gwyn | Entries tagged with go team venture!

Behind again! Gah, life is kicking my ass. I really love copyediting these travel guidebooks, but they are huge and an extreme amount of reading and dense, code-driven text, so they take so much time. I haven't even started my Yuletide story, but partly that's because of the lack of information, and thus idea sparkage, that my recipient provided. Or, rather, didn't provide (anything at all). I do have an idea for a treat story for one of the only other people who asked for this teeeeeny fandom, and I feel guilty that I'd much rather write this one, but hopefully I can do both in the timeframe allotted.

Anyways! Memage!

trepkos said: The most reckless thing you have ever done, but would do again.

You know, I'm not a very reckless person. Sometimes I wish I was, because those kinds of people always seem very carpe diem to me, and at times I wish I could live my life like, say, Tony Stark. But there's a reason my college friends called me "mom." I was always the responsible, sensible, adult one even when I was a kid, the person everyone called in an emergency. Not that I didn't have fun or do ridiculous things, but for the most part, I always chose the sensible path. But when I was a kid we lived across the street from someone who drove sports cars in races at Seattle International Raceway (rest in peace, SIR). One day he took me and his eldest daughter, who was my buddy, in the car around the track a couple times, at around 125 mph. This was a tiny little Alpine Sunbeam with only a rollbar up top for protection. Oh my god, it was the funnest thing ever. I can totally, completely understand the wherefores of how Paul Walker died -- even in a car as notoriously touchy as the Porsche he was in, that speed and cornering and rush is just...there is nothing like it in the world. If someone would take me around a track in a racecar again (or let me drive), I would go in a heartbeat. Yeah, I know, speed kills, but it's also really fucking fun.

arduinna Speak to me of Venture Bros! How did you get into it, who do you love best, what bugfuckery most (or least) appeals to you -- whatever you want, basically.

My love affair with the Venture Bros. started because my dear friend Keith, on one of his visits to Seattle, brought a copy of the first couple episodes, and presented it to me as a twisted take on Johnny Quest (which was one of my favorite cartoons of childhood). Since I had just seen not long before that the Harvey Birdman episode where Dr. Quest and Race Bannon have a custody battle over Johnny and Hadji, I was primed for more Quest parody.

I thought it was the weirdest cartoon I'd ever seen, and kind of creepy (the skinned dog, the peeing on the mummy corpse), but OMG I laughed so, so hard. I hadn't laughed like that at TV in such a long time. I totally fell in love with Brock Samson, because he was basically Race Bannon and Race was the closest I had ever come to having an animated character be a BSO (for some reason, which I've never understood, as much as I love animantion, I cannot feel fannish or be in love with a character the way I can with 3D live people. I don't understand it, but it just doesn't connect for me. It's weird). I just love Brock -- his love of weapons, his skills, his ridiculous mullet hair and oversized build...and his droll, dry sarcasm, so perfectly voiced by the inimitable Patrick Warburton.

They are so very out there. I haven't enjoyed it as much in the latter seasons, because I didn't understand a lot of what was going on once Brock left the employment of Dr. Venture. But I love how he's both devoted to the Ventures, still, and yet so disdainful of them because let's face it, that family is monumentally stupid. The Monarch also kills me, especially his love affair with Doctor Girlfriend (which, talk about bugfuckery: having her be voiced by a growly basso profundo), who should never put up with anyone that pathetic and yet she loves him unequivocally. There is no joke too crass, no idea too far gone for them. It's brilliant and so, so weird.

My favorite moment is probably still when The Monarch was telling someone about how he met a woman on "the LiveJournal" and that she told him he was "teh-heh sex, whatever that means." OMG I replayed that scene about a million times (and my friend

belmanoir does an incredibly precise imitation of this). I've watched a lot of other Adult Swim shows, and none of them have really caught my fancy the way Venture Bros. does.

First off, thanks to

ianmcin for this link to the new season of Venture Bros. trailer. It's so awesome, and I think I may have to change my LJ header to be "Be important quietly."

Second, I got my new teefs yesterday. Or rather, my aligners. It was a bad day all around (I went to the wrong office, since they have two, and then everyone seemed to make an unpleasant face or lecture me about it, and it wasn't like I could explain to them how insanely tired and worn out I was from a con or anything), and when they informed me about something called IPR, where they shave down some of your teeth so that they will be better able to position more correctly as the aligners do their job, I just about cried. NO one mentioned this to me before. I have extremely sensitive parts of my teeth to match my insanely sensitive skin, and these are of course the parts that will get filed. And as far as I know, they don't use anesthetic when doing IPR because everyone insists it doesn't hurt, but even when he was filing the attachments (more on that later) yesterday, I could feel that nerve sensitivity rocketing through me and I jumped more than a few times (which he seemed to ignore).

My initial consultation was with the female ortho (they are a married team), but both times I've been since I've had the male ortho. And he's not exactly friendly seeming or giving me a vibe that he's remotely interested in who I am as a patient, the way the female one was. In fact, the consultation was remarkably nice, everyone involved seemed concerned and interested in my issues and finding ways to smooth them over, but since they now have my money, everyone's been brusque and unfriendly and just a bit too businesslike for something that produces so many emotions in people. And I don't know if it was because I was late yesterday or what, but I left feeling really depressed. (I'm sure a large part of it was the assistant, Greta, whose Nazi-esque demeanor was right in line with her German accent and sour disposition.)

The attachments are these little "buttons" they put on some teeth so that the aligners have something to grip and move the teeth around. I had no idea these things would be so freaking deep -- they are raggedy and like little fingers on your teeth, instead of the more pimply type shape I expected. And when I've managed to get these aligners off and eat, they hang far enough over the edge of the molars that I've chewed holes in my cheek and it really fucking hurts. And that's after I get the freaking aligners off, which... jesu christo, they are hard to get out. It took me nearly 20 minutes to get the top aligner off the first time, and I was looking all over the house for something strong enough that I could pull them off. I even considered buying a crochet hook for them.

mackiemesser had warned me about this but I think until you really experience it, you can't understand. My gums are all gouged up from my fingernails and my nails are all ragged and split. There's a tool you can buy on Amazon I guess called an outie, and despite the name, i think I may need one. Supposedly it gets easier, but... I guess this is also why people lose weight.

I discovered a forum for Invisalign people and it's proving helpful. A lot of people with similar issues, though I haven't found any posts about tripping the gag reflex like mine are (it's the sharp edges sitting at the side of my tongue, which is always what triggers the reflex). I guess there's still a lot of wait and see. Going up to the store this afternoon for hydrogen peroxide for cleaning them (I don't understand why someone would use those denture cleaners with all those toxic chemicals!) a little extra because boy do they make me salivate. There's something about the plastic in my mouth that's turning me into a drooling Newfie (the dog, not the people from the province) or something and I think that will produce a lot of odor as I go along. The last thing I want on top of weirdly coated looking teeth and a lisp is scary bad breath. (Oh, and the weirdest thing of all? It feels like there is something alien on my teeth that I HAVE TO GET IT OFF RIGHT NOW OMG and I really shouldn't. It's like... claustrophobia, but with teeth. I can't even begin to explain it. But it's making me quite mad.)

Anyways, I still have a post to do about the con and the vids and such, but I'm busy focusing on my two years of misery ahead, so I don't want to interrupt my self-absorption. ;-)

Current Mood: distressed
Current Music: Eliza Carthy

I've been working on catching up with the season 2 The Venture Brothers episodes and have all but last night's finally watched. As usual, I've laughed so hard I've choked a couple times, and on the times I forgot the no-drinkie rule while watching, spit or snorted my iced tea a little too often. If you've never seen the show, this is me wearing my pimp hat and telling you You must watch this cartoon. It airs on Comedy Central's Adult Swim showcase of very grown-up, weird, sick, twisted, and mostly delightful shows, and each episode is only about 20 minutes long, give or take a few.

There is so much packed into each episode it's hard to even discuss; it's one of those shows you really have to see to believe what they get away with. The humor is so wonderfully sick, the pop culture references fly so fast, and the dialog is so crisp and sharp that I can't always keep up. I often have to watch eps a couple times to get all the jokes I missed while I was laughing.

It's essentially a riff on the classic boy-adventure cartoons of the '60s, very notably Johnny Quest. Here Johnny and Hadji are replaced by Hank and Dean Venture, the stupidest boys you could ever meet. In fact, they are so dumb that their father, the Dr. Quest character morphed into a vain, self-absorbed, clueless super-scientist called Dr. Venture, actually made clones of them because he knew they wouldn't live to reach adulthood. Fortunately, everyone on Team Venture is protected by Brock Samson (the Race Bannon character taken to ridiculous, hilarious heights), super-spy, former super-military guy, killer with aplomb, mullet-wearing ladies' man. I adore Brock. He's voiced by Patrick Warburton in his best monotone tough-guy mode, and he's hilarious and freakish. He'd do anything for the Venture boys and for Doc, but he won't hesitate to call them jackasses or insult them when they're being idiotic.

Much of the adventure and threat for the Team Venture comes from the Monarch, the lamest supervillain ever (and he knows it -- in an ep from a few weeks ago, he responds to a sharp question about his demographic appeal with a "I'm wearing a f---ing butterfly costume, what age group do you think I appeal to?" He still can't get over losing his villainness honey Dr. Girlfriend (who looks like a bombshell but speaks with a mobster-style deep New Yawk voice), and he always seems to want to make the Ventures pay somehow, even though he never really succeeds. He went to prison for a brief time, during which, he explains, he met a girl "on the Live Journal, which I kept in prison -- I've been blogging. After I posted a picture of my prison-sculpted abs, she commented that I was 'foin' and told me I was 'teh sex', whatever that means." Or something like that, I can never hear everything because I'm laughing too hard.

Dr. Venture has some oddball friends in the weird science community and in the super hero area, including Dr. Orpheus, who mostly gave all that up so he could be a stay-at-home dad. There is absolutely no political correctness about this show -- one of the friends has albinism, which comes in for many jokes as does his swishy behavior even though he doesn't admit to being gay, and he hangs around with a hydrocephalitic, very tiny man who shpeaks like thish, and wears an eye patch. You can kind of imagine how much mileage they get out of all that, and those are only the beginning. Jokes are made at everyone's expense, and it's unfailingly hilarious.

I love the spoofing of Johnny Quest, one of my favorite cartoons of my childhood -- recently they even had a walking eye that looks very much like the one in the credits of JQ. For a while they even had a dog that was a lot like Bandit, only, you know, stupider. And by making Brock obsessed with het sex, you would think they'd have toned down the underlying homosexual subtext that always existed with Race and Dr. Quest (which Harvey Birdman, another Adult Swim favorite, exploited so wonderfully in the Bannon vs. Quest custody battle episode a few years ago), but they haven't at all, really.

They get mileage out of everything on this show, and if you like your pop culture jokes to come thick and fast, this is the show for you. The first season is out on DVD, and I'm sure Comedy Central will re-run a lot of this season when it's done. In the meantime, you can visit their hilarious web site here for a rundown on the characters, special stuff that they put up there, and some clips to see just why it's so damn funny. Run, watch. Seriously, it's great. Go, Team Venture!