Showing posts with label funny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label funny. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Friday, September 2, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Conan the Barbarian - The Musical!
There is one thing certain about the upcoming Conan the Barbarian remake: there is no possible way it can be converted into a musical half as good as this:
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Bad 80's - Africa
There is a sense of innocense of wonder about those first true music videos in the early 80's that I happen to find very nostalgic. It's clear that artists were fumbling into the new medium, trying to marry their music with moving images while also attempting to tell a story.
One needs to look no further than Toto's Africa as one of the greatest evidence of that awkward transition from radio to video. If we ignore the the band's appearance, which screams early 80's Middle Earth festival, the video starts routinely enough: there seems to be a dude, looking for a certain book in an African library (maybe) while a female librarian works on. It makes sense, because I guess the song could be about a guy who is trying to track down a long lost love. I don't know why he would have to go to a tiny library, but this isn't the 80's.
From there, shit starts to get weird. I guess Toto must mean "creepy book demon," because the rest of the video unfolds kind of like a horror movie. After cavorting like miniature pixies atop a stack of books, the lead singer eventually finds that same book, cleverly labeled "Africa;" upon touching the book, the lead singer releases the rest of the demonic band from their leather-bound prison, who immediately go to work burning down the library and killing the poor innocent female librarian.
Thank jeebus for the Kindle and iBooks. I ain't releasing no Totos.
One needs to look no further than Toto's Africa as one of the greatest evidence of that awkward transition from radio to video. If we ignore the the band's appearance, which screams early 80's Middle Earth festival, the video starts routinely enough: there seems to be a dude, looking for a certain book in an African library (maybe) while a female librarian works on. It makes sense, because I guess the song could be about a guy who is trying to track down a long lost love. I don't know why he would have to go to a tiny library, but this isn't the 80's.
From there, shit starts to get weird. I guess Toto must mean "creepy book demon," because the rest of the video unfolds kind of like a horror movie. After cavorting like miniature pixies atop a stack of books, the lead singer eventually finds that same book, cleverly labeled "Africa;" upon touching the book, the lead singer releases the rest of the demonic band from their leather-bound prison, who immediately go to work burning down the library and killing the poor innocent female librarian.
Thank jeebus for the Kindle and iBooks. I ain't releasing no Totos.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
A Game of Content
Long time, amiright?
It's been hard to get some lucid content that isn't just trailers or funny short videos. Ideally, the rate at which I would like to be churning out content would be equal to the speed at which it is delivered over the interwebz, but frankly there have been a whole host of things that have diverted my mind elsewhere; ideally, all these new things are great for blogger contemplation, so for the sake of getting some much needed writing exercise, I thought I would do a stream of consciousness piece that would explore some of the things that have piqued my interest, and examine some of the things that have commanded my attention.
The NBA Finals
On paper, these Finals are joke. As if the NBA couldn't have planned it any better for their commercial viability, the Miami Heat are finally at full strength. Any way you look at the current matchups with the Dallas Mavericks, there is just no way you can completely shut the Heat down; conversely, there are several ways to derail the Mavericks (double team Dirk down to 35% shooting and make their bench beat you) and it just so happens that Miami has also one of the quickest and most athletic defenses in the league that is up to the task.
Talent wise, watching the Heat is like watching a constant highlight reel that can pretty much score without any set play, while the Mavericks is like watching a bunch of cagey veterans flip through a book of plays and then have to get into a half court set to free up their shooters and get any sort of offense.
I'll save my breath for the ref conspiracy theories, but I have already witnessed some blatant no-calls that were going Miami's way in Game 1. If you look at it from purely a financial "bottom line," the NBA needs the Heat to win; David Stern wants LeBron to validate himself in the wake of last Summer's PR nightmare that was "The Decision," and ascend to the rank of our generation's "Basketball Jesus." The conflict that LeBron created was good for dialogue and selling tickets, but I am sure the NBA would rather the top player of an era be as loved as MJ was (even though he was kind of a dick). Honestly, even though these Finals will be predictable, I'll still watch because the talent in tandem of Wade and James is undeniably entertaining. Also, the last living Neanderthal named "Dirk" can shoot the "J," y'all!
I know what you're thinking : I claim to have no time to write, yet I created a Facebook Account for my dog? It was a dare turned fun little exercise, as trying to picture how "Gus" views the world has been an legitimate time-killer.
I am sure if everyone who owned a pet tried to analyze and synthesize each of their individual quirks, you would come to find that these creatures that live with us actually have quite robust personalities. My dog Gus, for instance, is mortally terrified of grates and sewer drains, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. The phobia has gotten worse with age, yet he has never had a traumatic experience that would lend itself to the aversion or his behavior; hell, my parents' beagle/retriever dog is probably the smartest animal I know, and she has had a myriad of traumatic sprays to the face from skunks and never put 2 and 2 together that she probably shouldn't go sniffing that creature's ass.
It's funny, because while the fear Gus developed of vortexes he can't see into is completely instinctively rational, the behavior he exhibits is a little loopy : if I were on a normal sized residential street walking down the center, and there was a sewer drainage ditch to my right twenty feet away, and I took one step toward that ditch while he is on the leash, you would think that I suddenly was dragging him toward a pit of vipers the speed at which he puts the breaks on; he will desperately run the other direction. However, if I were going down the middle of the street, and I released Gus from his leash while the ditch was in sight, he would actually run right over to it and stick his whole damn head down the hole sniffing and examining it. Clearly, the rationale is: human + leash + hole = puppy spelunking.
Meh, the kid's cute - so I put up with it.
Back in April, I explored how awesome the existence of HBO's Game of Thrones was, and how far fantasy as a genre had come that it could get such a big budget, hard-R adaptation. Having not read a lick of the novels the show was based on, I noticed several initial similarities that seem to be pervasive through almost all the popular modern fantasy series of the last 20 years, similarities to me that had become trite and predictable, and I hoped that this series would not follow a similar arc.
Crises fucking averted.
Three weeks ago I started George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series. Three weeks later, I am 3500 pages into the series, having finished A Game of Thrones , A Clash of Kings , A Storm of Swords, and am currently blazing through A Feast for Crows - and finally officially at only the midpoint of Martin's epic.
Listen, I know many of you will only watch the show, so I will not spoil anything. I was peeved a few weeks back when it seemed that the show was vaulting ahead on some plot points faster than I could read, and was already spoiling material I hadn't gotten to in the books; now I am comfortably in a place where I can enjoy both the show and the books for what they are. I can only hope the show stays alive to do the major plot developments and characterizations justice (so far so good on that front), because everyone is in for an amazing treat (if I did a 1:1 comparison on how much ground the show covers in a week in relation to the books, I am at about episode 37).
Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice is the series that shatters the fantasy paradigm established by The Lord of the Rings and the clones that followed. In Tolkien's LOTR, there is black and white - good and evil - with very few shades of grey in between. The bad guys are literal monsters, while the good guys are human or some dwarf or elf variation. It's probably shouldn't be a shock that one of the most memorable and deepest characters is the one that also diverts from the black and white formula s so prevalent in the series (and also happens to be literally grey) : Gollum. There are subplots to be sure, but it all serves to feed back into main story and theme. Yet, the language and history have always been the deepest, the characters the coolest, and the battles were epic.
For years, trudging through fantasy post-LOTR has been like reading lesser variations of Tolkien's masterpiece. No one really attempted to break away from the norm (save for introducing sex) that there exists Good and Evil, and the hero could be altruistic to a fault but still end up triumphing. Why? The stories were easy to churn out and accessible, the characters familiar and identifiable, but the plots became rote and predictable.
Then came A Song of Fire and Ice in the 90's. George R.R. Martin's initial novel, A Game of Thrones , was lauded by everyone in the business as a literary masterwork and technical achievement, yet it never reached best seller status until it was announced in 2008 that HBO would be adapting it. Not only have the four books that have been released since then (released 4-6 years apart from each other) achieved multiple literary awards, but inside the jacket of each book exists paragraph after paragraph of only the highest praise from the best-selling fantasy writers of our time. If you read between the lines of their praise, you would understand that THIS was the series they wish they were capable of.
Again, how could something of this magnitude that insiders were raving about not achieve commercial success until the brilliant minds of HBO declared it worthy of throwing down damn near sixty million dollars?
Because it's a once in a lifetime genre-busting game changer. Everything that was comfortably established by Tolkien is gone. In A Song of Fire and Ice , the characters aren't easily identifiable - there IS no black and white, because only the grey can survive in this world. These characters are real people with real motivations and very adult cravings acting as if they would have existed in a historical medieval setting where there just so happens to also exist fantasy elements; Martin based the idea of the series on the historical machinations of the ruling families during the War of the Roses, and as a result the plot is probably the richest account of political intrigue in the entirety of the genre, one that at times is Shakespearean in its level of tragedy.
In the fantasy world of the Seven Kingdoms, Westeros, there are no magic bullets or plot devices to save our heroes and defeat the perceived evil; you play the "game of thrones" or you die. Ancient family Houses position and reposition themselves with Machiavellian plots that are so complex that at any one time there could be up to 15 individual characters with their own motivations who are affecting the progression of the story. As kings fall, the lines of family succession and codes of conduct and morality are so complex that each novel comes with an almost 70 page appendix of names and descriptions of the Houses "Great and Small" and everything in between.
But wait, isn't this a fantasy novel? 3500 pages into the series and just now are some of the traditional threads of fantasy being woven in, albeit with sublime subtlety. Even if you are watching the show, there is nothing really overtly magical happening. At the point I am at, there are so many characters who follow so many schisms of religions, one could guess that the gods are as diverse and morally grey as the characters that worship them; hell they too even could even be playing a "game of thrones" themselves. This fantasy elements are not forced, nor does they need to be to hold our attention - it is the richness and diversity of the characters who may emerge to the forefront, only to recede or die shockingly.
This is very much an adult series in every sense of the word (sexy wenches!), and readers are quick to learn that established characters' fates are highly unpredictable. Though the series seems on the surface to be about a few powerful people and families, Martin changes the script and establishes early on in the novels that it's not only kings that decide the fate of man, but also seemingly lesser individuals whose actions may have consequences that create ripples throughout the giant world they live in. What higher praise could be said of a story but that it captures the vulnerability of men and women, both great and small; they all may die, while those who live change. Through it all, the characters have life .
For all the political intrigue, I will say that my favorite story follows that of the Stark bastard Jon Snow and his snow-white direwolf "Ghost." I won't say too much, but his position on the Wall guarding the north removes his character from the game of thrones that happens far to the south. If I would venture a guess, I would say that Snow has to also be Martin's favorite character to write about, as his adventures with Ghost follow a more traditional fantasy model, and Jon himself is in the vein of an archetypical fantasy hero. I have already learned to stop trying to predict the fates of characters as the series is far from over, but the stakes that exist for Jon are a little higher than winning a throne. There is a Helms Deep moment on the Wall that I will look forward to seeing on any screen.
I should be finishing up A Feast For Crows just in time for the release of A Dance With Dragons which comes out in June. Hopefully, I won't have to wait 6 years like some people for the next book, as I hope George R.R. Martin has a Stephen King like crises of mortality Dark Tower moment and churn out the two remaining chapters sooner rather than later.
As the show concludes book 1, I will go over some important questions that the viewers should be asking themsleves.
After my upcoming one-year anniversary with my lovely wife, I am hoping to catch up on some more writing. Look forward to a Bridesmaids Vs. Hangover piece, an X-Men review, and some coverage and contemplation on what is to be revealed at the videogame expo, E3. Right now, I am going to go devour another 500 pages of A Feast for Crows and wait on bated breath for it's follow up.
It's been hard to get some lucid content that isn't just trailers or funny short videos. Ideally, the rate at which I would like to be churning out content would be equal to the speed at which it is delivered over the interwebz, but frankly there have been a whole host of things that have diverted my mind elsewhere; ideally, all these new things are great for blogger contemplation, so for the sake of getting some much needed writing exercise, I thought I would do a stream of consciousness piece that would explore some of the things that have piqued my interest, and examine some of the things that have commanded my attention.
The NBA Finals
On paper, these Finals are joke. As if the NBA couldn't have planned it any better for their commercial viability, the Miami Heat are finally at full strength. Any way you look at the current matchups with the Dallas Mavericks, there is just no way you can completely shut the Heat down; conversely, there are several ways to derail the Mavericks (double team Dirk down to 35% shooting and make their bench beat you) and it just so happens that Miami has also one of the quickest and most athletic defenses in the league that is up to the task.
Talent wise, watching the Heat is like watching a constant highlight reel that can pretty much score without any set play, while the Mavericks is like watching a bunch of cagey veterans flip through a book of plays and then have to get into a half court set to free up their shooters and get any sort of offense.
 |
| Yep, it's pretty much like an unfair NBA Jam game. |
I'll save my breath for the ref conspiracy theories, but I have already witnessed some blatant no-calls that were going Miami's way in Game 1. If you look at it from purely a financial "bottom line," the NBA needs the Heat to win; David Stern wants LeBron to validate himself in the wake of last Summer's PR nightmare that was "The Decision," and ascend to the rank of our generation's "Basketball Jesus." The conflict that LeBron created was good for dialogue and selling tickets, but I am sure the NBA would rather the top player of an era be as loved as MJ was (even though he was kind of a dick). Honestly, even though these Finals will be predictable, I'll still watch because the talent in tandem of Wade and James is undeniably entertaining. Also, the last living Neanderthal named "Dirk" can shoot the "J," y'all!
 |
| Dirk shoot ball! Dirk happy! |
My Dog has a Facebook!
I know what you're thinking : I claim to have no time to write, yet I created a Facebook Account for my dog? It was a dare turned fun little exercise, as trying to picture how "Gus" views the world has been an legitimate time-killer.
I am sure if everyone who owned a pet tried to analyze and synthesize each of their individual quirks, you would come to find that these creatures that live with us actually have quite robust personalities. My dog Gus, for instance, is mortally terrified of grates and sewer drains, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. The phobia has gotten worse with age, yet he has never had a traumatic experience that would lend itself to the aversion or his behavior; hell, my parents' beagle/retriever dog is probably the smartest animal I know, and she has had a myriad of traumatic sprays to the face from skunks and never put 2 and 2 together that she probably shouldn't go sniffing that creature's ass.
It's funny, because while the fear Gus developed of vortexes he can't see into is completely instinctively rational, the behavior he exhibits is a little loopy : if I were on a normal sized residential street walking down the center, and there was a sewer drainage ditch to my right twenty feet away, and I took one step toward that ditch while he is on the leash, you would think that I suddenly was dragging him toward a pit of vipers the speed at which he puts the breaks on; he will desperately run the other direction. However, if I were going down the middle of the street, and I released Gus from his leash while the ditch was in sight, he would actually run right over to it and stick his whole damn head down the hole sniffing and examining it. Clearly, the rationale is: human + leash + hole = puppy spelunking.
 |
| Nope, you're right Gus. Fuck that. |
Meh, the kid's cute - so I put up with it.
One Series to Rule Them All
Back in April, I explored how awesome the existence of HBO's Game of Thrones was, and how far fantasy as a genre had come that it could get such a big budget, hard-R adaptation. Having not read a lick of the novels the show was based on, I noticed several initial similarities that seem to be pervasive through almost all the popular modern fantasy series of the last 20 years, similarities to me that had become trite and predictable, and I hoped that this series would not follow a similar arc.
Crises fucking averted.
Three weeks ago I started George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series. Three weeks later, I am 3500 pages into the series, having finished A Game of Thrones , A Clash of Kings , A Storm of Swords, and am currently blazing through A Feast for Crows - and finally officially at only the midpoint of Martin's epic.
Listen, I know many of you will only watch the show, so I will not spoil anything. I was peeved a few weeks back when it seemed that the show was vaulting ahead on some plot points faster than I could read, and was already spoiling material I hadn't gotten to in the books; now I am comfortably in a place where I can enjoy both the show and the books for what they are. I can only hope the show stays alive to do the major plot developments and characterizations justice (so far so good on that front), because everyone is in for an amazing treat (if I did a 1:1 comparison on how much ground the show covers in a week in relation to the books, I am at about episode 37).
Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice is the series that shatters the fantasy paradigm established by The Lord of the Rings and the clones that followed. In Tolkien's LOTR, there is black and white - good and evil - with very few shades of grey in between. The bad guys are literal monsters, while the good guys are human or some dwarf or elf variation. It's probably shouldn't be a shock that one of the most memorable and deepest characters is the one that also diverts from the black and white formula s so prevalent in the series (and also happens to be literally grey) : Gollum. There are subplots to be sure, but it all serves to feed back into main story and theme. Yet, the language and history have always been the deepest, the characters the coolest, and the battles were epic.
For years, trudging through fantasy post-LOTR has been like reading lesser variations of Tolkien's masterpiece. No one really attempted to break away from the norm (save for introducing sex) that there exists Good and Evil, and the hero could be altruistic to a fault but still end up triumphing. Why? The stories were easy to churn out and accessible, the characters familiar and identifiable, but the plots became rote and predictable.
Then came A Song of Fire and Ice in the 90's. George R.R. Martin's initial novel, A Game of Thrones , was lauded by everyone in the business as a literary masterwork and technical achievement, yet it never reached best seller status until it was announced in 2008 that HBO would be adapting it. Not only have the four books that have been released since then (released 4-6 years apart from each other) achieved multiple literary awards, but inside the jacket of each book exists paragraph after paragraph of only the highest praise from the best-selling fantasy writers of our time. If you read between the lines of their praise, you would understand that THIS was the series they wish they were capable of.
Again, how could something of this magnitude that insiders were raving about not achieve commercial success until the brilliant minds of HBO declared it worthy of throwing down damn near sixty million dollars?
Because it's a once in a lifetime genre-busting game changer. Everything that was comfortably established by Tolkien is gone. In A Song of Fire and Ice , the characters aren't easily identifiable - there IS no black and white, because only the grey can survive in this world. These characters are real people with real motivations and very adult cravings acting as if they would have existed in a historical medieval setting where there just so happens to also exist fantasy elements; Martin based the idea of the series on the historical machinations of the ruling families during the War of the Roses, and as a result the plot is probably the richest account of political intrigue in the entirety of the genre, one that at times is Shakespearean in its level of tragedy.
In the fantasy world of the Seven Kingdoms, Westeros, there are no magic bullets or plot devices to save our heroes and defeat the perceived evil; you play the "game of thrones" or you die. Ancient family Houses position and reposition themselves with Machiavellian plots that are so complex that at any one time there could be up to 15 individual characters with their own motivations who are affecting the progression of the story. As kings fall, the lines of family succession and codes of conduct and morality are so complex that each novel comes with an almost 70 page appendix of names and descriptions of the Houses "Great and Small" and everything in between.
But wait, isn't this a fantasy novel? 3500 pages into the series and just now are some of the traditional threads of fantasy being woven in, albeit with sublime subtlety. Even if you are watching the show, there is nothing really overtly magical happening. At the point I am at, there are so many characters who follow so many schisms of religions, one could guess that the gods are as diverse and morally grey as the characters that worship them; hell they too even could even be playing a "game of thrones" themselves. This fantasy elements are not forced, nor does they need to be to hold our attention - it is the richness and diversity of the characters who may emerge to the forefront, only to recede or die shockingly.
This is very much an adult series in every sense of the word (sexy wenches!), and readers are quick to learn that established characters' fates are highly unpredictable. Though the series seems on the surface to be about a few powerful people and families, Martin changes the script and establishes early on in the novels that it's not only kings that decide the fate of man, but also seemingly lesser individuals whose actions may have consequences that create ripples throughout the giant world they live in. What higher praise could be said of a story but that it captures the vulnerability of men and women, both great and small; they all may die, while those who live change. Through it all, the characters have life .
For all the political intrigue, I will say that my favorite story follows that of the Stark bastard Jon Snow and his snow-white direwolf "Ghost." I won't say too much, but his position on the Wall guarding the north removes his character from the game of thrones that happens far to the south. If I would venture a guess, I would say that Snow has to also be Martin's favorite character to write about, as his adventures with Ghost follow a more traditional fantasy model, and Jon himself is in the vein of an archetypical fantasy hero. I have already learned to stop trying to predict the fates of characters as the series is far from over, but the stakes that exist for Jon are a little higher than winning a throne. There is a Helms Deep moment on the Wall that I will look forward to seeing on any screen.
 |
| Jon Snow = win! |
I should be finishing up A Feast For Crows just in time for the release of A Dance With Dragons which comes out in June. Hopefully, I won't have to wait 6 years like some people for the next book, as I hope George R.R. Martin has a Stephen King like crises of mortality Dark Tower moment and churn out the two remaining chapters sooner rather than later.
 |
| Don't die on me, bro! |
As the show concludes book 1, I will go over some important questions that the viewers should be asking themsleves.
In the future
After my upcoming one-year anniversary with my lovely wife, I am hoping to catch up on some more writing. Look forward to a Bridesmaids Vs. Hangover piece, an X-Men review, and some coverage and contemplation on what is to be revealed at the videogame expo, E3. Right now, I am going to go devour another 500 pages of A Feast for Crows and wait on bated breath for it's follow up.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Between 2 Ferns: Will Ferrell
I don't know why, but these always get my goat; this one begs the question: why haven't we seen an Anchorman 2 that includes John C. Reilly and Zach Galifianakis?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
YTMND Weekly #14: Gator Conan
- After Conan O'brien allowed Will Farrell to shave off his beard - he seemed to resemble a certain swamp lizard: Conan Is....
- Oh well, can I go back to my last save? R.I.P
- This should be the PSA for Alchaholics Anonymous: Just Add Alchahol
- Pretty good response to the Rapture failure this past weekend: Comic Book Guy mocks Harlod Camping
- I knew a Dan W. once. It wouldn't be surprised if this is the same guy: Meet Dan
Friday, May 20, 2011
Bad 80's - Invisible Touch
I am an unabashed Phil Collins fan. Did you know English Dwarfs could sing like angels accompanied by key-tar?
At one point in the 80's, there was one English Dwarf who ruled the world, and white people from miles around would gather and lose their shit to his siren's call.
But seriously, this guy was a magician. One of his first solo forays away from Genesis led to the greatest music video of all time: SOMETHING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO HEAVEN .
There was never a video that combined the hapless existence of a dog more ; it was once rumored that Phil Collins' voice had the power to seduce even a feral canine. This video cemented Phil as the "Dr. Doolittle of Power Ballads" :
In similar news, Phil Collins was just cast in The Hobbit as the mayor of Hobbiton. Sorry, that's not true - but wouldn't it be cool if he was?
At one point in the 80's, there was one English Dwarf who ruled the world, and white people from miles around would gather and lose their shit to his siren's call.
But seriously, this guy was a magician. One of his first solo forays away from Genesis led to the greatest music video of all time: SOMETHING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO HEAVEN .
There was never a video that combined the hapless existence of a dog more ; it was once rumored that Phil Collins' voice had the power to seduce even a feral canine. This video cemented Phil as the "Dr. Doolittle of Power Ballads" :
In similar news, Phil Collins was just cast in The Hobbit as the mayor of Hobbiton. Sorry, that's not true - but wouldn't it be cool if he was?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Taming a Direwolf!
Augustus "Gus" Miller-Hamilton Shcnauzer is my fiercest friend. I reward him with what I call the "sleeping claw."
I was a little annoyed with HBO's Game of Thrones this week, as it was the first huge break with cannon. There were some revelations given and plots revealed in the T.V. show that I haven't even encountered in the novels yet, and I am 1300 pages into the series. I just wasn't prepared for the astronomical leap the story took, but I understand the small-screen can't always have the subtlety that books can convey.
Knowing what I know about how the story is supposed to play out, I am hoping that they can at least do the big twists and turns some justice. My personal favorite stories so far in the books are the ones about Jon Snow and his direwolf "Ghost," as well as political maneuverings of the "Imp."
Monday, May 9, 2011
PlayStation Network Up By May 31st - Nerds Weep!
 |
| Now the universal symbol for "implosion" |
As I have talked about previously, the sundering of the PlayStation Network by hackers seemed to be debacle that would take only weeks to solve. Any official information detailing the time frame for the online restoration that has come down the pipline on the company's blog has been frustratingly brief and cryptic; each day of silence has only angered loyal customers more.
In an effort to throw the masses a bone, Sony talked about May 4th as the targeted day for restoration. Clearly, that day has come and gone with nary and explanation - until today.
Shigenori Yoshida, a spokesperson for Sony in Japan, told Bloomberg today that the company plans to have the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services fully restarted by May 31st.
May frickin' 31st?!?
When tested in the "B.S." meter, this too could be a loose timeframe, though the company indicates that it actually is "very conservative." They maintain that May 31st is the date at which all phases of the network, which includes the online gaming, Qriocity, and the Playstation Store services, will be fully up and running. Sony assures that the gaming component of the network will be the first to be phased back in.
Honestly, it's almost impossible to pin down Sony at this point. Their mantra during this fiasco has been to basically go Helen Keller with their Public Relations. In any case, the PlayStation's future just might be filled with Sony executives that turn a deaf ear to their customers until they find themselves wandering blind and dumb amongst the wreckage of their brand.
That's not "water" Helen, that's failure.
 |
| Helen, pictured with her dog, "Durrrglihimmmm" |
Monday, April 25, 2011
Popular Fantasy and HBO's "Game of Thrones"
 |
| Alright HBO, you win. I will pay* to watch you... |
After watching the first two hours of the Game of Thrones , I cannot express how grateful I am that a fantasy adaptation could get this kind of treatment. Having not read the series, I cannot comment on how true to the first book the show has already been, though the premise seems familiar enough (note, that I now have in my possession the first novel for devouring).
These last few years, I have bounced around most of the most popular fantasy series; they have ranged from the sketchy as hell Sword of Truth series, through the wholly original yet heavy-Mormon- handed Mistborn series, to well written but rote Runelord novels. Being that they are all pretty derivative of the grandaddy of epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings , all of these series seem to not-so-subtly bear similar conceits to LotR that have somehow become ubiquitous amongst popular fantasy.
So far, Game of Thrones seems no different. Published in the 5 year window (what epic strain of weed did these authors get their hands on in the early 90s?) that saw the release of The Wheel of Time series, The Sword of Truth , and The Runelords , I can say that there are already some striking similarities that are pervasive and familiar:
 |
| Fantasy author, or sex offender? |
- Weakened/Powerful enemies in the "distant" East that seek to rule the world.
- Enemies that, if not monsters, bear striking resemblances to some very...ahem...historically Arabic cultures. Oh and they also have an insatiable appetite for raping/incest/child molestation - you know, because they are EVIL .
- Hidden primal forces that ultimately use said bad humans to do their dirty work, often with promises of power - thus weakening the human race to the point of annihilation.
- Formerly ignorant/ambivalent heroes in the remote reaches of the known world that are forced into action and acts of heroism.
- Batshit insane amounts of magic. Often, this magic is used several times as a plot device to get heroes out of tight spots. Most of the time, the heroes do not even know how it even happened. Just go to the next chapter - by then the author will have come down off the peyote to explain it better.
- All the main heroes are male. They usually start out as virgins, but go through so much hell saving the world that the main female heroins, who also happen to be the hottest babes on the planet, have to pretty much just give it up. Saving the hot babe form the hell-spawned rape demon for the third time in the middle of the book is mere blow-job currency in modern fantasy realms, as these guys only get laid AFTER they save the entire world.
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| Begone, you blue-balling harpy! |
Yet, the subtle attention to detail, the production quality, the acting (I mean they even got Sean Bean, aka "BOROMIR" for Sauron's sake), and the plot twists have already been enough to garner a second season and the dubbing of "best T.V. fantasy ever." I have to agree that it is damn good, and I hope it marks the beginning of the golden age of the modern epic fantasy genre.
It's been almost a decade since The Fellowship of the Ring , so perhaps the technology has caught up to be affordable enough for the small screen to start picking up more of these stories. For now, I am going to enjoy this surprise while it lasts.
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| Aw hell, I have to kill ANOTHER rape demon? |
*By pay, I mean trick Time Warner into giving me free HBO.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Attack the Block Trailer
You really cannot go wrong with Sean of the Dead , so it's awesome that Attack the Block exists; it is essentially Sean vs. Aliens.
I often daydream about such scenarios while I am staring off into space at work. I am glad to report that the number of people on my list whom I would consider to use as live bait for the aliens or zombies is, actually, quite small.
Glenn Beck, however - you definitely made the cut.
I often daydream about such scenarios while I am staring off into space at work. I am glad to report that the number of people on my list whom I would consider to use as live bait for the aliens or zombies is, actually, quite small.
Glenn Beck, however - you definitely made the cut.
Monday, April 18, 2011
WebMD Fail: Graves Disease
I don't mean any disrespect for those suffering from Graves disease, but what I will put forth are some of the warning signs in case you, or someone you know is quietly suffering. Here is the official rundown:
First described by Sir Robert Graves in the early 19th century , Graves' disease is one of the most common of all thyroid problems . It is also the leading cause of hyperthyroidism , a condition in which the thyroid gland produces excessive hormones . Once the disorder has been correctly diagnosed, it is quite easy to treat . In some cases , Graves' disease goes into remission or disappears completely after several months or years . Left untreated , however , it can lead to serious complications -- even death. Although the symptoms can cause discomfort, Graves ' disease generally has no long - term adverse health consequences if the patient receives prompt and proper medical care .
Well that doesn't sound too terrible. What are the visible symptoms?
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| HOLY GRANDMAS! |
That's right, a disease that makes you seem perpetually surprised. Look, even this finger holds some secrets:
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| Damn - you manicure, bro? |
Hell, there was even a celebrity that turned a profit:
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| RIP Marty Feldman (1934-1982) |
Once again, if you or someone you know is quietly suffering, call the Graves Help-line at: 1-800-BOO-EYES
YTMND #13: Senor Wayne
- I don't know if there was ever an alternate universe where Batman took place in Spain, but I imagine this Bruce's empire would be more...sexy : Señor Wayne's Gentlemen's Club!
- Little did anyone realize at the time, Napoleon's life was cyclical: He NEVER wins!
- Not naming names, but I know a few guys that this would appeal to (also, the Final Fantasy victory music is a welcome addition): Nerds: 1 World: 0
- I thought the 'roids would have overcome his ability to speak, but apparanently he still has a lucrative singing career: Macho Man
- Ohhhh...so that's what happened: Well, Shit...
Sunday, April 10, 2011
YTMND Weekly #12: Potatoes
- I must admit, I am thoroughly enjoying the UnclePhilTMNDs that are coming out lately: La Patata Bonita
- Nostalgia is a good thing sometimes; Monkey Island was the ballz back in the day (and hard as hell for a kid that couldn't read): A Day In the Dream of Guybrush
- You'll thank me later: Scarlett Johansson Sex Tape
- Perhaps this ship has sailed, but a little Rebecca Black rehash is good for the soul: Kickin' in the Front Seat
- This could be the next great comedic pair on T.V.: Two and a Half Men
- NSFW! Jack Nicholson's greatest, and probably most true to life role: Kindergarten Cop 2 - Jack Undercover
Sunday, April 3, 2011
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