Oh Snap! I've Been Tagged!

RULES:
1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I play Irish traditional music on the flute and whistle. See...here's proof.

2. I use Ubuntu Linux on my computer about 80% of the time.

3. When I was in the fourth grade, I memorized Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven for a poetry/speech competition. I came in third place behind a girl presenting Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and another girl who recited Shel Silverstein's Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out.

4. I watch Days of our Lives almost every day. I likes mah stories.

5. I think that the three most charismatic actors in Hollywood today are Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle and Peter Dinklage.

6. My favorite beverage is beer.

7. I think rodents are awesome and have kept quite a few as pets over the years.

8. If I could have three wishes from a genie, they would be: an attractive and healthy body, never having to sleep, and ridiculously large piles of American cash (or maybe piles of Euros would be better).

Tagged:

Father Michael
Beniy

That's it. I don't have any more blogger friends.

King Ghidorah Lives!

When I was a little kid living in Kingman, Arizona, I used to get up every Saturday morning and watch a television show called World Beyond. It was my favorite show because it would present monster movies of every kind imaginable. This is where I was first exposed to the old Hammer Studios movies, Vincent Price movies, The Blob, and other movies of the same ilk. These movies were a lot of fun, to be sure, but they weren't what I most liked on World Beyond. Every Saturday morning when I tuned in, my young little heart would await in gleeful anticipation the announcement of this week's feature in the hopes of hearing one name: Godzilla!

I loved Godzilla movies. There was nothing more exciting to me than watching giant monsters collide with each other in the middle of Tokyo, or Osaka, or Planet X, or Monster Island. I thrilled at the moment of discovery when their varied monster powers were revealed for the first time. Some could breathe fire. Others shot electricity or beams of light. Some could even fly.

Out of all of Godzilla's formidable nemeses, not one of them was as awesome looking and as powerful as King Ghidorah. With his scaly gold skin and his three dragon-like heads and his huge bat-like wings, he was a glorious sight to behold! He could fly and shoot what looked like lightning bolts (they were actually called gravity beams) from all three of his mouths. He was the destroyer of worlds and the greatest threat that humanity had ever faced since the advent of nuclear weapons. In the movie Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla needed the help of both Rodan and Mothra just to defeat him!

Back in those days, I used to look out my bedroom window and imagine King Ghidorah on the distant horizon, slowly but steadily lumbering toward my house with his three heads bobbling wildly, shooting bolts of electric death to everything in his path. A friend of mine once told me that he had always believed as a kid (and probably still does to this day) that his love for Godzilla would protect him from being destroyed if Godzilla were ever to destroy his hometown. In contrast, I always knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that if King Ghidorah ever visited Kingman, AZ, I was most definitely going to be toast. He was a remorseless badass.

That's why I was absolutely overjoyed when that same Godzilla-loving friend of mine surprised me with the coolest gift I have received in a long time—a King Ghidorah action figure. My pictures don't really do it justice because my camera is not very good at taking close-up shots, but it is an awesome-looking toy. He now sits atop my computer monitor, standing guard in case any other 9" plastic monsters should enter my room with an eye toward creating mischief. Thanks, Brian, for the coolest present I've received in a long time!

[It should also be noted, that whenever Brian and I play Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee on his XBox, I always play King Ghidorah and he always plays Godzilla. I have yet to beat him.]

Satoshi Kon's "Paprika"

I have been a fan of Satoshi Kon ever since I first started watching his anime series Paranoia Agent on Adult Swim. The story was a fascinating look at a variety of social concerns, most notably the blurring of the distinction between fantasy and reality in both the media and in society at large. I also really loved the character design and the intricately detailed artistry of the backgrounds. I soon became acquainted with Kon's other works as well: the touching story of three homeless men trying to protect an abandoned baby in Tokyo Godfathers; the exploration of celebrity and malevolent obsession in the stylish thriller Perfect Blue; and the visually sumptuous Millenium Actress, with its gorgeously rendered depiction of an earnest and timeless romantic yearning. Because of the sheer beauty of his work, Satoshi Kon has become my favorite anime director. That is why I was thrilled to see that his latest work was recently released in selected U.S. cities.

Satoshi Kon's latest film Paprika may be both his most visually stunning and most disturbing film to date. In the story, a revolutionary device called the DC-Mini, enables therapists to enter the dreams of a psychiatric patient in the hopes of understanding the patient's neurosis or psychosis. Even though the device is still in the experimental stages and is not yet approved by the government for clinical use, Dr. Atsuka Chiba, in the guise of her alter ego—a pretty and mysterious young red-headed woman known to her clients only as "Paprika"—is using it to help people without the knowledge of her superior, the enigmatic Chairman. The Chairman himself seems somewhat dubious, if not hostile, toward the technology.

Before the government is able to approve the DC-MINI for use, three of the prototypes are stolen by an unknown party. The inventor, a hyperbolically corpulent genius named Tokita, advises Dr. Chiba that the three stolen devices could potentially allow the thief to enter into the dreams of anybody hooked up to a psychotherapeutic computer. The Chairman sees this as an opportunity to pull the plug on the nascent technology. When other scientists from the lab begin to go mad with the deluded dreams of other psychiatric patients, it is discovered that anyone who has been exposed to the DC-MINI, whether currently connected to it or not, can be placed into a psychotic dream state even while still awake. It is then up to Dr. Chiba—and Paprika—to enter into the twisted dreamworld into which these scientists are trapped and try to discover the evil mastermind behind it all.

The dreamworld imagery is some of the most imaginative animation ever shown on the big screen. One particularly rich dream has a polychromatic parade of flute-playing frogs, dancing kitchen appliances and ominous Japanese dolls. Reality becomes fluid, with scene after scene melding into ever more imaginative sequences with dizzying rapidity as the imperilled heroine attempts to escape from one exquisitely detailed trap only to fall into another. The conspiracy is soon laid bare, leading to an apocalyptic confrontation between those wishing to heal the world and the one who seeks to enslave and control it.

The whole experience was both exciting and exhilaratingly disorienting. This movie stands as a beautiful reminder of why I became hooked on Japanese animation in the first place. More than any other form of animation, Japanese anime has consistently provided the most diverse and awe-inspiringly imaginative realms into which fans are able to immerse themselves. In this most magnificent of art forms, Satoshi Kon stands as one its most luminous geniuses.

This film is rated R for brief animated nudity and strongly disturbing imagery. Definitely not for kids!

Funny M$ "Surface" Commercial Parody

Take a gander at this, will ya?

Ah yes. An old-fashioned take on a modern-day theme:

Lou Costello Buys a Computer

Prom Queen...Season Two!!????!?!?!?

I just watched what I thought would be the final episode of Prom Queen wherein, I was foolish enough to believe, all mysteries would be revealed. But instead, The Creators pulled the ol' "stay tuned for season two" fakearoo. Such insolence!

This is the same nonsense they pulled with Sam Has 7 Friends (episodes can still be seen here). That show tantalized us with the tagline: "Samantha Breslow has seven friends. On December 15, 2006, one of them will kill her." I loved Sam, and watched religiously, awaiting the inevitable final Death Episode. When the final episode was posted, I was quite surprised to see that they did not reveal which of her friends had killed her, but instead gave a teaser for a second season of Sam in which all of Sam's friends would be murdered...except one. That sounded awesome! Who doesn't love six times the carnage in your favorite soap opera podcast? Only problem is, season two has yet to materialize.

The creators posted a message on the forum that big-time corporate honcho Michael Eisner (under whose watch the Disney Corporation distributed such heartwarming family classics as Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, and Hellraiser: Bloodline) had agreed to produce a new series of theirs called Prom Queen. What is more, he had also purchased the rights to Sam season one and the options to Sam season two. The Creators also advised us that the "future of Sam is really dependent upon the success of Prom Queen." Now Prom Queen season one is over, but there is still no word from The Creators regarding the fate of Sam. That's right...Sam's death may forever remain an epic mystery, on a par with the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the identity of Jack the Ripper, or the recipe for Crystal Pepsi. All I can do is hope that the same fate doesn't befall Prom Queen. These podcast shows were quite innovative and intriguing. It would be quite distressing if the man responsible for unleashing Kazaam and Ernest Scared Stupid on an unsuspecting world were to pull the plug on these two exciting and interesting projects.

So, Michael Eisner, if you happen to read this, please have mercy. Even if you have to buy your Beluga caviar at Costco or maybe get your haircuts at Supercuts for a year, please do whatever you can to make sure that these shows have a chance to live and spread joy and rainbows to tens of thousands of people all across the internet! Please, if not for me, do it for the sake of this puppy:

Original source here. Some rights reserved.

The Start of It All

Howdy there, friends. Let's get this blog started off with a bang. What can I say about myself by way of introduction? First and foremost, my kung fu is the best! In case you are wondering...yes, I also have mad ninja skills. Not only that, but I've been known to stick to all the suckas, and my flow is totally dope. But enough about that.

I started this blog in the hopes of...I'm not sure what. When I was younger I felt like I just had so many important things to say about all the grave and pressing problems of the age, that I sometimes felt as if my heart would burst if I just didn't let it all out. Well, that's when I was young and dumb and thought that voting was the consummate act of meaningful self-expression. Wow...sometimes I wish that I could go backward in time and pimp-slap some sense into my head, but I have it on good authority (Jean-Claude van Damme's sci-fi masterpiece Timecop, for one) that "the same matter cannot occupy the same space," which is a fancy pseudo-scientific Hollywood way of saying that slapping my past idealistic self will result in some sort of cheesy CGI body-merging melting explosion-type thing.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that I have no illusions of being some sort of sage or prophet...although you are more than welcome to send me whatever offerings (cars, money, cigarettes, etc..) that you may deem necessary to obtain grace in my sight. Nevertheless, I hope that you, gentle readers, will find some amusement in some of the things I have to say. I thank you for tuning in.