Experimental Life

Jesus can walk on water but Chuck Norris can swim through land.

There is no such thing as evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.

It’s like 3AM so I may rewrite this late, it looks terrible…or maybe not.

Throughout the years I’ve gone through many of Ben Stiller’s comedy flicks. Some were good, others were a bit of a drag. I personally liked the film Mystery Men, it puts a new twist on superhero characters. I also liked Zoolander because as stupid as that movie was it was funny. Although with those funny stuff comes the bad movies like Envy, Along Came Polly, The Heartbreak Kid, or Duplex. Stiller may have his hit or misses but his current film, Tropic Thunder was quite a blast to watch.

Quite literally a celebritude (my word for a multitude of celebrity cameos) fanfare. First thing that you’ll notice about this film is how vast of the celebrity cameo it has, not only by it’s main stars (Stiller, Black and Downey Jr.) but other celebrities such as **SPOILERS**

Nick Nolte, Matthew McConaughey, Tyra Bank, Christine Taylor, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lance Bass and the ever crazy Tom Cruise (in an incredible role, I might say).

**SPOILERS END**

About the story, yes there is a story in this Ben Stiller film. Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr play three high profiled prima donna movie stars who are cast in roles to play American soldiers in a Vietnam war film, but as luck has it the film is threatened to be shutdown because of it’s high cost. So what do they do? They send actors into a dangerously warring territory to survive for their life…and film it at the same time.

What I liked about this film is how Stiller likes to over exaggerate things like what he did with supermodels in Zoolander but instead he creates these over the top movie actors and expands that though by putting them in a real life dangerous situation. Almost all of the characters in the movie are over the top. Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, an action-packed superstar who’s films have lately been bombs at the box office. Speedman is probably the most intensely ignorant and idiotic character in the movie caring only for his superstar status and trying to jump start his dwindling career back to stardom. Jack Black plays the character of the Eddie Murphy type of guy who’s always doing family friendly dumb comedies but with a history of hidden heroin abuse. And then you also have, probably a fan favorite, Robert Downey Jr as the Australian method actor who stays in character even after the film stops rolling. In the film he is portraying the role of a 1960’s blaxpoitation African-American male with the jive talking and the deep, gruffy voice and he keeps playing that character throughout the film. It might seemed a bit racist to have Downey in blackface, but truthfully, he’s probably the most sincere and favorable character in the movie while both Stiller and Black’s characters are both kind of mumbling idiots.

It’s good to see actors making fun of, well, actors. It’s good to see a movie that’s not afraid to make fun of a lot of things, this film makes fun of a lot of things: the overweight, black people, war, heroin, and at one point poking fun of the mentally retarded by having Stiller portray a retarded boy in a fake movie. That caused an uproar to the point where there were protesters picketing the film because of the heavy use of making fun of the mentally retarded. These folks need to chill out, the film wasn’t targeting the mentally retarded, it was targeting Hollywood in general and it’s cliches and industry stupidity in cashing out.

But whatever to them, this is a good throw away movie and it’s a funny catch. Being that it’s rated-R it’s not made to be watch by everyone. Come on, rated-R movies are here to offend, go back and watch your G-rated shit if you want safety. If you want to have some shits and giggles, check the film out, it’s a good laugh.

Shooter McGavin: I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast.

Happy Gilmore: You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?

Shooter McGavin: NO! I..

It’s right to say that Superman is a boyscout compared to the Batman because simply said, the Batman is bad-ass. I came back from watching the first midnight showing of the Dark Knight on IMAX and it has to be said that the Dark Knight blows all other Batman movies out of the water. I can testify now that Tim Burton can take that number one trophy off his mantle because Christopher Nolan knocked Burton off his throne and burned the disgusting taste of the horrible Joel Schumacher nippled suit with big neon crotched versions Batman Forever and Batman & Robin out of my mouth.

How can you make a sequel to one of the best Batman movie series after the original Tim Burton ones? By adding one of the most recognizable villains in comic book history, the Joker. A criminal who cares not about bargaining or getting money, he only cares about one thing, nothing, just chaos. You can’t have a Batman movie without him. He completes the Batman. And I would have to say, Heath Ledger did the job and he did it wonderfully. He made his version of the Joker quite sinister, and funny, but also very dark and creepy and I think that’s what people really wanted. Ledger proved that he was the Joker and I truly had faith in his performance. This movie was about the Joker as much as it is Bruce Wayne and the Batman. The Batman was a facade of Bruce Wayne. We had to see Bruce hide himself to become the Batman, but there was no hiding the Joker. Any way you looked at him, he was the Joker.

When you think about it, this was a Joker movie, not because of how much face time Ledger got in the movie, but because everything centered around the Joker, the Joker wasn’t centered around the Batman although the main focus for the Batman was Joker. Story-wise though, the Joker was the central character. For those of you who don’t know the story, here it is in a nutshell: The Joker comes to town and wrecks havoc within Gotham City and the Batman must try to save the day. That’s it. But within that tiny sentence lies an intricate way of storytelling. Every character has a motive, everyone in the movie had a sense of awareness that something needs to be done, whether it’s the Joke causing chaos, or the Batman preventing chaos, or Harvey Dent and James Gordon protecting us from the chaos. Everyone had a role in this little game and this is what shined in the movie. One character may spark something that is set off in another character and it makes the film flow.

From my own perspective, this is one of the best Batman movies I have seen. Goodbye Batman and Batman Returns, you have officially been surpassed by the Dark Knight and after watching this movie I have to say that they should NOT make this Batman saga into a trilogy because I feel that another Batman movie out of this saga will ruin it. This movie tied it all up, there really is no need to make another one. I don’t want to see another Spiderman 3 failure. The Dark Knight should be the end of the Christian Bale/Christopher Nolan era. There will be other remakes, but I don’t want to see another one tied to the Dark Knight because you simply cannot make something to continue the story as amazing as they did with the Dark Knight.

Christian Bale did a superb job as the Batman, Aaron Eckhart fucking rocked as Harvey Dent/Two-Face (I truly do believe in Harvey Dent), Gary Oldman was awesome as Gordon and of course, the late Heath Ledger…How did he make such an evil mastermind flow out of the pages of a comic book and create such a spectacular representation? There’s no words to really say how terribly good the guy is as the Joker. Jack Nicholson can fucking bow down to Ledger. The Joker was a dark character, the Batman was a dark character and you can’t have a Jack Nicholson version prancing around in the Dark Knight because Nicholson’s Joker would be raped hard by the thugs of the Dark Knight’s Gotham City. When the audience cheers more for the Joker than the Batman, you know Heath Ledger is doing a damn perfect job representing him. Seriously, the IMAX audience cheered and got rowdy for the Joker, he was the star of the movie. Maybe it was because of Ledger’s death, but I’d like to think that it wasn’t just because of that.

The cinematography and sound are simply stunning, the loud explosions and gunshots and earth shattering noises makes the film tremble with power. The city of Gotham was different from Batman Begin, not as much of a glorified dump in the Dark Knight as it was in Begins, but it was littered with goons and thugs and was a shithole place to live and I still wonder why there are rich people that dared to live there. If you know Gotham City is a dump and the crime rate is at 100%, you probably wouldn’t want to live there, but I guess these people LOVE their city pride. The sky views of the city are nice, so rich and scenic. Even though Gotham was filmed primarily in Chicago, you didn’t really think that. It felt like an entirely different area. Later on in the film the locale changes to Hong Kong and it’s just a wow factor when you see Hong Kong in full IMAX resolution. If you’re going to watch this movie, you need to watch it on the 3-story tall IMAX screen, no exceptions. This movie was made for IMAX and interestingly enough was also filmed with IMAX in mind.

I have some thoughts about this movie, thoughts that occurred while watching it. I was very found of the Havery Dent/Two-Face character. The fact that he cared so much about his city, that he was a strong enough person to fight crime and suddenly lose it all by what happens later on in the film. There’s just outcomes that you just don’t expect from this film, the little curve Nolan throws at you just to screw you. There’s parts of the film where I’m just sitting there wondering, “What the hell just happened here?”, it’s so hard to feel that Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face when you’ve seen the built up of how great of a district attorney he was throughout the movie and he’s quite scary as Two-Face, that disfigured face haunts you. Things that happen to Harvey Dent, things that happen to the Batman, things that happen to the Joker, Rachel, Gordon, Lucius Fox, Alfred, it all has its way of unraveling something new that literally blows ones mind.

If you haven’t noticed it by now, I totally loved the film. It’s exactly what I was expecting out of a Batman movie. Nothing too cartoony, as much as I loved the animated series, you couldn’t see that Batman, or that Joker as a real person because they were just too cartoony. What they did for the movie was just right, pulling out the comic book characters and making them more real. Call me a fan of commercial summer films, but who wouldn’t be after watching the Dark Knight? It’s an awesome film, simple as that.

I can not put out an episode currently. I do not have the time. I should have the new website out this weekend sometime (no). I will put a brief episode then (no). I am thinking of a bi-monthly format (no). More details to follow (no).

Thank you, Mick Aloha for the borrowed excuse.

for the new Mick Aloha Advent…uhh…I mean, the Wondercast coming in 2008 sometime… Maybe…

Pixar has one hell of a group of story writers because they’ve done it again with Wall-E. Came back from watching the first midnight showing of Wall-E and I have to say I absolutely love this movie. Not only did Pixar remake Johnny 5 of the Short Circuit movies into their own little CGI character, but they add better humor and a lovable nature to Wall-E that blow Johnny 5 out of the water…plus he’s the coolest looking little robot ever. Makes me want to buy the Wall-E toys.

What makes Wall-E such a good movie is it’s lack of using voice actors and yet Wall-E and the other robots (with their limited use of voices and words) convey such emotions to the screen that you don’t necessarily need to talk in the movie. There’s some voice work by the humans in the film, but the majority of the time it’s Wall-E, EVE and the other bots. It’s funny to think how robots have such outstanding emotions for…well…robots. With Wall-E, you can tell when he’s said, when he’s happy, when he’s scared without seeing any sort of facial expressions besides the movement of his camera eyes which is pretty much the only emotional thing on his face. Even with no real face to show expressions, he carries it out like it’s nothing, simple as that. Visually, Wall-E is simply stunning and superb.

Pixar’s usually know for its family friendly kids movies and yeah, Wall-E has all that in it, all the G-rated awesomeness that kids love and parents enjoy also, but Pixar spreads this universal coolness for all ages. Although it was midnight and kids don’t usually go to watch movies at that time, the theater me and some friends watched the film at was filled with mainly college folks, pretty packed, almost a full theater. I would expect more folks on opening day. Anyway, that tells you something. That Pixar not only made Wall-E for kids, but for everyone.

Pixar has a way of fulfilling the child in me by giving me wholesome entertainment without me getting bored or thinking it’s stupid. Coming from a long line of awesome movies, Wall-E is probably going to be ranked as my all time favorite Pixar movie knocking out my now past favorite, the Incredibles, to second place and Toy Story 1 to third.

I should explain what exactly Wall-E is about for those of you living under a rock. So basically…Earth is turning into a shit-hole because we humans pretty much polluted the Earth to no ends, so in a desperate measure giant cruise-like ships containing probably thousands or millions of people get sent into space for re-population and survival while the humans that are still on Earth stay behind to try and clean it up.

In the process little robots called Wall-E’s are made to help with garbage control, but the world ends up with so much garbage and pollution that the people and the poor little Wall-E’s could not even fix it and eventually everything on Earth dies out even the robot cleaners…except one Wall-E. He’s kept alive to forever clean up the Earths garbage. That’s the basic plot of the story, it gets a bit more complicated later on with him meeting EVE, a robot who scouts Earth for sustainable lifeforms and even later on when Wall-E goes on-board the spaceship, Axiom, in which the humans are living in although everything they do is controlled robotically making them obese couch potatoes.

The movie itself is filled with a lot of important messages mainly about how people need to stop turning the Earth into a hellhole. You push Mother Earth too far and it’ll bite back. The same message was said in the movie, The Happening, which played out a bit more differently, but ended up with humans dying. We destroy Earth and eventually she’ll destroy us. You really can’t expect the world to sustain suitable life if we take it for granted and pollute it and bring the toxicity level to a high.

Slight spoiler alert, stay clear if you want to watch Wall-E. The movie also makes light of how human beings rely too much on robots to do everything for them. In the movie the remaining human race living aboard the Axiom are obese, lazy, tired people who don’t even walk because they use hoverchairs that movie for them; food is mushed together into a milkshake looking drink, people talk to each by communicating on a screen rather then in person. Robots are doing everything for them, feeding them, grooming them, driving them around, telling them what to do basically, robots even play virtual golf for them and when you think about it, it kind of is true. There’s a lot of things robots do for us that we take for granted and instead of doing it for ourselves we conserve our energy by giving that job to a robot. In later scenes in the film, you find out that the whacked out, malfunctioning robots aren’t exactly the bad crazy ones, but the efficient, working ones become the real bad bots. It’s a scary thought, kind of like the Matrix but instead, not as creepy.

I guess the main idea of the story is it’s love theme between Wall-E and EVE. It’s cute and a nice little plot for them. It’s pretty adorable seeing them together and their interactions. I guess when you’re alone on Earth for hundreds of years creating emotions and feelings for yourself, you tend to crave it and Wall-E deserved it. He got what he wanted, a companion and the love that he was wanting.

This post is way too long, I’ll end it here. But to say Wall-E was a good movie is underwhelming, it’s a pretty awesome movie is more like it. I highly recommend for any of you folks to watch it and after reading my garbled, shit writing, I think you better go see it for yourself.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so satisfied with a game than I have with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. To backtrack myself a bit, I have ALWAYS been an avid fan of the Metal Gear series although I started out playing Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation before I played the original 1987 Metal Gear. Konami, along with Capcom and Suda51 have always been my favorite game developing companies…sorry Squaresoft/Square-Enix, some of your games aren’t as great as your other ones.

The Metal Gear series itself have always had a place within my personal favorites. Metal Gear Solid is by far…still…my favorite game, amidst some stupid changes from time to time, but it’s always back at the top. Solid Snake, Metal Gear’s (MG) main protagonist gives off an aura of badass. He’s not some emo depressed individual like Cloud in Final Fantasy 7 or a short, stubby Italian plumber. He’s a CQC, ass kickin’ BADASS. You can’t have Metal Gear without Solid Snake and vice-versa.

Playing MGS4 was a bit of a nostalgic experience. Knowing that this game will be the last one featuring Solid Snake is truly a sad moment, but with that comes a spectacular way to end the Solid Snake era. Snake provided fans of the game years of awesomeness, from the stealth action to the fantastic story developing to the amazing visuals that made the game what it is. My friends actually enjoyed watching me play the game, usually when one of us plays a single-player game, the rest of us hates watching it.

I bought a PlayStation original because of Metal Gear Solid (it was practically my first PS experience and I enjoyed every moment of it). I bought the PS2 pretty much for Metal Gear Solid 2 (and later on Metal Gear Solid 3) although I’ve been playing with the system way before it came out (basically playing with other peoples PS2s) and pretty much I bought the PS3 solely because I wanted to play some Metal Gear Solid 4 although my initial intentions were to watch Blu-Ray DVDs.

Unlike many players of the series who play as fast as they can to complete it the first time, I took the initiative and really delve into the story of MGS4 and I’m glad I did because the story is simply amazing, Hideo Kojima and his crew at Kojima Production knew what they were doing when they created MGS4, they had their mind set on satisfying the consumers and their fans.

The plot although nicely done can be a bit heavy for casual gamers and people who are new to the series, but it’s remarkable how it relates to modern day affairs such as war, technology, politics and also give off a sense of sci-fi fantasy. It’s also a bit scary knowing that this game has a bit of reality to it. The privatizing of military, government chaos, war for profit, robots and nanomachine technology. All those are a bit of truth and it’s creepy to think that someday war will be fought by companies who do it for profit and not because of sides or how soldiers will be injected with nanomachines to help them perform better in the battlefield. War has changed, politics have changed, everything WILL change sooner or later.

I’m going on a bit of a tangent for a moment. As I was saying, I’m sad to hear that MGS4 will be the last in the Solid Snake era and sad to know that MGS4 will be Hideo Kojima’s last Metal Gear series (maybe), but maybe another era will spawn and hopefully given to the hands of someone who will take care of it.

I haven’t really talked much about the game itself, maybe I will in another installment, I’m kind of sleepy and typing this up is a pain but the thing I want to make clear was that MGS4 brought a part of me back to when I was enjoying life playing video games instead of making it a chore to complete levels. I had a good time playing MGS4 and it was fun while it lasted.

Wow, so this is what non-sense ramble equates to. I love not being able to make sense.

Random shit on my mind.

People read this shit? I wouldn’t know since I can’t keep track, but apparently Mick Aloha from the Moon Masters reads my stuff because I was mentioned (I feel special). Anyway, this has nothing to do with my website, just giving the boys over at the Moon Masters a holler, check thems out.

So, I picked up Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots on release day and I must say, it’s quite the looker. There’s only a couple games that I would actually get pre-orders and pick it up at GameStop for and the Metal Gear series are definitely one of the few. So far, the short time I have played with it was pretty awesome. Old Snake looks pretty damn cool, though I still prefer tight faced Solid Snake or Naked Snake over Old Snake. I like how the story touches on the war economy, that money can get your soldiers. Instead of investing in government military groups like the Marines or the Army, the Middle East is replaced by PMC (Private Military Companies) who do the fighting.

I haven’t played much so I’m still not in depth with what the hell is going on, but it feels like a harder MG game and I’m liking it. I’ll update about it more as soon as I play a couple hours of the game.

Onto other shit in the agenda, I also recently purchased a new lens for my Canon Rebel XTi. I will be introducing the Canon EF 100mm lens to the family real soon. This will get me off my iPhone 2.0 anger problem because the price of this new lens is a whopper. Folks like K-ko may know how it feels about pricing of lenses for a DSLR. I found a place that rents camera lenses in the Bay Area, I might take a look at that places, the prices to rent camera lenses are relatively low, might borrow some lenses to see which ones are nice or not nice.

I’ve been taking sleeping pills lately, that shit WORKS. As I am typing this right now with a pill inside me, I am going in and out of being drowsy. My eyes are slowly closing…BUT, I need to finish this.

I always say I’m going to put out a new show, but every day I don’t feel like doing one. How do you other podcasters do it? How do you guys get your act together and put out your shit without putting it aside, makes me wonder if you weekly podcasters are robots :::ahem::: Moon Masters :::ahem::: Twinkie Beyond :::ahem:::.

Check out season 2 of the AD show, I know a lot…if not all of my listeners are from Apoc’s show, so check it out. I’m not going to put the link to his blog/podcast like everyone else does because he wants to keep it on the down low unless he says otherwise, but yeah…go find his blog yourself, bitches.

Okay, I’m getting fucked up with this sleeping pill in me so I’m out.

Damn it. Yet again, Apple screws me over with a new and improved version of something I have. First, they announced their line of MacBook series a month AFTER I got my PowerBook, then they put out iLife ‘08, now they screw me over again by pushing out the iPhone 2.0…a CHEAPER, more powerful, improved version of my current one.

Fuck, my 400 dollar iPhone going down to 199 dollars. What next Apple, are you going to take my freedom too? Hopefully they do something for the people who already own older versions of the iPhones, especially people like me whose iPhone is barely a year old.

Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Jordan Quizzes Harrison Ford (5/21/08)

Every year I make a list of famous to semi-famous females (any in the world, not just pertaining to America) that I feel are so captivating to me that I must present it to you folks.

My top ten (click on names to see their pictures):

This years top choice: Lena Fuji…drools…yeah, she’s so pretty. A Caucasian/Asian mixed model, quite the tempting combo. I love it.

It’s quite a surprise Ellen Page got such a high place in my list since every year it’s been Asian celebrities that top it. But hey, it’s always good to have something new. Ellen is mighty cute herself and I dug her a lot in Juno. She has those chipmunk cheeks that I have a fetish over. I love cheeky girls. Plus she’s over 18, so that’s good. I don’t want to be into some jailbait girl now.

Anyway, the list is every changing, but it’s cool, I dig it. Some of you might be thinking, “Simon, every woman should be beautiful in their own way”. Yeah, whatever, this isn’t a list of who I want to be with. It’s a list of girls I happen to find cute and/or hot. So leave me alone. Peace out.