Four Nerds

Tom Waits For No One

2007-03-05T14:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, I know it's been a while, but there's something I thought you all ought to see. For those of you out there that are Tom Waits fans, check out this little bit of weirdness:

Also, where the hell is my good friend Fogelmatrix? He isn't even a contributor anymore.

Brittney and Anna - Can the Locusts Be Far Off?

2007-02-27T13:14:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, on the rare occasion I will receive a request to blog. Sometimes I am given a topic and other times I'm just asked to throw musings against the wall because the sound "splat" will warm the cockles of even the most hardened heart.

This particular request suggested spouting off about the media's two most recent train wrecks Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith. "Rob, I could see Britney, but how on earth could you pick on Anna Nicole Smith, she's dead after all." And to that I say into my sleeve while averting my eyes sideways (cough) are you kidding me - hypocrite (cough).

Don' worry, you're not alone. All of America is bathing in this false remorse. After she passed away, blogs on CNN.com had comments that ranged from the remorseful to the downright suicidal.

Betty Smith from Nowhere Arkansas wrote, "We have lost our generation's Marilyn." Does anyone else remember Marilyn Monroe fucking a couch, because I missed that scene in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? But I do remember 25 minutes of heavy couch and pillow coitus being pivotal to the plot of the Anna Nicole Show (Later the couch extracted it's revenge by making Booby Trendy smell it's arm).

Peter Dumbfuck from Whogivesaratsass Wyoming wrote "Hollywood's star will shine slightly less on this day." Peter, uhh Peter come close please. We all enjoyed the Naked Gun and as much as we are hoping that the Naked gun 55 and 1/5 (hah those Naked Gun titles never get old) makes it to theaters before Leslie Nielson fossilizes or OJ decides to kill someone else, I don't know if ANS was the one that made those movies so successful. Or was it her stellar work on the Trim Spa commercials that you are lamenting for Pete. Because fear not Peter, the Olsen Twins are one more failed movie away from dropping out of the Skeletor look alike contest and making up for a decade of starvation at the nearest Sizzler. So in ten years we'll be hearing "Trim Spa baby" in talentless stereo.

Now you're all saying, "Rob, how do you know all of the stuff she did, if you don't like her?" I need to explain something to you. I have something called a penis and for some inexplicable reason that penis seems to like yellow hair and boobs. Most other people you talk to that have these strange appendages will concur, if not to your face, at least in the company of other individuals with the same appendage.

Moving on.

Brittney shaved her head, showed her vag and went to rehab. While I can't agree with her choice to go to rehab, let's just give her some space to build up her crazy energy to critical mass and watch her implode into a redneck black hole that only Schlitz, Marlboro Reds, and grits can escape.

Someone once said, I believe it was either Carl Sagan or Jodie Foster "Math is the true universal language." And I believe we can use math to get to the heart of both of these mysteries.

Brittny
Postpartum depression + the brain of a squirrel/Paris Hilton*crazy beaver shots=Shave your head and go fucking nuts

Anna
Postpartum depression + the brain of a retarded squirrel/Methadone*Losing your other child when the new one is being born= Assisted suicide

The net of this equation is that I think both of these ladies suffered from a very real mental disorder despite the rantings of scientology drone Tom Cruise. Seek professional help and don't turn to your lawyer or Paris Hilton for salvation.

Fun from JibJab

2006-12-15T14:15:00.000-05:00

Nuckin' Futs! The JibJab Year in Review

Deck The Halls

Mahna Mahna

I Swear!

2006-12-13T17:26:00.000-05:00

Star Wars Episode III: A Lost Hope

Rest in Peace, Peter Boyle

2006-12-13T14:54:00.000-05:00

Peter Boyle

October 18, 1933-

December 12, 2006

On a Golden Boat with Golden Wings...

2006-11-21T14:17:00.000-05:00

Director Robert Altman died today at the age of 81. He died doing what he loved most in life, making movies. Altman was the director of such classics as M*A*S*H, Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, and Godsford Park. He was known for his great ensemble films, and his works rarely had a single star. Often times he directed his cast to deliver their lines the way people normally talk, and he enjoyed overlapping dialogue.

Like most people my age, my first experience with Altman's work was with Popeye. Always the innovator, this was one of the first comic adaptations whose overall look was shaped by the source material's artistic style. Other films to use this approach include Dick Tracy and more recently, Sin City. Popeye was one of the first films in which I can remember thinking, "How did they do that?"- a question which shaped the direction of my life has taken. Specifically, I wanted to know how they made Robin William's forearms bulge like Popeye's. Heck, I still remember the songs.

Altman once said that while he could never pick a favorite film, the ones that were the least successful were the ones that he loved a little more. They were like his children. Personally, my favorite film of Altman's has to be Cookie's Fortune and it's one of his best. It's one of those films that is just perfect. There's nothing wrong with it.

Rest in peace, Mr. Altman. We'll miss you.

Beam Me Up Scotty, There's No Intelligent Life Down Here.

2006-10-19T13:13:00.000-05:00

Well kids, it's been a while, but the Captain is back. And to quote my namesake (Who is not the clown from Rob Zombie movies):

"Hello, I must be going.
I'm sad to say,
I cannot stay,
I must be going."

But before I leave this very short post, I must alert you all to this little tidbit I found the other day:

No, that isn't a movie prop, kids. You can't get these suckers at any comicon. This is the real deal kids. A non-lethal "set-to-stun" ray gun. To add to the ever-growing list of cool-ass inventions inspired by Star Trek, the U.S. Air Force has invented the Personal Halting and Stimulation Response rifle. That's right, it's a fucking PHaSR.

If you want the whole story, click here.

Swordfish.

I Had a Lovely Time at the Mall This Afternoon

2006-09-16T00:02:00.000-05:00

I know my heading is traditionally reserved for the first line of the snail mail letter you get from your Grandmother who the family has forgotten in some sweltering real estate scam in the Florida Everglades.

“Hey, Gran what was the highlight of 2005 for you?” and she says, “I had a lovely time at the mall this afternoon.”

But you know what fuck Gran, this is my time, I had a lovely time at the mall this afternoon.

I remained untouched.

Instead of the usual barrage of Kiosk, lets call them what they are Fuckbags, peddling their wares with inane statements like:

“Excuse me sir, may I have a second?”
No you Thalidomide baby, I don’t want to try a sample of your Kiosk Sea Salt Skin Cream or Kiosk Octopus Testicle Relaxation Balm. Are you trying to say I have bad skin? Nary a pock on this face Miss, and look at this rosacea, Santa Claus and pedophiles would kill for this natural rouge. I do however need a Great Barrier Reef Foot Scrub for $35, actually thank God you took up a second of my life.

“Do you know how to change the world sir, through language!”
Fuck you, there’s language. Wait, do you mean change the entire world or just my perception of it, because the second choice would be much easier and could be accomplished quite easily for $25 and without any language what so ever. Now, to change the whole world would take rich dialogue, no doubt, but also so much more. It would surely cost billions, perhaps trillions if my calculations are correct.

Oh, you mean your Kiosk Language Tapes are going to help me change the world.

So if I learn how to say in Spanish “The bathroom is under the cactus shaped whore”, our troops will put out of Iraq, Osama Bin Laden will be devoured by his own asshole, America will once again find a purpose and with that a solid economic base other than porn and perpetual bitching on the Internet (congratulations you just found irony), and finally hemorrhoids, male pattern baldness and male lactation will all be a thing of the past? Then I say it is whores, cacti and bathrooms for me sir.

“Have you ever tried a microdot, its ice cream but fun.”
Your Mother let’s you leave the house like that? I had always wondered where the people that crash and burn at Baskin Robbins end up. 31 flavors of actual ice cream were too hard to read and actually scooping the ice cream would require musculature on your bony waif like Victorian fancy lad arms. So Dots it is, two flavors, no scooping. Just let the unnatural Satan spawned “chemical” reaction in your customers’ mouths do all of the actual ice cream making work for you.

I think you get the idea. If you don’t there are these things called malls and they have stands in the middle called kiosks, they sell things like the unholy aberrations I mentioned above but also bad kung fu films, cell phone accessories to take your nextel walkie talkie phone (the one that everybody already hates because they have to listen to your whole fucking conversation) to the next level of annoying by making it blink, slippers, sunglasses, pretzels, popcorn, hair extensions, belt buckles, and some shit I have walked past 42 times and still can’t identify.

Usually, I can’t walk through the mall without these pariahs of life and joy pouncing on me with the velocity of Dumbo shot from a ping pong performing vagina.

But today I was left alone. Thanks to Pac-Man.

Pac-Man is my favorite T-shirt. I wore this shirt to the mall, along with flip flops and some torn shorts. I looked like a bum. If I had a seizure these mistakes of nature wouldn’t have stuck a wallet in my mouth today.

But when I go to the mall from work, with khakis on and a nice button down pressed shirt these people are under you like Croatian land mines of consumerism just waiting to explode with a sales pitch.

Am I surprised? No! This is just an observation and perhaps a lesson. All of those bums that smell like piss and finger paint with their feces; maybe they are on to something. Maybe they aren’t really having a conversation with their pubes, maybe they just want you to think they are so you leave them alone. Then again, they could just be fucking crazy. Just dress down and save yourself some sales pitch grief.

CorpComm During the Holidays

2006-08-31T09:25:00.000-05:00

Global communications are like trying to hit the bulls-eye on a dart board after a bottle of Riesling. The target moves without rhyme or reason.

When I was with my former employer, a global tech company, my team was charged with developing the interactive “Holiday” card.

As we all know, the Greek God Politicocorrectalis has been lording over corporate communications since he won a game of Connect Four against Zeus. So any mentions of color, creed or gender were instantly deemed verboten. Hmmm…so what do we say for this message?

Since this was 2001, we decided a message of peace or at the very least solidarity would be an appropriate feather in the cap of a very turbulent year.

So, I crafted a beautiful message and our Flash designer added some nice snow flakes gently falling to the ground for a touch of ambience.

The day after we sent out the message the flood of calls and e-mails came gushing in. “Alo Mates, it’s summer here in Oz, ow about some sandy beaches next year”, wrote one perturbed customer from Australia. “It hasn’t been a turbulent year for the entire world ey?”, chortled a heartless bastard from Canada.

So now references to climate and world events will get you a firm talking to by the good taste Gestapo. Whatever shall we do?

Golf! Yes, everyone loves golf, especially fat bald white guys in suits, which is our target audience. Because only fat bald white guys rise to the level of purchasing power to rubberstamp the exorbitant cost of our products. So how can we tie in golf to the Holidays in 2002? A game! A Flash based game of mini-golf.

I pull out my Laugh-In thesaurus of bad puns (thank you Nick at Nite), and start tying golf to the “holidays”. The Flash developer likewise starts putting in obstacles based on the same theme. Hit Santa with the ball and he gives a hearty Ho-Ho-Ho, whack the menorah and the candles come on, bump the Kwanza bush and it plays traditional African music. We even built two courses one with a winter theme and the other based on the sunny shores of the Southern Hemisphere.

January 1, 2003 after a restful break we come back once again to a flood of e-mails. “Golf and the Holidays how utterly gauche”, came a response from our friends on the little island across the pond. “Kwanza is an African-AMERICAN holiday you fools”, was written by an irate individual, who I guess had a hard time negotiating the shrub and was pulling in bogeys.

When August 2003 rolled around, my boss came over to my cube and told me it was time to work on our Holiday message again. I told him I would send him an e-mail shortly with my initial pass. When he opened the e-mail it simply read, “Let’s play it safe this year:

Happy December!

The morale? When it comes to international communications, craft your message carefully. Political correctness has not only permeated the global stage it has devoured it.

Paris: Twitty Of Lights

2006-08-24T13:02:00.000-05:00

Okay, here's the deal with Paris Hilton: *

She's probably the most worthless person in the world.

Here's how to deal with her:

Change the fucking channel.

Honestly, turn off VH1, stop watching E! (which I think stands for Excrement!), and for God's sake, pay no heed to the top half of the TV Guide channel.

If you've ever read anything I've ever written on the subject of celebrities, then you know that, for the most part, I think they are the most worthless, selfish, egomaniacal, self-centered and self-congratulatory people in the world and they have completely lost touch with what life is like for the other 6 billion of us.

Paris Hilton is the ultimate edition of that phenomenon with one exception. Most of the tabloid fodder out there got to where they are because they had a dream and some modicum of talent (even if it is the tiniest little bit).

Paris Hilton has neither. She had no dreams of fame and fortune because she was already rich. The money she had was not earned. It was bestowed upon her. She has enough wealth to make Solomon blush.** She has had every advantage in the world. What does she do with it? She whores herself on a “reality series” on national television.

If she truly had a dream to perform, she could have taken her vast resources and tried to become a true performer. Agents could have been hired, acting coaches and personal mentors could have been retained. She could have gotten into movies or on the stage. Hell, she could have produced her own movies.

But instead, she went for the lowest of the lowest common denominator. Perhaps it was just for fun. Perhaps it was because she was bored. But here’s the thing: She keeps on doing it. She keeps making home porn movies and bad music videos; she stays on the Stupid Life season after season, despite the fact that the two stars hate each other now. She keeps her face in the press as much as she can.

And I have a theory as to why. She is looking for purpose. This is a person whose entire life is without meaning. She is making a desperate and sad attempt to make her mark on the world but has no idea how to do it. Why else would she try to trademark the phrase “That’s Hot?” She was trying to say, “Hey world, this is my contribution!”

Unfortunately for this nitwit, it’s a phrase that is in common parlance. That’s like trying to copyright “Good morning” or “Merry Christmas.” Way to go Paris. You know, I think I'm gonna follow your lead and try to get a patent for air.

Paris Hilton has decided that the only way to make her existence count is by being famous. It doesn’t matter what you’re famous for, just so long as your face is on TV and the magazines in the checkout line at the supermarket. Instead of trying to find purpose and meaning through, oh, I don’t know, helping your fellow man by doing Great Works of philanthropy with that vast fucking fortune of hers, she blew her boyfriend while he videotaped it with a nightvision camera.

That’s hot.

Stars are Blind - And I Wish I Was Deaf

2006-08-22T06:01:00.000-05:00

How does Paris Hilton have a career? I truly have no problem with her being rich; after all, her great-grandfather earned it. I also understand that money breeds money. So fine, go roll around in your money and spend the rest of the day making more future rich babies, but for fuck’s sake stop infiltrating my entertainment mediums.

First we were forced to succumb to her and Lionel Richie’s talent less daughter acting retarded in the mid west. I have 400 channels and still couldn’t escape the vortex of awfulness created by these two. Here’s the first law I will initiate when elected President, anyone past the age of 12 that can’t spell a state name, will not be allowed in. These two twits don’t even know what country they are in, much less trying to build a cognitive map connecting nowhere back to Rodeo drive.

My feelings about the show aside, I have come to accept this show exists and it has made these two famous despite the fact that their collective IQ is 10 points less than Forrest Gump.

So what has spurred this tirade against the bronze anorexic one?

The video, Stars are Blind, by Paris Hilton!

If you clicked the link above and watched the video, first I’m sorry. Second, assuming you didn’t kill yourself, I hope you will agree that the lyrics are insipid and her voice sounds like a cross between a three old with a skinned knee and air being let out of my tires.

Please, help put a stop to this woman’s success before we vote her into the White House based on her keen fashion sense.

Two-Face is Too Effeminate

2006-08-18T10:01:00.000-05:00

I know our generation is changing all the rules on the definitions of masculinity and gender roles, but I see the latest addition to the new Batman movie line-up is just too much of a Nancy Boy to pull it off.

Filling the shoes of the barely existent Billy Dee Williams in the Tim Burton original Batman and the over the top Tommy Lee Jones in the first Joel Schmaker train wreck, Ryan Phillipe will be the new Harvey Dent/Two-Face.

So let’s recap: Heath Ledger is the Joker, Ryan Phillipe is Two-Face, all we need now is Jake Gyllanhal as Robin and we have a pivot man for the rogue gallery circle jerk.

I guess maybe I’m starting to show my age, but I just think these guys are too young and too dam pretty to convey the emotional scarring that’s at the heart of all these characters.

Never Rub Another Man's Rhubarb

2006-08-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

Well, it took me a while, but I've decided to weigh in on the Heath Ledger/ Joker "issue." My official position at this point is that, as of this writing, there is really nothing to say.

At this point the only thing that concerns me about Heath Ledger is the fact that he doesn't exactly fit the role physically. I mean, I don't really have much else to base my opinion on, from a performance basis at any rate. There's nothing he's done that would preclude him. I haven't seen anything that he was particularly horrible in. Sure, he's been in some bad movies, but bad movies aren't always the result of bad acting. Put it to you this way: Michael Caine was great as Alfred in Batman Begins. Michael Caine was also in Jaws 4.

As for Ledger, the problem is the fact that his face isn't long enough. He could pull of the grin, sure, but then again, so could I. Doesn't mean I could play the Joker. The Joker has a face that is long and gaunt, like his flesh has been pulled back on his skull, twisting it into that hideous smile. He's also got a thin, lanky body, almost like a doll. Crispin Glover's was bandied about for a while there, and I thought that he could probably do the job and do it well. Heath Ledger seems to be too bulky and his head's too wide. I thought the same thing about Jack Nicholson, except his bulk wasn't muscle.

So, we'll see.

Great Scott! (Scott? Who the hell is Scott?)

2006-08-01T19:01:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems my esteemed colleague Fogelmatrix missed my point. I wasn't saying, "Well could you do better?" I'm not asking you to come up with 180 million dollars and make a new movie. I don't want you to write a screenplay or anything like that.

What I am saying that it is easy to point the flaws in a movie we don't like. We all do that. It's easy to tear apart a movie. You were disappointed with this movie, so what would you have changed to make it better? An idea, that's all. It doesn't even have to be a complete sentence.

For example, you didn't like the fact that we find out Superman had a kid, or that Superman finds out. Fine, we take that revelation out. Okay, so now we have this kid who's just thrown in for no reason, other than to show that Lois has moved on. He's got no real purpose to the story now, so we take him out completely. Fine.

So now we have Lois and her boyfriend, who she dated when Superman left for five years. Without the kid, (and the possibility that he's the dad) the new guy doesn't stand a chance. He'd be out of the picture in five minutes. So, we can get rid of him.

So, now we just have Lois, five years later and nothing's changed. Superman comes back, and Lois is still there, a bit pissed, but hey, she's always been a bit pissed. Personally, I would have a lot harder a time with that than the idea that Superman had a kid. I would expect something to be different. Why not a Super-Bastard?

How about Lex's plot? Okay, you're okay with Lex as the bad guy, but think the idea of him using Kryptonite was cheesy. Fair enough. Ultimately he and Superman are going to have to face each other. Since Lex is only human, the final showdown will either be really quick, or Lex will have to come up with something to put him on an equal footing. In Superman 1, he had kryptonite. In Superman 2, he had three kryptonians to fight his fight for him. In the third one, we didn't have Lex, but the very human villain had a supercomputer to fight the boy in blue. In #4, Lex had a mutant nuclear clone of Superman.

So what could he use this time? A giant robot? Maybe, but frankly I'd be upset by Superman fighting a CGI robot. Personally, I'm fine with the kryptonite.

And don't hand me that overly sarcastic plot synopsis. It's always used "not as a valid point to an argument, but as a sarcastic..."This is SOOO cheesy" statement. It's a statement that relies on sarcastically overemphasizing certain parts of a story as to make it seem less believable. The CAPS Lock is essential at making your point. (Yes, I'm paraphrasing you.)

You can do that with any movie:

"Oh, she's REALLY going to get on that plane and not stay in Casablanca. RIGHT. GIVE ME A BREAK. Humphrey Bogart is so much cooler than the other guy."

"OOOH, he builds a world wide newspaper business, is one of the richest men in the world, and the one thing he wants on his death bed is a fucking sled? YEAH RIGHT. I'm so sure."

"Han Solo just happens to get back just in time to save Luke from getting shot by Vader. Please. Vader couldn't sense Han behind him with the Force!?! HOW CAN YOU BE SUPRISED WHEN YOU COMMAND THE FUCKING FORCE?"

As for the masses, I'm sorry dude, but there's no way in hell fanboys are the masses. Maybe your parents and mine didn't see Superman, but it wasn't just comic book geeks either. The movie made $52 million its opening weekend. Average about ten bucks a pop, that's about 5 million people watching the movie in three or four days. Do you honestly think it was all a bunch of dweebs like us? No, it was parents with their kids, teenagers, and yes, 18-35 year olds. But it wasn't just limited to them. Superman is arguably one of the most popular superheroes of all time. People from all walks of life wanted to see him.

But if you want a target demographic or a majority audience, then I'll help you out. Who do I think is going to this movie? Hmm... Let’s see... Could it be kids maybe? Kids who never saw the Christopher Reeve movies, Lois and Clark, Smallville, or the animated series. Kids who don't read the comics because they're still working on learning their ABCs. Kids who, with any luck, will ask their parents for those cool new Superman toys this Christmas, sleep on Superman bed sheets, watch that new Superman cartoon that will premiere on Saturday mornings this fall (I have no idea if they'll make such a show, but it's likely if the movie and toy sales do well.)

That's why revamping the franchise is important. Do you think the origins of Superman were a mystery in 1978? Yet they spent a significant portion of the movie explaining that. They were restarting the franchise back then, and bringing the current generation up to date. Same thing happened with this movie.

Thirty-somethings aren't the target market for anything other than baby formula and aluminum siding. Thirty-something comic book and Sci Fi geeks aren't the target market for anything found outside a comic book store. Sure, they'll want to appeal to the geeks, create a buzz at the latest comicon, and get a good word of mouth going. But the real money is in people with no responsibility. (Incidentally, the demographic that studios and networks generally like to target is 16-24, not 18-35. These are people that generally have disposable income and aren't tied down with things like car payments, mortgages and children. Sorry dude, you're a real grown up now.)

As for our parents' generation, Superman is almost 75 years old. They grew up on Superman just like we did. Instead of Christopher Reeve, it was George Reeves. Hell, he had been around for 13 years when my parents were born. You think the only people who grew up on Superman are the ones who watched Superfriends on Saturday mornings? You should have paid more attention to the people in the audience when you went to the movie.

Brokeback Batman

2006-08-01T12:01:00.000-05:00

Not to put a stop to our war on Superman, but Variety announced today who the new Joker will be for the next Batman installment.

Drum roll please...

par rum rum rum rum rum rum rum rum...

Heath Ledger...

Wait did you hear the drum roll?

As an extremely amateur actor I always try to have the faith that an accomplished thespian can put themself inside any roll. I mean at the ripe age of 31 I just played a 17 year old somewhat convincingly.

When Nicholson was announced as the Joker in the original Batman back in 1989 I was elated. Even at the age of 15 I had the world wisdom to know that this was a perfect fit.

Heath Ledger though I'm just not sure. It just doesn't seem like a natural fit. Shit I would have casted Ashton Kutcher before making this call.

OK boys open the flood gates!

Superman Returns 2.0

2006-07-31T18:33:00.000-05:00

"How would I have done it?"
I love that question. It is always asked, not as a valid question to an argument, but as a saracstic..."Well could you do better?" question. It is a question that tries to completely invalidate the opposition by removing the validity of their argument. It doesn't do anything to move the argument forward. It just basically says "Well if you didn't like it, you do it better." So in response Captain, you give me 180 million dollars and three years time and I will try my darndest to do better. How's that? I have never written a movie script or directed a movie but I will sure go out their and try my hardest. And then you can critique my work. But...seeing as how that Ebert Valley of the Dolls cliche most likely won't pan out...I will just respond to your post.

Special Effects
Ok. We agree that special effects can't carry a movie. The story was interesting though? Since when? This leads us to the next topic.

Story was cliched at best.
Superman AND Clark disappear for five years. He goes to find his blown up hometown and lands back in his mother's field. With a giant Christmas tree ornament? What use is that? What is it? Was it his spaceship? Why does he need a spaceship? I see him flying in space all the time? Lois Lane moved on...and got boring. She won a Pulizter for an article entitled "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." It should have been titled "That Asshole Didn't Call Me Back." In the meantime, she settles for Cyclops and has a kid. Who could the kid be? OOOHHHH? I wonder. Wow...What a co-ink-i-dink. Luthor is out of prison at the same time. And he has a plan to make real estate? Wow...brilliant mastermind in jail for 5 years and all he comes up with is making a giant new age crystal hippy haven? And look...Superman can lift out a RHODE ISLAND SIZE ROCK out of the earth...He actually went into the Eart and RIPPED IT FROM the bottom of the ocean. BUT STOPPING A TINY PLANE STRAINED HIM????? GIVE ME A BREAK.
Now Government got on my case earlier because I had to "suspend" my belief when it came to Superman. Why? Doesn't Superman follow some set of parameters? That might be a interesting thing to try to find. If I was Luthor, maybe I would spend some time on that one. Instead of just rushing for Kryptonite.
So, let's sum up.
Good guy shows up. Girl doesn't want good guy. Bad guy hatches diabolical scheme to control everything. Good Guy kinda gets girl. Then bad guy tries to kill Dalton by running a big Monster Truck over the car dealership. Dalton rips out throat. Kelly Lynch gets mad. Dalton yells across duck pond at Ben Gazarra. Ben Gazarra can just SHOOT Dalton from his back porch but instead burns down Uncle Jessie's barn. Dalton kills everyone and saves the day. I think I prove my point that Road House is a crappy movie just trying to be Superman.
Cliche? Oh god yes. I don't need obscure villians. I don't need Doomsday. Don't try to push that shit on me. I would never say that. I am ok with Luthor. I like Lex Luthor. I don't like Gene Hackman playing him because he plays him like Luthor is a wannabee bad guy. And Christopher Reeve at least acted like he enjoyed playing Superman. Routh is so boring it hurts. At least when I had the towel on I acted like I enjoyed being Superman. Remember the smile Reeve gave after he saved people. Routh just seems to "have" to do it.
And don't give me that crap about "revamping the franchise." That is the worst excuse in the book. Just trying to appeal to the masses. Not just fanboys. I hate to say it...we are the masses. We are the fanboys. Who do you think goes to these moviess? Our parents? No. It is us. 18-35 year olds. That is what makes up the viewing audience of comic book movies. The same people that love Kevin Smith and Star Wars and The Matrix and Lord of the Rings. The same ones that you argue Battlestar Galactica with. They don't need to dumb down Superman to appeal to the masses. Superman 2 was a great idea. Superman 1 he reversed the rotation of the earth to reverse time. Wow...that is crap. Comic book movies don't have to appeal to anyone else nowadays. They are a cash cow. Who is going to see the movies? We aren't talking indepents. So honestly. Who are you reintroducing the franchise to? If there isn't anyone bigger than Superman?
The Lois and Superman angle? Lois and Clark was better. Smallville was better. At least they came up with deeper characters. Oh look, Lois has a kid. That makes things awkward. This is supposed to make me feel better about their relationship? What happened to sexual tension. A buildup. X-Men did a great job with Wolverine and Jean Grey. Superman...just toss in a kid. Gay. Cop out. How can you throw in such a crappy "twist" to the "reintroducing" of the franchise. Now we have to worry about a superboy. Unless the kid gets hit by a Kryptonite truck while retriveing a ball in the street. Hopefully they could do that. With cool special effects.
There could be layers to Superman. Why not? An alien that constantly has to save humans from everything. Entire race of geniuses killed by an exploding planet that no one saw coming. Again...Smallville has done wonders with the idea of making Superman layered like Shrek. An onion has layers. Ogres have layers. Parfaits have layers. Why does everything have to fall back on "because that is how it has always been."
Do you really think Brian Singer gives a crap about what fanboys are saying on the internet? C'mon. Be real. Poopshoot.com has zero effect on anybodies opinion.
Catwoman and Daredevil and Joel Shumacher? C'mon. Don't lump my saying that your standards have been lowered by bringing up bad movies. Why am I expected to swallow the same things from every comic book movie? Just because it is a comic book movie? Spiderman gave us a well thought out script that introduced the creation of Spiderman while balancing the "tension" of the girl with a bad guy that was not the most popular but a great one nonetheless. Batman Begins showed us a new bad guy...kind of obscure...with the telling of the "lost" years of Batman. What did Superman show us at all? A kid? And bad acting. And the same old story. Why can't comic book movies do something different? The masses would still go see them.

Stupid sayings

2006-07-28T15:16:00.000-05:00

Earlier today someone at work asked me to call up one of our vendors and get some paperwork faxed over. Apparently they had trouble with these people, and suggested that I be extra polite and kiss-ass-ish. "After all, you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar!" he said.

We've all heard this one before in one form or another. It's a very old saying, the lesson being one can get more cooperation from others by being nice than nasty.

This little proverb annoys me though. My problem is not with the moral. It's generally how i apporach my dealings with others. My problem is with the imagery. First of all, the cooperation of others is something you want, whereas flies are more of a pestilence. That's a minor detail, and one that boils down to your own personal sense of literary aesthetics. I can forgive that one.

What really irks me is the fact that the logic is flawed. Yes, you might attract more flies with honey, but you would attract even more files with a big pile of shit. So what does that say about treating others?

Faster Than a Speeding Bullet....

2006-07-20T11:55:00.000-05:00

I've always been a big Superman fan. The Christopher Reeve movies were the first superhero movies for most of our generation, and in my mind, Superman I (and to some degree II) were the quintessential comic movies. To me, Richard Donner set the bar, and it's only been in the last two or three years when people have actually managed to come back to that level.

To explain, when Richard Donner made Superman, he told the story as you would any other story, like it actually happened. The characters were real and fleshed out. They didn't approach it with the carnival-ride campiness of say, the Joel Schumacher Batman flicks. They told a good story. They had plenty of action and special effects, but that wasn't the whole movie. Hell, it took half an hour before we even saw Christopher Reeve. (Incidentally, Richard Donner was fired from Superman II because the Salkinds wanted to make the movie campier. Richard Lester was brought in to replace Donner. Lester went on to direct Superman III, which did very poorly.)

When it came to Superman Returns, I wanted them to do exactly what Richard Donner did. Give us the action-packed Superman, but make a decent story. Superman 3 and 4 had plenty of action, but the stories sucked. For the most part, they did that. There are a few critics out there who have had problems with this movie. Let's look at a few of them, shall we?

1) Spectacular effects, but they don't carry a movie.

True. I have long argued that was the downfall of the Star Wars prequels. However, I personally don't see that here. I thought it was an interesting story. Supes disappears for five years, and has to reconnect with the world. Lois has moved on, has a kid, etc. Is the kid Superman's or not?

2) The story was clichéd at best.

Superman is clichéd just by being Superman. He's the quintessential superhero. How many superheroes wear capes and/or tights? How many have their emblem/ logo across their chest? Superman started all that. When we were kids, how did we pretend we were superheroes? We wrapped a towel around our necks and pretended to fly.

They were revamping the franchise. They wanted to put their own mark on it, but more importantly they wanted to remind people why they loved Superman and the original flicks. They had to pick up where Superman 2 left off, keep close ties to the first two movies, and make a good flick with a completely new cast. Sounds hard to me.

In a lot of ways, this new restart is similar to Tim Burton's Batman flicks. It's been 20 years or so since the last on-screen outing of the hero. People remember the last incarnation as being rather cheesy (think the Quest for Peace), so they went back to basics. The hero fights his archenemy, who is plotting a rather typical attack on the people of the city.

Sure they gave us the typical Superman stuff. Lex had a diabolical plan involving genocide and kryptonite. Superman throws the evil thing into space. How else would you suggest they have done it? Doomsday? Most people would walk out of the theater thinking "who the fuck is Doomsday?" How about Mr. Mxyzptlk? Two hours of Supes trying to trick someone into saying their name backwards. Brainiac would probably just remind people of Superman 3.

As for kryptonite, well, it's his only weakness. How else is Lex going to get him?

3) The story was all about Superman and Lois, their kid, and Superman's love life.

Well, duh. When you strip away the "eye candy" of the special effects, Superman is really about Lois and Superman. Hell, they had a show called "Lois and Clark" for crying out loud. As for the kid, I'm glad they finally took it to the next level. I'd be more pissed if it was more of the "I can't truly love you because I am Superman and can't risk your safety" crap. The story's always the same. Clark loves Lois. Lois loves Superman. But because she doesn't know his identity, never the two shall meet. Bullshit.

The story of Superman isn't that complicated. Hell, the original TV series was essentially Superman rescuing Lois and Jimmy from their weekly kidnapping. When I see a Batman flick, I want to see a story about a complicated, emotionally unstable superhero. There are layers to Batman. There's not a whole lot there with Superman.

4) Where's the originality?

My friend and colleague Fogelmatrix pointed out that when it comes to "the big four" comic book movies (Superman, Batman, Spider-man, and X-men), they should be better than the rest of the comic flicks out there. I couldn't agree more. I also think that of the comic book movies to come out over the last six years, X-men 1 and 2, Spider-man 1 and 2 and Batman Begins have been some of the strongest. The stories were good, they were well acted, and there was just enough "eye candy."

A lot of these directors and writers gave us stories that were very close to the comics. Why? Because they understand the fanbase. They played it close to their chest because fanboys are some of the most critical people in the world. Hell, people are still bitching because Hugh Jackman, at 6' 2", is way too tall to be Wolverine.

As for the average fans, they tend to start out with villains people have heard of. You give people a movie with some supervillain no one except a fan had ever heard of, they won't be as interested. Start out with their arch enemy and maybe they'll come back for the sequel. Don't think so? Then imagine if Tim Burton decided that the Ventriloquist was the hero to start with. It probably wouldn't have done that well.

You have to remember that of these four, the youngest title is 43 years old. There's a lot of history and a lot of stories out there. There's also a lot of high expectations. Branching too far from the source material always seems to backfire (just look at Catwoman), so how would suggest they do it?

I don't think I'm settling for inferior plots. I don't think I've lowered my standards. If I were, I would be sitting here praising the great works of Joel Schumacher and discussing the mastery of Ben Affleck's portrayal of Daredevil. Of the "Big 4" franchises of the last 6 years, I've enjoyed all the movies (except X-men 3). They were well-written, well-acted movies with compelling stories and good characterizations that remained relatively faithful to their sources.

So my question to you is, if the stories are clichéd, how would you have done it?

Superman Sucks

2006-07-18T07:29:00.000-05:00

Ok. Now I know I will get crucified for this post by the other two on this site but this question might be asked. Why is a movie considered "amazing"and the "best comic book movie ever" when the movie itself is written like a straight to video action movie starring Dolph Lungren and Wings Hauser. Here are my points.
Good Point
The special effects were outstanding. The plane sequence was breathtaking.
BUT...
Special effects don't make a movie. Why are we all so obsessed with eye candy? The plane sequence was innovative but in no way carries the movie. Cliffhanger had a great opening but the rest of the movie blew.

Good Point
The franchise is given a much needed defib.
BUT...
Why does every Superman movie have the same exact action scenes. Oh look...buildings are falling, Superman saves everyone. Oh look...every power he has makes an appearence.

Good Point
The script focuses on Superman's emotions...the stalker bit was kind of interesting.
BUT...
Let's be honest...Superman's emotions aren't really that interesting to begin with.

Okay...forget the good points. Let's just list what I don't like and wait for a scathing response from The Captain and Teneil (I mean Government Cheese)

The last 30 minutes were cliches. A movie with a crappy ending ruins the movie. Signs was good until the end. That makes the movie blow. I don't care about Superman in the hospital. I don't care about Superman having a kid. The kid point was thrown in for effect. Now you have to factor that in to the next movie.

Luthor came up with a plan that involves Kryptonite. Wow...how original. Give me a break. Do something different.

Lois Lane is torn between Superman and a normal guy. That is like that asshole that played guitar in college. No normal guy can compete. What is she going to do? I don't know...oooohhhhhhh...what is going to happen?

I enjoyed it. But it really wasn't THAT great. I will never watch it again. No need. NOTHING HAPPENED. And 3D can't change that. 20 scenes of 3D cannot improve an already fragmented movie.

Just because there hasn't been a Superman movie in 20 years doesn't mean that this one was good. It was better than Episode 1 no doubt. But it still isn't the savior of comic book movies. No matter how many scenes Brian Singer thows in trying to prove it.

That Poodoo That You Do So Well...

2006-07-07T09:50:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in the last paragraph of my last post, I have been playing Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) lately. I didn't get a chance to play it when it came out because A) The computer I had at the time was a piece of crap, and B) I didn't have an Xbox.

It's a great game, for the most part. I kind of wish you had more control over the fighting parts of the game, like in Jedi Knight II. That's okay, though. It's still a lot of fun. While it has a definite story to follow, I like the fact that you can take your character in any direction you want. Do you want to be an evil Jedi, or a good one? It’s up to you.

I’m about to talk in some detail about the game, so those few out there who haven’t played the game yet, there be spoilers ahead.

The one thing that annoys me about the game is the same problem I had with the Star Wars fan films. The game takes place roughly four thousand years before Luke Skywalker blows the shit out of the Death Star. The designers obviously wanted to significantly expand on the Star Wars universe by giving us something that takes place centuries before even the oldest Star Wars characters were born. Personally this infraction is more annoying to me because this game is a licensed, official Star Wars storyline. It's a part of the expanded universe. They should know better.

They were off to a good start too. They created a compelling story of a Sith War quite unlike the one in the movies. The planet that you started out on was one called Taris, a completely urbanized world where shit, quite literally, rolls downhill. Admittedly, it's a bit like Coruscant, but I liked the fact that it was a new planet I'd never heard of.

Unfortunately, that's where they stopped. First of all, they began by making most of the aliens in the game the same as the lot inhabiting the cantina in the first Star Wars, with a few from Jabba's palace thrown in for good measure. They have Rodians (like Greedo), Ithorians (Hammerheads), Twi'leks (The dudes with the head tails) and so on. The occasional Hutt shows up as well. They did invent one new alien, but s/he isn't a big part of the game.

You find yourself having to go to the local cantina. Why they can't have a bar, tavern, nightclub, pub, saloon, speakeasy, beer hall, or any of the other thousand or so names for your local watering hole is beyond me. No, it has to be a cantina, and the band has to be Bith players (like the ones in Star Wars) and the dancers have to be Twi’leks (like the ones in Jedi). Nothing new to report here.

A one point, you have to battle a rancor monster. Why they couldn't come up with another giant carnivore is beyond me. How hard could it be? Take a 20' body, add sharp teeth and claws. Add a roar and voila! You got a monster.

You soon find yourself at one point engaged in a Swoop race. For those of you who don’t know, a swoop is essentially like a speeder bike, except it’s a hell of a lot faster and more dangerous. While they don’t really make an appearance in the movies, they do show up in the expanded universe, including the popular Shadows of the Empire book and video game, which takes place between Empire and Jedi.

Again, the problem is that KOTOR takes place 4,000 years before all of that took place. Why are they racing the same damn thing? Even George Lucas, for all of the damage he did to the Star Wars universe with his prequels, was smart enough to create a new racing vehicle for the Phantom Menace, and that took place a mere 30 years before.

Through the course of the game, you gather together a collection of allies who accompany you on your travels. First there’s Carth, a Republic soldier who trusts no one. He’s a little like Han Solo, but I was willing to overlook that. You then meet up with a Twi’lek orphan named Mission, along with her Wookiee companion Zaalbar. After freeing Zaalbar from captivity, he offers you life-debt. (Sound familiar?) He’s followed by the Jedi Knight Bastilla and a few others (including an astromech droid, of course. Fortunately the droid looks more like Johnny 5 then R2-D2).

Finally you are able to escape Taris with your new friends. After stealing a rather familiar looking starship from a local crime boss, you fly the familiarly named Ebon Hawk (because all small freighters must have contain a species of bird in its name) to the planet Dantooine. For some reason, people just love coming back to a planet that Princess Leia mentioned in passing. The way you've designed Dantooine is cool, but why does it have to be Dantooine? You couldn't come up with a new name?

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: Dantooine is far too remote to be make an effective part of your video game.

Once on Dantooine, you are trained as a Jedi. One of the Jedi Masters that trains you is Master Vandar Tokare, who apparently is a member of the same species as Yoda. He even sounds like Yoda, except he doesn't switch his verbs and nouns around. He's a paler shade of green also.

After completing your training, which seemed to be like a weekend seminar, you are sent on a mission. You are charged with finding several star maps located somewhere on four different planets in the galaxy. This is the point I got up to last night. Two of them are called Korriban and Manaan. I’d never heard of them, and that’s cool. I’m looking forward to exploring them.

Sadly, I cannot say the same for the other two. The first planet is Tatooine, the home planet of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. It’s a tiny litter jerkwater planet that, as Luke so eloquently stated, “if there’s a bright center to the universe, (Tatooine is) the planet it’s farthest from.“ Why galactic events seem to hinge on this miserable speck of a planet, I have no idea.

The next planet is Kashyyyk, the Wookiee homeworld. It was featured in Revenge of the Sith, and also quite memorably in the Star Wars Holiday Special. This was Lucas’ original idea for the planet Endor, but decided to go with the more marketable Ewoks, after already establishing the Wookiees with Chewbacca. While Kashyyyk is a great idea for a planet, I would very much like to see something new. We’ve been there, seen that.

Upon looking at the Ebon Hawk’s navigational charts, I discovered you could also go another jerkwater planet called Yavin. You remember Yavin, right? It’s the big red gas giant that was all that stood between the rebel base and the Death Star at the end of Star Wars.

So far, Knights of the Old Republic is a great game. It’s fun to play; there are a lot of options, not just a single path to follow. The gameplay is solid, great graphics and sound. I love everything about this game, except for the fact that the people behind the games can’t seem to let go of the few little chunks of the Star Wars universe that George Lucas created in the movies. You have a whole galaxy to choose from guys. New aliens, new technologies, new planets. Create something we haven’t seen, especially if the whole idea behind the game is that it has no connection to the Star Wars universe in Luke and Leia’s time.

Bantha Poodoo?

2006-06-30T09:49:00.000-05:00

You know, I've always been a great admirer of Star Wars fan films. There are thousands of them now, it seems. Armies of faithful fans armed with camcorders and Macintoshes have made their Jedi dreams come true. From the cheesiest home video to the ones that are damn near professional looking. The parodies, the comedies, and the serious endeavors. It amazes me the passion of the people who not only take the time, but the expense and hard work to make these films.

They're everywhere. You can find a few of them here.

That said, it's now time for me to tear them apart. I probably would never make a fan film, despite working for a video production firm and having access to all the fun toys. It's not something that I'm interested in doing. No, I prefer to sit on the sidelines and bitch and complain about things. It's my way.

All kidding aside, I would like to offer up a suggestion or two to those out there who are making these films.

1) Stop making references to places you heard someone mention in passing in one of the movies (or in a game, or a book, or whatever). Whenever you mention that bounty hunter you ran into on Ord Mantell or that time you were in a cantina in Mos Eisley, it sounds cheesy. A lot of the places the rebels went were jerkwater planets that no one's ever heard of. Dantooine is far too remote to be mentioned in your film. I can buy mentioning a place like Coruscant, but that's the capital of the galaxy. People have heard of it.

Instead, make up your own places. You have a whole galaxy out there to use. Why stick to the 10 or so planets mentioned in the movies? Case in point, when Phantom Menace came out, a lot of people hated the fact that they spent half the movie on Tatooine. We've been there in Star Wars and Jedi, why are we back? (Of course, now that we've seen all three prequels, it makes more sense.)

2) Like the places, stop mentioning people you heard about in the movies, unless your movie is specifically about that character. If you are a smuggler, don't make your character in the employ of Jabba the Hutt. Make up something new.

3) Stop using lines from the movies. You don't have to call people a "Nerf Herder," you don't have to refer to the rebels as "rebel scum." Stop referring to people as "Bantha Fodder." There are other phrases you can use.

I can accept using something that is in common usage, like "May the Force be with you" or "I feel a great disturbance in the Force." That makes sense to me. Heck, I'd even accept the occasional "I have a bad feeling about this."

4) Stop painting your Dark Jedi to look like Darth Maul. Again, come up with something new. Or, if you absolutely must have that Darth Maul character, then for Pete's sake, either shave his head or get a bald cap. He looks silly with that mullet.

6) Paintball gear is not a prop, unless your movie is about paintball. It's a good place to start, but for crying out loud, doctor it up so it doesn't look like a paintball mask.

Are we seeing a pattern here? You have an entire galaxy to explore. Hang on to the themes and ideals of Star Wars, but branch out. Invent something new, something we haven't seen. You guys have the passion and drive to make these films, to master the effects. Now, just take it one step further.

Some of these suggestions also apply to those who are involved in official expanded universe content. I just started playing "Knights of the Old Republic" again, and I swear, if one more person mentions "Bantha Poodoo," I'm gonna scream. (Outside of that, it's a great game.)

STOP! Bullet Time!

2006-06-29T15:00:00.000-05:00

I recently found out that they are doing a Max Payne movie. It doesn't surprise me, I always thought it would translate well into a film if you do it right. There's the usual questions about who will play Max and who's going to direct it, but what I would like to know is what the deal is with bullet time?

Bullet time was featured prominently in the games, as anyone who has played them knows. There was never an explanation for it, you just hit the button and the whole universe slowed down. It worked well for the game, but I remain skeptical about how it will be used in the movie, if it's used at all.

To me, bullet time has quickly become an effect that is, well, passé. I think the reason is that usually bullet time is a very cool effect with very little purpose to the story. As a result, draws attention to the fact it is a very cool effect. In other words, a good effect shouldn't draw attention to the fact that it's an effect. You accept it as an element of the story, like a space ship in Star Wars or a time-traveling DeLorean.

So, in most cases, bullet time is put in for show, simply because there's no reasonable explanation for it, other than it looks cool. I suppose that's why the only time you see it anymore is when someone is spoofing The Matrix.

For most of us, we first got a glimpse of bullet time in The Matrix. In that movie, the slowing of time and space was explained by the fact that the Matrix wasn't the real world and people like Neo and Morpheus could bend it to their will. It worked.

On the other hand, a film like Romeo Must Die used bullet time, and it never worked because it was just there for show. It was a stylistic choice, and made no sense in the context of the film.

So, my questions to you are these:

1) Do you think they will use bullet time in the flick?
2) Do you think they should use bullet time in it?
3) If so, do you think it needs some sort of explanation for why Max can slow down time?
4) If so, then what explanation would you consider to be acceptable? If not, why not?

That said, I thought that Timothy Olyphant would make a good Max.

This Message Will Be Leaked To The Press In Five Seconds...

2006-06-28T10:02:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, the New York Times broke a story about a secret CIA program to monitor international financial transactions via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

Here in Philadelphia there is a...

Oh, man. I started writing what was to be a long rant about the Bush administration and the press and freedom and all of that, but damn it, I just don't have the strength nor the patience any more.

Fogelmatrix, Fogelmarix! Wherefore art thou Fogelmatrix?!

2006-06-27T14:38:00.000-05:00

Seriously dude. Stop being responsible and start wasting time.

Diversity Schmirsity

2006-06-27T09:27:00.000-05:00

I recently attended a conference in DC and had the privelage of meeting Steve C. who authors the Corporate Hallucinations Blog. Steve (like myself) is tired of the rhetorical nonsense spewed forth by the communications grinder. His latest post is on the topic of diversity, read my response below:

"Diversity is like a potato."

This was the opening salvo for the clockwork orange style diversity indoctrination I received at my former employer.

Despite the fact we were hemorrhaging funds like a hemophiliac on Coumadin, we were all forced to sit through endless hours of this rhetoric.

I digress: Essentially the potato in Ireland serves as a metaphor for Corporate America. If the Irish had only studied genetic engineering before horticulture they would have had multiple types of potatoes. Now assuming in this Bizzaro universe of reverse agrarian culture evolution the Irish had in fact cultivated multiple types of potatoes, the potato famine never would have occurred.

Despite the fact we were still shitting in bed pans and some folks were still ascribing to the heliocentric model of the universe, apparently top minds were hard at work determining the silent potato killer and research did indicate it would only kill one type of potato. Think of it as the Tay Sachs of Spudom.

So like the Irish we can’t have one type of potato in corporate America because if we do the company will die of famine and all the employees will migrate to a new land and every March drink green beer and pick fights with Police horses.

Here’s my take on diversity. A lot of people want to compare it to affirmative action. This is total bullshit. Affirmative action judges you not the quality of your work, but rather the color of your skin. Diversity like affirmative action judges you not on the quality of your work, but unlike affirmative action it judges you on a 12 point scale of different physical and personality attributes of which race is only one line item.

The 2,200 Reasons To Walk

2006-06-27T08:54:00.000-05:00

The other day, while on a road trip back from Boston, I was saddened to see a little yellow light start blinking on my dashboard. It wasn't the turn signal, or the hazards. It wasn't the low fuel indicator or the cruise control light. It a little yellow light in the shape of a gear with an exclamation point in the middle. It's the kind of light that makes grown men cry.

I drove my poor, ailing car home and rushed it to the "emergency room," the local trans shop. The initial inspection looked good. It looked as though I had nipped the problem in the bud. They said that it looked as though there was only minor damage, but they would have to pull the thing apart to be sure. I felt as though I had dodged a bullet.

Of course, I was being set up for a fall. I received a call this morning from the trans shop, and they said that not only did the parts of the transmission that wear out normally break, but so did the parts that usually never have to be replaced in the life of the car. It's going to run me about $2,200.00 to fix the damn thing. That’s roughly 30 percent of what I paid for the thing in the first place.

I bought this car about two years ago. This is my 4th car, and the first one built after I graduated from high school. This was the first time I had purchased a car from a dealer, and the first time I had gotten a car loan.

I bought it because my previous three cars were constant headaches; they had high mileages and always had something wrong with them. The first two were handed down from my parents, and the last one I was about 12 years old and I bought from a mechanic for less than 2 grand. I have learned something valuable from this experience. Never buy a car right after getting your prior vehicle inspected. You're buying out of anger, and it's just going to end in tears.

In my innocence I thought that buying a newer car with little mileage meant that it would be more reliable than the others. By paying more for a newer car, in the long run I would be saving money, because the upkeep would be less. How wrong I was. It just goes to show that no matter how old or experienced you become, you can always act like an idiot and convince yourself of anything.

There's a funny thing that happens when you spend a lot for a car, especially when you owe the bank for it. Suddenly, the second something goes wrong, you take it to the shop. The brakes are squeaking. I take it in. Routine maintenance is due, I take it in. The check engine light comes on, I take it in. You are invested in that machine, and you go to great pains to make sure it lasts the 3, 4 or 5 years you take paying the fucking thing off.

With a P.O.S. on the other hand, you don't give a shit. Sure, it'll cost you $500.00 every year to pass inspection, but you'll put a piece of duct tape over the check engine light so you won't have to look at it, rather than take it in. My first car had a coolant leak. Did I take it in to be fixed? Hell no. I simply stocked up on antifreeze and filled it before I left, and prayed I didn't get stuck in traffic.

The next car leaked brake fluid. Brake fluid! Did I have my brakes fixed? Fuck no. I stocked up on brake fluid and whenever the brakes started to feel soft, I'd pull over and top the fucker up. This was also the car whose steering wheel had to be at a 45-degree angle in order for the car to go straight. The only time you replace anything on a car like that is when the only way you can get the car to move is with a tow truck.

My current car isn't even that expensive. I bought it used for less than 10 grand. I can't imagine what would happen if I shelled out $50,000 for a BMW or some other ridiculous machine. The simple fact is this: If you put 100,000 miles on a car, something's going to break, and it's probably something expensive. It doesn't matter what kind of car it is or how much you paid for it. The only question is, do you give a shit whether or not it gets fixed.

I drove the brake fluid car to Los Angeles and back. I also drove it to Texas and back. I racked up roughly the same amount of miles on that SOB that Neil Armstrong logged on his trip to the moon. I had no qualms about breaking down, or what the resale value was. When it finally gave up and died, it had been driven into the ground. Now, I worry that by driving to Boston, I have put on too many miles. I'm sick of it. From now on, it's used pieces of crap for me. The rust around the tire wells and the duct tape holding the side view mirror on is a badge of honor.

I suppose the only alternative is to get a horse. I like that idea, because when it breaks down, at least I can take it out back and shoot it.

Business Communications Suck

2006-06-23T07:01:00.000-05:00

Like most only children, I am amazingly self-centered. The world did not exist before I was born and it will perish in a fiery blaze the day I take my last breath.

Since I live in this delusional vacuum of solitude, I had always assumed the problems with corporate communications only started when I began cutting, pasting and repurposing the 14 famous buzzwords of IT marketing as a career.

You know the words I'm talking about; reliable, scalable, robust, flexible, integrated, ROI, Return on Investment, infrastructure, outsourcing, off-shoring, efficiency, profitability, challenges and wait for it…Thought Leadership!

Well, slap my mouth, call me Sally and make me pay for my own dinner, because I have recently discovered that corporate America has been bullshitting us for the better part of a half century.

Take a second to peruse this IBM Ad fron back in the 1950’s.

This ad states, “Electron Tubes – Fast, Versatile, Accurate”. It’s a fucking tube. The only way it is fast is if you hurl it at someone (preferably the writer of this horrid copy). Versatile - not unless this tube can facilitate computations while making me a ham sandwich or giving me a blow job. Accurate – hopefully the computation it helps move along the “Information Horse and Buggy Path” is accurate, but as for the tube it self being accurate I have to disagree. I heard this particular tube give a speech in 1954 and its prediction that we would be sharing information via telepathy by 1972 was totally inaccurate.

I take solace in the fact that I am not trail blazer in muddled corporate communications, but rather continuing the proud tradition of “WTF Messaging”.

Brother, Can You Spare a C-note?

2006-06-22T10:27:00.000-05:00

You know, I was looking at some information today about the minimum wage in this country. Currently, the federal minimum wage is $5.15, and it was last raised back in 1998. For those of you who don't want to do the math, a person working fifty hours a week on minimum wage makes $13,390.00 annually.

At the time of the last increase, President Clinton allowed states to increase their minimum wages above the federal minimum wage. Since then, 14 states have done so.

This is a map showing the states that have increased their wage, those who haven't, etc. You can click on it to get a larger view.

Now here's the interesting bit. This is a map of red and blue states from the last election. Notice any patterns?

What amazes me is the fact that the Republican Party pretends to be the party of the faithful, yet the ones who seem to be trying to take care of their poor are by and large the blue states. I'm no theologian, but I'm pretty sure Jesus' message wasn't "Look out for number one."

Vader Haters

2006-06-16T09:57:00.000-05:00

Okay, one more thing I thought was cool...

Just Like Beggar's Canyon Back Home...

2006-06-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

Found this and thought it was cool. I understand why it was cut, but it's still cool...

"Hi, I'm a Mac. I'm full of shit..."

2006-06-13T13:28:00.000-05:00

You know, I've been seeing a lot of those "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials. For those of you who haven't seen them, Justin Long (from "Dodgeball") is the personification of a Mac, and John Hodgman (The Daily Show's resident expert) plays a PC. In each ad, they have a little conversation about what each machine is capable of, and the Mac always seems to come out on top. They're cute, and a good marketing campaign for Mac.

Unfortunately, they're also bullshit.

Don't get me wrong. I use a Mac at work and OSX is a great operating system. Leaps and bounds beyond OS9. It's done for Macs what Windows 95 did for PCs (except it did it about a decade later.)

They're still graphically better than PCs (a blessing and a curse to us and graphic web designers). They also have one of the best video editing programs out there. They have a lot to toot their own horn about.

I have no problem with a good Windows bashing either. Lord knows there's enough to complain about. But if you're going to do it, just speak the facts.

Let's run through a couple of examples, shall we?

Restarting
In this ad, the PC freezes in the middle of their conversation and has to be restarted. Yes, it's true that PCs can lock up on you, but if they wish to suggest that this doesn't happen on Macs as well, then they are kidding themselves. All operating systems lock up, even their precious OSX. My freaking Mac locks up all the damn time.

Network
In this, Mac and PC are holding hands, forming a "network". They say that they both network well together and all seems right with the world. Then, a Japanese chick walks in and holds Mac's other hand. Mac says that she is the latest digital camera, and begins a conversation in Japanese. PC looks perplexed, and tries to communicate with her with a sad little "buongiorno." The message: Your digital camera will not work on a PC.

Again, bullshit. Camera manufacturers want to sell their cameras to as many people as humanly possible. Naturally, they'd want to make their cameras work seamlessly with as many computers as possible. So, they've designed them to interface seamlessly with a PC, since Windows is the most common OS.

Personally, I have never heard of anyone ever having a problem hooking a digital camera to a computer, with the possible exception of people who just have really old machines. On the other hand, I have had problems hooking one up to a Mac, largely because despite the fact they've been using USB interfaces for their keyboards since 1999, they still only gave my machine two freaking ports. One is taken up by my fucking keyboard; the other is being used by my fucking printer.

Thanks Mac.

Work Vs. Home
In this one, the Mac says he's into doing fun stuff like movies and podcasts. The PC says he's into fun stuff too, like spreadsheets and piecharts. First off, they make it sound like PCs can't play music or movies, or do any of the fun things a user outside of an office might appreciate. Bullshit. In fact, back in 2004 the European Union fined Microsoft 497 Euros for bundling Windows Media Player in with Windows, which was deemed as creating an unfair advantage to other media players, such as QuickTime. (Guess who makes that player!)

Here's my script for how it really should be:

MAC: Hi, I'm a Mac.
PC: And I'm a PC.
MAC: I like to do all kinds of fun things, like music, movies and podcasts.
PC: I like to do fun things too. You can get literally tens of thousands of video games by every major game producer. Everything from first person shooters, to MMO games, simulators, RPGs, sports games, you name it, we got it. (Looks at Mac)
MAC: Uh... We have Tetris...

While most of these ads range from slightly distorted versions of reality to outright lies, there are one or two that are true.

Touché
The first is "Touché." This begins with Mac saying "Hi I'm a Mac, followed by PC saying "Hi I'm a PC." Mac then says "I'm a PC too" and goes on to explain how now you can run Windows on a Mac, and now you never need any other computer.

This sounds all well and good. Personally, I doubt it's as seamless as they claim, but we'll go along for the sake of argument. To me, there's an alternate message here. I know they're trying to say that Macs have pretty much everything, but to me they're saying "No one makes decent software for Macs, and the problem is so bad that we had to go out and adapt our systems to run the competition's operating system. You know the one, it's the OS crashes all the time and there's nothing fun to do on it. But don't worry, we have it!"

Powerful message folks.

Viruses
This is my favorite stupid ad. "Viruses" features a very sick PC. He says he caught the latest virus, and to stay back. Mac says, no, he'll be okay. PC says, "No, don't be a hero. Last year there were 114,000 known viruses for PCs." Mac says, "Yeah, but that was for PCs..."

You get the point. This is, in fact, largely true. There are hundreds of thousands of Windows viruses out there, more than any other OS. Because Windows is the predominant OS out there, virus authors like to target PCs, because they want to infect as many computers as possible. (I think they also got it in their mind that they're sticking it to Bill Gates.)

Of course, there are also a shitload out there for Mac as well, plus several thousand that don't give a shit what OS you have.

Personally, I think this ad was a mistake for Apple. It's like they put a giant "Kick Me" sign on their own backs. Now, I'm not a hacker, nor am I a virus author. But I imagine that to them, this ad would look like an irresistable challenge. ("Oh, you don't have enough viruses, Apple? I can help you there!" (Maniacal laughter ensues, with much stroking of a black handlebar mustache.))

Not really the message that you want to put out there.

Damn, that's cool.

2006-06-09T11:44:00.000-05:00

A few things were brought to my attention this week that I thought were pretty damn cool, and were worth mentioning.

The first is a parking garage. That's right, a parking garage. In Germany, to be specific. Now I know what you're thinking, but this is no ordinary parking garage.

The caption I received to the photos said:

"The two photos below were taken at a new parking garage in Munich. The actual space that the facility occupies is approximately 20% of a comparable facility with the traditional design used in the US.

Not only is the German structure less expensive to build, but vehicles are also "retrieved" in less time and without the potential of being damaged by an attendant."

I never thought I'd live to see the day when parking lot attendants would be replaced by robots.

The second thing that I saw was this. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and I want one. That's all I'm going to say on the subject.

The Fast and the Moronic

2006-06-06T08:37:00.000-05:00

I just recently saw the trailer for the latest "Fast and the Furious" movie (yes, they made another); "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift." Personally, I think the movie's tagline can go on the list of the stupidest taglines of all time:

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Speed Needs No Translation

Huh? Is that supposed to make any sense whatsover? Okay, I get it. They're in Japan. They speak Japanese and the American characters speak English. But an auto race is still an auto race no matter where you go. How very clever.

It's still freaking retarded.

The stupidity is compounded by the fact that in Japan, just like the other 95% of the world, they use the metric system. So, in essence, for an American traveling in Japan, speed actually does need translation.

Incidentally, the onlynations on Earth who haven't officially adopted the metric system is the United States, Liberia and Myanmar.

X-Men: The Last Stand?

2006-05-31T10:49:00.000-05:00

OK I have had time to decompress from the last X-Men and I have to say "It ain't that bad." I warn - spoilers lie ahead.

The storyline is actually a pick and choose from some old favorites over the past thirty years, melding Mr. Claremont's masterful "Dark Phoenix Saga" with a dash of the equally brilliant but too new to be revered mutant cure story by Grant Morrison.

From the dark Phoenix perspective purists will be sorely disappointed as it is simply protrayed as a dark manifestation of Jean Grey's personality. All of that creator and destroyer of the universe perpetually hunted by the Shi'ar empire is left in the anals of geekdom.

The mutant cure story also deviates from the comic, but it is done tastfully.

Mutants die. Now we all no that Jean Grey dies and resurrects herself more often than Liza Minelli's career, but a few other mutants that generally keep their pulse bite the dust (literally) in this film as well. Which despite my love of the comic book I'm OK with.

They are trying to end the saga, so the deaths were fitting and I have to say a bit sad. Not sad in that they died , but they finally introduced some new charachters taht I would actually like to see again.

Kelsey Grammer did a bang up job as The Beast. i actually would have liked to have seen more of him. I have to concur with our phanton Nerd that Angel was under utilized and was there to show us how smooth CG man flight has become.

All in all it was an entertaining two hours. I'm not thrilled with how tehy left the storyline open. Bringing in Moira McTaggert and her body hopping son was clever, but fully flushed out.

I'm guessing now that the movie broke every record in the book tehy may have to lean on that crutch a little more than thought.

Destroy All Humans!

2006-05-30T10:43:00.000-05:00

Well, I picked up a copy of Destroy All Humans! yesterday. I tell you, the first time I picked up a cow with my brain and threw it against a tractor, I was hooked. It's just fun, plain and simple. There's something truly enjoyable and cathartic about wiping out humanity. Good times.

The main character is a little grey man ("I'm not green, damnit!") named Crypto. He's on a one-man, er, make that a one-thing mission to rescue his clone (who crash-landed in Roswell, no less) and complete his mission to harvest humanity's brainstems in order to refill the dwindling DNA stocks at the cloning houses back home.

You get to zap, death-ray, abduct, mutilate and anal probe (yes, you get to anal probe) your way across the US at the dawn of the space age. With your staggering mental powers you can read minds, levitate objects (and, of course, cows), hypnotize people to do your bidding, and even make people's heads explode.

This is essentially Mars Attacks! from the alien perspective, and frankly, those hairless apes on Planet Earth are due for a good probing!

The Madness of Leonard, Part 6

2006-05-23T08:50:00.000-05:00

Last night, I decided I wanted to rent a movie. Having just seen Elizabeth I on HBO, I was on a British monarch kick and went to rent The Madness of King George. I hadn't seen it yet, but I had heard many a great thing about it.

I went down to the local Bloodblister Video. I wasn't sure whether it was in comedy or drama. I checked drama. It wasn't there. I checked comedy. Not there either. I thought maybe they shelved it under "King George" so I checked the K's in comedy and drama. Not there.

Normally, I would have just asked, but the place was crowded, which was strange for a sunny Monday night in May, and I decided to not wait in line to see if they had it. The shelves were all out of order, so I looked up and down the areas between "K" and "M." Still no luck. Finally, the line cleared and asked the girl behind the counter. She had never heard of it and I had to repeat the name. She told me that they didn't carry it.

Having spent some time managing my own video store in the past, I understand not having a title. Things break, people don't return things, they get lost. You get a title when it comes out on video, hang on to a few copies after it leaves the New Releases, and sell off the rest. If they break or are lost, often they aren't replaced.

However, Bloodblister is slightly different, at least in my neighborhood. You see, they have been phasing out their VHS stock for a while now. In this particular store, you can't rent any VHS tapes at all. So, pretty much any movie made before 1998 had to be re-ordered on DVD specifically to fill their catalog (non-new release) shelves.

I don't expect them to carry every movie. I also don't expect them to carry every Oscar-nominated movie (King George had 4 nominations and 1 win). However, I do expect them to exercise some common sense. While looking at the titles between K and M on the comedy shelf, I saw they had a copy of Leonard, Part 6. This was shocking to me. This wasn't a holdover from back in the day when it was a new release. No, someone in the Bloodblister hierarchy thought that this was a good title to put on their shelves. They went out of their way to re-order the damn thing on DVD for their stores.

I don't want to come off as being snobby here. "Oh, they didn't have my snooty British monarchy drama, but they had Leonard, Part 6. However shall I go on?" Nothing like that. It's just that it was Leonard, Part 6. LEONARD, PART 6!

If I was looking for, say, The Magnificent Seven or The Great Escape, but only found Leonard, Part 6, I would still be ticked.

Foglematrix Smells Like Taint

2006-05-19T13:24:00.000-05:00

I've decided to taunt Foglematrix until he acknowledges our existence again.

It's About Damn Time! (2nd edition)

2006-05-05T09:09:00.000-05:00

Get ready to have a geek fit, true believers. I read this article this morning:

Original 'Star Wars' Movies Coming to DVD -- At Last

Responding to legions of fans, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment have agreed to release the original versions of the first three Star Wars movies, unmodified by digital enhancements, on Sept. 12. Each of the films, Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983) will be released separately and will be accompanied by a second disc offering the digitally reedited version produced in 2004. They will be withdrawn from circulation on Dec. 31. A promo for the new releases states: "See the title crawl to Star Wars before it was known as Episode IV; see the pioneering, if dated, motion-control model work on the attack on the Death Star; groove to Lapti Nek or the Ewok Celebration song like you did when you were a kid; and, yes, see Hans Solo shoot first."

Can I get a "Hell Yeah!?!"

Fuckwit Marketing

2006-05-01T06:21:00.001-05:00

There are times I cringe in disbelief at my chosen profession. The calvacade of retards and halfwits that claim to be marketers boggles my mind and deeply saddens what is left of my heart.

For proof of the fact that marketing will bbring Western civilization to its knees we need to look no further than our own comments log here on Four Nerds. Last week Capt. Spaulding posted a lovely homage to the horny British prankster Benny Hill (for you kids out there, Benny Hill was the only way to see ladies wearing thigh hight stockings in the 80's before thighhighstockings.com). Instead of insightful thoughts about Benny's wacky music, here are the comments he received:
========================
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At first, when "marketers" flooded the blogosphere they at least made thinly veiled attempts at relating their marketing messgae to the topic of the post to which they were responding.

As we see however time passes and the asstards have stopped trying.

Fuckwit Marketing

2006-05-01T06:21:00.000-05:00

Yakety Sax

2006-04-19T08:54:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or does the Benny Hill music make everything funnier, except maybe for Benny Hill?

Check out this example.

Only In Theater

2006-04-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

In my last post I mentioned I was auditioning for Fuddy Meers at Playcrafters in Skippack.

Well I got the part of the 17 year old pot smooker that hates his parents.

I realize I look younger than my years I just hope I can pull off 14 years younger.

The truly comic part of the casting is that the real life age of my stage Mother is 22 and my step-father and real father are only 4 and 5 years older.

Ahhhh, the magic of the footlights.

Auditions - Fuddy Meers

2006-04-07T11:55:00.000-05:00

So I auditioned this past week for a show called Fuddy Meers at Playcrafters in Skippack. For someone just stumbling across this page, Skippack is the town of Norman Rockwell's wet dreams. A cozy hamlet nestled about 45 minutes North of Philadelphia.

The main thread of the show can be likened to Adam Sandler's movie "Fifty First Dates". However this will not suck because it doesn't have any of the three retards that made that movie such a debacle.

I'm hoping to either get the part of the pot smoking 17 year old still in 8th grade, the limping half deaf and blind man, or the prisoner who developed a split personality and manifests half of his personality through a puppet.

Fingers Crossed.

He's More Machine Now, Twisted and Evil.

2006-03-28T09:52:00.000-05:00

This is freakin' sweet.

Fogelmatrix, Fogelmatrix. Wherefore art thou Fogelmatrix?

2006-03-27T14:14:00.000-05:00

Seriously dude. Stop being responsible and start wasting some time with us. It's bad enough we're called Four Nerds when there's only three of us.

Ultimate Avengers

2006-03-24T09:35:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I last did a movie review, so here goes:

Well, I rented Ultimate Avengers last night. I was never really into the Avengers comic. They always seemed to be a loose collection of a lot of b-grade superheroes, none of which were particularly interesting to me. Unlike the Justice League, which brought together the best and brightest of the DC line, the Avengers always struck me as a team of spare parts, a bunch of characters slapped together because no one seemed to know what to do with them. Sure, a lot of them have their own titles, such as Captain America, Iron Man and The Mighty Thor, but the rest are just a weird assortment of boring characters, such as the Wasp (who I always assumed was an arrogant white dude who drove a Volvo and wrote for the New Yorker), Henry Pym, Scarlet Witch, or the Vision.

Anyway, the Avengers always had a few of Marvel's heavy hitters, like Spider-Man or Wolverine, but the rest are, in my mind, kinda dumb. Does anyone remember Doorman? He can hail a cab faster than any man alive.

Back to the movie. Despite my general blasé feelings over the Avengers, I rented Ultimate Avengers the other day because I saw the commercials and thought the animation was pretty cool. I have to say, the animation was excellent, the best part of the show, and quite possibly the best animation that Marvel studios has ever put out.

For those who don't know, the Ultimate Avengers is based on the Marvel comic, the Ultimates, and is a re-imagining of the Avengers comic line. There are several differences to the classic Avengers, such as the fact that the Avengers are formed by the U.S. government and headed by General Nick Fury (of S.H.I.E.L.D), who now is modeled after Samuel L. Jackson.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Anyway, the story begins at the end of World War II. Berlin is about to fall, Hitler is dead, the European war is about to end. Captain America leads a suicide mission to destroy a Nazi superweapon (a nuclear missile), a last-ditch effort to turn the tide of the war. Cap manages to thwart the Nazi plan, but not before discovering that the Nazis developing the nuke are actually (gasp!) aliens!

Well, Captain America is, of course, frozen in ice for many decades and is found and thawed sometime in the 21st century. The aliens are still a threat and Nick Fury heads the U.S. Super-Soldier program, the same one that created Captain America. Dr. Bruce Banner heads up the scientific team, the Hulk having been tamed through medication. Apparently, the record keepers in the 1940s were sloppy, and the formula which created Captain America was lost to the ages. So, Banner and ex-wife Betty are trying to recreate the formula to fight the alien threat.

Suddenly, the aliens attack, after being quiet for 80 years or so. Since the super soldier formula isn't ready, Fury assembles a team of super heroes, the Avengers, to deal with the alien threat. It's a rag-tag team of mixed personalities, such as the Mighty Thor, dangerous if provoked, the Wasp, the Black Widow, Iron Man and Giant Man.

Their first mission proves to be a disaster. The aliens not only manage to destroy the base that houses all of the government's early warning satellites, but they also manage to download all of the data in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s computer network. Fury, who is, well, furious, scraps the team and tries to get Banner to start the human trials of the Super Soldier program on the 12 pre-selected human subjects. Unfortunately, Banner has only done formula research on his own blood in an attempt to control the Hulk.

The aliens attack again and the Avengers overcome their differences to thwart the alien invasion. Banner takes the super-soldier formula, which allows him to temporarily control the Hulk. Unfortunately, once he joins the fight and the adrenaline gets pumping, he loses control and the Avengers must stop him before he destroys the city.

As I said earlier, the animation is excellent, and it has some top-quality superhero action (it got a PG-13 for violence). People get killed, and there are several shots of the Hulk squishing aliens like insects. All very cool.

At a mere 71 minutes, though, the story is lacking. There are huge plot holes in the story. Why did the aliens feel the need to help the Nazis build a nuke (and only one), when they could have easily overtaken global forces in their space ships? Why did the aliens disappear after Cap destroyed their nuke? Why didn't anyone else know that Banner had lied about his research? Surely Betty or even a lab assistant might have noticed that the files were empty. Why would America's most top secret super-soldier research project lose the formula due to sloppy record-keeping? (It was not as if they were writing with hammers and chisels on stone, you know.) Why would you set up the whole alien invasion plot, only to have the final showdown with the Hulk? How can it be 80 years after World War II and yet Captain America's ex-girlfriend and army buddy are still alive? Did I miss something there?

The story was highly reminiscent of the Justice League pilot, in which a ragtag team of superheroes must overcome their personal differences and learn to work together in order to thwart an alien invasion. In fact, they're both lead by patriotic heroes with red and blue costumes who fight for "truth, justice and the American way." It doesn't surprise me, though, since the Avengers were Marvel's response to the success of the Justice League.

Anyway, overall I give it a C+. It's worth watching for the spectacular animation (and the sound isn't bad either, especially if you have surround sound), but check your brain at the door. You won't need it.

American Idol Raped My Soul

2006-03-23T07:53:00.000-05:00

I am setting myself up for a verbal flogging of epic proportions, but I must get this off my chest.

I watch American Idol. I am a 31 year old, white, straight male and I have loved every season of American Idol since it came on the air.

However, I can not conform to the new lows of commercialism that this show has sunk to this season.

Never mind the fact that Ryan Seacrest can't get out two sentences without cutting to commercial. It is a simple fact of their business (hence why everyone watches "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and no one except me watched "Arrested Development" both equally smart shows but the prior comes without the network bullshit).

I Will Put a Ford Up My ASS Sideways Before I Drive One

The impetus for this rant are those insipid "videos" with the Idol hopefuls getting their nipples hard over the latest SUV or minivan from Ford. These shameful plugs were cute when they first did them two seasons ago, but have now become an embarrassment to the contestants and frankly anyone who can actually sit and watch them.

Last nights decent into Dante's fourth layer of the Beast was sung to "We Got the Beat" by the Go-Go's. All of the Idol hopefuls pulled crap out of the back of a Ford Behemoth and took the artistic equivelant of a big steaming dump as they enjoyed a day at the beach.

I hold no delusions that the only reason 80's music is tolerated is purely for the nostalgia factor, not because it's actually good music. Sure there were some great artists (The Cars, R.E.M. etc...), but for the most part the decade was just one long Casio riff stuck on the "autoplay" feature.

This is why an homage to this music is like someone saying they want to grow and be just like Adolf Hitler. YOU DON'T EMULATE HISTORICAL TRAGEDIES!!!!!

Only the Go-Go's should do "We Got the Beat" and even they should only perform it at a Cameron Crowe film festival.

I literally could not sit through this montage without groaning, so I turned it off. And I don't think i can turn it on agaian -- ever.

This is no longer a talent competition. It has become a showcase for mediocrity and product placement.

I think it was Moses who said "You shall not worship any false idols". Well Big M - here is one person who hold to that creed.

Roads? Where were going we don't need... roads...

2006-03-22T12:59:00.000-05:00

The problem with flying cars as they are being designed right now is that they are using the airplane model as a starting point. The problems my friend Cheese suggested, with fuel and accidents, are really the same issue: Safety. Flying cars intend to merge the world of aviation with automobiles, and quite frankly, I wouldn't trust the average driver to fly a kite, much less a car.

The reason most people don’t have personal airplanes or helicopters but do have automobiles is simple: Most aviation accidents are fatal. Most car accidents are not. Fatal car accidents generally only affect people on or by the road. Fatal plane crashes can cause devastation anywhere. In addition, September 11 showed us just how deadly airplanes could be in the wrong hands.

The problem is how planes get off the ground. As air moves across the wing of the plane, the airflow creates lift, which essentially uses the air to push the plane off the ground.

The first problem with this method of flight is, as my good friend Cheese suggested, one of fuel. Pushing a large, metal vehicle into the air requires a lot of energy, even if it is only the size of a car. When that energy is produced by burning a flammable fuel, then you only increase the danger of something going horribly, horribly wrong.

The second problem is the fact that the wing of the aircraft, whether the fixed wing of a plane or the rotors of a helicopter, has to be moving through the air in order to work. If my car breaks down, for example, I can pull over to the side of the road and call a tow truck. If I'm flying at 10,000 feet however, that's not really an option. You generally would plummet to your death.

The third issue is that of accidents. Airplanes today are piloted by highly trained, licensed professionals, many of which received their training as pilots for the military. Cars, on the other hand, are controlled largely by morons. All you have to do to drive a car is pass a test when you are 16.

So, what we need is a different form of creating lift that is safe from mechanical error and human error and does not require burning anything to power. This type of lift would need to work whether the vehicle was at rest or moving. If the vehicle suffered some sort of mechanical failure, even if everything breaks, the vehicle would not come crashing to the ground. It would either stay put or slowly descend to the ground.

So, how do you do it? In theory, a lighter-than-air vehicle like a blimp or zeppelin could work. If there was a catastrophic mechanical failure, a blimp would just float there. Since they stopped using hydrogen in blimps, you aren’t in danger of creating another Hindenburg. The problem is that airships like this are huge. Imagine trying to navigate even a personal sized blimp through the narrow streets of Manhattan.

There are other theories as well, but most of them are in the realm of pseudoscience. Electro-gravitic propulsion, for example, involves electrifying certain materials, which causes them somehow to become lighter. This is a popular theory amongst UFOlogists, but is largely dismissed by the mainstream scientific community. The trouble is that no one is quite sure what these materials are and what is meant by “electrifying” them.

Frankly, I’d like the scientific community to get off their freakin’ high horse. Sure, they might be crackpot theories. They might not have any basis in fact. They might defy the laws of the universe. But that’s the laws of the universe as we currently understand them. The laws of the universe used to say that the Earth was the center of the universe until Copernicus came along. For over 300 years, Newton’s Laws of Gravity were the end all and be all of gravitation until Einstein came along and said “Hang on a minute, there’s more to it than all of that.”

Faster than light travel is impossible? Prove it. Just because Einstein said so doesn’t make him right. If Einstein didn’t look at physics in radically new ways, we wouldn’t have the theory of relativity. Time travel won’t work? Bullshit. I’m traveling through time right now. If you can go one way, I say you can go the other.

What the hell ever happened to cold fusion? Sure, the Fleischmann and Pons experiment didn’t work, but so what? Just because it doesn’t work, doesn’t mean you ought to quit. Edison went through dozens of designs for the light bulb before he found the right filament. How many rockets did NASA blow up before they got it right?

There are a few people still looking into it. What I want to know is why the hell isn’t cold fusion the #1 priority of scientists exploring new forms of energy production? All this talk about reducing dependence on fossil fuels and finding renewable energy, yet we have a possible source of cheap energy, with very little waste, that uses the universe’s most abundant element, without burning a damn thing, and hardly anyone is looking into it.

Some say cold fusion is a myth. If it was all bullshit, then why are they still researching it? The problem isn’t that they aren’t researching it. The problem is they aren’t doing it enough.

If an idea is farfetched, if a theory is crackpot at best, then don’t simply shrug it off as bullshit, especially if the potential benefits are vast. Prove it wrong, damn it. Show us why it won’t work.

We can rebuild him. We (almost) have the technology...

2006-03-20T10:22:00.000-05:00

Well kids, I've said it many times before. Since the turn of the century, I've been largely disappointed with the state of modern technology. There have been no flying cars, no robot butlers, no moon colonies or luxury hotels in orbit. I don't take a rocket pack to work. No, for the most part, the technological promises of the 21st century have been a disappointment.

Well, fortunately the good people at Popular Science are just as annoyed as I am, and have labored to keep us up to date on the progress of future science. In the March issue, for example, they have dedicated the cover story to where we stand on these various technologies. One of the more interesting articles explores the recent development of the world's first bionic hand. This device is not only capable of responding to brain signals, but it can also feel. It's still a few years away from being commercially available, but it's still a step in the right direction.

They also profile a real-life rocketeer. Granted, rocket packs have been around for a while in one form or another, and his research into rocket packs has set him back about a half a million dollars, but it's good to see that he's keeping the dream alive.

Despite the fact that they don't have robots and flying cars, I'm not entirely disappointed with the future. The last fifteen years or so have seen some amazing developments, a lot of which we don't see as future sci because we have evolved along with the gizmos. For instance, I have a computer that fits in my pocket. My entire music collection is stored on a gizmo the size of a credit card. Thanks to Spaceship One (most boring spaceship name in history), space flight has now entered the private sector and companies are exploring space travel and space tourism as a viable business. The world is connected via a huge electronic computer network (although I still can't connect it directly to my brain). There's a whole host of cool stuff that have come out in the last decade and a half that needs recognition, from GPS systems to cell phones, DVDs and flat panel HD TVs to Blackberries and WiFi internet. When I was a kid, these things were science fiction. Now, they're science fact.

I remember as a kid back in 1984, going to see 2010 for the first time. There was a little montage at one point in the film where Heywood Floyd is preparing for his trip to Jupiter. In one shot, he's sitting on a beach working on a laptop. I can remember thinking how cool it was to have a computer that you could take to the beach, how 2010 was so far away, and how impossible something like that seemed in my lifetime.

Well, it's not impossible. Science fact has caught up with science fiction. I have a laptop, and even though it's a few years old and pretty slow, it's a heck of a lot cooler than that one Dr. Floyd had. I also wouldn't recommend taking any computer to the beach. Still, we have a long way to go.

P.S. - The Popular Science issue also explores the status of flying cars and robot maids, and so on, but those aren't on the website yet. Patience, my young Jedis.

George, George, Why Won't You Listen?

2006-03-16T16:57:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to put this out there for the whole world to see:

This is a link to the quotes section for 'Star Wars' to 'Jedi': The Making of a Saga (1985) on the IMDb. Take a look at the first quote on the top of the page. Now, go watch any of the Star Wars prequels.

The prosecution rests, your Honor.

“I Love It When A Plan Comes Together..."

2006-03-10T09:50:00.000-05:00

Of the thousands of TV show remakes to grace screens both big and small in the last decade or so, there have been many successes (Battlestar Galactica) and many failures (The Avengers.) It was of course inevitable that someday we would be blessed with a revival of that 80's classic, the A-Team, those lovable soldiers of fortune (aren't they all?), falsely convicted of a crime they did not commit. Well, that time is now. The worst shots in the history of popular entertainment (except maybe for Imperial Stormtroopers and Major Asshole from Spaceballs) will be hitting the big screen sometime in the next year.

They haven't released who will be playing whom, but certainly I would expect that Mr. T and Dwight Schultz might make a cameo. Dirk Benedict, known for his utter distain of remakes, (read his comments on the new Battlestar Galactica here) might not grace us with his presence. Too bad, he could really use the work. Of course, George Peppard has passed away.

Personally, I think the only A-Team you'll ever need is this.

Offshoring a Ca"ta-ta"strophe -- India Needs America

2006-03-02T08:52:00.000-05:00

I'm certainly not blazing a headline trail by calling out the inherent problems with offshoring American jobs to foreign interests.

Nor will I receive the Pulitzer in the category of Blogging for mentioning the fact that we did this in part to ourselves through a decade of sloth and laziness that resulted in the U.S. having less “science-minded” folks than the rest of the world.

No, my mark on the blogosphere – blogoverse – this page – the minds of the two other guys, occasional stalker and Jesus (Yes, Jesus reads FourNerds, we have proof because he, ghost, white dove left a comment once) will be with this singular statement, “India needs to start offshoring their communication activities to the U.S.

A Brief History

A colleague at work asked me to help him get a site off the ground. It’s basically a real estate venture with a twist. So I went out to a few different job posting boards to get some quotes on site development to ascertain whether they had the skills to get the site done.

What I got back was a litany of butchered English and turns of phrases that could only be concocted by someone who doesn’t really know the language trying to formerly write the language.

My colleague and I decided right off the bat since we would be doing most of this work virtually with the developer it was imperative that we build a good rapport and have a clear open line of communication with whoever we decide to work with. So we knew right away we wanted someone in the States. Even though it would cost us more initially we would save ourselves a great deal of frustration in the long run.

Most Humbled Sir – Gracious I am

This was one of the first forced greetings I received when I went in to check out my account and see who was vying for this particular project. Here are some others that followed:

Real Estate Practiced Professional
Web Interest Individual
Esteemed Project Implementer

Uhmmm, what about Hi? Also, “greetings” works quite well. In a pinch you could even rely on Dear Sir or Madam. This is not a Bollywood movie script, despite the fact you are oozing with respect, calling me “Esteemed Project Implementer” screams that you are writing from a faraway land.

After about the 47th submission I was able to yea or nay a developer simply from the greeting. Some however were smart enough to take my suggestion and just open with a standard greeting, unfortunately as soon as I started reading the rest of their reply they hung themselves.

“Your project is of utmost importance in our estimation” – Well I’m glad you guys are that committed, because one of us should be. I have about twenty other things in my life that take precedence over this. And I hope it’s your estimation because it’s not nice to speak for other people – unless they are geishas

Time is of the essence in us meeting – What? This one just reminded me of a Uganda money laundering scam. No, we actually have a lot of time. Chill out.

And the list goes on.
]
I am as of this day offering my services to any offshore agency that wants to sound “American” so they can at least get through the front-door on these projects.

E-mail me at rancidgovtcheese@yahoo.com with the subject “Communication Help”. I have close to ten years of experience in corporate communications and frankly guys, I couldn’t do any worse.

It's about damn time!

2006-02-23T17:37:00.000-05:00

Scientists, you're six years behind schedule:

Article: Flying car ready for takeoff?

Article: Terrafugia's flying car

Now if you could just get to work on that Moon colony, robot servants and aerospace planes, that would be great. It's 2006 and I'm running out of patience.

UAE Squatting on American Ports

2006-02-22T07:16:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back we had a bit of a "tete a tete" bouncing around the Nerdiverse over whether or not the best solution for protecting America was to take an isolationist stance with the rest of the world.

Being ever the extremist I was not a fan of going to war in the Middle East to protect the home front. In my mind that's the equivalent of installing a security system in your neighbor's house to protect your kid's bedroom. Instead I wanted to see us lock down our borders to be tighter than a nun's vagina on her death bed.

As my esteemed colleagues pointed out there are reasons I'm a Web Editor and not a political strategist. Because frankly my idea was a vat of stupidity followed with a bong hit of insanity. If we closed our borders the damage to all of the liberties and comforts we enjoy would be more irreparable than the Star Wars prequels were to George Lucas's credibility. Yes, it would be that bad.

but but but but but

However, openly inviting a known enemy into our security infrastructure is slitting our own throats.

Yes, I understand that this UAE company will only be controlling a small facet of the whole process. Well, that's one facet too many.

No one has convinced me yet that Saudi Arabia didn't take at least a small part in 9/11. I won't go extreme like Michael Moore and say they are the masterminds of it all, but I do believe they played a small part.

So why? Why are we letting them in? Don't we live in a capitalist society. Aren't there other vendors that can take care of this function? If we expose another chink in our armor simply for the sake of money; either because they are the lowest bidder or becasue of kickbacks, we have truly become our own worst enemy.

Freedom of Shhhhhhhhh!

2006-02-20T11:14:00.000-05:00

The other day I wrote a little commentary on the Danish cartoon controversy. Many of the papers who reprinted the cartoons did so "in the name of free speech." I thought that this was a load of crap, and that they were simply trying to be controversial. Instead of reporting the news, they were creating it.

Well, the whole argument has been thrown into sharp relief today. In Austria, British national David Irving has pled guilty to charges of denying that the Holocaust happened. That's right; this guy is facing ten years in prison for having an opinion. He made these comments 17 years ago, comments that he has since retracted. (Although there is plenty of evidence that suggests he has retracted nothing.)

Personally, I think David Irving is a scumbag. I think anyone who thinks that the Holocaust never happened is appalling and I wouldn't take the time to spit on them. That said, I think that no one should be punished for their beliefs, no matter how much I find it sickening.

You can't have Freedom of Speech and then criminalize opinions that most people find distasteful. Opinions that most people believe in don't need the protection of Freedom of Speech. It's the unpopular ones that need protecting. And while people like me hate comments like Mr. Irving's, and would spend our lives trying to defeat positions like his, I would defend his right to say it. It is my right to speak out against Mr. Irving, and as long as I enjoy that right, so too can he enjoy the right to be a monumental douchebag by saying such things.

I have no idea what it must be like to live in a country that took part in the Holocaust. I have no idea what it must be like for a nation to come to terms with something like that. Sure, the U.S. has had its own genocidal history. But here, it's history. In Europe, the Holocaust was something that happened in my grandfather's day. No idea what it must be like to think that the wholesale slaughter of an entire people happened on Granddad's watch. I cannot fathom trying to wrap your head around that.

I do understand the desire to punish people like Irving. But don't come to me with tales of freedom of speech when you are criminalizing that which you find distasteful. I have no patience for hypocrisy.

Completing the Five Year Journey

2006-02-20T06:52:00.000-05:00

Where ABC lacked the courage to complete the original voyages of the Enterprise N.C.C. 1701, 5 guys and some leggy gals picked up the mantle in teh garage of an Elvis impersonator.

Out of a sheer love of the series this fan-fic is sweeping the Net touting it self as the only new Star Trek in 2006. Sadly they are right.

Theank you for keeping the dream alive: www.newvoyages.com

Rest in Peace, Phil Brown

2006-02-14T10:44:00.000-05:00

Actor Phil Brown died last Thursday of pneumonia. He was 89. He will always be remembered as Uncle Owen in the original Star Wars. Born in Massachusetts, Brown starred in TV and Radio shows during the 1940s. In the '50s, he moved to London, after being wrongly blacklisted during the Red Scare. He moved back to the States after the success of Star Wars. Brown is survived by widow Ginny, their son Kevin, two grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

We'll miss you Phil.

101!!!!!

2006-02-14T09:51:00.000-05:00

Well, it's our 101st post, ladies. I was going to do the big flashy graphic for the big 100, but Cheese beat me to it. Anyway, on with the post.

In Indonesia today, a group of Australian nationals were sentenced to die by firing squad for drug trafficking. Indonesia, like many nations in Southeast Asia have a zero tolerance policy for drugs. Mere possession of a dime bag in these countries could cost you decades of your life.

I am a liberal, as you all know. It's a badge I wear with pride, and I have no idea how the right managed to turn it into a dirty word. I should tell you that I am against capital punishment. I think that the judicial system, like all branches of government, should be held to a higher standard. I think that execution for drug trafficking is a punishment that does not fit the crime.

That said, I find myself not feeling a whole lot of remorse for the fate of these guys. If you go to a foreign country, you are subject to their laws, whether you agree with them or not. Whether they are just or not. I mean, they were drug traffickers in Southeast frickin' Asia. You have to be out of your damn mind to do something like that. How dumb do you have to be? We're talking Salman-Rushdie-taking-a-vacation-in-Tehran kind of dumb.

And the Winner Isn't Us...

2006-02-13T07:29:00.000-05:00

The main reason i haven't seen any of the films this year is becasue they haven't come out on DVD yet.

Mrs. Cheese and I made an unspoken pact a few years ago, if there isn't major shit blowing up, we wait for DVD. Why?

Well for $30 we could...
Buy a cheap video game offering 40 hours of entertainment.
Eat a nice lunch at the Macaroni Grill
Get a couple pedicure

What I don't want for $30 is...
To listen to your kids
To have to move so you and your brood can all sit together while the opening credits are rolling (see Narnia)
To have to sit through twenty minutes of ads cleverly disguised as entertainment (The Twenty is my worst nightmare come true)
More ads that aren't disguised as entertainment -- "Wanna Fanta?" No. Die!
THOSE FUCKING FANDANGO BROWN PAPER BAG PEOPLE -- THEY AREN'T FUNNY -- I DON'T GET IT

So let's look at the contenders

Brokeback Mountain -- The only thing erupting in this is...OK too easy. I have nothing against gay people, however cowboys offend me greatly.

Capote -- I think Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a brilliant actor. I think a racially charged murder trial was big news in the 1950's. I also think in 2006 if I want to see racially charged hate crimes, I'll turn on the news. yawn

Crash -- What the hell is this? Really I know so little I can't even make a snide remark

Good Night and Good Luck -- Black and white - Not Clerks - Pass

Munich -- Nope I'm saving all of my middle-east hatred for the Fireman/Save the Day/Nic Cage trying to resurect his career/Oliver Stone trying to do something meaningful before he dies/The trade towers are saved at the end/9-11 epic

And the winner is...

2006-02-08T13:30:00.000-05:00

It's Oscar season again. Whoopdedoo. I've been watching the Oscars every year since Silence of the Lambs swept the major awards way back in 1992. Some years I found very exciting, some monumentally disappointing. (Run Forrest, run! Ugh.) and some were just sad. ("Uma... Oprah...")

Anyway, as the years have gone by, I have found that come Oscar time, I have seen less and less of the nominated films. This year is no different. Of the 5 best picture nominees, I have seen exactly none of the films. Honestly, the only thing that remotely interests me is the fact that Jon Stewart is hosting this year.

I guess there hasn't been any movies I've been really excited about in quite a while.

Something Rotten in the State of Denmark...

2006-02-08T10:14:00.000-05:00

I'm getting a bit sick and tired of Europe these days. If you hadn't heard, there's been an uproar in the Middle East (big shock) over the publication of several political cartoons in a Danish newspaper that depicts the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. One has him with a bomb under his turban. The cartoons first appeared in September of last year and recently have been reprinted in several European papers.

Well, let's just say that Muslims around the world didn't take this too well. Apparently there's a rule in Islam about creating images of God or Muhammad. Seems it's linked to idolatry and they don't like it so much. Mix that with images depicting him as a terrorist, and you've got a bit of an issue. There have been riots. A Danish embassy was burned to the ground. Several people have been killed. Yet these papers have continued to reprint the cartoons, even as recently as this past weekend. The claim it's in the name of free speech and freedom of the press.

Bullshit. They're doing it for shock value, pure and simple. They've artificially created this huge scandal as a way to insert themselves as these great champions of freedom. It's crap. It's not journalism. It's tabloidism.

You all know by now that I am unabashedly liberal and I fully believe in freedom of speech. I disagree with censorship of any kind, no matter how much I find it distasteful or repugnant. You should be able to say whatever the fuck it is you want to say, without fear of persecution or reprisals. Freedom of speech is absolute in my mind.

However, with that freedom comes a certain responsibility. The Danish papers knew that there would be riots and protests, yet they are still reprinting these cartoons. You'll notice that the images have not been shown in the American press, or on the television news. Yet the story has been reported across all American media. Once the initial printing happened, and it became an issue, there was no need to continue reprinting these cartoons.

It's called tact, Denmark. Look it up. This isn't about freedom of the press and you know it. People are dying. Just because you have the right to say something, doesn't mean you have to say it. I don't want to censor you guys. I just want you to show a little tact and common decency.

I've always defended our European friends. When that idiot in Washington came up with "freedom fries," I defended France. Heck, I was born in Europe. But this time, they're dead wrong. We get this sense in America that Western Europe has the air of being a highly progressive place. It's a load of crap. Sure, they have universal health care, and pot's legal, blah blah blah. In some cases, they're ahead of us, that's true. But this is also the same place that makes monkey noises at black soccer players and throws bananas on the field.

The Great Global Smacked-Asses

2006-02-03T11:13:00.000-05:00

Hey, here's a thought. Let's close the borders completely. No one goes in, no one goes out. You want to honeymoon at Niagara Falls? You'd better stay on this side. Want to take a cruise? It's called the Staten Island Ferry. Lovely ride.

Here's the thing. Our economy is utterly dependent on trade with foreign countries. Sure, we ship jobs over to China and India, but we also ship Coca Cola, Chevy's and McDonalds over there as well. Closing all trade with other nations is going to cripple out economy. If we decide not to sell our Dell Computers to say, China, then someone else will. Sony, Toshiba, The European Union.

Globalization is happening whether we like it or not. There’s no stopping it now, and you’re either on the boat or left back on shore. The economy is changing, just like it always has since the first Industrial Revolution. People are going to lose jobs, just like they always have. Before you were replaced by a machine, now you are being replaced by cheap foreign labor. People are going to be hurt and destroyed by globalization. I think if you fight it, you end up getting hurt even more.

If you want people to keep buying American, I have a few suggestions. The key to American success over the years has been our ingenuity. And right now our ingenuity is being replaced with complacency. So, how do we keep the edge?

One, put more money into education. Smart people come up with smart ideas. We’re frickin’ morons in this country. It’s not a question of how the money is allocated or whether we need a Department of Education. It’s gone way past that. If we had enough cash to spread around to all the schools, it wouldn't matter if it was poorly managed or not. Just look at the Pentagon. They're poorly managed but they work well because they have a fuckload of money. You give the schools all the money they need, then work on making it more efficient.

It’s like every time the subject of increasing spending on education comes up, Congress acts like they’re going to the dentist. They know they gotta, but they don’t wanna, and man I hate this, and whine and bitch and stall. It’s the teacher’s fault, it’s the Department of Education’s fault, it’s the parent’s fault. Blame, blame, pass the buck. Oh wait; there are no bucks to pass.

My second suggestion is to ease up on visas for foreign students. Ever since 9-11, it’s become damn near impossible for foreign college students to come here and get an education. It seems to me that if some genius kid in Beijing gets a chance to study in a Western school, he might try here in America. We’ve got some pretty damn good schools. But, if we don’t let him come, I don’t think he’s going to just go off some where and sulk. No, I think he’ll go to Europe.

It doesn’t end with them just coming here and getting that post graduate degree. What good is it to us to educate these kids and then just ship ‘em back home? No, you need to keep them here. Make a rule that says if you come here and get a Master’s degree or a doctorate, then you get a visa. Stay here and work for us. Sure, he might take a job that otherwise might have gone to an American, but his ingenuity could launch a new industry which could create thousands of jobs. Wouldn;t it be nice if those jobs were here? We’re a nation of immigrants, and our genius lies there. You know why we have a space program? Answer: German rocket scientists.

Also, if you want us to buy American, give us a quality product. Take the American auto industry. It amazes me how dumb they are. Right now GM is on the verge of bankruptcy. Ford is laying off people left and right. Why? Because they are making the same mistakes over and over again. During the boom years of the 90s and even into the 2000’s, these guys made a fortune off of the SUV craze that seemed to grip the country. People didn’t care that their Explorer got 2 miles per gallon.

Now here we are in 2006. Gas is at record highs. There’s a crisis in the Middle East. People can’t afford gas. And Ford and GM are wondering why they aren’t moving those Explorers and Hummers. The same thing happened in the ‘70s. People aren’t going to buy a gas guzzling Ford SUV when they can get a Honda SUV that gets twice the gas mileage. It’s that simple. Why is it that Japanese automakers have consistently been able to stay ahead of us when it comes to making fuel efficient cars?

Ford is actually developing a hybrid SUV that partially runs off of ethanol. I applaud Ford for finally getting their act together and trying to move in new directions. But make it something that actually makes a difference in the long run. Right now, producing ethanol requires the burning of more fossil fuels than would be used if we just had gas cars. So, in the long run, the cost of those fossil fuels is still going to be an issue when it comes to the bottom line. Whether you burn the fossil fuels at the ethanol plant or in my engine, either way it’s going to show up at the pump. I think the difference is that instead of needing oil; they can use coal, which we have a fuckload of.

Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff we could be doing. Shutting down won’t help. Some people say that George Washington wanted America to be an isolationist country and we should go back to that way. Well, back then we were a tiny, insignificant little agrarian country. Now we are the most powerful nation on Earth. You can’t shut out the rest of the world without shutting our hand in the door.

Robin Williams 08'

2006-02-02T20:06:00.000-05:00

On the heels of my latest rantings in the "The Great Global Boycott" post (did I just fall into a big of prententious douchiness by referencing one of my own posts?), I received a great e-mail about a recent bit Robin Williams developed. Here it is:

Robin Williams' Plan...(Hard to argue with this logic!)

"I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for
peace. So, here's one plan."

1) "The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, and the rest of those "good ole boys", we will never "interfere" again.

2) We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany, South Korea, the Middle East, and the Philippines. They don't want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No one allowed sneaking through holes in the fence.

3) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave.We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of whom or where they are. They're illegal!!! France will welcome them.

4) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit!!!! No one from a terrorist nation will be allowed in. If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum would never be available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11 cashiers.

5) No foreign "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home baby.

6) The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. This will include developing nonpolluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.

7) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don't like it, we go someplace else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)

8) If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides most of what we give them is stolen or given to the army. The people who need it most get very little, if anything.

9) Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island someplace. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

10) All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer. The Language we speak is ENGLISH...learn it...or LEAVE...Now, isn't that a winner of a plan?

"The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'you want a piece of me?' "

This is exactly what I have been wanting to hear from a politician.

The Great Global Boycott

2006-01-31T20:20:00.000-05:00

OK. You gents are going to ream me in a fresh asshole for this one, but I am going to throw it against the wall regardless. After all, I've remained virtually unscathed thus far in the war of the words that rage between you two, it's time I enter the fray.

You're going to hate my point for two reasons.

The utter hypocrisy

The logistical lunacy

The Only Way to Save Our Economy Is To Close Our Trade Borders

Yes, I know ending the war would help our economy. Ha..ha...ha..hahahaha, shut up! OK, now for something possible. Closing our trade borders. You want people to buy American, stop importing shit from China. You want more jobs for college grads stop offshoring to India.

What's in a name?

2006-01-26T11:21:00.000-05:00

When is a planet not a planet? That's the question that astronomers are asking themselves this week. Last Friday, astronomers at the California Institute of Technology announced the discovery of a tenth planet in orbit around the sun. The planet, called 2003 UB313, is approximately 3 times the distance from the Earth as Pluto. It's also larger than Pluto, perhaps even up to twice as big.

But not all scientists are convinced. The existence of the planet is not in dispute. Rather, the problem is that not every one in the scientific community has settled on what constitutes a planet.

The debate has gone on for years. There is a group of frozen objects beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. The detractors say that this new "planet" is simply a large Kuiper object. Many of these have also claimed that Pluto isn't a planet either.

Some of the reasons include the size of the objects. Most Kuiper Belt objects are small, like the objects in the asteroid belt. Pluto, in fact, is smaller than the Moon.

The other major reason is the orbital plane. Most of the solar system's planets circle the sun along the same plane, give or take a few degrees.
Pluto's orbit is 17% off of the standard elliptical plane, which has prompted scientists to claim that it's not a true planet.

You see, the planets were formed from the big swirling mass of gasses that formed the Sun. Like a big whirlpool is space. That's why most of the planets all orbit in roughly the same plane. Pluto's eccentric orbit suggests that it was captured by the Sun's gravity, and originated from either outside the solar system, or was a moon that escaped Neptune's gravity.

2003 UB313, on the other hand, has an orbital plane that is a whopping 45% of the standard. That's the reason they just discovered it, because up until now, no one was looking for planets on that plane. So, scientists are now suggesting that, like Pluto, it shouldn't be counted as a planet.

Well, as a geek, I am chiming in. I have a certain expertise after all, having watched Star Wars over 500 times. Here's the deal: Pluto has always been a planet. The whole world, except for a bunch of whiny astronomers, has accepted that. So, a planet it stays.

Since it's the smallest planet, it's going to be the standard for what defines a planet. Since it's got a weird orbit, orbital arguments don't count. (It actually crosses Neptune's orbit sometimes, temporarily making it the eighth planet.) I don't care if the planet has a square orbit, it doesn't matter. Stop with the semantics, you anal retentive, nitpicking geeks.

I'm writing all this because it's a stupid argument, and scientists are wasting time and energy on a semantic debate. I read a quote from one scientist who actually said "To just call them planets does an injustice to the big guys in the solar system." Are you kidding me? The planets are being slighted?

Last time I checked, Uranus didn't give a shit. Jupiter couldn't be reached for comment.

You're looking for order in outer freakin' space. Last time I checked, it's a pretty random place. We're gonna keep discovering new planets across the galaxy. And the more we learn about them, the less and less they'll fit into your narrow little vision.

So, here are the new rules for planethood.

1- It must orbit a star.
2- It must be at least as big as Pluto.
3- It cannot be man made. (Sorry, Death Star.)

End of story.

Kids and Their Crazy Phrasiology

2006-01-23T20:40:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the sickeningly sweet Cosby like into to this post (what the hell happened to those specials that he used to do? When did kids stop being cute and no longer worthy of inane interviews from the Cos?)

Anyway. my brother-in-law recently wrote this phrase in an e-mail: " So sleep easy, for you will be limping in style with your tainted-up wounded paw".

Now because I'm a dick I wrote an unnecessarily long rely back to him. Fucker (and I say that most lovingly) dared me to put it on a website. Seeing as this is the only website within my realm of power that will allow me to say taint repeatedly through out the text without getting fired you get to read my reply:

Uhmm how does one exactly taint-up a paw, or for that matter any body part? One would have to carefully remove the taint (and I don't even want to begin to contemplate the mess that was once your groinassal region) and then find a way to stretch the taint so it could cover the part of the body you want to "taint-up". Because honestly unless you stretch the taint all you have is a small sliver of skin. Except for that thing under the bridge you dated from New Jersey. She walked right in and said "I'm Whorecubus, bearer of grossly large taint".

No taint-up and taint stretching technology is sweeping the nation. I heard MTV has "Taint my Ride" under development right now.

Fuck Man - You are sick medieval taint stretcher
Love
Your Sister

Paranoid? I think not!

2006-01-18T07:52:00.000-05:00

http://www.bushwatch.com/bushfuhrer.htm

Oh and it is without a doubt the Millenium Falcon. Best ship of all time. Best captain and navigator. Best history. Best everything. Plus, it made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs.

She may not look like much...

2006-01-16T09:56:00.000-05:00

In my wanderings about the web, I happened across a site where someone recently posed the question "What is your favorite spaceship?" So, I pass the question on to you. I know, for a lot of us geeks and fanboys out there, the automatic response is usually something like the Millennium Falcon, but I want you to really think about it. We've watched a lot of spaceships over the years, to say nothing about the ones we've read about in books and comics. So which is it?

The Heart of Gold?
The Nostromo?
That one in The Life of Brian?

Stretch your brains, people.

WWII As an RTS Chat Session

2006-01-10T12:42:00.000-05:00

Click here for the funny

Favorite Scenes - The Sequel

2006-01-04T07:43:00.001-05:00

Sorry to hijack your post Spaulding but my reply was becoming a post of its own.

Like most culturally void Americans, I consider any material authored prior to my birth immaterial. And I believe that movies are getting better as time progresses.

If a movie opens in black and white and I can tell it's not Clerks, I immediately shut it off.

I know - I suck

So my list of greatest scenes, are probably square in-line with that of your average 15 year old.

No particular order (or maybe they are as these are the ones that readily pop into my mind). A lot of these rely heavily on the music playing in the background. Oh yeah TV sneaks in as well. Sorry!
=============================
John Cusak holding the boom box under Ione Skye's window in Say Anything. The first movie I went to on a date.

The entire montage of Freaks & Geeks when they are at the makeout party and Bob Seeger's "Accompany Me" plays. The wanton desire blanketed with pubescent fear really makes me think these kids weren't acting.

The end of Return of the King when Vigo Mortison says "No one bows before you little bitches" and then everyone bows except for the two gay hobbits and their stoner pals. I cried - swear to God.

Back to the Future - The whole dam movie - I saw this movie ten times in the theater when it opened. I was on summer vacation and I would use my allowance money to hop the train in Fanwood N.J. to the movie theater in Westfield. There is no comparison to the freedom a latch key kid has on summer vacation. 11 years old, no job, riding a train and basking the glory of a time traveling Delorean - sheer rapture indeed.

Christopher Reeve crouched over the corpse of Margot Kidder in Superman after she drowned in the earthquake (I think – it looks like a tide of dirt kills her). The anguish on C. Reeve's face was some amazing acting. A great great actor. It's almost a shame he was so man-pretty because that was his only hindrance in breaking out of the leading man mold. I say it's a shame because leading man roles suck. The meat is in character acting.

And just when you thought this list couldn’t sink further into the bowels of Americana.

Spider-Man II when Mary Jane says “Go get em’ Tiger”

I also have to agree with my esteemed colleague on “A Christmas Story”, adding to it the scene where Santa kicks Ralphie down the slide. That entire scene was a great slap in the face to the commercialization of Christmas.

And I’m going to pick a Star Wars moment, also from Empire, but it isn’t the big reveal. My favorite was when Han Solo was frozen in carbonite and Leia says she loves him. Harrison Ford’s response of “I know” captured the soul of that character. I recently developed a whole new respect for that scene when I found out that the line was improvised by Ford.

Best scenes ever

2006-01-03T14:09:00.000-05:00

I came across someone's top 100 list of movie scenes today. It's not bad, but not complete. Here's the list. Anyway, my additions to the list are (in no particular order):

- The Mount Rushmore scene North By Northwest(1959)
- "Bond. James Bond." - Dr. No (1962)
- The end of "M" (1931)
- "The stuff dreams are made of..." Maltese Falcon (1941)
- Bogie's manners speech in The Big Sleep (1946)
- The "You know how to whistle" scene in To Have and Have Not (1944).
- "I'm Spartacus" Spartacus (1960).
- "You'll shoot your eye out kid." Santa in A Christmas Story (1983)
- Robert Mitchum's good vs. evil speech in Night of the Hunter(1955).
- The hotel room/bees scene in Rushmore (1998)
- "Dowd. Elwood P." Harvey (1950) (or any scene with Josephine Hull)
- "STELLA!" Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
- "We rob banks." Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
- "They call me MISTER TIBBS!" In the Heat of the Night (1967)
- "These go to eleven." Spinal Tap
- The Danny Boy scene in Miller's Crossing (1990)
- The "I'll be there" speech in Grapes of Wrath (1940)
- The chestburter scene in Alien (1979)
- "I'm walking here!" Midnight Cowboy (1969)
- The Little Tramp getting caught in the gears in Modern Times (1936)
- The fight at the end of The Quiet Man (1952)
- The birds in the playground in The Birds (1963)
- "They're coming to get you, Barbara!" Night of the Living Dead (1968)
- "Nobody's perfect"- Some Like It Hot (1959)
- "You English think you're soooo superior"- A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
- Any scene with Nick and Nora in The Thin Man (1934)
- Hinkel bouncing the globe in The Great Dictator (1940)
- The strange interludes scene, the "One morning I shot an elephant" scene and the "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" scene in Animal Crackers (1930)
- The closet scene in Monkey Business (1931)
- "No, I am your father!" Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Any additions?

Sequel!

2005-12-29T16:16:00.000-05:00

Let it begin...

Okay, here's my take on sequels. First of all, I agree that Temple of Doom is not a sequel. It's a prequel. I should have used The Last Crusade as an example.

Secondly, I know you hate it when I pick apart your arguments word for word, but there's something I wanted to point out in the definitions you mentioned. You wrote that a serial is "Of, forming, or arranged in a series: Published or produced in installments, as a novel or television drama."

The word "series" is the key here. It has an arrangement, a specific order. A series is defined as "A number of things that follow on one after the other or are connected one after the other." In other words, I'd say that the Star Wars trilogy is a series, because it's episodic. That's why they call TV shows "series" because they are episodic. The old serials that Lucas loved as a kid were serials because this week's Flash Gordon continued the adventures of last week.

In my mind, you have it backwards. A sequel doesn't have to continue the overall story of a character, event, etc. For example, the Star Wars trilogy tells the story of the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire. It's divided into episodes, which are lined up in a chronological series that tell the overall story. Therefore, it is a serial.

On the other hand, Superman 3 is not a serial. It does not continue the overall story of Superman 2. It continues his adventures, but the events of Superman 2 would not change what happens in Superman 3.

Let's put it to another test. Superman 3 could have come after Superman 1, and no one would have been confused because the story was out of order. On the other hand, Return of the Jedi could not have come after A New Hope. It wouldn't make sense. Star Wars relies on being in it's chronological series in order to work.

The Indiana Jones movies do not rely on their order of release or their chronological order to make sense. They aren't a series because you could watch them in any order and you'd get what was happening.

To sum it all up, a sequel is like you said, "a work whose narrative continues that of a preexisting one." I simply submit that while it continues a preexisting narrative, it is not dependent on it. A serial is. That said, all serials are therefore sequels, but not all sequels are serials.

Serial or Sequel?

2005-12-29T09:12:00.000-05:00

Sequel: A literary, dramatic, or cinematic work whose narrative continues that of a preexisting work
Serial: Of, forming, or arranged in a series: Published or produced in installments, as a novel or television drama

The reason for this argument was a conversation I had with The Captain. We were talking about Steven Spielburg and how he had said in the past that he would never make a movie about evil aliens, and then SHAZAAM! War of the Worlds. I said that he also said he would never make a sequel and then SHAZAAM! Jurassic Park 2: Electric Boogaloo. The Captain asked when he said this and I said that he said it in an article after ET came out and reporters were asking him if there was going to be a sequel. (ET 2: Cruise Control) The Captain brought up that if this was the case then why would he make Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? (Here on known as ToD.) I said that the Indiana Jones movies were more Serials than Sequels. I had never thought of them as sequels. They are independent of each other. They do not reference each other. They aren't chronologically in order, or at least they don't have to be. Just because they have the same main character does not necessarily mean they are sequels. To be a sequel, there should be criteria that is followed. The main one being that a sequel takes place in time AFTER the first one. Take a look at the Holy Grail of trilogies, Star Wars (Original Trilogy. The prequel trilogy never happened. I repressed them.) New Hope came out and we as a society said it was pretty good. Farm boy who dive bombs Womp Rats gets caught up in a struggle to free the universe and makes a one in a million shot using voices in his head as guidance. Great movie. THEN...Empire Strikes back comes out three years later. Empire says to us that the Empire can't be killed in one shot and that Farm boy can learn to balance muppets upside down on one hand and that even though the "Force" let Vader and Obi-Wan feel people around them and all that crap, Vader had no clue that his wife had twins in hers uterus???? Give me a break....ok ok...Prequels never happened. Prequels never happened. Prequels never happened. Go to a happy place. Just because we were given more Star Wars does not mean we have to fake reasons to like it. Breathe....ok. Getting back to the point.
The original Star Wars trilogy had sequels that took place one after another. Does a movie qualify as a sequel if it was just filmed one after the other. Does A New Hope count as a sequel to Episode III: Attack of the Crap Monsters.
Indiana Jones was made from a love of the serials from the yesteryear. They are serials. Not sequels. Fight to the death please ensue. (Star Trek music queued up)

Uhmmm Superman????

2005-11-30T20:12:00.000-05:00

As the saying goes, "you can't judge a book by it's cover." Well exhibit A not only espouses this principle: it marries it, impregnates it and dies a slow death in the Florida Keys with it.

This is the cover from All Star Superman #1. If you followed the link, you will see Grant Morrison, the writer's interpretation of the picture. He thinks Supes loos laid back. Nay, I say gay. Hence what prompted me to give him a friend.

*Sidenote* What homosexual stereotype won't the Queer Eye guys embody? Doing all the theater I do, I've known a lot of gay dudes. If you took them all and lumped them together and they somehow morphed into a mountain of super-homo, it would cower in the pink harshness of Carson's gayosity.

Back to point. I generally love Frank Quitely's illustrations. The realism he usually brings to his drawings is spot on. Some say he makes chachters look ugly. I say most of the world is pretty ugly, move on.

This picture though just doesn't do the quality writing inside this book justice. The All Star line unlike Marvel's ultimate line isn't about establishing a new ongoing continuity, but rather to bring together today's creative powerhouses and let them tell an isolated story in an established universe.

However, the similarity between the DC All Star line and the Marvel Ultimate line is that they are intended to entice new readers by shedding the baggage of 70 years worth of continuitry.

What kid would by this book based off of that picture?

Grant, Frank - you guys have never let me down. Please don't do so this time. You're telling a dam good story here, package it better so your talent can reach a new audience.

FogelMatrix

2005-11-09T20:25:00.000-05:00

If anyone loved him this is what his avatar might look like

This is a creepy fucking fascination you two have with this...

An only child alone and wild, cabinet maker's son or not, should not be rereleased on this earth. Or wait, he's the son of the cabinet maker's son. So he's the son of the Leader of the Band.

And what were he and his ex-lover doing in the frozen foods section on Christmas Eve? If she's married to an architect, where the hell is he? It's Christmas Eve for fuck's sake, why did he send her out?

It's been too long...

2005-11-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

I know it's been a while since I've added a seething rant, a bizarre observation, or an insane opinion. I could say that it is because I have been working too much. I could say that it is because I have been traveling a lot lately. I could say that I have been pressing my will and energy towards the goals of world peace, environmental harmony, and freedom for all mankind.

Or I could tell you that I've just been playing too much Star Wars: Galaxies.

Anyway, on to my latest bit of lunacy. I've been reading the Lord of the Rings lately. I have tried to read Tolkien before, and while I have great respect for the man, I find his books to be, well, a bit dry. I'm a member of the MTV generation. If it doesn't have flashing lights and bright colors, it's hard for us to keep focused. We're stimulus junkies. Why else do you think they treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder with Ritalin, which is the bastard cousin of crystal meth?

Back to the point. I have noticed that, unlike other fantasy novels I have read, most of the characters in Middle Earth do not speak like we do today. Everyone speaks in grandiose terms. Tolkien would write something like:

"There, amongst the deep fires of the Mountain, I hewed his fiery Helm, and smote the great beast. Thus, my great quest and long imprisonment were ended." *

On the other hand, a person nowadays would simply say:

"I stabbed the monster on the volcano and went home."

One of the things I noticed was that people always refer to others by referencing their fathers. "Frodo, son of Drogo," Aragorn, son of Arathorn," and so on. This is something that they only seem to do for men. There's never "Arwen, daughter of Elrond."

Well, I've decided that this is a practice that needs revival. So, from now on, it's "Tim, son of Kevin,” or "Alan, son of Lenny." Admittedly, it might be a bit awkward when talking to "Ted, son of that-bastard-who-walked-out-on-me-and-my-mom-when-I-was-four-and-shacked-up-with-a- cocktail-waitress-outside-of-Lake-Tahoe."

*This is not from Tolkien. I made it up to illustrate the point.

Arrested Development - Great Freakin Show

2005-10-31T22:48:00.000-05:00

Kust finished watching the DVD -- Every minute of this show is hilarious. I didn't htink the MArtin Short episode was all that and a bag of chips, but David Cross playing Mrs.Featherbottom and his unwavering commitment to the "role" is sheer brilliance.

Also, check out his little rant on the bloopers reel calling out FOX marketing on its piss poor promotion (PPP) of the show.

=======================
PPP - I'm adding it to the book of L33T /\/\aRk=t1/\/g sp33k

JLA - Great Freakin Book

2005-10-31T20:10:00.000-05:00

When I got back into comic collecting in 2001, I had one mission. Fill in the holes on my X-Men comics pronto and forsake all other books. Well, I'm a retard!

What happened in the time when I quit comics (93') and my return almost a decade later, was a shift in power. A shift in the raw creative juices that fuel these stories of the fantastic.

When I left comics in 93' Marvel was king. Sure they had lost some of their superstars to this new upstart company called "Image". But, by that time most people realized Liefeld actually sucked and Jim Lee needed to let his ego simmer down. And by 93' most people were starting to realize that Image was only that, an Image.

DC was doing OK killing off and maiming its main characters, but we all knew that these supposed "life altering" events for batman and Superman would be transitory at best. At their worst they would just be marketing vehicles. I'll let the 12 polybagged white and black (each) issues of Superman sitting in my basement be the judge on this one.

Marvel truly reigned supreme. The stories were real without being disturbing like Vertigo comics. And thanks to Liefeld jumping ship the books actually started to have backgrounds in the art again (my biggest complaint against the man, I defy you to find a background in his panels).

I loved the X-Men of this time period. So it only made sense that when I got back into comics that these would be the books I would hunt down to get me up to speed as to what was going down during my seven+ year hiatus.

And the books were good. Not fantastic, but quality.

What I didn't realize until the whole "Infinite Crisis' thing started a few months ago was that the power of creativity had shifted back to DC.

I recently picked up the relaunch of JLA in TPB format from the mid-90's and it is AMAZING. Now, of course I shouldn't be surprised since it is Grant Morrison doing the storytelling on these books. But when did DC grow-up? I initially thought it was a recent phenomenon with writers like Geoff Johns joining the stable, but I was wrong. It looks as if DC has been solid for quite some time now.

I've always had a soft-spot for the Justice League. I loved Keith Giffen's work on the book back in the late 80's. The books were superhero books in only the loosest sense of the term. This wasn't a Justice League of the universe's greatest heroes, but rather all of the B and C list characters that no one wanted to admit existed. The types of characters that result from a night of heavy bong hits - Booster Gold: Man of the 25th century - Guy Gardner: The horny, crass, obnoxious and annoying Green Lantern, Maxwell Lord: Super billionaire who bought a superhero team. Giffen's writing can best be described as sarcasm injected with a heavy dose of irony. Brilliant, I recommend any of his books.

But the JLA trades I picked up from the mid 90's are grittier and dirtier. They are the original DC characters, but they are real, fallible, yet still untouchable. Just ask for the fist JLA trade at Comics and Whore. You won't be disappointed.

Next After Judge Judy – Judge Hypocrite

2005-10-21T12:43:00.000-05:00

My wife sends me articles every day at lunch. Sort of her own little Drudge report.

Well today she sent me this story based on a sex offender who 20 years ago did some bad diddling and now finds himself a Father with his younger wife (yes, he is part of the “old Dad” phenomenon). Now, social services and the legal system want to take that child away.

This got me to thinking. Our justice system has become a hypocrisy wrapped in shroud of misinterpretations.

Personally, I think child sex offenders should have their balls cut off (or vagina sewn shut). All sex offenders are awful, but I hope anyone who abuses a child in any way has their own seat in hell waiting for them.

But but but…that is not how our legal system was designed to operate. Good, bad or indifferent our legal system is based on the idea of redemption. I have to wonder if the politicians that signed into effect legislation like “Megan’s Law” ever took a political science class. If we are going to forever mark these people, why have them serve any jail time at all? With legislation like Megan’s Law and this recent case, we are telling these people that there debt will never be paid.

If we truly feel this way let’s just kill these fuckers at sentencing. Save the taxpayers money and put everyone’s conscience at ease. Because obviously they will never be able to lead a normal life. So then what is the point of letting them pretend that their lives are normal?

American Dad

2005-10-14T09:24:00.000-05:00

I think that it can pretty much go without saying that American Dad, Seth MacFarlane's follow up to the Family Guy, pretty much blows. I have given it a try, and it pains me to watch.

However, the other night I was flipping through the channels and happened across an episode. I had been seeing commercials for this episode all week, in which the American Dad is having trouble dealing with the fact that his son is a geek. Anyway, I tuned in at the middle of the episode. The dad and the son were at a Sci Fi convention, and the geeks were after them for some reason. The crowd was turning ugly, and closing in on our heroes.

The crowd parts (think the basket chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark), and instead of a swordsman, it was The Star Wars Kid. That's right, The Star Wars Kid, hero to geeks and fanboys across the globe.

I completely lost it. This was the type of humor that made The Family Guy great. Not just pop culture references, but the most obscure references that only geeks like us would get. Brilliant.

Now if they could just get rid of 99% of the characters from American Dad, they might actually have something.

First October Post - BooYah

2005-10-11T07:34:00.000-05:00

Pulling myself out of the vacum of new television shows for some webby pontificating.

I'll be spending the beginning of next month at Vertex Exchange 2005, presenting on "Blogs in Corporate America". I have a feeling most people registered for this class just so they can figure out what their kids are up to.

When not preparing for the left coast, I have been engrossed in the greatest graphic novel to bitch slap my imagination since Watchmen; Rising Stars by J. Michael Straczyinski. Before anyone comic purist crawls up my ass, "No, I am not endorsing Dynamic Forces with this link, in fact I think they smother the life out of comic collecting with their impenetrable bagging system. It was just the first hit on Google."

What I like about JMS is that he writes utilizing one of Franklin Covey's tenants of business success - Begin with the end in mind.

As he showed us with Babylon 5, JMS isn't concerned with milking a dead cow by making a series stretch out indefinitely. He writes in arcs, huge enormous arcs, but arcs none the less. Babylon 5 was intended to be a 5 year program and that's exactly what it was.

Rising Stars was intended to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Unlike Superman and Batman these characters don't live forever, they are extrodinary but they are mortal. In my opinion that raises the stakes and my interest level. Very few books walk you through a character's entire life. Rising Stars walks you through the entire life of 113 of the most extrodinary people this world has ever seen.

Funny

2005-09-30T15:49:00.000-05:00

I came across this and thought it was funny:

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/film/50reasons.html

Random Stupidity

2005-09-28T08:27:00.000-05:00

I was at a store last night looking for a cheap pair of pants for work. I won't mention the name, but I went to one of those off-price stores where they sell overstock and irregular clothes. Anyway, as I brought my new $15.00 set of carpenter pants up to the register, the clerk asked me my phone number. This is nothing new to me; stores have been doing this for years. I politely refused, and continued with the sale.

I was waiting for my debit card to process when I happened to look down at the counter. There was a small sign next to the register which had the words "Why Do We Ask For Your Phone Number?" written in large, friendly letters. *

This was followed by: "To keep you on or add you to our mailing list."

Excuse me? Your mailing list? I wasn't aware that my phone number was a vital part of the postal process. Tell me, does a P.O. box come equipped with a landline? Once I got over the fact that this was quite possibly the dumbest thing I have ever read, I continued:

"Your personal information will be in no way used for sales or marketing purposes." **

Yeah, right. Here's the deal, kids. Every time a store asks for your zip code, phone number or address, it's for marketing purposes. Every time you use one of those supermarket cards, or frequent buyer cards, it's used for marketing purposes. The reason the local supermarket discounts your groceries when you use your card is because they take that information and sell it. There are companies whose entire purpose is to catalog the consumer habits of people across the world. There are vast databases filled with information about how you spend your money and on what. They know what kind of toothpaste you use, what size pants you wear, and how often you go through prophylactics.

They, of course, turn around and sell the information right back to the manufacturers, who then use it to target their advertising and marketing strategies. "Crest Whitestrips aren't doing well in southeast Pennsylvania. Better buy up some more ad time and discount them for a week or so." And so on.

So, the local Safeway actually makes more money by discounting your groceries. Personally, I could give a shit who knows that I eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly, and that I use Dial hand soap. I just feel sorry for the poor slobs out there who will blindly accept the "We want to keep you on the mailing list" line.

*Thanks, Douglas, you hoopy frood.

**I don't remember the exact wording, so I am paraphrasing here.

PLAGUE - Hits World of Warcraft

2005-09-27T10:30:00.000-05:00

Recent news of a World of Warcraft plague has nerds everywhere cowering in fear.

A Horse Is A Horse, Of Course, Of Course

2005-09-21T08:47:00.000-05:00

Last night, I was flipping through the channels and I happened across a show on the Discovery Channel. The show was opening us up to fascinating the world of champion racehorses. This isn't something that really interests me. Watching shows on horse racing is like watching fishing shows. Horses are beautiful animals, but unless you own one and can actually ride it, then there's not much point.

What grabbed my attention was the fact that I had stumbled onto the part of the show when they were showing us what happens when you put a horse out to stud. Let me describe how this works. Basically, when the horse is in the mood, they take him to a small room. This room has a metal dummy in it that is roughly the same size and height as a mare. The then proceed to wash the horse, and then bring him up to the dummy. The horse mounts the dummy and goes to town. They then take an "artificial vagina," which is really just a big tube with a hole in one end and a baggie on the other, and place it over the horse's penis. The horse ejaculates, and voila! You have several thousand dollars worth of horse spunk.

The idiot host of the show decided that he should be the one to do this. For his protection, they put a bike helmet on him. As if he didn't feel stupid enough washing a horse's erect member, he also had to do it wearing a yellow bike helmet that was so small it wouldn't fit a four-year-old.

None of this, however, was what caught my attention. Not the equestrian dong washing, the artificial vagina, or even the little yellow helmet. Even if that was what I was into, they have websites for that. No, what caught my attention was the fact that the Discovery Channel decided to blur the horse's penis.

That's right kids, in the same way they blur the half naked crack whores on Cops, they blurred the horse's wang. How fucking repressed does a society have to be when we can't even show the sex organs of another species? This was a friggin' documentary, not a skin flick. (Like I said, they have websites for that). Unbelievable. Guess what, mammals have penises and vaginas people. We don't lay eggs. We have sex.

And we're the only ones who seem to have a problem with that fact. Grow up. It's horses. You can show a fucking sea turtle squeezing out eggs in the sand, but you can't show a vet plucking a horse?

Rules for Stand-Up Comics

2005-09-20T13:02:00.000-05:00

I know I'm stealing from Bill Mahr by creating a set of "new rules," but there are some things that need to be said, and said in list form.

In the age of cable TV, we have been inundated with all kinds of entertainment. There was a time when our desire for stand-up comedy could only be satiated by a 2 minute performance on the Tonight Show. Now, we have a thousand comedians with a half hour each on Comedy Central and half a dozen other channels.

The problem is, because we see so much stand-up, we keep seeing the same themes over and over again. It's boring.

So, my new rule is this:

Comedians are no longer allowed to do stand-up acts about the following:

1) Sex. It's too easy. We have so many hang-ups, so many issues about sex that all you have to do is mention some little thing that you ex-girlfriend did once and you get a laugh.

2) The Differences Between Men and Women. Same thing, too easy. We know that men check out women's breasts. We've laughed at the insane rules women have about the dishwasher. Move on.

3) Children/ Parenthood. Bill Cosby Himself is not only a masterpiece of "clean" comedy, it's one of the greatest comedy concert films of all time. And the parts about the trials and tribulations of parenthood are hilarious. The only problem is, it came out in 1983. Unless you gave birth to the anti-christ or your children have telekinetic powers, we've heard it all before.

4) Marriage. See numbers 1-3. Erma Bombeck is dead, people.

5) The Differences Between White People and Black People. This is not because, as a cracker, I am offended when black comedians make fun of white people. I could care less. 500 years of oppression? Yeah, I'd say you're entitled to make a few jokes at our expense. It's not because I hold on to some sort of bullshit notion of political correctness either. My problem is that it's been done to death. When Richard Pryor did it 30 years ago, it was edgy. It was hip. Now, it's as played out as "Take my wife, please."

6) Divorce. See Marriage.

7) Work/ Bosses. Your job = comedian. We're not buying your insights into office politics or dating co-workers.

8) Getting older/ Middle Aged/ Midlife Crisis. We all get old. Men get bald, sprout hair in their ears, and get erectile dysfunction. Women go through menopause and gravity goes to work. We all get fat and start to forget things. Viagra ain't that funny anymore people.

9) Bill Clinton/ Dan Quayle/ Richard Nixon. Yawn. Yesterday's news. Might as well be making jokes about Herbert Hoover.

Don't get me wrong. I have a high regard for any kind of performer (Except, of course, for movie stars). Comedians in particular. Making people laugh is one of the hardest things in the world to do, especially on stage. Comedy is without doubt the hardest genre in entertainment and anyone who attempts it has more balls than I ever will.

That's why I hate to see really funny people waste their talents on tired material. Sure, the topics I mentioned will get laughs, but how much greater would it be if you got the same laughs by talking about Styrofoam, small business accounting practices, the Ice Age, or the Punic Wars?

AT LEAST SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS

2005-09-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

"PARIS - Apple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs' said Tuesday he would resist music companies' "greedy" demands for price increases on the iTunes music download site and warned that such a move would encourage piracy."

As I am sure you would all understand, I got a tear when I read this. Now...I also understand that Jobs is looking out for his own ass but it's nice to know that he understands why piracy is so large. It isn't about "screwing" big business. It's about the affordability of things. 99 cents for a song is priced nicely. How many times have I been on iTunes just looking and end up buying 5 bucks worth of songs that I would never purchase if I had to get the entire album. What companies need to understand is that by raising prices and releasing shoddy products, people eventually get tired of it. Key word being "eventually." It may not happen tomorrow, it may not happen in the next ten years but Hollywood is going to have the same backlash. Paying $10 for a movie that just doesn't live up to the hype is going to bite them in the ass. And comparing the dollar amount opening weekend just won't cut it. Just for kicks, let's look at a movie that came out in 1990 when movie tickets were an average of $4.50. Just for comparison, a can of Coke in 1990 was roughly $.50 from a vending machine. Now...a can of Coke is about $.70 in a vending machine. Movie tickets are balancing at about $11. Home Alone was filmed in 1990 and grossed $245 million. Spiderman was filmed in 2002 and grossed $403 million. Home Alone had about 54 million views and Spiderman had about 44 million. Now why should Spiderman get more credibility as a movie? Granted, anyone born before 1983 pretty much hates Home Alone. When you can take a family to the movies for less than $20, isn't it more likely that business will increase? There are a handful of movies that I have been dying to see in the past few years in the theater. But i haven't. Because I can't see spending $11 to sit in a movie for TWO hours. Especially when i can rent a movie in 4 months for 3 bucks and keep it for at least 48 hours. This is why movie piracy is so big nowadays. Because societies want a way to escape but not at the price we are paying for it.
The funny thing in all of this is the first CD I ever bought was U2's Joshua Tree album. It cost me about $16 in 1987. Cd's today cost about $16-$18 dollars. That inflation is less than every other entertainment industry. But in a time when we are inundated with shit music like Evanescence and Creed and Limp Bizkit and Lincoln Park, we may hear a song we like and were forced to buy an entire album. In an age of one hit wonders with the ability to download those one hits, what is the point of wasting money on an entire album? Again, societies need escape. But with the cost of necessities going up, how do you afford entertainment?
What was I talking about in the beginning of this?

Is George Bush Scared of Jon Stewart?

2005-09-15T20:34:00.000-05:00

Has anyone noticed that George Bush always makes televised speeches on a Thursday night? My latest crackpot theory is that he does this because he doesn't want to become Jon Stewart's bitch. The Daily Show doesn't have a Friday night show, and the Thursday show is done taping in the early afternoon or evening. (I'm not really sure what time.)

The logical conclusion is that George Bush is scared of Jon Stewart.

Rest in Peace, Robert Wise

2005-09-15T08:47:00.000-05:00

Robert Wise died yesterday at the age of 91. To geeks like us, he will always be remembered as not only the director of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but also The Day the Earth Stood Still. He directed a whole slew of classic movies, like The Haunting, Run Silent, Run Deep, The Sound of Music, West Side Story and The Andromeda Strain. He also edited a film that is widely considered to be the greatest American film of all time, Citizen Kane. Rest in peace, you will be missed.

The Family Outing

2005-09-13T10:54:00.000-05:00

RIP Network Television

2005-09-12T16:11:00.000-05:00

OK this started in response to Spaulding's scathing indictment of the media and then started to take on a life of its own.
==============================================================
Every generation changes the rules, but ours is playing a special part in transforming media.

WE WANT YOU

That's what all the networks are saying to us the ever important 18-45 white, male demographic. We are leaving traditional television in droves.

And after owning digital cable for two weeks, I can see why we are collectively saying fuck you to 99% of network television. I was at about 95% when Fogle got me World of Warcraft for my Birthday. And at about 90% with DVD's

Reality TV must end. As we enter season 400 of survivor (Yes the show started in 1605. How do they calculate seasons anyway tehse days?)I am reminded why my faith in humanity has continued to dwindle with each passing year on this planet.

Who cares about these people. I will give shows like Survivor and Apprentice some credit, in that they actually force people to compete for a common goal. However, producers of shows like Simple Life and Filthy Rich Cattledrive deserve to have their lives ended in a death so awful it could only be concocted by Hitler, Napolean and Osama Bin Laden (for anyone who is counting Nostradamus still isn't that far off the mark) sharing a doobie and a case of 40's. How long will we continue to deify these twits that are so out of touch with any other facet of reality aside from their own bubble of spoiledocity (Screw you all - it's a word now).

Thanks for the Shitcoms

Joey blows - According to Jim blows Joey - Two and a Half Men is mildly amusing as long as you enjoy watching a spoiled fat kid be loved and cherished for being stupid and lazy. Sitcoms officially blow. So from here on out they will be called Shitcoms.

You know what digital cable has taught me though, Shitcoms always blew. Yes there are gems out there like the first few seasons of Friends and Arrested Development, but they are few and far between. Shows I used to love as a kid I now watch on On Demand and grimace.

Diff'rent Strokes - Blew (and if you watch the opening credits without any context you'll think Mr.D spends every Tuesday cruising the ghetto and picking out afro-american pre-teens to "ride" his limo)

Silver Spoons - You would think this was penned by Corky from "Life Goes On". Sir John Gielgould should have left well enough alone after Paperchase

Supertrain - Die

BJ and the Bear - Wow a monkey and a truck all in the same show. Check my nipples. Rock hard baby. This is exciting TV

I could go on but this list is hurting my mind. Shows have been bad fro a long time, but we watched them becasue there was nothing better on.

Start improving the quality and format of Shitcoms or forever lose us to HBO and Showtime original series. You're making progress with shows like "The Office" Mr. TV Executive but you have a long road ahead of you. And stop copying off the British. We won the war.

All The News That's Fit To Sensationalize

2005-09-09T14:03:00.000-05:00

I've always hated the TV news, especially local news, which is bottom-of-the-barrel journalism, and the 24-hour news networks, because they're the fungus growing on the bottom of the barrel. This has always been a problem for me, because as a television soundman, these folks often pay my rent. I keep telling people that I'm fighting the system from within, but we all know that's bull.

Anyway, when Katrina began forming last month, the usual flock of idiots flew down to the South to show America how dangerous a hurricane was... by standing right in the middle of it. As if we didn't know. You could practically hear the drooling of news producers and reporters across the nation. Those sad bastards at the Weather Channel were practically orgasmic.

However, as Katrina made landfall, the coverage quickly began to change. The media realized right away that this was no regular storm. The coast was ravaged. New Orleans, which initially seemed to be spared the brunt of the storm, was underwater. And the news was there.

I have to say, I was actually very impressed overall. They were on the ground from day one. When it seemed like the government wasn’t doing their job, the news was on top of it. They found those poor stranded people in the Convention Center, long before Michael Chertoff or Michael Brown had any clue as to what was going on. They did what they have been failing to do for so long. Not only were they our eyes and ears, but also our watchdogs. They asked the tough questions and demanded answers.

I do have a couple of issues though. First of all, when people were trapped in the Superdome and Convention Center and the National Guard was nowhere to be seen, don’t show us helicopter shots of them. If you have a helicopter, you should be airlifting people out. If you can’t do that, then you should be airlifting food and water in. If, for some reason, you can’t do either, then land the chopper and donate your fuel.

Second, what’s with the report about the body bags? “Rescue Workers Have 25,000 Body Bags Ready” That’s one hell of a headline. The problem is, it’s not news. Was there a headline saying “Rescue Workers Have 50,000 Blankets Ready” or “Rescue Workers Have 150,000 Band-Aids Ready”? Of course not. This is just sensationalism, pure and simple. You’re doing good, folks. Let’s not drop the ball.

Can't He Do Anything Right?

2005-09-09T09:08:00.000-05:00

In the wake of the hurricane, the massive destruction and loss of life, and the government's pathetic response, I have to ask the Bush supporters out there:

Is there anything George W. Bush has done right? Anything at all? Please, just name one thing.

"But Captain, Hurricane response and preparation is the responsibility of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. How is it the President's fault?"

There are four simple words that Harry Truman once said. "The buck stops here."

This administration is famous for passing the buck and getting away with it. When there's no one else to blame, they make the victim the bad guy. No weapons of mass destruction? Must be the CIA's fault. Torturing prisoners in Iraq? Well, the sergeant in charge was to blame. Karl Rove leaked a CIA agent's identity? Well, why was her husband in Africa anyway? He's got no credibility. (What the hell ever happened with that anyway? It just disappeared.) Cindy Sheehan wants to talk to him about her dead son? Well, she's a left wing wacko with ties to Michael Moore.

Mr. President, you are in charge. Everything even remotely tied to the executive branch is your responsibility and when things get screwed up, it's your fault. Be a man and take some responsibility.

They keep saying "Now is not the time to play the blame game." Spoken like someone who truly is to blame.

Perfect Moments

2005-09-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

Ever have one of those perfect moments? The ones where you think, "Damn, I wish I had a camera?"

It's about midnight and I just got back from the video store. After a late-night hankering for a movie, I left the store and walked out into the shopping center parking lot. The lot was deserted, save for my car in the front row, and a lone sedan sat alone in the middle of the vast lot. A few discarded shopping carts from a distant supermarket were scattered about.

As I left the store, I noticed that one of the shopping carts was moving down the slope of the lot. From what I could tell, it had just started moving on its own. There were no people, no other cars, no signs of life. It was almost as if Gravity had suddenly remembered it should be pulling the cart downhill.

As it coasted down its long path, I noticed that it seemed to be heading towards the lone sedan. I couldn't be sure, the angle I was tracking the thing wasn't that great.

Could it? No, not in this huge lot... Holy shit! I think it's gonna...

SLAM!

The cart careens right into the side of the sedan. In the pale glow of the single streetlight, I could see the fresh and enormous dent in the passenger door. It was glorious. It was like a ballet.

If only I had a camera.

Celine Demon

2005-09-08T14:05:00.000-05:00

Well, our nation has been rocked by tragedy, and on hand for emergency photo ops were our legion of celebrities. Oprah, Celine Dion, Sean Penn, George W. Bush and scores of other mindless idiots have gone into the ravaged areas to make a difference (in their ratings).

I shouldn't be that hard on Sean Penn. At least he showed up with a boat and tried to help people escape from the flood waters. Sometimes these retards can actually do something that matters. I like what Russell Crowe had to say. He was sick of people like Bono constantly in your face about whatever pet issues they have and that they're only into it for the publicity. He said:

"I do my bit to improve the world but I think it's very important to get things done on the quiet. I'm sick to death of famous people standing up and using their celebrity to promote a cause. If I see a particular need, I do try to help. But there's a lot that can be achieved by putting a cheque in the right place and shutting up about it."

Rock on, Gladiator. Rock on.

Despite the fact that I'm unabashedly liberal, it's the liberal celebrities that I hate the most. They aren't helping, they're just bitching on national TV in a vain attempt to pretend that their existence makes a difference. At least the Republican celebrities actually do something. Think about all the celebrity politicians you can think of. They're all conservatives. Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono, Fred Thompson, all Republicans. Put up or shut up, I say.

Los Angeles 2019?

2005-09-07T12:26:00.000-05:00

I was cleaning out my apartment yesterday and I happened across a book, "Cyberpunk: 2020." It was one of the many roleplaying game books that I bought in my youth but never got around to playing. Written in 1990, it allows us to live in the dystopian nightmare that was to come in the next 30 years.

Well, we're half way there, and I decided to see how we're doing. I flipped through the book, and had a few laughs. The book was clearly written at the beginning of the information age, and like all predictions of the future, it seems way off. 15 years down the road, and we are not much closer to cybernetic limbs or brain implants. We still aren't anywhere near flying cars. (C'mon, Detroit! Get the lead out!)

There were a couple of things that made me laugh out loud. There's a flying car built by McDonnell Douglas. Newspapers are delievered via fax to vending machines. There's still a Soviet Union. The section on cell phones was hilarious:

"The phone of the future is mobile and cordless, allowing the cyberpunk on the go to talk from his car, office, or even on the street. These 'cellular' phones operate by using a series of stationary transceivers which pick up your phone signal and relay it into the regular phone Net. Calls can be made from not only from within the city, but also long distance (with a Long Distance service of your choice) all over the world and even into orbit.

Cellular phones come in a variety of brands and styles, although most are about the size of a hand-held walkie-talkie. They operate on rechargeable batteries good for about twelve hours, recharging from a wall socket in 6 hours. Brand names include Magnavox, NEC, Okidata, GE and Radio Shack. Prices range from $400.00 for an inexpensive model, to $3,000.00 for a model with multiple lines, built in hold-buttons and memory autodial.

Like other phones, you must pay a monthly service charge. Baseline rates are $40.00 per month plus $0.20 per minute for local calls. Long distance varies- a call from Los Angeles to New York might cost $2.00 a minute during daylight business hours, $1.50 for evening hours. Cell phones also have a limit on how far they can operate outside the city limits; about 20 miles.

They managed to get one or two things right, however. They did predict high definition flat panel television. They talk about a single European currency, though they call it a "European dollar."

On the other hand, they say, "The Fax is the letter writing mode of the future. You may type your letter in using the keyboard, have it scanned from your own laser disk, or use the built-in scanner to 'read' any typed letter. The faxed copy is then transmitted by wire to the local post office in your destination area, where it is automatically typed off, inserted into an envelope, and delivered by letter carrier to the mailbox."

I suppose my point in all of this is simply this: Why do science fiction writers (and roleplaying game authors) insist on giving their fictional worlds in a specific time, one which is likely to be within their lifetime? Take Blade Runner for example. It takes place in 2019, which is only 38 years after the film was made. Yet, we have flying cars, off-world colonies, and genetically engineered robots, to say nothing of the fact that L.A. looks like Cybertron on crack. Ridley Scott will likely live to see 2019. He may be 82, but he'll probably be around. I'm betting that the future isn't anywhere near what he predicted.

I guess this all stems from the disappointment of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie, you could take a Pan Am(!) flight to a space station or even the Moon. We were sending the first manned mission to Jupiter (Saturn in the book!). Now, it seems like the only thing it got right was the fact that we evolved from apes. In reality, 2001 was an awfully shitty year.

Admittedly, Stanley Kubrick sadly didn't live to see 2001, but Arthur C. Clarke did. (Boy, he must have been disappointed.)

I love the cyberpunk genre. I love the bleak, film-noir-ish future. A lot of it seems dated, however. It just seems to me that if you are going to create a fictional world set in the near future, don't put a specific date on it, especially if it's likely you may live to see that date, and look like an ass because you were way off.

That's why I always liked the Max Headroom show. It was always "20 minutes into the future," which made it seem like it wasn't quite on our plane of existence. While only 20 minutes ahead of us, we would never catch up it, and therefore in would never exist for us. It was a great idea.

I also like stories that take place off in the distant future. Take Dune, for example. The first book starts in the year 10,191. That's 8,000 years in the future. You can really go to town there because it's almost impossible to make any sort of an educated guess about the future that far ahead. 8,000 years ago, agriculture was just emerging in the Nile Valley. Just imagine what it will be like in another eight millennia.

Anyway, stop using dates in the near future, unless you like looking like a chump.

Whales Smarter Than Republicans???

2005-09-02T07:23:00.000-05:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_sc/clever_whale

"Life Will Find a Way"- Michael Crighton/ Jeff Goldblum

Wow...Intelligent Design is right!!!!!
There was an all powerful creator who could foresee that we as humans would trap giant killer whales, make them do stage shows for children, and supplement their diet by baiting seagulls. You know they just didn't adapt to their environment. Apparently Orca was designed from the beginning for this type of thing. Their may be "holes" in the "theory" of evolution but with the help of Intelligent Design I am able to understand how animals (human and creature alike) are able to "evolve" in intelligence and "adapt" themselves to environments. And thank the Designer for my POINTLESS MALE NIPPLES.

For more information about who could be one of the Intelligent Designer's please visit this website: http://www.venganza.org/

Without Intelligent Design I would be lost. All those questions I have about "Life, The Universe And Everything" (I hope Mr. Adams found out) have all been answered in a simple to follow, multilingual, manual. It's called the Bible. And let me tell you. I follow it to a tee.

I am so thrilled to see that some of the basic design flaws in the human body have been addressed.
- Why isn't the female pelvis designed to give birth flawlessly? We were designed that way.
- Why did I have to have my wisdom teeth removed? Because my designer thought it would be funny to make humans have surgery.
- How come my hip joints and knees are subject to extreme stress and may degenerate over time? Because my designer thinks old age should be accompanied by pain.
- Why would a designer think to make the output ports on the female so close to input port? Because infections and episiotomies are to remind women that they should hate their designer. If we were designed by someone, and that someone "could" have been female, don't you think that they would have thought of this issue? Intelligent Design never does mention a "god." And since the "Christians" are the ones pushing this retarded idea, their god is thought to be "male" and that just makes this all the more amusing.
- I just wanted to let you all know that I have by studying figured out what the appendix is for. But my designer doesn't want me to tell you.
- Genetic birth defects that are found in "primitive" animals like gills, extra digits, or the appearence of a what is commonly called on monkeys...a tail. I love the fact that my designer gave us humans a reason to doubt it's existence. I know that when I create or accomplish something amazing, be it a painting, a biosystem with billions or different lifeforms, hell even a big ol' turd, I brag and smack talk till everyone knows who did it. I like the fact that my designer took such a big part in this world's evolution....er...uhhm...earlier times and is completely silent now. I know when I used to get the silent treatement from from my parents I never felt more loved.
- Last week I was mugged and stabbed in the stomach and I remember what my last thought was before I crapped myself and passed out. Thank you designer for your brilliant idea to place the belly region with all it's pointless organs like the stomach, kidneys, liver and the aorta vessel right out there in the open. I am just thankful that no endangered species carry a wallet. That mugger would have had a hard time trying to attack the vital areas on quadripeds. With the protective spine and back it is just tougher to get into a tiger's pockets. At least my designer thoguht ahead and realized that by making it easier to kill humans we could at least control the population. At least we can control it in countries where we have economical interests.
- I like the idea that my designer isn't omnipotent and omnipresent and perfect. If he was, he could only create perfection. Isn't it impossible for perfection to create imperfection?

Thank you Intelligent Designer whatever you might be.
This kinda feels familiar. I am proud of my Designer in the same way I am happy for my cousin when he does well in the Special Olympics. You are really proud of that achievement but you know that they will never accomplish astrophysics.

Moral Decay In Video Games, Part II: Ride of the Idiots

2005-09-01T10:37:00.000-05:00

This post is rated M — Mature: Contains content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older.

The article Fogelmatrix posted brings up a good point. Why is it that you can steal cars, shoot cops, murder hookers, deal drugs, shoot gang members, and that’s an M rating. But the second you get a blowjob, it’s Adults Only? Did I miss something? How is a hummer worse than all of that?

Here's a couple of tidbits I picked up on the hot coffee mod:

"In New York, a class action lawsuit has been filed by Florence Cohen, an 85-year old grandmother who purchased the game for her 14-year old grandson. Cohen's lawsuit claims that Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the game, are guilty of deception, false advertising, fraud and abuse. The accusation of deception is based on the change from M-rated to AO, meaning according to the lawsuit that the original rating was a deceptive practice."

I don’t know anything about Florence Cohen. This old lady could be the nicest, sweetest grandmother in the world. Her house could be filled with cookies and milk. She could be kind to puppies and kitties. Her breath could have the sweet scent of cinnamon rolls. It’s just too bad she’s a fucking idiot.

Okay, first of all, the game is called GRAND THEFT AUTO. Use your freakin’ head lady! What the hell did you think it was about? Picking daisies in a field?

Secondly, they’re stating that the game should have been an AO rating, instead of an M. Did it escape anyone’s attention that the kid she bought it for was 14? Does it not say clearly on the box "M — Mature: Contains content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older?" The kid shouldn’t have been playing the game in the first place.

Here’s what happened. Grandma fucked up. She bought a game for her grandkid that she really shouldn’t have. There were all manner of warnings about the game’s content (including the game’s title). She didn’t pay attention, and now she wants someone to pay.

Well Grandma, it’s your fault. The ratings are there for you. There is no way they could have made it simpler, short of tatooing the ratings to your forehead. If you want to blame someone, look in the mirror. I am so tired of people not taking responsibility for the raising of their kids (or grandkids).

"U.S. senator Hillary Clinton has jumped into the fray by suggesting new regulations be put on video games sales. The ESRB is also conducting an investigation into whether the game's publisher lied about the game's content in an attempt to avoid the Adults Only 18+ rating. Also, Congress just passed a resolution to have the Federal Trade Commission investigate whether Rockstar intentionally undermined the ESRB by having the content in the game."

Hillary Clinton is really pissing me off with this. This is why I'm ashamed to be a Democrat. This is bullshit political swaggering. She's making a run for the White House and is trying to position herself as moral and separate herself from past scandals.

First of all, the ESRB ratings are not required by law. They aren't mandatory at all, just like the movie ratings. The ESRB is not a government organization. They set up the rating system as a way of self-regulation in order to keep the government out of their business.

Secondly, it’s subjective. All rating systems are. Ever see a movie and wonder why the hell this was only PG-13? Why the fuck to Democrats get all hot and bothered when it comes to civil liberties, but keep jumping on the censorship bandwagon. (I’m lookin’ at you, Tipper Gore.)

Aren’t there bigger issues that Hillary should be looking at? Isn’t there a war on or something?

Moral Decay In Video Games

2005-08-31T14:49:00.000-05:00

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ticket_to_hell

Hey NeoColletor

2005-08-29T06:29:00.000-05:00

You're latest post won't allow for comments, so I guess I'll leverage Nerd Powah to respond.

Kingdom Come & The Dark Knight Returns

These are what I fel to be two of teh finest books ever produced. I would add "Marvels" to this list, but I know you are solely a DC gal.

I lent you both of those books because
A) I knew what an all out Superfreak you are
B) They both give a humanity to big blue that never makes it into a lot of his other stories

The Dark Knight Returns is Batman's book through and through. From the opening car race to the final moments where he fakes his own death. This book pushed me from enjoying comics to loving them in that special man-paper way.

I will always see Superman as the primary villan of this story. It's not that he's outright I'm going to ransom the world for a "beelion dollars" evil, it's just his ideals differ so greatly from Batmans and his faith in humanity almost blinds him to our flaws. This makes him weak and a puppet of a corrupt system. Plus he sold out all of the other super heores simply so he could stay on earth. The best villians are the ones that are convinced that their cause is just. If you didn't read this book, you're not a Superman fan. The new Batman/Superman series has done and amazing job continuing this dichotomy of ideals between these two charachters.

Kingdom Come is a very different book. This is the Elseworld take on "The Justice league" as they enter their golden years. Superman is just tired of it all,, especially the new generation of Superheroes, who embody only the first part of that title. They are cold callous and run the polanet like it's their personal playground as opposed to protecting and cherishing the life around them. Plus the art was done by Alex Ross...

Evolution of a Comic Collector

The one down side to getting te books delievred wouldn't be a problem for you now. You are married to titles and charachters more than authors or artists. As time progresses though you may find yourself following a certain creative team as well as your chestnut subscriptions. I have a couple of these:

Alex Ross: The most stunning picturtes in comics
Kurt Busiek: Astro City and Marvels reignited my love of collecting
Bill Willingham: Any man that make Gepeto the lord of all evil is tops in my book
Brian Vaughan: Ex Machnia, Y: The Last Man & Runaways are less comic books and more artistic indictements on society
Bendis & Johns: The superstars of the Marvel and DC Universes. Johns actually got me reading DC again. Thank You!

What was the book you just finished Neo? Details please, Judas Contract sound familiar, but I can't remember them all.