UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

I’ve never really watched Venture Bros. on Adult Swim, although I’ve long suspected that I might like it if I gave it a chance.

That suspicion was heightened tonight as I perused the DVDs at Target. To any average person, this cover design may fall somewhere between inexplicably weird and just generally poor. But to me, and to many other 30-somethings like me, it grabs you by the eyeballs and drags you over to pick it up. So authentic! Did they carry it over on the ba– oh holy crap, they did! Fake ’80s video game screenshot and all!

Yes, the package design for the Venture Bros. Season 3 DVD set is a faithful — no, absolutely dead on — reference to the classic package designs of late ’70s/early ’80s box designs for games from the Atari 2600. Or, to speak more accurately to the time period of the designs, the Atari Video Computer System. The solid, garish box color; the font; the overall layout; the watercolor collage art. It’s all vintage ’70s, vintage Atari, 100% perfect. They even faithfully reproduced (graphically, not physically) the fact that the boxes were always already smashed when you bought them at the store.

If you’re not familiar with those box designs, here are a few reference points for you (from AtariAge):

(And yes, since you’re wondering, I did go out of my way to pick six of the lamest Atari games I could think of.)

Facebook on the iPhone is a profoundly dissatisfying experience. The Facebook iPhone app is no good (at least it’s free), the iPhone-optimized Facebook website (http://iphone.facebook.com) is no good, and using the regular Facebook site on the iPhone is not exactly optimal either. Come to think of it, the regular site has its problems even when you’re viewing it on a computer.

But I’ve found a solution. There is, of course, one more way to access Facebook: the “standard” mobile version that gets served up to the mobile browsers in more feeble cellphones than the iPhone. Turns out you can access the mobile site from an iPhone, and it offers a lot of features that the iPhone-optimized site lacks. I suspect Facebook has abandoned further development on the iPhone-optimized site given that they’re also developing a full-fledged iPhone app, but since the app sucks, it’s a lose-lose situation for iPhone users.

As I said, you can access the regular mobile version from your iPhone, but if you just go to its main URL — http://m.facebook.com — from an iPhone, it automatically redirects you to http://iphone.facebook.com. So you have to trick it, which isn’t hard. Here’s the magic URL you’ll want to bookmark in Mobile Safari (and maybe on your computer as well):

Enjoy.

If you’re a regular user of Google, you probably know that Google likes to occasionally honor historical events by changing its logo for a day, in a way that symbolizes the event it’s honoring.

These are usually interesting (if for no other reason than simply what events the Google team deems worthy of their recognition), and sometimes quite artistic. But today’s Google Doodle is probably my favorite yet.

You see, today is the 25th anniversary of Tetris, one of the most iconic video games of all time.

And here’s the doodle:

I saw Up today, and I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I have enjoyed every Pixar movie (except A Bug’s Life which I frankly found a little boring). Some have been better than others. But I think I can safely say Up is the best one yet. The opening sequence was such a masterpiece of poetic, wordless, visual storytelling that I literally wept (wept! literally!) at the end of it, both because it was an emotional scene but also because it was just so beautiful.

From there the story becomes a bit more conventional but no less engaging, with a wonderful balance of humor, action and suspense. It’s a story wonderfully told, wonderfully acted, and artfully animated.

When it first became apparent in the mid-’90s that hand-drawn animated feature films were on the brink of extinction, I was dubious that computer animation could ever become as artistic as the best classic animation. I feel like Pixar reached that point with Finding Nemo, surpassed it with The Incredibles, (truly incredible), and finally became an art itself with Ratatouille. I thought the opening third of WALL-E maintained that level, although once the doughy humans appeared my enthusiasm waned. But I am pleased to say that Up has picked up where Ratatouille left off. The sight of thousands of brightly colored helium balloons billowing up from Carl’s house was a dazzling moment, and that was just the beginning.

Yes, I think Up is a success in just about every way. But the thing that has stuck with me most through the rest of the day is the impression Dug the dog made on me. He’s a wonderfully endearing, delightfully comic (without being cheesy or corny) character. Here’s a clip of our heroes first meeting him.

What little research I’ve done seems to suggest that most people who’ve bothered to react to it actually like this commercial, but I find it highly disturbing and totally unpleasant. It is ugly and stupid, and I hate it.

So, of course, I need to subject you to it.

https://youtu.be/mudOonoGK_U

OK. I just watched the whole thing now, and the 60-second version shown here is actually slightly funny with the voice over. But the 30-second version they actually show on TV all the time around here is all of the scary and ugly stuff with the funny removed, and is just a half minute of suck.