Operation: Great Job!

I don’t make fun of retarded people. I think it’s unfunny and unfair. However, some labels I think are questionable. I think “touched” is a stupid one, if a little outdated, and “handicapable” is just trying too hard. That’s just me, I deal with semantics quite often and have word preferences. So with the kinder, gentler phrasing in mind, what do you think of this cover?

No one suspected him…

The Disney World Anal Retentive Vacation

So a head’s up to all 6 of you who read my blog - I am going on vacation! Your old pal Ethan is taking next week off and setting sail to gorgeous Lake Buena Vista (Spanish for “Lake Boon Vast”) for a week of fun at the most magical place on Earth, Disney World. I’ll be bringing the trusty laptop and hopefully getting some blogging in if I find weird stuff, but I’m warning you right now: it’s a vacation. I will be doing vacation things. I will be eating from buffets. I will plan on being very tired a lot. Updates may be sporadic, more sporadic than they are now.

When planning the Disney trip, though, there are numerous questions that need to be answered. Where to stay? (we’re staying at the Wilderness Lodge) What to eat? (Disney meal plan allows for some great choices) Where’s the Nazi hidden in a Disney mural? (it’s in the Grand Floridian). Luckily, there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of websites devoted to helping you answer your questions and offer reader-generated tips, including gems like “the parks get crowded sometimes, so be prepared” (???).

I have searched a few of these sites and found one that absolutely screams “anal retentive.” I’m not going to list the name of the site, but I will link to it. First off, try to get over the bad site design. Most of the site is made up of ads and pinks and yellows, which have been known to drive prisoners mad. Still, it’s the perfect site if you want your trip planned down to the minute, as well as the 6 months prior to your trip. It offers such scheduling tips as:

and

If you’re looking to dine at the parks, not to worry, this man has every meal planned down to the 5 to 15-minute interval:

Yes, don’t worry, paranoid people, a five-minute variance is OK. It’s normal. Don’t freak out. I’m sure you can busy yourself for those five minutes, it’s Disney World after all.

The website assumes that you will be traveling with children, but it feels that there should be certain guidelines about which children to bring.

If you cannot find suitable children, you may need to leave a few at home and try and rent some for the trip (Disney does not offer child-rental services). The real issue, though is not necessarily the age or the height. It’s the brains. Thankfully, the writer of the site has given some thought to the issue, and come up with his take on it:

There’s a lot to do in the Disney theme parks. Aside from numerous schedules the writer has prepared, each differing in case you don’t have much money or if your children are (shudder) under 48 inches high, he has also put together a comprehensive list of attractions you can skip. He considers them “rides that almost no one will regret missing”. If you weren’t intrigued enough to click on the Nazi link, please check this link to an actual annotated spreadsheet. It’s a winner and a half.

And if the parks get dull, you can always enjoy the nightlife, like I found on Yahoo maps:

Wish me luck, friends, for I (and my girlfriend Katie, as well as season 2 of Heroes on DVD) am going to Disney World. And we’re not using that guy’s itinerary.

This week in Netflix

Every week, the DVD-through-the-mail site Netflix announces new DVDs for rental. Most are films that never got a theatrical release. Ethan Kaye brings you This Week In Netflix, the most inexplicable actual description of an actual film actually posted by the Netflix staff.

This week?

Silent Mobius

As Tokyo faces an onslaught by Lucifer Hawk, a demon determined to wipe out mankind, Officer Katsumi recalls what led her to join the Attacked Mystification Police, an elite unit of supernaturally powered women charged with protecting the planet. A postapocalyptic cyberpunk adventure that blends elements of action, science fiction and horror, this anime film features stunningly detailed visuals.

Dear Japan,
Please, please stop. Stop with your little girl heroes, your obsession with police and detectives, and your desire to see Tokyo destroyed by demons or robots or whatever crap your self-loathing creative team comes up with this week. Stop. You, as a people and a country, are better than this.

For instance, there was a time when people associated Japanese cinema with the master Akira Kurasowa (we share a birthday, by the way). Seven Samurai was considered the best foreign film ever made at one point. People fawned over you guys. Now, where’s the love? One-third of the films you produce involve some sort of elite unit of supernaturally powered women charged with protecting the planet, one-third are overly-bloody gangster films, and the final third are horror movies. How did you fall so far?

The part that gets me is obsessions. You constantly depict Tokyo being destroyed by something, in this case a “demon”. When Americans did that in Independence Day, people were shocked. It was a big deal. Sure, you get some property damage in American action films, but usually it’s fairly limited in scope - think Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard. But you Japanese just love seeing Godzilla or Mothra or whomever beat the crud out of your capital city, killing your populace, film after film. Why?

And the cop thing. There used to be a rule that every anime had to have a fat cop as a comedic device. Now if there isn’t a fat cop, there’s a competent cop as the main character. Or detective. Or bounty hunter. Some sort of law enforcement. American films have cops in them too, but half the time they’re corrupt and the other half of the time they’re forced to play outside of the rules (again, think Die Hard). In fact, American films like seeing average Joes take on the bad guys instead of cops. So why do you insist on shoe-horning the police into all your movies?

I’m not even going to go into the tentacle thing. You guys have lived on an island, surviving off squid for too long.

In short, stop. Please stop this downward, yet circular trend you’ve fallen into. Stop the futuristic techno-crap. Stop with your post-apocalyptic obsessions and screaming desire to be ravaged by demons or robots or monsters. Stop naming your characters the Attacked Mystification Police, that’s just stupid. You need a 5-year moratorium on film/animation and you need to spend that time thinking about what you’ve produced as a nation for the last 20 years and how you’re going to make up for that.

Start by hosting a World’s Fair.

Follow-up to the last post

I got an email from my uncle about the last post. This is what he said:

“Big Jim was just some guy who thought he looked like a rock star.”

So I guess that’s about as much of an explanation as you’re going to get. Big Jim, if you’re out there, please, defend your existence. And don’t be related to me too much.

Big Jim RULES

My uncle Mick, a veteran of the 70’s, was putting some of his old scanned pictures up on the web and gave me access to his albums. There were some pictures of the family, some pets, some camping trips I didn’t go on, stuff like that, but as the pictures started to get older, the subjects got weirder. There was a psychadelic sunset painted on my uncle’s wall. An ex-girlfriend who probably had a story behind her that I was never privy to. And this gem, an autographed photo.

From the signature, this is Big Jim.

The hair says “John Holmes,” while the suspenders say “Doug Henning”, while the pants say “pink, and you’re wearing suspenders with us”. Big Jim rocks the hell out of that brick wall too, so don’t you start static with him. I have no idea who Big Jim is, why my uncle has an autographed picture of him, or if this is a photo that the band carried around just to sign for fans. I don’t even know what band this was. I might even be related to Big Jim and not even know it.

So Mickey, if you remember who Big Jim was, let me know. I’d love to hear the story behind this picture.

In the meantime, Big Jim is my computer wallpaper.

Anatomy Make Eyes Hurt!

Oh no.

No no no no no no. Do not want.

What are you THINKING, 1990’s Marvel? Did you think Thor could walk with those legs? He’d chafe his dumplings down to nothing and then snap his shins like stale breadsticks. I have fairly large thighs, I admit it, but they stop touching each other well before they get to my knees. Does he have any skin at all on his legs? Because he’s showing interior thigh muscles that wouldn’t be visible unless he was flayed - and he’s wearing armor on top of it.

That isn’t a shirt. It can’t be. It can only be painted on, with definition like that, which means that before battle Thor has someone painting his chest blue and yellow. You think your job sucks?

Does he have wings? Who the hell has muscles that stick out like that from their back? Arms attach to the shoulder, not to the ribcage. And what arms they are! Looks like they’re being held on by a prayer.

And his chest is almost the same length across as the distance from his chin to his knees. This is bad. Way bad.

And if you do the thing where 1 head = 1 foot, Thor is 8 feet tall. His head is TINY. A little peanut-headed storm god.

So what does this add up to? In my esteemed opinion, the man is a giant who uses steroids like a fiend, shrunk his batch down to nothingness, and has malignant cancerous tumors under his arms. And he’s a comic book hero worthy of the 400th issue of a 482-issue comic book (?).

I need to lie down.

Our Video Game History Part VI

Welcome back to another edition of “Our Video Game History,” the segment on this blog where I bring you back to the games that structured our youths, especially if our parents refused to buy us a Nintendo which we desperately wanted. To date, I have still never bought a Nintendo, but since all the games are available online, I don’t think it matters much at this point. So those of us without actual consoles had to deal in these, PC games of very, very dubious quality. Join us, won’t we?

There’s obviously a lot going on in this game. There’s a dock, a monkey statue, a cyclone, a giant woman, and some lily pads. But let me draw your attention to the characters in the foreground. I’m not going crazy, but are they performing scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire? Tell me how, aside from the monkey statue and the cyclone, this isn’t a poster for a community theater presentation of Streetcar. You’ve got the plantation house in the back, the docks on the side, Stanley beating Stella in the front and even the famous “STELLAAAAA!” scene playing behind that. My guess? This is the text-based version of Streetcar. YOU ARE IN HOSPITAL. DO YOU WANT TO DEPEND ON KINDNESS OF STRANGERS? Y/N.

This is actually the sequel, Mean Streets II: All Roofs, No Streets Per Se. It’s where the protagonist of the first game becomes afraid of roads, streets, avenues, driveways, highways, ramps, lanes, and terraces and decides to only fight crime on the roofs of high buildings. All his food is delivered.

“So what do you want to call this, the game where cavemen fly planes?”
“Megalomania!”
“Ok. What does that have to do with cavemen in planes?”
“Absolutely nothing. Just like the word.”
“Alright, I hate it. And I hate the concept too. You can’t name this Megalomania.”
“How ’bout if I tweak it a little bit? Just the title though.”
“If you can tweak the title, I’ll let you release your stupid game.”

You’re a wealthy merchant. Your ships travel all over the world, bringing tapestries, weapons, spices, art, and fantastic foods to all the nations. But then someone finds out about your daughter. The little socialite has been tarting herself up all over town. There’s even a grainy scroll circulating around the shipping lines of her engaging in a sexual encounter. Your dreams are shattered, your company is rocked by scandal. So you start drinking. Heavily. After you’ve been forced to fire the crews of 90 of your best ships, you’re so far in the bottle you’ll never be sober again. You wander into your office, where the big globe is. In an alcoholic fog you stumble over to the globe, collapse upon it, and take stock in your awful, awful life.

You have engaged the mechanical arm.
The mechanical arm is moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
You have successfully grasped the wrench you dropped.
Mission Accomplished!

Growing up, we kids knew two rules. 1) Bible games always sucked, and 2) the art on the box cover was a very good indication of the quality of the game. This, to every child not raised in a commune in Utah, would be an awful game, just by looking at the cover. Extraordinary things are happening with Moses’s arm - look! the tablets are shrinking! And his elbow bends in three places! Incredible! Still, even with bendy Moses, most children would prefer to do nothing than play this game.

Even if you are dead and decomposed, you can still witness for Christ.

It’s the future and you’re a narco cop. But the cops are out to get you! How will you and the rest of your police officers survive, now that the Law’s after you? Who will save the cops from the police? How will the police force react when the full weight of the city police force comes down on them? Find out in Narco Police, the thrilling game that pits police against law enforcement like never before!

“Hey guys! Do you dare go into Dr. Hammerstein’s house?”
“No, Rick, that’s dumb. I mean, that’s his house. He lives there.”
“But it’s probably spooky!”
“That may be, but it’s private property. You don’t see us wandering into every house on this block. Only Tom’s, because his mom said it’s ok.”
“C’mon guys! Chamber of horrors!”
“Rick, next time we go to Tom’s house, we’re going to take a different route.”

Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay

Waaaaay back in the 80’s, there was something called “heavy metal music.” It was loud, shrieky, fast, occasionally sentimental, and, for some reason, people took it seriously. Grown men wearing spandex, makeup, and big hair would yell about partying and girls and crowds would react positively. In retrospect, they looked like many women do in the deep South. But they were huge, with all the drugs, and sex, and money they could ask for. Nowadays, bands like Cinderella, Ratt, the Scorpions, and Winger struggle to find a bar gig, but back in the days before alternative rock, these guys were the main show.

Which is why they got their own comic books.

Rock N’ Roll Comics were the products of Revolutionary Comics, a company who also put out unauthorized histories of baseball players and porn stars. The comics consisted of the history of the band up to that point, three full-page B&W pin-ups of the band member who died, and one or two short humor pieces, usually based around whatever big-haired, interchangeable band was featured that week. They were insanely positive of whoever they were featuring, setting up each awful metal band as the greatest thing to ever happen to music. Oh, there was a New Kids on the Block issue too.

But the one thing these all had in common? Amazingly bad art.

DEAR GOD LOOK AT STEVEN TYLER’S EYES

The art was on-par with the guy in your high school who’d turn in hand-drawn notebook sketches of Ozzy for art projects about the Impressionists. Saying it was amateur was a compliment. Despite this being a biographical comic, the artist that was hired (and uncredited, as far as the Comic Book Database can tell) just simply could not capture likenesses. It was just one more shovel of dirt onto the coffin of a comic that featured Guns N’ Roses every third issue.

I own some of these issues, I got them as a joke gift from a friend who found them for about 15 cents each and all of them are atrocious. Here are some highlights from my collection:

I hesitate in this public blog to use the word “mongoloid”, but damn, something is wrong with David Lee Roth’s eyes and that’s the closest thing I can use to describe it.

We won’t spend too much time on James Hetfield’s receding Klingon hairline and will instead focus on bassist Jason Newsted. What the hell was this artist on?

A comparison:

Jason’s turned into a hastily sketched “human” thing with uneven eyes and tiny forehead. If I saw this crawling out of a military lab, I’d order it shot then burned.

Say, like Bon Jovi?

Then you’d probably hate the unauthorized comic book starring this guy:

And that’s the COVER of this book. This is supposed to make people buy this comic. They’re supposed to recognize this guy. Try it for yourself. Copy and paste the picture into a word document and then show it to people in your office. See if they correctly guess who this is supposed to be in 10 tries or less.

But who can forget Motley Crue!?!

Obviously the artist could, since he drew people who look barely even human, let alone like Motley Crue. Also, breasts don’t work that way, butts definitely don’t work that way, and the girl on the lower right looks like she has fish ribs.

This week in Netflix

Every week, the DVD-through-the-mail site Netflix announces new DVDs for rental. Most are films that never got a theatrical release. Ethan Kaye brings you This Week In Netflix, the most inexplicable actual description of an actual film actually posted by the Netflix staff.

This week?

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Camp Rock

Despite Mitchie’s (Demi Lovato) beautiful voice and musical aspirations, the only way she can attend the pricey rock camp she wants to go to is to help in the kitchen — a fact she goes to great lengths to hide. But when celebrity camp counselor Shane Gray (Joe Jonas of the teen pop band the Jonas Brothers) overhears her singing without ever seeing her face, he makes it his mission to find the girl whose voice has captured his heart.

OK, I honestly don’t have too much of a problem with this movie. It’s not aimed at me, it’s aimed at tween girls and sexually confused tween boys. It’s Disney, Disney films get a little bit of leeway from me, since they’re generally decent quality and, again, they’re not aimed at me. I’m not going to see it, it’s not my cup of tea, it’s aimed at a much younger audience.

HOWEVER, Netflix did recommend this to me, and then told me that based on my previous rental choices, I would give this film FOUR AND A HALF STARS.

Which blew my mind. Four and a half stars is a big commitment. Looking back on my previous rental history, I’ve rated quite a few movies four stars or higher, yet absolutely none of them fall into the categories that Camp Rock does. For instance, George Pal’s 7 Faces of Dr. Lao got 5 stars from me. So did 1776, Heroes Season 1, Batman Begins, Inherit the Wind, and Lenny. The closest approximation to a kid’s movie that I’ve given high ratings to was the second season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and that has bad language and things that spontaneously catch fire.

Like I said, Camp Rock’s not for me. But who is it for? 13 year olds! And if the peculiarity of Netflix’s recommendation doesn’t strike you as funny, here are a few actual reviews from viewers to brighten up your day. Keep in mind that about half of the reviews on the site (the ones I didn’t include) admit to not actually watching the movie, only looking forward to it because the Jonas Brothers are in it. And they all rated it 5 stars.

“Camp Rock is a great MOVIE! Me and my B.F.F. enjoyed every minute of it, I liked it a lot better than High School Musical #1 and #2! I give it 2 big thumps up. Demi Lovato has such a great voice and does a great job playing her part in the movie. I love this movie and everything in it but, I do think it’s a movie girls would enjoy it better than boys.”
- Big thumps up! Hellz yeah! And it’s great to know that this is a MOVIE! and not a BOOK! or a PAMPHLET! or a NICKELODEON! Glad to know this met with the approval of you and your B.F.F.

“I’m 11 years old and I’m not a huge fan of the Jonas Brothers…sure I like their music but I’m not one who will scream their head off and pay 200 dollars per ticket to get into their concert. Still I absolutely loved this movie! The music was great and the actors are very talented when it comes to singing…I wasnt mesmerized by their acting but Hey! no one is going to like a movie for just acting! The voices of the actors are enough for me! If you want a fun, chick flick kind of movie or even if you just want to relax and be able to sing along to the songs then absolutely get this movie!”
- This 11-year old either is lying about his/her age, or is a master of the English language. I wasn’t weaving sentences this good when I was 11, or actively using the word mesmerized, and I had a genius level IQ. good work, lad.

“Yes I am one of those girls who screams and pays 50 bucks for one the jonas brothers tickets, but it is a cute film from disney with good remodels for younger kids. It is very good i loved it!”
- If you are looking to remodel younger kids, this movie will have good recommendations for you.

“This movie is so great it’s great for all ages the jonas brothers where so good in this movie so was Demi Lovato and everyone eles. Having to dill with lieing in the movie it teachs you a lesson.”
- A tribute to special education!

“if you like to sing watch the movie! it’s awsome !I loved it it was like the best movie ever! to me I liked best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- You have dishonored my clan! Killed my master! Now I will kill you with five-finger heart pierce dragon phoenix strike! A loser is you! Welcome to die!

“I Loved the movie it was awsome especially Joe Jonas in it sooooooooooo cute did you know he is a MAJOR CUTIE”
- According to the IMDB trivia page, there is no claim made to Joe Jonas being a MAJOR CUTIE. Apparently IMDB did not know this interesting fact. What makes this funnier is that the person who rated this had a profile picture of Spock, so it looked like Spock was commenting on Joe Jonas.

“Shane Gray(Joe Jonas From The Band The Jonas Brothers)bY accident runs Into A Bush RunnIng AwAY from Girls. When He Hears Mitchie(Demi Lovato)Singing. WiLL Shane Ever Find The Mysterious Girl”
- Sadly, this was probably the studio pitch for the movie.

A shout-out to laughter

I have Cake Wrecks in my blogroll for you to look out at your leisure, but I wanted to call this site out so you KNOW that you NEED to go visit it. Quite simply, it’s real, professional cake disasters and mistakes. Here’s today’s (I laughed out loud):

It’s obvious what the note to the decorator said. It’s just as obvious that the decorator was lazy or stupid, or probably both. The whole site is filled with these kinds of cakes, and I spent a decent chunk of last night reading through them. Do yourself a favor and read Cake Wrecks for yourself.