Noiseless Chatter Archive

Hohohohohohoho!! I hope you are eating Thanksgiving foods, because it’s time to talk about Xmas! Specifically, The Third Annual Noiseless Chatter Xmas Bash!!! For those who don’t know, the Xmas Bash!!! is pretty much the only reason anyone looks forward to the holidays. For the third year in a row I will be hand-picking an assortment of terrible, terrible, really, truly terrible Xmas specials, songs, and other curios from the annals of pop culture history. And we’ll watch them live, together, making fun of them and keeping each other sane in real time. Honestly, it’s great. It’s like being at an Xmas party without having to put on pants, and the people there are actually really nice and they’re not wearing pants, either. And once again, donations will be accepted for The Trevor Project , providing counseling and suicide prevention services for LGTBQ youths. It’s an important charity to me, and if you can spare anything at all to help those who need such support the ...

  ALF Reviews: “Hooked on a Feeling” (season 4, episode 6) I’ve been doing nothing but urinating and playing  Fallout 4  for the past week, so forgive me if I come off as slightly distracted…but I think I can push the game aside and focus on  ALF  for the couple of hours it’ll take me to write about it. “Hooked on a Feeling” begins with Vault 111 opening at last, 200 years after The Great War has left the planet a barren wasteland. ALF is unfrozen in this dangerous new world, and left to fend for himself as he searches for his kidnapped son… …okay, yes, I’m kidding, but as I made that joke, I realized that  ALF  and the  Fallout  series are actually worthy of comparison. (NO REALLY KEEP READING) In each case, the backstory involves the nuclear destruction of an entire planet. In  ALF ‘s case that destruction is literal, whereas in the case of  Fallout  it refers to the destruction of civilization. In short, Melmac isn’t there a...

I loved Goodfellas when I was younger. Well, okay, I still do. It’s a brilliant film, and occupies a pretty high spot on my list of all time favorites, but it was especially meaningful to me when I discovered it in middle school or so. It was the first film that I didn’t just enjoy, but that I appreciated . It is, unquestionably, an artistic masterpiece. It has to be, because when I first saw it I had no concept of the language of film, and very little idea that the medium could be meaningful. I liked things or didn’t like things…there was little I could articulate beyond that, and little I could understand. Goodfellas was the film that punctured that bubble for me. It was something I enjoyed, but it also impressed me in ways I’m still figuring out decades later. Scorsese’s visual mastery, for instance, was arresting. I sat rapt, over and over, watching the same scenes unfold in ways that felt fresh and new every time. And for a good long while, this was the f...

  ALF Reviews: “Mind Games” (season 4, episode 5) I’ve more or less resigned myself to the fact that we’ll never see Jodie again. On any other show, this would register as mild disappointment at best. After all, while a great character may be retired on those shows, there will be other reasons to tune in from week to week. That’s why they’re great; our enjoyment doesn’t hinge upon one or two small things that we hope will make an appearance. On  ALF , however, her loss is significant. As you probably remember, “For Your Eyes Only” was the first episode of  ALF  that I genuinely enjoyed, and it’s still something of a high water mark for the series. ALF befriending a blind woman wasn’t just a great idea; it had solid followthrough. It was a funny episode that also managed to make me feel sad for the insane alien rapist who lived in the laundry basket. There was a sweet and welcome honesty to his relationship with Jodie, and while I’ve enjoyed other episodes since, that...