that there are a lot more common links than differences in a lot of sitcoms released over the past thirty or forty years.

So, I thought that I would attempt to go in a different direction from the standard family sitcom that is sweetened with syrupy dialogue and cavity-inducing group hugs. And while we're discussing this non-traditional sitcom in detail, we'll hopefully find a way to incorporate little life lessons along the way, because let's face it...that's what the point of this blog is about. At least I would like to think so, anyway.

Most family sitcoms seem to follow a rather basic recipe. Take a group of actors and cast them as members of the same family. Add one living room set, and one kitchen set. If possible, make sure bedroom sets are available for those who want a variety of locations. Add a season worth of scripts, and a dash of studio audience (or you can substitute a canister of fake laughter should a studio audience prove to be too expensive), and voila. You have a standard family sitcom. But what happens if we tweak the recipe just a smidgen by substituting different ingredients and blending different combinations together? Would the result be the same, or would it pack a punch?



Let's find out by talking about the Addams Family.



The Addams Family may be most well known by the 1960s television series, a few animated adaptations, and two feature films made in the 1990s. But, did you know that the Addams Family actually began as a comic strip?

It all began back in 1932 when a young cartoonist named Charles Samuel Addams began working for the magazine The New Yorker. His first drawing in the publication was a sketch of a window washer, and it appeared in the February 6, 1932 edition of the New Yorker. Six years later, in 1938, the first Addams family cartoon appeared in the pages of the magazine. When Charles Addams first began drawing the cartoon characters that would eventually become the Addams Family, he had meant it to be a satirical look at what society had deemed the ideal American family at the time of the 1930s. The family was portrayed as a wealthy and eccentric family who have a fascination (some would relabel it an obsession) with objects and customs deemed macabre and mysterious. As a result of their interests, outsiders would classify them as weird or scary, and tend to stay away. The clincher is that the various members of the family are confused by this behaviour. They certainly don't mean any intentional harm on any guest that seems to drop by. In fact, I think as far as the Addams family were concerned, they didn't see themselves as doing anything all that out of the ordinary, and honestly seemed unaware, or even ignorant of the fact that their neighbours were genuinely frightened of them.

At any rate, those comic strips soon became a big hit for Addams, and were so popular that by 1964, the ABC network decided to air a sitcom based on the comic strip. The Addams Family premiered on September 18, 1964, and during its two season run aired 64 original episodes until September 1966. Before the sitcom debuted, Charles Addams was asked to provide names for each of the characters, as prior to the sitcom creation, his characters were nameless. He eventually came up with the names for the characters, and without many changes are the names that are still used today.

So, just like I did for a few entries, I figure that the best way to talk about the show itself is to provide trivia bits introducing each of the characters, and providing behind the scenes information about this show. And at the end of this article, I'll share with you the life lesson that we all can take from this show.

  1. The Addams Family recently became a Broadway musical, debuting in 2010. In some performances, the role of Morticia Addams was played by Brooke Shields.


  1. On the television series, Morticia was played by actress Carolyn Jones. She was the first wife of legendary television producer Aaron Spelling, and had a career that spanned three decades. She died of colon cancer in 1983 at the age of 53 years old.

  1. Morticia Addams was described by Charles Addams as “the real head of the family...low-voiced, incisive and subtle, smiles are rare...ruined beauty...contemptuous and original with fierce family loyalty...even in disposition, muted, witty, sometimes deadly...given to low-keyed rhapsodies about her garden of deadly nightshade, henbane, and dwarf's hair.”

  1. Morticia's maiden name is Frump, and while her family tree was shaken up a bit in the 1990s movies, in the television show, Grandmama Addams was her mother-in-law.

  1. Morticia enjoys gardening by chopping the blooms of roses off and keeping the stems, and she also has musical interests.


  1. Morticia can reduce her husband Gomez to mush just by speaking French.
  1. On the television show, Gomez Addams was played by actor John Astin, second husband of Patty Duke, father of Mackenzie Astin, and adopted father of Sean Astin. At the age of 81, he is still going strong, with reports of him teaching a course in method acting and directing at Johns Hopkins University as recently as 2009.

  1. When it came time for Gomez to be named, Charles Addams had two possible named picked out for him. One was Gomez, the other Repelli. Somehow, I don't think Repelli Addams has that same ring to it as Gomez Addams.

  1. In Latin America, Gomez's first name was changed to Homero.

  1. Gomez is extremely athletic, and is a very skilled sword-fighter and fencer.

  1. Charles Addams gave Gomez this description; “Husband to Morticia (if indeed they are married at all)...a crafty schemer, but also a jolly man in his own way, though sometimes misguided...sentimental and often puckish – optimistic, he is in full enthusiasm for his dreadful plots...is sometimes seen in a rather formal dressing gown...the only one who smokes”.

  1. Not that this has anything to do with any trivia or what have you, but Gomez is one of my two favourite Addams family characters. The other one is Wednesday Addams.

  1. Wednesday Addams was named after the famous poem “Monday's Child”, where the line for Wednesday reads 'Wednesday's Child is full of woe'.

  1. Wednesday Addams was played by actress Lisa Loring, who would later appear on the daytime soap opera 'As The World Turns' in the early 1980s playing a woman named Cricket.


  1. Wednesday is a girl of six years old in the pilot episode of the series. Her hobby includes raising spiders, and her favourite toy was a Marie Antoinette doll which was decapitated by her brother, Pugsley.



  1. Pugsley Addams was originally supposed to be given the name of Pubert, but was changed to Pugsley at the last minute. The name Pubert, however, did get used in the 1993 Addams Family Values film, when Morticia gave birth to a third child, that was the name he was given.

  1. Pugsley was played by child actor Ken Weatherwax in the original television series, and has since shifted his career focus to working behind the scenes.

  1. Pugsley's hair colour has changed depending on which Addams Family adaptation you happen to be watching. In most of the live-action performances, he's depicted as brunette, but in cartoons, he's shown with blonde hair.



  1. Cast member Blossom Rock, who played Grandmama Addams, was the oldest cast member of the series, born in 1895. When the Addams Family filmed a television reunion special in 1977, Blossom Rock was too ill to appear in the role and was recast by someone else. She passed away one year later in 1978.


  1. Uncle Fester was played by Jackie Coogan, who began his career as a child actor in silent movies. In 1935, he was in a car with his father and best friend when it crashed in San Diego County. He was the only survivor.
  1. Jackie Coogan was one of the first cases of a child actor suing his parents. He claimed that his mother and stepfather stole upwards of four million dollars from him to spend on luxuries. He sued them in 1938, but only ended up receiving only $126,000 of the money that was left in his account after paying the legal expenses. His friend Charlie Chaplin would later assist him financially when he fell on hard times.



  1. Initially when Ted Cassidy was cast as Lurch, the Addams family butler, he was supposed to have been a mute character. But during one of the first rehearsals of the show, Cassidy ad-libbed the line 'You rang?', and the line proved to be so well-liked by producers that the line soon became Lurch's signature line, and thus Lurch became a character that was capable of speech.

  1. Although it was hard to tell because of the show being filmed in black and white, Lurch's skin colour was supposed to be blue.



  1. Cousin Itt was portrayed by three different people during the course of the show's run. The majority of the scenes were played by Felix Silla, but for a couple of episodes, the role was filled in by Roger Arroyo. Sound engineer Tony Magro supplied the gibberish laden voice of Cousin Itt.

  1. Cousin Itt was one of the only characters that was NOT created by Charles Addams. Rather, the character was conceived by producer David Levy. Cousin Itt did make an appearance as an uncredited extra in previous Addams Family comic strips.


  1. When Thing was introduced, Charles Addams based Thing on a New Yorker cartoon. The cartoon depicted a shocked mailman reacting to a sign that said 'Beware Of The Thing'. Initially, he had the idea that the 'Thing' could be a disembodied head that rolled around the house on ramps and pulleys, but eventually decided on having 'Thing' take on the appearance of a hand.  Thing was played by Ted Cassidy, and he admitted that while he usually used his right hand to play Thing, on occasion he used his left hand to see if anyone would notice.
There you have it! Twenty-six facts about the actors, the show, the characters, and Charles Addams himself. I hope this gave you some more information on the show and why it remains a cultural mainstay even decades after it first appeared in mainstream media.

But what life lesson can we learn from the Addams Family?

Well...deep down inside, the Addams Family aren't really that much different from us. I mean, yes, they do things a lot differently from other people, but that's a part of their charm. I'll even argue that the Addams Family are a lot more functional than some modern families out there in the world. I mean, yes, Wednesday and Pugsley do sometimes cross the line with their sibling rivalry, but deep down, I think they love each other. Gomez and Morticia may not dress and act like Ward and June Cleaver, but I have never seen a couple act more loving or devoted to each other. That's real love right there. And, no, I don't have an uncle who used to turn on light bulbs just by sticking them in his mouth, but I'm sure that everyone has one uncle or aunt that has a quirk to them that makes them just as lovable.

So, I guess the lesson learned is...don't judge a book by its cover. The Addams Family may appear creepy and kooky and altogether ooky...but you know, deep down inside their odd appearances and wacky family traditions, they're more like you or I than you'd think.




Thursday, October 13, 2011

Thursday Night At The Arcade: The Simpsons Hit & Run

Occasionally, something comes along that revolutionizes pop culture as we know it.

We've all seen it. I'm sure everyone who was around during the 1980s would cite Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince as just three of the many musical artists who revolutionized pop music as we knew it. Sometimes, the revolution can spread through the movie world, as the release of Avatar popularized the idea of 3-D movies (though recently I'm seeing a bit of a mini-backlash towards this technology).

Television is another area where something can air that changes the way that television is presented for years. Just take a look at Survivor. It started off as a simple television show taking a group of people and stranding them on a deserted island. Now there are dozens upon dozens of reality shows (some good, some bad, some really ugly) showcasing thousands of people in various situations ranging from the practical to the bizarre. Eleven years later, the reality television juggernaut is still going strong, much to the chagrin of those who believe that reality television is anything but 'real' (and yes, I am inclined to agree with this).

The same deal with talent shows. Twenty years ago, the idea of a talent competition airing of television and getting huge ratings would have been enough to make all the network executives howl with laughter. So when FOX took a chance on a little show known as 'American Idol', it's amazing just how huge a success it became. Now we have lots of talent shows where aspiring singers, dancers, songwriters, models, and even chefs can compete to become the next big star.

(Though seriously, unless your name is Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, or Carrie Underwood, those chances even are still slim.)

And would you believe that this has also happened in the world of animation? And that this will lead into my Thursday Night At The Arcade topic?

If you turn on the FOX network on any given Sunday night, you'll likely see that the majority of the prime time spots have been devoted to animated programming. In the past, you saw King Of The Hill and Futurama in that time slot, and nowadays you'll see Seth MacFarlane's trilogy of animated programming in the form of Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, and American Dad.



The granddaddy of this animation block though is The Simpsons, which have captivated audiences all over the world for nearly a quarter of a century. When they debuted on the Tracey Ullman show in 1987, they only had a few 2-minute snippits to their name, and admittedly, creator Matt Groening still had some doubts over what the characters were supposed to look like, as they were rather crudely drawn back in '87 as compared to now.

On December 17, 1989, the first full-length Simpsons episode aired on FOX, and that episode was the starting point to a series that as of 2011 is still airing today, and likely was the show that kicked off the Sunday animation block on FOX television. Considering how long the Simpsons have aired, and the amount of merchandise that has supported the franchise from comic books to T-shirts, it's a safe assessment that the Simpsons have shaped pop culture. Through parodies of all sorts of commercials and products, and by the Simpsons themselves endorsing such products as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Butterfinger, and MasterCard, the Simpsons have become a real mainstay.

However, there is one piece of merchandise that for whatever reason hasn't really left the Simpsons in a good light.

Video games.

For whatever reason, most of the video games that have been released starring the Simpsons family have crashed and burned.



One of the first video game appearances for the Simpsons was the 1990 video game 'Bart Vs. The Space Mutants'. The game was ported to both the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Game Gear, but didn't exactly get rave reviews. I personally didn't mind the game so much, but I found it so incredibly frustrating and difficult at times. I remember how relieved I was when I beat that game. Another game, Bart Vs. The World, wasn't much better.



Then when the Super Nintendo was released, 1993 saw a couple of new Simpsons releases. Bart's Nightmare showed Bart trying to find the missing pages of his homework in a sleep-deprivation induced nightmare, while Krusty's Fun House was a puzzle game where you had to kill off all the rats scurrying around the place. Both were failures.

Even as we reached the PlayStation era, the Simpsons seemed to struggle with coming up with a decent game, as The Simpsons Road Rage was nothing more than a Crazy Taxi game with a different look.

But then 2003 came around, and with that, the release of a Simpsons game that was quite fun to play, had brilliant graphics, and had quite a few fun sidequests that could allow the player to unlock certain features within the game.



The Simpsons Hit & Run video game was released on September 16, 2003 in North America, and was originally designed to be a parody of the video game series Grand Theft Auto. What made the game fun was that it was a game that could be played by people of mostly all ages, and had quite a few background jokes mixed in for dedicated fans of the Simpsons, such as myself.



The game is essentially a game where you have various Simpsons characters driving around various parts of Springfield doing certain tasks that will help you advance to the next level. Each level has seven missions, with a bonus eighth mission that will allow you to upgrade your vehicle to a sleeker, faster model.

The playable characters include Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa, as well as Kwik-E-Mart store owner, Apu.

The game is set in Springfield during the week of October 25-31, and in the first couple of days, the events that the characters have to go through are pretty mundane in nature. The first mission shows Homer driving to the Kwik-E-Mart for a container of ice cream. Other missions include dropping off Lisa's science project off to school, helping Marge stop a shipment of Bonestorm games from corrupting the minds of young children in Springfield, and returning belongings that Homer 'borrowed' from Ned Flanders.

The first level really has nothing to do with the main plot, but it sort of mirrors a typical Simpsons episode where the first act has absolutely nothing to do with the leading storyline. There are some hints that all is not right though. There are gigantic cameras buzzing around that look like huge wasps, and while destroying them will land you a whole bunch of golden coins (which can be used to buy clothing items and bonus cars), it's still unknown why they even came to Springfield in the first place.



It isn't until the afternoon of October 26 (level two in the game) that we really get into the main plot of the game. This level has Bart jamming up cell phone frequencies, collecting monkeys for Dr. Nick Riviera, and keeping out of the view of Principal Skinner, who wants to catch Bart to throw him in detention. At the end of level two, Bart gets abducted by a spaceship, and isn't seen again until the end of level three, where Lisa finds him in a dazed state on a boat at the Springfield Squidport.



By October 28 (level four), Marge comes upon the truth after she manages to get through to Bart. Bart tells him that aliens came and abducted him and said something about using cola to brainwash the people of the city. With Krusty pushing Buzz Cola on television commercials, and an unusually high number of Buzz Cola trucks and mysterious black Sedans on the streets, Marge comes to the conclusion that the cola is responsible for the strange happenings that have been going on in town. Most of the missions for Apu's level (level five, set on October 29), go about trying to stop the shipments of cola from being distributed at a Buzz Cola promotional party at the Squidport scheduled for October 30 (level six).

Before the end of level six, we discover the reason why aliens are so interested in the town of Springfield, and Buzz Cola. Kang and Kodos (the space aliens who have made quite a few appearances in the television series) believe that they have the makings of an interplanetary reality show starring the citizens of Springfield. By sending the wasp cameras to Springfield, they've been entertained by the daily dealings of the townspeople. Their grand finale was to spike the supply of Buzz Cola with a special ingredient that turns average Springfield citizens into mindless zombies, and can have the ability to bring the dead back to life.

Setting the stage for the final level of The Simpsons Hit and Run, which takes place on Halloween. And kudos to the art department of that final level. It really does resemble a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror special!



I would absolutely recommend this game to everyone. It really is a lot of fun to play, and some of the missions in the game can be quite challenging. There's one mission in Apu's level that gave me headaches because I kept running out of time. It was only by chance that I managed to finally complete it.

There's a whole lot of inside jokes in the Simpsons universe as well. Anyone who has watched the show can pick out little references from the series. Kamp Krusty appears in the game, as do Krustylu Studios, the Duff Beer factory (though I wish Duff Gardens was included), Mr. Burns' mansion...even some minor references like the popsicle stick skyscraper referenced at the end of the episode Marge Vs. The Monorail. The skyscraper appears twice. In Level Two, we see it ablaze, and by Level Five, it's a smouldering pile of rubble. Because levels are revisited twice (or in the cases of levels one, four, and seven, thrice), it can sometimes be a game to pick out all the differences between each playthrough.

So, try it out! You may be pleasantly surprised.


Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Across The Pond and Beyond - French And Saunders

For this version of Across The Pond and Beyond Wednesday, I figure that we would shine the spotlight on a couple of actresses who have done incredibly well in their native United Kingdom, but have also had quite a bit of success stateside.

One of them ended up voicing the character of the Fairy Godmother on Shrek 2 and made guest appearances on the television shows Roseanne, Friends, and had a long-standing role in the British comedy Absolutely Fabulous. The other one had a famous role on the television series The Vicar Of Dibley, and had small movie roles in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Both of them were wonderful success stories in their own right, but whenever they got together, they were absolute magic. The chemistry that the two actresses shared with each other made each of them shine even more, and that partnership managed to last two decades on television with their mastering of sketch comedy and quick wit.



I'm talking about the duo known as French and Saunders.



The pair is made up of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. The two women first met each other in 1978, while both were students at the Central School of Speech and Drama. At the time they met, French was 21, Saunders, 20. They began the first of their collaborations shortly after their first meeting, and based on their love of comedy, focused on creating comedy acts. They first began performing together in the early 1980s by performing at the famed London comedy club 'The Comic Strip'. In September 1981, they were featured on a live comedy album of Comic Strip performances recorded by comedy entrepreneur Martin Lewis. A year later, French and Saunders made their first television appearance in a television program called 'The Comic Strip Presents...'. Not only did they appear at least thirty times during the series run, but they actually held writing credits for the series as well.

In 1984, both French and Saunders appeared on a program called 'The Tube', and this was a notable appearance for something rather risque and taboo, for it was the first time that the word 'blowjob' was ever used on UK television, courtesy of Dawn French. (Oh, the things you learn researching blog topics...heh heh heh)



By 1987, French and Saunders were making a mark in the comedy world. They had starred in a program that they had collaborated on, called Girls On Top, which had come on the air a couple of years earlier. With co-stars Tracey Uilman and Ruby Wax, the show became a success in the world of Britcoms. Also by 1987, the duo had appeared on a couple of Comic Relief specials and signed a contract with BBC. The girls were starting to make their way to the top.

In 1987, the duo's popularity would grow with the launch of the French and Saunders sketch comedy show.

The first episode aired on March 9, 1987, and over the course of twenty years managed to air 46 original specials. The final French and Saunders show as of now aired on Christmas Eve, 2007. During the first season of the program, French and Saunders was purposely made out to look like a low-budget variety show where the two stars would try a whole bunch of stunts which failed miserably (kind of reminds me of the Super Dave Osborne show).

In later years, as the show grew in popularity and ratings, the budget that the show received grew, and therefore more could be done with the program. And both French and Saunders definitely took advantage of this. Using the money to create parodies of television shows, music videos and movie clips, the show quickly upgraded from cable access television to a high quality comedy hour. From You Can't Do That On Television to Saturday Night Live, so to speak.

And, what better way to showcase the talents of both French and Saunders than showing you some of these clips in action?

Because, really...I could make this blog entry seven pages long, but somehow, I think video clips could speak louder than anything I could write about these talented ladies.

I mean, after all, they spoofed Bjork...



...Bananarama...




...Madonna...



...America's Next Top Model...



...Alanis Morissette...

...and even Baywatch!


Tuesday, October 11, 2011

One Final Thanksgiving Dinner



Hello, all, and a happy Tuesday to all of you. If you're American, you probably just got through Columbus Day, and if you did have that day off work, I hope you enjoyed it.

As for any Canadians who might be reading this entry, I wonder how many of you are recovering from a hangover from turkey, ham, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. I know I certainly had my fair share of it.

I know that in Canada, Thanksgiving was yesterday, and that I am writing this blog entry one day late, but sometimes there are some subjects that you have to write about. And sometimes, there are some days where you kind of have to put pop culture aside and write about something a lot more personal in nature.

This is one of those days.



The year 1991 was a year which ended on a rather low note for me personally. It was the year that I ended up having to say goodbye to somebody that I really loved, and having to deal with it as a young boy.

It wasn't the first time that I had experienced the sadness, but necessary event known as the death of a loved one. When I was about eight years old, my uncle Roy passed away, and for some reason I remember being at the funeral, but I wasn't exactly sure of what was going on. I of course knew who Uncle Roy was, but I didn't exactly have what one would call an inseparable bond...I mean, I was only eight at the time. Needless to say, I knew back then that when people died that we had some sort of memorial service for them as a way to say goodbye to them, but I didn't exactly understand why it was such a big deal. Looking back on it now, when we were all at the burial site in the cemetery for my uncle, the only thing that I actually remember from that day was seeing a small garter snake slithering along the ground next to one of the tombstones.

Kind of funny how the mind can remember something completely unrelated to an event, isn't it?

But, that was back in 1989, when I was a small fry of eight. Two years later, in 1991, I was still a small fry at age ten. But this loss would be one that really affected me.

In order to write about the end, I have to start at the beginning of this particular memory, which takes place on Thanksgiving.

As I explained earlier, in Canada, we celebrate our Thanksgiving in October, on the same day that the United States celebrates Columbus Day. Because of our cooler temperatures in general, our harvesting season is six to eight weeks early in comparison to the United States.



In 1991, Thanksgiving fell on October 14, and this is where our story begins.

1991 was the year in which we had a change of venue in our Thanksgiving celebrations. Usually, we had decided to just have our Thanksgiving celebration at the home that my family lived in until the year 2000. That year, we had decided to have Thanksgiving at my maternal grandparents home instead. I have no idea whose idea it was to have it there, but from my understanding, my grandmother had come up with the idea herself. If that were the case, then it makes this account seem even more emotional, but anyways, let's go on.

That Thanksgiving was one that I can remember as being extra special. Aside from my family being there, my aunts, uncles, and cousins were all in attendance. And, it absolutely blew my mind because my grandparents house wasn't exactly all that huge. Believe me, I know.

When I was three years old, my family had some bad luck, and my dad ended up getting temporarily laid off from his job (luckily he was brought back about six months later), but it was rough going. For six months, my parents and I were forced to move in with Grandma and Grandpa, and to say the quarters were tight were a bit of an understatement. Nevertheless, it seemed to work. Although going outside to play was an option (though only in the backyard as my grandparents home was across the street from a major railroad crossing), some of my earliest memories was watching television with my grandmother. Sometimes my grandmother and mother would walk with me to the nearby corner store to buy candy and all sorts of other treats, as a way to try and make childhood as normal as possible. I can't imagine that having three extra people living in the house with her and Grandpa was easy on her, but I can't ever remember one instance where she complained about it. At least not in front of me anyway.

In fact, I think that's probably how I ended up developing my obsession with pop culture. I think it was through her. She would watch television every morning, and the television would always be tuned into some daytime soap opera, or a game show, or old reruns of sitcoms. I can still remember watching old reruns of Three's Company on my grandparents television set while munching on Oreo cookies and Cherry 7-Up (Yes, back in 1984, there was such a thing as Cherry 7-Up).

Certainly not every memory was idyllic like that. I remember causing a little bit of mischief for my grandparents by being a little bit on the hyperactive side. I think I remember her cringing every time I went to examine her cabinet filled with breakable knick-knacks (of which I am proud to say that I only managed to break one...believe me, as a kltuzy child, this was good news!), and of course, we can't forget about the time I almost drowned in a neighbour's pool, which lead to a fear of the deep end of the pool for two decades.

But really, most of my memories of my grandmother were positive. I have absolutely no bad things to say about her at all. None. She was that fantastic of a woman. I loved her so much.

That Thanksgiving was one memory that I will always have of her. She insisted on making as much food as possible, and I can remember that nobody went hungry at the dinner table. But I do remember that I had gotten into some trouble that day.

At the time, I was playing with a couple of my cousins, and I doubt that they would remember this, as they were only toddlers at the time. My cousin Natasha for instance was only two and a half at the time, and I remember playing this game with her where we would grab one of my grandmother's potted plants, put it in the middle of the room that joined up the living room and the kitchen (though ironically enough, it wasn't a dining room, we all dined in the spacious kitchen area). If you can guess what happened next, you get to pull the wishbone with me, but I'll tell you anyway.

I can't remember whether it was my fault or my cousin's, but somehow, one of us accidentally kicked the potted plant, and it fell and broke on the ground. And, the noise it made was loud enough to get everyone's attention.



Oh, my mother was furious. So was my aunt. Apparently, that plant had been one of my grandmother's favourite plants, and it now lay on the floor all broken because us two kids played a stupid chasing game. Both of us felt bad about it, but since my cousin was barely three, she didn't know how serious the situation was. But, I felt terrible about it, and I felt bad that I wrecked Grandma's plant.

But, you know what? Grandma was perfectly fine about the whole thing. If I remember, I did apologize to her, and she told me not to worry about it as it was just an accident. She said that she could always get another plant, but she was concerned that we would end up cutting ourselves on the broken pot pieces, and she didn't want that to happen. One thing I can say about her is that she loved all of her six grandchildren (at the time), and I have to believe that she would have done anything for any of us.

And after 'Plant-Gate', Thanksgiving resumed as normal, and we all ate to our heart's content, and I think my grandmother was absolutely thrilled that everything had come together almost perfectly.

I often wonder if my grandmother had known that Thanksgiving 1991 would end up being her last one. Maybe that's why she worked her fingers to the bone making this Thanksgiving so memorable. Because she wanted to experience one last holiday with her whole family by her side.

A few days after that Thanksgiving, on October 28, my grandparents went out to the local arts center to see a concert. The Irish Rovers were the main act that particular night, and my grandmother had been a fan of that band as long as any of us could remember. I can only imagine just how much she would have loved that concert, and I can't help but think that one of her final memories would be seeing a band that she loved in concert.

Just three hours after that concert ended, my mother was woken up early by a phone call. It was from my grandfather, and the news was very grave. On the morning of October 29, 1991, I had gotten up for school that morning, excited to tell the kids in my class all about my Halloween plans, and how I was dressing up as Super Mario, and how my costume was made by my sister, and how much fun it was going to be.

It was only when I ran downstairs to the living room that I sensed that something was wrong. When I asked what had happened, my mother would only tell me four words.

Your grandmother passed away.”

I almost couldn't believe it. At the time, both my grandmothers were alive, so I actually asked which one passed away, but seeing my mom's face that day, I knew that it was my maternal grandmother. Turns out that on the way home from the concert, as my grandfather turned the corner to the street where my grandparents home was, my grandmother had a heart attack and passed out cold. The doctors did everything they could to save her, but by the time they arrived at the hospital, it was too late. My grandmother had passed away just after midnight on October 29, 1991. She was only 66 years old.

I was only ten years old at the time, and I remember being kind of in a daze for the first two days after I had heard the news. I know that my family had tried to go ahead with life as best they could, and because of my young age, I naturally had a lot of questions about what had happened. They answered some of them honestly, but others, they never answered. I guess maybe it was because they didn't think I would understand at the age of ten, but I think that they might have been surprised to know just how much I did know.

There was one thing in agreement with members of my family. Although my grandmother had passed away, the last thing they wanted was for me to miss out on the Halloween festivities. This however would prove challenging, as my grandmother's wake was scheduled, ironically enough, on October 31.

A plan was hatched though. While my parents and sisters attended the wake, the mother of my sister's boyfriend at the time would take me out trick-or-treating. And, prior to my grandmother's death, I had helped my sister decorate our house for Halloween, and we ended up spending hours doing up the special loot bags that we were giving out that Halloween. It would have been a shame to let that go to waste. So, my sister's boyfriend at the time stayed at my house, answering the door to trick-or-treaters who came around.

I admit that going out trick-or-treating without any immediate family members there was kind of weird. Not that my sister's now ex-boyfriend's mom was bad...she was a really nice lady. Still, it wasn't quite the same, as I had gone out trick-or-treating with my mom in previous years. Nevertheless, I did have a good time, and I think I set a record in just how much candy I managed to get. And a funny incident actually happened after my mom picked me up and drove me home. When we arrived, there were a group of college aged boys inside our withered tree trying to steal the dead body prop we had thrown in the tree for decorating purposes. And we ended up watching as my sister's boyfriend tackled one of the boys and ended up sailing right into my mom's rose bushes. It was quite comical. Turns out that they needed the fake body as a scavenger hunt item put on by their fraternity or something. We let them have the prop in the end, and definitely provided some much needed laughter at the end of a hard day.

My grandmother was laid to rest on November 1, 1991, and I'll admit to completely being inconsolable during the whole funeral service. I think partly it was because the makeup artist made over my grandmother to the point where I didn't recognize her, and that sort of freaked me out. But I was also at the age where I was aware that this would probably be the last time I would ever see her again, and it just hit me at once. Oh, my family did the best they could to console me, but it wasn't until after we left the church that I dried my tears. I think a part of it could have been my age at the time. My two sisters were in their late teens, early twenties at the time, and had experienced funerals before. My younger cousins ranged in age from two to five, and I think were too young to know what had happened. But at the age of ten, I remember all too clearly how badly I felt. I think my heart was broken that whole week.

My mother took her death really hard too. It was bad enough that my mom had lost her mother. She was in many ways one of the few people my mother really laid her trust in, but to make matters worse, my grandmother's funeral was just two days before my mother's birthday. It was doubly devastating for my mother in that regard.

It's been almost 20 years since my grandmother passed away, and in a way, she still lives on. My grandmother had a recipe for jam filled cookies that have been in the family for generations, and I suppose a little bit of her lives on in all of us grandchildren. Since my grandmother died, three more grandchildren and four great-grandchildren have been born. She never got a chance to meet them, so all we can do is tell them what she was like. Kind of like what I'm doing in this blog entry.

I think that last Thanksgiving is how I remember her the most though...when she was at her happiest with all her loved ones by her side. Somehow, I think that made it a little easier to cope after she passed away...knowing that at the end, she was truly happy.

In loving memory of my grandmother
July 13, 1925 – October 29, 1991



Monday, October 10, 2011

Monday Matinee: Beetlejuice

Good morning, people! And if you're reading this blog from the great country known as Canada, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you have a safe and happy holiday, and that you have lots of great food to eat at all of your dinners.

While today is technically Thanksgiving day, I imagine that a lot of you probably had your Thanksgiving dinners on the weekend, and that's fine. My family usually hosts their Thanksgiving dinners on the Sunday before. But if you're having your dinner tonight, may it be just as memorable as the video of this feast that I posted below.



Well, okay, so maybe your dinner wasn't quite as...dysfunctional and weird as the example I posted, but it does provide a nice transition to today's blog subject.



I think the first time I saw Beetlejuice was right around Halloween 1989. The movie itself had come out in the movie theaters a year and a half earlier at the end of March 1988, but by 1989 had been put on both video cassettes and I believe laserdisc format (both of which are obsolete in today's world). I remember that my sister was planning on having some sort of Halloween party at the time, and she wanted to rent some scary movies for her guests to watch upstairs in our attic (the area of the house where the party was being held). She walked over to the video store around the corner (which given the closings of Jumbo Video and Blockbuster Video in Canada is also becoming obsolete), and rented a few tapes. One of which was the Beetlejuice movie, which was a fairly new release at the time (our video store had a limited selection of movies available back in 1989).

Of course, being that there was a nine year age gap between myself and my sister, I was not invited to attend the party. I was only eight years old after all. But, what she didn't realize was that at the age of eight, I was one of the only ones in the family who knew how to program the VCR and operate it. Just because she had kept all the party supplies up in the attic didn't mean that she had the foresight to lock the attic door.

(Not that she could anyways, as our attic door never had a lock on it in the first place.)

But anyway, one day when she was out on a date (this was a couple of days before the party), I snuck up to the attic, found the Beetlejuice movie, and put it inside the VCR to watch.

And I loved it!

Sure, the movie wasn't meant for kids to watch, but it wasn't overly gory or violent. Just a couple of swear words and a couple of not overly disturbing scenes. I didn't even have any nightmares after watching it.

(Which may not have ended the same way had I selected one of the other movies my sister had rented, which were Pet Semetary and Nightmare On Elm Street respectively.)
At any rate, Beetlejuice was such a classic movie. With such big named stars as Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Catherine O'Hara all having roles in the film, is it any wonder why the film did so well at the box office? The film was made on a $13 million dollar budget, and made almost five times that amount in profits when originally released in theaters.

The film was so successful that it spawned a cartoon remake of the movie, produced by the director, Tim Burton. It ran from 1989-1991. Below is the opening of the animated cartoon, which differs slightly from the film, but we'll get to that later.




For now, let's talk a little bit about the general plot of the film version.


The film opens with a panoramic view of a small New England town (in the cartoon, it is given the name of Peaceful Pines). It is here where we first meet Adam and Barbara Maitland (Baldwin and Davis). The young, married couple are on vacation and decided to use this time to redecorate their country home, located on the outskirts of town. The couple are really excited about the project, and look forward to having a place to relax away from the stresses of work and the big city.
Unfortunately, fate has a nasty way of interfering in the lives of the young couple. When returning back to their house from shopping in town, Barbara almost runs over a dog. When she swerves out of the way, she ends up driving the car off of a covered bridge, sending the car into the bottom of the river below. Adam and Barbara lost their lives in the accident.

Or, did they?

Unbeknownst to either of them that their physical bodies have died, their spirits somehow manage to find a way back to their country house, where they think that everything is fine, and that the only problem that they have is that they would need to buy a new car.

But then they notice that their reflections are invisible as they pass by any sort of reflective surface, such as a mirror, or a windowpane. And, then Adam finds a red covered book that had not existed before with the title 'A Handbook For The Recently Deceased'. It then dawns on both Adam and Barbara that maybe they really were dead. It was all but confirmed when Adam tried to leave the house and ended up in a strange world filled with sand and giant sandworms.

Of course, Adam and Barbara are left feeling very confused about what has happened, but at the very least, they still had their home, and they still had each other, so all they could do was sit and read their new book, trying to figure out what their next move was.



But, alas, fate decided to play around with the Maitland couple in death as well as in life. Because the Maitlands were considered dead and gone in body, this meant that the house they owned in life was put up for sale. The home was eventually bought by a family that was originally based in Manhattan. The Deetz family could best be described as loud, obnoxious, and somewhat on the snobbish side. Well, at least in a few of its members. Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones), a former real estate developer recovering from a nervous breakdown buys the property, and moves his family in. The family includes his second wife, Delia (O'Hara), an artist and sculptor with a rather stuck-up attitude about her, and Charles' daughter from his first marriage, Lydia (Ryder), a teenager who is in a gothic phase, dressing entirely in black.

Immediately upon moving into the house, Delia decides that the country motif that the Maitlands had decorated the house in before their demise isn't sophisticated enough for her, so she hires an interior decorator named Otho (Glenn Shadix) to transform the house from cottage cozy to a modern art project on acid. No, seriously, the house looked like the love child of Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso. The dinner scene I posted up above showcases just one of the many rooms that Delia wrecked redecorated.

The Maitlands are not happy with this latest development at all, and it becomes no secret that Barbara is not amused by Delia's attitude and disgusting taste. And for a ghost to critique the décor of a home negatively, you know it has to be absolutely tasteless.

They discover that they need to seek some help in getting the Deetz family out of their home once and for all. But when they contact their afterlife case worker, Juno (Sylvia Sidney) for assistance, all she'll tell them is that they are responsible for scaring the Deetz family out themselves, as the handbook states clearly that they have to remain in the home for 125 years after they pass away. In short, Juno wasn't much help.

And honestly, Adam and Barbara needed help to scare the family away. Lots of help. They couldn't even scare a bird away. That's how pathetic they were as scary ghosts.

Here's the kicker though. In their attempts to scare the family away, they actually managed to find a way to communicate with one of the family members. Turns out that the teenage goth Lydia was the only one who could see Adam and Barbara, and that Lydia called them out on how terrible they were at scaring people. But, Lydia wasn't as screwed-up as Charles and Delia were. In fact, she actually began to like the Maitlands. And, this is something that I kind of want to talk about in detail.



The reason why Lydia feels a bond with the Maitlands is because she secretly wants to be a ghost herself. Naturally, this sparks concern in both Adam and Barbara, who try to convince Lydia that she should not want to be like them, as being a ghost isn't as grand as she thinks it is. Yet, Lydia seems to believe that she would be happier as a ghost. That she would believe that in order to be happy, she would have to be dead. It's definitely a terrible way to think about life, but at the same time, I can totally get why Lydia feels that way. Considering that her stepmother is a shrieking harpy who seems to care more about herself than anyone else, and that her father gets consistently treated as a doormat by Delia, I can see why she would feel as though she hasn't got a friend in the world.

By befriending Adam and Barbara, it ironically gave Lydia a sense of belonging. Lydia couldn't talk to her parents about her problems because she felt as though they didn't care about her at all. But she COULD talk to Adam and Barbara, because they were always there to listen to her. I mean, they were dead. Where were they going to go?

The feelings were reciprocated by Adam and Barbara as well. Barbara especially took Lydia under her wing, telling Adam that she didn't want Lydia to get hurt or scared. One has to wonder if the Maitlands had survived the crash if they would have had children of their own. If they had, I bet they would've made great parents.

But even though they had developed a friendship with Lydia, the Maitlands knew that it wasn't enough to have the Deetz family leave entirely. So, against their better judgment (and against the warnings that Juno had provided them), they decided to contact a freelance bio-exorcist ghost who goes by the name of 'Betelgeuse' (Keaton) to get the Deetz family out of the house once and for all. The way they can contact Betelgeuse is by saying his name three times. When Adam and Barbara do this, they are warped into the miniature model of the town that Adam was working on prior to his death, where they come face to face with the grotesque looking Betelgeuse. (And, I add that this clip does contain some adult language, so be warned)



Certainly a character, isn't he? Or, rather, I guess I should say wasn't he? Betelgeuse was just as dead as the Maitlands. It's unknown exactly just how Betelgeuse died, or even how long ago he died, though he did mention that he witnessed the Black Death plague, so it's assumed that he was alive a long, long time ago.

Betelgeuse does agree to help the Maitlands out, but there is a catch. Apparently, Betelgeuse knows that there is a possibility that he could re-enter the land of the living, but in order to do this, he would have to marry a living person.

Enter Lydia Deetz.



When Betelguese goes a little too far in his efforts to scare the Deetz family away, Lydia mistakenly believed that Adam and Barbara had turned on her, and she was really hurt. She retreats up to the attic where Adam's miniature model was kept, and it is here that she meets Betelgeuse, who plays mind games with Lydia, which causes her to release him back out into the Deetz house.

By the last half hour of the film, the Maitlands realize that Betelgeuse has double-crossed them, and their mission is to save Lydia from marrying Betelgeuse and to protect the Deetz family from being his next victims. Again, I won't reveal what happens at the end, but let's just say that a sandworm, a shrunken head, and Harry Belafonte music is a huge part of the ending. Believe me, you'll love it.

And part of the main reason why you'll love it is because of the rich character development that occurs in Lydia Deetz.

When Lydia is first introduced in the film, she's an angsty young woman who feels completely alone, and believes that she would be happier if she weren't alive, as she felt neglected by her family. From the moment that the Maitlands came into her life, she felt as though she had a kindred spirit (literally), and because she found people she could confide in, she began to open up, and let down her guard. By the end of the movie, she's virtually unrecognizable in a good way.

It's just a shame that the Maitlands were not brought into the cartoon version. Weirdly enough, in the cartoon, Lydia befriends Betelgeuse (whom she calls Beetlejuice at this point), and the cartoon episodes switch back and forth from the town of Peaceful Pines to the Neitherworld where they have adventures in both. But, you know...I'm sure that in the movie version, Lydia will never forget the Maitlands, for they were the ones who offered an ear of sympathy and a guiding hand when everyone else seemed to turn away from her.

I guess the lesson to be learned is not to dismiss someone as being just moody or depressing just because they dress all in black or rarely say a word. Maybe they just need someone to talk to, and they're afraid to speak out because they feel that nobody is listening to them.

Maybe all they want is for someone, anyone, regardless of whether they may be dead or alive to show that they really do care about their well being. That they are worth something.

It's a message that Lydia finally managed to learn...even if it did come from a most unusual place.  Now, let's listen to a little Harry Belafonte, and end this blog entry just like the movie itself.