Mah Boi.

The Legend of Zelda: The Faces of Evil.

In the early 1990s, the Nintendo company entered into an ultimately fruitless partnership with Philips. Only Philips' end of the bargain ever materialized; software for its CD-i system based on existing Nintendo franchises. Three of these games (Hotel Mario, The Legend of Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and The Legend of Zelda: The Faces of Evil) have developed infamy on the Internet for the animated interstitials (called "cut scenes" by video game enthusiasts) that would be viewed before certain stages of play. These cut scenes feature bizarre animation and highly exaggerated vocal performances. The low picture and sound quality of these cut scenes is a part of their appeal, and coincidentally has made them easily disseminated over the Internet for many years. In some circles, the CD-i cut scenes are so ubiquitous that a reference need only consist of a single word.

Most popular among fans of this footage are characters that were created expressly for these games, such as the King of Hyrule (dubbed "King Harkinian" to distinguish him from other Kings of Hyrule in the franchise, usually known simply as "The King" among discussions of the CD-i videos) and Gwonam, the King's advisor (named only in CD-i instruction books, and often referred to by fans as "Squadalah Man" for his memorable exclamation). The King's first line in Faces of Evil, "My boy, this peace is what all true warriors strive for!" is one of his most celebrated. His pronunciation of "My boy" is spelled as "Mah boi" among fans when quoted in writing. The quote has come to be associated with this still image:

Thus, "Mah boi" can be invoked visually with a tall and narrow opened mouth and a raised right index finger held near to the face.

The Dark Side of the Rainbow: "The Great Gig in the Sky."

In the early 1990s, discussion began in the IRC chatroom "alt.music.pink-floyd" about a supposed "synchronicity" with The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). The product of watching The Wizard of Oz with the audio replaced by two plays of The Dark Side of the Moon is known as The Dark Side of the Rainbow, in reference to the song performed by Judy Garland in the film, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has remarked upon the pairing as the idea of "some guy with too much time on his hands." Alan Parsons, the producer of The Dark Side of the Moon said in 2003, "[I]f you play any record with the sound turned down on the TV, you will find things that work."

The Dark Side of the Rainbow stands best as a communal cultural thought experiment. It invites projection, speculation, and discussion. One of the most celebrated instances of synchronicity in The Dark Side of the Rainbow is the beginning of track six, "Money," which begins just as Dorothy enters the Land of Oz and the film switches to color. However, often overlooked is the footage aligning with the track before it, "The Great Gig in the Sky."

Referred to while in production as "The Religion Song" and "The Mortality Sequence," "The Great Gig in the Sky" features the nonverbal vocalisations of Clare Torry, meant by Pink Floyd to represent the acknowledgement of mortality and conception of the afterlife. In The Dark Side of the Rainbow, it accompanies the sequence in which a Dorothy, alone in her home, is swept away from Kanas by a tornado. The archivists at Bohnhelm can only wonder why more has not been said of this song which primarily features a woman screaming aligns flawlessly with scenes of a woman having a frightening experience.

This sequence of The Dark Side of the Rainbow can be viewed here.

Analysis:

The track begins softly and ominously just as the signs of the coming storm are heeded by the people of Kansas. Gerry O'Driscoll narrates the farmers' efforts to prepare for the black destruction looming on the horizon. No one present is afraid of dying. A horse on the loose becomes the first shot in a war of human emotions, signaling an end to civility, and the supremacy of the primal as death is flung across the countryside. As Dorothy is left to face nature's full fury alone, Clare Torry's vocalisations begin, growing ever more impassioned and frantic, reaching their apex as a window knocks into Dorothy, sending her down to her bed. From there Torry's voice softens and dons a more contemplative tone, seeming to invite the mystic circumstances to come. Anything can happen now. Torry's subdued howls become a conciliatory cry for reason in Dorothy's tunnel of the inconceivable, the terrifying and the fanciful. Clare's vigor returns as Almira Gulch becomes the Wicked Witch. Danger is born anew, and so is Dorothy's will to survive. After the sight of this new villainy, the terror of riding the winds has been cheapened, and no matter how the furniture may shift and shake, it's just not as threatening as it was before. Clare's voice softens as the house begins its dainty descent. With the landing, it grows heavy with the burden of enlightenment. She no longer needs to sing Dorothy's confusion and anger at a world eager to destroy her. She knows what has happened in her heart.

The Max Headroom Incident.

In 1987 the Coca-Cola company began airing ads featuring the British character Max Headroom. Headroom, purportedly the world's first artificial intelligence-based television host, was portrayed by actor Matt Frewer in heavy makeup behind a blue screen, with speech distortion effects and a computer-generated background added in post-production. The character was named in a play on the sign label "MAX. HEADROOM," the United Kingdom equivalent of signs labelled "CLEARANCE," either of which referring to the height of a door frame.

On 22 November 1987, at around 11:15 PM, the airwaves of Chicago CBS affiliate WTTW were interrupted by a pirate broadcast by a man wearing a Max Headroom Halloween mask along with a beige suit. Fighting his way into the living rooms of uncounted Chicago area households, this mystery man assumed the guise of the most artificial ad spokesman of the day to speak frankly upon the twilight of the twentieth century.

"Your love is fading! ... Oh, I just made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds."

Doozy Bots.

Bandai and Toei's Gundam franchise was a heavy-handed cautionary epic devoted to portraying a grisly outer space war fought by piloted giant robots as realistically as possible. SD Gundam was Bandai's response to Gundam's popularity with very young children, presenting franchise's appealing robot designs in more lighthearted scenarios for audiences uninterested in Gundam's message or reverence for minutiae. The term "SD" stands for "Super-Deformed," and describes the large head and squat, stubby proportions applied to the robots of Gundam for these more child friendly series. SD Gundam as a brand would come to rival its parent in Japan in the 1980s.

In 1989, efforts were made by the Sunrise company to import the SD Gundam brand into the United States market. Though multiple SD Gundam animated series had been produced by that point, it was understood that their anime aesthetic would be unappealing to American audiences. Thus, imported and repackaged SD Gundam toys were to be promoted by way of a completely new animated series called Doozy Bots. The only remaining evidence of the production is this video, identified by the character of its narration as being furnished for a licenser's trade show. The end result comes off as a studious and careful effort to produce "American appeal" by people who understand the concept only in abstract, academic terms. Some points of interest on display:

1. The football replacing the "o" in "Bots" in the logo.

2. Comical sound effects dubbed into dramatic scenes of sports being played to make the show seem wackier and more lighthearted overall.

3. Wipeout and Tank are shown jumping a football goal with their skateboard and wheelchair, respectively.

4. Tank, the wheelchair-bound African-American, turns into Guntank, a robot with tank treads rather than legs.

Discouraged from producing original content for the U.S. market by the failure of Doozy Bots and an adaption of Sailor Moon using live action and Western animation, experimentation with English dubs of the original anime began at the turn of the decade, contributing the beginning of an anime fad in the United States which would last throughout the decade and into the next.

"The Bots Master" Intro.

The Bots Master was an American-French co-production that aired from 1 September 1993 to 1 May 1994. Set in the year 2025, the series features prodigy inventor Ziv "ZZ" Zulander and his band of robots called BOYZZ, or Brain Operated Young Zygoetopic Zoids. The majority of these BOYZZ went by a name ending in two z's. In each episode they did battle with Lewis Leon Paradim (often referred to as "LLP") and his terrorist associates at the Robotic Megafact Corporation (Curiously contracted as "RM Corp," rather than "RMC"). In addition to his BOYZZ, Ziv Zulander commanded a fleet of five vehicles that could combine into a giant robot, the Jungle Fiver. Though the name is a tasteless allusion to "jungle fever," I assume the writers were confident that children would recognize the pun but believe "jungle fever" to be a fictional illness contracted in black and white movies about jungle explorers in pith helmets. In an effort at attention-grabbing gimmickry, each episode featured a sequence filmed in 3D that could be viewed with a set of 3D glasses packaged with each Bots Master action figure. Interestingly, the series was animated by one "AB Productions," while toys were manufactured by one "C&D Toys." It's the kind of coincidence that only real life would be so unimaginative as to perpetrate.

The Bots Master stands as a definitive example of a series that was well-animated but over-calculated for optimal marketability, yielding forgettable, mediocre pablum.

The lyrics to the theme song, courtesy "The World's Greatest Bots Master Page" (Reformatted for Web 2.0 and with mistakes recognized by my own listening corrected):

You know the planet is in a jam

A diabolical plan of only one man

Lewis Leon Paradim, an international punk

and his army of 3As are his piece of junk

Yeah! Well, he can't fade us

He forgot about the BOYZZ and the guy who made us

Ziv Zulander, master of BOYZZ bots

We undermine the plot

We're the Sports BOYZZ and we like making noise

Commander Jock has some intelligent droids

I'm Cook, and I can take the heat

But don't forget, you are what you eat

Call me Watzon, let me swivel and say

I rock as a doc and I save the day

D'Nerd is my name and the brain is my game

I'm Genesix, any problem I can fix

My name is Ninjzz, the battle hinges

On how I use my Zword and what it singes

I'm Ziv Zulander, ZZ for short

You know I fight the Corp

I'm the Bots Master

Listen up, you all, we're the BOYZZ Brigade

When it's Laser Time, put on the 3D shades

"Laser Time, boys!"

Vintage Darth Vader Halloween Costume.

New on display at Bohnnhelm is this handsome bodysuit from a vintage child's Darth Vader Halloween costume. There was a time when licensed Halloween costumes consisted of a rubbery face mask and a sleeveless plastic smock bearing an image of the character its wearer supposedly portrayed. The wearer's neck became the line between fiction and metafiction, between a world where you are Darth Vader and a world where Darth Vader is on your shirt. The origin of this bizarre concept is currently being sought by the most esteemed researchers at Bohnhelm. But until the answers arrive we can only gaze upon this pristine specimen of the phenomenon and wonder. Case Bohn, for one, would like to believe that this Halloween costume design template came at the request of focus groups of actual children, and that children were once made happy by having these costumes to wear.

"I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself" by Elton John.

This charming little spirit about a misanthropic teenager contemplating suicide appeared on John's 1972 studio album Honky Château. His fifth album, Honky Chateâu was written in four days. In 2003 it appeared in Rolling Stone's "Five Hundred Greatest Albums of All Time" at No. 357.

On the album version, John's narrator demanded a nightly visit from Bridgette Bardot. Here substituted is Irish radio and television personality Terry Wogan, who on Christmas day of 1979 made his second televised address on behalf of the BBC-organised charity Children in Need.