Blogagaard Fondly Remembers ALF Christmas Special
I really loved ALF when I was growing up, way before his career as annoying spokesman got started. (Why did nearly every one of my childhood heroes end up crazy or just plain sold out?) The first "books" I ever wrote featured ALF as main character. I guess you'd call it fan fiction, but I can be forgiven since I was only seven. One book was about ALF trying to eat cats, and the sequel was about ALF trying to rescue the Tooth Fairy from some dark tower or something. I illustrated these books by hand, and I still have them. Not my best work, but they actually fly along, plot-wise. Out of all the ALF episodes I watched, eyes huge as not to miss a thing, my favorite was the two part Christmas episode in season two. Here's a plot summary from an ALF website:
Part One
ALF and the Tanners prepare to spend Christmas in a cabin. When the owner comes to visit them, ALF accidently jumps into his trunk and he is taken to a hospital and given away as a Christmas gift to a little girl.
Part Two
ALF tries to escape from the hospital but ends up stuck in an elevator with a woman in labor. After helping the woman to give birth, ALF pretends to be a toy and the cabin owner puts him back in the trunk and they drive away. When the cabin owner is about to jump off a bridge, ALF disguises himself as Santa and convinces the cabin owner to drive back to the cabin, where ALF is reunited with the Tanners.
17 comments:
So, did ALF like, disappear, then have to go into rehab, and is either satisfied with life or working to make a comeback? Has he become a VH1 cliche?
When I was seven I wrote and illustrated a Thanksgiving story in which a family raises a turkey from an egg, names it, cares for it, and then kills and eats it after the turkey attacks the father. I think I had a pretty good grasp of human nature for a seven-year-old. The eeriest part of this story was the breezy narration.
I bet ALF is currently on display in Planet Hollywood, right next to Harrison Ford's stained undershirts from the movie 'Six Days, Seven Nights'. The indignity.
The last episode of ALF, when ALF really died for me, involved ALF deciding to return home to planet Melmac on his spaceship. He almost made it, but was picked off by the Alien Task Force and taken into custody, along with all the Tanners. This episode was meant to be a cliffhanger continued in the next season, but the show was cancled before Season 5 could begin. Apparently this freaked people out for a long time, because in 1996 there was a ALF TV movie on ABC (not NBC, his longtime home) and it showed ALF was fine after all, even though not a single member of the original ALF cast was in the movie. I don't think this movie counts; I think ALF is still in custudy somewhere, making wisecracks about the bad Area 51 cooking.
FREE ALF< YOU SONS OF BITCHES! RETURN THIS COMMERCIAL ENDORSING ABORTION OF A FAKE TO WHENCE IT CAME!
He was probably glad to get the hand out of his ass.
No you didn't!
ALF was real!
AHHHH!
Have you seen this recently? ALF blows.
You should post your fan fiction. This is some of my favorite.
Read "The Dream" but picture Oppegaard and ALF.
I forgot to tell you that I checked that Eggers book out of the library. I'll get to it in a week or two.
From "The Dream": I knew what was about to happen and my heart and soul cried out in great agony. I didn't want him to die! I looked into his sleeping face and I thought of all that would be lost if he died. I said, "He just can't be taken from me yet again! NO! Not like this! Not like in the comic!"
About a month ago, I spent part of a day reading this, a Star Wars fan fic thing. Unlike a lot of fan fic (And I have spent some time in those trenches, boys and girl (say, why is it always me, Dave, and Clurg, with an occasional drop in -- like grace -- from Amyethyst?); I spent some time studying fandom with one of my college professors -- I have a very minor publication in some book somewhere about it. It was a paper I wrote for a conference that the professor in question rewrote into turgid and published.), it is almost good. I thought about writing the guy and telling him how to make it actually good (it isn't all that often that I know what to do, although I can almost always identify suck), but then I thought, "why do that?" It almost achieves Hamlet-like soliloquies, but he drops the tone too often -- "hey, look at me, I'm writing!" Like I should talk, however.
I mispelled "Amethyst." I was going to go for "Amy," then apparently changed my mind mid-syllable.
For a while there, I was reading a lot of Harry Potter fan fiction. It can get really disturbing.
I felt like an anthropologist amongst the sci-fi damned.
Two girls.
I, too, read some Harry Potter fanfic. Specifically I was looking for stories with 'R' ratings or better, just to see how people would handle a sex-scene.
At Hollins University, there was a huge fanfic movement. I was in the graduate-level writing workshops (only freshwoman in there, might I add), and I was shocked and amazed that people would actually turn in fanfic to be critiqued. I mean, what the hell do you say to two cartoon characters having gay sex? 'That scene is unrealistic' just doesn't cut it anymore. The fact is, fanfic ceases to exist outside of the sphere of the original, and so I cannot call it art. So fucking there.
Actually, Kelly, two very young boys.
Also, it bothers me because of how much emotional, psychological energy people invest in this type of writing. I get the impression a significant part of their interior lives revolve around these fantasies. Not like a kid who is just engaged with the story and it sparks his creativity.
Man, every time I see this picture of ALF on my blog I just have to smile. ALF!
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