Fun with keywords: “Hooray! It’s no longer August!” edition

First things first: Why the photos of the grimy innards of my cheap wristwatch, you ask? Because I’ve started writing articles full-time, and the first one I sold was a piece on changing watch batteries. And I liked my photos.

In other news: After a yearlong hiatus (something about the recent seasons of Smallville being: a) Luthor-free, and b) soul-killingly awful), Dan Liebke has once again started up the Smallville Files, his bizarre and hilarious episode recaps, over at Astonishing Tales. This is reason for much celebrating.

Speaking of things that are soul-killingly awful, fresh episodes of Heroes start airing on NBC on September 21st (new time slot! Check your local listings!). I’ll continue the recaps unless/until the show manages to break my spirit for good. I’m also looking to add another couple of shows to the recapping roster: Flash Forward, maybe? Does anything look good and/or endearingly terrible?

A look at the keywords used to find this site in August:

"haven't you heard? i'm the defensive player of the year."
Worst Heroes line ever. And there’s some daunting competition in that arena. Fun contest: Submit your least-favorite Heroes line in the comments below. Best (i.e. worst) submission wins praise and admiration.

mohinder hair cookies
Ah, the legend of Mookies, the cookies that smell like Mohinder's hair, continues! For the record, three different people used this search term to find this site last month.


"time travel" "kiss herself"
Hemingway once claimed he could write a story in six words: “Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.” I think his record just got beaten.

are volume three and four of heroes going to sell together
Yeah. It’s out on DVD today. That would have been wildly greedy of NBC Universal to sell them separately.

chris evans banana up my ass
Ah, yes. Not Another Teen Movie. Some of Evans’s finest work. (You know that scene in Varsity Blues with Ali Larter and the whipped cream bikini? See, Evans’s character attempts to recreate it, only he decides to be a banana split… It’s more tasteful than it sounds.)

heroes 4 publicity photo
Here it is. Underwhelming, except perhaps for fans of Hayden’s cleavage. Remember last summer how Heroes did that awesome pre-Season Three publicity blitz with individual bus posters for each of the twelve regular cast members and huge full-cast billboards? I miss those days.

Then again: great posters, but an underwhelming season. Maybe an underwhelming poster will result in a great season? Maybe?

what episode of heroes plays my little runaway
sylar ima walking in the rain

“Into Asylum.” Which, despite Sylar getting the shapeshifting ability and the strategic use of Del Shannon tunes, is sort of a godawful episode, what with Peter and Angela being all kinds of self-absorbed and loathsome while hanging out in a church and Claire and Nathan wasting the viewing audience’s precious time getting drunk in Mexico. It’s no 1961 in terms of overall wretchedness, but man, it wasn’t good.

jason gilman fanclub
Something you haven’t told us, Jason?

who is Alex in heroes volume 4
justin baldoni gay sex

Yeah, cute Justin Baldoni played cute Alex, but since I’ve had no exposure to him beyond his brief stint on Heroes, I’m clueless about the second search term here. But! I just remembered I actually had a dream about Baldoni last night, in which we were at a party and I was telling him that I liked him on Heroes, and he was insisting that he was never on Heroes, he was in Mission: Impossible instead. Yeah, I don’t know. We’re having a heat wave and I’m not sleeping well. My dreams are getting a little wonky.

Comments

Ingrid Richter said…
Aw, man! And here I thought Sylar had run amuck on your website, Morgan, fine-tuning your watches within a fraction of a second (cue ominous ticking sound).

You're in good company. Mark Twain wrote the pamphlet My watch: an instructive little tale back when he needed a bit of spare cash. Fine stuff!

Speaking of fine stuff, I always love your keyword search articles. Nicely done!
Dan said…
Thanks for the link, Morgan. I'm going to do my own 'Fun With Keywords' post today and have to track down the person responsible for 'i will name my kid after dan liebke if he continues the smallville files'. Some troubled soul from Bloomington, Indiana. Anybody, anybody?

I'd enter the Worst Heroes Line ever contest, but, as you well know, entire episodes depart my brain within hours of watching them. I can't be expected to remember individual lines, no matter how godawful they are.
Dan said…
Oh yeah, and slightly off-topic, but on the six-word story thing, my favourite was (perhaps inevitably) a contribution by Mr Alan Moore:

"Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time"
Morgan Richter said…
I tip my nonexistent hat to your fan in Bloomington, Dan. Anyone can send an email, but transmitting messages through a judicious keyword search is a freaking art.

(I had one visitor from Bloomington last month, but s/he arrived via a more prosaic Google search for "Michael Rosenbaum Girlfriend.")
Dan said…
transmitting messages through a judicious keyword search is a freaking art.


Yes. I also get 'if i type this into google will i make the next edition of dan liebke’s “fun with keywords”?' on a regular basis from somebody in Sydney town.

It worked once, but they've been using it every other day since then. Which is a lot to type just to mess with my keywords.
Morgan Richter said…
I'm duly impressed. All of my especially zany and self-amusing keyword searches (I'm thinking of anything involving wild speculations on Skulky the Turtle Wonder's sex life) can be directly traced back to... well, you, Dan. And sometimes Boy-Morgan. But mostly you.

I am, however, heartened to see there's still a fervent interest in cookies that smell like Mohinder's hair. It's a cottage industry waiting to happen.
Dan said…
As I believe Aragorn, son of Arathorn, once said: "A day may come when people lose interest in cookies that smell like Mohinder's hair and Skulky The Turtle Wonder's sex life.

But it is not this day."
Lou said…
The genius of Mookies lives on. How fabulous. And it's not even me searching.

I think a place in the top 10 worst lines has to be reserved for Angela's godawful explanation about why she steals socks for her sister.

Looking forward to recaps starting. Flashforward looks promising. A bit Lost-like, before it went into monsters and island moving nonense. Im also keeping an eye on Happy Town. Looks intriguing.

Congrats on freelance writing gig too!
Lou said…
PS There is no finer blog label than "Hayden I dont need to see your breasts".
Morgan Richter said…
I shouldn't blame poor Hayden, because I sort of suspect her cleavage was drawn on by an overambitious Photoshop artist looking to jazz up an otherwise dull-as-dishwater teaser poster. Maybe our resident graphic artist Boy-Morgan will jump in here and give his professional opinion as to the realism of Hayden's breasts.

Sylar telling Elle, without a single trace of irony, that he forgives her (for... getting mad at him for murdering her father?) is way up there on my list of worst lines, just for the exceptionally high "WTF???" factor.
Ingrid Richter said…
And here I always thought the "O" in Heroes was supposed to be an eclipse. Now I know it's actually supposed to be one of Claire's breasts.
Morgan Richter said…
Yes. Depending upon your point of view, that "O" is either unfortunately placed, or exactly where it should be.

Eyes up, Hiro.
Morgan Dodge said…
I'd threaten to name my kid after Dan as well, however it's a little late for that what with the birth certificate already filled out and whatnot.
I salute the troubled soul in Bloomington. The needs of the many and all that rot.

I believe I was actually called upon, in my sick-day-daze, to offer an expert opinion on, of all things, breast photoshopping.

It looks like they cranked the contrast up on all of them. More dramatic shadows, perhaps to imply a more dramatic season? (I'm hoping someone dies in a freak elevator accident, while someone else discovers that they're pregnant... but the father is not her husband!)
Anyway, to the point. Yeah, that little dark line that makes its way up her chest from her shirt doesn't look like it's part of the natural lay of the land at all. Trick is that it's hard to say how much of it happened in cranking up the contrast, and how much of it was added afterward. I suspect a little bit of both.

And that is my expert opinion. Feel free to ask me about any other breasts. I'm happy to leap into action for the good of the cause.
Now back to bed with me. Please, carry on.
Morgan Richter said…
Aw, Boy-Morgan, I'm sorry you're still sick! (Sinus rinses! They work! Added bonus: gross out all your friends!) Thank you for sharing your expertise in all things relating to graphic arts and breasts. I knew I could count on you.

I'm going to crudely Photoshop Mohinder into that poster, preferably standing right in front of Claire. Just to raise my spirits about this coming season a bit.
Jason Gilman said…
Jason Gilman fanclub... not sure how to react to that one other than: Best. Keyword search. Ever.
Morgan Richter said…
I'd happily join your fanclub, Jason. Presumably, we'd meet on a bi-weekly basis to sit around with wine and cheese and talk about the awesomeness of you. It's like a book club, only it's all about Jason, all the time.
Dan said…
The Jason Gilman fanclub sounds awesome. Count me in.

Speaking of crude Photoshop work on the promotional poster - try this out.
Ingrid Richter said…
This new season looks awesome!

Can I join your fan club too, Jason?
Morgan Richter said…
Awesome, Dan. I feel better about the new season already.
levitatethis said…
I admit that every time I look at that god awful poster for the new season I find myself distracted by Hayden's breasts. They're hypnotic.

It's obviously done on purpose to keep me from remembering how far this show has fallen.

But I do have to say the improved poster with Skulky the Turtle makes the show look far more promising.
Morgan Richter said…
I'm pretty indifferent about breasts, but whenever I look at that poster, that's all I see.

Might be worth noting that the annual television pre-season bus poster/billboard blitz is taking place all across Los Angeles... and Heroes has zero posters up. None. Nowhere. Last year's poster campaign was huge: in June the traditional eclipse logo one-sheets cropped up all over town, then in July they were replaced by similar posters with "VILLAINS" spray-painted in red across them, and in August they rolled out the cool individual-character one-sheets. And there were huge painted murals on the sides of buildings, and city buses were painted over with the character posters.

This season? Nothing. NBC Universal is not spending money promoting it. I think they're a little embarrassed.
Amanda Brown said…
I’ll continue the recaps unless/until the show manages to break my spirit for good.

So...you'll be doing one recap, then?...
Morgan Richter said…
I'm leaving open the door to be pleasantly surprised by this new season, just in case it exceeds my gloomy expectations. But otherwise, yes, one episode sounds about right.
levitatethis said…
I can see it now. You recap one episode then throw in the towel.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, Mohinder walks by in the background of a scene in episode 6 and like moths to a flame you're back...but only recapping that one scene. I mean, you've got to have standards.

There are no posters up? Yikes. Then again I think most of us are expecting this to be the final season of the show (barring a miracle or a tragedy, depending on your opinion). If I see Mohinder say, "screw it" and hop a plane back to India where he begins teaching again while doing research in his spare time and develops quite a following in his own right (as a geneticist) I'll take it.
Morgan Richter said…
At this point, I think the only question about the new season that's genuinely sparking my interest is, where the heck is Mohinder? I hope they at least come up with some really cool way to explain his absence (Oh no! Sylar-as-Nathan has imprisoned poor Mo in a tower somewhere!). It could happen.

Yeah, no bus posters. No billboards. No hype. I think NBC is deliberately reducing expectations. Probably a good strategy.
levitatethis said…
A part of me feels for the actors though (well, not all the actors -- some more so than others) because they're the face of the show and to see how far it's fallen is just so...sad.
Morgan Richter said…
I hope the cast is insulated somewhat from the bad press the show (and they) are getting these days. I know it's the natural flip side of the acclaim/warm fuzzy feelings they received back when the show was, y'know, good, but I still like the actors and the characters they play -- I just don't like the scripts.

I think they'll all do okay for themselves post-Heroes, even with how far the show has fallen. Quinto's been taking a tremendous amount of crap for how bizarrely Sylar was presented last season (I mean, The Power of Empathy? Whose brainchild was that?), but it's more than balanced by the praise for he got for Trek. I think Heroes will only help Sendhil, Masi, Grunberg et al snag good projects after Heroes fades away for good.

(I'm tired. I've typed "Hereos" twice, which sounds like some ungodly combination of Heroes and Oreos.)
Ingrid Richter said…
Yum! I love Hereos with milk!
Dan said…
Hereos and Mookies with milk!