Feudal Mario

There is a lot to like about the artwork of xiaobaosg (see it at his deviantart site and blog or buy it on his Etsy shop).  Although he is a self-described amateur artist, I am not really seeing how the quality of the artwork lines up with that amateur status.  Given his location on this planet (as best I can discern it), it is not surprising that his work all carries a heavy influence from traditional Asian/Chinese drawings.   True, his artwork has a bit too much panda for my taste but an interesting choice and one that plays out quite interestingly in some of his communist propaganda pieces.  But really what really got me excited about his work are the two pictures of his that are below.  A Mario and a Contra re-imagining in feudal China.  Sure, the Mario take is a bit of a new one but certainly there is no shortages of Mario art on the web.  But to do Contra?  That is a home run.  It is one of the few video games I have actually played all the way to the end (I clearly remember battling the level boss in the picture).  A true classic of the old blow on the cartridge Nintendo system.  That just rocks.  Really, after finding this fine piece of art I am only left to ask, why not more Contra pop-art on the interwebs?

This blog post is sponsored by Oscorp Technologies.

A New Leaf

As we now head into our next 100 blog posts, it seems like a good time to rethink how I go about doing my irregular writing.  I recently read an article about a guy who did a blog post about Mario (The Plumber not the former Bayside Wrestler) every day for the year.  I found that article a bit inspiring.  Why can't I do that?  Maybe if I found a topic that I really cared about it might be easy to bang out a little something, something everyday.  Heck, if this person can do a post (almost) everyday, why can't I.

The problem isn't a topic that I am interested in enough to dive into it for a full year.  I certainly don't have that passion for a video game (except for maybe Tecmo Bowl and Agent USA) like my inspiration.  So instead of fixating on a single topic, I am going to try doing a rotating schedule of alternating subject matters to power me through this mission.  

Do I believe that this is the trick that it will take for me to post regularly?  Not in a million years.  How long do I think it will take before I miss a day or abandon the schedule all together?  Wouldn't be surprised if it was within the week.  But hey, why not at least try.  And with that as my introduction, here is the tentative schedule with explanations to come as to what many of these topics actually represent.

Sunday - The Solitaire Odyssey Update

Monday - Pen of the Week

Tuesday - A Science Like Substance

Wednesday - Art Apprectiation

Thursday - This Week in Pirate Futility

Friday and Saturday - What ever strikes my fancy

And there you have it.  The quest begins.  But before I call this post to a close let's enjoy a fine piece of classical music.  Rock it Rockapella!

This blog post is sponsored by Buy More.

One More Way Newspapers Have Moved Online

While we are on the topic of nerdy web-based comics that amuse me, I have to mention my favorite of the bunch,  xkcd.  I forgive the fact that it favors physics and mathematics over biology and genetics for its humor  Egg-head humor of this quality is hard to come by.  But all of this talk of comics reminds me of my favorite part of the Sunday paper growing up.  Calvin and Hobbes. Far Side.  Bloom County.  Despite the fact that the paper was think enough to kill Alvin and the Chipmunks if it were to land on them, this was only section (other than Sports) that I would make sure to read (well I may have also made sure to review the Best Buy flier).  But as the newspapers began to die so did the comics section.  It became thinner and thinner.  Soon the only things left were the milquetoast strips like Beetle Bailey and Family Circus which are the humor equivalent of Orange you glad I didn't say Banana Knock Knock joke. Thankfully, the thing that killed the comic strip is saving it again.  The internet has a flourishing comic strip community.  Some blogs are even assembling their own Sunday comic sections with only web-based comics.  They aren't terrible.  And they are definitely better than Hagar the Horrible.

 

This blog post is sponsored by Kabletown.

Chance of Brightest Day, Most Likely Blackest Night

The trailer for the first live-action Green Lantern movie came out last weekend. Unfortunately though, when I call it live-action, I am using the term loosely. And this greatly disappoints me.

I am, of course a bit of sci-fi, comic book dork and in the realm of the superhero universe, Green Lantern was my childhood favorite. Superman was an incredibly boring and unimaginative character and Batman was just too mainstream for my taste. I wanted a B-level star to call my own and Green Lantern fit the bill (my choice of Green Lantern over Batman was for the same nonconformist reason that I chose to root for the New Orleans Saints and Houston Astros despite growing up around Pittsburgh and the greatest sport franchises of all time) . I was sold on the galactic policeman. Of course the cartoons that my fandom was built on didn't contain any of that confusing Book of Oa backstory. Just a man and his ring. But by the time I found out that Green Lantern wasn't that special in the comic book world, one of thousands that include a dog, a squirrel, and a cucumber, he had been imprinted on my amygdala. With the kind of brainwashing that only childhood cartoons can provide, I was very excited to hear that a Green Lantern movie was on the way. Of course, at this point my hopes should have been as high as a Democrat on election day but the lessons of G.I. Joe:Rise of Cobra and Transformers 2 didn't seem to fully set in.

The casting of Ryan Reynolds should have been the first warning sign. Yes, Hal Jordan is a cocky test pilot but the Green Lantern of Hal Jordan and John Stewart are definitely serious stalwart fellows. There is no such authority exuded by the Sexiest Man Alive (or Dead for that matter - I can't imagine a dead body being very sexy). He is the jokey, snarky, ironic guy. Just because Iron Man was such a hit, doesn't mean every superhero from here on out has to be Sherlock Holmes as Tony Stark. But I always like Reynolds going back to his days as a guy in a pizza place so I was willing to overlook Hal Jordan as a poorman's Stark minus the alcoholism. Then I saw the preview.....If they were going to use so much cheap CG, why not just make it an animated feature and call it a day. They couldn't even be bothered to fashion a real suit for GL out of real materials. They had to paint him up like on of the girls in the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit issue. It looked horrible. When the next step after the three new Star Wars movies was the Cartoon Network's Clone Wars. I made complete sense. Nothing looked real in those movies. You might as well forget the expensive actors and just make it all computerized. And that is what we have with the Green Lantern movie. A whole lot of really fake looking CG done at the discount rate compared to the cost of Star Wars. If you were going to do this, why not just make another cartoon movie. At least Green Lantern has several options for his Jar Jar.

This blog post is sponsored by Ferris Aircraft.

Who Says TV Isn't Educational

It is very likely that if you are fan of musical theater, you are fan of Glee. I know I'm that toe tapping kind of guy. A weekly song and dance extravaganza staged with tongue firmly implanted in cheek. What is not to like? Well, I will tell you in two words, Will Schuester, the most annoyingly awful main character a popular show has had to bear since Joel Fleischman. It is not clear whether it is the actor or the script that has led to such repulsion but what appears on screen is a most hateable personage unlike anything outside of Wysteria Lane. The first season presented us with a hapless sap with little backbone but the second season of the show has advanced him to a selfish, self-serving whelp with little redeeming value. And every time they try to find an excuse to feature him in one for the show's main pieces, he comes off as if he assembled the entire Glee club in a desperate bid to finally feel like the cool kid in high school (And wow was his rendition of Make 'Em Laugh just painful to watch). A sorry little creature. He is a fantastic argument for home schooling. Let's just hope the rest of the show doesn't go the way of the Schue although the last couple of episodes have shown a troublesome trend. The Kurt storylines have been both heavyhanded and predictable while this week's substitute episode had breakneck shifts between plot points was all over the map. But as long as they keep filling their hours with classics of rock like below I will be there.

Side complaint - As great as Hulu is for subverting commercial TV, it is still a shame their clips have a freshness label on them. It won't be too long in the future until the above highlight becomes non-functional. And won't we all be a little worse off for the loss.

Now for the unreplicated genius of the original source material as well as the best of this lot of educational diddies. "I'm Just a Bill" gives you a better understanding of our form of government than any civics class. Plus it rocks.

This blog post is sponsored by Rapunzhair.

Award for Best Use of a Tuba

Since I am on the topic of high quality musical numbers from Saturday Night Live, I had to highlight this bit of high art. It has got everything or at least everything that matters to me. Nostalgia for a well remembered piece of pop iconitry. Close but not quite over exposed Dr. Horrible. Overproducing what had typically been considered background noise to a ridiculous level. If only all iconic TV theme songs got such treatment.

This blog post is sponsored by Morley Cigarettes.

Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

I first became acquainted with Star Trek through syndicated reruns of the "Star Trek Classic". The timing of my introduction to the 5 year voyage couldn't have been more perfect as it came within spitting distance of the premiere of Star Trek:The Next Generation. Because of my temporal proximity to first adventures of the USS Enterprise, I had to check out the new intellectual property. TGN, as the cool people refer to it, took the original concept and built a show that was actually worthy of it. In fact, it was so far beyond the original in quality that it was hard to believe they came from the gene pool. Heck, TGN cast an actual actor instead of a pompous hack at the head of impressive cast of memorable characters such as nerdy son of the ship's doctor that grows up to be time traveling demigod and proliferative blogger, a ship's engineer that teaches kids to read in his spare time, and, my favorite, the omnipotent Q. Sure every Star Trek series to follow TGN, including critics' favorite Deep Space Nine, was a pale imitation of TGN and a waste of hours of my time, but the sheer joy of a weekly sci-fi show with brains when there were no other sci-fi shows on TV will live with me for a long time. The fact that TGN featured the best ever series premiere-series finale bookends doesn't hurt either. It is just too bad they could never successfully translate TGN to big screen, necessitating that overpraised, underwhelming, and internally illogical Star Trek reboot of this last summer (I never would have thought a young Captain Kirk would have such an effeminate speaking voice). At least J.J. Abrams didn't use the bomb in the brain gimmick for the 15th time in this movie.

I say all this to set up the following clip. A mash-up of that same overpraised, underwhelming, and internally illogical Star Trek reboot with the A-team theme song. The A-team - a gloriously cheesy 80's show that I ate up as a kid. Of course they really don't make shows that light weight any more. Too bad. (By the way, the new A-Team movie looks down right awful)

Make it so Number One.

This blog post is sponsored by Biffco Enterprises.

And Starting at First Base, Aaron Carter

I have always been a sucker for All-Star games. Despite the fact that the games last half the day and no one under 50 watches the sport on a regular basis, I still make time to take in baseball's Mid-Season Classic every year. Despite the fact that the NFL has to typically go to its seventh choice at each position to get enough players to actually field a team, I willingly extend my football watching by a weekend for the Pro Bowl. Even though I know that the entire sport is rigged by the league and gamblers, I will even channel surf to the NBA All-Star Game. (Sorry, nothing can convince me to waste my time on the NHL defenseless shoot out) There is something about seeing all of those famous faces in unique arrangements that has always tickled my fancy. Stockton to Drexler. Ozzie Smith turning the double play with Ryno.

My fondness for the athletic mash-up carries over to other arenas as well. As a kid I always enjoyed those cheesy 80's TV movies that were cast with actors from that network's current line-up of shows. Spotting the next familiar face as it popped up was sport. The same goes today for any surprise TV and movie cameo's. Seeing the big star pop up unexpectedly in a flamboyantly out of character supporting spot (Madea Goes to Star Fleet Academy). Quality doesn't matter (Cannonball Run), I still get joy out of it. The only version of this phenomenon that I can't get behind is the reality show variation (Dancing with the Stars is the NHL of the celebrity all-star game). I have no interest in actors being themselves. They are only interesting as empty vessles for the manipulation of writers and directors.

A final variation on this theme is the name-dropping song which brings me to the below posted videos. Both feature catchy toons centered around random assemblages of real and fictitious characters (although how Aaron Carter warrants the same air space as luminaries like Chuck Norris, Batman, and Abe Lincoln is beyond me). In case of the first video, I can't stop myself from repeating the chorus of "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" in my head on a continuous loop. In the case of second, the gratuitous Jake Gyllenhaal appearance is the perfect cap to the completely hilarious send-up of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This blog post is sponsored by Speaker City.

All About Me

From the outset, I have made no bones the nature of this blog. It is intended to be nothing more than a compilation of self-indulgent navel gazing. This is likely the reason why it has taken me nearly a full calendar year to realize that other members of the genus Homo have happened across my ramblings. But now that my eyes have been opened, it is time to salute these fine upstanding citizens for taken note of the internet's highest quality detritus.

Since I began cataloging poor quality videos that amuse only me, I have received 7 comments on this corner of the internet wilderness. One was a spam comment that I deleted while 3 more are were from relatives that pitied my sad, lonely, and ignored musings and threw me a bone. But then I put up a post about the upcoming G.I. Joe movie. Surprise, surprise, I hit a sweet spot for the blogosphere. 2 of the comments are even relevant to my post. So thanks Marc and Kyle. You have proven that every now and then, the needle can be found in the haystack, even when the haystack is larger than the great state of Alaska. And specifically to Kyle, you have obviously put some thought into your comment and in the spirit and tradition of great internet debate, I respectfully deem your opinion the moronic regurgitation of an obviously mentally feeble individual in need of institutionalization. Who will feed you when you mother passes on? Actually, I see what you are getting at but I stand by my concerns over casting. My problem with Duke isn't so much about age but the blandness of the actor. And despite your contention, I still feel Cobra Commander needs the gravitas that only comes with age. But I am prepared to be and hope to be wrong.

In honor of my most popular post, I present video from Cobra Commander's ill fated run for President. I imagine his plan for a weather control device would have been as beneficial to the future of this country as the Iraq War and the latest version of a stimulus package. Oh, and the Oscars were completely unwatchable.



This blog post is sponsored by Prescott Pharmaceuticals.

You Are What You Eat

If Hallmark created Valentine's Day then Hersey's has to be responsible for Halloween. The one time of year when it is socially acceptable to load your children up on sugar and high fructose corn syrup. But other than the all natural, life giving goodness of corn syrup, what is really going into the bellies of your little ones when they gobble down their spoils. Sure, we know what's in an apple (razor blades) but what about Laffy Taffy. It can't all be vitamins and minerals. There could possibly be something unhealthy mixed in with those real fruit flavors. Thankfully, an artist has given us a detailed view of the innards one popular confection. Those high-pitched noises you hear every time you eat a Gummi Bear? Their screams. And since we are the topic, enjoy some other Gummi Bear-related entertainment.

This blog post is sponsored by Gringott's Financial Services.

A Real American Movie - GI Joe

My two favorite childhood cartoons/toy lines were the Transformers and GI Joe. So, I was suitably stoked when the Transformers live action movie was first announced. Thankfully, I was not disappointed when the final product arrived on the big screen (as long as I block out all of the scenes involving John Turturro). Now the men with the kung-fu grip are also heading to the silver screen (sometime in the summer of 2009). Hopefully they take the big budget approach and do this thing right (Lots of explosions, little talking, and maybe a weather control device that is broken into 3 pieces and scattered to the far corners of the world). With a live action He-Man movie also on the way, all we need now is a Thundercats extravaganza and my entire childhood will have been successfully mass marketed to a new generation.

Most of the casting for the primary roles has now been announced. For the most, the cast looks like a strong mix of notable character actors. People that should really provide some color to their cartoon-inspired roles. There are really only a couple disappointing or unusual choices though. I would have liked to have seen a more firmly established personality inhabit Duke, the alpha dog of the Joes. The selection of another bland, nameless, generic Hollywood boy toy to head up this effort seems to be a step in the wrong direction. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has done fantastic work in movies like Brick and the Lookout but doesn't seem to have the size or the age to pull off the Cobra Commander. I guess the choice of a prepubescent Duke required his nemesis to also be on the younger side. But again, a less than stellar casting choice. Overall, though, I would give a thumbs up to the cast. The international flavor is a nice touch. Marlon Wayans does seem like an odd choice but I imagine they wanted some comedy relief and he is just as good as anyone for that role. Although, I can think of some other G.I. Joe team members that would be better for him to portray for laughs than Ripcord. Shipwreck was always one of the cutups on the cartoon. Why not him? In choosing the Joes and the Cobra members to include in the movie, they did grab all the big ones. Flint and Lady Jaye must have just missed the cut on the Joe side and Serpentor and Dr. Mindbender would seem perfect for a sequel (Here is hoping this movie warrants one). I just hope the movie does not become the Ninja show. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow kind of took over the G.I. Joe comic book series. As a final show of the level of geekiness I have for the G.I. Joe world, I have matched up the actors from the movie with there cartoon counterparts. Others have done this but those lists are already out of date.

The Joes

Channing Tatum as Duke


Rachel Nichols as Scarlett


Dennis Quaid as General Hawk

Ray Park as Snake Eyes


Saïd Taghmaoui as Breaker


Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty

Marlon Wayans as Ripcord

Cobra


Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the Cobra Commander


Christopher Eccleston as Destro


Sienna Miller as the Baroness


Byung-hun Lee as Storm Shadow


Arnold Vosloo as Zartan

RU-DY! RU-DY!

What can I say, I am a sentimental fool. I get misty eyed at the end of It's a Wonderful Life and don't even get me started on the end of Charlotte's Web (when all those horridly ungrateful baby spiders start leaving Wilber). Add a sports theme to the mix and you had me at hello. Come on, a boy and his dad connecting from beyond the grave over a game of catch. What stone visage could stand up to that? So, when Samwise Gamgee finally overcomes long odds and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to realize his lifelong dream of playing for Pope-worshiping Golden Domers to the chant of "RU-DY! RU-DY!", I became an instant fan of the movie. And believe it or not, this moment of lilliputian triumph actually happened. Below is the actual, real-life Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger footage and the Hollywood dressing up of that same action.

American Gladiators

If you don't watch, you are un-American and must report to immediately to Guantanamo Bay for reeducation.

Ah, to be Young and Sick

The recent death of Phil Rizzuto (Hey I told you I was late to funerals) reminded me of those wonderful days of my youth when I was able to satisfactorily fain illness to convince my parents that my day was better spent on a couch than at a desk. As any meth dealer will tell you, there is nothing good on day-time television especially in the 80's when the choices were limited to the big 3 networks, PBS, and a couple of local affiliates. This led to sick days filled with reruns of the best 1970's television had to offer. Happy Days, Mayberry RFD, Gomer Pile, Beverly Hillbillies. High culture, for sure. Interspersed amongst the aged hilarity were some truly awful commercials that still stick with me to this day. One, of course, was the Money Store commercial with Phil Rizzuto that inspired this post. I had no idea that the man was a Hall of Fame baseball player, only that he wanted to sell me money (how does that work as a business exactly). The other was for the one, the only, Freedom Rock. Is that Freedom Rock, man? Well turn it up man. Classic.

Autobots, Roll Out

Just a quick note on an enjoyable time. As a person who spent most of his formative years in the 80's, the Transformers Movie is a big deal to me. Thankfully, I was not disappointed (too much). Sure there were many fanboy details that were wrong (Bumblebee will always be a VW Bug to me) but the numerous action-filled sequences (something dearly missed from Pirates 3, Spiderman 3, and Superman vs. a Rock) kept it in the realm of an entertaining popcorn flick. And despite never being an Optimus guy (my favorite was Trailblazer), I got a little goose bumply when that Semi rolled up. Good to hear the old Optimus voice too. My only complaint was an extended comic relief section in the middle of the movie featuring a mom coming up with euphemisms for masturbation and John Turturro in his underwear. The actors appeared to be allowed to ramble and ad lib at will with absolutely no editing for quality to follow. It was incongruitus with the rest of the movie and grinds the picture to a halt. Other than that, can't wait for Transformers 2 (and the GI Joe Movie).