Hole In The Wall Mini Cupcakes

~Arctic Bear!~
I love hole-in-the-wall eateries. Something about the personality of small places where you can have a quiet conversation with the owner/chef/waiter/cashier. Or maybe it's the closest I can come to blowing up a wall and getting to the secret room to find that heart piece.

HMTFWS: We Will Be Full of Plastic

So it's been forever but I have a really good excuse: I had a job! Yeah seriously, I was doing stuff to make money. But then I realized that money is totally overrated and all that matters in life is absorbing the internet. So here's a How Much The Future Will Suck I wrote last week, but forgot to put up here. More in a few days

HMTFWS: Wheelchairs

Cato and I went to a NYLaughs comedy in the park thing last Sunday. Eddie Brill said some cool stuff about our culture and how unhealthy it is. During his rant on soda being purely chemicals that can corrode car paint but we still drink he said, “Why's your kid on Ritalin? Because you give him processed sugar! You might as well give him crack. At least that has baking soda in it.”

If the government really wanted us to be healthy, they wouldn't be putting so much money into healthcare. They'd do things like making Meat and Bone Meal (that's what makes cows mad) illegal, and hand out free facemask for urban-dwellers instead of syringes.

So because I'm yapping about how much the present sucks, and because it's been a while, there's a brand new How Much The Future Will Suck! This one is for old people (which will be you when it becomes the future, so listen up!)

Giant Robots Are Meant To Blow Up Stuff

~What does zord mean?~
I just watched the reveal trailer for the new MechWarrior game and I'm pretty disappointed. I never really got into MechWarrior. Mainly because I didn't have a computer running windows, but also because the robots were boxy and slow compared to sleek acrobatic gundams. This video is supposed to show a reimagining but it looks like an old Godzilla movie reimagined in cgi.
If you're gonna have clunky, slow moving robots, might as well add a bunch of color to them, and make five of them that fuse into one giant one, and call it.. what would sound cool? Something that begins with a Z.. and ends in “ord.” wait, it will need mega at the beginning because that gives it +10 cool points. Okay, okay, I think I got it: A MegaZord.
It's been years since anything cool has happened with the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers franchise. Super Sentai has died out in Japan, leaving the American branch to fully film episodes. Transformers, GI Joe, and every Marvel character are all getting 21st century remakes, so why not something with the word Morphin' in it's title?

Transformers 2: Rise of the Ghettobot

~It's true. Lego and Hasbro have teemed up to bring you the most action packed toy commercial you will ever see.. until 2012~
It's been a really long time, so I'm gonna make this short and spoiler-free.

The main aspect of Transformers that got it popular was giant robots duking it out with each other. Metal fists breaking metal faces is amongst the top 10 most awesome things ever (3 of which still have yet to be discovered). Everyone knows that the failure of the first Transformers was the surprising lack of metal faces blowing up.

Revenge does it right.

Right from the start robots are driving around beating each other up so bad you can't tell who's Decepticon and Autobot. Prime redeems himself as badass leader (just watch him, don't listen. Actually, you could probably watch the whole movie muted and it'd be better). Actually, the movie should be listed as an Action-Comedy, and hopefully for number 3 they will drop the drama (less slow-motion heart throbbing music, more Stan Bush – Megan Fox's slo-mo bouncing boobs can stay though). The CGI budget went way up and it shows in fully 3D scenes of Transformer headquarters.

There was some weird stuff with Megatron being a lot smaller in this one, Starscream as more of a lackey than a backstabber, still too much human, Optimus can now transform into a gundam, Ironhide and this green guy are British?, why does the plot revolve around humans when there's a whole milky way of stars? But most of all, people seem to be pissed about the ghettobots.

Apparently we live in an age where robots can star as minstrel characters. Skids and Mudflap are Autobot twins who fight with each other, speak ebonics, and serve as the movies comic relief. Just because someone speaks ebonics, has a gold tooth, and can't read a dead language doesn't mean they're African American. Also, according to movie-law, if the twins were black, they should have died first. But it doesn't matter what I saw because people will always look for a racial character to iconify as their reason to bitch (no one says anything about the Egyptian midget security guard). Personally, I think the ghettobots were the most developed characters in the whole movie. No other characters make their goals clear, open up to the audience, or make sense like the ghettobots do. When they're scared, it makes sense, when they're ready to fight, you're ready to see them kick ass, when they grieve it's as personal as little Daniel crying on Prime's leg. None of the other characters have the kind of depth they did. Some transformers were introduced and ripped apart before they even got a line in (the sign of a great transformers movie. I have a feeling there will be more of this is #3). Plus, they combo-transformed into an ice cream truck. Best super power ever.

So give the duo a chance and enjoy the metallic mayhem.

PS- This movie made a big point about out-of-the-house run conspiracy theories with internet videos and blogs. What will that, eBay, and a third mystery hobby accumulate too? I don't know exactly, but I'm sure something with robot tentacles controlling our minds through the internet.

July 4th! Screw Britain

Music Video to celebrate the grandest of American holy days!
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Mind Control Robot Army Is Now Real

~He's thinking: TRANSFAAATS!~
Recently some mad docs over in Japanland have made major process in creating a mind controlled wheelchair. Reproving that all Japanese scientists simply want to create gundams. In this case, the psycoframe (I'm sorry about the geocities link, but that site has SO MUCH information, I couldn't pass it up).

Right now, the thing takes 125 milliseconds to translate “BURROWED LURKER! TURN RIGHT!” into wheel movement. It works by sensing brain waves using an EEG, and watching cheek puffs. I don't know what a cheek puff is, but it makes the chair stop so it must be important and easy.

Meanwhile, Honda has brought their Asimo one step closer to being the icon of never-leave-your-room future. This time, you strap into a chair with a giant box attached to a bowl that goes on your head and you think really hard about your right hand, your left hand, feet, or tongue (wait... is this robot pron?), and after 20 seconds (Ya I know! You could have done yourself by that time!) the Asimo moves for you.

What's really interesting is that they call this huge chair monster a Brain Machine Interface, or BMI. So in the future, when people ask for your BMI, they won't be checking if you're fat. Because everyone will be obese. They'll be figuring out what operating system you use to control your robot army servants.

Watch as Japan gets closer to world domination by robot!

Rufio Wins Again

Lots of people like to think that the fall of The Pirate Bay will initiate a new era of free entertainment. But until we have a utopia where robots serve us and we do nothing but create and absorb entertainment, artists will need to get paid to eat, which means the entertained will need to give if they want more entertainment.

There are already a few systems that work: pay per view, on demand, and television. Pay per view works just like going to a movie, or a video rental place, or a concert that isn't live, and it's really expensive. Once the majority gets comfortable with the internet these places will be completely extinct, replaced by NetFlix type services. The only way for movie theaters to survive is if they lower prices and make watching a film into a communal experience.

OnDemand services like Fox's are great because they provide currently airing shows completely free with three 15 second commercials. This creates a whole new world for advertisers (on one hand, less advertisements = less revenue, on the other, less advertisements = more focused advertisements = more revenue). The problem with these services is that they are not available for films and you can't watch every show you want, especially shows that are not airing (South Park does it right).

Finally, there is the most stable form of entertainment distribution: television. Television is great because it's cheap, plentiful, and reliable. I think it's really interesting that Hulu going not-free is completely overshadowed by TPB.

This system we use makes people feel they have an obligation to watch a movie (that was recorded with a shaky camera) on their tiny computer screens. Pirate Bay's resurrection as VideoBay is a good step towards an easier entertaining world, but I doubt it'll work flawless because the networks like their system and they control the producers and keep their army of online-phobic loyal.



In other news, mcchris FINALLY finished Part Six Part Two. This album's 3 months late and it's a preorder right now.. when's it gonna come out? Zuckuss' Prius is real snappy pappy though.. so maybe it'll be worth it.. it'll probably be worth it. (UPDATE! The song got taken down on myspace. Checkout YouTube for piratized)

How Much The Future Will Suck #2 – Air Conditioning Will Be Extinct

I saw transformers, but I'm writing my review so.. patience is a virtue not known only to Goku as he trains on a huge ball-ship towards Namek.

But be not scared! Here is a How Much The Future Will Suck! This one's about air conditioning, cars, and twists in journalism.

How Much The Future Will Suck #1 - Nanoterror in the Skies

Didn't see Transformers so I'm starting this series today instead of later. I've checked some reviews and people are complaining about how the movie is just explosion after explosion followed by plotless robot annhiliation. Which means this movie is perfect. I'm excited.
The first How Much The Future Will Suck! It's about flying.

Transform Into A Revenge! .. what? (part1)

~Optimus don't revenge no body~
Two years have passed since the first ever live action Transformers film hit big screens and raised the standard for photo-realistic cgi. It was received with very mix reviews, but that's what happens when a series has had 20 years of re-imaginings and thematic alterations. Overall, it was a great effort to revitalize eBay. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, seems to have a different effort: all-out robot dismemberment.

After seeing the first flic, I wrote a little about how the reason Transformers gained a diehard fanbase, half-decade of reruns, and has existed for so long because the characters could be mortally wounded. Unlike heroes in other shows, Transformers actually can die. Part of this was to create new toys (Transformers is just a huge Hasbro commercial), but it ended up making us care about the characters. The Autobots became more human than any other superheroes because they lost battles, they lost friends, and so often their struggle to find fuel, win a war, and save humanity looked so hopeless, but .

But with time, worried mother's realized their peanut-allergic children were thinking complex ideas and questioning established standards so the robot mayhem was dropped (only surviving in two or three series shown only in Japan because Japanese parents all secretly wish they could transform into cars instead of having to cram into subway trains), replaced by small casted, light hearted series like Beast Wars and Transformers Energon: Gotta Catch 'Em All!, with Hasbro spewing out lines of toys that never appear in the actual show because they really were that desperate.

Skip to 2007 and the world is looking a lot more like 1986 than it ever had before. Now, the whole planet was facing an energy crisis, tearing itself apart, and cold wars have become full out onslaughts against privatized organizations. Obviously, giant alien robots slugging it out is the perfect parallel for kids to understand what's going on. The thing for the now-20-somethings-that-know-all-the-lyrics-to-“You Got The Touch” didn't realize was that Transformers was a children's movie. Thanks to '90's and 00's Transformers series, it has a small cast of 'bots (which means no epic old-cast wipe-out battles featured in the first 30 minutes of Transformers: Apocalypse! Matrix Forever), and thanks to Spielberg the questions of whether or not it's okay to take some planet's energy and how a soldier's answer to that question changes the entire war is replaced by the simple black and white definition of: bad guys trying to take allspark, good guys trying to stop them, bad humans doing crazy experiments with cell phones and vending machines, good humans making out on car. However, I ended my review by saying that the film left the Transformers franchise in a good direction; really cool cgi, some pretty good battles (Optimus vs Bonecrusher), and a reminder for everyone to keep selling their Transformers toys on eBay.

LUCKILY Revenge has lots of robots. Previews have shown Optimus battling squads of Decepticons armed only with badass righteousness. It is also Act II of a trilogy, so it should exist as the dark middle climax towards an epic, galactic-shuddering resolution. There is a great chance Optimus will once again become the full-force leader of the full-hearted side in a no-one's-winning-war, instead of a scrawny guy who says, “My bad” when he steps on your yard. The only way to know for sure is to see it.. today.. stay tuned for part 2. . .

Global Wettening

~When did it become London?~
Today my girlfriend and I were going to see Jake And Amir but it got rained out. Rained out because of global warming. What the crap is that?

I used to get really excited about global warming because winter won't be cold and beaches will be everywhere. But no! It's just going to rain every single day forever.

If global warming is going to make it rain more, people need to stop being wimps about it. It's just water. It's not acid that we have to hide from. It's a free shower. With all the chemicals in the sky it probably functions as liquid soap, shampoo, conditioner, AND moisturizer! That's what the 21st century's all about – multi-useable free trade products.

The oceans will be less salty too because of ice caps melting. So you won't be able to use the excuse, “the water's too salty!” when your neighbor tries to get you to go surfing with him because he just wants to hang out and he's new here and doesn't know what fun things there are to do so you should just stop complaining all the time and do it!

All I'm trying to say is we should start calling it global wettening.

Fat Asian Kids and Old People

~”With my GPS we'll never get lost!”~
UP is such a great movie! Who thought of making a lean, evil rottweiler sound like Zim? GENIUS!

And who thought people still want to see fat kids? I like how UP makes a statement about the communication gap between old folks and children because it's only going to get worse once people start having great grandkids again and we need to start creating a system for it. But why's the kid have to be a chunk bucket? Disney's supposed to make characters that stand as role models for children, give parents hints about how to raise their kids, and be cute to everyone else. So Disney is saying that kids should be fat, parents should make their kids fat, and everyone else thinks chunky kids are cute (well.. chunkbuckets can be kinda funny).

Actually, I think Disney is just making a sharp popular commentary. In UP we see the perfect example of a modern day child: overachiever, gets lost without a GPS, and fat. The first two are reasonable considering the kind of world we live in, but the third I view as a direct result of crappy morale-heavy 90's cartoons.

In shows like … I actually can't think of any. But NOT Captain Planet or Ninja Turtles or Transformers.. maybe Pete and Pete, Hey Arnold!.. anyways, these shows always had the token fat kid who's life sucked because he was fat and he couldn't do anything. The token fat kid was especially useless in shows where people are trying to save the world or something and the fat kid can't run, can't dodge, and needs to eat stuff every five minutes. (LOST's Hurley is a token fat character! He does N O T H I N G action-movie oriented). For some asinine reason, the main characters of the show decided to tell the fat kid that, “it's okay to be fat. You're still a good person.” So the fat kid gets all this self esteem and in the real world fat kids start saying, “it's okay that I'm fat. I'm still a good guy!” Cut to ten years later and ~somehow~ our country has an obesity crisis. All we have to do is stop putting fat heroes in shows! Keep the fat characters as villains. And stop eating so much Popeye's. Yes it's delicious but just stop going three times a week. Try two times a month.

--A trying not to be a fatty Teck

PS: Anyone else excited for District 9?

Once again unemployed

~This time not eating so much curry~
I'm in NYC, once again unemployed because I'm lazy. It's not a hard way of living. It's actually very relaxing. But lately I've been thinking a lot about New York, and what it says about the United States and US Americans. So I did a quick urbandictionary search and found NYC is “Where my heart will always be no matter where I go.” I thought it was the home of bagels...

Basically, people have ridiculous amounts of pride for New York City. It is supposedly the capital of the world, the economic and cultural heart of America, the biggest city of America, one of the strongest urban centers in the world. But for such a small space crammed with so many prideful people, it's amazing how little community there is. The other night, my girlfriend and I were walking through Central Park at 4am. (Because we weren't sure if the buses were still going or not... and it was 4am! We wanted to sleep). We walked through and it was actually kind of magical, like some ancient elven village that people dropped a pavement road in the middle of.

If you know anything about NYC, you're probably wondering why anyone would walk through Central Park at 4am. That's the point!. If it is such a great city, why should anyone be scared to walk around? Why are people so solitary when they wait to cross the street? Why can't you look at people on the subway? Why do gangs define the color clothes you wear?

I sat down as the sun started to rise and I thought about this stuff. For some reason, all I could think of was a zombie-man living in New York. A completely civilized, domesticated zombie, not eating brains and moaning. Just some undead guy who has a job and lives in an apartment and doesn't look people in the eye or make a scene and is scared of getting robbed by junkies. So I started writing and there'll be a novella somewhere around these tubes by the end of the summer.

This summer should be good. I have lots of free time and not so much food so I can't just sit around and eat. Which is kind of lame now that I think about it..

~Teck, still searching for Dark Night of the Soul