Not here, we're still getting snow.
I ran across Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner filed under "Humor" in Amazon downloads. Complete with Nimoy's Ballad of Bilbo Baggins—if you haven't heard it, you should be glad.
Bwahahaha!
Today a monitor exploded at my office. It produced one of the most unpleasant burnt-electronics smell I've ever been around. It was a 22-inch CRT by ViewSonic. A nice monitor, but not much anymore.
Enjoy it everyone, it only comes around once each year!
My Wii Number is: 0092 4901 2101 0883. Leave a comment here or send me a message with your number (be sure to tell me who you are, too) and we can play together.
The Ides of March.
Oh, and guitar hero hand. I played for five hours yesterday and my hand is sore. I'll have some serious kungfu action grip when I beat this game though…
A few days ago I started reading Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds. It has been difficult to put down. I'm down to about the last 70 or so pages and I don't want it to end. I love having a book that's this much of a page-turner, and Reynolds does an excellent job. My first exposure to his work was Revelation Space, I picked it up based on reviews on LibraryThing and it's recommendation engine. Eventually I mooched most of the books in the series. The copy of Chasm City I have ended up with is actually my third—the first was a paperback (acquired from BookMooch), the second was a hardback purchased in a library sale in Portland, but it was in bad condition. The third copy I found while in Houston last December, and it's a hardback in excellent condition.
Chasm City is a stand-alone book that doesn't really have to be read along with the other Revelation Space books, so you can jump right in to it.
Today, I join the ranks of all cool people that own a Wii.
Finally.
Oh, and I got Guitar Hero 3, too.
Apparently there is a creepy gnome terrorizing a town in South America. Watch the video. You know you want to.
The other day I watched Godzilla vs Megalon, a truly classic Godzilla movie. I watched it as the next in the series of reviews I've been writing up as I've been watching the second season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
In this installment, citizens of Seatopia (who I don't believe are originally from Earth), raise their protector, Megalon, from sleep to crush their enemies, all of humanity. I think they do this because of the nuclear testing that's going on around their submerged island hideaway, but I don't quite remember. Anyway, the Seatopians send agents to capture a scientist who is creating a robot. They don't really explain this either. The scientist escapes, but his friend and a little boy (who I think is the friend's son) are kidnapped. The Seatopians take control of the robot, named Jet Jaguar, but the scientist regains control by speaking into his neclace. They were using Jet Jaguar to lead Megalon on a path of destruction through Japan. When the scientist takes control of Jet Jaguar, he sends him to fetch Godzilla. Jet Jaguar sign-languages to Godzilla about what's going on, then they both head back to Japan. Jet Jaguar reprograms himself (the scientist said he programed Jet so he could do this) to grow large, so all of a sudden Jet Jaguar is a gigantic robot. But it's not enough, as Megalon whoops up on him. Enter Godzilla, who takes no crap from no one. They gang up on Megalon, and Godzilla does this double flying front kick that will absolutely crack you up. Except he does it twice, and it isn't as funny the second time. Anyway, it's a classic Godzilla move you really shouldn't miss.
I rate this movie three empty seats, one for each giant monster or robot appearing in the film.
The best Giant Robot show ever had to be Megas XLR. This past weekend I managed to find the entire series online (it's not available commercially). Although technically not anime, I put this in with it because it makes fun of all giant robot shows.
And another one for the review books. This time it's First Spaceship on Venus, a German duesy of a scifi flick. This movie is about a magnetic recording that was discovered to be from a spaceship from Venus. This is apparently what caused the Tunguska Blast of 1908. Anyway, to figure out what's going on, we send a bunch of scientists in a spaceship off to Venus. They have some problems, and on the way discover that the recording contained plans on how to take over our planet. But it was too late to turn around.
When our scientists get to Venus, they discover that the natives have all been wiped out, but left several things behind, including metal bugs that they used for recording voice and data, as well as power plants, etc. When a scientist slips and knocks a rock into some black mud, it goes crazy and starts chasing them all, until one of them shoots it with a ray gun, at which point the mud creeps away ala reverse footage. At this point we discover that the Venusians had the ability to convert mass to energy as well as energy to mass, and the ray triggered the mass-to-energy reaction that would arm the weapon aimed at Earth to shoot radiation at it. We reverse the reaction, but sacrifice two scientists in the process. One who dies because his suit gets punctured, and the other just gets left behind when the gravity reverses and repels the spaceship from the planet's surface (don't ask me how or why, I don't know).
Overall, it was an average episode. I rate it one extinct civilization's population worth of empty seats—for the Venusians who died when their science exceeded their control.
Here's another review for the series: King Dinosaur.
The movie was preceded by a short film from New Jersey about safe driving. It was pretty darn funny. Basically this guy dies in a car wreck because he's an aggressive driver and he goes to heaven, where he is defended by his guardian angel, who explains how much "watching out" he's done for the guy. This was made during WWII, because they mention doing our part for "the war" a lot. It's full of kooky scenes about passing people, cutting drivers off, and running down pedestrians.
But back to the main point of this review—the movie. King Dinosaur is about a planet discovered in our solar system that is very similar to ours. We sent four scientists there to explore it. They befriend a local lemur they name Joe. Joe did some of the best acting in this film. The scientists do some tests, explore the area, and get attacked by giant bees, snakes that growl, and more unbelievable creatures. When two of the scientists take a raft to an island, they discover it is inhabited by dinosaur-type creatures. The main aggressor they claim is "very similar to Earth's Tyrannosaurus Rex," hence the King Dinosaur title. Any second grader today could tell you it looked nothing like the T-Rex, and was, in fact, a giant iguana instead. The giant iguana, or King Dinosaur, is the top of the food chain here, as it is attacked by multiple giant lizards and beats the lunch money out of each of them. King Dinosaur only loses when we detonate an atomic bomb on his turf.
The movie ended pretty quickly after that. Despite how bad it sounds and how dry the plot was, the movie was one of the more enjoyable MST3K episodes I've seen. I'm a little surprised that this one is not available for purchase, it wasn't that bad. Certainly better than The Hellcats, which totally sucked.
I rate this movie 4 empty seats, for the entire cast of the movie.
To ME!
Happy International Women's Day to everyone else.
One more for the series, here's my review of The Hellcats. The director spent half his time acting in this movie and it shows. This flick was absolutely terrible. I mean bad even for Mystery Science Theater 3000. The movie is about a man that gets shot. His brother takes leave from the military to hang out with his dead brother's girlfriend, fight bikers and that's about it. They dance around, break things, drink lots of beer, do drugs, and make out in groups. They get in trouble with some shady businessman (played by the movie's director), but I don't know why. I didn't understand much of what was going on. It really was that terrible.
Even Joel, Tom Servo, and Crow's jokes couldn't save this from sinking to the bottom of my list.
I rate this movie one empty seat—mine. I'll probably never watch it again.