GIANT ROBOT CLUB!

Also: Pee-Wee Shows iPad to The Playhouse!

Apparently the guy who played Billy/Blue Ranger was openly gay (what a shocker!) and left the show because the cast and crew were calling him faggot all the time:

(EW.com) — Almost 20 years after back-flipping onto kids’ TV sets as the nerdy Blue Ranger on Fox’s “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” David Yost opened up to No Pink Spandex about his stint on the show. And during the three-part interview, Yost revealed just what happened behind-the-scenes when his character was written off the show (and sent to live on another planet): Yost actually walked off set one day after being teased about being gay.

“The reason that I walked off is that I was called ‘f*****’ one too many times,” Yost says in the clip. “I had just heard that several times while working on the show from creators, producers, writers, directors… Basically I just felt like i was continually being told I was not worthy of being where I am because I’m a gay person. And I’m not supposed to be an actor. And I’m not a superhero.”

After leaving the show, Yost says he experienced a nervous breakdown. But he’s been doing just fine since then, working behind the camera as a producer for reality TV shows like “Temptation Island.” Still, the fact that such intolerance might have taken place on set of “Power Rangers” kind of kills the nostalgic buzz we all have for the show, no?

Wait, is being part of Temptation Island better or worse than Power Rangers?

Full article on Entertainment Weekly

WOODBURN — Flames from a burning bush spread to a church in Woodburn late Thursday morning.

Fire fighters were dispatched about 11:15 to a report of smoke coming from the Church of the Nazarene at 3601 Newberg Hwy, according to Woodburn Fire Chief Paul Iverson.

A passerby used a fire extinguisher to put out most of the flames before emergency crews arrived.

The cause of the fire remained under investigation.

Hmm… I’m assuming there’s no checkbox on the fire inspector form for ‘ironic act of God’.

via KGW.

Thanks for asking! A few things going on right now. Features pictures, music, and a story! Yay! Click through for the crap parade:

Read more…

Manual labor is becoming more and more difficult for Japan’s aging farmers, prompting a Tokyo professor to devise a high-tech solution: mechanize the bodies of the farmers themselves.

I’m shocked but not surprised that this is where Japan is spending all of its GNP- mechanizing the elderly. Good plan. We all know how well that worked in Roujin-Z.

Additional Nihon-brand craziness after the more!
Read more…

Famed anime director and animator… Was the creator/director of Paprika (which bears more than a passing resemblance to Inception), Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent, and Tokyo Godfathers among other works. Dead at 47. Damn.

Source.

Some ‘scientist’ from ‘Bristol’ thinks that available space, not survival fitness, is the most driving part of evolution.

I think we should go kick this guy’s ass! Who’s with me?

I’m really looking forward to Machete, and was hoping to drum up some interest in going to see it as a group when it comes out September 3rd.

Doesn’t have to be opening week, but I’d like to go to a movie with some people for a change.

Interest?

(Title is a riff from the ‘Grass’ short film)

Rifftrax LIVE Was Awesome! Reefer Madness is one of my all-time favorite movies the cast tore to shit, but the real treat were the three all-new shorts they worked on:

Short 1. 1930′s film on not using gasoline as a household cleaner. Was this ever so large a problem as to merit the production of a 10-minute public service film? Yes! My favorite part was the montage of explosions unrelated to gasoline describing how dangerous gasoline is when used as a household cleaner. Dynamite however is 100% safe apparently.

Short 2. 1960′s school film on what to do with dried grass. Ten minutes of watching kids braid grass into hats and other amazing uses for the stuff. So fucking insanely stupid you can’t believe it existed. Great job on the riffs here.

Short 3. Old 1930′s B&W bosco-style cartoon of two hobo dog/cat things at the north pole. Apparently it was father/son things, but at one point the old one steals the young one’s wallet when he thinks he’s dead so god only knows what the actual plot here was.

And of course, the eternally terrible Reefer Madness was ripe for the riffing. This was the carefully remastered and colorized version, which is weird to see if you have only seen the original in black and white, or haven’t ever seen the 1940′s in color. I really enjoyed hearing almost all new jokes for the live showing vs. the track they laid down on the DVD release a few years back. I never remember the riffs on the first run so I can’t really lay them out here, and most of them need to be in context.

It was a little overpriced to be honest but very fun to experience this kind of insanity in a theater full of similarly-minded geeks. There was a heated Warren Ellis discussion in the line waiting to get in.

ALSO-

Mike Nelson also announced the next Rifftrax Live event would be October 28th, doing the original House on Haunted Hill (starring Vincent Price!).

Any interest?

EDIT:

An encore (rebroadcast) happens on August 24th. So if you still had interest that’s another opportunity.

This thursday, 8pm at the Clackamas Town Center Century theater… Live coast-to-coast broadcast of a live riff session on Reefer Madness (OH YEAH!) by the mst3k/rifftrax guys! Only $13.50 and I am definitely going!

Info here.

Also includes some new short films, which have always been some of the funniest shit the mst3k guys managed.

Sorry for the short notice- didn’t find out until just now that it was available in town… Is anybody in?

How to teach philosophy and ethics through comics… because we all know how well that works out for the characters in them.

Via BBC.

Fantastic article- really well done and fun to read.

Yakuza 3 Review by Yakuza

Interestingly the author is a Jewish-American reporter who writes for one of Japan’s biggest papers as their chief Yakuza investigator- THIS is a really cool article about him and his interactions with the Yakuza, good and bad.

All via BoingBoing.

Finals week sucks, but this doesn’t! Quick note, volume is super loud at times.

Also, a clip from Night Court featuring Brent Spiner’s biggest TV role before Data- this is pretty good:

I remember seeing this advertised on FOX saturday morning years back. It’s stunning that it exists.

Power Rangers in Space Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Standard Quality [File2HD.com]

XKCD.

This is a good article from the BCC about how the US and UK view ‘fairness’ differently and why. Given how I feel about things right now this article really got me thinking. Basically the columnist says that the US uses a perceived or real lack of fairness in life to justify an extremely mobile society unconcerned with standing our ground and dealing with problems, while the UK tends to stay in one area as long as possible to try and work out how to make things better. Just a very interesting perspective.

Article on BBC

So my birthday is saturday. I was just going to ignore it as usual, but I kind of feel like going out and doing things- if not saturday then some other day. Anybody have any ideas?

Just when you thought things were quickly approaching maximum oddness, this sort of thing pops up and reminds you that there’s still plenty of room for crazy in the world.

Also, props to Time magazine for hamfisting the Moses allegory here:

Hip-hop, more than most pop genres, is something of a pulpit, urban fire and brimstone garbed in baggy pants and backward caps. So it’s little wonder that one of the music’s icons, Haitian-American superstar Wyclef Jean, is the son of a Nazarene preacher — or that he likens himself, as a child of the Haitian diaspora, to a modern-day Moses destined to return and lead his people out of bondage.

Via Time

Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs and narrator of Deadliest Catch, has a crazy story about castration and some really awesome insights into the real nature of success. It’s 20 min long, but there isn’t any video to really see but it is definitely worth listening to in the background.