C.T.O.T.I.O.T.D.

27, 2006 | Once upon a time, Betty Boop and performed together.
was filmed in 1932, before the forced Betty to give up her short skirt garter and change into a knee-length dress with a back (and, presumably, a bra). As you might imagine, the Code was Betty's death knell.

Sex sold, even in cartoons from the 1930's.
This cartoon opens with the earliest known footage of Cab Calloway and his Orchestra performing a one-minute introduction to . The plot of the cartoon is pretty simple: Betty decides she hates her parents and runs away with a friend, then she gets the bejeebers scared out of her and she returns home.

Simple, eh?
Yeah, but one wonders where Max Fleisher got some of his ideas. Calloway appears before Betty and Bimbo in a puff of smoke as a rotoscoped walrus and conjures up visions of ghosts skeletons while singing about drug use having a sugar daddy in front of a constantly changing background.

The demons witch that scare Betty home seem almost tame by comparison.
Cab Calloway went on to make two other Betty Boop cartoons: in 1933 (which also features a one-minute long live-action introduction by Cab Calloway and his Orchestra performing the title song) and , also in 1933, four years before the version. Alas, there is no live-action footage of Cab Calloway performing the featured song, , although he does appear as a rotoscoped Koko the Clown.

If you have some extra time, check out those two cartoons. In them Max Fleisher comes up with some of the most original and clever visual stunts and situations ever commited to film..

.and, yeah, the Production Code of 1934 killed those, too.

Posted by Victor, Jul.

17, 2006 | Have you heard about the , Trek Passions?

It was after a wildly unsuccessful run with Esquire.com Personals, a paid service affiliated with the men's magazine, that "S" (he asked that his name not be used) sought out Trek Passions.

The final straw came when he was rejected by a woman with whom he had nothing in common. "She was the complete and total opposite of me in every way," he confesses. When the self-proclaimed "Spock-like personality" turned out not to be "fashionably ironic," she was disappointed.

(He doesn't think his day job as a janitor helped his cause any.)
"S" says that he's been told: "Weird people should date other weird people - the normals don't quite understand."

Here's a typical intro from , by a 31 year old male seeking female:

Your basic Spock-like personality here, seeking a woman with a personality somewhere in the Deanna Troi to Subcommander T'Pol range.

will consider B'Elana Torres to Kira Nerys types depending on extenuating circumstances. No tribbles, please.

Here's another one from an average carbon-based life-form:

I've been in way too many relationships where the girl I'm with thinks "He's great, except for that Sci-Fi fascination" .

. . I'm so done with that, and just looking for someone who can enjoy an hour of Trek with me instead of in the other room.

Lol, good luck with that, dude.
This one's short and to the point:

Take me to your bedroom, earthling. I live ST:OS, ST:TNG, BSG and BDSM.

Bwahaha! I'm not sure I'm familiar with the acronym for that last tv show, though.
Now, I know some of my readers have probably already opened up another window and are feverishly typing their intros as we speak.

On the other hand, some of you geeks might be skeptical, like Conan O'Brien was:

Trek Passions received a boost back in March, when, on his late-night talk show, Conan O'Brien quipped: "The fans say the dating website is going great and any month now they hope a girl will join."

Funny, but I did check and yes, there are a few girls on the site.