Slashdot Mirror
Futurama Returns
GrumpySimon writes "Good news everyone!
Straight from a one-eyed alien's mouth - 13 new episodes of Futurama have been confirmed by Katey Sagal on Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show. All the original actors have signed up too."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I love the smell of Slurm in the morning - it smells like ... walrus!
While I applaud it, I remember the resurrection of Ren & Stimpy and how it just wasn't quite the same anymore. The making of a popular series can often rest on the frenzy of creating the episodes and the chemistry of those at work on it. Add an interruption, time for other projects and influences, what will become of pulling the team back together? Will it be the same, or will it be like, "well, Bender saying, 'bite my shiny metal asee' doesn't totally suck, but it's just, you know, different now."
Other news in the It's About Time Department:
In other good news, finally on DVD, Yellowbeard! Arr! July 27 for USA & Canada or July 10 for UK No word yet on extras, like Group Madness, the documentary of making of the film.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
All thirteen episodes will come in a suppository!
Complete with New shinier, easily bitable metal ass.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Hip, hip, huzzah! Hip, hip, huzzah! Hip, ah screw it.
Good news everyone, it's about f-in' time!
Sweet Zombie Jesus!!!!
They've been VERY naughty this year. Now they must be trying to make up before Xmas.
Ryan Fenton
Cuz the actors never get it wrong.
P.S. I feel like it's some futurama reference that my CAPTCHA was "breeder." Is Slashdot trying to say something about the human race?
I wonder if this will affect the 4 movies that are currently being planned. Ride the Walrus!
Maybe it's just me but, I don't get why futurama is popular. I don't get why any of the comedy animated shows are even cloe to popular. They very rarely make me laugh and it seems to be more "Well theres nothing better to watch" than "wow! I must catch it this week" as other series (like Doctor Who for example) bring out in me.
So can someone explain to me the appeal of these shows or are they just drivel for the masses with the odd geek joke throw in to keep us happy? It seems nothing ever changes and what does change is instantly ignored, which really gets my goat. One week Lisa will be super smart and a veggie and the next week suddenly she's as dumb as Bart and eating a pork chop. So WTF?
Someone please explain to me how this sort of thing is more popular than something with a real plot or something which is really funny?
Not trolling, I just don't get it.
I like muppets.
ah but the whole use of celebrity heads was lame. Discuss
HYPNOTOAD LIVES!!!!
That's too bad. Sure, I'm sad it ended, but it DID end well. Go figure what'll happen now.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
How'd they get Phil Hartman on board with this one?
Sure! ...anything's got to be funnier than you.
Let's hear it for ancient readme files.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
I know, that sounds sad, even for a geek, but what can I say: Futurama is my favorite show and if you don't like it, you can bite my shiny metal ass.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Does this make me happy?
Is the space pope reptilian?
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
"Amen, brother. I don't go anywhere without my mutated anthrax... You know, for duck hunting".
Trying to explain why the above example is funny is like trying to legislate common sense.
Both attempts are certainly futile.
If I were you I just wouldn't worry about this too much and just wait for the year 2008 and use one of those America's favorite Stop 'n' Drop booths.
You can't handle the truth.
Katey was on the late late show on Tuesday night, why did it take until Thursday night for this to get on slashdot?
/. within the hour of it being said.
I'm disappointed. I would expect this sort of news about Futurama to get on
"Will they make it funny this time around?"
"I just thought I'd come into a thread about a show I don't like and spend 20 seconds posting that I don't like it."
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Stewie: "What magazine are you From?"
E! Weekly rep: "Entertainment Weekly"
Stewie: *Cracks neck*
As much as I disagree with GP, I think you just disproved your own point.
It's about time! I love Futurama but you can only watch that show so many hundreds of times.
Richard Nixon was on Futurama, or rather his head was, why not Phil Hartman's?
Isn't it about time you go rile up the WoW nerds on blizzards forum?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Perhaps I'll breed some kind of albino shouting gorilla...
Straight from a one-eyed alien's mouth [...]
If this is a reference to Leela, she's not an alien but a mutant! Release your nerd pass!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leela's_Homeworld
Ok that's indeed great news... the sad news is Futurama is still dependent on Comedy Central. Why do shows still need this kind of deals? Idealy this would happen: There is an official Futurama web-site, they say they want a new season, they need US $ X to produce it. They sell shares on their website or through ebay using a dutch auction in order to finance the project. Geeks buy them. They make the episodes. They realase them on the internet in a non DRM format and using bittorrent so they don't have to pay for bandwith. People pay a small amount of money to download the .torrent file. If they want to pirate it anyway nothing will stop them so why bother with protection.
Many people download that great show, the benefits are given to the shareholders.
Everyone is happy.
That's really what the RIAA really is affraid of. Artists now have a way to have vertical control, marketting, distribution etc. They claim to fight piracy but really want to make this come as late as they can. Once the artists realize they can actually make more money by short circuiting the distribution cartels
a) price will also fall for the consummer
b) more competition of works, more quality
\u262D = \u5350
and brannigans antics
First Family Guy, then Futurama. Where's Firefly?
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Okay, so all of the original actors have signed up. But what I'd like to know is if all of the original writers have signed up.
>One week Lisa will be super smart and a veggie and the next week suddenly she's as dumb as Bart and
>eating a pork chop.
those are called reruns.
As for lisa being super smart and being a veggie, I think you must be confused. Lisa starts out a smart and talented saxophonist, later in the series she just becomes preachy and loses most of her character.
Also, vegetarians are never smart.
...DRM'ed. "Geeks don't want DRM, geeks want Futurama (just see @ the Internet) so we will release new episodes of Futurama to sell DRM to those bloody nerds..."
This is the only reason for Fox to start it again.
--
This is not a flamebait... this is bloody serious... Just wait'n'see.
Lots and lots of Morbo laughing at puny human misery!
Professor: Good news everyone. While Fox's quality programming is out of our reach, Comedy Control has decided to take us for some new episodes.
Fry: Don't you mean Comedy Central?
Leela: No, Comedy Control. Comedy was outlawed in the year 2045, during the Great War with the Neptutians. Comedy Control comes around and kills everyone involved with animated shows.
... I don't get it. Where's the usual downside following "Good news everyone!"? Do we have to go and wrest the episodes from giant killer bees, or something?
Quoth the Incompetent Robot Elders:
Silence!!!
Futurama does indeed have long-term plot elements, more so than most live action television shows (and at least comparable with Doctor Who and its Daleks and Cybermen). Generally the plot centers around Fry.
- Fry and the Brains (and the Nibblonians)
During the series it transpires that Fry is the only human being capable of resisting the psionic attacks of the Brains, a group of free-flying brain beings that want to take over/destroy the universe. Fry's brain waves are different from other peoples because Fry, as a result of events in the episode "Roswell that Ends Well", is his own grandfather.
In the first encounter with the Brains Fry is abducted by Nibbler, who is not only Leela's pet, but also an agent of the ancient and stupendously powerful Nibblonians (which explains why he was the only one of his kind on the planet where he was found). Nibbler explains Fry's abnormality and assists him in fending off the Brains' attack on earth. After Fry succeeds Nibbler wipes Fry's memory (everyone else was too stupefied by the Brains to remember what happened) and resumes his life as Leela's pet.
Later, in The Why of Fry, we learn that Fry was not frozen by accident. In fact Fry was brought into the future by Nibbler, whose much younger self was present on New Years' Eve '99, and who gave Fry the nudge that tipped him backwards into the cryogenic chamber. In this episode Fry is press ganged into service to destroy the Brains' ultimate project, a device that will acquire all knowledge in the universe and then destroy the universe to prevent its knowledge from becoming outdated.
Once Fry is inside the Mega-Brain and has activated the bomb with which he is to destroy it, the Brains reveal what Nibbler did to Fry and offer Fry a choice - he can stay there, blow up the Mega Brain and vanish along with it due to the failure of his escape scooter, or he can let the Mega Brain catapult him back in time to the space-time nexus centred on his own fall into the cryochamber.
Fry elects to travel back, and in fact initially prevents Nibbler from knocking him into the tube, until Nibbler persuades him that he should sacrifice himself and fulfill his predestined mission, because...
- Fry Loves Leela
Fry has an unrequited passion for Leela throughout most of the series. In a sense there is a lack of follow through here, because they do pull kind of a "will they/won't they?" thing, but Fry does succeed in communicating the depth of his feelings at times, and when he wins the devil's hands and uses them to make a holophoner opera in Leela's honour Leela realises that Fry has a depth of character and feeling that is concealed by his physical and social clumsiness.
- Leela and Her Parents
As someone else mentioned here, Leela's parent enter the series late in the piece and stick around. In fact I was surprised that nobody responded to the "straight from the alien's mouth" in the article by pointing out that Leela, as we discover when her parents emerge, is not an alien but a mutant, whose xenolinguist parents left her at an orphanage with a note in an invented alien script, so that she would be taken for an alien and avoid the apartheid-style restrictions places on mutants. This is a major shift for Leela both in the sense that earlier episodes made much of her search for her species and homeworld, and in that at least two episodes towards the end of the series are heavily concerned with her relationship with her newfound parents.
- Amy and Kif
Amy, the engineering student from Mars, and Kif, Zapp Brannigan's XO, fall in love early in the series and their developing romance is the subject of multiple episodes throughout subsequent seasons.
i'm sure there are other examples of long-term continuity that have slipped my mind, but really nobody could accuse Futurama of forgeting its past.
Stirring defence of Futurama and the Simpsons there. But I think you're pretty much wrong in everything you say. To respond to your three main points:
1. The characters in the Simpsons are surprisingly consistent; the clearly distinct characters and their traits are one of the shows great strengths. Lisa is BOTH intelligent AND a member of the archetypal working class family; these are not mutually exclusive, and the show is subtle enough to deal with this.
2. Futurama IS better than Dr Who whichever way you spin it (allowing for taste), and its PLOTS are amongst its great strengths. When you compare the Simpsons to Futurama, one thing that is very apparent is that Futurama has much more comprehensive, less formulaic, better written storylines. The episodes, and the series, feature an internal logic which is stronger than the Simpsons, or indeed almost any other comedy other than Seinfeld or Arrested Development.
In many cases the humour is directly derived from the strength of the plot. For example, Fry travels back in time and becomes his own grandfather. As a result, he is unique in the universe, and his uniqueness ties in to the whole Nibblonian vs Brains subplot. Similarly, Leela's origins story is tightly woven throughout the various episodes and across the series. I know for a fact that Groening, Cohen and co set out to write lengthy thematic arcs which in some cases spanned series 1-4 inclusive.
If you think it's a plot-less cartoon with jokes, you're not really watching it.
3. Well, this basically explains why you think what you think. I agree to the extent that each episode of Futurama is self-contained. However, they are also intricately linked with other episodes, and you miss a lot of important context and detail from some episodes if you treat them as a one-off 'adventure'.
Try watching Futurama, in order, from start to finish. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Read Pynchon.
What kind of a fan would not know that Stewie would neverend his Sentence with a Preposition?
but it was just a joke. You must be a riot at parties.
Great. Good to see the Actors are on board. What about the writers though? I have to imagine the highly talented futurama writers found new homes that have been enjoying their talent for a while.
The best news I've heard for several month!
Holy crap! I can't believe it-- someone was actually watching Craig Ferguson!
After Futurama died, I tried to fill the void by watching excessive amounts of The Simpsons. Now I don't know if I can watch Futurama again without being confused by the absence of Homer.
Frog blast the vent core.
please not have jumped the shark please not have jumped the shark please not have jumped the shark
qntm.org
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Good news on the surface but until it is confirmed the original writers have signed up I won't be keeping too many expectations of the new series.
The actors can be replaced, the writing team can not - not if you want to keep the same style of humour.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Screw fox, they killed firefly.
The box says YES!
Former post is a spoiler. Or, at least for those unhip enough not to have seen Serenity.
But me, I'm so hip that I can't go through most doorways without having them enlarged.
David Duchovny (remember him...?) has been claiming for ages that a new XF movie is going to be made. Gillian Anderson (remember her...?) has also said the same thing, as has Robert Patrick (Agent Doggett), Annabeth Gish (Agent Somebody...), Mitch Pileggi (Skinner), and other actors from the show.
Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz have both said they are working on a script, or have written one, or are thinking of a number between 0 and 20, or something...they have been negotiating with FOX for years, and all sorts of interesting conspiracy theories are circulating as to what the hold up may be.
Duchovny's career is dead in the water. He left the show in midstream (and in the lurch) to pursue what he believed would be a stellar movie career, only to produce a small string of absolute stinkers (eg 'Evolution', 'Return to Me'), as well as his own home movie effort ('House of D')...now he has nothing, so talks up 'XF2' in the hope it may happen if he wishes it to hard enough.
Anderson has been luckier: her movies have been mostly mediocre, but her stage career in London has kept her alive.
Chris Carter seems to be on permanent vacation, and Spotnitz seems to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
If an actor or director or producer or craft services flunky claims something is happening it can be safely ignored. They have a vested interest in generating enough buzz to convince the money men to finance more work for them.
Even studio announcements mean fuck-all (especially if they're from FOX).
I wouldn't get too worked up about this 'Futurama' claim.
Ooooohhhh no. I fell for this one before...
"Let the feast of a thousand hams begin!"
-----
Sig Sauer
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Hope this dosn't turn out like before. When Billy West said on his forum that they are making new episodes, then later on he said he got it wrong!
Anyway, not getting my hopes up to much, but if it happens then great!
but the flesh is soft and spungy..
I can't help but feel that it's because of me that the show has been optioned (correct word usage?): You see, I bought the first two DVD sets just over a week ago, right before the actors were re-signed! *takes a bow*
It is upon this occasion that I will venture to make the obligatory reference: woop woop woop *scuttles* woop woop woop *scuttles*
I hope they also get back some of the original writers from seasons one and two; in my opinion the quality of the writing went downhill in seasons three and four, to the point where it was probably just as well to call a halt. (There were some good episodes but the jokes and dialogue just weren't as funny.)
(There were four seasons of Futurama made, though in the USA they were screened in a slightly odd order.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
http://www.redrival.com/hateown/
partially anti-wow anyway
Well if he explained about Robot Santa then I'm sure they had been good, rather than face his violent rampage through their christmas...
At first I didn't fall in love with it, but once I got it tivo'd I sucked down all 5 seasons and watched them in like a month. Now I regret it, because I want so much more. I think it was a little ahead of it's time, but now people are ready for much much more. I prefer it to the simpsons in terms of raw hilarity now. I hope it has the same longevity!
But you can only enjoy all 3 seasons shows in order when watching with a brain slug.
Please, put this brain slug on, you will enjoy every show much more!
Avoid garlic shampoo...
Let the biting commence!
This is not an automated signature. I type this in to the bottom of every message.
But I am not going to stand by while someone tears down classics like Ren & Stimpy in order to ego-masturbate.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
If this is yet another false hope, I'll go ahead and make my own Futurama.
With blackjack and hookers!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fry: This was our storage closet. My Dad spent years turning it into a bomb shelter.
Leela: [sadly] And yet you guys never had a single nuclear war.
Bender: [sadly] What a waste.
What's the hardest thing about eating a vegetable? The chair.
:)
Professor: That's not good news. That's not good news at all!
Every night at 8pm we watch Futurama reruns on Teletoon (even though I have all the dvd's, go figure). He loves Bender (or 'bot bot') as he refers to him, but then again who doesn't love Bender? He will be very pleased that the show is coming back!
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD
qntm.org
This is all well and good, but Slashdot's already gotten my hopes up once by saying that Futurama's returning, then beaten me to a bloody pulp when I find out it isn't really true! I'd like to actually see some episodes to prove it. You still have Zoidburg, you all still have Zoidburg!
I keep it in a box under the bed.
The last time
On that note, I would personally love for Futurama to return but I won't get my hopes up.
\
comments on Katey Sagal's comment on his site.
As long as they don't try too hard like Family Guy is doing. I have to say, Family Guy these days is boring as anything. First three seasons were mint, but what they're coming out with now is total crap. Previously it was edgy, but funny. Now they just go for offensive for the sake of offensive. The plots are horrible, and just aren't trying.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Wow - that's great news! I'd phone my friends to tell them, but I swallowed my mobile phone again.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Most shows have some kind of continuity and Futurama does. Sure they'll be a bit random and break rules at times (take that Bender is made of 40% of Zinc, 40% of Titanium and 40% of Dolomite- 120% for those of you who are reading this early in the morning), but in general unlike the Simpsons, the show progresses. The characters age, have different birthdays, refer to events in the past. You'll also notice the love between Fry and Leela developing. Take the later episodes like 'The Sting' where Fry takes a giant bee for Leela, and the many loving things they do that continues to bring them closer, as well as the same thing on the Amy side.
PS: best episode ever: Jurassic Bark.... poor Seymour the dog.
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
In the first episode, when the crew shows up at the professors door looking for work, he removes his former crews job chips or whatever from an envelope titled "space wasps stomach contents". We later see the tie in back to this about 4 seasons later. good stuff.
First they better put it in a timeslot that doesn't get screwed! Hard for anyone to watch when it was consistently being bumped because of football.
Second, Family Guy has done quite well since being restarted.
"She's built like a steakhouse, but she handles like a Bistro!"
Amazon Women in the Mood
Zapp Brannigan
She's a mutant!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leela's_Homeworld
Of course, somehow those space wasps become space bees instead. Hmmmmm..
Doubt it.
Even if either tanks or gets in the way, they can afford it.
They're all back at severely reduced pay, remember!?
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Your inevitable doom will be delayed for another day.
To quote Fry in "Fry and the Slurm Factory"
Fry: Uh, could I have some Slurm please?
Glermo: No food or drink allowed on the tour. You'll have to wait until you're partying with Slurms McKenzie.
Fry: When will that be?
Glermo: Soon enough.
Fry: That's not soon enough.
fak3r.com
"Good news everyone! Straight from a one-eyed alien's mouth"
What one-eyed alien? I don't remember any one-eyed alien on Futurama.
A one-eyed mutant maybe, but no alien.
Technoli
HUZZAH !
If life is merely a joke, the question still remains: for whose amusement?
The family guy. That show has consistently gone downhill since it got on mainstream tv.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Awesome to the max!
It seems like the new episodes are going to be broadcast on Comedy Central, not Fox, so Faux can continue to bite your shiny metal ass.
You raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir. Bravo!
Thank God one of the 5 people that watched Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show passed this on to those of us who read Slashdot.
To quote pinky: yeah but ... "apply north pole to what?" :)
It was a great episode. Forgot about that one. Though that was 10-11 years ago by now.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
And now for the unresolved plot lines of Futurama, all of which I am hoping to see picked up in the new series:
-Fry loves Leela
The most obvious over-arching story during the series was Fry's adoration of Leela and Leela's continuous indifference to Fry. Obviously this IS something which is meant to work out with a happy ending. Episodes such as "Parasites Lost", "The Farnsworth Parabox", "Time Keeps On Slippin'" and the series finale, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" make this pretty clear.
The question is how they'll eventually get together. Leela keeps rejecting Fry because he doesn't have a lot to offer. He's a dumb, dropout delivery-geek - she's a smart, attractive spaceship pilot. Alternate/previous Frys have managed to get close to Leela with romantic gestures: a diamond scrunchie, a holophonor serenade, a love message written in stars. There's another key point, and that's Leela's oft-mentioned but never-seen ex, Sean. In "Devil's Hands", she describes Sean as pasty, unambitious individual whose redeeming feature was his skill as a jazz saxophonist. So it seems like creativity, specifically musical creativity, is the key. The problem is, even though he works hard at it, Fry doesn't even have musical skill. Not as far as his hands are concerned, at any rate. Nor can he sing. Or draw. And he won't artificially enhance his skills if this distorts his personality - "Parasites Lost" makes this clear.
The solution? Either Fry will come up with some other amazing romantic gesture, or he'll find a musical instrument he CAN play well. Or perhaps he'll find some other, more successful creative outlet.
-Fry is the single most important person in the universe
This arc was intended to occur from the very beginning of Futurama's production. "Space Pilot 3000", act three of "Anthology Of Interest", "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid", "Roswell That Ends Well" and "The Why Of Fry" are the relevant episodes. Thanks to his being his own grandfather, Fry is the only person in history to lack the delta brainwave, making him the only person able to fight the evil brainspawn on behalf of the Nibblonians. Fry has twice defeated the brains, but as Nibbler wiped his memory of the events of "The Why Of Fry", he doesn't remember the second time and possibly not the first either.
At the end of said episode, Fry remarks, "If you ever need a saviour again, just ask." Nibbler replies, "Oh, we will. We will." Presumably Fry will need to fight the brains at least once more. And obviously it must be the brains that he fights: against any other foe, Fry is all but useless.
Earlier in that same episode, Fry mentions Leela and Nibbler remarks, "Ah. She must be the other. You must not give up on her..." and promises to help Fry make things work with her. This suggests not only that Leela has some critical part to play in saving the universe next time around, but also that much more hangs on Fry and Leela getting together than just Fry's happiness. These two arcs are obviously strongly linked together.
Side note: while "Anthology Of Interest" is mostly non-canon, the spacetime warp which tears open as a result of Fry failing to be frozen is very important. During "The Why Of Fry" the enormous brain explains: "There is a nexus point between universes at the space-time where you entered the cryogenic tube." Here's why: if Fry fails to enter the tube, he fails to go to the future. If he does that, he isn't present at the supernova and doesn't go back in time, where he doesn't sleep with his grandmother, meaning Yancy Fry is never born and so Fry himself is never born either. The result is a paradox which, as seen in the "Anthology Of Interest" story, destroys the whole universe.
How Fry and Leela's fates are linked, and what shape the next (final?) brainspawn threat will take, remains to be seen.
-Morbo
Newsmonster Morbo is an extremely poorly-disguised spy for his (unnamed) home planet. His race is plotting to take over the Earth. Will they ever do it? Will
qntm.org
But we have heard this before. Billy West made the same statements and he retracted them. This might suggest that there is some momentum in the Futurama camp to make it live again. However; I won't believe it until Fox airs Futurama sporadically at 7:30 on a Sunday night, preempted by baseball or football, following another dismal episode of King of the Hill, with little to no advertising or promotion ensuring that the show fails to capture a large enough audience so Fox believes it a failure and yanks it off television once again.
Why does anybody work with Fox? Fox is the bigget show killer of all time!
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Have been waiting for this for ages... I just hope they kee the humor of most of the old episode's
-- http://blog.troublenow.org/ Just a reference base
curl -sI slashdot.org|head -6|tail -1
Wonder Falls, Andy Richter controls the universe and Keen Eddy were great.
The Pitts was the worst thing I have ever seen...
... Tell my wife, Hello.
I Like Pie...
I was up in northern California a few years ago, visiting my grandma. We had often made family trips up there when I was a kid growing up in New Mexico, but due to the shortness of vacation time, never saw much of the surrounding country, instead spending our limited time socializing with relatives. Because of this, my grandma decided to take me around to do some sight seeing. Among the places that we stopped was the Chico Dam. It was nice solid dam, with lush vegetation on the banks, and behold, fish trying to jump over the dam. After a closer look I noticed a fish ladder coming from the base of the river.
:)
I had seen these on the discovery channel before - they were designed create a detour so the fish could swim up and around the dam to mate upstream. I followed the ladder from the base of the dam as it wound up the hill. Along the way were signs describing the different fish in the river, and I spotted several of the varieties among the travelers. I was struck with a sense of awe watching these fish. With such determination and perseverance they swam, often doing everything they could to keep in place against the current, but slowly and steadily jumping up one step of the ladder at a time.
I followed the fish ladder to the top of a hill, where it went into small building. Ah I thought, this must be where they tag the fish for studies. I bent over to one of the large windows to block the glare from the sun. A metal rod rammed through the fishes head, and it was thrown limply into one of two piles. Workers grabbed the fish from one pile and and sliced open their gullet with a smooth swipe, causing orange gunk to fall into a bucket. At the other pile, workers were squeezing a white liquid from them. I stood there dazed for a moment, and then looked down and saw a little plaque that stated that the orange stuff was called roe, and the white stuff was called milt.
That, my friend, is the day I learned the term Milt
I later learned that all the fish swimming up the river would have died naturally after mating anyway, that only a small percentage make it this far up the river, and that the number of fish born at this hatchery far exceeded the number that would have been born naturally. So it was a good thing, if a bit shocking for the uninitiated. I also learned that fishing is for suckers - why hassle with nets and lines, when you can have your dinner swim to you.
So there's my question: what happens if a brain slug latches on to a hypno-toad? Who would win? My guess is, we all would lose.
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
Bender will fish a shark out of his own body and beat the crap out of it, then feed it to Nibler.
You can't handle the truth.
Damn this has been a good day for me! New Futurama and now this! Yes! Yellowbeard! I've been waiting years for this. I actually paid $40 a couple years back to have my VHS version converted to DVD. I can't wait!
"Your mother's a bloody liar... That's what I liked about her." - Yellowbeard
So to all the people who complained about Ren & Stimpy Adult Cartoon Party "not being like the original Ren & Stimpy": YOU'RE WRONG.
Adult Cartoon Party is far closer to the original than Nickelodeon's watered-down versoins. In fact, many of the episodes for SpikeTV's Ren & Stimpy Adult Cartoon Party were actually Nickelodeon episodes that got censored out of existence!
Ren & Stimpy Adult Cartoon Party is the true realization of the artists original vision for Ren & Stimpy. That SpikeTV only produced 6-8 episodes IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
Remember, in the pre-pilot, they fuck a baby's head. It was never supposed to be a pleasant show.
I have spoken.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Feel free to add your two cents here:
http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/2004/12/15/ai-was-a- good-movie-fuck-you-all/
(Or here... but this discussion will be archived before long.)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Futurama: Excellent show. Original. Funny. Well written. Beautifully acted.
Family Guy. Okay show, often funny, but has a huge and dedicated audience.
Firefly. Extremely un-original. It's a western, but set IN SPACE!! Even Battlestar Galactica has better plots and better actors. Small but extremely aggressive audience that can't take criticism (watch how quickly this post gets moderated down).
The show didn't replace with Seven. It was in the 'valuable life lesson' stage, where they were trying to _teach_ you to never let visitors go out for cigarettes and leave their child in your home. Especially when your wife wants another kid. It's an important thing to teach the future parents of this world. They need to include something similar on Sesseme Street.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
She's no one-eyed alien, she's a one-eyed mutant. Boy, you'd think nobody here had actually watched the show when it was on.
They're taking their dog to get its two shots before it's too late. You're taking your dog there too, right?
"Leela keeps rejecting Fry because he doesn't have a lot to offer. He's a dumb, dropout delivery-geek - she's a smart, attractive spaceship pilot."
Leela has as much trouble in the romance department as Fry does. Perhaps moreso. (Aside from Zap Brannigan.)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
They didn't bring the show back completly, but they did at least do a mini-series and wrapped up all the loose ends.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The show didn't replace with Seven.
Well you're right, they didn't replace with Seven, they added him on to sort of replace the 'child element' of the show though.. whether it was as a lesson or not.. Kinda like Olivia didn't REPLACE Rudy (and have you seen her lately? wow..) but she took her place as the 'cute little kid who does cute little kid things like call 900# joke lines'..
Yawn!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And you will be punished for your error!
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
for the record, that was intended entirely as a joke, treating Married With Children as a lesson-teaching show. Yeah- Seven sucked.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Sadly, it ain't gonna happen. Nick made sure that the experience of creating Invader Zim was as traumatic as possible for all involved. I think that the end result was absolute brilliance (parts of my house are like a shrine to Invader Zim- it's kinda scary really), but nobody involved has any interest in picking it back up. *cries*
:-)
As a side note, you probably already have the DVD box set, but in case you don't the first volume is now available on the iTunes Music Store.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Agreed. I can't be in the room when Jurassic Bark is playing, and I'm a heartless monster!
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I think the Zap Brannigan incident qualifies as trouble in Leela's romance department.
Or they digitally edited the first episode before rebroadcasting it.
but there are HUGE GAPING HOLES in the ongoing plot.
In one of the first few episodes their career chips are taken from an envelope labeled "Contents of Space WASPS Stomach", while in the later episodes they try to complete the previous failed misson, and find the last ship in a hive of "Space BEES".
(I suppose that the envelope may have been mislabeled, or as Lucy Lawless said: "It was a wizard.")
Are we sure this time?
for the record, that was intended entirely as a joke, treating Married With Children as a lesson-teaching show. Yeah- Seven sucked.
;]
Hey now you're getting personal, my parents used that show to teach me about morals and being an upstanding successful human being..
Just noticed a trailer for Al Gore's new epic at YouTube which was produced and voiced by the Futurama crew. Enjoy - unless it's been posted already - in which case enjoy again:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5BjrOi4vF24
"I'm so angry I can't even remember to close my italics tag."
20 seconds? You don't give me much credit for being able to type at a reasonable speed.
Seriously, though, the "20 seconds" wasted on making a wise-assed remark about how I don't find the show to be very funny (and the additional seconds spent replying to you) pale in comparison to the 3 or 4 hours of TV viewing I spent trying very hard to give that show a fair chance, out of respect for the writers and voice talents involved.
It mostly suffered from the same disease as "The Critic" (the failed cartoon featuring the usually-funny Jon Lovitz), in that the writers seemed to think that (not so) obscure pop-culture references are automatically funny, even if they are not used to say anything funny or witty. The formula gets old very quickly.
So I ask again, not rhetorically, will it be funny this time around?
Because that would be awesome. I like it when comedies manage to be funny.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"I'm so angry I can't even remember to close my italics tag."
Nice try, but the whole post was in italics, and yes the tag was closed.
"20 seconds? You don't give me much credit for being able to type at a reasonable speed."
Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds to post.
"Seriously, though, the "20 seconds" wasted on making a wise-assed remark about how I don't find the show to be very funny (and the additional seconds spent replying to you) pale in comparison to the 3 or 4 hours of TV viewing I spent trying very hard to give that show a fair chance, out of respect for the writers and voice talents involved."
So why not spend 20 seconds writing the letters instead of making snide comments intended to annoy the people who saw what you didn't see in it?
"It mostly suffered from the same disease as "The Critic" (the failed cartoon featuring the usually-funny Jon Lovitz), in that the writers seemed to think that (not so) obscure pop-culture references are automatically funny, even if they are not used to say anything funny or witty. The formula gets old very quickly."
I think you're confusing Futurama with Family Guy.
"So I ask again, not rhetorically, will it be funny this time around?"
It was funny the first time around. Don't feel bad, though, I didn't get Austin Powers the first time around.
"Derp de derp."
"So why not spend 20 seconds writing the letters instead of making snide comments intended to annoy the people who saw what you didn't see in it?"
That was supposed to read "writing letters to the writers". Sorry.
"Derp de derp."
That is just unbelievably nerdy and in-depth. I love this site.
Well, this thread is either going to be one person saying this is good and one person saying it's bad, or otherwise we all get to express our opinion :-P
:)
As someone who only started watching the series after it was cancelled (and then watched at least one every night until he had seen them all) I am tentatively excited about this
Just don't mess it up. It ended so well.
What is this, Digg? Link to the story, not some fuckhead's blog: http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/back_to_the_fu turama_entertainment_don_kaplan.htm
My Manwich!
So why not spend 20 seconds writing the letters instead of making snide comments intended to annoy the people who saw what you didn't see in it?
Because it amuses me to make a snide comment every once in a while.
I think you're confusing Futurama with Family Guy.
With you there. "Family Guy" sucks hard.
Don't feel bad, though, I didn't get Austin Powers the first time around.
Okay, I can see somebody thinking Austin Powers was not funny. It's not for everybody. But to not get Austin Powers??? It's an hour and a half of fart and dick jokes disguised as a spy-movie parody! I think you must be the first person I've ever meet to say they didn't get it right away.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Fine! I'll make my own Futurama episodes! With Blackjack! And hookers!
In fact, forget the hookers and the Blackjack!
Aw, screw the whole thing.
Isn't Morbo just a send up of bad '50s era rubber suit space monsters? He looks like one I remember from back inthe day. I figured all his dialog was based on those kind of old films, not any immpending invasion by some unknown alien race.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.