Movie Muhfriday: Prince of Persia - 7-out-of-10 T's

I read a review that compared this film to cinematic cotton candy: fun, pretty, but when you taste it, try to dig deeper, it disappears. I can't disagree with that, but neither do I think it's necessarily a bad thing.

On another note, I've said to people before that, when it comes to movies, I don't mind knowing how it will end as long as I enjoy the ride, kind of like a road trip. Here, I suspected the end, but I'll admit I was surprised that they actually "went there". I won't ruin it for anyone, but just imagine how a movie about a time-traveling dagger might end up, and you're probably not far off.

All that said, I liked this film. It was a fun movie to go to; the MacGuffin was interesting and it was easy to understand why everyone was searching for it, the characters developed naturally, and it was filmed excitingly and yet was easy to follow... a decent summer movie.

Jake Gyllenhaal is Dastan, a Prince of the Persian Empire. He was not born into it: the King saw him do something selfless and heroic when he was nothing but a boy in the slums; he adopted him, giving him a home and a family, and raises Dastan like a son alongside his other two boys.

Jump ahead fifteen years: the Persian army, led by all three of the Kings sons who are advised by their uncle, the king's brother Nizam (Ben Kingsley, awesome here). They discover a spy who is taking weapons to their enemies, apparently from a holy city. They are advised to take the city and stop this plot. As they siege the walls, Dastan gets all sneaky and comes in from behind, and through his awesomeness, they conquer. While this is going on, the Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton, *reowr*), tries to hide a mysterious dagger, but it ends up in Dastan's hands.

When their father comes into the city, as it's conqueror, Dastan is expected to provide him with a gift: his older brother, the first in line for the throne, gives him a robe to present to their father. Dastan does... and the robe ends up killing him. Dastan is now a "murderer" in the eyes of his nation, and he goes on the run with the Princess, trying to clear his name.

"This was not the time for a swim, princess..."

Along the way, he discovers what the dagger can do: for short bursts, the wielder can travel back in time and change events that just happened. The first time he uses it, he doesn't realize what is happening, so a sword slice that missed him the first time catches him the second go around. Another quick burst back erases the slice, and he stops his attacker before they even know they're going to attack. It's kinda fun.

Hypothetically, what I wouldn't mind seeing (now that I know what happens) is a movie that completely cuts out the first or second run, so we see what everyone else sees: a dagger wielder who knows what's going to happen before it does. That might be interesting... in theory.

Of course, the dagger's powers are not infinite: the wielder can only go back as long as it is filled with the Sands of Time, which means it is capable of about a minute jump when it is full: activation drains the sand, and we don't know for much of the film if more can be gained anywhere.

My problem with this movie is the end, and I know what I said about a fun journey, but... watch it and you'll see why. I literally can't say anything about it. Is it as stupid a twist ending as, say, Book of Eli or The Village? No. It makes sense, it's a solid film. I just... guh. Whatever. You know what? Here: click and drag at "here there be spoilers" down and you'll highlight my spoilers. If you don't want to see the spoilers, do no clickin' or draggin' and just scroll down.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!!!

He ends up right back where he started. Like, literally. There's a loophole or something that lets him go back to when he first got the dagger, before he's banished and kills his dad or whatever. Just about everything that happens in majority the film doesn't actually happen. So, it's like it was pointless. I love a journey, as long as I end up somewhere different because of it. It's like taking a road trip FROM home to GET home. He stops his father from dying, he gets the traitor, but everything that happened for that week DIDN'T ACTUALLY HAPPEN. I get it. I do. It's a happy ending. But I kind of left feeling all "What's the point?"

SPOILERS IS OVER!!!

I recommend this film. You won't leave disappointed, as long as you aren't expecting Citizen Kane. It's an action movie filled with pretty people and fun special effects, and it has a good story. Take your lady or fella, get some corn and a drink, and have a nice Memorial Weekend.

Raised by TV, part the 1st

My parents are lovely people who did a delightful job raising me, and since I think I’m awesome, I give them major props for the glorious being that is me.

Way to go, Mom and Dad.

Now, let me shift my ego aside here *heft, thump!* and lets get on with the article.

Like most people my age, I spent a lot of my childhood watching TV. If you quantified it, I would probably hang my head in shame, but I’d be right there in Hangsville with everyone I went to High School with, so shut up, quantifiers.

The best part of daytime TV is when they show old stuff from the 80’s and 90’s. You can keep your soapy operas, give me three hours of “Matlock” five times a week, and I’m set. So, I figured for today’s dose of Vitamin T, we’d reminisce about those who ruled the airwaves in the 80’s and 90’s, and who continue to do so in syndication.

Matlock

Andy Griffith was one of the Kings of Television for decades. Every week, he’d oversee the city of Mayberry, make sure that Otis the drunk stayed funny and didn’t kill anyone with his inebriated shenanigans, keep Don Knotts from killing anyone with overeager gunplay, all while being a widower and raising a son and being followed around by a camera crew. And he was a heckuva whistler. Then, I guess he got tired of enforcing the law, and decided to start practicing it as a lawyer.

He changed his name to Ben Matlock, left Opie with Aunt Bea, and started a new life in Georgia. He had two daughters with a new wife who then died, leaving him a widower to the second power (exponentially more power than just a single widower), charged $100,000 per case, and ate only hot dogs. (Most of that is actually true.)

Here, have some math: There were 195 episodes of Matlock, with one case per episode. Lets factor in the two parters with cliffhanger endings that stretched that out to one-case-per-two episodes, maybe an occasional pro-bono case. All totaled? The man had at least $15 million by the end of the series, and that’s not including the cases he took in the off season.

"I'm rich as balls, kids!"

With his nigh-unlimited funds, cantankerous and do-it-yourself attitude, and snappy fashion sense, he’s probably the richest character to ever be on TV ever that wasn’t a cartoon duck who swam in money.

And that leads us to a spinoff that spun off of a spinoff of this show:

Diagnosis: Murder

"... yup, it was murder, alright."

Matlock gave birth to “Jake and the Fatman”, which you’ve probably never heard of since the Fatman was fat and died, probably, of being fat, but before dying, gave fat, sweaty birth to another series that kept one of the Kings of TVLand relevant into the 90’s, Diagnosis: Murder. “D:M” actually rarely showed Dick Van Dyke occasionally keeping people alive. Aside from his Patch-Adamsian “laughter is the best medicine” philosophy of health care, in which he made cancer patients think everything was going to be okay as soon as he put on a rubber nose and sang songs for them, he also taught me that it’s okay to have a mustache.

“Thank you, Mr. Van Dyke. Thank you so much.” – Tony

While that’s true, I don’t think I ever saw him do too much actual doctoring on the show. Just going around and declaring that the dead people had been, in fact, murdered. And you know what? I didn’t care a lick.

“I got you eating out of my hand, son.” And I totally would have.

With the rest of the cast up there, including his actual son playing his son on the show, for eight seasons and three TV movies, the world was blessed with Dick Van Dyke on a regular basis. And, one time in 1997, I think, they went full circle:

Absent: the Fatman. Diagnosis: death by fat.

OHMYGOSHANDHOLYJOSE, that’s Ben Matlock and Dr. Mark Sloan TOTALLY HANGING OUT! My mind, she was blown. And D:M is probably still one of my favorite shows, even though I haven’t seen an episode since Jr. High. Kind of like how candy tasted better when you were a kid, it would probably have lost something after a decade of life experiences, but it’s still fun to remember.

The A-Team

“Mr. T don’t need no shirt, fool!”
Seriously, you have no idea how hard it is
to find a pic of Mr. T with a shirt.
NO IDEA.

This series was based on fact, and no amount of cajoling or so-called proof will ever convince me otherwise. Four men, accused and convicted of a crime they did not commit, run from those that pursue them while helping those in need (for money and some sweet, sweet loving for the Faceman): The Charismatic Leader, the Handsome Face, the Mad (crazy) Pilot, and the Mad (angry) Black Man with the Black Van.

NO IDEA.

I like to think that they’re still out there, doing good, running from and outsmarting their pursuers, and breaking the crazy pilot out of the crazy ward in new, crazy ways twice a week. This show taught me that, even if you’re convicted of something you didn’t do, the situation can be remedied with explosions and mohawks and liberal amounts of stealing from the bad guys.

You’re probably wondering why the brothah doesn’t have a gun,
until you notice that he’s got two perfectly visible under
THE SHIRT HE’S NOT WEARING.

MacGyver


Never has the mullet been this glorious.

This show wasn’t on any stations I had, or if it was, it was on past my bedtime. I’ve only ever seen one episode of MacGyver, and it has effected me like you wouldn’t believe.

The gimmick is that he can make anything out of anything. In the episode I saw, he was stuck in a swamp, surrounded by the enemy, and had to keep someone alive, probably a beautiful woman or an orphan or something. You know what he did?

He filled the shafts of bamboo that were all over the swamp (I guess he was in Asia?) with swamp gas, stoppered them up with mud, lit one end on fire, and threw them at the enemy, where they exploded magnificently.

That’s the end result, over his shoulder there.

HE MADE EXPLODING JAVELINS. That qualifies anyone for hero status. And he apparently did crap like that every week. This is a show that I need to get my hands on.

In closing, thank you for reading, and taking this walk down memory lane with me. Next time on “Raised By TV” we’ll probably talk about TGIF, or the Power Rangers or something. But right now, lets just bask in the glory of Mr. T’s guns and MacGyver’s mullet.

Aaaaahhhhh…

Sea mammals defending our shores

The Navy SEALS are old news kids: now, we've got Navy Dolphins and Navy Sea Lions.

No. Not these.

Apparently, the Navy has trained these animals to search for bombs and terrorists very quickly, something that would take human beings much longer to do since, you know, we swim slow. And can't really see underwater. Or hold our breath for very long. Man, we suck.

"Man, you suck." (Translated from dolphin)

One of the more surprising things about this, to me, is that we've apparently been using sea mammals for years, as far back as the Vietnam War.

What they do is this: dolphins, using echolocation, can find things like terrorists or bombs, things that shouldn't be there, very quickly. Sea lions, which can see (apparently) five times better than us while under water and are crazy dexterous (and ADORABLE) will attach a clamp or something to the legs of any people the dolphins find so we can reel them in, or attach a marker to a bomb so we can find and disarm them.


HOW AWESOME IS THAT?

"Holy crap, we're awesome!" "I know, right?!"

Hopefully, once they do a good job, they let them relax.

Possibly with an ice-cold Coca-Cola.

Perhaps even retire with a military pension?

"The people here are so friendly!" "But I wish the kids would call more..."

Movie Monday: Shrek Forever After - 6-out-of-10 T's

This is the first "fourquel" (sequel, threequel, fourquel, get it? GET IT?!) I've ever written a review for, and it's for a series that has taken me through more emotional highs (Shrek 2) and lows (Shrek 3) than I thought a CG movie series about a Scottish ogre possibly could. We'll begin this review with a quick recap:

SHREK: The first movie was marvelous, feature length fractured fairy tale (like those ones on Rocky and Bulwinkle) that took what we know from our years of Disney white-washing (don't get me wrong, I loves me some Disney, but fairy tales were invented to scare kids into behaving) and spins it on its ear. A legless, tortured gingerbread man? A happy ending that doesn't turn the beast into a handsome prince, but turns the beautiful princess into a "beast" and is still pretty happy? My issues with the sound track aside, this was a solid film.

SHREK 2: They cranked the dial up to 11 here. This movie still gets me: that scene at the end when Shrek is riding to the rescue of his one true love to the glorious tunes of Jennifer Saunders singing "I need a hero"? I get the pee-shivers every time. And they added the best character to ever make a debut in a sequel (sorry, Boba Fett): Puss-in-Boots ("Shrek?" *Stops licking, looks up* "For you, baby: I could be"). And it ends happily again! With the main characters choosing to remain all Ogrey! Plus, mutant dragonky babies!

SHREK 3: This film was full of teh suck (misspelling intended, and will be explained in a forthcoming installment of "Internet School"). It had a great cast, but they got lost along the way and ended up with a whitewashed film (but without the fun of a Disney installment) and ended up utterly forgettable.

Which brings us to the present:

"Final Chapter"? I'll believe it when
I don't see a fivequel, Dreamworks.

This movie wasn't terrible. In fact, it was pretty good. I actually didn't want it to end. I won't ruin what happens, but the basic outline is thus: Shrek dreams of leaving his life of domestication, filled with the same routine day after day, taking care of babies, entertaining friends, having tourists bother him when he's on the john... he wants things to be the way they were. After doing something rather douchey and being told by his lady to get with the program and realize just what he has (three beautiful kids, a wife that loves him, friends and neighbors who adore him), he stubbornly takes a walk and meets Rumpelstiltskin. Rumpel offers him a deal: a day from his past for a day as a "real ogre again". Shrek agrees.

Stuff downspirals from there. Shrek gets what he wants, but so does Rumpel: he takes the day Shrek was born, and now he's in a world where he never existed: his swamp is a wasteland, he never rescued his true love, and Rumpel is somehow king (it's all explained, and makes sense in the film). After the day Shrek got in return is up, he'll cease to exist. OH NOES!

That's Rumpel in his "Angry Wig". Quite funny.

The best part of this movie, in my opinion, is this:

Aaaaand she wears plaid.

Fiona rescued herself in this alternate reality, and has built around herself a legion of fighting ogres who oppose the rule of Rumpel.

These guys are awesome, and Fiona is BA. Her fighting skills from the first movie return in force, only now she has axes and maces and shields and AN ARMY.

Thus far, I have merely extrapolated on what can be seen in the previews. This... this was a fun film. Was it as good as 1 or 2? No. But neither was it worse than either of them. And when it comes right down to it, I'd rather have a movie that "isn't as good as 'great'" than one that was straight-up bad. Unfortunately, not being "bad" earns you a 6 on the T-ometer, at best.

If it is the end, I'm okay with it. I doubt it, though: just like previous Shrek films, this will probably earn them dumptrucks full of money, and you never retire the golden goose (or cash cow, or... platinum pig? Whatever your choice of farm animal, I'm easy).

I recommend seeing this in a theater; it's a good addition to the Shrek-mythos. Don't bother about the 3D, though, nothing here warrants it. Save a few bucks, or spend it on popcorn, but you don't need the glasses, and besides: most of the exciting stuff in this film happens at night, and 3D glasses only make it darker.

WHY WON'T ANYONE TALK TO ME?!

When this is on my desk, it's a
sure sign I'm gonna have a bad day.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again every time it makes me angry enough to post about it: the part I dislike the most about this job is when I CAN'T DO IT because people won't talk to me. I need information to do what I'm paid to do.

Usually, I can get it from phone calls, and when someone is hard to track down, that just means I need to bother the people around them until I'm being more of a hassle and more annoying than it would be to get the person I'm after to call me, or to give me their cell number. But days like today... grr.

For some reason, every time they give me a video camera, I'm rendered useless. No one will speak to me. I walk around for half an hour, asking everyone I see if they'd be willing to speak about a local issue. Last time, I was straightforward, and no one would talk to me. Then, my boss went out and got comments from EVERY SINGLE PERSON HE SPOKE TO. (Way to make me look like a slacker, people of Darke County! Thanks a ton!)

Today, I took their advice, and tried to be more sly about it: instead of "HEY talk about THIS" and shoving a camera in their face (an exaggeration of my approach last time), I was all like "Would you mind speaking about a few local issues?" I was like a ninja. Or, as much like a ninja as a 6'3" guy of expansive girth can be. (I'm as stealthy as a continent. I should try that, actually: just standing there until people forget I'm there, then surprising them. Like an earthquake, I guess.)

Nothing. They'll talk, just not on camera. GRAAAH. Or they're not from around here. Double-GRAAAH.

I'm gonna go be useless now.

Starter Pokémon: the Devolution of Cool

Warning: this is a long one, kids.

Well, people of the Internet, it’s about time you learned: I’m a geek. What is a geek? It’s a nerd without the smarts. That’s me. I like movies and video games, but not just the cool ones that a guy my age is supposed to like, like God of War or Ratchet and Clank (both awesome); no, the first game I utterly conquered, the first game that I played until it was 100% complete, and which still holds a special place in my heart, was Pokémon Red.

I… I had to catch them all. ALL 150 OF THEM.

Much to my parent’s chagrin and confuzzlement, I was hooked. It was like crack, I imagine. I also imagine that from the outside looking in, it looks pretty stupid. Well, your face is stupid. Stupid face.

The point of this post, which is probably going to be more like a novel of some kind since we have five generations to go through, is to illustrate that the Pokémon that I grew up with were, by and large, better than the new ones. Kind of like the greatest generation: things were better back then, everything was fresh and new, and the possibilities were endless. Now, these stupid kids have their stupid shows and they don’t know what it was like to have to tilt your Game Boy just right in order to see the screen without glare, or how batteries needed changing every few hours because the brick went through them like a fat kid through a bag of Doritos.

GENERATION I

Look at them. They’re adorable. You’re seeing perfection there, folks: Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle. Imitated, emulated, never duplicated, these guys were the foundation upon which I wasted my 6th grade year. Introducing a generation to the idea that the Rock-Paper-Scissors trifecta could be applied to other areas. And then… then we found out they could evolve.

What?

Holy crap. Look at that. They got bigger, and even badder. Ivysaur grew some teeth there, Charmeleon got an angry look and a head spike, and Wartortle… has head wings and is farting a cloud. Kind of a step backwards there, buddy. (My little brother got a Wartortle, and when I saw this… oh, I mocked him horribly.)

Still, two out of three ain’t bad, and even though he looks a little retarded, Wartortle is still better looking than some of the other ones we’re going to see on our little romp. More on that later.

GRAAAAHH! MY MIND, SHE IS BLOWN.

I don’t even care that Venusaur’s name doesn’t make any sense (is that a palm tree with a flower on it?), he could eat your frikkin’ head. Charizard is a dragon! A DRAGON! He flies and shoots fire and looks utterly baddasssssss… but the real winner here, the one who made up for his step backwards last round by sprinting forwards (and beating the earth into submission so the rest of his trip was downhill so he could run faster) was Blastoise. Those are cannons. LOOK AT THE CANNONS. I didn’t even care that he had metal cannons coming out of his back, that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen (and I profusely apologized to the little bro once I saw that he’d traded his head-wings for BACK CANNONS; good trade, there).

Now begins the descent into suck. It’s slow at first, but you really start to feel the decline.

GENERATION II

The suck starts with Chikorita there. I have no idea what the balls that thing is even supposed to be. Some kind of… hairless hamster with a spiked collar and a leaf on it’s head? What the crap? Cyndaquil at least looked a little cool: he’s like an echidna with fire coming out of it’s back. Totodile makes the most sense here, but in the cartoon he was all ADHD and bouncy and I think he was mildly retarded. Not doing much to endear me, guys.

Sooo… it’s a dinosaur? Bayleaf still looks like a cop-out, and they’re going to have to pull a Blastoise in order to make it anything but a total disappointment when it comes to aesthetics. Quilava is less of a spiny thing now and more of a… what? A rodent? A fire-ferret? Cool name, but definitely in the awkward teenage years here. And Croconaw… sorry buddy. He seriously looks like somebody I went to school with. I think we all did: a little slow, not necessarily in the “special” class, but just kind of big and awkward. And… why is he wearing a caveman, over-the-shoulder tummy pattern? It’s just silly. 2.5 strikes for this set, fellas, saved only by Quilava’s name from getting a total strike out.

Aaaaand the disappointment. Meganium is like some kind of gay-pride alien brontosaurus here. I think they just started down the wrong path and couldn’t find their way back. Typhlosion, on the other hand, has the second- or third-coolest name of any Pokémon ever. I’m probably going to name my son that. “Typhlosion MacKenzie”. Heck yeah. Unfortunately, Feraligatr suffers from lack of spaces in the tiny game card’s memory and ends up with a name that was just one “o” away from being a decent monicker. He even looks pretty cool. It’s amazing what the lack of a vowel can do to you… sorry fellas. You tried, except for the Flowersaurusian there, and were stuck with the job of trying to out-do, or at least live up to, the perfection of Gen-1. Maybe next time…

But no. The roller coaster of suck has only just begun.

GENERATION III

These guys look… okay. I don’t mind what’s going on here. I at least recognize where they got the idea for Treecko: he’s a plant-based lizard thing. They’re even stereotypically green, so it’s a solid start; I don’t even mind that crap-eating grin he’s got on. Torchic has another great name, but… he’s a chicken. A fire chicken. What’s he going to do, other than grill himself? “Torchic used fricassee! It’s finger-lickin’ good!” No. And Mudkip… he’s got like spikey herpes on his face there. Why are you smiling, Mudkip? STD’s are no laughing matter.

What the heck, guys? Grovyle has wings now, and a pony-tail? There was the guy who could pull it off, and all those other guys who wanted to but couldn’t: guess which one you are, Grovyle? Who’s idea was this? And that grin is really starting to piss me off. Now, why doesn’t the fire-chicken have wings? Birds don’t have claws on their wing, so why should you, Combusken? Which is a terrible name, BTW. From “combust” and “chicken”. All you’re doing is making me hungry. You wouldn’t even make it to your final stage, you’d have been deep fried and covered in seven secret herbs and spices way before then. And you, Marshtomp… I don’t even know where to start with you. Your spike-herpes have seemed to calmed down a bit, but that stuff is never gonna go away. And the mohawk? One person can pull that off, Marshtomp, and you are no Mr. T.

… ugh. Just… just stop. Sceptile has a fern growing out of his butt, a couple goiters on his neck, and if he doesn’t wipe that look off his face I’m gonna do it for him. WITH A BASEBALL BAT. Blaziken, I know it isn’t your fault, but you have a horrible name: it’s like… they realized how stupid you look and tried to counter that by finding the most awesomest name evar, omg, like Dirk Awesomelazer or Phoenix McBadass, blatantly attempting and failing at the same time. And you, Swampert… I told you that the disease would spring up again. You look ridiculous, by the way, like you decided one mohawk wasn’t cool enough and figured two would be better, then decided THREE would be OFF THE CHAIN and put one on your butt. You were wrong. You were so, so wrong.

Fortunately, and right when I had given up hope, here comes an oasis, a bright spot in the dark, and reignited a glimmer of joy within my expansive and fuzzy breast.

GENERATION IV

It’s… it’s like I’m a kid again. They’re adorable. I have nothing negative to say about you, Turtwig: those leaves work so much better on you than they ever did on Treecko or Chikorita. Chimchar, you are so happy that your butt is on fire that I want to hug you and talk about how much I love that your butt is on fire. And Piplup, if you looked any sweeter, I’d probably have to start taking insulin or something cause I just developed the die-beetus. You three are like a triple play in the 7th inning of a baseball game that just had a three-hour middle where nothing happened: you pump some life into it and get the crowd excited again.

Grotle is this generation’s Wartortle: a silly teenage phase where we see potential, but don’t really know where it will lead. Monferno looks like a quarterback to me: easy confidence, not a hair out of place, and all the ladies love him. Plus, he realized that the fire on his butt, which probably made farting hilarious as a child but incredibly conspicuous as a teen, was a bad idea, so he moved it away by developing a tail. Wise move, sir. Prinplup, you lose points for both your lack of originality when it comes to your name, your dual mohawk (you might have been able to pull it off in Gen 6, but it’s too soon after Swampert, buddy), and for your pants-suit that goes up waaaay too high. He’s like Urkel a little bit… but the “Urkels” of the world also end up the “Bill Gates” of the world, so we’ll avoid judging you too harshly… for now.

HOME RUN! HOME RUN! GEN 4 GOT A HOME RUN IN THE BOTTOM OF THE 9TH!

Torterra, you’re carrying a tree and a mountain on your back. If you were real, I’d stick a La-Z-Boy up there, a mini TV and a fridge, and we’d see the world. Sure, it would probably take us a month to get to Indiana, but we would look awesome while doing it. Infernape, you’re, like, wearing armor, and you moved the fire as far away from your butt as you can, sticking with your whole “fire monkey” thing but reinventing yourself enough that people forget all about that one time you accidentally set your desk on fire your Junior year. Wise choice. And you, Empoleon… it’s like the guy who used to be in the AV department with tall pants and glasses went to college, started working out, got contacts, met a girl, then started a software company that reinvented the way people use their wrist-watches and made billions. He’s dressed up, he’s ready for business… guh. You wish you looked that good in a frilly shirt.

So good. SO GOOD. A taste of the glory days, guys. But you know what happens after a mountain?

That’s right. A valley.

GENERATION V

WHAT THE BALLS AM I EVEN LOOKING AT. This is the recently-released artwork for Gen. 5, Pokémon Black and White. They’ll probably sell a gazillion copies, cause Pokémon prints money, but you guys can do better than this. Their names haven’t been translated or properly word-played into English yet, so you’re looking at Tsutarja, Pokabu, and Mijumaru up there. I have no idea what those words mean either.

Is that another plant-lizard? Why? Did you not learn your lesson after Treecko? He’s even got that same look on his face! WHERE’S MY BAT?! And why is there another food-animal with fire powers? “Pokabu used barbecue! It’s super delicious!” But that last one… oh man. Oooooh, man. He isn’t even happy. He’s a sad, albino otter who hit the shell he was trying to open on his tummy SO HARD that it fused into his stomach-flesh. And he’s wearing a sweater vest. I’d be frowning too, but that doesn’t excuse his starter-status. He’s something you should run into a hundred times and learn to hate, like a Zubat or a Magikarp, not something that’s given to a kid who’s just starting out on his journey into the world to help him beat that world into submission.

We don’t even know what their next forms look like, they’re that new. I’ll tell you, though: my hopes are not high. I’m gonna go hang out with my Torterra now, relax in my La-Z-Boy, and slowly amble into the sunset to look for my bat.

Movie Monday: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus - 5-out-of-10 T's

I have no idea what happened in this movie. Like, none whatsoever.

This review could have been about Robin Hood, but I heard that that movie sucked, so me and the guys rented something instead, and I figure this movie is recent enough to count for Movie Monday. There we are, with pizza and Pepsi and the biggest flat screen hi-def television I've ever seen (seriously, the little "Sony Pictures" clip at the beginning was the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever had the privilege to glance upon) and comfy couches, and the movie starts, and I just got more and more confused.

Here's what I gleaned, and you can find this out from the stuff on the back of the box: Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and his midget, Mini Me, (Verne Troyer), are both immortal, I think. The Doc has a daughter who the devil (Tom Waits, awesome) will claim for his own on her 16th birthday, three days away, unless the Doc gets 5 souls by that time. Heath Ledger shows up out of nowhere and helps. And there's a mirror.

THAT IS ALL I GOT.

These films that apparently have awesome stories that bend the mind and are supposed to make you think and make sense if you think outside the box of accepted narrative stylings always give me a headache.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON

Dr. Parnassus was tricked by Tom Waits thousands of years ago, and now he holds the whole world in his brain or something. For some reason, he has a sideshow that he drags around England with a helper, his daughter, and Mini Me, and they try to get people to go into the mirror. When they do, they find a world ruled by their own imaginations. At some point in their psychedelic journeying through the looking glass, they are presented with a choice: good (The Dr.) or evil (The Devil). In the case of a drunk guy, it's a giant staircase (A 12x12x12 step program to recovery!) or a bar. If you choose the bad one, you explode. Or something like that.

Guh.

Why wasn't this rated worse than a 5? Very simple: even though I had no idea what I was looking at or what was going on, there were some very pretty things to look at presented in a very interesting way. Also, it had some great actors, and each of them get at least one point added because of their presence alone: Christopher Plummer +1, Colin Farrell +1, Heath Ledger +1, Johnny Depp +1, Jude Law +1, Mini Me -1, Pretty Visuals and daughter (very pretty daughter!) +1 = 5 out of 10.

Really good actors, and the ladies love 'em.

Actually, that isn't fair, Verne did a really good job. But I like my math there.

If it hadn't been for the company I kept while watching this film, and what I watched it on (GAAAAH IT WAS GLORIOUS), I probably would have hated this film. Strong visuals and good actors cannot carry a film that makes me wonder if there were special mushrooms on my pizza.

On the flip side... this thing was a labor of love. Their main character died with plenty of filming left to do, so they had to get creative. Enter the three guys up there: every time Heath goes through the mirror, he looks different on the inside. I like that idea a lot. They did what they could with what they had, and I don't know what the movie would have been if Ledger had been able to finish it, but the fact that they did finish it when they had a setback like that really kind of endears me to them.

I don't regret paying the 3 bucks to rent this. But, I'm gonna need to make some serious life changes before I watch this again: namely, become more accepting of mind-expanding pharmaceuticals.

"Doc, you should really take a hit of this..."

Something I hope won't suck...

After yesterday's apocalypse scenario, lets talk about something light, but still with a potential bit of gloom 'n' doom: a cartoon.

Later this summer, a movie is coming out, and it's got me more scared than anything I've seen in a while. It isn't a scary movie. It isn't a suspenseful movie. It isn't even a mysterious movie. If we're lucky, it might have all of those things and be awesome, but I really have no idea. What it is supposed to be is a kids movie that doesn't talk down to them, a film like Chronicles of Narnia, or the good Harry Potter films. Unfortunately, what we'll probably get is another flop like Percy Jackson or Spiderwick. What am I talking about?

The Last Airbender.

I am an incredibly lucky person. I went to a college where I met people who like the same things I do, and one of those things was the now-finished, then-unfinished, Avatar: the Last Airbender on Nickelodeon.

It's set in a world with four nations, each with people who can control one of the four elements: the Fire Nation, Air Nomads, Water Tribe, and Earth Kingdom, and the people who could control these elements were called benders. Each generation, in a dalai lama-style reincarnation cycle, one person is born who can control all four of the elements, and they are called the Avatar. When an avatar dies, they are reborn into the next nation in the cycle. The current avatar was born into the air nomads... then disappeared for 100 years. During that time, the Fire Nation declared war on the other three, and now rules most of the world.

The series was groundbreaking. It found a happy medium between silly kidventures and serious plots that kept even adults engaged. They killed characters, something that I have never seen in a kids show. They didn't do it graphically, but you knew that you wouldn't be seeing that character again.

It was pretty epic.

What I love the most is that it told a story, and when it was done... it was done. The creators finished their story and left at the top of their game. They could have dragged it out for forever, watering down what they'd done, plot twists, whatever... but they didn't. They finished.

Now, the movie is coming out. If you read the fine print on that poster up there, you saw that it's been directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which has filled the fans of the series (called "Avatards") with a great deal of trepidation.

I used to love the guy. I figured he could do no wrong. I even went to so far as to say that film was invented for him to tell stories with, and was just waiting for him to show up. (You can probably still find it on my now-defunct Xanga blog from college.) Theeeeeeen came the Village. And the Happening.

Ugh. I've kinda lost faith in the guy. This is his last stand: if this film is awful... he's done, probably, and he's taken one of my favorite franchises down with him. I'm hoping that Night doesn't completely rape the series and make a movie that sucks colossally. I have low expectations of the film, but high hopes.

Do good, Night. Do good.

Engineering our own destruction: Spider-Goats

I promise you that this is totally for realz: we have genetically engineered a cross between spiders and goats. The reasoning behind this abomination is sound, and if you step back and just think about how cool it is that we've actually accomplished it, it's kinda neat. But, I mean, c'mon: have these people learned nothing from SciFi Original Movies?

This is pretty much exactly what will happen. (Image found here.)

Scientists have told us for years that spider silk is stronger than steel, but we can't reproduce it in a lab, and spiders are so small that it's next to impossible to harvest enough to actually do anything with. So, in lieu of tossing up their hands in frustration and going back to modifying corn or whatever, they started thinking outside the box and shot some spider DNA into some goat fetuses.

Outside the box is EXACTLY what that is.

The product is a goat. It apparently looks, acts, smells, and produces milk like a goat. To paraphrase the Turing Test, when you can no longer tell the difference between something real and something artificial, it stops being artificial. The only real difference is in the milk: there are strands of spider silk in the milk. Not a lot, but more than if we were harvesting it from spiders, and definitely more than we've been able to produce without the goats.

This silk is, for all intents and purposes, spider silk. It's stronger than steel. They get more of it every time they milk the goats. It can be used for bridges, body armor, and, most surprisingly, in the human body to repair or replace damaged ligaments and other injuries. So far, what these scientists have done (they're Canadian, I think) is figure out a way to create a miracle material in a way that doesn't hurt anyone or anything and is easy to gather.

The spinneret gene of a spider has been artificially introduced into these goats. And it passes on through breeding, so they've got a herd of maybe 50 silk-producing goats by the last published count.

Juuuust waiting for the other shoe.

This is... it's like a movie. A bad one. Like, not even a good scary movie, like The Birds or Psycho, but a bad one, like Blood Monkey or Shark Swarm. Well meaning scientists find a way to help humanity by doing something that seems innocent. "What can go wrong?" they'll say, "It's just a herd of goats, who's it hurting?"

TRY ALL OF HUMANITY, YOU MADMEN!

"You've done a baaaad thing!"

I'll tell you exactly how this is going to go wrong: they're expecting to expand the herd to over 1,000 goats. That's a lot to keep track of. As the goats reproduce, each generation is going to start acting less and less like regular goats. It will be gradual. But slowly, like the patient hunters and cold-blooded killers they've been harvested from, the spider genes are going to start to become dominant.

They're going to overtake the goat genes, replacing the happy, friendly bits of their brains with horribly spidery bits. But they're going to keep the parts that are beneficial to them: the breathing and circulatory system, the eyesight, the hearing. They'll probably start to develop more than four legs, and show the ability to utilize their webs in ways far more dastardly than just being able to be fished out of milk.

Do you know why spiders aren't the size of cats, or dogs, or people, or cows? Because their breathing apparatus is ill-suited for anything bigger than, say, a baseball. We've given them, ON PURPOSE, better breathing apparatus. They'll start to get bigger. And deadlier. And one of that 1,000 is going to escape. Probably a pregnant female who isn't cool with laying her clutch of eggs, all 300 of them, inside the facility they're being kept in.

She'll get out. She'll lay her eggs. And then the end of humanity will begin. They'll probably cross-breed with some of the hardier wild goat species out there, like big horn sheep, and take over the mountains.

"That's spider-goat territory."

The artist in me wants to think of aesthetics. What will they look like? What's the most horrible thing I can think of, that will give future generations of spider-goat-hunted North Americans nightmares for the rest of their days?

I know two things for certain: 1. They will have eight legs and those things that aren't legs but look like them and come out of their faces with fangs on them, called pedipalps; whether or not the legs have hooves depends on where they live, mountains or cities. 2. They will have eight eyes, and they'll all be goat eyes.

EIGHT OF THEM

I don't want this to happen. But I know that it will. I know that we've probably started the clock that counts down to our destruction by making something that will surpass us on the food chain.

Or, y'know, nothing will happen. Everything will work out fine. We'll have the silk, and herds of happy, friendly, two-eyed, four-legged, goat-sized goats who want nothing more than to eat grass and tin cans and carrots and bump heads occasionally.

I doubt it though. And when the end comes... don't say I didn't warn you.

Heroes of History: Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla, probably calculating how to teleport cats to Venus or something.

Thomas Edison is responsible for stealing and taking credit for many of the amenities we use to day: electricity, the electric light bulb, portable music (he’s credited with creating the record player), microwaves… some newspaper guy named him “The Wizard of Menlo Park”.

In reality, he was actually just a shrewd businessman, and by “shrewd business man”, I mean “lying, thieving jerkwad”.

Thomas Edison, circa 1900

Let’s talk about the lightbulb. Edison’s patent on the bulb happened in 1879, but electric light bulbs (or incandescent lamps) were being toyed around with as much as 50 years earlier than that. Here’s a list of guys you’ve never heard of: Jean Foucault, Humphrey Davy, J.W. Starr, and Heinrich Goebel. Who are they?

They’re dudes that worked on the lightbulb before Edison did. In fact, the last guy on that list, Goebel, came and tried to sell it to Edison, who turned him down. Then Goebel died. And Edison bought the patent off of his widow, probably for a deeply discounted price.

Also a bargain shopper!

So why am I talking about Thomas Edison when the article is titled “Nikola Tesla”? Because Tesla invented just about everything else that Edison is known for.

In 1884, Tesla was a young inventor. He’d moved to America from Croatia probably for the same reason everyone did: the streets were paved with cheese, or whatever. This is speculation, but he’d probably heard of Edison, maybe idolized him a little bit, and wanted to get a job with his company. So he did. Edison hired him and they promptly started arguing. Tesla said he could improve Edison’s stuff, and Edison called him on it, offering him $50,000 if he could.

Tesla did, slaving away for months on Edison’s stuff, and made some huge improvements, then went to Edison and asked for his money.

“Tesla, you don’t understand American humor.”

That’s a quote. That’s what Edison said in reply when Tesla asked for his money. “Oh, haha, it was a joke.”

Tesla invented Alternating Current (AC), which is the type of electricity we use when you plug something into a wall. It’s able to send huge amounts of electricity long distances without turning wasting it by turning into heat, unlike Edison’s Direct Current (DC), which could only be used over short distances and wasted most of its energy by turning to heat along the way. We don’t really use that anymore.

Tesla’s was better. Anyone who understood that could see it. Edison, though, couldn’t stand that, so he went around providing demonstrations as to how “dangerous” AC was by killing things with with it. Including an elephant.

Edison waged a full-on intellectual war on AC that probably set the use of electricity back decades, but on his deathbed, he said his only regret, his biggest mistake, had been in trying to develop direct current, rather than the superior alternating current system that Tesla had put within his grasp.

Tesla invented the radio, primitive radar, spark plugs, devices to for x-rays, developed ways to send electricity through the air and power inventions from across great distances, he was working on an actual “death ray”, and theorized the cell phone nearly a century before it came about, and he said this:

“The household’s daily newspaper will be printed ‘wirelessly’ in the home during the night.”

With a little modification, that sure sounds like the internet, doesn’t it?

Tesla, contemplating his awesomeness

Nikola Tesla was a genius and a marvelous showman, presenting his inventions in ways what delighted audiences, much like a magician, but fueled with bright, sparking science. Unfortunately, he was a terrible businessman, a little obsessive compulsive, and a bit of a shut in. All of this combined led to him dying alone and with a mountain of debt. And you’ve probably never heard of him.

That’s him hanging out with Mark Twain.

There’s a bit of a movement online to educate people to how awesome Tesla was, and maybe get him the recognition he deserves. Maybe you should look him up… and perhaps take another look at all that stuff your teachers told you.