Skip to content

zwolanerd

“I guess I just like liking things”

May 28, 2013 Tuesday 10.5: Recurring Arrested Development Jokes

So you watched the new season of Arrested Development this weekend, right?  Well, if you didn’t, I’m sure you had a good reason. But it’s too bad, really, and I hope you get a chance to see it soon. I’m not going to spoil anything about it other than to say I wasn’t so sure about the first couple of episodes, but by the end of it I was totally on-board. In fact, I’d rather have another season instead of a movie.

So in honor of a new season of one of the greatest shows ever put on the air, here are my favorite recurring gags from the first three seasons. I won’t go into my favorites from the new season for a while, but I’ll have to consult the Spoiler Rules to see just how long I have to wait.

Oh, and in case you missed it, be sure to check out Recurring Developments for a guide on all of the recurring gags. The wording on the following list is from them.

10. “Her?” – Poor Ann. She seemed nice enough (though that mayon-egg thing was certainly gross!).

9. Carl Weathers is frugal – Baby, you got a stew goin’!

8. “Annyong” / “C’mon!” – If this list was going by how much I used them in day-to-day conversation, “C’mon!” would be #1 with “Annyong” not too far behind.

7. “Well, that was a freebie.” – The thing I like about this one is that if it hadn’t been a freebie, the action would have been very, very horrible. Lucille would most likely have killed Buster with that beating!

6. “No touching!” – My favorite variation is on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day when the prison guard’s daughter says it. “Her self esteem is through the roof!”

5. “You’re gonna get some hop-ons.” – Oh, stair car. I love you.

4. “Gob” with a hard /g/– The name “Gob” is funny enough, and pointing out the absurdity of it by pronouncing it how it looks is just about perfect.

3. Literal doctor – This guy!  “He’s going to be all right.” And I particularly like it when the family stats to figure him out – Michael’s “Let him finish” is a great follow-up.

2. “Steve Holt!” – So much fun to say! I love how much optimism is summed up in his delivery of that line. I know I’m supposed to think it’s egotistical, but to me it’s more like a “Yeah! This is great!”

1.5. “I’ve made a huge mistake” – [Not sure how this one disappeared, but it was always meant to be here. Rather than realign everything else, it gets a .5. Sorry!] – Whenever you use this line in your daily life (and you will), you must try to say it in Gob’s voice and emulate his far-off stare. A good companion piece to this phrase is Michael’s “What is wrong with me?”

1. Chicken dance – I have tried to do every last one of the chicken dances, and I have tried to figure out which one I like the best, and I have not done well at either task. They are all so very wonderful.

Bonus: It isn’t a recurring bit, so it can’t be on the list, but my favorite gag on Arrested Development is the bees/beads exchange with Michael’s follow-up: “Gob’s not on board.”

Tags: ,

May 24, 2013 tGIF: More Cats

This cat must be Australian

This cat must be Australian

Okay, dog, just settle down

Okay, dog, just settle down

Who you callin' "weasel"?

Who you callin’ “weasel”?

Hold on there, sonny. You ain't done yet.

Hold on there, sonny. You ain’t done yet.

Human, enough. You're just embarrassing us both.

Human, enough. You’re just embarrassing us both.

Form of... a soccer ball!

Form of… a soccer ball!

Alley cat, alley oop cat, what's the difference?

Alley cat, alley oop cat, what’s the difference?

May 23, 2013 Wonderfalls S01E09: Safety Canary

SUMMARY
Jaye and Eric are on their first date at the zoo, where the aviary keeper is talking about the hyacinth macaws in her care and about the romantic history of the birds. The Safety Canary is on a sign that reads “NO flash photography” tells Jaye to “take a picture”. She does, and is attacked by the birds. This causes Penelope, the keeper, to get moved to shoveling elephant poo. Jaye is then told to “save the lovebirds”, and so Penelope, Eric, and Jaye go to the zoo late at night to steal the birds.

They bring the birds to the Tyler residence, and Aaron answers the door. They are joined by Mahandra and Sharon. Mahandra has been concerned that Jaye is going to break Eric’s heart, and so she tells Jaye to end the relationship before she gets in too deep. Jaye wants to put this off, so she opens a window and the birds escape. While looking for them, Jaye finally tells Eric that she is just going to break his heart so he should run.

Hearing the story about the macaws spurs Sharon to go to Beth’s to apologize over the fight they had, but the macaws are mating her car. Penelope makes a connection with Rufus, the zoo custodian, after she realizes she’s not as happy as she expected to be. Aaron and Mahandra share a kiss. And when Jaye goes to the Barrel to apologize to Eric, she interrupts him kissing Heidi, his wife.

We get a lot of love stories in this episode, and by all appearances, they end well — except for Jaye and Eric. The birds get it on, Mahandra and Aaron get smoochy, Penelope and Rufus establish a new friendship, and Sharon and Beth reconcile. Of course, we know that something probably went down between Thomas and Beth, as he seemed awful whistle-y on the way back to his car, and Beth was trying to tell Sharon something before they kissed. Even Heidi and Eric seem to have reconnected, but it remains to be seen how this will go, since Eric has made no attempt to contact her the entire series thus far, and has been actively avoiding her.

"I'm a snowy owl love killer!"

“I’m a snowy owl love killer!”

Jaye’s instructions to “save the lovebirds” seems to be directed at all of these couples. By helping to save the birds (from extinction, no less), she helped Penelope realize that she was using the birds to avoid making real connections with people. This spurs her into thinking that she is doing the same thing, except in her case, she is letting the muses be her excuse. And Sharon is inspired by the story of Lauren and Humphrey, the macaws in question, to let Beth take the reigns of their relationship and not to demand control over it. Even the discussion about Jaye’s man-eater ways pushed Mahandra to accept Aaron’s kiss challenge.

The big reveal is at the end of the episode, when we are led to believe that Jaye got to the Barrel and she and Eric made up, but the camera pulls away to reveal Jaye walking in on Eric and some other woman kissing, who Eric introduces as his wife, Heidi. This obviously does not bode well for the future of their relationship.

We had another new muse in this episode, the Safety Canary, who repeats the line “take a picture” several times. (Little nitpick, but it sounded more like a parrot than a canary.) The Lovesick Ass makes a couple of appearances here, first to tell Jaye to “save the lovebirds” after being dropped off by Thomas the EPS guy, and then later as Jaye’s backseat companion on her way to apologize to Eric. The Mounted Bass at the Barrel also implores Jaye to “save the lovebirds”. When Aaron asks Jaye if the cow creamer told her to mate the birds, she replies drily that the stuffed fish did.

TRIVIA & REFERENCES:

  • This was the last role that Kellie Waymire (Penelope) had before her death. She died in 2003 of a heart attack. The episode is dedicated to her.
  • The names of the macaws are a reference to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who were married.
  • This is the only time that a muse interacts with the world, as the Lovesick Ass blows a packing peanut away.
  • The exterior shots of the Barrel was a restaurant in Toronto called The Canary. It was a school and hotel that was remade into a restaurant, and is now owned by the provincial government.
  • The sequences with Eric’s heart bursting through his chest and landing in Jaye’s hands is an homage to the French film Amelie.
  • The makeshift macaw habitat was originally going to be in Jaye’s trailer, but scheduling and logistical reasons made using the Tyler residence more practical. It is the same house that was used in the 2004 film Welcome to Mooseport.
  • Mahandra is reading a copy of Out magazine on the Tyler’s couch when Aaron challenges her to a kiss.
  • The network demanded that all references to lesbians and related sex scenes be removed from the episode. Both Thomas and Sharon had steamy scenes with Beth that were removed. The scenes were also supposed to have sperm graphics that would later have been used to foreshadow a second season story arc about Sharon’s “mysterious” pregnancy. After quitting smoking, she would notice some weight gain, and then discover she was pregnant. It would also be revealed that the reason Thomas and Beth divorced was because she could not bear children.

Tags: ,

May 23, 2013 Xbox One

So Microsoft showed off their new console on Tuesday and everybody’s ticked about it, apparently. I was able to have the reveal on at work while I was doing other stuff and I didn’t think it was horrible, but I also feel like maybe there wasn’t enough info for me to make a judgment call just yet. See, the biggest gripers are saying “They talked about TV the whole time!” like it’s a surprise that Microsoft wants the Xbox to be your one stop shop for all your entertainment needs. I guess they haven’t been paying attention the last couple of years? It’s not like Sony doesn’t want this with the PlayStation, too.  How many different video and TV apps are there for both current systems?  Without counting I’d have to guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.2 grillion.

Art by Brandon J. Carr

Art by Brandon J. Carr

This goes back to a very common response I have to a lot of things: no one’s forcing you to use the things you don’t like. Will it act like a TiVo and a set-top cable box? Sure. Do you need to use it that way? Nope. You can just play games on it if you want, I’m pretty sure. Seriously, why is this a thing people still get angry about?

For my own self, I actually kind of like all the other stuff my gaming consoles can do. If you were to compare hours spent gaming to hours spent using Netflix on the consoles I own, you’d see a pretty drastic gap in the favor of Netflix, and the biggest reason is my wife doesn’t game, but she does watch Netflix now and again. And when we finished the first two seasons of The Walking Dead on Netflix and she wanted to watch the third season even though we don’t get AMC, all we had to do was download episodes via Xbox Video, a thing that is so easily gotten used to that we forget just how amazing it is.  Could I set up a Roku or a media PC and have it display on the TV? Sure, but condensing is a big part of simplifying.

Now, granted, there are still some things about the Xbox One I’d like to know. Yes, it looks neat and the fast switching between functions is long overdue and yay, Blu-Ray, but no one knows how the used games question will be answered yet. There’s talk of having to pay a fee if you want to play a used game, which is really just a fancy/stupid way of saying “You’ll need to buy your own copy.”  This, really, would be the thing that keeps me from buying an Xbox One. In a big year, I might buy four brand new games. In that same year, I might buy 20 used games and the reason is price. I can’t afford to buy 24 new games at $60 apiece. It just will not happen. So while I understand that the used game market doesn’t make game companies immediate money, I think they’re forgetting about the “building an audience” aspect. Example: I borrowed Mass Effect from a friend of mine. I’d heard about it but never played it, and it was five years old. I didn’t love it, but it was okay, so I borrowed Mass Effect 2 from. That one I loved. So when Mass Effect 3 came out, I straight up bought it the week it came out. If I hadn’t been able to borrow the first game, I most likely would never have gotten to the point of buying the third one. Added bonus: from here on out, Mass Effect will always be on my radar. If a new one comes out, I’m pretty likely to buy it.  So let’s say there are eventually three more, that’ll be $240 I spend on the series (and the $20 I spent on buying the first two from my buddy). If I hadn’t borrowed the first two, my total payment to Bioware would have been $0. I’m no accountant, but those numbers seem important.

But, like I say, we just don’t know yet.  E3 is coming soon and speculation is that we’ll hear a lot more game-related stuff then. I want to buy the new Xbox, so it’s Microsoft’s play at this point. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Tags: ,

May 22, 2013 White & Nerdy

 

I have been often tempted to buy that hoodie but have so far resisted.

I have been often tempted to buy that hoodie but have so far resisted.

White & Nerdy is one of my favorite Weird Al songs. It’s just so relatable, man. At least, I always felt like it was related.  I’m white, I’m nerdy – seems like I fit the bill.  But I thought maybe I should break it down piece by piece to see if I meet the qualifications in the song.

They see me mowin’ / My front lawn

Right off the bat I’m in trouble.  My retired neighbor mows my lawn. I think he (correctly) assumes I wouldn’t take as good care of it as he does and he doesn’t want property values to drop. He says it’s because he wants to be out of the house more, but I don’t know.

I wanna roll with / The gangsters

No, sir, I do not.

First in my class here at M.I.T.

I wasn’t even first in my high school class and I didn’t attend M.I.T.

Got skills, I’m a Champion of D&D

I’ve never even played a game of D&D, aside from about a half hour of my cousin trying to teach it to us when I was… 7? 8? In my defense, I’ve long wanted to give it a try but I don’t have anyone around me who knows how to run a game.

MC Escher that’s my favorite MC

I do enjoy MC Escher drawings.

Keep your 40 / I’ll just have an Earl Grey tea

I don’t like 40s (which I think means beer?) or Earl Grey tea.

My rims never spin to the contrary / You’ll find they’re quite stationary

Yes, this is true.

All of my action figures are cherry

I have three Tick action figures that are still in the original packaging, but my TMNT and Batman figures have all been freed and played with.

Steven Hawking’s in my library

No, he is not. Nor are any of his books.

My MySpace page is all totally pimped out

Even when I actively kept track of my MySpace page it wasn’t all gussied up.

I got people begging for my top 8 spaces

Never happened even once.

Yo I know Pi to a thousand places

I know pi to exactly 4 places.

Ain’t got no grills but I still wear braces

Never had braces

I order all of my sandwiches with mayonnaise

I think mayonnaise is disgusting.

I’m a whiz at minesweeper I can play for days / Once you see my sweet moves you’re gonna stay amazed, / my fingers movin’ so fast I’ll set the place ablaze

While I enjoy Minesweeper, it bothers me that you cannot solve the puzzles using logic only. There are times when you have to make a blind click and I feel that’s a design flaw.

There’s no killer app I haven’t run

There are many killer apps I haven’t run.

At Pascal, well, I’m number 1

Closest I ever got was taking a FORTRAN class in college. I enjoyed the logic of programming but not the act.

Do vector calculus just for fun

I’m not even sure vector calculus is a real thing.

I ain’t got a gat but I got a soldering gun

My dad gave me a soldering gun once. I think he had high hopes for me. Sorry, Dad :(

“Happy Days” is my favourite theme song

At one point in my life this was actually true. I didn’t make my recent list, though.

I can sure kick your butt in a game of ping pong

No, I can’t.

I’ll ace any trivia quiz you bring on

I’ll do fairly well at trivia games, but not “any one you bring on.” My brother is the one you need to watch out for on these.

I’m fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon

Nope and nope. I looked into learning Java once and backed away quickly. Klingon hurts my throat.

They see me roll on, my Segway!

I did get to ride a Segway once!  I think it’s the sort of thing I could come to like.

I’ve been browsing, inspectin’ / X-men comics you know I collect ’em

My collection of comics is limited to collected trades and graphic novels, and I have fewer than 50, mostly focused on Batman and Spider-Man.

The pens in my pocket / I must protect ’em

For a time when I worked at a hardware store when I was a teenager, I did wear a pocket protector and I found it to be quite handy, thank you very much.

my ergonomic keyboard never leaves me bored

I always thought it would be a good thing to get one of these, but I don’t type correctly so I’m guessing it would be a nightmare.  I use a sort of fast hunt-and-peck with a little muscle memory thrown in. I do all right, but I usually have to look at what I’m typing, and even then I make frequent mistakes.  I keep thinking I’ll learn to type correctly some day, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Shopping online for deals on some writable media

Who doesn’t shop online?

I edit Wikipedia

I’ve had some corrections I have wanted to make, but I haven’t actually gone ahead and made them.

I memorized “Holy Grail” really well / I can recite it right now and have you ROTFLOL

I know bits and pieces of it, of course! And I also know that no one says ROTFLOL. It’s just ROFL, Al.

I got a business doing web sites

I was a webmaster for a small college 15+ years ago, back when HTML was pretty much all you had and you lined everything up with tables. I’ve looked at CSS and the whatever else is going on these days and no, thank you.

When my friends need some code who do they call?

Someone else.

I do HTML for them all

No, I don’t.

Even made a homepage for my dog!

One of my cats has a Facebook page, does that count?  Yes, I’m that guy. In my defense, it was mostly so I could see the process of how to run a fan page.

Yo! Got myself a fanny pack /they were having a sale down at the GAP

I did have a fanny pack when I was a kid. The only time I wore it was when I went to Six Flags. I’d stuff that thing full of Skittles so I had something to snack on all day.

Spend my nights with a roll of bubble wrap / POP POP! Hope no one sees me gettin’ freaky!

I do not get freaky with bubble wrap.

I’m nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream

I’m more a low-level nerd and I’m more pink.

I was in AV club and Glee club and even the chess team!

I was not in any of those things. Granted, we didn’t have any of those things at my high school.

Only question I ever thought was hard / Was do I like Kirk or do I like Picard?

I do not think this is a hard question. I’d rather have Picard as my captain on a day-to-day basis, but in a crisis Kirk is the man now, dog.

I spend every weekend / at the renaissance fair

I have never been to one.

I got my name on my underwear!

No, I most certainly do not.

So according to this song, I’m really not very nerdy at all.  Bummer :(

Tags: