In My Brain

Indiana Jones

This is old news to some, but they gave the new Indiana Jones title a um... title.

Thanks Geek Monthly.

Jessica Alba Outs Me, Ross

Last week at the Teen Choice Awards, Jessica Alba won the "Female Hottie" award. In her little acceptance speech, she attempted to lash-out at me. Yes, that's right. I am the Ross she lashed out at.

To all of you who didn't see her little tirade, here it is:
"Ross didn't love me. I was pigeon-toed, I had a sway back, I was slightly cross-eyed, buck-toothed, I sucked my thumb. Look at me now, Ross! Look at me now!"

Well, I'm lookin'.
Now look, I know you are very attractive - everyone knows that. But back in the day, like you said, you were buck-toothed and cross-eyed. And it was YOU who had a crush on me. You said, "Hey Ross, I promise to kiss you if you pick me for your team." And as I recall, I DID pick you. There was never a stipulation that said I had to pick you first. So, I actually lived up to my side of the agreement, despite all the angst you've been carrying around for these many years. Also, you sucked at baseball. You struck out every single time you went up to bat. Wait, you did hit it once - backwards! And then, you were doing cartwheels in the outfield the whole game and stepping on bees and sucking your thumb. I was yelling at you that one time to catch the ball, but you weren't paying attention. It knocked you right in the head. We lost the game because of you! But I guess you were fortunate. I think that hit to the head uncrossed your eyes, right?

And your mad at me?! You sold away your first kiss to be on a baseball team. Yikes!

Now you're all grown up, and living the successful life in Hollywood. Congratulations. I've enjoyed watching you in some of your mildly successful films. Like the Fantastic Four films which were kinda good. "Honey" which was quite bad. Sin City which was pretty good. And the old Dark Angel series which was pretty okay. Oh, and you did pretty good in Entourage too.

I'm sorry you're been mad at me for kissing you and then putting you on my baseball team, thus fulfilling the details of the promise. Maybe if you weren't the worst baseball player in class, I would have picked you sooner.

And Jessica, if you're so hot, how come they casted you as The INVISIBLE Girl? Huh? Answer me that!

I knew it! New Disney Princess is black

I had this pegged a couple years ago. With the Disney Princess Marketing Machine devouring everything in its site, I knew they would have to introduce a black princess character in order to keep things going. And that's what they did today. Princess Maddy of New Orleans is the star character in Disney's next animated feature, "The Frog Princess."

Here's the link.

No surprises here - Iran outraged over "300"

I imagine it will be only a couple of hours now until the Religion of Peace rallies and begins killing people and burning buildings to show how they are not a violent people.

"300" opened this past Friday, and raked in $70 million.

The Ayende-No newspaper of Tehran wrote, "Hollywood Declares War on Iranians."

An ironic headline, since the story is about the Persians who declared war on the Greeks.

The paper also said that, "the film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people."

Another paper, Hamshahri, says "300" is "serving the policy of the U.S. leadership..." Give me a break! The policy of the US is not based on a comic book written over 8 years ago.

This kind of hyper-sensitivity is getting old. Cartoons of Mohamed - month-long riots, fire, murders. A Koran found in a sewer somewhere in Saudi Arabia - riots, fires, murders. It's ridiculous!

The movie does not focus on the actual historical accuracy of the event. It focuses on bringing a comic book to the big screen. And it does so beautifully. It's a creative visual take on a story, not a historical take. If that's what you want, get the whole story by watching an historical documentary.

What really happened? The Persian Empire was spreading quickly across the middle-east, and even took so Greek city-states in Turkey. Years later, these Greek areas revolted, and they were assisted by the Athenians. This did not please the Persians. And since the Athenians torched the temples that were in this Persian-occupied Greek town, the Persians swore revenge. And so as Xerxes came into power, he went after Greece, and his massive army and navy were engaged at the Hot Gates. In that battle, the 7000 Greeks led by 300 Spartans made the Persian Army pay dearly! And the Navy did significant damage against the Persians. After 3 days, the entire Greek army was wiped out, and the remaining Navy fled south. And so Xerxes then decimated Athens. He then continued to make war in Greece. And his Navy chased down the Greek navy, and at Salamis, the Greeks nearly destroyed the entire armada. After that, the Persians never came back to Greece.

Historically, that's what happened. But the part of the story we love, are the 300 Spartans who sacrificed themselves so that Greece would have a couple more days to rally and prepare for a counterattack, or to flee Athens. In this moment, Greece became united as a fledging democracy. And had the Spartans not stood and fought, Athens, and all the people in it, would have been killed, and Democracy, Freedom, and Western Thought along with it.

This all happened circa 480bc. It's not a new story. Across the middle east, there are places one can go to hear about the heroic tales of the Muslims during the crusades. Oral traditions, stories passed down for generation after generation. Stories that celebrate the killing of the Christians. And now we tell a story, a story based on a comic book, and suddenly, we're declaring war on them and instituting anti-Iranian policies. Ridiculous.

Blades of Glory

There's a new movie being made right now called Blades of Glory. The movie stars Wil Ferrell, Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), Will Arnett (Gob Bluth, Arrested Development), Amy Poehler (SNL), and Jenna Fischer (The Office), among others. So it should be really funny.

It's about 2 rival ice skaters (Wil Ferrell and Jon Heder) who are banned from the Olympics, only to return through a loophole by competing in a Pairs competition. The link above to IMDB has some photos, as does this site here which has even BETTER photos, including one of quasi-sexy Jenna Fischer in a stripper outfit - If you're into that kinda thing.

Toy Story 3 Announced

On Thursday, Disney announced that they would be releasing Toy Story 3 in 2009. Superfun!
Read all the gory details here.

Chad Vader

I finally got around to watching all 5 of the Chad Vader episodes. They're great.

The story is about Darth's less well-known brother Chad, who after a terrible biking accident, has been given a life-sustaining suit from his brother. And meanwhile, Chad still goes about his business as the day-shift manager at a local supermarket. It's pretty entertaining.

Watch it here:

MST3K & EPI I

Good news from TheForce.net today. News that Mike Nelson, of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame, now of Rifftrax, has new audio commentary making fun of Star Wars, The Phantom Menace.

All I can say is, - It's about freakin' time!!

How does it work? You buy the audio file for $3, then play it at the same time as you watch the movie; like one would do with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz.

Kelly and I are definitely going to check this out. We're both BIG fans of Jar Jar Binks [haha] and it should be quite entertaining. =)

Horror

Does anyone else out there have a problem with the overwhelming influx and new genre Horror movies? It seems like every couple weeks, for the last several months, there's a new gory movie coming out. Saw, Saw II, Saw III, The Cave, Hostel, Feast; those are the ones I can think of just off the top of my head.

What's with these movies? They look SO disgusting. People being eviscerated on screen, eaten alive, tortured - I would never go see these movies. They're SO dark and disturbing looking. I just don't understand why people would see these nor why movie studios would produce movies like this? Anyone out there see thes flicks? Any one out there completely grossed out by the concept of them like I am?

Speaking of horror. Halloween is almost upon us. And since Kelly and I live in Watsonville, we are NOT looking forward to it. This town and Halloween go together like poop and a toilet - they're made for each other. Everyone dresses up like the living dead - blood, monster masks, fangs, rotting flesh, people try to look as gross as possible. It is COMPLETELY overwhelming and gross. We handed out candy last year and it was too much. I think this year we'll just hide out. Another thing is that we live in a fairly nice neighborhood. Because of this, people from other neighborhoods carpool here to get candy. On Halloween, the streets are packed with cars - there is no street parking. There are HUNDREDS of extra trick-or-treaters roaming the streets - and they are all dressed like monsters or slutty vampires. And I can't have the kids anywhere near the front door that night.

And don't even get me started on the local Walgreen's during the month of October. Plastic corpses everywhere, monster masks, caged zombies hanging from the ceilings, and all manner of undead decoration covering the entire center area of the store. It's completely over the top (not in a Sylvester Stallone kind of way).

The month of October is one of the big reasons I don't like living in this town.

"Oh, cuh'mon Ross - give me a break. I think you're over reacting."

Maybe, but it still drives me nuts every year.

Beauty: Skin Deep

It's been awhile since my last post. I've been über busy with work, kids, that kind'uh stuff. Kelly has been crazy-busy with photography.

For any technophiles and or itunes junkies out there, I've been really enjoying 2 podcasts - both courtesy of G4. The first is "The Daily Feed Video Podcast" with the lovely Layla Kayleigh, bringing the latest news from the technology and entertainment industries. Cool stuff, with some personality. The other, is "The Daily Nut"; a collection of comical video clips from across the web - college humor.com, youtube.com, etc. But there is a great clip posted today from college humor - but I went to the mainsite to watch the whole thing.

This is a great little film. It shows a woman walk into a studio sans make-up. Then, a team does hair, make-up - the works. The resulting photo is then edited in a photo-editor (judging by the interface, not photoshop), eyebrows lifted, neck lengthened, cheek bones raised, etc.

It is really great to watch. I mean, we all know how much manipulation takes place before a photograph ends up being printed in an ad. But to see each step taken here is really something to behold. To my female audience - if you ever dream of looking like one of those models in the ad, this is a perfect little movie to show you how unrealistic it is.

This is DEFINITELY something I will show my daughters. It's only about 2 minutes long, so be sure to watch it.

Here's the link.