A Break from Breakdancing Octopuses (and the Net)

I may sound like a killjoy, but I just don't feel drawn to see the movie Paul, which depicts an alien who behaves a great deal like Seth Rogen, because it just seems like lazy comedy to me, as do computer-animated movies about hip talking jungle animals and the like. 

I know Kyle Smith liked it, but if comedy writers want to impress me, have aliens and animals that don't behave just like humans (or even like Seth Rogen) but are funny anyway.  That would be an accomplishment.  Anyone can come up with ideas like "He's an octopus -- but he breakdances!  Just like he's people!"  Why should it surprise or delight us that imaginary beings we made up behave like us?  And how myopic is it to want them to?

(I realize I may sound as picky here as Isaac Asimov, who once criticized the show ALF for its failure to make ALF convincingly alien, unhelpfully suggesting that if ALF communicated through electrical sparks, for instance, he would seem more otherworldly, to which my friend Marc Steiner says, "Yeah…that'd be…hilarious.")

By contrast, here's some real geek comedy.

P.S. But to get back to laziness for a moment: I need to catch up on some real work, so I'm laying off the blog, Facebook, and Twitter until Friday but then will do a Book Selections entry -- with zombies! -- kicking off a whole "Month of Heroes" (which will see the release of Atlas Shrugged: Part One, my trip to Texas to educate the Russia-like commies in Austin, and much more).

Don't panic if I'm aloof until then.  I must go and blaze my own trail.

But feel free to e-mail me if anyone out there's still having trouble posting comments -- or, if so moved, show that you're not having trouble by posting away here as an open thread until I resume posting on Friday.