Into the Forums

When it comes to boiling the Mountain Xpress forum experience down to its essence, few handle the subject as well as resident artist and fumetti whiz brebro. Just take a look at his ongoing MX Forum Channel Surfing thread, recently updated to include highlights from the roast of forum user PFKaP and the public transportation thread.

Over on the Non-Local sub-forum, we learned that Carter MacDowell‘s politics-lampooning animated comedy sketches, TVPigs got picked up by big-time media outlet United Feature Syndicate. A goodly selection of the local animator’s work, check out the recently updated TVPigs forum thread. Speaking of politics, other budding topics of discussion this week include Iran’s right to nuclear power and ex-VP Cheney’s pro-gay-marriage stance.

Over in the Arts & Entertainment sub-forum, forum users have been trying to figure out why movie studios tend to release similar movies. You know the trend: One studio releases a movie about a city-threatening volcano, and before you know it, it seems like every studio has a flick about some mountain blowing its top. Thankfully, resident film guru Ken Hanke was able to help: “Word gets out that so and so is making the ‘next big thing’ and everyone races to turn out something in that vein — or what they perceive that vein to be. As a result, you get floods of similarly themed movies. … It used to be more amusing, though, when semi-literate studio heads would rush to buy properties from other media without knowing what they were buying. All they knew was that this play or that book was ‘hot.’ That’s why Sam Goldwyn bought Lillian Helman’s play The Children’s Hour. He not only didn’t know it was about lesbians, he didn’t know what lesbians were. In fact, when he was told that he couldn’t make a film about them, he countered that ‘we can always call them Bulgarians.’”

In other arts discussions, forum regulars are still scratching their heads over the suicide of b-movie and TV legend David Carradine, fuming about not being able to get Beastie Boys tickets for their Orange Peel show and musing about the upcoming Black Ball.

Other worthwhile topics from the last week include: the ongoing discussion about the long-term viability of democracy, some mad props for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Definitely Not the Opera” radio show, a conversation about the French Open, questions about house-breaking a puppy and some geek love for open-source OS Linux Mint.

Don’t see a discussion about that burning topic you’d like to talk about? Why not start your own? All registered members of MountainX.com have forum accounts, and if you aren’t a member, joining is easy — just click here.

— Steve Shanafelt, forums administrator