The Underground — Issue #30
Everything you need to know about in this weekly series: Why CGI looks worse now than it did 20 years ago, a terrifying Internet short-story series is coming to television, a landmark sci-fi novel, OCD myths explained, and a robotic challenge between two tech superpowers.
At Social Underground we go beyond the mainstream stuff and see what’s underneath the surface. What should we get into, listen to, read, eat or watch? If there is something in our culture that needs attention that’s our job: Show you the underground things that you need to know about: Books, music, television, movies, comedians, art, and whatever else we can find to get you into something you never knew about. That’s The Underground.
1. Why does CGI look worse than CGI from 20 years ago? Take a seat, breathe in a few times, and admit to yourself that some CGI you see in movies that cost $200 million look like cutaways from Playstation games in the 90’s. Jurassic Park? Looks beautiful and realistic 20 years later. Terminator 2? It looks like it was just made. Jurassic World? Everything looks CGI until they actually film the animatronic dinosaurs that the actors can interact with. Terminator Genisys? How can they make it look way worse than Terminator 2 with present day technology?
The answer is that when you try to make everything with CGI, it all looks like CGI? When you don’t film real locations and use a computer to simulate it all, the human brain calls bullshit. Think about the first Star Wars film. Most of those films were filmed using miniatures and creative techniques. Fast forward to Episode III: The One People Said Wasn’t As Bad As The Last Two, and it looks like a video game for the first 10 minutes. Not a good video game, but a videogame you feel obligated to deal with because you sat through the other ones and have to get this one over with.
This video educates you on why CGI is so bad in films now. As I said in Social Underground’s piece about CGI before, it’s not “special” if you overuse the hell out of the technology.
2. A Creepypasta story that will haunt your dreams. There are many subreddits on Reddit, but /r/creepypasta is a collection of stories that will keep you up at night. If you think you imagined something awful that will keep you up at night, creepypasta is the page that will make you hate your eyelids for exposing you to the dark.
I chose the one that most creeps me out to the point that I make sure my windows are locked and an aluminum bat is right beside my bed. The Syfy channel has just optioned to make one of these twisted stories into a television show. The story Candle Cove by Kris Straub has inspired Syfy to make a series titled Channel Zero.
If you choose to go onto the creepypasta Reddit, well, you’re pretty brave. Picturing someone turning some of these stories into reality is terrifying enough. Hell, even the story I wrote scares the crap out of me.
Check out the short story told in message board format that inspired the series.
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Skyshale033Subject: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
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Does anyone remember this kid’s show? It was called Candle Cove and I must have been 6 or 7. I never found reference to it anywhere so I think it was on a local station around 1971 or 1972. I lived in Ironton at the time. I don’t remember which station, but I do remember it was on at a weird time, like 4:00 PM.
- mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- it seems really familiar to me…..i grew up outside of ashland and was 9 yrs old in 72. candle cove…was it about pirates? i remember a pirate marionete at the mouth of a cave talking to a little girl
- Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- YES! Okay I’m not crazy! I remember Pirate Percy. I was always kind of scared of him. He looked like he was built from parts of other dolls, real low-budget. His head was an old porcelain baby doll, looked like an antique that didn’t belong on the body. I don’t remember what station this was! I don’t think it was WTSF though.
- Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- Sorry to ressurect this old thread but I know exactly what show you mean, Skyshale. I think Candle Cove ran for only a couple months in ’71, not ’72. I was 12 and I watched it a few times with my brother. It was channel 58, whatever station that was. My mom would let me switch to it after the news. Let me see what I remember.
- It took place in Candle cove, and it was about a little girl who imagined herself to be friends with pirates. The pirate ship was called the Laughingstock, and Pirate Percy wasn’t a very good pirate because he got scared too easily. And there was calliope music constantly playing. Don’t remember the girl’s name. Janice or Jade or something. Think it was Janice.
- Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- Thank you Jaren!!! Memories flooded back when you mentioned the Laughingstock and channel 58. I remember the bow of the ship was a wooden smiling face, with the lower jaw submerged. It looked like it was swallowing the sea and it had that awful Ed Wynn voice and laugh. I especially remember how jarring it was when they switched from the wooden/plastic model, to the foam puppet version of the head that talked.
- mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- ha ha i remember now too. 😉 do you remember this part skyshale: “you have…to go…INSIDE.”
- Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- Ugh mike, I got a chill reading that. Yes I remember. That’s what the ship always told Percy when there was a spooky place he had to go in, like a cave or a dark room where the treasure was. And the camera would push in on Laughingstock’s face with each pause. YOU HAVE… TO GO… INSIDE. With his two eyes askew and that flopping foam jaw and the fishing line that opened and closed it. Ugh. It just looked so cheap and awful.
- You guys remember the villain? He had a face that was just a handlebar mustache above really tall, narrow teeth.
- kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- i honestly, honestly thought the villain was pirate percy. i was about 5 when this show was on. nightmare fuel.
- Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- That wasn’t the villain, the puppet with the mustache. That was the villain’s sidekick, Horace Horrible. He had a monocle too, but it was on top of the mustache. I used to think that meant he had only one eye.
- But yeah, the villain was another marionette. The Skin-Taker. I can’t believe what they let us watch back then.
- kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- jesus h. christ, the skin taker. what kind of a kids show were we watching? i seriously could not look at the screen when the skin taker showed up. he just descended out of nowhere on his strings, just a dirty skeleton wearing that brown top hat and cape. and his glass eyes that were too big for his skull. christ almighty.
- Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- Wasn’t his top hat and cloak all sewn up crazily? Was that supposed to be children’s skin??
- mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- yeah i think so. rememer his mouth didn’t open and close, his jaw just slid back and foth. i remember the little girl said “why does your mouth move like that” and the skin-taker didn’t look at the girl but at the camera and said “TO GRIND YOUR SKIN”
- Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- I’m so relieved that other people remember this terrible show!
- I used to have this awful memory, a bad dream I had where the opening jingle ended, the show faded in from black, and all the characters were there, but the camera was just cutting to each of their faces, and they were just screaming, and the puppets and marionettes were flailing spastically, and just all screaming, screaming. The girl was just moaning and crying like she had been through hours of this. I woke up many times from that nightmare. I used to wet the bed when I had it.
- kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- i don’t think that was a dream. i remember that. i remember that was an episode.
- Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- No no no, not possible. There was no plot or anything, I mean literally just standing in place crying and screaming for the whole show.
- kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- maybe i’m manufacturing the memory because you said that, but i swear to god i remember seeing what you described. they just screamed.
- Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?- Oh God. Yes. The little girl, Janice, I remember seeing her shake. And the Skin-Taker screaming through his gnashing teeth, his jaw careening so wildly I thought it would come off its wire hinges. I turned it off and it was the last time I watched. I ran to tell my brother and we didn’t have the courage to turn it back on.
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mike_painter65Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
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i visited my mom today at the nursing home. i asked her about when i was littel in the early 70s, when i was 8 or 9 and if she remembered a kid’s show, candle cove. she said she was suprised i could remember that and i asked why, and she said “because i used to think it was so strange that you said ‘i’m gona go watch candle cove now mom’ and then you would tune the tv to static and juts watch dead air for 30 minutes. you had a big imagination with your little pirate show.”
You can read more stories over on the /r/creepypasta subreddit. You can also throw your bed away since you won’t be needing it after reading some of the stories.
3. Ready Player One is a must-read book for anyone that loves sci-fi dystopian fiction.
Ernest Cline has been mentioned in previous Underground’s, but his first novel really sets the bar high. His book deals with a future that is full of technology where people sync into a gigantic virtual world, while they ignore that the real world is falling apart.
In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines—puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win—and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.
The book is set to be adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg, which could be a good or bad thing. There are so many good tidbits stuffed into this book, I feel that a movie will strip away what makes it so much fun. I loved Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy the movie, but so much of the book’s narrative only work on the page. I guess we’ll see.
Head over to Amazon and buy this immediately. Even better, get the audiobook that is read by Wil Wheaton. He nails it.
4. The common misconceptions of OCD explained. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is often used by people who happen to be neat and tidy, or obsessed with doing things perfectly, but a lot of this is true and is often blamed on OCD.
This video from TED explains what OCD is and how debilitating it really is. I often jokingly refer to myself as OCD because I can’t get off a cardio machine until the minutes or calories hit an even number, or my habit of counting how many steps on a staircase and dividing by two. These 2 examples are weird, but there is in no way anything debilitating about them other than making me sound strange.
Check out the TED video on OCD below to find o out how rare and debilitating it can be.
5. The U.S.A. has challenged Japan to a mech robot battle. Now, I consider myself quite the American citizen, but I can recognize when we don’t stand a chance. Like the war on obesity, America will lose and end up getting a dinner for 4 and eating it alone while watching a re-run of The Biggest Loser. Japan has been in the robot/mech industry before anyone has ever heard of it. At the very minute, I’m watching Knights of Sidonia on Netflix, and that show is all about mechs with lasers. The only thing I can think mech related that came from America was The Matrix sequels. We all know how those were.
MegaBots, a U.S. robotics company, has challenged a Japanese robotics company (Suidobashi Heavy Industries) to a giant battle of the two best mechs. This sounds like it will be something fun to watch, but as much as both company’s efforts have put into their mech robots, they will still look like two robots bumping into each other, breaking down, and disappointing everyone… OR going on a rampage and attacking the crowd. Then, the robots invade the cities and activate other robots in hiding. It turns out it was a set-up from the beginning of an invasion!
But probably just something fun to watch. Check out the video below of the challenge and impressive movements of the mechs:
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com