Eureka!

http://indianproxy.com/

I think I've found it! A solution to some of my problems. Hello, blogspot. Come in, wikipedia. Is that you out here, bbc. Please use the back door, xxxwetpussyxxx

Four Second Fury

Here is the time killer we've all been waiting for, and no, it's not God of War 2 or Ghost Recon 3. There's even a boss fight.

Sofia Coppola

Lost in Translation has joined the ranks of Office Space in my movie mind. These are the only two movies that get better for me everytime I watch them. Now, I haven't tried to watch either of them several times in one day, but I do watch them every now and then and each time, better than before. This is rare for me, usually I get bored after the first few times. Even with my favorite movie, Bringing Up Baby.

I first saw Lost in Translation in the theaters and I thought it was alright, nicely done. But then after coming to China and watching my bootleg copy of it once every couple of weeks, I have fallen in love with the movie. Mainly because the feelings of isolation in the middle of everything resonate with me much more after my time in China.

Then I read this, which lead me to this. Am I really beating you to this, Tony? I've also grown to love New Order while in China because it really is what the article states it is, the music that is. And after seeing the trailer, I have high hopes for Sofia Coppola. She's been maligned or held to a higher standard because of her family ties, even her success with Lost in Translation seemed to be asterisked because of that. But the way she's pulled this trailer alone off makes me think this is the start of a beautiful career that is ready to emerge from her family history's shadows. Hopefully, this won't be just another bio/costume/epic/pic but actually have some of the brooding qualities that makes the director original these days. The trailer gives me hope.

Mission: Impossible: 3: As In Number 3: Tres

Does anyone else think the use of dual colons is lame when they shortened it to M:I:3? I feel like some bimbo decided it just needed that extra spice of symmetry, and threw in a second colon.

Anyway, "M:I 3" is about Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt, who is in the midsts of winding down his secret life, as seen in the prior two movies. And now he's looking for a "Rabbit Foot."

I wasn't too sure what to expect, especially with all the negative publicity Tom Cruise has been getting lately (which I have no doubt will color some people's view of the movie), but I liked it. My companion also liked it, which makes it more difficult to bounce analysis around, so I tried to read some negative reviews to get my thoughts going, and they are thus: The action was good. Some say it wasn't edge-of-your-seat enough, but I felt it was exciting, while being appropriately realistic, as far as movies go. No more of that bullshit motorcycle mid-air jousting bullshit, or tra-la-la dual-car spin-dancing. Yeah sure, it wasn't *completely* realistic, because Ethan Hunt would've been dead two movies ago, but instead of over-the-top action, you got more technical action. For example, an explosion throws Tom Cruise against the side of a car. The glass of the back window cracks. Nice attention to detail (yes, it'd probably kill him in real life). Agents convincingly moved and covered their zones of fire. Etcetera.

And the movie keeps most of the blatant blunders of action movies to a minimum. As one of the Austin Powers movies pointed out, all too often, the good guy is allowed to live to meet his impending, but not current, doom. I almost thought M:I 3 was going to suffer that flaw, but it gracefully weaved its way out of it. The biggest action-movie blunder committed by the movie, off the top of my head, is "bullet dodging." It's a typical problem with "realistic" action movies (non-Matrix), and many modern action movies have tried to solve it as they try to be more and more realistic, but its presence was negligible and acceptable.

Finally, the length was also good. I was worried it might run too long, but it went well. Rather than show every possible action sequence that Agent Hunt is involved in, the movie tactfully skips certain parts. Yes, we know he's good by now. We can accept that he pulls off whatever he was trying to do that was not shown, just as I accept that every character in every fictional work knows how to use the restroom, and does not need to be shown doing so. So in conclusion, a good, fun "summer" action movie to start the season. As far as comparable movies go, off the top of my head, it's better than Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Tom Cruise is White

I don't know why, but I find this hilarious

It must be another one of those Scientology coincidences (i.e. how their teachings state that Boeing DC-8 jets are exact replicas of the ancient alien space transports, but without rocket engines). Cruise is just doing the Thetan mating dance or some shit.

In fact L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics states that Xenu himself was an exact copy of P. Diddy, except he was a ruthless alien warlord.

Happy Fuzzy Friday!

Bearded white silkies

I'm not sure what the heck these are really, but apparently they're poultry (a chicken maybe?) that look like rabbits!!!!!

World's Most Expensive Sandwich

LINK

eighty-five pounds!!! Actually, when I first heard the title, I was expecting something in the thousands. But about one hundred fifty bucks, eh? Sure, why not, I'll have it without the foie gras, mayo, and tomatoes, though. Still the same price, eh? FECK ORF

Coachella 2006

Well, I've had about 4 days to gather my thoughts and recuperate from the madness that was Coachella 2006. I must say it wasn't as thoroughly enjoyable as 2004 (Radiohead, Kraftwerk, Pixies, The Cure, Air, Flaming Lips, Crystal Method, Paul van Dyk, Ferry Corsten), and the dance tent wasn't as good as 2005 (Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, Hernan Cattaneo, Junkie XL, Miss Kittin, along with Coldplay, Weezer, Nine Inch Nails, and New Order headlining), but Daft Punk really took their set into epic and legendary status (it's all over the Coachella and electronic music forums).

To show you all what you missed *snicker* here's a sampling:


(Daft Punk playing a mix of Superheroes and Face to Face)


(Daft Punk - Brainwasher)

Both of those videos were recorded by yours truly. The set was very, very fun, the audio really really really loud (Robert you would be covering your head with your jacket, fingers, hands, arms, and shoes), and 35,000 crazed festival attendees packed into one big tent.

Their set was scheduled to run from 11:10 to midnight, as the tradition for Coachella is that no acts can go past midnight (The Cure went 40 minutes past midnight, and Goldenvoice was fined something like $2k or $10k for every minute they went over), and at midnight Daft Punk cut the music from an hour of crazed straight "electronica". Of course, to top it off, they went straight into One More Time (i think) and played another 20-25 minutes. I can't describe how everybody was cheering after the set ended, suffice it to say that the traditional European festival applause was there, and people standing around for 5 minutes cheering when the lights came on, but I can leave with this:















England has Glastonbury, Spain has Sonar, the 60's have Lollapalooza, but we have Coachella. You owe it to yourself to catch this festival at least once in your lifetime, preferably before you get too old =)

What would Jesus watch?

MovieGuide.org is a website that allows ratings and reviews of movies currently out in the box office so that parents can make family-friendly decisions on movie watching. I suppose this website helps the morons out there--the same morons who would resort to Dr Phil for advice on being a human being. If you're going to take your kid to a rated PG/R movie, do you really need a reviewer to break down and list every questionable scene in a movie that could negatively influence your child (eg, someone gets punched, attempted kiss, fast racing car, number of swear words organized by severity, "psychiatrist violating professional oath", "the villain getting away with a crime", etc)? Do you really need someone to tell you that Basic Intinct 2 is not family-friendly?

Moreover, I don't like the Christian spin on it. And oh yes, boycott the DaVinci Code, it says, since your Christian devotion won't be able to stand up to any presentation of alternative dialogue. Then proceed to cover eyes, ears, and mouth and pretend like the real world doesn't have any "bad things" and that it is static.


"Movieguide is a ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles, by influencing entertainment industry executives and helping families make wise media choices."

Check out their glossary of questionable content, including feminism, evolution, globalism, humanism, capitalism, anticapitalism (a tool of personal envy--so you're basically screwed with either stance on capitalism), and political correctness.

Then proceed to abide by proper biblical principles and put women in their place. If you acknowledge women at all, you might be advocating the DaVinci Code.

And your child is Ralph Wiggum.

Archaeology vs Parking Lot

Spanish city builds parking lot over ancient Roman city. Wow.

They discovered a well-preserved Roman forum, bath house, gymnasium and temple as well as dozens of private homes and hundreds of mosaics and statues — one of them considered to be among the finest found.

But now the bulldozers have moved in. The last vestiges of the lost city known as Colonia Augusta Firma Astigi — one of the great cities of the Roman world — have been destroyed to build an underground municipal car park.

Coming Non-Indie Games

Well, since Robert wrote a post about games, I also decided to, except mine will be concerning higher profile, commercial games (I'm sure this will only appeal to a subset of people here, at best, 50% of you guys, but then lots of other posts have been, too, I'm sure). I've been trying out a few demos lately, namely Heroes of Might and Magic V, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, and Rise of Legends.

Executive Summary
Heroes of Might and Magic V: Meh. Don't buy.
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter: Eh. Consider.
Rise of Legends: Awesome. Definitely try.

The rest is fluff.

Heroes of Might and Magic V
A tactical fantasy game. I didn't like this one. It's a beautiful game, but the mechanics annoyed me. Basically your army can't go anywhere without a hero/heroine to escort them, which is incredibly lame. So you can't reinforce your current army without going back to town, but if you go back to town, then you don't have a presence in the field, and if you don't reinforce your army after a battle, you'll be unable to take on future threats...so then you start building heroes who are nothing but glorified troop transports. Retarded.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (PC)
A realistic shooter. I was really looking forward to this title. I loved the original Ghost Recon, which was a tactical, very realistic first-person shooter (one shot, one kill). But, after trying the demo, I was pretty disappointed. The graphics were awesome, but it didn't support anti-aliasing because of the algorithms they chose (CODE RED: COMPUTER SPEAK. ALERT! ALERT!).

But graphics are secondary to gameplay. Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't so hot either. It's more akin to the game's cousin, Rainbow Six: urban combat, with a lot of tactical management, rather than the original Ghost, which was primarily long-range in forests and jungles. I usually don't mind management, but with the city environment, you really have to baby your squad. From the looks of it, the XBox 360 version is superior, though the gameplay is a bit more arcadey there.

Rise of Legends
This is the "spiritual successor" to Rise of Nations (henceforth referred to as "RoN"), which was awesome. Unfortunately, a lot of people, it seems, had trouble handling the multitasking required in RoN, which put more emphasis on economies compared to other real-time strategies.

Anyway, Rise of Legends is a beautiful game that feels like a hybrid between Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Rise of Nations. There's only two resources now rather than five, and there's three unique races instead of the myriad of Earth nations from before. Each of the three races plays quite differently, with very different upgrade paths. You probably won't be able to get them all, unless you focus on a particular type. With the Vinci race, some upgrades are presented as a choice among three, with the unchosen forever unavailable for the remainder of the game.

Feeeeeed

This guy looks like he plays WoW, huh?

(click on pics for full-res glory)

Bear Gun

Megan stumbled upon this story over at MSN describing a new Japanese novelty invention, a gun that shoots teddy bears. Basically, it's for people who want to throw the stuffed bears at weddings, but really like pulling a trigger better than moving their arm. I love the ultra-generic message from the spokesperson too: "We're hoping to capture the hearts of couples." Isn't this prettymuch like a car manufacturer saying "We're hoping to capture the attention of drivers"?

Why is it always the Japanese who come up with this shit? Battle-raper? Wtf.


Addendum: why is it that when I look at that picture I feel sorry for the bear jammed in the barrel?

APOD pic

Another great image from APOD. Link to description here. Saturn on its side photographed from the Cassini spacecraft.


The tiny moon by Saturn's ring is the recently-discovered Enceladus:

Sloppy Seconds with Opal Mehta

Any writers out there? Or...skilled plagiarizers, rather. Got this heads up from Eric. Yes, it's probably become a wearisome topic, but it looks like a fun, little contest. I'm tempted to try.

Its not that hard.....

Memorize the lingo and you will not have problems communicating with women again.

Bach- this is dedicated to you!


Girlspeak


I love you Bach.

Proper Tipping

This is fairly old in terms of the internet, but is still a fairly accurate guideline for gratuity practices in various locations. If you haven't worked in the service industry, this will probably help. It's a handy thing to have bookmarked, I suppose.

Oh, and hello.

Eye Jewelry...

I think when it comes down to this, the simple things like hoop earrings or a pendant necklace will do.. no need to go to these extremes. It's as if we've run out of places to add sparkle to ourselves.

http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2006/04/eye_jewelry.html

I can't tell if this is worse than those contacts WITH the stars/confetti IN it. I'd like to vote that these are worse.. cuz someone can just tug on it and you'd lose your sight.

Indie Lit

So I'm in Shanghai, searching high and low for a biography on Billy Shakespeare called Will in the World. Why? Why not? I love reading, and I love discovering new books I'd never imagined could have been published. Of course, Will in the World does not qualify as such, but I want to read it after doing miserably on the Shakespeare questions when I tried out for Jeopardy and after enjoying a similarly styled biography on Beethoven I had to read in college. But mainly random novels on random subjects. Just like music lovers love going to the tiny shithole down the alley to hear the latest new band to get massive college radio play, I like looking for books that you cannot find unless they are actively searched for. As in not The Da Vinci Code. Don't get me wrong, I loved that book for the few hours it had me entertained. And that was that. Nothing else to take from it.

This is what I hate. Mass entertainment. People want the same thing. Over and over and over again. Spoonfed the same mushy apple sauce. I decided to post this after two things happened. First the plagiarism post. The author used a book packager. They pretty much tell the author what kind of plot to write and then let the author have a go. This book packager is actively looking for a new fantasy children's series. As in Harry Potter. Can't blame them or the kids, they want money and they want to be entertained. Fine for someone who is ten. But adults? C'mon! Think a little. Find something new to read. So the second reason. Pramoedya Ananta Toer died the other day. Who? Indonesian author who wrote about Dutch colonial rule in his country and what followed after independence. He's been banned by the current regime, I believe. His works, that is. I had to read one of his books in a college class and loved it. So went looking for his other books. Couldn't find them, really rare. I know there's Amazon, but nothing beats walking out of a bookstore with the item you've been looking for. So I say, find new shit from everywhere. Every country must produce a few class novelists. Some are more famous than others, but they're all out there. The only drawback is translation. I think if it's possible, reading should be done in the language of the author. But I can't speak whatever they speak in Indonesia, so I'll have to settle for the English translations of Toer's works.

So just read. Anything. Autobiography of Motley Crue is hilarious. Or go online and find the website for any college lit course that has a group name in front of it. Asian lit. Asian American lit. Southern lit. Egyptian lit. Postcolonial. Gay. Look at the class syllabus, choose a title, find it, and read it. Good stuff. And not all popular stuff is lame. Check out David Sedaris. Popular and hilarious.

80 Blue Polo Shirts + Best Buy = Hilarity

Improv Everywhere Mission: Best Buy

About 80 people (agents of the Improv Everywhere group) dressed in Royal Blue polo shirts and khaki pants showed up at a New York Best Buy store to create some hilarity.

Some highlights to look for:

• Agent Natty's video testimony.
• The fact that the attractive Agent Reeves was never caught by the cops or security with her massive camera, even though two male agents were stopped for filming the event.
• One agent brought his two daughters with him and had a fun father-daughter afternoon.
• The written testimonies of several agents about their experience.
• Agent Shafer, de facto mission leader, knew the law and stood up to the cops.

The site in general is really fun. Check out the other missions they've done.

I am Asian

Usually, I don't give a rat's ass about racial issues, but the whole McDonald's exotificizationalizing and Asianificationalization of their foods is pissing me off. Eat this nasty potpourri combination of nuts and vegetables (edamame, snow peas, red bell peppers, mandarin oranges, toasted almonds and mixed greens)--with sesame dressing--for an Asian salad that will promote a healthy well-balanced existence because all we Asians have got our yins and yangs balanced like the yogi master.

http://www.i-am-asian.com/

"We're Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and our diverse cultures and our everyday American lifestyle are becoming one." - McDonald's um Oriental blurb about their hot new Asian salad

Do any of you Asians out there frame pictures of the good luck kitty?


Spanish and English ad/logos for the Asian salad

Note that in the ad, the Spanish ad says "Find the flavor, encounter something exotic," whereas in English, it says "Seek flavor, find harmony." Buenisimo, soy persona exotica.

Bravo, Stephen Colbert. Bravo.

Yes, I know this is a double post about Stephen Colbert's amazing performance. I wrote this not knowing about Ron's earlier post. I'm leaving it here because...well...it's my thoughts.

On Saturday, comedian/actor/writer Stephen Colbert was invited to speak at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. In past years, comedians who were invited, like Jay Leno, would do safe, lighthearted jokes that didn't rankle anybody's nerves. Colbert, on the other hand, has balls. Using his "Colbert Report" persona as a hardcore conservative TV pundit, he ripped into Bush like no other and he did it right in front of the man. Even as the crowd reaction and Bush's face went from decent to dead serious, Stephen kept pushing the envelope: "He [Bush] just doesn't stand for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares." I was laughing my ass off. Unfortunately, he bombed with that audience. I think Stephen knew he would never ever get another opportunity to speak the truth in front of our nation's president.

Some would say it was inappropriate for him to be so harsh and blunt in that occasion, but I think Stephen said "Fuck tradition and etiquette. Somebody has to say something meaningful." I applaud Stephen. Bravo, my man. Bravo.

You Tube: Colbert Roast Part 1
You Tube: Colbert Roast Part 2
You Tube: Colbert Roast Part 3

Colbert is gonna get assassinated

O.M.G. Lol. Watch the video, read the article. I personally like his humor, and therefore his speech (though, it's a bit long), but I still felt awkward for him. It's like watching a rabbit bring a flame thrower to the local lions meeting.

*edit*
K, I just finished it. It's more like a rabbit with an MG-42, artillery, and napalm bombardment. "...Madam First Lady, Mr President, it's been a true honor..." verbally raping you.

Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny

Ha, wtf.

Optimus pwns all btw.