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Jun. 17th, 2008 @ 08:55 am Trains of Thought - Al Capone to Aliens...
I was working out at the gym, watching the History Channel (or the Hitler Channel as some of my friends refer to it, due to the ridiculous amount of shows about Hitler and the SS on it) and there was a show on the Valentine's Day Massacre. Now, I'm watching all this without sound, of course, as I listen to my own music. But they show a clip of a man firing a Thompson submachinegun.

The cyclic rate of the Thompson muzzle flash clicks with something in the back of my brain, reminding me of the muzzle flashes of the M41 Pulse Rifles from Aliens (and appropriately, it should as the M41's were built around a Thompson chassis).

And suddenly, I have a craving to watch Aliens, which I haven't seen in a couple years.

All of this happened in about 0.6 seconds.

The brain is a weird place.
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Jun. 16th, 2008 @ 09:14 am Retro Book Reviews - A Comparison of Classics
I've been on a classic Sci-Fi binge lately, tired of the largely derivative junk that populates the sci-fi 'verse these days (granted, it still may be fun derivative junk, but it's still derivative junk.) So, I decided I gotta go back in time. Back to basics, back to the classics. Here's what I've read in the last 3 weeks or so:

- Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber (the original Corwin cycle - not the Merlin cycle)
- Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat (again, the original trilogy, not the newer stuff)
- Isaac Asimov's Foundation (I read the first this weekend and will be continuing in the trilogy tonight)

Now, the Chronicles of Amber and Stainless Rat I originally ready back when I was probably a freshman in high school. And to my shame, I had never actually read Asimov's Foundation trilogy - I've read a ton of his other stuff, including his Elijah Baley/R. Daneel Olivaw novels. I tried reading it in middle-school, I think, but I thought it was boring and didn't get far into it. So, with that background, let's get onto the reviews...

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Jun. 14th, 2008 @ 08:47 pm Death Race = Car Wars?
Okay, geek friends check this out. You remember the game Car Wars? Or those of you sci fi fans out there may remember an old Alan Dean Foster short story called "Why Johnny Can't Speed". From a quality movie perspective, it looks like it will be on par with something like, say, Resident Evil - which isn't to say it's bad, it's just kwality rather than quality. I don't think I've ever actually seen a Jason Statham movie (although was he in Snatch?), but ever since the Transporter came out, I just kind of considered him the next Chuck Norris - i.e. not that impressive compared to the real HK martial artists, but able to make a bunch of movies because he's white and can beat people up in ways that most Americans aren't used to seeing. But seeing this preview, I might make an exception. Looks like rip-roaring fun!

Anyone out there see Doomsday when it came out and can report on it?
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Jun. 9th, 2008 @ 09:31 am Random Thoughts After a Generally Great Weekend
Even though I went to a wedding this weekend (along with all the accoutrement events) where there was great food - tri-tip, stuffed chicken, chicken karaage, saba, sushi, croquettes, Scotch eggs - I still managed to lose two pounds since the last time I weighed myself.

While Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber (the first five books) still stand the test of time pretty well, Harry Harrison's original Stainless Steel Rat trilogy feels pretty dated. (If I get a chance, I want to write up a retro sci fi book review to expand on this subject.)

I largely hate San Jose Airport. The security lines are the worst of anywhere I fly, the TSA agents the most disagreeable, and even the Southwest desk agents, who everywhere else I go are chipper, cheery, and friendly, are downright grumpy.

It was a good weekend to meet legendary friends-of-friends that I had heard about for years, but have only now had the chance to meet.

There was at least one other thing that I wanted to mention, but I can't remember it now... :P

Edit: Oh yeah, that's what it was - turns out one of my friends from high school who went back home to Japan to work after college met one of the taiko players up in Phoenix I play with occasionally when the taiko player was on a cultural exchange there...it's a small taiko world...
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May. 18th, 2008 @ 12:54 pm Iron Man
Having now finally gotten to see Iron Man, I can say that it not only met, but exceeded any expectations I had for the movie. I had heard people say that it was quite possibly now the best superhero movie made. And frankly, from the trailers I had seen, I could see that it definitely had the potential. I was not disappointed. I could not have asked for anything more from the movie, frankly. Even after reading all the spoilers I could find, even after reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, the movie still proved to surprise me.

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May. 16th, 2008 @ 03:52 pm Ant-Man? Seriously. Ant-Man?
Why is it that Marvel can slate an upcoming ANT-MAN movie and DC can't get itself together enough to produce a Joss Whedon-penned Wonder Woman?  Ant-Man? Ant-Man?! You're kidding, right? I always thought of Ant-Man as one of those second-stringers who's good in an ensemble cast like the Avengers but can't stand up for a solo career. And they're going to make an Ant-Man movie? Marvel's mining pretty deep in their intellectual property to see if they can't ride this successful movie train as far as they can.

But DC, for the life of it, can't seem to get past Batman in it's own stable of characters. Sure there was Superman and they're doing well on TV with Smallville and a host of cartoons. But a movie? I'm hearing that even the next Superman movie is having a hard time getting a green light.

This actually has a pretty good explanation.

Seriously, though - Ant-Man?
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May. 13th, 2008 @ 10:01 am BSG Homage to Tron?
End of line.
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Feb. 11th, 2008 @ 08:23 am Can you smellllll what Barack is cooking?!
There are many reasons why I hope to be able to vote for Barack Obama in the general election. The most ridiculous of which, however, is that when I hear Obama speak, I feel like he sounds like the WWE's People's Champion, the Brahma Bull, The Rock. There's something about the timbre and register of Obama's voice that reminds me of Dwayne Johnson, The Rock. And, yes, somehow that makes me even more inclined to vote for Obama. Ridiculous? I fully admit it.

But I keep waiting for Obama to give the camera "The People's Eyebrow" and call his opponents a bunch of "jabronis".
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Feb. 8th, 2008 @ 10:12 am Best Lost Quote of Episode 4.02
"I'd probably be dead if I still had a kidney there." - Locke
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Jan. 21st, 2008 @ 08:41 am W.D. Richter, Stealth, and Buckaroo Banzai Minutiae
I watched about 10 minutes of the movie Stealth on FX this weekend. And in those 10 minutes, I saw the amusing evidence that it had been written by W.D. Richter, director of Buckaroo Banzai.

In the scene I watched, the stealth squadron goes after a group of terrorist leaders in a high rise building and they're going to use a "Truncheon Implosion Bomb". In Buckaroo Banzai, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems had been contracted by the U.S. government to build the country's stealth "Truncheon Bomber".

Fifteen years ago, I would have taken this as evidence that Stealth and Buckaroo Banzai exist in the same cannonical universe. Now I just kind of chuckle at the irony.
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Dec. 6th, 2007 @ 01:15 pm Heroes Episodes and their Writers
As part of a discussion on [info]bryant's blog, I've become interested in which episode of Heroes is written by which writer. My thinking is that there could be a pattern to good and bad episodes based on the writers of the day, much like that was the case with the X-Files (e.g., if it was a Darren Morgan episode, you were probably going to get something good, and funny, too boot).

So, here is the list I've put together of Heroes episodes along with their respective writers:

Season 1:
- Genesis (101) – Tim Kring
- Don’t Look Back (102) – Tim Kring
- One Giant Leap (103) - Jeph Loeb
- Collision (104) - Bryan Fuller
- Hiros (105) - Michael Green
- Better Halves (106) - Natalie Chaidez
- Nothing to Hide (107) – Jesse Alexander
- Seven Minutes to Midnight (108) – Tim Kring
- Homecoming (109) - Nora Kay Foster and Adam Armus
- Six Months Ago (110) – Aron Eli Coliete
- Fallout (111) – Joe Pokaski
- Godsend (112) – Tim Kring
- The Fix (113) - Natalie Chaidez
- Distractions (114) - Michael Green
- Run! (115) - Nora Kay Foster and Adam Armus
- Unexpected (116) - Jeph Loeb
- Company Man (117) - Bryan Fuller
- Parasite (118) – Christopher Zatta
- .07% (119) – Chuck Kim
- Five Years Gone (120) – Joe Pokaski
- The Hard Part (121) – Aron Eli Coliete
- Landslide (122) – Jesse Alexander

Season 2:
- Four Months Later… (201) – Tim Kring
- Lizards (202) - Michael Green
- Kindred (203) – J.J. Philbin
- The Kindness of Strangers (204) – Tim Kring
- Fight or Flight (205) – Joy and Melissa Blake
- The Line (206) - Nora Kay Foster and Adam Armus
- Out of Time (207) – Aron Eli Coliete
- Four Months Ago (208) – Tim Kring
- Cautionary Tales (209) – Joe Pokaski
- Truth & Consequences (210) – Jesse Alexander
- Powerless (211) – Tim Kring

I've given Season 2 a brief analysis which I've posted to Bryant's blog based solely on discussions there as that's the most quantitative analysis I can do. But if anyone wants to try to analyze these, they're more than welcome to.
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Nov. 29th, 2007 @ 09:51 am 21 vs. Bringing Down the House
So, I just saw the trailer for 21. When I read the book Bringing Down the House, I thought that it would make a great movie. When I found out that the movie rights had been purchased, I was excited to see how it would turn out. Well, it looks like Hollywood has worked its "magic" with another fine book so as to be able to make the story marketable to the mass media and star pretty, well-known faces.

But in a way, this is really the antithesis of a major point of Bringing Down the House. Part of the reason that players were recruited to be on the MIT blackjack team was because they were non-descript - because they could look like anyone. The major players were chosen because with the right clothes and dialect coaching, they could be taken as Chinese, Middle-Eastern, Eastern European.

It just makes me a little sad as the book really didn't need anything to make it a great movie, but it seems like Hollywood needed to "gussy it up" a little. :P
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Oct. 24th, 2007 @ 12:45 pm Big Trouble in Little China Easter Egg on Chuck
Chuck hits another geek icon with an homage to Big Trouble in Little China by naming James Hong's character "Ben Lo Pan", a Triad boss. Geek power!
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Oct. 1st, 2007 @ 08:12 pm Lost Easter Egg on Chuck (no spoilers)
Whoah! Was just watching the new show Chuck and in a scene where he is reciting a number of the secrets in his head, we hear him say, "Oceanic Flight 815 was shot down..."

Heheh...nice.
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Aug. 16th, 2007 @ 08:44 am Rilyn likes Ska
In an ever-continuing attempt to find music that is both suitable for Rilyn and enjoyable for myself to listen to over and over and over and over again (cue Dr. Cox visual), I pulled out some of my old Aquabats albums to play for her. In general, she seemed to like them well enough - but when I put on the Aquabats big radio hit, "Superrad!" Rilyn started dancing! Yay! My daughter likes ska! I'll have give a listen to my Save Ferris albums to see if those would be relatively benign. I'd play Presidents of the United States for her except there are a few songs (unfortunately including some of my favorites) with profanity in them. I mean, she may eventually learn that language on the playground like I did as a kid, but I'm not planning on teaching her at home.


(Oh yeah, and by the way, did you know that the Aquabats MC Bat Commander was a child actor that was in V, Pretty in Pink, and did the voice of Cavin on the Gummi Bears cartoon?)
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Jul. 12th, 2007 @ 09:33 pm Prision en Llamas Dos
I'm sitting in a hotel room in Lancaster on a trip for work. And I'm watching the move Prison on Fire II in Spanish. Which considering how much sense Prison on Fire II made in Chinese with English subtitles, it's making about as much sense to me now.
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Jul. 3rd, 2007 @ 08:54 am Dreamt Last Night...
Had a crazy, cool dream last night that was a cross between Battlefield: Earth, Monsters, Inc., and Shadowfist. Aliens, resembling Abominations from Shadowfist, had invaded the Earth and enslaved the population. Along with a few others, I was part of the resistance movement (vaguely resembling the Jammers, but without the monkeys - think more along the lines of the Gearhead - 'Lean, mean, sand in the vaseline.') The final shootout of the dream took place in a paintshop that was similar to the door storage facility in Monsters, Inc. - except instead of doors, there were folding chairs hanging in rows, great slabs of plywood, and metal beams, all flying around on tracks, crashing into abominations, with myself and one of the other resistance fighters leaping from one track to another, flying through the air to grab onto the bottom of a folding chair like a trapeze. Fun dream.
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Jun. 26th, 2007 @ 09:18 am What's Hot in Tucson
Last night, Anne and I were watching the local news and the weather came on. They showed a forecast for the next 7 days as they do, giving the high and low temps for each day. And you know how when they do these things, they'll show a little cloud if it's going to be overcast, or a snowflake if there's going to be snow? Well, for the two days this next week that they expect it to be 108 degrees, there was a little label underneath that said, "HOT!". Mind you, the other days of the week when it was going to be 106 and 107 were -not- labeled "HOT!". So, I guess that tells you that Tucsonans only consider it to be hot when it gets over 108.

Man, folks are hardcore here.
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Apr. 27th, 2007 @ 02:28 pm R.I.P Drive - we barely knew you...
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117963779.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

Yet another canceled show that I'll have to get on DVD to see how the rest of the season fares.
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Apr. 13th, 2007 @ 08:58 am Yay! Props to Karen and Rome!
I was taking my shower this morning, minding my own business, and Anne rushed into the bathroom with the front page of our newspaper's arts and entertainment section - there in a half-page spread was an article on my taiko dojo! The pictures are of the Funhouse Movement Theater group - a dance troupe that uses our space, but the majority of the article is about Karen and Rome, the leaders of Odaiko Sonora. I particularly appreciated the article's focus on Karen and Rome's work to help educate members of the arts community with the business side of the arts.

Check out the article here if you get a chance:

http://www.azstarnet.com/accent/178112.php
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