#I watched the Bumblebee movie and Transformers (2007) tonight

[vampthropologist]

I wonder how easy it will be to find familial f/o things for the autobots

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 8 Page 44

DJ JAMSTA: We have a lot of great events and giveaways goin’ on here today. Thank our mayor, Mr. Christian Weston Chandler that CWCville is a clean city; no one has to go home drunk or somkey! We’ve got coolers and kegs full of our famously delicious CWC-Cola, Diet CWC-Cola, lemonade, grape and orange soda, compliments of our local CWC-Cola bottling company, founded and opened proudly in 1985; three years after CWCville was founded by our mayor’s father, Robert Franklin Chandler Jr. You can enter to win a 40-inch Sony HD-TV from CWick-Circuit City, or drive home in a shiny new ‘08 Chevy Camaro Concept. Also tonight, our rising star, Jiggliami will be singing her debut single, “War of Love” on the concert stage, here at CWCville Beach. So stay tuned to CWCville, Virginia’s number 1 radio station for all this and a lot more.

LOLISA: Awesome, Jamsta!! Well, I’m thinkin’ of takin’ a swim in our clean beach’s ocean, but I’ll leave ya to par-tay as we hear from Ricky Martin’s party with “La Vida Loca”!

Jingle: Everything! Station KCWC

Jamsta hypes up this party by discussing the day’s events and, of course, praising their lord and savior mayor. Even while he is lost to time (from the perspective of our characters) and may never return, they take time to both credit that he is, even in absentia, mayor of CWCville, and to express their reverence to him for keeping their city safe. At this point he essentially is a deity, watching over CWCville and influencing the fates and fortunes of his followers, specifically, those who praise him are rewarded and those who blaspheme him are punished.

When CWCville is described as a clean city, they mean a dry city. Chris was vehemently against alcohol at the time and remains against both tobacco and marijuana, so CWCville’s entire notable citizenry are straight-edge. “Somkey”, by the way, is a double level of fail in that it’s a misspelling of a CWCism - he meant “smokey”, which I suppose in this context means high.

Here we get our first taste of Fanta, I mean, CWC Cola, Chris’s self-aggrandizing competitor to Coca Cola and Pepsi. There’s some implications that, like KCWC, CWC Cola is a state owned company and holds a state-run monopoly over the carbonated beverage market. At least it comes in a variety of flavors.

Here’s the first real mention of how CWCville was apparently founded the day Chris was born, and by Chris’s father. This logic really doesn’t make any sense (aside from the obvious fact that it was fueled by Chris’s ego). That a man would name his city after his young son isn’t absurd, but why he would make the entire city centered around his son’s names (particularly his initials)? Obviously Chris named everything in CWCville on an ego trip, but that doesn’t explain why in-universe his father named everything after his toddler son.

“Cwick-Circuit City” (no idea why the sudden change to the more phonetic “Cwick” spelling) is a play on Circuit City”, a once-Richmond VA based chain of big box electronics stores. Little did Chris know at the time, in the fall of 2008, that they had entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and early that next year they went out of business, ceasing operations in their brick-and-mortar stores in March 2009. Coincidentally, literally while I was writing this, the Circuit City brand relaunched as an online-only store. Funny how timing works out.

In the complete inversion to the above, the Camaro nameplate was discontinued between 2002 and 2010, but a “Concept car”, a prototype to gauge public interest, of a revival of the line was designed in 2006 and garnered enough support to warrant bringing the Camaro back for the 2010 model year, which weren’t available for sale until the spring of 2009, after Chris had finished Sonichu 8. There were no ‘08 model Camaros, and I don’t think Chris realizes that “concept cars” are for showroom use only, and you can’t and shouldn’t be selling them for street use. It’s worth noting in the notorious 2007 Michael Bay helmed Transformers movie, notable supporting character Bumblebee was  portrayed as a Camaro in his vehicle form, given the sudden rise to prominence of Transformers in the next issue I can’t help but wonder if Chris chose a Camaro because he was thinking about Transformers.

These two promotions seem pointless, and from a narrative perspective, since who wins these promotions isn’t a plot point, we never find out who wins, and they never come up again, they are. But Chris likely included them to make the radio station seem more like a real radio station, and to hype up that this Spring Break concert and party were a big deal.

Jamsta also introduces the B plot of this episode, wherein Jiggliami, Blanca’s OC introduced in Sonichu 7, has her debut concert.

Lolisa is drawn here with these weird black lines all across her fur. That’s Chris’s way of drawing a tan. Seriously.

Lolisa plays us out of this segment with Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” Chris’s second mention of one of his songs. Although the song remains a party staple, the song was a hit in 1999, further cementing Chris’s preference and nostalgia for the pop charts of the late ‘90’s.