{"id":98,"date":"2010-09-29T15:34:55","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T15:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/?p=98"},"modified":"2011-06-15T11:50:21","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T11:50:21","slug":"saurod-we-hardly-knew-ye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Saurod, we hardly knew ye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was it really just eleven years ago that people thought the Dancing Baby was hip and fresh?<\/p>\n

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Ah, shareware CDs. My personal gateway into knowing what was popular a decade ago. This originated from PC Format magazine, issue 92 (February 1999!), and I had really high hopes for it. It had demos for Rogue Squadron 3D<\/em> and Klingon Honor Guard<\/em>! It contained a full accounts app that would, and I quote, “take control of [my] cash!” <\/em>And if that wasn’t enough, the goddamned Dancing Baby was promoted as an exclusive feature. Delving into this would be like that stupid Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> CD I wrote about, except more ’90s flavoured!<\/p>\n

The CD is disappointingly barebones, and it doesn’t recognise new versions of Quicktime. And – get this – you have to install<\/strong> the demos. What is this, the stone age? Can’t I just stream it off the CD? I know it’s impractical and not recommended for optimum performance, but I’m not made of installation time<\/strong>, man. I can’t waste my vital man hours waiting for a ten year old demo of King’s Quest 8: Mask of Eternity<\/em> to transfer to my hard drive, even if it is a mere 48mb! Do you want me to die of old age?<\/em><\/p>\n

If I were making any attempt to be funny I would investigate what currently lies on www.babycdrom.com<\/strong>, but I’m a little scared to find out. It’d be a little embarrassing to be land in jail because I was snooping out web addresses that are older than my dog.<\/p>\n

I watched Masters of the Universe<\/em> last week. I know nothing about He-Man<\/em> and am familiar with the movie only through CodieKitty’s complaints<\/a>. Great reason to watch it, eh?<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t even know where to begin on recapping the story, mostly because I didn’t understand a lick of it. Yeah, Skeletor’s kidnapped some sorceress, I get that, and then there’s something about He-Man’s sword granting super powers and the universe being made of music, but I’d be hard-pressed to piece the whole movie together coherently. The scenes on Eternia with He-Man and company seem to exist only to forcibly emphasise the fact “these guys are going to land up on Earth, you know!” That fact is doubly emphasised by how there’s only three sets made for Eternia. It’s like they wanted to make a fantasy Star Wars<\/em>, but budget concerns forced them to shoot most of the movie in any contemporary building they were allowed into.<\/p>\n

Despite my snarky attitude, it’s an enjoyable piece of fluff. It’s totally cornball, but it appears to almost try and take itself almost seriously, which I guess adds a little ironic extra appeal. Dolph plays He-Man as an incredibly boring character, though – I know main protagonists are usually the most dull character of any medium, but\u00a0I couldn’t see any resemblance of personality in the guy. He’s basically a big plank of cardboard with muscles. Frank Langella plays a wonderfully hammy Skeletor, but it’s kind of wasted when he has no one to play off. His minions are as boring as unbuttered bread and He-Man can’t make snappy retorts to save his life. It’s kind of sad when the only heroic character I liked was Man-At-Arms, purely because he had a great moustache.<\/p>\n

Although pretty unremarkable, I loved just the look of the movie. Yes, there’s only three Eternia sets, but they really look fantastic – Gwildor’s abode is fantastically homely, and the castle throne room is suitably massive and makes for some dynamic shootouts, especially when a chunk of a Californian alleyway is suddenly warped inside. The costumes, although kind of dorky on occasion (I couldn’t help but be weirded out by Skeletor’s nose, and of all the minions to kill off, why did they spare the stupid jerk with the white Elvira hair?)<\/span> were pretty neat looking, and going by the credits it looked like they had some fantastic concept artists on board. There was one guy in particular I looked up, he had done some fantastic stylised artwork of dinosaurs, but I can’t remember the guy’s name. Instead I found Edward Eyth<\/a>. Very exquisite stuff; the fact most of his work is just human faces makes it even more appealing to me.<\/p>\n

And on the subject of art, here’s today’s random doodle.<\/p>\n

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I drew this on request from somebody at work, and apparently she printed it out so her child could colour it in. While that’s kind of sweet, I can’t help but think “man, that kid’s going to notice that Spongebob’s eyes are lopsided and he’s missing his left cheek.” I trust the child to ignore how terrible those hands are, because seriously, have you seen how kids draw hands? They’re like sausages pinned to a flattened soccer ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was it really just eleven years ago that people thought the Dancing Baby was hip and fresh? Ah, shareware CDs. My personal gateway into knowing what was popular a decade ago. This originated from PC Format magazine, issue 92 (February 1999!), and I had really high hopes for it. It had demos for Rogue Squadron […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,7,6],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-doodle","tag-movie","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}