Heavy Metal: The Series

Horror Biz

"You must admit, it's hard to imagine this place being conducive to anyone's mental health."
—Batman, on Arkham Asylum

I've pretty much abandoned Falling Skies, and I'm desperately hoping that the writers of Terra Nova develop something beyond dinosaur-of-the-week with only the badassness of Stephen Lang and its family-friendliness to keep it on my radar. But there is one show this season that has me eagerly awaiting the next episode.

FX's American Horror Story is the story of the Harmon family. Psychiatrist Ben Harmon moves his wife Vivien (played by Connie Britten) and his daughter Violet (played by Taissa Farmiga) cross-country to Los Angeles, leaving behing mundane misfortunes and misdeeds like miscarriage and adultery only to find supernatural horrors at their new Hollywood Victorian abode.

With the New House, New Problems trope as its central motif, AHS has all of the tropes that make for great horror: the Waif-Prophet, Creepy Twins, a Spooky Painting, and a delightfully Politically Incorrect Villain played by my nominee for Best Supporting Actress in a Dramatic Series Emmy, Jessica Lange.

Go Quest, Young Man

For my fellow Jonny Quest fans, a new take on the old Jonny Quest Title Sequence by Roger D. Evans.

h/t The Lair of the Evil DM

Blog o'the Week

The Savage AfterWorld

Why? Thundarr Thursday

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D.I. Choo Choo Choose You

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Archer

Dear Internet,

I should have been told about this sooner. I had to learn of this ... on television!

Archer is an animated, half-hour comedy set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), a spy agency where espionage and global crises are merely opportunities for its highly trained employees to confuse, undermine, betray and royally screw each other. The series features the voices of
H. Jon Benjamin as suave master spy "Sterling Archer," whose less-than-masculine code name is "Duchess"; Jessica Walter as his domineering mother and boss, "Malory"; Aisha Tyler as his ex-girlfriend, "Agent Lana Kane"; George Coe as his aging-but-loyal butler, "Woodhouse"; Chris Parnell as ISIS comptroller and Lana's new love interest, "Cyril Figgis"; and Judy Greer as Malory's lovesick secretary, "Cheryl."

Links

ARCHER Official Website | Only on FX

FXArcher's YouTube Channel

Fate's Warning

Must make myself watch Smallville. Must make myself watch Smallville. Must make myself watch Smallville.

( Read more ... )

Please, Please, Please Tell Me What to Buy This Time...

"It's never too early to start beefing up your obituary"
--MIM

In a fit of insomnia this morning, after a session of filing, I decided to do a little research on my new favorite ad campaign: The Most Interesting Man in the World. EuroRSCG, the company that spawned the ad, analyzed the product thusly:

The Dos Equis brand represented a small, thriving beer franchise. The flavour, authenticity and distribution potential of the brand meant that there was a huge opportunity to expand sales and penetration. However, qualitative and quantitative research showed a lack of a distinctive identity other than Mexican-ness.

t I think they hit the nail on the head. I always just thought of it as "the other Mexican beer." The challenge, as they saw it:

The beer category is one of the most competitive categories in advertising with over $1 billion in spending and myriad new products, flavours, seasonal variants and packaging innovations adding to the noise. For Dos Equis to succeed it needed to do more than just create awareness, it needed to extend its media dollars by generating conversation among the target audience. Euro RSCG needed to find a way to insert the brand into culture, to present Dos Equis in a way that would spark chatter and pique curiosity, and, most importantly, look beyond the conventional Mexican imagery of beaches, burritos and burros.

The CBI (Creative Business Idea):

Our idea was borne out of a simple truth: Dos Equis’ drinkers may be pretty average in their habits and attitudes, but most want to be seen as unique and different, and are terrified of being perceived as boring. Here was the opportunity for Dos Equis: as a brand with an unusual, original and underground status, it could become an outward sign that its drinker was decidedly not average. Dos Equis could become the symbol of a life more interesting. And we would share this truth through The Most Interesting Man in the World.

The strategy:

We introduced the eccentric, swashbuckling, charismatic character of The Most Interesting Man in the World (MIM). Seasoned in years, deserving of respect and grey-haired enough not to be a viewed as competition, the Most Interesting Man is a magnet, rather than a mirror. He is a man rich in stories and experiences, much the way the audience hopes to be in the future. Rather than an embodiment of the brand, The Most Interesting Man is a voluntary brand spokesperson: he and Dos Equis share a point of view on life that it should be lived interestingly.

The results:

Full year case sales are up 20% and total dollar sales are up 33.7% vs. YAG - significantly exceeding the 2.7% category growth rate (Nielsen). Sales in TV markets are outpacing sales in non-TV markets, 21.1% and 15.7%, respectively. Velocity gains for the Dos Equis franchise are 45% and an incredible 85% for lager, which is featured in the campaign. Distributors, the most critical and important constituents, are calling the campaign ‘the strongest work in the [beer] industry’. Plus, Millward Brown LINK places the spots among the top 5% most enjoyable ads ever tested, for any category, and the ads doubled the norm in both AI and persuasion.

[ source : EuroRSCG ]

Lest we forget, here is the original Most Interesting Man in The World:

C-SPAN2's Buck TV

C-SPAN2's Book TV had an excellent interview with Christopher Buckley. Usually, I can't suffer through In Depth's full three hours, but Buckley's three hour block was so interest, touching on so many different subjects, it was over before I knew it.

Among other things of interest, I found out that Buckley dispatched his father to the Great Hereafter with a jar of peanut butter, the t.v. remote, and the deceased's favorite rosary. He touched on his endorsement of Barack Obama, praising him as "a very fine guy possessed of a first class temperament" while predicting that Obama's deficit-doubling economic policies will "bring this country to its knees." He also spoke of Dubya's ruinous deficit spending, his love of Dubya's dad, his time in the merchant marine, the war between his dad and Gore Vidal, and, of course, his works -- especially his latest, a memoir, Losing Mom and Pup.

Watch it here.

While checking his blog at The Daily Beast, I found out that Tucker Carlson is a fellow Flashman fan.

I Wish G.E. Could Bring This Good Thing To Life Again

Jack Webb. Gene Roddenberry. True: The Man's Adventure Magazine. The trifecta of men's adventure entertainment if ever there was one. Well, apparently these three greats came together thanks to their good sponsors at G.E. to give early sixties television viewers G.E. True, an anthology series based upon the stories in True.


The Executive Producer


The Writer


The Source

The following is from the October 12, 1962, isse of Time magazine:

Even Jack ("dum-de-dum-dum") Webb is back. This time he is retelling stories from the files of True Magazine. The first one was set on a hospital ship off Okinawa, where a doctor operated on a marine who had a live and sensitive shell in his body capable of blowing a six-foot hole in a steel deck. It was a hell of a moment, but Webb sank it. "At 1830 hours exactly," he intoned, "the operation began on a human bomb dead center in the circle of death." He hosts the program in an echo-chambered voice, while he stands beside the word TRUE, spelled out in block letters 22 feet high, or roughly ten times as tall as Jack Webb.

The cast included such "guy show" luminaries as James "Scotty" Doohan and Werner "Col. Klink" Klemperer.

I don't get it. G.E. gave my dad's generation this, and all they give me are those crappy Al Gore light bulbs. Go figure.



Policia: Uno, Zetas: Zero
h/t Feral Jundi

I've been following the Zetas for quite some time now. For those who haven't, they are a Mexican narco-gang who started out as a special drug interdiction unit trained and armed by the U.S. government, then realizing the money to be had playing for the other team. B'rer Jundi reports that Mexican authorities have nabbed one of the Zeta leaders. Hats off to the Men-in-Black. Whew, I made it through a post about federales without mentioning "steekin' badges." Doh!

Note the anti-Swine Flu masks.

Bender's Game: Better Than That Piece of Krod

Last night, I managed to catch Futurama: Bender's Game. The whole show was centered around Dungeons & Dragons. They even paid homage to Dungeon Master Zero himself. Frye & company have to destroy a dodecahedron by tossing it into the fiery plastic from which it was molded ... at the Geysers of Gygax.

Orson Scott Cardassians be forewarned. The show has nothing to do with Card's novel.

I found it far more entertaining the Krod Mandoon and most of the other t.v. fantasy genre fare out there these days.

In other gaming related matters, Matt Staggs has an interview with Erol Otus at Tor.com.

In political news, Arlen Specter (RD-PA) announces that he is not a Republican. Most of us have known that for at least a decade or so. I'm glad he finally figured it out.

Ever since I read Michael Crichton's speech about the Green Religion, I've just considered Earth Day just another whackaloon made-up holiday like Kwanzaa; however, Michael Tresca of used his Earth Day constructively: he wrote about Jack Vance's Dying Eath and the contributions Vance made to the genre. See it here, if for no other reason, the illustration.

In movie news, I saw Monsters vs. Aliens. I highly recommend it to those with offspring. I got to see the trailer for Land of the Lost. I'm not a fan of Will Ferrell, but I'll be there for the sleestaks.

Saturdays on Wednesday

h/t Chris Roberson

Anyone who has been following the keystrokes made by this particular monkey knows that I, like my first-born, am a great fan of The Secret Saturdays. Therefore, they would understand my delight when I saw an imagined The Secret Saturdays comic book cover done a la Jack Kirby (thanks to the brilliant mimickry of Juan Ortiz).