GIANT ROBOT CLUB!

Live-action GANTZ.

http://www.gantz-movie.com/

Also spoof of Wes Anderson movies:

Warren Bad Idea, Movies, Whatever brutal, FUCK!!!, HOLY CHRIST IN A BUCKET, Insane, Japan, Movies, Seriously?, WTF?

Here is my present to you:

MILES’ UPDATE
Birthday Cards are a Scam!

Sean Whatever

Today I keep alive a Barrett family tradition.

It is the tradition of not watching the regular season and playoffs, but watching the Superbowl all the same.

Go Saints!

Miles Whatever

As of today, the Hollywood Video in downtown LO is shutting down forever.

That store opened around 1990, and it was the source of almost all my video games and movies for nearly half of the 20 years it was open. I have fond memories of hitting them up every friday after school to rent a game or movie for the weekend, since I never had the money to buy games or movies.

It had an absurdly well-stocked anime section (like 150 titles in 2000!) that opened me eyes to a whole genre of terror and insanity that I would otherwise have never encountered as early as I did. Their classic VHS section had almost everything I could want.

I remember when they had audiobooks and VHS tapes. I remember renting Final Fantasy II and Chrono Trigger. I remember our late-night runs to find something worth watching. Mostly I have amazingly detailed and special memories of the place.

Even when my parents couldnt buy me something they always had money for a game rental at Hollywood, and a pizza at the Little Caesar’s (next to the taco bell down the street). That was my escape from the loneliness of my life when I was young.

I have a lot of the same feelings and memories for Hollywood that a lot of you had for Rosewood video. It’s so goddamn sad to see these places that fueled our youthful discoveries go away. One more reminder that we’re not little kids anymore and the real world is changing and being rebuilt for another generation entirely. For me, it’s like watching someone tear down your childhood home, or the playground near your house, or hearing that a long-lost friend died.

I’m going down tomorrow to raid their stock- I feel like I’m graverobbing by doing so.

Drink a toast to the past, and for the happy memories that sustain us.

-Warren

Warren Whatever

I would play this:

Hardcore video game rap, with an 8-bit flavor:

Source, plus links to the Mario and Castlevania rap by the same team.

http://kotaku.com/5465891/are-you-a-bad-enough-dude-to-listen-to-this-with-speakers-on

Warren Whatever

I don’t know how many of you watch Important Things with Demitri Martin, but here you go.

Bruce the Funny Dog

EDIT: The song is hilarious, and the sketch really picks up speed at the end.

Miles Whatever

"Oh God, I can't do this shit anymore..."

Warren Whatever

Joe Haldeman, author of Forever War… wrote Robot Jox….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Jox

Also Ridley Scott is filming the Forever War movie as we speak.

END OF LINE.

Warren Whatever

So earlier this week, buried beneath news stories about the iPad and Haiti, was a little story about how physicists at Lawrence Livermore just overcame one of the most fundamental hurdles involved in achieving sustained nuclear fusion.

Not only did the team prove conventional thinking about the interaction of laser-generated plasma with fusion reactions as -total bullshit-,  but for the first time are looking at a system that can reliably make a positive return on energy investment (megawatt in, megawatt out, etc).

This is really fucking exciting, because if we can figure out how to maintain nuclear fusion using non-radioactive sources, we can start looking at power sources that don’t require a massive supply chain or non-renewable resources to keep running.

It’s not a pipe dream anymore- we’re finally entering the age where fusion is a reality!

Even better, we may even be able to take radioactive materials and refuse them in such a way to make them less unstable and therefore less radioactive (though in truth, using a plasma furnace will achieve better results anyway).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8485669.stm

Warren Whatever

So… I’ve been busy trying to evade work and set myself up for another school attempt this year, while playing through a stack of games I really need to finish. Also working on the bankruptcy option still (that is a giant fucking monster pain in my ass.)

What about everybody else? What are you up to these days?

Warren Whatever

So, Salinger’s dead. I never really got into his work, though it’s hard to deny the impact he had on youth culture during the middle of the last century. He never really spoke to me the way he did to others, probably because I was already disenfranchised with society, but had turned my angst inward toward project ’self-administered hell’.

Like many other authors, he apparently despised celebrity and fame- this always makes me question their initial motives behind publishing their work. If you make a heartfelt work public, aren’t you essentially -asking- for that to happen?

He spent the last 50 years in seclusion- I heard he ate in the kitchen of restaurants to avoid notice among other weirdness. He was so private, in fact, that I assumed he died years before since I had never heard a damn thing about him.

I suppose also it’s your right and privilege to avoid the spotlight, especially if your work gets used to justify or explain assassinations and radical movements. Again, I just don’t see the importance of the Catcher in the Rye, or how it was embraced by so many as such a mind-opening experience.

Maybe I just needed to add some LSD?

MILES’ EDIT
Howard Zinn author of a “People’s History of the United States” is dead as well. While I did not read People’s History, I did get a chance to see Zinn speak about 7 years ago. His tongue in cheek talk about checks and balances was a not to subtle way of saying there were no checks nor balances. Our government is flawed. I don’t necessarily agree, but I don’t disagree either.

Warren Whatever

So…yeah…

Okay, so the first 24 hours of facebook were a bit surreal. I’ll think the funniest moment was when Geoff joined the “I Hate Mike Cassidy Group” followed by Sean, followed by Mike.

This one works on two levels. First you have Mike’s membership, which is farcical enough (kind of like the No Homers club). But second, is the fact that this is clearly a group for a different Mike Cassidy. I can just imagine the group’s creator going “what the hell?”

Miles Whatever

“In other news, the one true king of england was found dead in his cell at eastwick prison. He was the apparent victim of a cell-block ’sex for cigarettes’ trade gone terribly, terribly wrong…”

Warren Whatever

Remember sonic spinball? That crazy genesis game where you were sonic, and the world was a series of increasingly badly designed pinball tables? Well some genius decided they would make a roller coaster out of that.

Smart.

I remember that game and if the coaster is anything like it, thousands of theme park attendees will be thrown into pits of lava, and while their bodies burn away into charred ashes, a man with a handlebar mustache and a billiard ball physique will be taunting them with talk about chaos emeralds and gay foxes.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3177698

Warren Whatever

Okay, so part of my rampant musical posting on this site was for just such an occasion. You guys are all awesome, and we’ve done loads of cool shit together. But aside from a Weird Al show with Alan, we haven’t really gone to any concerts.

You follow me so far?

The Toasters, my favorite ska band, and perhaps THE GREATEST U.S. SKA BAND EVER are playing two shows in Oregon. There’s a show on February 18th in Portland, and a show on February 21st in Eugene. I’d like to go to at least one of those shows. Let me know if you’re interested.

EDIT
Tickets are cheap, 10 bucks a pop. I’d prefer Eugene since the show’s on Sunday instead of Thursday. But the Portland show has a couple other acts who may be worth checking out.

Miles Whatever

Ska is SO 2009. Now I’m into ROCKSTEADY!

Messin’ Around by Deal’s Gone Bad

The song I’m about to post has rocked my world all damn morning. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to jump up and wave your hands about.

Take a listen. Doesn’t it sound like something right of the Blues Brother’s Soundtrack? Like some soulful creation of the 70s infused with some of that 60s blues sensibility? Can’t you just imagine some powerful black vocalist belting this one out?

The real mindfuck? This song came out in 2007 and the band is comprised entirely of white musicians. Play that funky music white boy indeed…

Miles Whatever

Here’s some insane shit because I had a stressful week!

Read more…

Warren Whatever

The victory of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race caused Health Insurance Stocks to rise. While Brown’s victory does not guarantee defeat for health care reform, it does through out a few road blocks.

How fucked up is this? Those without then ability to get health insurance are as “at-risk” as ever, while those with the financial security to buy stocks in health care get richer. Can we stop all the profiteering from suffering? Can we just STOP IT?!

Maybe I’m upset because this has been a race that I have been watching with some interest (kinda like swine flu circa May 2009). But I just don’t know what to do. It angers me to think that the will of one state (no matter how good a barometer of the masses) could influence the entire country. My own health insurance is currently dependent on a few more months of service before benefits kick in. I’m 27, uninsured, and if anything, I’m still one of the luckier ones. Now THAT’s a depressing thought.

It makes me want to take action. But what kind of action? Do I talk to my friends and neighbors? Do I blog? Do I donate money? Do I volunteer? What do I do?
It needs to be something…

Miles Whatever

Yes, Vin Diesel actually does play D&D (jump ahead to about 2:20 to avoid more Jimmy Kimmel than necessary):

You know who else plays D&D? Read more…

Sean Whatever

Has anyone else seen the trailer for Creation, the Charles Darwin biopic?  It’s…uh…well, take a look at it here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/creation/

Leaving aside the fact that it doesn’t seem to be very historically accurate (Origin of Species was basically first written in a rush to keep Russel Wallace from publishing the theory of natural selection first), there seems to be some sort of undue emphasis on the religious impact of Darwin’s theory and very little on the scientific impact.  This seems to me like it is either missing the point to the importance of Darwin or deliberately misrepresenting the issue.  Would it be going to far to say that this trailer is indicative of the opinion of Darwin in western popular culture as a whole, where more people consider him important based on the religious implication of his theories than for his contributions to scientific thought?

Does anybody else feel like we as a culture aren’t really interested in science (and especially evolutionary biology) on its own, but rather that most people only really care about it for how it confirms or refutes their religious worldview? Regardless of what this trailer implies, this was definitely not the way people thought in 1850s Europe.  What do you guys think is the cause for this difference in cultural values?

Being who I am, I guess I should be more irritated by the trailer for the new Karate Kid movie because it takes place in China and is about Kung-Fu and will probably set back American awareness that Japan and China are different places and that knowing the difference matters, but that’s a lost cause.  Also, there’s something kind of creepy about Jackie Chan beating up little kids and telling Will Smith’s son to “jack it off.”

Why can’t all movies be more like Hot Tub Time Machine?  I have no philosophic/cultural objections to Hot Tub Time Machine.

Sean Whatever