Community Returns

NBC's Community returns on March 15! 

=0 Awesome :D

Here's a trailer for season 4:

It draws up many questions such as "Was that evil Abed in the beard?"


If next week isn't soon enough to see the gang again, then check out the animated shorts. Abed becomes the Dean's assistant. I'm getting the feeling that it will take a turn like the movie I, Robot.

I could not help laugh when Shirley appeared at the end. They captured her voice and personality in the expressions.

Troy & Abed Shirt

I have a lot to blog about including Johnny Cupcakes! But for this post, I'm going to return to Megan Lara who has done Art Nouveau style T-shirts.

"Dope Adventures" T-shirt

Today on TeeFury.com, Megan Lara has a T-shirt of Troy and Abed from Community in the styled of the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes."
At first I was a little disappointed that they don't look much like Troy and Abed. But then I thought about their relationship. Troy is the boyish innocent one while Abed is the rational one. So Megan Lara matched up the personalities well.

And then I looked at the details. If you know Troy and Abed, then you will appreciate the comic title "Kick-Puncher." =) They have also like blanket forts, and they now room in one in at the end of season 3. The little mug says "Special drink,"  which I think refers to Abed's chocolate milk recipe. So Megan Lara has succeeded in putting Troy and Abed elements in the "Calvin and Hobbes" setting.

You can get the shirt HERE for $10, but only for 8.5 more hours of today. The web page has a countdown for the duration of the shirt sale. Afterwards the shirt will no longer be sold at TeeFury. You will have to find the shirt on another website, which will sell the shirt for at least $20.

Here's a picture of "Calvin and Hobbes" for those of you who need an introduction to them:

Calvin and Hobbes

You can read the comic strips in book volumes now. Some adventures, including the great ones, last more than one strip. The names were chosen from philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes the tiger is actually a stuffed animal that Calvin imagines as a real tiger and his best friend.

There's no fooling myself now that I'm nostalgic and sentimental. I will get the shirt!

Abed videos

I mention the show Community and the character Abed, played by Danny Pudi, a few times so I wanted to share some videos I just found.

The first one is deep and meta with viewer becoming character: 

There are a few episodes I missed and this was one of them. After watching the scene, I want to see the rest of the episode.

Apparently, the character Abed does appear in the show Cougar Town, but as himself.

The last video is full of bloopers. It shows the funny and geeky pair Abed and Troy, played by Donald Glover.  Together they are cool geeks though. :)

I am also a fan of Batman so I enjoyed the video even more.

Do you watch Community? =)

Sadly Stories Have Endings

I just finished the second season of the TV show Community. The two part episode was a thrill to watch; I laughed, ooohed, and awwwed. However, the departure of a character made the season finale sad to accept. Thankfully the show's not over yet, but will more characters leave? =( Abed got cooler in season 2. Character growth is an amazing thing to witness.

Community: A Fistful of Paintballs

Another show I'm currently into is Lie To Me. I got into it late, and sadly, the show is canceled.  So I have just one more season to watch. Once I am done with Community and Lie to Me, will I find a show to love as much?

As for comics, I have not read past issue 1 of The Unwritten.  The first issue had so much material, and I enjoyed it on its own. I am afraid to continue though perhaps because of expectations and maybe because then I will finish the series. I really should read issue 2  though. The series is around 27 issues now.

Issue #2

During one summer in high school, I read 3 books (2 of them were The Blue Sword by Robin McKinely and one from the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card) that were each around 300 pages. When I got towards the end of each one, I stopped and started the next book. Eventually I had 3 unfinished books so I read the endings to all three.  The stories were then complete but I still had wished that some of the books were 500 pages.

Have you felt the same way about a story? I am sure people do with series (shows and books).  I do not always finish series. What do you do to deal with the need for more? Do you re-watch the series with the knowledge of future events and character development? I will do the same for Community. Also, I hope to catch the show panel at the SD Comic Con. =)

For some shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, I get a full sense of completeness and cannot re-watch the series immediately. Years have to pass so that I remember less.

Meta

I've heard little about meta-narrative and meta-fiction before, but I did not understand the concepts. Then I had a week of great literature talks with three other English majors this past Fall.  I kept running into them that week, which I'm grateful for.  Meta was one of the talks (not metaphysical poetry).  

At this point, I had seen an episode of Community where the character Abed makes a meta-film. He states how he'll make a film about a film-maker who realizes his life is a film, whose film-maker will realize his life is a film too, and so on and so on. So I understood that a meta-art form worked beyond its boundaries or was layered with one form inside of another form. A film within a film. However, metanarrative is specifically a story within a story.  Metanarrative seems to also have a philosophical approach towards truth. Sounds like the inner story is the material analyzed in the outer story, which the reader himself can analyze too. I'm still trying to understand metanarrative. I know that the novel City of Glass is a example of metanarrative. I read the comicbook/graphic novel version in a class, but I have to read the story a second time.

My friends' description of meta sounded like when the story "breaks down the fourth wall," goes beyond its boundaries, and speaks directly to the reader about its form.  Soo I now see a meta-art form as being conscious of itself and commenting on the form.  Going with Community again, the character Abed makes the show meta. He comments on what the episode is parodying.  He even once stated how his commentary is his gimmick as a character.  This aspect of the show is one reason why I watch Community.  My friends helped name and define one of my interests.

This week I got my sister to watch one of my childhood movies, The Neverending Story, which I had a feeling was Meta.  (SPOILER ALERT)  The movie has a metanarrative because it's a story within a story, following a boy reading a book of the same title.  The experience explored is the connection between the reader and protagonist.  A reader follows the protagonist's journey, feeling and suffering with him.  That's why Atreyu saw Bastion in the mirror.  Also think about this: Atreyu's journey depended on Bastion's determination to continue reading the story.  Bastion is the one continuing and pushing the story.  

You can compare this movie to The Princess Bride with the boy's interest in continuing the story, but the only influence he had was whether the audience of the movie would see more the story.  The characters do comment a little on the inner story though like with the expectation of a hero vanquishing the villain.  I would like to have a metanarrative with the protagonist knowing that he lets the reader see the inner story.

Back to The Neverending Story with my sister and I as the audience,  I kept mentioning a wolf scene so when the part came, she seemed disappointed that it was mostly talk.  I'm glad she continued to watch the movie though.  It is mostly talk and shots of Bastion reading, but I like the metanarrative.  I also love the Swamp of Sadness. If you let sadness overtake you, then you will sink. So basically you give up in this journey that needs determined heroes/readers to continue the story. I read somewhere that there was a book before the movie and I found out that the movie only covers half the story.  I'm adding the book to my list to see more of the metanarrative commentary. The second half of the book seems to be the movie sequel but the book ends differently.

Another book on my list is a comic/graphic novel called Unwritten. I've only read a few pages so far but I like what I've read that the story's about.  It covers fanatic fandom for a series that's like Harry Potter. I am interested in fandom.  How a story impacts a fan greatly, the arguments among fans of different stories, and the harm of escapism when not accepting reality. Unwritten also seems to be meta with the boundaries of story and reality, but I think the commentary is more on the fans.  The series is three volumes, with the third one coming out in March.

Maybe I'll have another entry about Meta or at least about Unwritten when I've read more of it.