This cheesy version of Mr. Roboto is much more palatable coming from the Japanese than it ever was from Styx!

Coming Soon!

I LOVED Diablo and Diablo II (with the Lord of Destruction expansion pack)! I can’t wait till this hits the stores! Here’s a screenshot:

Time to save up my money for a new Official System!

A total mangling of the lyrics that is so funny, you’ll fall out of your chair! WARNING! NSFW!

Something tells me I’ve done this before, but I don’t care! Every time I see this, it’s just as funny!

O...K...

Yes, I admit it; I am a sucker for mush from the 60s. Case in point:

Compare that to another song he’s famous for...one which I can’t stand and won’t subject you to...so long as you don’t click on the link. Go figure.

In case you’ve seen Hidden Frontier, Odyssey, or Helena Chronicles (all three Internet-based Star Trek Fan Series), the producers have something else up their sleeve…
...and it isn’t Star Trek:

Looks like the HF studios will be very busy right about now and for the foreseeable future.

The 1980s brought us ”Jumping The Shark” to describe something that a fictional character does that’s so over-the-top and totally out of character, requiring massive suspension of disbelief. Such an event usually signals the demise of the show where it takes place.
Now a new phrase has entered our vocabulary, courtesy of that great movie hero, Indiana Jones. I actually saw The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull a couple of weeks ago, and sure enough, the situation analogous to Fonzie jumping the shark in Happy Days occurs. Indy escapes from the Russians at Area 51 and stumbles on a town nestled in a valley. He reaches a house and calls out to a family sitting in their living room watching TV.
Only the family...is a mannequin facsimile. Indy realizes ”Oh Sh******t!” when the air raid siren goes off. He scrambles to find a place to hide, finding a lead-lined refrigerator which he rips everything out of it, climbs in, locks the door, and the Bomb goes off. He survives after being tossed and turned inside the fridge a few thousand feet or so. He gets out and sees the Mushroom Cloud where the “town” once existed. Shortly thereafter, he gets picked up by AEC personnel and receives a nice decontamination shower.
And so we now have: ”Nuking The Fridge!” Do I think this movie Nuked The Fridge? Not Just No but HELL NO! C’mon, get a grip! This is Indiana Jones we’re talking about here! This flick was a 50s Sci-Fi B movie! Because of that, my rating for the film is 7.5. So There.

Since I lived overseas when I was a young lad, I developed an admiration for world music, and here’s a great example...Peter Gabriel and Youssou Ndour (from Senegal) performing Shaking The Tree:

If there could only be more modern cartoons like this one!

HAT TIP: Kickin’ & Screamin’

This week’s video shows Weezer having fun with (my SWAG) Diet Coke and Mentos...and Pork and Beans of course:

I’ve looked high and low for the DVD of this performance and I found it while I was on vacation back East. IMHO, this version is far superior to the original 1976 track on “Hotel California.” From “Hell Freezes Over”...The Eagles’ live rendition of “The Last Resort”:

Call some place Paradise, kiss it goodbye.

Tonight, as I’m winging my way for a much-needed holiday vacation back east, I decided to do something a little bit different....

Sorry, that isn’t Alan Colmes behind that mask!

According to the Beeb, Steven Spielberg is listening:

“Only if you want more. That’s why we made this Indiana Jones. We’ll certainly have our ear to the ground to hear what happens. That’ll decide were we go from here.”

At least the Crystal Skull film got a standing ovation at Cannes, so that’s a start.

I don’t seem to recall publicly writing about how I call a certain national pizza chain by a slightly different name. In any case, here’s the song from thirty years ago which prompted the moniker, from Elvis Costello:

Note to Self: Next time you go to a movie, make sure it isn’t the late show! That’s because I got back at 0130 hours this morning and I crashed afterward. The Official Roommate also went along, and I hope he didn’t stay up too late because he had laundry to do. But I digress.
If I were to describe Speed Racer in just three words, it would be these: Live Action Cartoon. Yep, the Wachowski Brothers strike again and literally interpret the original Japanimation series from the 1960’s. It isn’t a film where the producers lift everyone from the small screen and set them onto the “regular world” of the silver screen, it really is a cartoon which happens to use live actors and (what else but) the chop-chop-chop-chop sound FX whenever Speed engaged the Mach Five’s jump jacks. The race scenes moved just like the cartoon; in particular, the fight scene with Togokhan aboard the bad guy’s truck as it swerved all over the torad, prompted me to think “OK, when’s the Mammoth Truck gonna show up?” The Togokhan team logo, when the signature dragon was taken away, screamed Ferrari. And the closeup/background perspective also screamed cartoon from way back when. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
This movie wasn’t without controversy; PETA complained about the use of the chimpanzees in the film (so what else is new?); and there was also that overblown story about one chimpanzees copping a feel of Christina Ricci on the set.
Speed Racer is rated PG for sequences of action, some violence and language. Great matinee movie occasion, and a relatively clean movie as far as today’s standards go.My rating: 7.5