AVATAR: THE LEFT-HANDED AIRBENDER...

     I wonder if the Air Nomads in the Avatar universe had a handedness to their airbending power?

source

     For instance, when I imagine generating a vortex of wind around me, it always develops in a counterclockwise motion. If I imagine shooting a blast of wind from my dominant hand, it also spins in a counterclockwise corkscrewing fashion (from my perspective...it would be clockwise from your viewpoint) and again, if I imagine shooting a blast of wind from my left hand, it is only a straight-up gust with no spin whatsoever.
     I asked Roommate about this, who is left-handed, and without leading on my part, he told me he imagined such vortices spinning clockwise when he thought of how they might spin.

     Makes me wonder if I might be on to something...

     In-Universe, the Air Nomads had all been killed prior to the start of the series and precious few glimpses are ever given to their way of life before the start of the Hundred Years War allowing for little exploration into the quirks of their culture.
     Still, might it possible that handedness determined the natural spin of one's vortices. It's not like it would be impossible to spin them the other way: it just wouldn't be your instinctual motion. After all, you can teach yourself to write and other tasks with your non-dominant hand. I can eat almost as comfortably left-handed as I do right-handed though with the latter I retain better control over the utensil.

     I wonder how clockwise benders might be viewed by counterclockwise benders? I choose clockwise as the minority because the emblem of the Air Nomads shows three swirls all moving in a counterclockwise rotation.

Emblem of the Air Nomads (source)

     Would their powers effectively cancel each other out when used against one and other (or at least lessen the severity of the attack or effectiveness of the defense)? Would they be embraced as an enhancing diversity or viewed with skepticism since they'd likely be a minority? Because they have the "opposite flow", would it affect the way they see the universe? Do they eat meat?
     If the latter, might they have been complicit in betraying the majority Air Nomads to the Fire Nation because they had wanted to rule only to have it backfire on them when Firelord Sozin chose to wipe all Air Nomads out?
     The non-canonical character Afiko was said to have hailed from the Southern Air Temple and betrayed his fellow Air Nomads. According to the card game where his character exists, he was said to have been envious of Aang, the new Avatar, and so revealed the secret location of the temple to the Fire Nation, allowing its soldiers to wipe out the monks who lived there. How did his vortices manifest?

Afiko: clockwise airbender?

     Stuff we'll never know...

LINE OF THE DAY, part XXXVI

      I've been reading the comments section of this article for quite some time. Yes, I am a long-term Simpsons fan but unfortunately I lack the articulateness with which to defend my love for a show I've been watching since before they were a show. Remember, The Simpsons used to be a series of shorts between sketches on the Tracey Ullman Show back in 1987-1989 before getting their own 30 minute show which debuted in December 1989.

      As far as events go, the debut of the Simpsons has stuck with me to this day. I still remember where I was and how excited I was to see it. I remember staying up late on school nights to watch their shorts on Tracey Ullman while not even caring about the comedy sketches in-between. I have been with the show since I was Bart's age and from I've heard, the show will be ending next year when I will be Homer's age (he's 37, in case you don't know).

      My commitment to The Simpsons perhaps reflects my commitment in other areas of life. So if there's some girl out there who worries about her potential man's commitment to a relationship, let my undying love for the Simpsons be a reflection of how I handle the ups and downs of any interaction we have in life. When I care about something/someone, I never stop caring.

      Anyways, lapsed fans and other types of haters love to spew venom on their once beloved show whose golden years have long since passed. I wish I could remember which episode I heard the commentary in, but I remember vaguely Matt Groening talking about the way we view a show depends on when we first started watching it. The Simpsons, running for as long as it has, cannot remain the same show forever. Yes, the early seasons have a lot more heart to them. I know this. I've been watching them with my Best Friend again recently.

      But the show could not have remained that way. And for those who loved the Simpsons when it had heart, of course they will be disappointed by the increasing cartoonishness of later years. But that increasing cartoonishness was inevitable as the series progressed past its 200th, 300th, and now past its 500th episode. The show may have close to 600 episodes by the time it is capped.

      For me, personally, the Simpsons is divided into two, maybe three, eras. There's the rerun years and the saw-it-only-once years. When the show was new, repeats of older episodes were common. To this day when watching older episodes I can anticipate gags, I remember which gags were used for commercials, etc. But as time went on (probably starting in 1998), episodes repeated less because Fox had a greater pool from which to select, and then, starting in the early 2000s, TV came up with this idea of not airing repeats anymore and the weekday hour of Simpsons repeats on Fox went away so I would only see new episodes once and not become familiar with them later. I can't anticipate their gags. I kind of even forget I have seen them.
     The early episodes were ground into my memory via repetition. The newer ones are largely ephemeral.

      I'd give the Simpsons a third era. Starting around 2010, I noticed the quality of the episodes suddenly changed for the better. I've very much enjoyed the last five years of the Simpsons and wished they would be repeated as frequently as the first ten years so I could enjoy them as thoroughly.

      Anyways (again), it's always nice to have someone defend what appears to be a universally derided episode of the Simpsons. The Principal and the Pauper was an episode that fans consider a fuck-you to them. Principal Skinner was made out to be an impersonator, the "real" Principal Skinner is installed, and at the end of the episode everything goes back to normal. The show was funny and I personally enjoyed the ridiculousness of the episode's ending because, let's face it, the show is a cartoon. I think what pissed people off is that there were reminded they were watching a cartoon. But I like Artemis Strong's defense better:

Geez, [The Principal and the Pauper]'s like one of my all-time favorites. It finds so much joy in creating a point-of-no-return scenario, then rigidly enforces the cartoon/sitcom rule that things always return to stasis.

It wasn't the first time they did that same joke, nor the last. It's sort of the mirror of the recurring gag where they remind you of how full and outlandish the Simpsons' lives are if you consider them in terms of the combined plots of all the episodes.

After I posted this, I gave it more thought and I realized another reason this episode appeals to me is that on the surface it seems to be trashing fans' investment in a character they've come to know. But underneath it, I think it is an affirmation of this love the fans have for even a supporting character like Skinner.

What the episode says is that it isn't important what Skinner's (or any of the characters') backstory is per se, but who that character has been in the time the audience has known them. We grow to love their personalities, not the ins-and-outs of their biography.

We return to these people week after week because of their deeper character, not their characterizations. It's irrelevant whether his given name is Armin or Seymour; what makes Skinner Skinner is his unrelenting stuffy rule-following in the face of Springfield's general chaos.

What this episode confronts is the sort of paradox of having a weekly show like this. There is a desire to have the characters be involved in adventures and conflict that reveals new things about their character, but an aversion to having said development contradict characterization too much. This episode crosses that line, revealing the deepest--and in my opinion most touching--aspects of Skinner's character, but also scuttling the characterization of Skinner as the Mamma's Boy.

So the show has its cake and eats it too, responding just how a fan would, wanting to erase what it had just seen and never speak of it again.

It's a nod to the artifice of continuity and canon, as well as their import.

RUBBER DUCKIE, YOU'RE THE ONE...

     I don't know. Maybe it was because I had a brother but I never saw Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street as a gay couple and at some level it bothers me that other people do. However, explaining why is no easy feat. And believe me, if someone wants to go around peddling the idea that Bert and Ernie are a gay couple, whatever. I'm not gonna fight it but I just don't know where the association comes from though I guess it's an adult perspective.

     My brother is close enough to my age that I have no memories of not having a brother so he's always been there. We also shared a room all throughout our schooling so the idea of two boys/men sharing a room together didn't exactly strike me as strange. But that's how those two came across to me...just two brothers living together and sharing a room with unseen parents (it's not like you saw the rest of their home - hell, even the bathroom was only implied on a sing-a-long record I remember having as a kid). It didn't occur to me as a kid that they were supposed to be grown-ups. The muppets on Sesame Street never struck me as adults, even the Count, because their behavior was decidedly more childish than even the actual kids on the show. Manifestations of id I suppose if you wanna go psychological here.

     I know now, many years later, that Bert and Ernie were actually based on the Odd Couple so they weren't brothers, they were roommates just like Oscar and Felix on that show and Bert and Ernie roughly paralleled their respective neat & tidy and messy & casual attitudes. One of the many things on Sesame Street intended as nods to the adults they knew were watching along with their children. Perhaps since The Odd Couple has been long off the air that the gay insinuations have come more into play as the original reference is lost to living memory...or perhaps it was always there but I was content with my "they were brothers" interpretation rather than friends living together (in the original television series, they were both divorcés sharing a Manhattan apartment).

     I guess Bert and Ernie are what you need them to be. Roommates to those who remember the original reference; gay for those who find comfort in them being a loving gay couple in an often trying (but forgiving) relationship; and brothers, for people like me...or maybe just me.

THE SMURFETTE PRINCIPLE...

     What was Gargamel thinking when he created Smurfette? And yes, I know he stated his intentions but what I'm getting at is...how was it supposed to work? He clearly didn't think this through.

      The Smurfs are magical beings born under the light of a blue moon. They don't reproduce...not even asexually through budding like a hydra. They're utterly sexless and given how long they live, I can only guess that the reason Papa Smurf is called that is because he came upon more than one human (Homnibus maybe?) who referred to him as the father of the Smurfs he fosters. It was probably the beard...

      The Smurfs show gender types (Vanity and Hefty are extreme examples) but nevertheless remain sexless. They almost certainly lack reproductive organs because that's not how they come to be. I would imagine if they were ever shown speaking a language of their own that it would not have any gender reference (outside of maybe living versus nonliving things). I can only imagine animals and especially humans confused them with their two halves of the same whole thing going for them. If there were a Superiority Complex Smurf, perhaps that Smurf would think their kind to be better than the other forms of life because they have no need for such thing as separate halves and crude babymaking.
      So again, I reiterate, how exactly was Gargamel's plan supposed to work? His plan was flawed from the start when he assumed their species played under the same male/female rules most lifeforms obey. I know how it played out because I watched the cartoon: the writers clearly assumed all the Smurfs were dudes and had no qualms about the idea that a multi-hundred to possible multi-thousand year old society which has never had a Smurfette before would suddenly find itself full of pent up attraction for something they couldn't possibly even conceive.

      And yet again and again throughout the series the Smurfs are gaga for her.

      Maybe it was the hair... Some envy perhaps? :-)

      The only thing I think I could accept is that the attraction to and lust for Smurfette is not because she is a female Smurf, an impossibility as far as I'm concerned, but rather a Smurf not born like other Smurfs. She's unique and different because she was not born of the light of a blue moon. They're attracted to her rarity, not her femininity despite how the cartoon portrays it. Either that, Papa Smurf went a little overboard in his attempts to undo Gargamel's spells and made her irresistibly charismatic to the other Smurfs. At the moment I forget if Papa Smurf was relative immune to her "charms" or if he acted like he lusted after her too.

      Also, if Gargamel could create a Smurf, however stereotypically feminine, from a magic spell, why didn't he just make a bunch of them that way considering how interested he has been in turning them into gold and/or foodstuffs? Nothing in the spell used to make her seemed particularly expensive or difficult to obtain, unless the "hardest stone" for her heart was in fact a diamond, something Gargamel certainly would have difficulty affording...

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...

     I was thinking about the old Power Rangers series earlier this week. If you remember the show, the Power Rangers were color-coded (red, yellow, blue, green, black, and pink) and even when not in uniform, their street clothes were curiously color-coded as well. I'm sure this was done in real life to make things easier for the show's intended audience's age range but I was left wondering why this might happen for real given that it might appear like a bad move security-wise.

     I thought it would be funny if the Power Ranger teens were looking at old photos of themselves prior to their being summoned by Zordon, pointing out how weird it is that Kimberly (the pink ranger) isn't wearing pink in this photo and that Billy (the blue ranger) isn't wearing anything blue. And then they laugh about it because Kimberly and Billy love pink and blue respectively. Then Jason (the red ranger), showing a look of concern, asks to see a photo of him and notices he's not wearing any red and none of the remaining rangers have this color fixation way back when.

     Jump scene to them confronting Zordon who tries to change the subject while strongly suggesting he's guilty of something. They then pressure the more impressionable Alpha-5 to get an answer and he finally caves and admits one of two things (whichever is funnier to you):

a) That Zordon is many hundreds of years old and can no longer see as well as he once did so he put a spell on the rangers to compel them to wear clothes matching their ranger color assignment so that he could more easily distinguish the rangers out of uniform.

or

b) That Zordon cast a spell on them to compel the rangers to always be wearing their respective colors because, well...(Alpha-5 clearly nervous)...Zordon says that all humans look alike to him so he used this spell as a way to tell you all apart when not in uniform.

BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE MAY HAVE FOUND THIS AMERICAN DAD QUOTE FUNNY...

     The B-story of the American Dad episode, "The Adventures of Twill Ongenbone and His Boy Jabari" which originally aired on January 13, 2013 had Steve Smith attempting to do an assignment for his history class of learning about history from interviewing his father, Stan. Stan is not the type to open up on even impersonal matters face-to-face, but at the suggestion of one of Steve's friends, he called his father betting on the idea that if there's a space between him and his dad, he'll be more likely to open up and open up Stan did, revealing his multiple daily internal struggles without any more prodding than a hello.
     Stan first talked his career as a CIA operative, confessing how easy he now finds it to kill people. Whereas his original targets scarred him mentally, he is now able to think about dinner plans while carrying out assassinations.
      The next phone call had Stan revealing that he questions his lovemaking to his wife how it went from once being passionate to now, mechanical. Steve tried to hang up the phone, but was prevented by his friends who tackled and subdued him, leaving them to ask more about Francine and her body, much to Steve's disgust and horror.
      The third call came about when Steve's teacher accused Steve of lying about not doing the project when he claimed his father was uncooperative. He called his teacher out by calling his father in the middle of class and putting him on speaker phone (something Steve announced to his father). He asked Stan who the President was when he was young to which Stan replied with, "I don't know, who cares? I guess I think about killing myself pretty frequently and why not? What's so great about living? You know when I'm happy? For about five seconds in the morning when I first wake up. Before I remember who I am and what my life is all about: Anxiety...disappointment...diarrhea more often than not. (sighs) I don't know if there's an afterlife but who cares? Nothingness couldn't be any worse than this meaningless march through my empty days... (Steve hangs up the phone)"
      Steve turns to his teacher who has now positioned himself by the window exclaiming that Stan is right and that life is meaningless. He declares, "Life dismissed!" and throws himself out the window.

      Yes, the monologue is very depressing, but in context was hilarious. No, I'm not suicidal and I hope you're not either but I also made what Stan said into a handy-dandy Demotivational Poster for easy sharing. The preceding text was all for search engine purposes like printing all the lyrics to the Pillbugs' song "Greeting Committee" because that song, in my opinion, needs to be found.

Without further ado, here's your Demotivational Poster: Life Dismissed

You're welcome.

A BOLD PREDICTION (a.k.a. How Many Episodes Until I Am Completely Proven Wrong)

      I finally started watching the legacy series to Avatar: The Last Airbender called Avatar: The Legend of Korra. It's wonderful to again find myself in a familiar world, a world I imagine that will not end in cancellation disappointment like Babylon 5's legacy series Crusade. I actually forgot that Avatar Earth is Wuzzle planet :-)

      The series is three episodes in and I am boldly and almost certainly incorrectly making these predictions:

1. There is a fifth element in addition to the traditional four of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire and this element is, for the lack of an appropriate term, Qi [Chi]. This possibility came to light in the original series's finale when Aang removes the Fire Lord's ability to bend.

2. Amon, the leader of the Equalists is a Qi Bender and knows this, but is content to manipulate everyone opposed to Benders in an effort to secure his position of power.

3. Qi Bending affects the other four Elements, but not the Qi Element.

4. Korra will battle Amon, possibly in the first season finale, and lose her ability to bend for most of, or the entire second season. This will give her an invaluable opportunity to see life from the other side. The Equalists accuse the Benders of oppression of non-Benders. She will now be in a perfect spot to find out if this is true or not. I think she will find extensive evidence of Bender oppression that she will dedicate her life to correcting.

5. Korra will regain her ability to bend the traditional Four Elements by either learning how to Qi Bend on her own (paralleling her current difficulties in mastering Air Bending), learning how to do it from Aang (somehow), or through an encounter with a reclusive lion-turtle.

6. Korra, upon mastering Qi Bending, will thus become the world's first true Avatar as no Avatar previously, has ever shown true mastery of all Five Elements (except for perhaps Aang) most likely due to the reclusivity of lion-turtles.

DAY 3 - YOUR FAVORITE TELEVISION PROGRAM

Again, I'm assuming that this is an all-time thing. For me, it would have to be You Can't Do That on Television during the heyday of Nickelodeon. No matter how many times I had seen a particular episode, I would cheerfully watch it and all its repeats whenever and however many times they aired.

The show also ties into one of my very few direct memories of Grandma. She was babysitting my Brother and me downstairs in my childhood home when the show came on. She was unaware of the running gag of various absurd shows being pre-empted so that YCDTonTV could be shown instead. That day happened to be one where the show was pre-empted by itself. ("You Can't Do That on Television will not be seen today...") I remember explaining to Grandma that they always did something like that when she remarked that Brother and I would have to watch something else.

I remember having a slight crush on Stephanie Chow, an ongoing theme perhaps of my early childhood seeing as how in third grade, I had a boyhood crush on a Japanese girl.

I was happy that Nickelodeon, for its 20th birthday, back in 1999 decided to air many of its old shows including YCDTonTV throughout the weekend. They were focusing on "Nickelodeon Knew Them Then" so the two episodes featured Alannis Morrisette. I wish there were more but that would have to wait for µTorrent :-)

Truly, it is a show that could not be done on television these days for children. One of the episodes featured in 1999 showed kids in the school hallways with guns and later the principal breaking into one of the kid's homes with an automatic weapon (the parents wouldn't believe that the principal was out to get him). There were no muzzle flashes, just sound effects; all in good fun, but impossible to do today not to mention the obviously Nazi dungeon warden and El Capitano and his incompetent firing squad. I highly doubt that even the choir boy scenes would go over well today either. Since the show is not available on DVD, torrent it and enjoy it all over again or just YouTube whatever you can find. It's well worth it!

On a sad note, earlier this year, Les Lye passed away at 84. He was the man behind the show as well as every adult male character.

Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/arts/television/24lye.html

There's also the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can%27t_Do_That_on_Television


You Can't Do That on Television intro
(originally posted to That Other Journal on December 20, 2009)

A TWIST OF MENTOS...

What's not to love?
(originally posted to That Other Journal on October 27, 2008)