Noiseless Chatter Archive

  ALF Reviews: “Love on the Rocks” (season 4, episode 15) We’re in the final ten episodes! Part of me knew I’d make it this far. The rest of me attempted suicide several times to keep from making it this far. But here we are…wrapping up the series for good. Eagle-eyed readers might have spotted some new entries on the  ALF archive page . It’s not everything I have planned for the wrap-up, but it will keep me from forgetting to do the things I’ve promised. I’m also considering a live stream / riff of  Project: ALF  ahead of the official review, so please let me know if there’s interest in that. It won’t be anywhere near as elaborate as the Xmas Bash!!!, but that’s okay. Maybe I’ll screen it along with two episodes of the show…a pick of mine, and a readers’ choice selection. We’ll see. Let me know if you have any ideas, as it’ll be the closest thing we have to a big finale celebration, and I want to make sure it’s something everyone can enjoy. Speaking of things everyo...

I wrote recently about one of the few true ethical dilemmas I found myself having to navigate in Fallout 4 . It was a satisfying moment, if only because I couldn’t be satisfied. For the first time (at least, the first time that I noticed) I was not able to do things my way. And that was a good thing. The decided lack of satisfaction was more satisfying than the go-anywhere/do-anything open world had yet been. There was a beauty in the fact that this situation wasn’t as simple as I’d like it to be. And, as I mentioned briefly in that earlier piece, it was accidental. This wasn’t an ethical conflict by design, like my Necropolis example from the original Fallout . No, this was a conflict born of circumstance. A few speech checks failed, against all odds. I’d sided with a certain faction that made the situation less straight forward. And I’d invested time (in-game) and empathy (personally) with The Minutemen, the group of interlopers that became my eventual sacri...

  ALF Reviews: “Make ‘Em Laugh” (season 4, episode 14) Has time rendered any prospect sadder than “David Spade guest stars on this week’s  ALF “? “Make ‘Em Laugh” aired in January of 1990.  ALF ‘s cultural cachet was falling quickly, with public opinion of him and his shtick souring fast. His ratings fell. People stopped caring. He was once the star of one of the most popular shows in the world, but, as Artie Fufkin would say, ALF oversaturated. The more often people see something, the more opportunities they have to get sick of it, and ALF gave everyone a wealth of opportunities to get sick of him. He was  everywhere . There were ALF clothes, ALF dolls, ALF action figures, an ALF board game, ALF video games (in traditional and educational flavors), ALF ice cream, and even ALF records and cassettes on which he either narrated irrelevant fairy tales or sang bullshit songs about Melmac. And those were just the tie-ins. As far actual ALF productions go, there was of cou...