Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

Krispy Kreme Kapers

James drove me, Marlo, Janet and Yvonne into Delta today for donuts. I went more for the road trip than because I expected the donuts to be a life-changing experience, and it was a lot of fun. Waiting in line was like waiting in line at a fair or an amusement park except the ride (James’ mad driving) came before and after the actual KK experience. They had a large tent set up and the line was like a who’s who and a what’s that of Delta & Vancouver. There was a young boy in front of me who had the flaming Converse All-Stars just like me, and his father had mismatched colour Converse on too. I had a pretty good time, the one and only drawback was that there was too much loud music drowning out conversation in the backseat. Yvonne brought up Hawaiian doughnuts and none of the rest of us had ever heard of such a thing. She claims that doughnuts with the coloured sprinkles are known as Hawaiian. I brought up the fact that we could have Hawaiian pizza later if we brought along a shaker of said sprinkles. Good times were had making fun of the other people in line, and reminiscing about games we had as kids like Hungry Hungry Hippos, Mister Mouth, Perfection, and Sorry. We watched the donuts travel along little conveyor belts on their exciting journey from conception to consumption, and Janet noted she wanted to go through the glazing machine. I concurred and emphasized with a Homer-like “mmmm…glazed me.” Two of the poor little buggers didn’t get flipped over on the flipper and so were undercooked on one side. They passed through the glazefall (waterfall of glaze) but it was obvious that they’d never get through quality control. I watched one of them get tossed out. It was so sad. He never had a chance. Or, actually I guess he did have a chance - but he blew it.

By the time we got back Marlo had eaten six donuts. We rented On the Waterfront “I coulda been a contender” and that was quite good. I was getting Lee J. Cobb confused with Vic Tayback (who played Alice’s boss on the sitcom Alice) but that is wrong wrong wrong. Cobb played roles in Twelve Angry Men and The Exorcist.

Today they (Teletoon) aired the first ten episodes of the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoons. That may sound impressive but the episodes are only 5 minutes long, and each episode contains a minute or so of footage from the last episode so you can “catch up.” Pretty annoying, so when I taped them I naturally edited that stuff out (along with the commercials of course). This series is created by Genndy Tartakovsky, the talent behind Samurai Jack, so the style and quality of the animation is beyond reproach. Ugh, what a clumsy cliche beyond reproach has become.

The characters are not voiced by the original actors from the movies (except for Anthony Daniels), but the talent they got does a fair job of imitation. As might be expected from Tartakovsky and from Star Wars, most of the story is battle after battle. They make some interesting choices, not all of which I agree with. Some things happen too easily and quickly: like vehicles exploding and being cut in half by a light saber too small to do the job; in another scenario a dozen eels pushed around a completely massive vehicle. Even though it’s only a sci-fi cartoon, they pushed the boundaries of believability.

There were also gaffs a la forgetting that destroyer droids had force sheild bubbles. They had lancers on speeder bikes which (even though they were piloted by cool-looking IG-88 droids) just seemed silly given the limited use of the lances. And there weren’t enough grenades or little flying robots that deliver huge bombs. That is all.