Gaffer Tape's YouTube Reviews of Awesome Candy-Creating Goodness! (The Facts of Life/Star Trek III Conspiracy!) — Page 14

Get a squeaky one!

At this point I think Gaff should invest in a squeaky-chair sound effect. And then tell everyone his chair squeaks again.

I won't be happy with some crap CG sound effect.  I want the real thing, or I'm starting a petition website with a forum 2... 3... EIGHT times as good as this one!

What the hell does George have to do with this?  Oh... wait... yeah, that's right.  He's the one who took my chair away!  It's all his fault.  That damned Lucas.  He ruins everything.  I guess that means you all should leave me alone about it and start complaining to Lucasfilm.  You should start a petition!

Who said anything about George? The Gaffer's Original Unaltered Chair was your fault!

Edit: DARN YOU FRINK! ALL THE WAY TO HECK!

I stand by my unsupported claim that it's all George Lucas's fault, and you should be taking it up with him.

(Oh, and I temporarily forgot my own name, but that's entirely irrelevant.)

A couple of new additions to the lineup.

First, my latest entry for the Who Reviews the Reviewers Contest.  This challenge was to review something at least ten years older than me with an emphasis on historical context.  I chose Sunset Boulevard.

The second was just a little pet project of mine.  I really liked my "News Marches Forward" segment, so I decided to do another one.  In my mind, after newsreels were replaced by television news broadcasts, the News Marches Forward program found new life shifting into educational filmstrips, starting with this little ditty, riffing on the final episode of Star Trek:

Why Women Can't Captain Starships

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Indeed.  I actually had never seen it until about a month ago.  Shame on me.  But I'm now glad I did.

A fantastic pair! One of the few AFI Top 25 movies I actually enjoyed and a unique review of a crappy Trek episode. A man of many talents you are, Mr Tape.

Why thank you.  To tell you the truth, though, I actually really like "Turnabout Intruder" and might like to do a serious analysis of it some day (although sfdebris has already done a great review of it).  Its bizarre premise that women can't captain starships is indeed... well, bizarre, especially considering that it's a Gene Roddenberry story.  But I love the concept of someone taking over the captain's body.  I love love love Shatner's extremely hammy performance ("MUTINYYYYYYYYY!") as well as the performances of all the rest of the characters.  And, most importantly of all, it's an episode that makes me think.  Granted, that requires me to substitute alternate premises to the episode to do so (such as that Janice is television's first transgendered storyline, or that Janice, batshit insane that she is, has taken feminism to its dangerous extreme by pawning off her own incompetence as just an act of sexism).  I'm not trying to apologize for the episode, because it certainly does deserve its criticism.  But if good Star Trek, or good science fiction, or good fiction, is supposed to make you think about things, then "Turnabout Intruder" does succeed for me on that level.

EDIT:  Oh, as my video should show, it also makes me think a little TOO much about how that whole Captain's Log thing works.  Janice in Kirk's body is making log entries, and so is Kirk in Janice's body.  How in the holy hell does that work?!  How does the whole log thing work at all?  How do people not access this?  DOES NOT COMPUTE!!!

It's probably worth mentioning that Sunset Boulevard won the top spot for the last round of the contest.  Let's see if I can do as well for this round.  This challenge was to review an album.  I've never done that before.  I'm somewhat musically-inclined, though, so let's see how it turned out.

Rubber Soul Review!

Nice shirt. Classy. Anyway, reviewing the review as I watch! Totally agree about Revolver being one of their best, it ties with Abbey Road. Nice use of the Feebles clip! I loved the mini-TV rant. OK, I never got "Drive my Car". Funny, I thought Norwegian Wood was about a lesbian. In general, you seem to know your stuff - I hope you knew a bunch about it without looking it up! Nowhere Man's definitely my favorite, personally. Also: Ringo is amazing in that cartoon. In My Life also is a very strong song!

So, basically, the cartoon clips were a good choice. But, why is Run for your Life so slow? Is this some mono-mix I'm unaware of?

Heh, I was hoping you'd like this one, bkev.  I just had a feeling you, specifically, would be bringing down the hammer on me if I screwed this one up, so I'm glad you like it.

So let's see... Norwegian Wood.  I've actually read both those things.  The way I see it is that the real-life inspiration was an affair (or one-night stand), but the lesbian aspect was a subtext for the scenario of the song.  As in, a real scenario was extrapolated as basis for a fictional song, sorta like how "Hey, Jude" was supposed to have been written for Julian Lennon, but Jude simply sounded better than Jules.  But basically the story for the song, as I've heard, is that the singer is invited over to a woman's house.  She cockteases him for a while (being a lesbian) before making him sleep in the tub.  He wakes up and sets fire to her Norwegian Wood-paneled apartment in revenge.

About Run for Your Life... hmm, I just listened to both the stereo version and the version I used in the video back to back, and the latter does seem just a bit slower.  For the songs where there actually were corresponding cartoon episodes dedicated to them, I just kept the corresponding audio rather than switching it out with the version I own.  I did this for two reasons.  1:  I'm lazy.  2:  All I own is the 1987 stereo mix of the album, which I know doesn't exactly have the best rep.  Through a good portion of their catalogue, The Beatles considered the mono mixing to be the standard, while stereo was more of a niche thing (it'll never catch on).  So I felt it was important to have what I assumed was the original mono mixing for as many of the songs as I could swing.  That said, I got all of my TV show clips from YouTube, so I have absolutely no idea if there were any conversion issues that might have affected playback speed.  As a matter of fact, given that I've heard that you have a decent vinyl collection, I was hoping maybe you could tell me. ^_^

Finally, as for your hoping I didn't look most of this up... I guess that depends on what you mean.  I mean, unless I was there to witness the events the first hand, or the information was just transmitted into my brain (either of which would have been really awesome), I would have had to have looked this up.  But I guess you mean if I looked this up solely for this review, in which case, no, most of this stuff I learned back in high school, although I did refresh myself before writing this just to make sure I wasn't making anything up.

I, of course, meant just for the review. You are correct.

And, the verdict on Run for Your Life is: the US mono issue is as fast as the stereo CD issue, so the cartoon was definitely incorrect. The more dominant guitar riffs even sound kind of awkward. I would definitely imagine the cartoon either used a different take or slowed it down to fit the music video.

If he won't plug it, I will! Gaff reviews... a review?

Aww, thanks, kev.  I appreciate your support, although it seems to have garnered as much attention as I expected when I hesitated posting a link to it.  Not that I don't love my OT friends and am sure they're relatively fond of me too.  But it's just soooo meta that I find it hard to believe anyone who doesn't already follow Geekvolution would find anything of interest in it.  But, you know, I do what I gotta do.  Still have a contest going on!

Heh, thanks, Frink.  I really appreciate that.  As for the, um, rushing of words, well, that's less of a tendency than it is an artificial construct.  For several of these contest videos, even after I prune my script as far as I think I can, and edit out as much footage as I can, I still find myself way over the time limit.  So to make up for that I actually do take my audio and speed it up a little.  And, yeah, it annoys me, and I think it was particularly bad on my more recent one (but don't tell anyone; the judges haven't done their deliberations yet).  I suppose that really doesn't make any difference to the watcher, and it might actually seem worse since you know I'm not only doing it on purpose but actually making it that way... Ah, well, my dirty little secret is out. =P

But at any rate, I'm flattered that I came to mind for late night baby-holding entertainment.  Sure I was the last choice, but I'll take what I can get. ^_~

So some people might have noticed in the "Last web/tv series seen" thread that I've been getting into Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  You might also have noticed that I particularly disliked the episode "Valiant."  Or I might just have an overinflated opinion of myself that anyone would notice anything I say.  But, anyway, it pissed me off so much that I just had to let out my rage in the most therapeutic way possible:  by making a video out of it.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine "Valiant" Rant!