The previous Muppet movie (The Muppets (2012)) banked its appeal on being absolutely drenched in nostalgia. It was for lapsed Muppet lovers, adult children who loved these characters when they were kids who could now share it with their own kids. It had heart and sweetness and, like the original Muppet Movie, a genuinely moving story.
Muppets Most Wanted doesn’t have the advantage of access to all that nostalgia; the previous film is only a couple of years old, so what is there to be nostalgic about? So instead it goes a different direction: with a wink and a shrug it eschews all the feely-feely nostalgia and goes straight for the laughs. And it is funny. Great gravy, is it funny. This might be the overall-funniest Muppet movie yet made.
Tweeter of the Month: @audipenny
Perhaps the most laugh-out-loud Twitter talent out there right now, Audrey Farnsworth crafts tweet jokes that seem to start out in a safe, predictable way, but quickly veer off into bizarre surrealism. She is a brilliant mixture of mundane and insane. I absoluterly LORVE this kind of humor. It reminds me a Jack Handey in a very palpable way. It was hard for me to pick just a couple of tweets from her, so here are six:
I'd love to stay but I've got that flu of where if you keep talking, my arms turn into shovels and I just start digging
Album of the Month: Alcohol & Isolation by Three Ninjas
Old-school, howling, angry, depressed, authentic country music. None of this pop-country crap that has dominated the country music scene for the last 30 years. I wrote about this album a little while ago. And I went to its album release party on Tuesday night. Here’s a photo of that:
And here’s a sample song. Take a wissen; it’s good stuffs:
Also, if you manage to track down a physical copy of the CD, there are GOBS of bonus songs at the end! DO IT!
Game of the Month: Adventure Time: Card Wars
There was an episode of Adventure Time a while back where Finn & Jake played a holographic parody of “Magic: The Gathering” called “Card Wars.” Well, since this is the 21st century, someone went ahead and made a real version of the game so you, too, can play it! It is surprisingly fun, and the voice actors recorded a metric tonne of lines for it. It does a surprisingly good job of capturing the feel and rules of the game as played in the episode. Cons: it’s not free, and it’s micro-transaction based, so unless you’re willing to pony up the cash it’ll take you a long time to build up a powerful deck. Also, there’s no multiplayer, which seems weird since the episode was about a two-player card game. Oh, well. FLOOP THE PIG!
Tuesday night I went up to Three Ninjas’s Album Release Party for his newest album, Alcohol & Isolation. His opening act was the folk punk one-man dynamo, Joshua Stephens.
As is my way when it comes to music shows, I made some animated .GIFs of the festivities. Partake and enjoy!
Joshua Stephens opened the evening.
Threeni #1
Threeni #2
Threeni #3ni
I’ve made many an animated .GIF in my time. ‘Tis true! Look at ’em all!