Friday In My Mind

Friday again? Didn't we have one last week? Oh well, here goes...

Twitter Goes Boom! Again.

Thanks to Firefox Monitor, I bring you news of yet another in a never-ending stream of data breaches. Seriously, these will literally never end. Even though it's really tempting just to ignore the notifications, I always feel I ought to do something...

It does get particularly irritating when the source is 

a) Something I signed up to a decade ago

and

b) Have pretty much never logged into since

not to mention

c) Have no intention of ever logging into again.

So, this morning I dug out all my Twitter details, which, yes, I still have, thank-you, and changed all of them. Should I ever want to use Twitter, which will never happen, I now have a specific email address just for that. It will not be used for anything else, which means it will never be used at all. 

Now no-one will be able to steal my unused Twitter account with no followers and no posting history and pretend to be me, someone no-one has ever heard of. Phew!

So Long, Tracy Hyde

Here's the timeline:

Ten years ago: For Tracy Hyde form in Japan "as a solo project for Natsubot".

One week ago: I "discover" For Tracy Hyde, while searching for something entirely unconnected on YouTube.

Three days ago: I share my discovery with the world - or at least the infinitesimal part of it that reads music posts here. I'm less than effusive, observing "It may be shameful to admit it but this is exactly the kind of song I'd probably skip over if it was by an English or American band."

One day ago, morning: Pitchfork reviews For Tracy Hyde's latest album, Hotel Insomnia, giving it a big 7.6 thumbs up under the headline "The latest album from the Japanese shoegaze band shimmers with restless yearning, a sense of wonder kicking like a fluttering heartbeat in the chest."

One day ago, afternoon: Pitchfork reports "For Tracy Hyde, Japanese Shoegaze Band, Break Up".

I  hope it wasn't anything I said...

I Like Cartoons

No-one calls them "cartoons" any more, do they? If it was good enough for Top Cat...

Once again, it seems I'm watching a lot of animated television. I swear it's not intentional. It just keeps happening.

I mentioned how frustrating I found it, not to be able to footnote my entries in last year's musical Advent Calendar. Case in point, Day Nine, which featured Woofin' and Meowin' by Inventory Full favorites Superorganism.

This tune was written specifically as the theme for the Christmas Special of a show called Housebroken, a Fox animated comedy featuring Lisa Kudrow as "A dog named Honey who runs group therapy sessions to help neighborhood animals manage the neuroses brought on by their owners and each other." I had never heard of the show before the song popped up on one of the music feeds I follow but pretty soon I'd seen every episode.

Luckily for me, since the show has no distribution in the UK, some kind-but-arguably-irresponsible person has posted them all on YouTube. Even more luckily, as yet no-one has put a stop to it. 

I wasn't expecting great things, as I'm sure you won't be if you just watched the awkward, official Fox trailer at the head of this section, but I was substantively impressed. The show's way better than I imagined it would be. 

Housebroken is a smart, funny. well-written show that frequently goes in directions I didn't anticipate. The characterisations are solid, the situations believable-for-sitcom and there's a delirious sense of surrealism hanging around the whole thing. Highly recommended, especially for anyone with pets.

Sadly, I've consumed all the Housebroken content that's available right now but I have two other much longer-running animated shows on the go, both on Amazon Prime. One's a very old favorite that I belatedly realised I'd never really seen that much of; the other's a show I'd never heard of until a couple of weeks ago, almost certainly because it's Canadian. 

It took a combination of the worldwide web and the growth of streaming services to reveal the depth and breadth of Canadian popular culture to the world. Now the curtain's been lifted, it's catch-up time. This particular revelation is the animated spin-off of a live-action show I really want to track down as well. 

They're both called Corner Gas. I imagine some people in the US may know the show but as far as I can tell it never had distribution in most of Europe (Finland and Cyprus being the exceptions). Instead, for some arcane marketing reason, it showed mainly in the Middle East and North Africa. 

The animated version reminds me very strongly of King of the Hill, a show I watched in the '90s. It also has some similarities to recent Canadian sitcom hit Kim's Convenience and US classic Newhart, although in none of those shows was the main character a comic-book fan, something that automatically puts Corner Gas ahead on points.

The other show will, I'm sure, be familiar to most people reading this. It's Daria.  

I watched a few episodes of Daria on Channel 4 in the '90s but they were mostly out of sequence and I remember little about them. What I mostly remember Daria for is the voice-pack for Baldur's Gate I downloaded and installed that made my character speak only in phrases sampled from Tracy Grandstaff's performance as the title character, Daria Morgendorffer.

As you might imagine, that gave my first play-through of the game a certain edge it otherwise wouldn't have had. I lost that voice-pack when I changed computers and my second run at the game was nowhere near as compelling without it. 

It's been a revelation to watch the show from the beginning, learning who all the characters are and how they interact. I'd remembered it as something close to a monologue but it's really more of an ensenble show, as are most really good sitcoms. The animation is incredibly minimal, as was the unfortunate norm of the time, but the script and voice acting more than makes up for the lack of visual finesse.

Renewal Patrol

While we're on the subject of TV shows, I just finished the third season of Doom Patrol. As is my practice, I immediately tabbed over to Google to find out if there was going to be a fourth. Question expecting the answer "No".

To my amazement, not only was a fourth season commissioned, it's already showing on HBO Max. Given the frequent reports of cancellations to various DC projects following the appointment of James Gunn as Studio CEO, it seemed to me, having watched with increasing amusement the extent to which the showrunners of Doom Patrol were willing to subvert the entire concept of superheroics, there would be little chance of a slot in the supposedly more commercially-focused New DCU.

Then again, given the timeframes, I guess Season Four is already legacy product. Season Five has to be the one that's in doubt. I have yet to watch any of the current, fourth, season, which has no UK distribution at present, but it would be deliciously ironic should it turn out to be the final exposure. 

Doom Patrol holds the record, as far as I'm aware, for longest set-up for a superhero team. I thought two seasons from Cloak and Dagger was pushing it but we've watched these characters bicker and equivocate for three full seasons over whether they are - or even want to be - any kind of team. They don't even get a collective name until the final episode of Season Three, when Cliff "Robotman" Steele comes up with... Doom Force. 

Personally, I'd like to see a spin-off show featuring Dorothy and the Dead Boy Detectives, the team of paranormal investigators (Two ghosts and a medium.) with whom she leaves the show in Episode Three of the third season. Maybe they'll be back in Season Four. I hope so.

And that's about all I have for today. Another Friday afternoon ground down to dust.

Onwards!