Is that spam on your refrigerator?
By Ian Fried
October 11, 2002

A PC in your refrigerator? Korea's LG Electronics sells a 26-cubic-foot fridge that lets you watch TV and surf the Net—for "only" $8,000.

Now, who would actually want one of these things? After all, a fridge, a 15-inch TV and a computer will set you back a lot less than $8K. So maybe the TV won't be a liquid crystal display like the fridge's got; those are just minor details. And if you need to check e-mail, log to your usual must-read websites and watch digital pictures, the kitchen doesn't seem like the best place for it. Frankly, this is an appliance whose time hasn't come yet.

A lesson in restaurant manners from Suzy Hansen's review of Alison Owing's Hey Waitress! The U.S.A From the Other Side of the Tray:

...Suz, a waitress whose new husband had been a horror to wait on, offered this simple instruction [on how to treat a waitress] to him:

"You will sit very quietly. You will give your order, completely, clearly, succinctly. You will never harass the waitron and will be very grateful and tip twenty percent even if she forgot your order completely. Maybe she's having a bad day."

Would the customary 15% be enough, or is that being stingy?

Idiot Box

Well, that was a whole weekend spent detached from the outside world, firmly parked at the couch and watching episode after episode of The Scooby-Doo Show (1976). Not exactly food for thought. Unless you're watching under the influence of a sugar high (heavily sweetened, caffeinated drinks are a geek's best friend), which leads to sophomoric dissertations on the semiotics of Saturday morning cartoons:

The aspect that most distinguishes this Scooby-Doo incarnation from the classic Where Are You? (1969) one is the increased number of "creatures" and "beasts." Oh, the '69 version did have a space alien, a witch and a werewolf. But they were a ghostly space alien, a witch's ghost and a werewolf's ghost. This time around we get a snow beast, a tar monster, a vampire, a demon and a sea monster, among many others, and more ghosts. But the focus is no longer just on spectral apparitions.

At the same time, this new reliance on monsters called for a new set of features on these foes. In the '69 show, the ghost werewolf and a ghost Yeti introduced fangs and claws to the "frightfaces" the Mystery Inc. gang chased after, but other ghosts were mostly human (or human-looking in any case). The '76 show, on the other hand, offers a cornucopia of fangs, claws, horns and other spiky appendages. If on the first series the ghost witch looked like your standard pointy-hatted hag, this series has a cat-like witch sporting black eyes with glowing irises and a mouth full of sharp teeth.

Like, what's going on here? Maybe the move from plain old ghosts to monsters had something to do with the times. At the end of the 60s, the concept of "ghost" (a disembodied spirit returned from the dead) was probably still scary enough, but the 70s might have brought a larger set of frightening presences: sightings of UFOs, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, which, indeed, shows up in one episode. Clearly, some new blood was needed to threaten the Scooby gang.

But what about all those fangs and claws? It's like a Freudian's field day! Consider that during the Victorian era, Dracula's sharp teeth were an opposition to the sexual mores of the time: a means for promiscuous "intercourse" with every female and male the Count well pleased. So were Fred, Daphne and the others fighting smugglers and con artists hiding behind externalized male aggresiveness?

Probably not. During this series, character design was in the hands of Alex Toth, whose most famous creation was Space Ghost. Mr. Toth was an action oriented designer, specializing in superheroes and supervillans. One of his signature motifs were triangle-shaped eyes, and in this incarnation of Scooby-Doo there was no shortage of those. It may even be that the larger number of monsters was a move to accommodate Mr. Toth's design style.

Never spend close to 48 hours watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons non-stop. Specially while guzzling bottle after bottle of carbonated soda.

The Twilight Zone has generated a large body of analysis. Why hasn't Scooby-Doo received the same treatment? There are clearly experts out there.