You Ever Notice...and What's the Deal...

[D'Snowth]

What's the deal with scene transitions? I don't mean things like fades or wipes or something... I especially am talking about cartoons that use specific things to break up scenes instead of a clean edit.

I'm pretty sure I made this exact same observation several pages back, only for live action sitcoms in recent years.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

What's the deal with that Geico commercial where a camel is happy that it's Hump Day? Until a few weeks ago I didn't know that "hump day" was an actual term for Wednesday. How many people would have known that if not for the commercial?

A lot of people. I heard the term for the first time years ago. But I actually think it might be a regional thing. Or something that only just became more popular.

 

[minor muppetz]

A lot of people. I heard the term for the first time years ago. But I actually think it might be a regional thing. Or something that only just became more popular.

I wonder if "hump day" would belong in the "Aluminum Christmas Trees" trope at TV Tropes. That trope is for things seen or mentioned in works of fiction that are real but due to when they were made, when they take place, or where they take place, the average person might think it was made up.

If that camel asked me what day it is, I would have just said "Wednesday". Or payday, as that comes every other Wednesday for me.

 

[snichols1973]

Has anyone ever noticed that American Dragon: Jake Long and The Life and Times of Juniper Lee are conceptually similar? In other words, you could see that the shows had rather similar storylines and structure if viewed side by side.

The similarities:

American Dragon ran from January 2005 - September 2007 on Disney Channel, while Juniper Lee ran from May 2005 - April 2007 on Cartoon Network.

The protagonist of each series was a Chinese-American preteen with a grandparent who acts as a mystical mentor to supply them with advice and wisdom when dealing with the supernatural, they each have a younger sibling sidekick that sometimes helps them with their quests, and a centuries-old guardian in the form of an enchanted talking dog that can communicate with supernatural beings that are invisible to mortals.

 

[minor muppetz]

Often I go to stores with automatic self-check-out machines, and it'll be common for some of them to be closed. What's the point of closing an automatic check-out machine? I can see the regular lanes being closed due to not having enough cashiers, but the automatic ones should be open 24/7, unless they are broken. In fact last night I saw a few closed ones and asked an employee what the point of that was. and she seemed to miss the point of my question, instead pointing to lanes that were open.

Of course using those lanes used to be really frustrating to me. I can't remember why, but for a long time the process was really annoying to me. I think I eventually figured out how to do it without being frustrated. In fact one time after much frustration with an automatic check-out lane I complained about it to the manager, who also didn't seem to understand my complaint.

 

[MuppetSpot]

Has anyone ever noticed that American Dragon: Jake Long and The Life and Times of Juniper Lee are conceptually similar? In other words, you could see that the shows had rather similar storylines and structure if viewed side by side.

The similarities:

American Dragon ran from January 2005 - September 2007 on Disney Channel, while Juniper Lee ran from May 2005 - April 2007 on Cartoon Network.

The protagonist of each series was a Chinese-American preteen with a grandparent who acts as a mystical mentor to supply them with advice and wisdom when dealing with the supernatural, they each have a younger sibling sidekick that sometimes helps them with their quests, and a centuries-old guardian in the form of an enchanted talking dog that can communicate with supernatural beings that are invisible to mortals.

Yeah I was going to post about Juniper Lee and American Dragon but, a ton of people say it here over and over again.

 

[Drtooth]

A lot of people. I heard the term for the first time years ago. But I actually think it might be a regional thing. Or something that only just became more popular.

More like an older thing that people are starting to reference again. I've heard it quite a while ago, but not too recently.

 

[minor muppetz]

Yesterday I was looking at some old Mad Magazine parodies (from the book Mad About the Eighties), and there's a few things that struck me as odd.

In the Taxi parody "Taxing", at the end Louie tells the cabbies he wants them to give some people free rides, and they object at first (Bobby particularly seems annoyed by the prospect, saying "we don't give free rides!"). But normally, Louie wouldn't want to give free rides, and the others would probably be more willing to do it.

And I wonder how long it usually takes for Mad to spoof a TV show after its begun. The Taxi parody appeared in a 1980 issue, after being on the air for two and a half seasons, and yet this parody does not fetaure Reverend Jim but does feature first season character John Burns, his appearance here played straight as opposed to being a gag appearance. And interestingly, it seems the Mad writers must have had as much trouble with the character as the actual Taxi writers did, as he isn't even given a parody name (he's not mentioned by name at all).

And the Alf parody "ARFul" features depictions of a number of real people and characters from other franchises, and not just as background or gag appearances, but actually involved in the plot a little. But one thing I noticed is that, in regards to non-Alf characters depicted, some of them are referred to by their actual name and others referred to by parody names, regardless of whether its a real person or not. E.T., Chewbacca, and Richard Dreyfus (I would have called him Richard Doofus) are all referred to by their actual names, while Dr. Ruth and some Star Trek characters are referred to by parody names.

I have a number of Mad compilation books (the real big-sized ones that have been out since the 1980s), and what's the deal with some of them having list of content pages and some not? It seems the main ones without content listings are the decades collections. And those content listings list what issues the comics were originally featured in.

 

[Drtooth]

Anyone ever notice that in 1980's cartoons, the resident scientists/inventors had a 50/50 ratio of being completely terrible at their jobs/ actually stumbling buttbackwards into something right?

Wheeljack, the 80's Ducktales version of Gyro Gearloose who, actually was the more successful of the bunch, but only succeeded at making things that the Beagle Boys used to steal Scrooge's money, Donatello from that version of TMNT (as opposed to 2k3 Donatello who could do no wrong)... Gadget Hackwrench...

 

[D'Snowth]

Is it just me, or does it seem like everybody's got an obsession with squirrels right now? I mean really, we've got a SHARKNADO-esque horror movie coming out about killer squirrels, there's a new Sears commercial on TV right now where a guy has trained squirrels to clip coupons, it's like squirrels have become what llamas were there for a while.