I was explaining to Michelle about why I am getting the "Starblazers" DVD series for the boys from Netflix. When I was a kid, "Starblazers" would come on in the afternoons about a half-hour after I got home from school. I pretty much never missed it, and it was my first experience was an anime series (as opposed to the typical adventure cartoons in which the plots never extended beyond a single episode).
I used to be into that show so much (this was in 1979-1980 when it came out, and I was 11-12 years old) that I would tape record episodes while watching the show so that I could listen to them later in my room. I guess I was already a pirate at that point since I was making unauthorized recordings and listening to them multiple times later. :) You have to understand this was before video games. If I had had a GameCube or the like back then, I probably never would have watched TV.
Anyway, watching it again now, I'm pretty amazed at how awful it is compared to the more modern-day stuff. The animation quality is horrible. The music is awful, lots of 70's influence in there (though I do like the little aria on the main menu which is an excerpt from the show's background music). Almost like a parody of "Starship Troopers", which was almost a parody of itself. The boys seem to be into it, though, so I'll keep going with it. Not too many movies on Netflix right now that I'm just chomping at the bit to see.
We finished watching the entire Robotech series. Now that's one I wanted to watch but it was on every morning at 8am. I had to leave for school by 8:15, though, so I always missed at least half the episode and often more than that because I was getting ready to go. The boys really liked it, so I'm glad we went though the set.
Oh, and by the way, prior to my changing the name of the comment script from mt-comments.cgi to (something random).cgi, we were denying an average of one spam per minute for the past several months. It was really that bad. Since I changed that filename, we have had zero spam attempts in the past four hours. So that simple change so far has led to a factor of 1000 better spam defense. I'll report again in a week.
Posted by Observer at January 30, 2005 02:14 PMComments on entries can only be made in pop-up windows while those entries are still on the main index page. Sorry for the inconvenience this causes, but this blocks about 99.99% of the spam the blog receives.
I am repeatedly amazed at Observer's appalling taste in music. Sneers like "70's influence" (and if you mean Disco [Hurl. Ralph. Shudder. Repeat.] it's OK to sneer at that, though I've pushed that into the barren-of-anything-redeeming Reagan years, the 1980s).
Posted by: Feff on January 31, 2005 10:05 AMWhen I say "70's", I mean the worst aspects of it, like the shlocky disco music that tries to jazz up some of the classic themes and styles of the 60's but only ends up sounding like elevator muzak that thinks it's too cool for words. Or the militaristic throwbacks to the 40's and 50's that have been similarly tweaked, always for the worse.
Posted by: Observer on January 31, 2005 01:46 PM