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Nerdvana: San Fransokyo

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In the relatively short time we’ve been doing the Nerdvana segments on this blog, we’ve celebrated characters, songs, a food product and a building, but today’s Nerdvana celebrates an entire location. Today, Nerdvana geeks out over the setting of the geektacular Disney movie Big Hero 6, San Fransokyo.

If you can make it here, then you’ve got some sort of reality-warping machine, ’cause it’s a fictional location.
 
While the comic book miniseries that the movie is very, very, very, very, very, very loosely based on was simply set in Tokyo, the Mouse House’s filmmakers decided to make the movie’s setting a mash-up of Tokyo and San Francisco, just as the movie itself was a mash-up of Disney and Marvel. Even the Golden Gate Bridge is a Japanamerican mish-mash, viz:
Now I enjoyed the movie, but I REALLY fell in love with this city idea. As the producers have noted, San Fransokyo is practically a character in itself. This has already become one of my favorite fictional burgs, even surpassing Superhero City from Marvel’s The Super Hero Squad Show….
…of which I still like some of the architecture (particularly the Xavier Academy, Asgard and the Baxter Building, though I like the latter better with the blue hue it had on the show), but San Fransokyo edges Superhero City out on 2 counts: one, its’ buildings are more creative and imaginative, and two, San Fransokyo isn’t crawling with capes; if every other inhabitant of your city is enhanced, mutated or otherwise ‘superfied’ in some way, then being a superhero isn’t really anything special.
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Now I’d like to do a story or make a show with an Eastern/Western mash-up setting. Why do I dig San Fransokyo? Let me enumerate the ways: first, it’s ethnically and culturally diverse, populated by Asians, whites, blacks, wasians (white Asians), blasians (black Asians–is that even a thing? Well it is now, I’m calling it) and other races live together in peaceful cohabitation with all of the various cultures, architecture and nomenclature coming together…
Wasabi_BH6
 “Note how he said ‘blacks‘, as in plural. Yes, there are other blacks in San Fransokyo. I’m not the only one. So pressure groups, put down your picket signs.”
Baymax
 
 
“Don’t forget robots. This town has a thriving robotic and mechanical population, with machines performing many useful and vital duties for humankind. Sure, we aren’t allowed to vote and we’re rarely taken out to discos, but we’re here, we’re digitized, get used to us.”
 
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is rockman.jpg
“Hey, dude. I get that you’re the current robot of the hour, but I gotta say, your look just ain’t cuttin’ it. Big, white and balloon-ey? No style. Fix yourself up with some styling metallic armor, with some gems and plates, a bot’s gotta have some bling. And stick a cannon to your arm, chicks dig arm cannons. But you can’t be blue! That’s my deal.”
 
That reminds me: another reason I like San Fransokyo is because it’s a futuristic city. I loves me some Cities of Tomorrow. San Fransokyo has a Science and Technological Institute…
…which is a haven for the future eggheads of tomorrow. There are even female students there.
 gogo-and-honey-lemon
Go Go: Yeah, girls like science and tech. No big whoop. I’m into anything that moves fast, flies high or causes motion sickness.
Honey Lemon: I love science! I also enjoy cosplaying at sci-fi and fantasy conventions. Ya hear that, writers of Conan and The Big Bang Theory?

“Hot babes who love STEM? My UltraMan boxer shorts just got tighter!”

Also, San Fransokyo reminds me of the wondrous cityscapes from Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball series, with the futuristic flying cars, presence of high tech, advanced science and a little bit of magic, and the ovoid and spherical building structures.

“Yeah, this place you’re geeking on is pretty nice and all, guy, but that name’s just not working for me. I’d give it a more impressive, more awesome name, like…Satan City! Now that’s a name a town can be proud of!”

GoGo_Transparent

“Yeah, the home of Satan. That’ll bring in the tourists!”

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that San Fransokyo is the home of boy genius Hiro Hamada and his MILF-ish aunt Cass, a gregariously underused element in the film, as far as I’m concerned.
Disney’s Rapunzel has aged pretty well, I’d say.

“Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson? Please say yes!”

 
Get outta here! I’m sure there’s a game of D&D going on that needs a Level 22 Archer or something.
-So come on down to San Fransokyo.
You’ll come for the beauty and the science, you’ll stay for the Sushi Burgers.

Beyond the Background: The Ghoul School

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Today’s installment of Beyond the Background spotlights that rare sub-species in pop culture: the all-female Monster Mash. Today we’ll be shining the spotlight on a gang of monster girls who all attend a special school together.

Ah, no, not them. Believe it or not, kiddies, there was another ghoul girl gang before Monster High. Today we’ll be looking at the girls from Miss Grimwood’s Finishing School for Ghouls, the finishing school for the daughters of monsters, as featured in the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 TV movie Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School.
"Those Monster High bimbos think they're so hot. Let's see them rock these bitchin' tutus!"

“Those Monster High bimbos think they’re so hot. Let’s see them rock these bitchin’ tutus!”

Scoob, Shaggy and Scrappy were employed at Miss Grimwood’s boarding school for a single school year as gym teachers, though they spent most of that year being scared, running away from people and things and having to save their students from a swamp witch with a web fetish. Anyways….
The school’s headmistress was (no prizes for guessing) Miss Grimwood, who had an octopus butler and a floating hand in her service, as well as a pet dragon named Matches who acted as the school’s ‘guard dog’. Miss Grimwood definitely had a preference for the macabre, but what kind of monster was she? She didn’t seem to possess any kind of dark power nor did she seem to come from any kind of supernatural or paranormal lineage. Maybe she was just a Goth.
Miss_Grimwood
“I did assemble this outfit at Hot Topic, yeah.”
 
Now on to the students. First up, we have Sibella, the daughter of Count Dracula and one of his many, many, many wives, girlfriends, lovers and flings. (Vampires are the playas of the monster world, after all.) Sibella is very kind, polite and generous, though not above using vampire powers or her bat form to her advantage in sports such as volleyball and racing. She has a frequent habit of making puns on words to make them relate to vampires, such as “Fangtasic to meet you.”(Yay, puns.) She seems to be creative with clothing, making a bat robe for her father and a fire proof one for Matches, and she seems to be able to go out in the sunlight with no difficulty, though she doesn’t appear to sparkle in sunlight either.
“Darling, I sparkle everywhere I am! I just got it goin’ on like that!”
 
In addition to being the second tallest of the ghoul girls (tied with Phantasma and second only to Elsa) Sibella is, dare I say, the hottest among the girls. I’m starting to like the color purple more and more…
Sam-Kinison
“SHE’S AN UNDERAGE CARTOON VAMPIRE, YA FREAK! STOP THINKIN’ WITH YER PANTS AND GET ON WITH THE ARTICLE! OH-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!!”
 
Next up, we have Winnie Werewolf, a brave, tough, sometimes over-confident 8-year-old lycanthrope, possessing superhuman strength, speed, and senses and perhaps as a result of her wolf-like nature, she is notably the most athletic of the girls, once challenging Sibella to a race.
Winnie Werewolf
“Yeah, I’m pretty awesome at sports. I basically rule all of ’em! Well, except maybe swimming. I don’t swim much; when I do the pool sometimes gets clogged with globs of hair. I have body hair issues.”
 
Next there’s Elsa Frankenteen, the teenage Frankenstein monster. She’s a tad slow and lumbering, with a facility for stating the obvious, but she’s got heart (or to be more accurate, 2 of them) and while lacking the speed and agility of the other girls, she compensates with great strength and extreme durability.
Elsa Frankenteen
“I guess I’m pretty strong. I did once lift the entire school to retrieve a soccer ball. But my real passion is Mad Science. I’m majoring in Dark Matter studies and minoring in Building an Army of Atomic Supermen.”
 
Next up is Phantasma the phantom. She’s loud, hyperactive, wacky and silly, with a high-picthed cackling laugh, but is actually smarter than she appears. She also loves to play, float, and run around. Being a ghost, she can float through many objects. She can also spin her head around like an owl. As a spectre, Phantasma can become intangible at will. This makes her able to phase through both inanimate objects and people alike. She’s also a talented organ player, having composed an original piece which she wrote and performed with with Miss Grimwood’s hand keyboard with her octopus butler on drums; it was called “Duet for Three Hands and Six Tentacles”.
“I’m totally gonna be a rock ‘n’ troll musician when I grow up! I’m gonna come on stage in a flashy cape and start my shows by saying, ‘It’s showtime, folks!'”
beetlejuice_by_invitroblossoms
 
“You’re adorable, kid, but that’s my line. The only things scarier than me are copyright lawyers!”
 
Finally we have Tanis the mummy, the youngest and shortest of all the girls, with an innocent demeanor. She’s a literal thumb-sucker. Cute, but not nearly as hot as Monster High’s Cleo DeNile.
“Who says I’m not hot? Underneath these wrappings, I look like Zoe Saldana!”
 
Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that Miss Grimwood’s Finishing School for Ghouls was adjacent to Calloway Military School, a military academy for boys. the Grimwood Ghouls had a long-running rivalry with Calloway due to the boys constantly beating them at volleyball (this is why Scooby and pals were brought on as gym teachers in the first place). I wonder if the girls like the boys now?
“Like them? Why, they were DELICIOUS!”
So no rematch, then.

Ad Nausea: Slimer Toothpaste

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Cartoon characters schilling consumer products is nothing new in the industry, and The Real Ghostbusters, the 1986 to 1991 Saturday morning cartoon series based on the 1994 hit movie was no exception. When going through the archives, I came across this commercial for a product called Slimer Toothpaste. It even boasts an appearance by the green ghost himself, but only Slimer. Come now, you weren’t expecting any of the Ghostbusters themselves to appear in this, did you? They’d want money, especially Peter. Apparently, it was toothpaste that came in 2 flavors: grape and bubble gum. I never saw this stuff being sold anywhere, but it’s not the strangest idea I’ve ever heard. It still sounds better than OJ orange flavored cereal or Cap’n Crunch’s Punch Crunch. That stuff was straight up nasty! Anyway, here’s the commercial:


Check out Slimer’s facial expression when he and the kids are about to brush. Dude looks lobotomized. He was probably so blitzed out on Ecto Cooler that he doesn’t even remember shooting that ad. Anyway, is it just me, or is the mom in this ad kind of hot?

OK…It must just be me, then. Moving on. Given the time frame of this commercial. It’s possible that this ad served as a precursor to the season of the Real Ghostbusters Saturday morning cartoon when the shows’ producers decided to have Slimer star in his own solo segments and even put the character’s name over the title.
Anyone remember this?

Yeah, that’s pretty much my thoughts on that season also.

Why Dipper and Mabel Pines are Awesome!

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  1. They’re twins. By now the awesomeness of twins should be self-explanatory.
  2. They get to spend the summer with supernatural oddities, mysteries waiting to be solved, and a known con-man.
  3. Dipper is an academic genius. We like geniuses here almost as much as we like twins.
  4. Dipper has a birthmark in the shape of the Big Dipper, proof that he’s a genuine mutant. The Xavier Academy should be calling any minute.
  5. Mabel rocks those stylin’ braces and a seemingly endless supply of colorful sweaters with cute decals.
  6. Mabel’s an avid collector of stuffed animals, though she only actually loves half of them.
  7. Mabel’s kind of crazy. We like crazy.
  8. Dipper’s done a brief stint in county jail for assisting his great uncle in a counterfeit money making scam. Dude’s got prison cred.
  9. Dipper once brought a fighting video game character to life. I’m waiting for someone to teach me that trick with Chun-Li.
  10. Mabel has a pet pig.
  11. They’ve played Laser Tag in the future!
  12. Mabel’s best pals with a deep voiced Amazon and a girl who wears cutlery on her hands.
  13. They’ve gone trick-or-treating as jars of peanut butter and jelly.
  14. Dipper’s been called cute by Wendy Corduroy in the past.
  15. Dipper’s a fan of girly bubblegum pop music. Way to tear down the walls of gender stereotyping, bro.
  16. They boast the title of “Mystery Twins”! That’s just cool to say.

Nerdvana: My Ever Changing Moods by The Style Council

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On this edition of Nerdvana, I’m going to share with you another one of the songs that I’ve been grooving with. This is one that I first heard in 1984 on the late TBS 6 hour music video block titled Night Tracks, basically TBS’ answer to MTV (You know this was back in the 1980s, because MTV was showing music videos back then. This was back when the ‘M’ in MTV stood for “music” instead of “mediocre”). What I find interesting about this song is that it’s lyrics are about dealing with problems and inner conflicts, yet it’s sang in such a bright, upbeat tone. Now, whenever I’m going through some sort of creative headache or conflict, this song goes through my brain. Here’s “My Ever Changing Moods” by The Style Council. Enjoy.