This Week In Entertainment (5/28/07)

My Pick of the Week is Mario Party 8. I have three of the Mario Party games and I'll probably pick this up. Still, I hope the next Mario Party is online.

The other Wii game that's coming out this week is Mortal Kombat Armageddon. I've been waiting for the Wii version of this game for quite a while, and I hope it's good. If not, I can always pick up the PS2 version for twenty bucks. (This game should have also had online play.) I'm going to kick everybody's butt with Frost.

And for those who wanted a more intellectual challenge, it's The New York Times Crosswords for the DS!


On to DVDs.

Everybody loves prequels, so here's Hannibal Rising.

Poor Cubs fans. Here's a box full of empty air, I bet.

Here's a set that includes all five Superman movies, including the most recent one. I wouldn't mention this except that it's referred to as the Corrected Edition 2007. I was laughing at the idea of people buying the original set for a lot of money and finding out that it was wrong somehow, until I realized that they're referring to the director's cut of Superman 2.

Sunday, Lazy Sunday (5/27/07)

I saw Spider-Man over the weekend. Maybe my expectations were lowered due to the subpar reviews, but I liked it. Not as much as I liked the first two, though. I would give it a seven, while I would give a ten to the previous movie and an eight or nine to the original. Maybe I'll spend a post giving my thoughts on it.

I've been playing online games lately. I once thought they would be cool before the Dreamcast came out, but then I thought they were going to ruin the quality of one-player games. Now I guess I'm on the bandwagon. Two weeks ago I played Tetris DS. It wasn't the first time I played it online, but now I have a Nintendo WiFi USB Connector. Well, that Sunday I got my butt kicked, and I now have 32 wins out of 69 tries. My world score, or whatever it is, is back to the base 5000. Hopefully I'll have more luck next time.

Yesterday I tried Animal Crossing with my friend Lita. She got to visit my AC town, which was pretty crappy. I first played Animal Crossing back in October, but I put it down and never picked it up till yesterday. And you know what she did the moment she appeared? She BLAHed me! My whole life has been altered thanks to that! Thanks a lot, Lita!

I've heard rumors for the last couple months that have disturbed me. My old arch-diocese may be a poorly run organization that's running it's schools into the ground. My mom works for my old elementary school and everything I hear from her suggests it. Teachers are constantly shifted from grade to grade (if they decide to put up with this nonsense) and no one knows if they have a job next year. Given that our old church was near bankrupcy, it seems like we were lucky to escape to the Archdiocese of Baltimore. I hope. (I'm not going to even mention what I think the Catholic Church's take on immigrants.)

On brighter news, I have tomorrow off! WHOO! And I believe the project I've been working on for several months is almost over. I can't wait to move on to anything else. I can't mention what it is due to a non-disclosure agreement, but hopefully it'll become public someday.

During Lita's stay at my Animal Crossing town, she put up a false billboard saying that I love Family Guy. Pfft! I only vandalized the wiki entry for Grey Poupon because I wanted to make fun of how it seem to me that Family Guy gets mentioned at several wiki entries. Do we got that now?

In other animated news, I want to punch the writers, producers, and whoever involved with The Simpsons for the four hundredth episode of the Simpsons in the face. They deserve that for their political mutual masturbation of an episode.

Here's a link to something that I find interesting, if also very legally iffy.

I'll admit that my thoughts were very jumbled today. Enjoy Memorial Day!

College Days: Fall 98

Since I usually talk about my childhood a lot, let's instead focus on my adulthood.

I graduated from high school in 1998. The Caps had recently snuck into the Stanley Cup finals and... I'm not sure if anything else happened that year. Anyway, I'm going to go over my memories of that semester in what may prove to be an eleven part series.

My grades at high school weren't that great. I struggled in my freshman year, and unless the councelors were just trying to scare me, that may have cost me in the long run. After I survived my freshman year I adjusted and cruised through the last three years. I grew up thinking that I would get a job after leaving high school, but I was surprised during my junior year when my parents told me to apply for the University of Maryland. I did, even if I stupidly waited to the last minute to do so.

The essay I had to write was about my favorite book and how I would take lessons from it, or something. I picked Dante's The Inferno because I didn't read any novels outside of class and it was the only one that I really liked. I'm sure it seemed like a great idea at the time. For recommendations, I got one from my math teacher, which was important because math was my strong poin and I was planning a major involving computers or accounting. The other recommendation I got was from my Catholic Ethics teacher because I was getting an A in the class. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I wonder about that.

I did eventually learn that I was accepted into the University of Maryland. However, I was pissed to learn that I was waitlisted for a semester. I had to go to Montgomery Community College in the meantime. For a long time "waitlisted" was a dirty word in my mind. I went to Montgomery Community College Takoma Park campus because it was closer then Prince George's CC.

I took the placement test during the summer when I was still seventeen. I remember that because they asked if there were still any underaged people. I had to call my mom just to learn my social security number for the test. I think it was just a math test.

When the semester finally started, I took four classes, which my parents helped me pick. I took Pre-Calculus, even though I took it in my junior year in high school. I wonder if I didn't do so well on the placement test. I took chemistry with a lab class. I took an English 101 class. And I took what we thought was a computer class. It was, but not quite what we expected.

My schedule was perfect in my mind, except for the lab class on Tuesdays. I would have my earliest classes in the morning and be out sometime at three on most days. My Fridays were light and I went home before noon, and that set the standard when I picked my classes for the rest of my time in college. I always tried to have light Fridays (and Mondays.)

One of the advantages of this particular campus was that it was only a 15 minute walk away from the Metro Station. I don't drive so I needed this. If I remember correctly, it usually took about thirty minutes on the metro to get to the College Park Metro Station, the closest to my home. That semester I usually walked home, and that usually took fourty-five minutes. Only rarely did I take a bus home, which would cut time down to 6 minutes. The problem was that the bus only showed up every hour, so I avoided for most of that semester.

Montgomery Community College isn't that big. On my first tour there, I saw a lounge with a couple couches and a tv screen. This is where I usually went to hang out, because there wasn't too many other places to go. Most of the time I spent my free periods there watching ESPN or doing homework. I wasn't the only one who used the tv, and most people would change the channel for BET and other music video channels. I heard several music videos, including "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)", which I thought was one of the dumbest songs I ever heard. I don't recall if there was a cafeteria, and if there was, I probably didn't go. This may have been the poin in my life where I never ate anything until late afternoon. There was a computer lab, but I only went there a couple times for my computer class. The internet was still rather young at the time.

Pre-Cal was the first class I went to. It started out in a room that reminded me a lot high school but we eventually moved to a computer lab. The professor taught the class five times a week, and it wasn't broken up into lecture and discussion. Since I took Pre-Cal two years before, I easily got the highest grades in the class. There's honestly not much more to say about this class.

My chemistry class had to lectures on Tuesday/Thursday and a lab from 1-4p on Tuesdays. I have to say that I like chemistry more then most other sciences that I've taken, including advanced biology and physics. The lectures were taught by one professor for most of the semester, but something happened that forced her to stop teaching the lab classes, so another woman took over that. This class may have been my intro to the college way of teaching classes, i.e. lots of text book reading. I was warned about this in high school and was determined to keep up. I don't recall how well I did (the professor posted all her notes on an overhead projector so we probably didn't have to do all the reading) but I'm sure I did a better job keeping up in that class then my English class.

I remember the lab far more then the lecture class. We were all assigned to tables with four other people. Sometimes we would work together, often times not. Most labs would involve heating something so I got to gingerly hold the spark lighter near the bunsen burner and pray I wouldn't burn myself. And I was pretty bad with the lighter, so it took me a long time to light that thing. We had a secondary book with the activities to do each week. Sadly, I was horrible at reading it, because I was always asking the professor about some of the blanks we had to fill in. I'm sure it annoyed her as time went on. I can't remember too many specific labs, except for the one where we just sat down and built molecules with sticks and balls. Otherwise all I remember is the time I dropped the lid of a cup I was burning. I caught it, which was a bad idea. So I dropped it again. I remember raising my hand when the professor asked who dropped what.

My computer class was really a rehash of a class I took in highschool. It taught us how to use things like Windows Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and other Microsoft Office tools. Despite the fact that I was signed up for the class thinking it would
help in a career towards computers, I later learned that it was counted as some Business class in the UMD. It was a Monday/Wednesday class. I remember the professor or teacher wanted us to get floppy disks for the class, which is funny to think about now. She just wanted us to save our files in these disks. At one poin she wanted us to write an essay about my life, and I kept it boring. I wonder if I should read that essay a decade after it was written just to compare my life then to now and see how I would react.

The class was very easy. I didn't bother studying for the first exam, and that set up one of the scarier moments I had at Montgomery CC. A girl that sat next to me asked me if I studied for the test. I wasn't sure if the test was that day or the next class, so I thought she might have been talking to somebody else behind me. I was walking towards her while I was about to make my turn to go up the stairs to the class. I made the mistake of just looking at her briefly and saying nothing. Big mistake. She let loose on me while I was still walking to class and I realized my mistake. Even worse, she started accusing me of racism because she was black. At this poin I decided to just quickly go to the hallway outside the class. She gave me a dirty look before we went into the class, yet she quickly forgave me when I told her that I didn't know the test was that day. She even offered her notes before the test. I felt terrible for the rest of the day. When I was at the metro station and I missed a train, I made a woman repeat what she mumbled to herself because I didn't want to get accused of anything again.

That brings us to the last class I had, English 101. I believe this was a Tuesday/Thursday class. I was never good at verbal skills, but I wasn't prepared for what this class threw at me. The professor was an old man who hated life and himself. At the beginning of the semester some professor offered to bring some students over to her class. I really wish I had done that, because I may have had a better chance. The professor I got did all his time complaining about how we were all morons who were going to end up working at McDonald's. We had a textbook with a lot of essays but I'm not sure why. We would have discussions about the essays but it didn't count for anything.

At Montgomery CC, they had a stupid system where essays were graded by two independant graders who grade on a 1-4 poin system. 1 was an F, 2 was a D, 3 was a C , and 4 was an B or A. If the two graders gave different scores, then a third grader was the tie breaker. This stupid system was bias towards failing. Our essays had to be written in class during the hour or so the class lasted. We were usually given three different essay topics. Towards the end of the semester there was one big essay that we would have to pass or we would automatically fail the class. All the other essays were practice for this one. Those who failed it had to take a remake on a Saturday or something, and those who failed that had the option for an audit. I'm pretty damn sure I passed that big essay, but I failed the class, so I'm not sure what was going on here.

The professor himself was a bastard. His big advice to pass the essays? Buy a newspaper everyday and read the op-ed page. That was it. The op-ed page was suppose to magically teach us about all kinds of stuff like big words. I tried this but I wasn't impressed by this method. (Also, this was 1998, when the Clinton scandal was exploding. So the op-ed articles in the Washington Post had a sameness to them.) Otherwise there was not much to the class. We had some discussions about the textbook essays we had to read, but I don't know why we bothered. The rest of the time he complained about how life sucked. He told us how hard it was to get good jobs (admittedly true) and he told us how the government was going to kill us if we didn't pay attention to it (maybe not in those words.) He took great pleasure over the Clinton scandal (not that he was a Republican fan) and I remember him laughing during the day Clinton gave his infamous "definition of is" testimony. He would complain about how much the English department sucked. He would also complain about how Christianity sucked.

We had one good discussion over a hypothetical situation where a wife had to support her husband after he decided to quit his job to become a writer. And we went over one essay written by Maya Angelou. He told us about how she was a liar because her essay made it look like blacks went to colleges to specifically get bad jobs ("janitor 101") when that wasn't the case.

There was one essay written by the author of Lord of the Flies. It was about the three levels of smartness or thinking. The lowest level was about doing what everybody else did, and the upper levels had to do with thinking on your own and being inventive. I remember thinking what an arrogant bastard the author was. He's suppose to be as smart as level three Einstein (who he once met). Why? Because one time he out-argued a dumb level one Christian (BLECK!) girl. He hated marriage because that was just some dumb level one thinking and the world needed some innovative level three thinking! Whatever. Our last day of class ended early because he made us read Martin Luther King Jr's essay that he wrote while he was in jail. We were suppose to notice something about the essay but nobody did, so the professor laughed at us and dismissed us.

That was my first semester of college. In the end, I only had two classes that counted for anything, and one was a class I already took in high school. I went to the University of Maryland the next semester after this test run. Good bye, Hawks.

Skill Squares

I'm going to be busy this week, so I may be forced to do short entries each day. So I'm going to post some pics of a couple games I had at Delaware.



These are Skill Squares.



They all have these on the bottom. You wind the game up and have about a minute or so to play. On the side is an on-off switch. In front of each skill square is a lever that you pull back to (usually) shoot marbles. Usually your goal was to get all your marbles into some goal.



This Skill Square is Shootin' Gallery. It may be the first Skill Square I had, and it was definitely my favorite. Your goal is to shoot down all the bottles. There's only four, unlike a lot of other games where your goal is eight. This game was easy because you would often win the game by pulling hard on the lever.



Each Skill Square had a ranking system on a label on the back. It was hard not to get the rank of TOP GUN in this game.



The other game here is Rocket Tower. The goal was to shoot all eight marbles into the beds of the four rockets. Each rocket could hold two marbles. I don't think I ever got all eight marbles into the rockets. Six was ok and seven was doable, but it was easy to accidently knock a marble out when shooting marbles into the rockets.



Sometimes a ball would get stuck in the hooks under the rockets and you would have to consider ending the game or shooting away hoping the ball will dislodge itself.




So, there you go. I think the original set had four, and I got those and a few more. I'm not sure if I still have them all, but I'm sure I can find a couple more.

This Week In Entertainment (5/21/07)

I couldn't think of a pick of the week this morning. I should pick stuff like Roots: 30th Anniversary or The Third Man, but who would I be kidding? (I've only seen the LaVar Burton part of Roots.)

They're releasing five of the Bond movies seperately. This week includes two good ones (The World is Not Enough and The Living Daylights), two bad ones (Moonraker and The Man with a Golden Gun), and two I haven't seen (You Only Live Twice and From Russia With Love.)

Could Epic Movie be worst then Date Movie? Probably. (I used to love movies like this. Maybe they need to clone Leslie Neilsen.)

There are special editions for Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2. Say, is there a sequel coming up anytime soon?

Do you know anybody who you secretly wished was sterilized? Well here's Pokemon 10th Anniversary and Dragon Ball Z: Season 2.

Here's Volume 2 of Perry Mason Season 1. You know, I find this whole volume thing really annoying.

Ocean's Eleven/Ocean's Twelve - Say, is there a sequel coming out soon?

Jews In Space - What, they finally made this movie?


Update!



They finally released the Virtual Console games of the week today. My Pick of the Week is Donkey Kong Country 2, even if you don't actually play as Donkey Kong.

Saturday Morning Cartoons: Mid Eighties

Last week I talked about the cartoons I used to watch on USA Cartoon Express. Since I don't feel like writing a Demo Fun thing tonight, why don't I look at the mid eighties to see if I remember which Saturday morning shows I watched? I'll focus on the early years before I started watching regularly.

In order to figure out what I watched, I had to find a schedule. Here's a website that has a listing for the eighties.

One of the earliest cartoons on this list that I know I didn't see on Cartoon Express was an episode of Supercade. This was a collection of cartoons based on popular video games of the time. The cartoon I saw was shown on very early morning, which is why I didn't watch the show more often. It might have already ran its course by the time I saw it. Anyway, it was an episode of Donkey Kong, where Mario and Pauline were in a raft for some reason. I think there were glaciers in the background. That's all I remember.

Another early show I remember is the Ewoks cartoon. I don't know if I saw this before or after the trilogy. Mostly likely before, because I think I saw parts of the trilogy at Delaware. I don't remember much about it.

Another show was Kidd Video. This was a show about some band who got transfered to a cartoon world where they did stuff. I don't know what they did, but there was a fairy whenever they needed a deus ex machina. There villians were some animal guys. I think the girl of the group wore leg warmers because it was the eighties. There were a lot of live action scenes so the band could pad the episodes with songs. This show may have been on a few years since I can remember it a little better then the above listed shows.

Punky Brewster - I never saw the original show. This cartoon was about a girl and her magic creature. She had some friends and they had adventures. I think there was a dad who never knew of the magic creature. I can remember two whole episodes! One was an episode where the friends won chunk of change on a game show and had to get rid of it all to win even more money. They lost when the boy friend had two cents left over from buying a candy bar. I don't think there was any magic hijinks involved. The other one had the magic creature making an evil Punky Brewster because he was lonely. The clone came from a picture where Punky was mad after she dropped an ice cream. The creature probably got rid of the wrong Punky at some poin.

Superfriends were still on when I was real young. I think I caught the tail end when they introduced Darkseid and the cartoon was a little darker. I think I remember Darkseid zapping Wonder Woman, but who knows. Firestorm might have been in these shows.

The Amazing Spiderman - This had Spiderman and Iceman and some woman (I'm pretty sure she had a fire power to complement Iceman.) I think they all had normal identities and switched over to their superhero identities somehow. We might have a part of an episode on a Beta tape somewhere.

I guess that's it for really early stuff. According to the website I posted earlier, the fall of 1986 seems to be the earliest where I recognize enough of the cartoons. So the next time I post about Saturday Morning Cartoons, I'll pick up with the 1986-1987 season.

Tork Book Club: Diamonds Are Forever

Hit it, Shirley Bassey!

I'm not a big fan of Diamonds Are Forever, the movie. Connery spent most of his screen time looking bored, and Tiffany Case wasn't the most likable Bond girl in the series. Blofeld goes out on a low note. At least Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd were fun to watch. So let's see how the fourth James novel is like. Here's my jumbled thoughts. Warning - thoughts more jumbled then usual.

Heh, almost forgot to mention the SPOILER ALERT!!!

The novel is about James Bond and his attempt to shut down a diamond smuggling gang. There's a pipeline from Africa to New York to Las Vegas and Bond beats up some people on the way. Blofeld doesn't make any appearances.

The book is more episodic then previous Bond novels. In the first and third novel, he basically goes somewhere to investigate or confront the villian. In Live and Let Die, Bond is on the run from Mr. Big, but this is the primary focus of the rest of that novel. Diamonds Are Forever is much more disjointed. For example, after Bond goes undercover, the gang tells him to go to the races to collect his money for smuggling diamonds. There's a couple chapters where Bond learns about horse racing at Saratoga and the latter chapter is about how Bond fixes the race to screw with his bosses. This is interesting but it has little to do with the rest of the book except to explain how crooked the gangsters are. Later Bond goes to Las Vegas. One of the gangsters are there, but the whole poin of the trip seems to be a chance to take a few shots at Las Vegas.

I have to say that this novel is disappoining. The villians, two brothers who run the "Spangled Mob", don't appear too often. I'm having trouble remembering much about them except that one was a hunchback and the other was really into westerns. Also, to stop the diamond smuggling, Bond basically has to travel from poin A to poin B and shoot the bad guys on the way. There's some obligatory pathos (some ally gets shot, Bond gets tortured) but I don't think there's enough payoff in the story.

There is some character stuff, and it's mostly between Bond and his American friend, Felix Leiter. Leiter was partially eaten by a shark two novels ago so now he's a member of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Leiter's job in the novel is to basically give Bond all the info he needs while in America. While it's nice to catch up on this character, I think too much time is spent on listening to Leiter talk about the gang and not enough time on Bond actually investigating the gang.

Tiffany is much better in the novel then she is in the movie. After reading the novel you can see what the film makers were going for, but they forgot to make her sympathetic. In the novel you can at least see why she acts the way she does. Still, I wish the novel gave a better reason for Bond falling in love with her. I'm willing to bet that the reason she won't be in the next novel (besides the obvious meta reason) is because Bond got bored after he was able to melt her heart. There isn't much else to their relationship besides having a few meals together.

Mr. Witt and Mr. Kidd make their appearances halfway through the novel to torture a guy who Bond paid to fix a race.* They're not as flamboyant as in the movies and they don't call each other Mister, but they're just as deadly. One thing I wish the novel could have had that the movie did have was them killing off several people as time went on. Still, they're far more memorable then the brothers who run the gang. At one poin they torture Bond by kicking him with football cleats. They spend most of the time wearing sacks over their heads, so their last moment in the book is suppose to be a surprise. (When Bond figures out who these guys are, he appears to be particularly boneheaded.)

* - (This part of the novel is bizarre, by the way. There's some stupid clinic where people wrap themselves in mud and fry in 'tombs' for 20 minutes at over 100 degrees. Was this suppose to be a weird nod to Dante?)

To give you an idea of how Ian Fleming constructs his villians, not only did we have the aforementioned hunchback, but one of these guys has a wart on his thumb-joint that he sucked. (The previous novel also had a thumb sucker and nail biter.)

The final villian of the piece is some guy who got introduced early on and then gets killed at the end of the novel. I can't remember if he appears in anywhere between those poins.

I think the novel would have been better if Bond wasn't moving around too often. I guess it's because of the pipeline that makes it necessary, but I would have rather had Bond do more learning about the gang and the pipeline and less time trying to get his money for his smuggling job. I also wish the novel would have told us more about Tiffany then she was gang-raped, she hates men as a result, and she's good at cards. The final-twist-head-bad-guy should be dropped because he wouldn't be missed, and the Spang Brothers should be more memorable.

I give this book a grade of "Wasted Potential." I give the movie a grade of "Waste of a Couple Million Dollars, but Mr. Wint and Mr. Kitt were Cool."






Currently Reading: State of Fear by Michael Crichton

Previous Read: Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming


Also, in case anybody cares, here's the DVD set I'm working on.

Currently Watching: Addams Family Volume One

Wiki Weird Facts #1

According to the entry for Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour:

A porno movie called Sunny & Cher, featuring Sunny Leone is possibly a spoof on the title.

Hippy History Month Essay #3

My essay is about Cheryl Sarkisian LaPiere. She is best known for pondering over the question of life after love.

Cheryl was born in 1946 in Southern California. Since there's not a lot else in Southern California, Cheryl was inspired to be an actress by watching her mom on stage. At sixteen Cheryl dropped out of highschool due to her dyslexia. At this time she changed her name to make it easier to spell.

Rehc, better known as Cher, met Sonny Bono (pronounced BOH-NOH) in 1962. They eventually became lovers which helped their careers. Their age difference made them a hit with the hippies.

Sonny and Cher knew how to tap into the hippie conscious by naming their 1965 debut album "Look at Us." This included "I Got You, Babe", which was a hit because it reflected the hippie attitudes toward possesions. The group even popularized bellbottoms, which was a big part of the hippies plan to show contempt to American fashion.

Later in the sixties the duo tried their luck at movies. Good Times were their first movie, but without Jimmy Walker it bombed. Their next attempt was Chastity, which bombed when word of mouth spread that the title wasn't meant to be ironic.

In the early seventies when hippies were tiring of the early hippy movement and turning to more forceful messages of peace and love, Sonny and Cher were forced to get a television show. Their show was the hundreth variety show released during the decade and was a hit, thanks partially to Cher's nose. The show was popular because people enjoyed watching Sonny and Cher trade insults with each other, but this led to their eventually seperation. Because of this, Cher decided to take the rest of the decade off.

Cher decided that she was too good for music in the eighties, so she tried acting again. She played parts in movies and broadway until 1987, when she starred in "Suspect", "The Witches of Eastwick", and "Moonstruck." The Academy Awards gave her an Oscar to keep her from starring in too many movies. (However, there is no truth to the rumor that Marisa Tomei was in anyway involved.)

Cher was able to become a popular singer again around this time. She was able to hang out with Beavis and Butthead. She even proved that her tastes in fashion hadn't changed when she starred in the music video for "If I Could Turn Back Time."

In the 2000s, Cher took her hit song "Do You Believe?" on tour. The gimmick is to add another "Do you Believe?" to the song everytime she sings it. She later had her farewell tour, which lasted from 2002-2005. It took this long because she wanted to say goodbye in alphabetical order.

Since Cher adopted the hippy persona for a while, it's a fact that while she claimed that she wanted to help the world, all she did was smell bad and smoked pot. Still, she was right about Letterman.

This Week in Entertainment (5/14/07)

My Pick of the Week is the Tex Avery's Droopy - The Complete Theatrical Collection. If the box art is accurate, this set may include one of the funniest cartoons ever. This cartoon had Droopy guarding a safe while the sheriff was in another room, waiting to strike if he heard any noise. Two bank robbers overhear this and make an attempt to rob the safe while not making any noise. Naturally Droopy does everything in his power to make noise and the running gag involves the two robbers running several miles away to scream in pain or let firecrackers explode.

In the "they'll make a sequel to anything" category, I give you Half Past Dead 2. Tragically, this movie doesn't have Steven Seagal, so what's the poin?

For U2 fans, there will be a DVD about War. It's listed as a Rock Milestone and Bono is quoted as not being afraid to offer the world to his audience.

Demo Fun #11

Today's demo is Psymon's Kettle. It can be found here.

Our picture has a flying kettle with a face on it. There's also a jug with an eye on it. There's some computers flashing in the backgrough and the whole thing is very cheerful looking. "Kettle" is in big letters and to the side we can see "Vandy." There's a little green helicopter (kettle-copter?) that it's the background.

Our author today is Psymon. Yeesh. If this guy's real name is Simon, I hope he got a couple wedgies in his youth. This must be an old demo, since it starts out with the credits. The music is done by WE MUSIC. The picture is done by THE Vandy. Psymon did everything else from the character set to the flashing computer things.

Psymon wants to get things started about a minute in by thanking a few "Peeple." Uh huh. Vandy gets thanks for uploading the demo. Wow, Psymon has the power to thank people for stuff after they did it. Ian&Mic are thanked for a Dragon's Lair 2 extraction that has nothing to do with this demo. Psymon mentions that there's a second song if you push 2. Hey, hackers loved the C64 because they could steal well done music files. Why not shove a few extra tunes into a demo?

Psymon is now boring us with the details about this demo. It took two days to program. The piccy (groan) took two weeks to make, although Vandy supposedly worked on it off and on. Psymon always has to have electro sound music in his demos, but he's missing the proggy. (ugh!) Anyone who could provide them that program in whatever was the Bit Torrent of the eighties will be thanked with a mega mention in Psymon's next demo.

Psymon tells us that Vandy will soon bore us for about 10k. That's an odd thing to be specific about. Still, Psymon will be back in time to list a bunch of other nerds. I can hardly wait.

Vandy says hello and asks us what we think of the piccy? Vandy admits that we probably think it's c**p, although I reserve that word for his/her word for picture. Vandy blames the fact that he had to use a joystick instead of a mouse. The idea for the picture comes from an advertisement seen in a magazine. Vandy dedicates the picture to the guy at cnet who got Vandy online. Vandy asks whether anybody had problems getting online after using cnet's modem. Uh, it was the eighties; who cared about the internet? Vandy proves he's not the only one with that problem by mentioning a friend of his that hasn't gotten on after two months. Wow, dial-up was REALLY slow back then.

Vandy starts babbling about something brought to him by someone named Skin'ed. It's called jailbreak (a demo?) and whatever it is, it "is'nt" BASIC. Vandy completed whatever it is. Psymon is now on Vandy's case so Vandy says goodbye.

Psymon returns and supposes that we're just dying for him to list a bunch of nerdy aliases. See, normal people wouldn't care, so I guess this is what seperates hackers from the rest of us.

Here we go: Mic&Ian (who are shockingly referred to as Theifs!), Pleb, Flug, Smegg, Thargoid (I'm actually wondering if someone is playing a prank on me), Wizard, Gronk, Tony, Colin, Lugy, Skin'ed, Boz, Dal Miv The Dingers, Hugh, Jaybird, Huddy, Meanteam, Torky (WHAT?!), Daz, Kernal, Hex, Ocean Software Company, Ratt & Benn, Panther, X-Rayz, Gi-Jo, Galivan, Diblogic, Yak, Tim, 1001, Zzap! 64, Commando's, Death (WHY THANK YOU!), TMC, Three Weelin' Franklin, Lee at Software Plus!, Marky, ECS, Weffry, Omega Man, the anti 1 Voters! (Vote NO on question one!), Matty, Hagar, All 9 VOTERS!!! (Question one passed in a landslide!), Fosh, Bush, Xess, ASCII... (OK, I GIVE UP! I'm not listing anymore!)

Psymon finally says good bye because this demo needs to be uploaded. After a bunch of garbage text, Psymon tells us to turn the demo off before it starts repeating. Hey, no need to tell me that twice!








Stats:

Date - 1980s.
Scrolling text - Standard.
Font - White.
Europeans - They use the word mate instead of friend, so it's a safe bet.
Bragging about Accomplishments - Vandy downplays his picture.
Putting other hackers down - Nope.
Listing a ton of other nerds - Yep.
Harsh language - Nope.
Song - The second song has a little Safety Dance in the background. I give no score because I'm tired.

Simpsons Season 18 Conclusion

The 18th season is coming to a close, so let's take a look at the final 3 episodes.


Stop or My Dog Will Shoot (JABF12)

Summary - After Homer gets lost in a cornfield maze, Santa's Little Helper rescues him and becomes a local hero and the Simpsons decide to enroll him in Police Dog Academy

Comments - Rudy Guiliani is going to be in this episode. Umm, I really don't have anything to say. Hopefully he'll just have a small cameo like Tony Blair and the episode will have a lot more Stephen Hawkings.

This may be a good episode because it focuses on the dog. (Did the previous sentence sound damning?)




You Kent Always Say What You Want (Jwhatever)

Summary - Homer purchases the 1-millionth ice cream cone at an ice cream store and is featured on Kent Brockman’s nightly news program. However, the innocent interview turns into trouble when Brockman uses a shocking expletive and Ned Flanders wages an anti-indecency campaign.

Comments - Not only has South Park Already Done It, but didn't Family Guy Already Do It? This episode may be slightly interesting after the Imus crap, but I'm not optimistic. In fact, the original title was "The Kent State Massacre." Yeesh.

Uh, so Kent's show is live and not delayed? Good going, moron. Unless we get a repeat of the marajuana episode, Ned will no doubt be the bad guy, something that I've always hated. It's still my position that Ned is funnier as a perfect neighbor.









24 Minutes (Jsomething)

Summary - With the help of Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brian, Bart and Lisa must stop bullies Dolph, Jimbo and Kearney from releasing the ultimate stink bomb at Springfield Elementary's annual bake sale.

Comments - South Park Already Did It, but I missed the first half of that episode.

I've never seen 24, but that doesn't necessarily mean this episode will lose me. The parody of the X-Files was a great episode.

This episode has Keifer Sutherland. I hope this episode is the opposite of G.I. Doh, the other episode he appeared in, because that's my least favorite episode of the season.

This will be the 400th episode, so I'll cross my fingers for this one. It'll be aired on the same day as the previous episode, so maybe this episode will be a make up for "You Kent...".







I've missed these episodes.


The Wife Aquatic - I did see one clip. According to this episode, we all die on January 7th, 2010 thanks to global warming. Can't wait! We have 972 days to live.


Rome-old and Juli-eh - I missed the ending, so I didn't get to see the preposterous way the reset button was pushed to end Selma's marriage.

The Boys of Bummer - I read the episode synopsis and wondered if the writers were really this far out of ideas.

Crooks and Ladders - Volunteer fire fighters, huh? Is it like that Flintstones episode where it was all a scam?



And now to end with something more positive. The best episode of the year was probably Little Big Girl. I think. Also next season they're going to bring back Sideshow Bob and his brother Cecil. I'm crossing my fingers on that episode.

USA Cartoon Express

I used to watch the USA Network quite a bit as a kid. The thing I watched the most was The Cartoon Express, which was a collection of old cartoons from the seventies and early eighties. This was one of the things that defined my taste in cartoons.

I can't remember if The Cartoon Express was aired everyday or only on the weekends. I do know that on Saturdays it aired at least till 11. Saturday was the biggest day of the week since the day started off with original programming. It also allowed kids to participate by phoning in their opinion on things and it was the first time I saw random people have their birthdays listed on the air. I'm pretty sure that this was a precursor to what Nickelodeon evolved to, although I haven't watched Nick in a long time so don't assume I know what's happen on that network in the last decade.

I remember during 1988 I had my first taste of politics. USA let kids call in to think who should be president. They would make their pick and make a brief empty statement for why they made their pick. Kids got to pick between Bush or Quayle, meaning it was probably the primaries. (Or USA was biased!) Maybe it was Bush vs Dukakis, but I remember it being Bush vs Quayle.

USA Network is where I watched He-Man. I was a big He-Man fan as a kid and one Christmas I got a huge set of He-Man toys. I was such a big fan that I even watched She-Ra after He-Man was over. Side story - Even though I was a huge fan of He-Man, I must have misheard his catchphrase every time. Everybody knows that it's, "I HAVE THE POWER!", but for some reason, I always heard it as, "I AM HE-MAN!" I like my version better because it avoids using the word power twice in two sentences.

Most of the cartoons showed on USA were Hanna Barbara cartoons. The cartoons included more famous stuff like Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear but included a lot of the cheesier cartoons. I'm talking about stuff like, "Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch!" and "Turbo Teen." This includes all the Yogi Bear derivatives and Scooby Doo clones. And I love all these cartoons! I think I had a Shirt Tales lunch box at some poin. Today I'm sure I would be embarrassed if I watched most of the cartoons but I always saw these as good, well-drawned cartoons and this led me to reject the later cartoons made by Nickelodeon. My favorite HB cartoons included Laff-O-Lypics, Pebble and Bamm Bamm Show, The Herculoids, and Kwicky Koala.

Sadly, these cartoons quickly disappeared when the Cartoon Network appeared. And now these cartoons have all migrated to Boomerang, which I don't have. I'm sure by the time I get Boomerang, these cartoons will have been replaced by the crappier Adult Swim cartoons.

On Saturdays at seven there was a show called Calliope. It was about some guy and his dog and they hosted cartoons that were different from what was usually offered. It also had a lot of viewer mail. Sadly, I didn't watch this show too often because it was too early to watch. The only cartoon I can remember was something about a bunch of penguins.

The Cartoon Express had several bumpers that teased you about which show they were going to show next. Several times they would show Dragon's Lair and Pac-Man promos but never show the cartoon, which annoyed me a lot. They were automatic must-watch shows because they were based on video games. Dragon's Lair was especially rare because I think they made only a dozen episodes.

There were a couple cartoons that actually disturbed me. The first was a famous episode of The Smurfs where the Smurfs started biting each other tails and becoming purple. The purpleness made them lose their minds and it spread like a disease. There was also an episode of Pac-Man that had a alternate future where the ghosts had won and Pac-Man and his family ended up getting chomped. Even though Pac-Man was just-a-dreaming all this, it made it appeared that the bad guys had won in that episode.

There were some cartoons I didn't like (Johnny Quest for one), but the one that really stands out in my mind as a cartoon that I hated was Gem. I would leave or turn off the tv whenever they showed that. I never cared about a bunch of girls trying to be rock stars and I didn't care about their rivalry with the bad rock girls. Who cares whether or not if she was truly outrageous?

Eventually as I got older it got harder to watch this on weekdays. We only had one tv with cable. I started watching the current Saturday morning line up of the networks. My taste in cartoons shifted towards the Disney cartoons of the early nineties. I watched a couple of Mortal Kombat cartoons towards the end of the decade, but The Cartoon Express I knew died when they got rid of all the HB stuff.

I wish they would put Pac-Man and Laff-O-Lympics on dvd.

Hippy History Month Essay #2

My essay is about John Lennon, aka John Lemon. He was best known for his impossible ability to work eight days a week.

John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England, in 1940. Nothing interesting happened in his early life, but he probably had a guitar at some poin.

In the mid fifties he formed his first band. It was named the Quarryman, which is why he didn't instantly gain fame. His partner was Paul McCartney and they eventually let George Harrison in after they got tired of his begging. The Beatles were chosen as their new name because they wanted to appeal to the younger generation, and there's no better way to do that then misspelling stuff. Ringo Starr joined them at some poin when the band got confused over the number four and five. Lennon was the leader despite the fact that they all had Moe Howard haircuts.

It was in the sixties that the Beatles became famous. They became popular in America after they appeared on Ed Sullivan, but John was angry when Ed only showed them from the foreheads down. John was furious and this was the origin of his rebellious ways. John even spent a hard day's night thinking of a great revenge, but Paul told him to let it be.

As the decade went on John started to worry his fellow band members. He is famous for observing that the Beatles were bigger then Jesus, but attempting to walk on water was too much. A yellow submarine was built to keep an eye on him and was there whenever he yelled Help! The Beatles tried to explain this away to the press by saying that he was pretending to be a walrus.

When John and his first wife divorced, Jonh looked for someone who would love him do. Since he couldn't buy himself love, he soon found a soulmate in Yoko Ono. She won his heart after she was the first to correctly answer nine when he asked her to pick a number between one and ten. It was not to long after this that John's message to the Beatles was, "Hello, Goodbye." When interviewed about this many years later, his response was simply, "because."

In the seventies John turned to political activism, which was the style of the time. He was determined to rally the younger voters to vote against the Vietnam War, and with his help, McGovern won Massachusetts.

Yoko and John's relationship started to falter. They tried to give peace a chance, but it wasn't something they could imagine for a while. They eventually reunited and John retired for a few years, only to return a few months before his murder.

Since John was a huge icon in the hippy movement, we can only assume that while he said he wanted to make a better world, he just smoked pot and smelled bad. R.I.P.

Week in Entertainment (5/7/07)

My Pick of the Week is a pop-up book featuring a comic character. Yeah, reading is fun, especially when it's 3d and interactive! Seriously, this was a thin week.

The Sims 2: Deluxe DVD is out for those who have been late to the Sims 2 thing. Like me, for example. I still don't have Sims 2.

Awwww, look at all the babies in National Geographic: In the Womb - Multiples!




Oh well. Since that list was so crappy, here's two bumper stickers I found amusing.

Congress Quickie

Congress is trying to mandate fluorecent lightbulbs everywhere. (You need to login to see the article.)

Get the government out of my bedroom! And bathroom! Stay away from my Kitchen! Get outta my Basement! And so forth, I think you get the joke.

A Look at the Summer Movies

Because, why bother looking up some popular website or magazine when you can read my thoughts?! Anyway...

I like Summer Blockbusters. They're the only movies I'll go to see anymore. Not that I go to the theaters often. Anyway, here is the big summer blockbusters of 2007.





The One Movie I Would See If I Could Only Choose One:

Spider-Man 3 - I have a feeling that this movie is going to be a letdown after the first two, and I'm already trying to avoid spoilers that confirm or deny this feeling, but this should still be a good movie. I do wish the stuff I read about the Sandman turns out to be false, since it sounds like a needless way to rewrite the first movie. I do want to see what they're going to do with Gwen Stacey.




Movies I Want To See A LOT:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Besides the Spiderman films, this is one of the great series of the decade. A lot of credit has to go to the makers of the previous films in making them work. I almost wish I was a kid so I can enjoy this series as one. That said, this was the longest book of the series and they're going to have to cut out a lot. I'm really hoping they can pull this off for this one and the final two books.



Movies I'm Excited About (in a way):

Transformers - I never got into Transformers so I don't give a damn about this movie. However, given the negative buzz, I can't wait until the nerds unleash their whiney fury on Michael Bay. "HOW COULD HE CHANGE THIS OR THAT!? DAMN HIM!!!!" That's going to be great.




Movies that I Might See If Someone Offered:

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - I wasn't really a fan of the first movie. The heroes didn't seem to be that heroic and the movie spent too much time with dumb jokes and the fire guy doing lame stunts. I also don't really know anything about the Silver Surfer (my dad was a DC Comics fan.) It'll probably be watchable but just that just like the first movie.

Rush Hour 3 - There was a time in the late 90s where my family got a lot of Jackie Chan movies. I was disappoined by the first movie but liked the second one. (Lower expectations, maybe?) Maybe Tucker will die ten minutes into the movie.

Mr. Bean's Holiday - The show is great. The 1997 movie sucked. Even the scenes recycled from the show sucked. Still, maybe they learned from that and decided to make a good movie. We'll see.



Movies I'm Indifferent to:

Shrek 3 - Hated the first one. It was way too smug about it's supposed cleverness. Didn't see the second one. I'm not a big fan of the mugging of Mike Myers.

The Simpsons Movie - I was going to say that I would still be interested in this movie if the writers could avoid the enviroment and lame politics, but who cares? BART'S GOING TO BE NUDE!! YOU HEAR THAT!! HEY, EVERYBODY! BART'S THINGIE!!!! PLEASE, PLEASE COMPLAIN SO WE CAN BE RELEVANT AGAIN!!!! (Seriously, I rather see Futurama in the theaters. I'd love to see their animation on the big screen.)





Now Obligatory CGI Movies:

Ratatouille - In the Pixar corner!!!!! It's, uh, some movie about a rat. I guess we still have to wait for them to rebound after the ok-ness of Cars.

Surf's Up - In the Not-Pixar corner!!!! It's, uh, more stupid penguins.






Sequels In Series I haven't Seen At All:

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - We have the earlier movies on DVD, so maybe I'll watch them.

28 Days Later... - I'm not a fan of zombies. If I had to see a movie about zombies, I'd rather see a junkie one. (Although I've never seen the Resident Evil movies either.)

Ocean's Thirteen - Another heist!? See, now you're just being greedy.

Evan Almighty - I used to be a huge fan of Jim Carrey, but haven't seen too many after he failed at being a serious actor. This doesn't even have him, so I'm not sure what the poin is. (And where the heck is my real sequel to The Mask?!)

Live Free or Die Hard - Is that what happens to New Hampshire residents if they don't live free?

Bourne Ultimatum - I can't think of anything to say.





Because We Just Love Video Game Adaptions

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale - This will be Uwe Boll's greatest film, by the way. I'm damn sure of it.

DOA: Dead or Alive - More like Dead on Arrival! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!






The Heck!?

Underdog - No, seriously!? Live action, and the dog doesn't speak in rhyme? Now I regret liking George of the Jungle.

Bratz Movie - The only way I'd see this movie if it was directed by and written by Strong Bad.




No. Flipping. Way.

Hostel 2 - Torturing dumb American tourists! And this time with women, which means possible rape! And the poster has a big chunk of unidentified meat!

Bleck.

Hippy History Month Essay #1

(Note: This essay was originally about someone else, but that will be delayed until next week, hopefully.)

My essay is about Tom Laughlin. He is best known for his dedication to pacifism, but he also has his good poins.

Tom Laughlin was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and lived in Wisconsin. This traumatic experience obviously shaped his life.

Tom was an actor and got his start on the TV show "Climax!" There is a famous urban legend about this tv show, but it is not true that it's a sex show. He also starred in movies like Gidget and South Pacific, which allowed him to play up his strengths as a beach bum.

In the sixties, this typecasting finally caught up to him. He was forced to star in movies meant to humiliate him. Titles like "The Young Sinner" and "The Born Loser" were thought up first, long before a poster and eventual script were made. However, Tom got the last laugh when they made The Born Loser about an Indian. Tom's native American looks made him perfect for the role as Billy Jack. People are often shocked to find out that he's really a caucasion from the Midwest.

The Born Loser told the story of the a former Green Beret who doesn't wear a hat. Along his way, he meets several bikers and local girls, all who have bad parents. At some poin his pacifism allows him to kick several people. Eventually this straightens everything out, and Billy gets the girl Vicki. Their love was not to last as he dumps her before the credits role after her bizarre lightbulb speech.

The movie was directed by a hat who was always critical of Laughlin. Eventually the two had an offscreen altercation. The hat kept telling Tom that it could do his scenes by itself, and they eventually compromised for the next Billy movie. Billy was still the star, but the hat would appear in every scene. (There are websites dedicated to where the hat is on every frame of the Billy Jack Trilogy.)

The first movie of the seventies trilogy is appropriately, Billy Jack. This movie tells the story of the origin of how Billy Jack's girlfriend Jean gave him the hat. There's also a lot of racist, corrupt town folks, but the hat wins in the end. Tom was also allowed to speak out on half of the Indian community because he looked so much like them.

This movie became a success when Tom was the first to show endless commercials of the movie on television. This revolutionary idea is now how all films are advertised in America. Later in 1971 Laughlin directed Touch of Satan, which defined his views on relationships.

In the middle of the decade Laughlin created The Master Gunfighter, a movie that debunked the idea that cowboys actually used guns instead of the historically correct swords. After this he created his masterpiece, The Trial of Billy Jack. This movie is the first to have scenes where people talk about issues for 15 to 30 minutes straight. The movie is about Billy going to jail for slapping Jesus, but the belly dancing team from his girlfriend's hippy school free him. Eventually some soldier go on their campus and shoots several of them to stop their whining. Billy survives mostly by the awesomeness of his hat.

This film was one of the top moneymakers of 1975, so a sequel was guaranteed. However, he made the tragic mistake in dissing the hat when he decided to do a remake of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. The film was a flop and destroyed Laughlin's career as a film maker. The hat is now in a museum in Japan somewhere.

Tom Laughlin's later life is defined by his entry into politics. He has entered into several presidential races, and sometimes people even vote for him. In New Hampshire he proved his popularity by receiving 2% of the Democratic Party vote in 1992. He now maintains a website filled with his revolutionary ideas and stuff.

Since Tom Laughlin was a big hippy it is a known fact that while he talked about wanting to save the world, he just smoked pot and smelled bad. However, he does deserve credit for the name of Rowan and Martin's variety show.