(no subject)

[camwyn]

Watched a bunch of Real Ghostbusters episodes this Saturday, as some of you no doubt know. All of season 1 has now been watched, save for one truly horrid episode that, so far as I am concerned, should be un-Named- "Look Homeward, Ray" was poorly written, poorly characterized, gratuitously humiliating, populated with uncharacteristically stereotyped characters, and otherwise generally bad. Not to mention that it caused me to yell at the TV that Ray had better give John Constantine back his trenchcoat right now because clearly Ray didn't know how to wear it, but that was really the only bright spot. Far as I'm concerned, that episode doesn't exist.

I was hoping I would get some good episodes out of the mix and I did; JMS eps were heavy, and there was a Michael Reeves (I think) one, too. No sign of Ragnarok and Roll, nor Collect Call of Cthulhu, but there was the episode with the Sandman and one with Samhain and the one with the Three Ghosts of Christmas (although that left me with an unaccountable urge to find some form of canon support for the idea that one of the guys might be from a Jewish family, Lord only knows why). Even some of the eps that weren't JMS related were pretty good, so I’m happy about that. I have found myself wanting to come up with some kind of drinking game for the show, including a line about taking a shot any time an episode displays real continuity. Most of the time this means a view of the containment unit's contents happens to include a ghost or spirit we've seen before, but this disc included the ep where we found out what happened to their old uniforms and how they got Slimer, so that ep is one where you'd be drinking an awful lot.

I did notice one or two things that made me wonder just how prescient the people who wrote the cartoon were. One of them involved the episode "Troll Bridge", I think, since virtually every description of the troll colony that had overwhelmed the Queensboro Bridge caused me or mephron to make comments about Usenet, but the other…

One of these episodes featured Egon wearing a scarf while they were searching for something outside. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. The scarf was quite plain and horizontally striped, all stripes the same size. The background colour of the scarf was a light, dusty blue, but the other colour was a sort of dull brownish-orange- too brownish to be New York Mets orange. It looked, in fact, almost exactly like an old-school cartoon might depict the colour bronze. In the mid-1980's Egon was wearing a Ravenclaw scarf.

Clearly, the man had a penpal during his years at Durmstrang.

On another note, can anyone point me in the direction of a good means of grabbing screencaps? Some of these episodes had scenes with elements I really liked.

Comments

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough I can see Egon at Durmstrang.

[camwyn]

Precisely why I placed him there in Who Ya Gonna Owl?....

"If you don't mind my asking. . ." [Hermione] leaned forward. Despite the fact that they were the only passengers, she spoke in a voice just above a whisper. "You are aware that use of the Imperius Curse on a human is grounds for a life sentence in Azkaban here?"

He took off his glasses, examining them for possible damage. Finding none, he slid them back on. "Of course," he said. "They covered the Unforgivables at the start of my second year at Durmstrang."

"You went to Durmstrang?" exclaimed Arthur.

"Unfortunately, yes. It was my relatives' idea. They said I'd already finished my degree in the mundane school system and that I could pursue graduate work after getting a proper magical education."

"But- your degree- what, at university? Durmstrang's for-"

"I finished my bachelor's in physics before I was twelve years old. I went back to MIT for my doctorate after I finished at Durmstrang."

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Well, shit. Off I go to bookmark that one and read it.

(Twelve? Dear God.)

[camwyn]

This one, like Hellblazer: Hogwarts, is still a work in progress. I will be working on the next chapter this week, though.

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Almost all my fics are WIPs. The only ones I ever finished are the really long obnoxious ones like Vita Labyrinthae and Waiting for You.

Still bookmarking and reading.

[camwyn]

Right, then. It's at fanfiction.net and fictionalley.org, whichever you'd rather risk visiting.

[cold-hope.livejournal.com]

Read and reviewed.

[camwyn]

Sweet. Thanks!

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me. I'm supposed to pass on the idea of Hellblazer/Ghsotbusters. More specifically, Johnny boy's magic adding extra punch to the proton packs.

There was also mention of the fact that if the packs spew out positive energy, which traps the negative energy of ghosts, why isn't there a matter/antimatter explosion?

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

Don't quote me on it, but my guess is some really wacky hyperdimensional magnetics. This isn't a static system, not by a long shot...

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. In fact, the stream crossing is probably an antimatter explosion of sorts.

[camwyn]

Someone suggested that crossover once. I've been considering it. I'm not sure I could do it properly, though, since Hellblazer does different things to my head than Ghostbusters material and one or the other would lose out rather badly.

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

*Nods* I hear ya. *Shrug* I didn't think it was the first time you'd heard the idea anyway, but I thought I'd pass it along.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Hellblazer/Ghostbusters? Hell, with Johnny's luck, the damned things would start sucking in people then eat Jeanne's legs

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

mmmm, Jeanne's legs . . . Uh, did I say that out loud?

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

How's the Dalek Rodeo going?

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

It's coming.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Not sure what format the eps you're watching are in, but VirtualDub Mod can grab just about anything. Many other video/DVD-watching programs can do it, even if it's just screencapping, but you usually have to turn the video acceleration off to get anything other than a black box.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Oh, Lord. Now I'm picturing Egon as the descendant of Rabbi Loew, who built the Golem of Prague.

[camwyn]

I'm not touching any golem stuff with a ten meter cattle prod. Apparently there was an episode of Extreme Ghostbusters (a show which I successfully rolled to disbelieve in, after discovering that it had existed only upon finding the toys for it in the 3 for $10 bin at Toys R Us) where a rabbi's son built a golem. More than that I don't know.

Egon does, however, have magical ancestors, although I do not have a copy of the episode "Egon's Dragon" on hand for exact reference.

Well, if you wanted....

[unseenlibrarian.livejournal.com]

...You could argue that they were trying to imply that he was Jewish, given that part of the episode involved a Fiddler on the Roof pun(Wasn't it also called "If I were a witch man?")

Re: Well, if you wanted....

[camwyn]

Since I"m not sure which of the eps I referred to is the one of which you speak, allow me to repeat myself:

I successfully rolled to disbelieve in Extreme Ghostbusters. In the same way that I rolled to disbelieve in the movie Constantine, although I had a higher roll on the cartoon one- I could not entirely dispel the movie and wound up having to shelve it in the mental stacks reserved for 'weird alternate universe version of thing I already know'.

Disbelieving in the Extreme Ghostbusters canon means I'm not allowed to use any references to it if I'm trying to back up an assertion in my fic.

Re: Well, if you wanted....

[unseenlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Wasn't talking Extreme. Talking the regular series; I never saw an episode of Extreme Ghostbusters, but I seem to recall the title of the "Egon's magical ancestors" ep being "If I were a witch man."

Just sayin'.

Re: Well, if you wanted....

[camwyn]

Oh. The only one I knew of for certain in the original series was called "Egon's Dragon". Clearly, I'm going to have to visit eBay and acquire some more back episodes of the series.

Re: Well, if you wanted....

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

I liked Extreme Ghostbusters

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Real Ghostbusters stopped existing for me when the wheelchair bound character rolled over bumpy ground and stairs

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

"Spengler" sounds like it ought to be some kind of Yiddish bastardization, doesn't it?

[camwyn]

I dimly recall someone claiming it may have been Dutch in the context of the series, but in the real world it was the last name of a philosopher named Oswald Spengler- Harold Ramis said this in the commentary on the DVD of Ghostbusters, along with noting that he stole the first name Egon from a classmate who had been a Hungarian refugee. Still, I don't know where Oswald got the name from. It might bear looking into.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

WinDVD does good screencappage.

It's where I get most of my from-the-movies icons.

If you can tell me where to get my hands on a copy of the disk, I could screencap for you.

[camwyn]

It's sort of an illegal disc, really. When I say 'sort of' I mean 'completely'. It's all transferred from the TV show as far as I can tell.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

Aha.

*ziplip gesture*

[shadowspinner.livejournal.com]

Have you heard of this site? (http://archive.ghostbusters.net/) They have most of the episodes available there, though the quality is a bit dodgy sometimes.

[camwyn]

Ooooh. Certainly worth a try... THank you!