Author: Carrie - Cannibalistic Nerd

The All-New Super Friends Round Up S2 Ep6A – “Shark”

Season 2, Episode 5, Storyline D – “Shark”

Original Airdate: October 15, 1977

Safety Segment
Superman, flying overhead, notices two boys on a bike. One is sitting on the handlebars so the one pedaling can’t see what he’s doing. They almost fall into a deep crevice in the sidewalk, but Superman rescues them just in time.

Superman chides them for “riding double” and then they discuss general bicycle safety. Do you see that hole in the ground? How in the hell did that happen and why aren’t there any warning signs? There should have been more talk about the un-blocked-off big-ass crack in the earth.

Short Synopsis: “A warm, sunny day at State Beach, where two teenagers will soon take a boat ride they will never forget.” – Narrator

Our cast of Wonder Twin Cautionary Tale Teenagers (notice we have yet another pair of deserted island cutoffs):

I had to name two of them myself.

The one dressed like an idiot (Mike) brags that he, “just broke the beach record – dove down to 60ft!” I don’t know anything about scuba diving. Is this impressive? I like to know how accurate the cartoon brags I’m watching are.

Mike declares he can dive anywhere, and to “just name it!” So, it is named by Wallpaper: Rocky Point Cave.

There’s then some exposition about all the sharks that hang out around there and that nobody tries to dive there because of it.

It’s a Shark of a Tale
There’s a shark at Rocky Point Cave. I sure didn’t see that coming.

Mike panics and turns over the boat, bringing Wallpaper into the water with him.

Karen and Left Blinker, who watched this happen from the beach, say they’re going to get help, but they aren’t shown seeking out a payphone so I’m not sure I believe them.

Mike and Wallpaper decide to swim back down to the rocks for protection (they share Mike’s oxygen).

Yay. The Wonder Twins.
Now it’s time for The Wonder Twins to show up and ruin everything.

Zan, Jayna, and Gleek arrive on the scene just in time and in their usual eagle-carrying-a-monkey-carrying-a-bucket-of-water configuration. Zan turns into an “ice boat” because he’s completely lame and worthless and Jayna turns into an octopus, in mid-air, which was really weird looking.

Can’t you just imagine Mid-Air Octopus flying around dispensing wisdom and general tips? No? I’ve just finally lost it because of all the Super Friends viewing? Fair enough.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah, Jayna stops the shark:

Lesson Learned
Once they’re all out of harm’s way, Mike let’s everyone know: “No more braggin’ for me. From now on I’ll stick to diving where I know it’s safe.”

Or, in other words:

P.S. I’m posting Super Friends outtakes on the Cannibalistic Nerd Facebook page. So, if you need a mid-week Super Friends pick-me-up, that’s the place to get it.

If you would like to see these shenanigans for yourself, Season 2 is available on DVD.

What a Discovery

I used to occasionally watch a show called If Walls Could Talk on HGTV a while back. Basically, it showed people talking about the amazing treasures and historical artifacts they found in their fancy old homes. The camera would follow people up and down creaky old stairs while they explained how they discovered this or that. Examples (paraphrased and possibly made-up):

  • “I was in the attic trying to escape from my family’s oppressive neediness and while I was rocking back and forth in the corner, I noticed a loose floorboard and lo and behold, there was a first edition of The Wizard of Oz under it.”
  • “I was burying my mistress, I mean, some jars of pennies in my crawlspace when my shovel hit something hard. Turns out, it was an old tin box with a perfectly preserved Civil War-era flag in it. I’m lucky to be so homicidal, I mean, thrifty.”
  • “I was having a good wank in my ‘jack-off shack,’ which is the hall coat closet, and it finally dawned on me, this trunk that I always sit on in here while I look at Hustler didn’t belong to us. So I looked inside, and it was a whole bunch of stuff that used to belong to Chester A. Arthur!”

You know, things like that.

Well, I had my own If Walls Could Talk moment this week. As you may know, we’re currently staying with my mom while we try and figure out what we want to do while our still not bought house is not bought. Our cat is currently staying in the large room over the garage, which for the last 25 years has been called “The New Room” since its addition in the late 1980s.

In the early 2000s, my sister lived up in The New Room while she attended college. The New Room has a bathroom with a small closet. I’m currently using this small closet (which also houses Kenbie and all his/her friends) to store the cat’s food. Well, and here’s my moment:

  • “I was yelling at my cat to for the love of God shut the hell up and getting out his food to hopefully appease him, when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, taped to the inside wall of the closet, this:”

Y’all, it’s just like finding the diary of a Union soldier that shows great bravery in the face of turmoil, except it’s about not mixing up your shit and shower sponges and I see the person who made it multiple times a week. Still, it’s so amazing to have such a historical glimpse into the house’s past.

Have you ever found anything interesting in your house? I know it will be hard to top the sponge color code but I’d still love to hear about it.

And the winner of the giveaway is…

Frankly, I’m shocked at how many people loved and wanted this thing:

I would say, “there’s no accounting for taste,” but coming from someone who watches The Super Friends every fucking week, I think it would be a little hypocritical.

After getting down one of my mom’s million and a half baskets (she owns more baskets than any other human I’ve met), and putting each entrant’s name on a post-it note and folding it in half just so, Tom pulled out the winner’s name. Congratulations to Amy of Lucy’s Football. You will be receiving this prestigious award in the mail this or next week.

To all of you who didn’t win, I know that with time your hearts will mend and your tears will dry. Remember that life isn’t about material possession, but about what the shell poker game trinket represents – ample supply of beverages and cheating in retaliation of not being offered one. Let’s never lose sight of that.

The All-New Super Friends Round Up S2 Ep6A – “The Enforcer”

Season 2, Episode 5, Storyline D – “The Enforcer”

Original Airdate: October 15, 1977

Pre-synopsis warning: this segment was only about 7 minutes long, so there wasn’t much to work with. That also probably means that the third storyline is going to be tortuously long. Next week is another teenager-related cautionary tale. It’s gonna be a rough few weeks, folks.

Short Synopsis: “On a desolate island in the South Pacific…” – Narrator

Narrator has fallen asleep again. We see an older man with half a head of hair dodging red laser beams from robotic-looking creatures. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it, Narrator?

He’s quite spry for a man his age, and in order to escape the robot-things, he dives off a cliff. He washes up on shore at a different island days later, having seemingly made himself a raft while floating in the ocean.

Some islanders help him and contact the Super Friends, telling them he has an “incredible story.” We’ll see about that.

Aquaman and Wonder Woman are on the case.

Here’s this incredible story we’ve heard so much about.
“I am Garth (my guess) One, Super Friends, I was the leader of a peaceful civilization that lives hidden beneath the island I came from. However, our people became corrupt, and law an order vanished. In an attempt to restore order, the council overruled me, and voted to put The Enforcer in temporary command of the state. A ruthless outlaw, with his own army of criminals, when the council realized its mistake it was too late.”

Eh, I’ve heard better.

“I think it’s time The Enforcer met the Super Friends.” – Wonder Woman

Yeah, that’ll show him! Nobody wants to have to meet The Super Friends.

The Enforcer and his army – when compromise goes wrong.
The Enforcer looks like someone took two different action figures, some kind of web-handed yellow creature and a purple something, and combined them into one:

The army soldiers, I can only imagine a writer telling the animators – “I want knight’s suit of armor meets cheerleader uniform meets Metropolis.”

Wonder Woman needs to take Disguises 101 again.
As soon as they arrive at the under-island civilization, Garth is apprehended by The Enforcer and taken into custody. Aquaman and Wonder Woman do the old “knock out some bad guys and take their uniforms” trick to rescue Garth.

Luckily, the villains are just as stupid and don’t notice.

Oh, my.

Aquaman and Wonder Woman find Garth One being strung up over a vat of some kind of boiling substance. Is this the kind of kinky stuff in Fifty Shades of Grey? Was it influenced by The Super Friends? Nevermind, I don’t care.

Then, Wonder Woman lassoes two measly soldiers and proclaims the Super Friends the victors. Huh? Basically The Enforcer and, like, four friends took control of an entire civilization? Oh, wait, it’s that they only have 7 minutes to tell a story? Ok, yeah, that makes more sense.

The Enforcer pulls your typical “NU UH, nanner nanner boo boo, I have an escape hatch!” move and then tries to swim away. But he’s no match for Aquaman the swordfish Aquaman suckers into helping him.

Peace is restored and everybody learned their lesson. Snooooze.

P.S. I’m posting Super Friends outtakes on the Cannibalistic Nerd Facebook page. So, if you need a mid-week Super Friends pick-me-up, that’s the place to get it.

If you would like to see these shenanigans for yourself, Season 2 is available on DVD.

If at first you don’t succeed, try it on, try it on again. Unless you’re me.

I hate shopping for clothes. Even more specifically, I hate trying on clothes. I hate every moment of the experience.

First of all, I’ve seen too many “very special episodes” of TV shows about shoplifting to not know that there’s some person sitting at some control booth watching me change. We all know you’re out there, you mouth breathers with your bar-b-cue potato chip fingers, just waiting to catch me shoving tank tops and bras into my purse. When I arrive at the changing room and I do a weird dance in front of the mirror with both my middle fingers in the air – that is directed at you, sir or madam.

I also hate the number cards they pass out when you go and try clothes on. Never are my insecurities over my ability to count so tested as when I have to come up with the correct number of garments I want to wriggle in and out of as quickly as I can in that florescent nightmare of a room. What if I give the wrong number? Will I waste away in prison, cursing myself for my inability to correctly  tally up pants? Will those miscounted pants – the two I never had in the first place, become an enduring mystery, like D.B. Cooper’s money? “Nobody knows where C.E. Williford may have hidden those two pairs of khakis. We may never know,” Dateline will tell it’s viewers. “But I didn’t! I didn’t hide two pairs of khakis, I just count worse than a toddler,” I will yell, but it will fall on deaf ears.

I like to have pictures with my blog posts. This is a drawing of a pair of pants, just in case you’re not sure what I’m talking about.

Last week I had to face the harsh reality that I have grown too fat for all but two pairs of pants – one pair of capris, and one pair of black jeans. I live in the South, which means in the summer it feels like a sadistic grandma is smothering you with a soaking wet hot quilt. If my black jeans had them, they would have rolled their eyes hearing me explain that although it’s 102 degrees outside, I’m sure if I stay in the shade it’ll be fine. But, even I am not that delusional. I only had one pair of useable pants. This was a sad realization, and doubly so because it meant having to buy new pants.

I made my way to the local Super Target, grabbed 3 different pairs of pants of varying sizes (I did count correctly – things were looking up), and headed to the dressing room. Even if there’s a lock on the door, I have a constant fear of being walked-in on, like someone will pick the lock because they’re certain nobody’s in there. This has never actually happened to me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t worry about it; it’s is a free country.

I quickly tried on all three pairs of pants. I bet I looked like a contestant on Double Dare trying to get through the obstacle course in time. One after the other – none of them fit. They were too small. After removing and individually cursing each pair, I gathered my things and left the dressing room. As instructed by the attendant (is that the right word for that job?), I left the unwanted and now cursed pants on a giant pile for someone else to put back (that always bothers me, I feel like I’m shirking my responsibility to put things back where they belong).

This is when a rational person would then get some larger sizes to go back and try on. No. I don’t go back in to dressing rooms after I’ve gone once. I take the information I gathered from the first trip – “those pants were too small for me” – and jump to conclusions – “the next size up is obviously the correct choice.” I went to the pants what were the least tightest and bought the next size up, being so thankful that I’m smart enough to outwit a second trip to try pants on.

The next morning I woke up and grabbed my new pair of pants and I swear I heard my formerly sole pair of pants, a crumpled, broken heap in the corner of the room, crying tears of joy.

The new pants are too big. Did I return them and resign myself to another voyage to the fitting room? I think we all know the answer to that. No, they’re not so big that I can’t wear them. I just need a belt. If the belt were a tied rope, yes, I would look like a hobo. But, I would rather look like an overweight hobo who still somehow manages to have pants that are too big than take my clothes off at a place other than my own home for the second time in a week.

Life is about growing, learning lessons that help you improve yourself. With age comes wisdom and all that jazz. What lesson did I learn from The Ballad of Buying a Second Pair of Pants? Fuck lessons.

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This post was in response to Studio30 Plus‘ writing prompts this week.

read to be read at yeahwrite.me