Are You Afraid of the Cultural Stereotypes?

This is from an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? in which children from around the world are abducted for a kind of intergalactic zoo. I love the costume designer's attempts to establish that some of the kids are FOREIGN.

"Gee, little boy in the Agbada, where could you possibly be from? Africa?! Why I was not expecting that! And you in the poncho--Sweden, right? Wait, Mexico? Mind = blown."

How big an area do those thumbprints on the map convert to in actuality? Some of those kids look like they might have a five-thousand mile walk ahead of them. And notice how the two Canadian heroes take advantage of the situation to finally cross the border into America.

Also, why do mad scientists continue to not only install self-destruct switches, but make them really big and obvious? There might as well be a sign above it that says Do Not Push (Unless You Want to Defeat Me and Escape)

In Which I Let Hamlet Et Ham

No doubt a great soliloquy, delivered with passion by Branaugh. But I can't help cracking up over the way the camera hesitantly keeps zooming back, like a timid guest trying to escape Hamlet's dinner party.

"All right. Well, Hamlet, thanks for us inviting us for a lovely evening, but we've really got to--"
"What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?"
"Uh, I don't really know, but I guess philosophic--"
"A beast, no more. Sure, that he made us with such large discourse looking before and after gave us not that..."
"Well, I'm not sure--"
"CAPABILITY and godlike reason to fust in us unused!"
"Oh, I thought you were finished. Like I said--"
"Now whether it be bestial oblivion or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event..."
"Er, which event are we--?"
"A thought which quartered have but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward."
"Thought which...what?"
"I do not KNOW why yet I live to say this thing's to do!"
"Shit. Susan, he's doing it again."
"Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means to do it."
"*sigh* Honey, go start the car. I'll be there in a minute."
"Examples gross as earth exhort me."
"Gross as earth? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Witness this army of such mass and charge, led by a delicate and tender prince whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd, makes mouths of the invisible event, exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell!"
"For an eggshell? I don't know that making eggs is that--"
"Rightly to be great is not to stir without argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honor's at the stake! How stand I, then, that have a father killed, a mother stained, excitements of my reason and my blood, and let all sleep?"
"Uh, this is getting a little weird--"
"While to my shame, I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men that for a fantasy, and trick of fame go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot whereon the numbers cannot try the cause which is not tomb enough and continent, to hide the slain?"
"Yeah, I'm just gonna go now."
"O, from this time forth--"
"Sorry, can't hear you. Bye now!"
"My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!"
"I don't know why I let you talk me into this, Susan. He's getting weirder. I don't even want to stop at Dairy Queen anymore, let's just go straight home."

In Which I Am Liquid Cool

Man, remember when Capri Sun had the world in its pocket? Remember when they threatened to overtake Coca Cola as the nation's leading manufactured beverage? I sure don't.

What I primarily remember is how damn difficult it was to get the straw into those Space Age containers. Capri Sun apparently eschewed any kind of "sensible" design for a futuristic juice box that was supposed to make us feel like we were astronauts. I sure wouldn't want those spear-sharpened yellow straws floating around in zero G's without copious eye protection, I'll tell you what.

Sharp though the straws were, I don't remember anybody being able to poke them through the designated hole at the tapered end, where they were supposed to go. It always slipped off completely or punctured the juice non-box in the middle so that all the liquid cool leaked out and got your hands all sticky. I think actually getting the straw through that hole is used as a test in one of those Karate Kid sequels. Most kids just turned the whole thing over and jabbed the straw through the bloated bottom. Easy, but it meant that you couldn't put your Capri Sun down until you were completely finished with it.

The above commercial, however, clears up the mystery: Capri Sun wasn't marketed toward mortal children. Only T-1000s with a taste for extreme sports were meant to experience the syrupy mediocrity.