I own a copy of this poster, framed, and signed by Kirs Kristofferson, Ernest Borgnine, and C.W. McCall. I am very proud of this.

On my bookshelf, there’s an old VHS tape with a faded, hand-written label. It says, “Convoy, 1st Gen.” This is because in 2000, when I tracked down and rented a copy of the 1978 Sam Peckinpah movie, after years of searching, I was so excited that I made two copies of it. Then I made another six copies off of those two copies, and gave them away to friends. (I am blessed with the sort of friends for whom a bootleg copy of Convoy is a great gift.) Anyway, the “1st Gen” on the copy I’m looking at indicates that this one was dubbed right from the original. I’ve lugged it from apartment to apartment over the last ten years, even though I haven’t always had access to a VCR.

But I probably won’t ever watch it again. If I wanted to see Convoy now (and I kind of do, after writing the last paragraph), I could just put it on the top of my Netflix queue. They’d send me a nice new DVD that would look ten times better than my old videotape. Actually, I don’t even have to wait for the DVD. Convoy is currently a “Watch It Now” movie on Netflix, so I can stream it right to my computer. Or I can use my XBox to watch it on my TV. And if I wanted to buy it, the DVD is $13 via Amazon.

This is simultaneously awesome, and a teeny bit sad.

It’s easy to forget that only 15 years ago, finding a movie was a very different experience.

Today’s guest post comes from Shelby Cobras of Illogical Contraption.

Anyone with a sixth grade education should probably already know who Joseph Campbell is. An American mythologist, anthropologist, and author, Campbell was the first to define the perameters of the “Hero’s Journey“, a basic plot outline that most epic tales passed down through history follow. If you are not yet familiar with the “Hero’s Journey”, do not despair. This post will educate you.

The “Hero’s Journey” is a well-accepted phenomenon, an equation that applies to such disparate tales as The Epic of Gilgamesh, Star Wars, Conan The Barbarian, and… a cat food commercial?

Indeed. And not just an example. One of the BEST examples.

Every now and then, we like to take a break from our usual coverage of cyborg movies and dance pop to talk about something a little different.  By which I mean:  every now and then it’s one in the morning on the night before my post is due, and I’ve spent the last two hours frantically scrambling for a topic and coming up blind.  I just haven’t consumed any particularly interesting pop culture in the last week.  Makes it kind of hard to write about the stuff.

So what did I do this past week?  Well, I had a pretty good sandwich… yeah.  Okay, sandwiches.  Let’s overthink this thing.

[Political humor today from this guest writer. Want to trivialize tragedy through commerce? Never forget… to suggest your own patriotic t-shirt in the comments.]

Throughout history, enterprising men and woman have taken advantage of tragedy and despair to turn a quick denarius, pound, shilling and dollar. When tragedy struck, vendors of every age pulled out their screens, dusted off a few patriotic slogans and started printing t-shirts. And for some reason there were eagles on them.

The art of patriotic eagle t-shirt printing began in the last years of the Roman Republic, when vendors near the Capitol set up their tents and started selling black and white SPQR caps and these fashionable tunics.

More shirts through the ages after the jump.

Overthinking It’s overthoughts and overprayers go out to the people of Haiti at this great time of crisis.

One of OTI’s favorite Perfect Gentlemen, Wyclef Jean, is already on his way to Haiti through the Dominican Republic (probably there by the time you read this) to help out people on the ground. His foundation for Haiti, Yele, is one of the many organizations gathering donations to help with relief efforts. OTI knows you can find any number of other organizations doing good work, but there’s little substitute for having the people who sound the call be people like to listen to. So, whether you give to Wyclef’s foundation or to somebody else, listen to Wyclef, and do something—however you figure out how to do it—to help these folks.

Wyclef is also soliciting donations to his foundation, which looks like it is refocused now on earthquake relief through his twitter feed. (I’m not going to recommend those text to donate things because I don’t have confidence in them; but if you do, sound off in the comments.)

Here’s Wyclef on Anderson Cooper 360. An interesting cultural moment:

And here’s a repost of Wyclef’s message from www.yele.org.

STATEMENT BY WYCLEF JEAN ON HAITI EARTHQUAKE

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 02:05PM

“Haiti today faced a natural disaster of unprecedented proportion, an earthquake unlike anything the country has ever experienced.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake – and several very strong aftershocks – struck only 10 miles from Port-au-Prince.

I cannot stress enough what a human disaster this is, and idle hands will only make this tragedy worse. The over 2 million people in Port-au-Prince tonight face catastrophe alone. We must act now.

President Obama has already said that the U.S. stands ‘ready to assist’ the Haitian people. The U.S. Military is the only group trained and prepared to offer that assistance immediately. They must do so as soon as possible. The international community must also rise to the occasion and help the Haitian people in every way possible.”

Many people have already reached out to see what they can do right now. We are asking those interested to please do one of two things: Either you can use your cell phone to text “Yele” to 501501, which will automatically donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund (it will be charged to your cell phone bill), or you can click here to DONATE.

Thank you,
Wyclef

The regular Yele Haiti website will resume in a couple of weeks. In the meantime our focus is on providing real-time information about the situation in Haiti.

Oh, and one more note from OTI — if you think there’s any reason why you shouldn’t do what you can to find some effective way to lend a hand or a dollar in Haiti, well, Wyclef has this much to say about whatever stands in your way (out of context, of course):

So last week, I was on a luxury cruise. And sitting in a hot tub, watching the Pacific Ocean roll by, mulling over what flavor of margarita I should order next, I felt a tremendous sense of peace.

For the first time in years, I was safe from the living dead.

This is like Hometown Buffet for the living dead.

You see, I live in Manhattan. New York has many things going for it–world-class museums, vibrant nightlife, and a subway system that you are legally allowed to pee in (I’m pretty sure). But one major disadvantage to living here is that I will most likely be devoured by flesh-eating zombies.

Think about it. All pandemics hit the major urban areas first and hardest. That was true even in the days of the Decameron, in which the frame story involves young Florentines fleeing the Bubonic Plague to a villa in the countryside. But when the zombies hit Manhattan, the odds of me getting a Metro-North ticket out of here are pretty slim. I’m probably going to end up dashing across a bridge, carrying my son and my XBox on my back, trying desperately to escape the tristate area before it becomes the DIEstate area. But I might not even get that far – in the pseudo-zombie film I Am Legend, the government quarantines Manhattan and blows up the bridges.

I could, of course, just stay put. If I lock my front door, I’m pretty sure the zombies aren’t getting in. (I live in East Harlem, where we take front doors seriously.) I’ve got plenty of canned food, and I could get plenty of clean water out of the tap before that goes kaput. I figure I could make it a month or two, no sweat. But staying put is really gambling that the government will be able to turn the tide and fight back the zombie menace, or release some sort of airborne cure, or organize some sort of massive rescue effort. And although I’m a proud Democrat, and I believe in the government’s ability to accomplish many things, I don’t have much hope that FEMA can take on a zombie horde before I run out of Easy Mac.

Actually, the zombies may never have a chance to get be. I wouldn’t be surprised if the military panicked and fire-bombed the entire city. I’ve seen Outbreak.

So living in New York, I’ve gradually come to accept my doom. The cruise ship was another story.

That’s right: embiggen.  What?  It’s a perfectly cromulent word.  I have it here right in my Scrabble dictionary in between “d’oh” and “kwijibo.”  And if you don’t like it, I’ll call you a craptacular, cheese-eating surrender monkey.  (Or your non-union Mexican equivalent.)

Okay, so we know that The Simpsons has hit the big time language-wise, what with words like “meh,” “yoink,” and “d’oh” entering the dictionary and sayings like “I, for one, welcome our insect overlords” and “worst episode ever” entering the popular lexicon.  These words and phrases still have power, and they’re still funny—after all, if they weren’t, the memes wouldn’t continue living on in blog posts, YouTube videos, and YTMND… things.

But I think we’re due for some new* Simpsons-related bon mots, don’t you?  So I’ve scoured Simpsons episodes and episode guides for the top ten useful words and sayings that need to find their way back into our lives.

*And by “new,” of course, I mean old: all of these words and saying come from The Simpsons’ first through eighth seasons—you know, the good ones.

In 2009, over half a million people visited Overthinking It. What did they come to see? Well, largely, the homepage and the movies category.

But seriously. Which posts were the most highly-trafficked? Here, without any ado whatsoever, is a list of the ten posts from 2009 with the largest numer of views.

1. Marty McFly’s Grim Future
2. The Science of Back to the Future
3. Slumdog Millionaire: How much is 20 million rupees anyway?
4. Clichemageddon
5. The Ghostbusters Are Horrible People
6. I Will Always Have Been Back: Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Schwarzenegger
7. [Think Tank] Best Use of Aliens as Metaphor
8. The Smooze: Anatomy of a My Little Pony Villain
9. Pixar’s UP!: Paradise Lost at Paradise Falls
10. The Ghostbusters’ Risky Business Plan

For those keeping score, Belinkie leads the pack with four posts in the top 10, while Fenzel and Lee tie for second with two each. Perich rounds out the top 4, tied with a herd of cats. (Seriously. You should try getting our writers to do the Think Tank on time.)

These cows almost killed Disney.

It was only five years ago that Disney ran up the white flag and did the unthinkable: it shuttered its 2D animation facilities. This is the Walt Freaking Disney Company: they invented animated movies as we know them. But a series of flops (Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range) at the same time as Pixar churned out a string of instant classics was too much for the Mouse House. They decided that the public clearly wanted computer animation, and that’s what Disney was going to give them.

Except that didn’t work either. 2005’s Chicken Little didn’t even make back its budget domestically. So in 2006, Disney took the if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em route, purchasing Pixar for $7.4 billion (which actually seems like a steal to me). The Pixar people were suddenly in charge of Walt Disney Animation… and the first thing they did was get the 2D animation department back up and running.

John Lasseter and Co. were betting that audiences hadn’t stayed away from Home on the Range because it was 2D. They had stayed away because:

a) It was lame, but more importantly…

b) a trio of sassy cows wasn’t what audiences wanted to see from Disney.

Anyone who’s been around a little girl in the last twenty years knows that the old Disney films still resonate, maybe even more than the new Pixar stuff. In 2009, the Disney Princess line of merchandise netted over $4 billion for the company. In a way, the continuing popularity of those 2D films is what enabled Disney to buy Pixar.

So when they set out to make The Princess and the Frog, they had a tricky task: produce something that recreated what people loved about the old Disney movies (especially the early-90s triumvirate of Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin), but also something creative enough to get consumers back into the habit of reflexively going to Disney movies. It’s sort of like making a Bond movie–you need to stick to the formula, but also keep it fresh.

So how did they do it? Well, let’s go to the chart. (And by the way, bigtime Princess and the Frog spoilers begin now.)

Welcome to Black Friday (or as we Americans have it now, post-racial Friday), so called because it is traditionally the day on which retailers first turn a profit for the year. While we hope you do your fair share of consumption, we hope you will not be blinded to the true meaning of our many holidays, the reason for the season: Overthinking.

Every year it seems to start earlier and earlier. This year, the christmas decorations were up the morning after Halloween. The onslaught of treacly music began. The snowdrifts were painted into the corners of retail window displays. (This is particularly laughable as I live in Los Angeles, which is a coastal desert.)

And yet, the season has its pleasures as well. Great food. Time off from work. Eggnog Lattes at Starbucks. People wearing Santa hats around. Fox News’s annual sanctimonious hand-wringing about “The War on Christmas.” A court case or two over a nativity scene on public property. The release of cynical Oscar-bait films. ‘Tis the season to be jolly!

Question: What do you love or hate most about the holiday season?

And let us not forget the day just past: Thanksgiving. (American Thanksgiving for our international audience.) A time to pause, gather, imbibe immoderately, fight with your family, eat pie, and note your gratitude for things you might take for granted the other 364 days of the year.

Question: What neglected bit of pop culture are you thankful for?

These or any other topics are fair game: It’s the most wonderful open thread of the year!