Hey, anyone want a
life-sized Gundam (A Zeta Gundam RX-78-2, for anyone that gets picky about such things)?
Well, the controls aren't nearly as impressive as in the cartoon, and it doesn't seem to be able to stand up properly without support, and, of course, as far as I know, the "magic" propulsion system which can keep the completely un-aerodynamic mobile suits in the air for hours doesn't exist, but it still looks cool.
COOLEST GAME EVER! (UPDATED)
Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain has a level wherein you fight Quebec separatist terrorists whom have taken control of the Toronto subways! Sounds like Sony has finally been listening to my video game ideas... sure it's about 30 years out-of-date but, meh, a game wherein you just fight Raymond Villeneuve and his gang of Mouvemente Nationale pour la Liberation du Quebec petty thugs would be a cakewalk, what with their amazing weapons like "gasoline in a plastic Sprite bottle".
Of course, separatists are bitching and moaning about this new game, but that just makes it even more fun. It's been all over CJAD this morning, but I can't find any articles online yet, though I did find this
amusing message board thread (in French, and I don't have time to translate).
I've really only tried the first
Syphon Filter, back in 1998 or so, but I do recall it was much more of an accessible game than the heavily-hyped
Metal Gear Solid, which was trying to be too cinematic at the expense of gameplay. My brother John (the one at film school in Colorado) is a big fan of both series (he has a Playstation 2 and I don't).
UPDATE: Aww... Sony pussied out and
pulled the fun and cool Quebec separatist terrorist-killing level from its game.
"It's difficult not to be made to feel like a target when you know that games distributed to large numbers are inviting the player to shoot at separatists," the Societe St Jean Baptiste's Jean Dorion told CFCF News.
Well, don't do anything violent like the separatists in this fictional game and the fictional anti-terrorist unit won't have any reason to shoot you, pure and simple.
I hope a bootleg version of the forbidden level surfaces somewhere, or this inspires some federalist to make a cool
Half Life mod on a similar theme.
THE BOONDOCKS ON RUSH LIMBAUGH
Rush Limbaugh's drug problems were mentioned in
Monday's and
Tuesday's installments of the
Boondocks comic strip. (I link to the
UComics.com Boondocks page because the
official Boondocks site hasn't been updated in three years.) To Aaron McGruder's credit, he didn't play the race card based on Rush's misinterpreted comments on ESPN's
NFL Sunday Countdown, so I didn't use the obvious headline "Aaron McGruder is overrated because the liberal media wants to see a black cartoonist succeed". (Well, I wouldn't exactly say McGruder's "overrated", but they've done a couple of weeks of reruns lately. Plus, he introduced all those great characters in 1999 like Mr. Petto, Huey's teacher, and Riley's former-prison-guard-babe-turned-teacher, and rarely uses them.) Still, I was hoping he'd have something inciteful to say, but he seems content to just take cheap shots at Rush and implied shots at his listeners.
Since they'll be gone from the free part of the UComics.com site in two weeks, I'll transcribe and Fisk Tuesday's strip here.
PANEL ONE
Cesar: The people I feel most sorry for are Rush's followers, who now have to swallow the fact that he's a fraud and a hypocrite...
Okay, first of all, Rush's "followers"? Typical liberal condescension towards conservatives. Rush doesn't give marching orders, he's a guy on the radio people listen to and can agree or disagree with. Why not just "Rush's listeners"?
Secondly, "he's a fraud"? How so? He's not pulling a fast one on anyone... he's not claiming to be anything he's not. He gets paid handsomely, but that's all above the table. So what? We just found out he's not perfect. No one's perfect. It's certainly not like he shot a cop, or anything like that... no, wait, if he had shot a cop,
we'd have all sorts of Idiotarian celebrities supporting him.
"And a hypocrite". Well, in the liberal world view, being a hypocrite is about the worst offense possible, right up there with homophobia (which, of course, can be defined as disagreeing with a self-proclaimed "Queer" activist on anything). What is being a hypocrite, really? Saying one thing but doing another. First of all, we're all hypocrites to some degree. Just in this blog, I tell people not to take public transit when the maintenance workers' union starts taking juvenile actions, but I take public transit anyhow (because I don't drive). If a hypocrite has a good point about something, his point is inherently valid; it's not invalid even if he fails to live up to his professed ideals. Also, like I pointed out before, in the specific case of Rush Limbaugh, the quotes against drugs the media is dredging up are from
The Way Things Ought to Be, published in 1992, and
See, I Told You So, published in 1993. Not only are they outdated, a very pertinent fact is that they were written several years before his back problems for which he received the medication commenced, so he wasn't even being hypocritical when he made the comments. Honestly, he hasn't talked much about drugs in years, at least not as much as he did during the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, and even if he talked about it more on days on which I wasn't listening, he's a guy with a weakness, and one that isn't really his fault and one which he took it upon himself get over. Cut him some fricking slack.
PANEL TWO
Cesar: I mean... can you imagine what it would be like for millions of conservative white men to find out America's most brash right-winger is strung out on drugs? It's like... it's like...
"Conservative white men"... way to paint all of Rush's listeners with the same brush. Women and minorities do listen, ya know?
"America's most brash right-winger"... I can think of a lot of conservatives and libertarians whom are a lot more brash than Rush is.
Michael Savage for one. Also,
Ann Coulter, subject of
Wednesday's strip.
Mark Steyn, if he counts as American. And, of course, bloggers like
Emperor Misha I.
"Strung out on drugs"... See, McGruder actually uses a stereotype of drug users from conservatives just to paint Rush as a helpless addict, spread out on the couch in a daze in his stained underclothes waiting for the postman to put the welfare cheque in the mail slot so he can cash it and buy a few more hits. The truth is, most drug addicts can function normally in society to some degree. But Rush ain't
Marion Barry smoking crack in a hotel room on video. Rush is a guy that got addicted as a side-effect of the painkiller
OxyContin which he was *prescribed*. It's an notoriously addictive drug, as addictive as heroine, so Rush just has the same human frailty as thousands of other people. It's not like he set out to become an addict by buying an illicit narcotic on the street. Plus, of course, McGruder implicitly assumes that, by being associated with the word "drugs", Rush will have a figurative scarlet letter on his forehead in right-wing circles, ignoring that many conservatives and most libertarians support legalizing some or all narcotics, the war on drugs being a huge financial drain, with the vanguard of the conservative war against the war on drugs being at
National Review. So, no, sorry Aaron... erm, I mean, "Cesar and Huey", despite what you may want to see happen, Rush ain't becoming a pariah with conservatives... if anything, Rush is getting more love and support than ever from his millions of friends on the right.
(By the way, I got prescribed pain-killers myself when I had my impacted wisdom teeth removed in September 2002. I didn't get much of a buzz... not even when I combined it with alcohol, and we're talking 9% La Fin du Monde beer. I don't see what the fuss was about, but I guess I just wasn't using OxyContin.)
I don't really have anything else to say, but I'll finish transcribing the strip regardless.
PANEL THREE
Huey: Louis Farrakhan going to Heaven and finding out that God is a white woman who likes pork sandwiches.
Cesar: Something like that.
Assuming Louis Farrakhan goes to Heaven, of course.
I DON'T KNOW IF THIS INFORMATION ABOUT CHRETIEN'S "PLAN B" IS BULLSHIT OR WHAT...
...but, if the sovergnity referendum in 1995 had been a victory for the separatists, I would have welcomed
Canadian tanks into Montreal in order to protect federalist areas of the province. I say, let the "seppies" have their own little Banana Republic of Saguenay and Ile d'Anticosti, but damned if they're going to drag millions of proud Canadians, French, English and "Allophone"-speakers alike, out of Canada against their will. Not that I'm a huge fan of prime minister Chr�tien myself, but, if he had one problem with his treatment of the soveirgnty debate, it was that he didn't speak seriously enough about partition, the only logical solution even if "partition" is a very politically incorrect word to the separatist-appeasers. An independent country of Quebec, a Canadian province of "West Quebec", and a Cree/Innu territory in the north. Yes, the partition of Quebec wouldn't be an easy process, but neither would be separation.
But Chretien said Lawrence Martin's allegations are "bullshit", or the French equivalent ("merde", I guess).
IS IT TIME FOR ME TO STOP CALLING YVES ENGLER "COMRADE ENGLER"?
Well, no... of course not. But there's this bloody hilarious
opinion piece by moonbat Robert Sonin** in this week's Link, which argues, essentially, that Engler's views
aren't anti-capitalist enough. And he's not being sarcastic... at least I
think he's not.
My response:
Da, Comrade!
Hmm... Yves Engler's views aren't anti-capitalist enough? That's actually funnier than anything in the spoof issue... this guy is being serious, right? I mean, I'm an unrepentant right-wing bastard whom would never defend Engler's views on capiltalism (or, as I prefer to say, "laissez-faire Free Market-ism", since calling somehting positive a Marxist term like "capitalism" bothers me), but, come on... ["Mr. Slave" from South Park voice]"Jesus Christ"[/"Mr. Slave" from South Park voice]! This guy lost me when he said "Lenin would have called Engler's view..." and he wasn't being sarcastic. I guess it's time to ship Engler off to the gulag or the Siberian mines for being less "ideologically pure". Ah, internacene bickering on the left... it never ceases to amuse me.Steve B.
**I don't remember Robert Sonin from the bad old days of the "Communist Students' Union", so I don't know if I can officially call him "Comrade" according to my own rules (it applies to CSU executives from the Rob Green, Sabrina Stea/Patrice Blais, and Sabine Freisinger regimes), but, obviously, he deserves that. Maybe "General Secretary Sonin"?
Zac Bertschy has written the
2003 Anime Fall Preview. He seems to recommend
Peacemaker Kurogane, Leiji Matsumoto's
Galaxy Railways and
Hundred Stories best, but I think I'll like
Planetes for the reasons I give
here:
Zac has seen Planetes and I haven't yet nor have I read anything else but what he wrote about it yet either, so I can't really say whether or not I think a comparison to the "Magnetic Rose" sequence of Memories is apt or not, just, from the way Zac described it, would it be wrong for me to assume the series can more easily be described as "Patlabor in space", at least in tone? (By Patlabor, I mean the semi-comedic/semi-dramatic TV and the two OVA series, not the more serious films.) If that's the case, I'm sold.
I was sort of hoping he'd review the Sailor Moon live-action series, just so I could see how many times he'd fit the phrase "train wreck" into a single paragraph. Or maybe he likes it... from the impression I get about his tastes from the board, his reviews and "Miso Soup", I think not, but ya never know. I like it a lot, but I was expecting something really goofy, campy and cheesy and it exceeded even my wildest expectations in those regards.
Oh, sorry, the name of Zac Bertschy's column at Kevin Smith's
MoviePoopShoot.com is
"Hot Miso", not "Miso Soup".
SAILOR MOON THOUGHTS
On Wednesday, I finally got a chance to see the second episode of live-action
Sailor Moon, which took me a couple of days to completely download using WinMX. As before, I don't need to write a synopsis since I can just
point you towards Genvid.com.
Is it just me or is the music in the teaser showing scenes from the previous episode a rip-off of the romantic theme from
Superman?
Aww... for some reason, Queen Beryl is nowhere near "Rita Repulsa"-hot this time around. At least Jadeite's wig looks a little less weird this time around.
Ooh... Motoki's turtle's aquarium in the Crown Karaoke center is unusually clean-looking and not the salmonella tank which was the aquarium for my brother and sister's turtles. They put them in a wading pool in our backyard in 1997 when we all went to England for vacation for a month, and, when we returned, they were gone! Not that this has anything to do with my synopsis.
Yes, that's right, Usagi has a karaoke "Passport" with a picture of Luna on it which Motoki doesn't seem to recognize, but he lets her in anyhow. Umm... Motoki? Shouldn't you be able to know which "Passport"s are valid and which are forged considering you work at the fricking place which prints the bloody things?!
Luna has set up the Sailors' headquarters in a room in the Crown Karaoke center which, apparently, Motoki won't notice is "missing". Well, they've established that Motoki is dim, so I guess maybe it's not so far-fetched that he'll notice an entire room as well as the door to it is gone. Even though the room seems to be the largest one in the place, almost big enough to be a "set" (*wink wink*)! Though, I should point out, the Sailors had a whole room for themselves at the Crown *arcade* in the original Naoko Takeuchi manga, so this isn't really a total invention for the live-action series. In the anime, they mainly used Hikawa temple as a headquarters, though one of the arcade machines at Crown did double as their master computer.
Luna put in the candy dispensers, and replaces the flowers herself every other day? Also, she printed up the songbook herself? A stuffed toy got record companies to place glossy ads in her songbook?
More obvious foreshadowing: Minako Aino's latest album is called "Venus". I have to say, though, making Minako an idol singer already does clear up one of my big problems with the anime. In the anime and manga, Minako only wanted to be an idol singer, though she was already an idol to many as "Sailor V", her guise before she joined the Sailor Senshi and became Sailor Venus. I always had one simple question... who was making the Sailor V merchandise? Did they have permission from Minako and, if so, were they in on Sailor V's secret identity as Minako? Well, if you assume it's all unlicensed attempts to cash in on the folk legend of Sailor V popularized by eyewitness accounts in the Tokyo media but never filmed, it works as an adequate explanation, and, in the first season, this may just be the case. But, in an episode in the third season, Minako seems to be openly hawking products with Sailor V's picture on it, so someone else, never mentioned on the series, is in on her secret identity besides Katarina, the police officer? Or does Minako just make all these products herself? But, if the merchandising is about Minako as herself, it just makes a lot more sense.
While Luna's explaining something in Japanese, Usagi, not paying too much attention, uses her magical transformation cell phone and becomes.... Amy, the punk girl played by Tia Carrere in the 1986 Sainte Anne de Bellevue-filmed** horror suckfest
Zombie Nightmare. The resemblance is uncanny... even the face of the actress playing the punk girl looks exactly like a young Tia! Apparently, this film, also starring Adam West, was featured on
Mystery Science Theatre 3000, however, I don't think they've ever shown that in Canada, but I have rented
Zombie Nightmare and it was even worse than I had heard. No, Usagi-chan! Don't go to the Mirabel fitness centre on Brunswick boulevard in Pointe Claire across the street from Fairview shopping centre! If you do, the zombie played by Jon Mikl Thor will kill you and smear your blood across that window!
Aww... no one wants to eat lunch with Ami Mizuno so she has to eat alone on the roof. She looks so sad... aww... Genvid.com already made a joke about the live-action version of Ami-chan being so dim compared to the anime that she actually talks to Luna like a person before she realizes that it isn't an ordinary stuffed toy, so I can't make that joke.
Hmm... that museum room with the two little pottery statues which Jadeite puts the crystal thing which looks exactly like rock sugar next to to transform them into the monster-of-the-week sure is awfully big to be displaying just one small exhibit, isn't it?
Also, good thing that the museum is otherwise empty except for Ami-chan's juku (cram school) teacher, whose body the statue-monster steals for no apparent reason other than to drag Ami-chan into the fight-of-the-week later on in the episode, when Ami-chan is the only student not made unconscious by the teacher as she was listening to Minako on the headset.
Aww... Ami-chan is upset because Usagi only wanted to be friends with her because she was a senshi? But Luna didn't tell her until after Usagi talked to Ami for the first time...
Ooh... clever in-joke... the name of the juku which Usagi's mother sends Usagi to is "Yoiko no Nakayoshi" as in
Nakayoshi, the shoujo (girls') magazine which published the original
Sailor Moon manga.
Wow, that bracelet thingy Luna gives Ami-chan looks like it came from only the finest toy store plastic jewelry vending machine.
Hmm... isn't it lucky that Ami-chan somehow falls at a much slower rate than the ceramic idol statue "monster-of-the-week"? I guess in Japan, gravity doesn't always abide by Newton's Law. Also, it's a good thing that Ami-chan transforming into Sailor Mercury in mid-air overrules Newton's Laws of motion somehow.
Behind Sailor Mercury, at the end of her transformation sequence, there's one of those ultra-slow motion film of a splash of water from a drop hitting a surface where it looks like a bubble and then a crown as smaller drops protrude from it. What is this... is the video backdrop the original beginning from
3-2-1 Contact?
As Sailor Moon and Sailor Mercury spin in pirouettes to get out of the way of the monsters-of-the-week, look at their skirts. Do I see a little "white"? Then Sailors Moon and Mercury run in a huge circle around the monsters-of-the-week, and Sailor Moon does this jump that looks like a scissor kick and you see her panties clearly. Mercury crouches to avoid the ceramic idol dog, then spis around and there's a brief but very big panty shot, and, during the "Shining Aqua Illusion" attack, you glimpse some more white. What's the deal with all these panty shots of teenage girls? Who directed this episode,
David Hamilton?
Wait... how exactly does Tuxedo Mask know that the new Senshi's name is "Sailor Mercury"? He was watching them in hiding way up there on that walkway! I guess he's an excellent lip-reader.
Hmm... why do I get the idea that they couldn't think of a good way to end the episode so they're just showing the first scene from next week's episode, introducing Keiko Kitagawa as Rei Hino?
Well, overall, I'm still enjoying it, but... damn... are they intentionally trying to make
"Sweet Angel" Chisaki Hama look as sexy as possible when she's Sailor Mercury, to the point of sort of looking like they've smeared some Vaseline on the camera lens like the aforementioned David Hamilton does? It's just a little creepy considering that Hama's the
youngest of the five main actresses, who doesn't even turn 15 until November 10th.
I haven't even found the third episode on WinMX yet, so don't expect the next one of these until at least Friday.
**The credits for
Zombie Nightmare list it as "Sainte Anne de
Vellevue"! Also, bits of it were filmed in Pierrefonds (the Twist & Creme ice cream place), Pointe Claire and on Sherbrooke right in front of Concordia's Loyola campus, I know.
