That's no claw, it's a tooth! 4/2

Here’s my favorite fantasy monster, Vermitrax Pejorative. Trust me, she’s as frightening as her name.

She came from 1981’s Dragonslayer, an often overlooked film from back in the days when Star Wars roamed the earth. It’s somehow natural then that Phil Tippett also created the dragon for Dragonslayer, and should make you want to check it out even more.

(Sometimes world would cross, and the Rancor wasn’t a Vermithrax fan, it would seem.)

The name, in case you were curious, is a latin-ish way of saying “The Worm of Thrace Who Makes Things Worse.” I’m glad only dragons are named in this manner, otherwise I might be known as “The Dude Who Sits A Lot” or something equally vile.

Anywho, the creature was amazing on film. Using the then revolutionary “go-motion” technique, Tippett made a dragon that I BELIEVED in. It was scaly, slimy, ill-tempered, and dangerous.

Near the beginning of the film, the wizard Ulrich is presented with one of Vermithrax’s scales. He tells the peasants who seek his help in defeating it:

“I know of this creature, Vermithrax Pejorative. Look at the ridges here, on this scale. She’s old now, and when a dragon gets this old she knows nothing but pain. She grows decreptid, pitiful - spiteful.” I’m paraphrasing, but you get the drift.

Long before you ever get to see the dragon, you know she’s going to be a mean bitch.

To keep her from burning the kingdom of Urland to the ground, the king has made a bargain with the beast; he will feed her a virgin every 3 months. While he sits in his castle and praises himself for his diplomacy, Vermithrax is feeding the virgins not to herself, but her young hatchlings instead. Guess you didn’t think about that, did you, sire?

Fantasy geeks can debate all they want about it resembling a wyvern more than a dragon, but let’s face it, to the world at large it’s a moot point. Vermithrax is 50 feet long, winged, and can melt your ass with fire. I think that settles it.

This thing is amazing to see. Its first appearance is mostly off camera and you only hear its sharp intake of breath before toasting a maiden for breakfast, but it merely baits you. You think, well it can’t be that awesome can it? Later, when our young hero Galen tries to poke it with a spear, you get to see just how impressive it was. I dare say that although CGI today may look better integrated on fil and can be photo-realistic it doesn’t feel that way. I know it’s done in a computer. I look at Galen on the neck of Vermithrax and I know he’s on a 40 foot machine with rubber skin. The 4 foot model is walking through that cave and I can for a moment forget the scale.

Though nominated for an Oscar for FX, it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Somehow.

Stuff like this won’t be made ever again, and it’s too bad. I’m not trying to take anything away from CG animators, they do incredible work. But there is something to be said about the hand made puppet, the stop motion shooting that takes weeks to get a few minutes of footage, and the effect it has on you.

TV I would pay for 4/1

When I see clips like this, I tend to think that our television here in America is somehow lacking.



I don’t care how “unsophisticated” it may be, but watching guys get hit in the nuts when they screw up a tongue twister is just funny. I would watch Dr. Phil if he got a purple-nurple from his guests (or perhaps a goblin with a clown wig).

I don’t have much more to add to this clip, it speaks for itself.
Happy April Fools Day.

Hurry, Star Force! 3/31

If I had to pick one cartoon to best say something about me as a kid, it would have to be Star Blazers. Sure it looks a bit crude by today’s standards, but in 1980 this was the very pinnacle of cool for me. There were three shows that constituted a triumverate of awesome for me (Speed Racer, Star Blazers, Robotech) and this show was at the top of the pyramid.

I won’t burden you with all the details of the plot (this time) except to say it was all about the human race using alien technology to resurrect the Yamato as a space ship in order to save themselves from the Gamillon Empire. The idea is that the Earth has a year to live before radiation from the Gamillion planet bombs reaches the last surviving humans hiding below the surface. The Yamato (called Argo in the American version) can make the journey to a far away friendly alien to retrieve the Cosmo DNA to revitalize the planet and stop the radiation.

It’s a compelling plot, to be sure, and each episode ended with a reminder of how many days remained before Earth perished. There were aliens (who eventually and inexplicably became blue-skinned) and space ships, guns and gadgets. But even the mighty Wave Motion Gun didn’t make the show what it was, the characters did.

The show gave us stories of courage, sure, but also loss. People could die. In fact in the very first episode you witness the slaughter of an Earth fleet by the Gamillons. Among those lost was the older brother of the main character (Derek Wildstar). The one surviving ship was commanded by the Argo’s captain, Captain Avatar. Throughout most of the show the two men struggle with the guilt and anger of the event, something you won’t find on the Snorks.

The villains were not bumbling, moustache twisting clichés either. Their leader was what the Japanese considered an “honorable foe” in that his reasons for attacking Earth are not out of the desire for conquest or glory, only that his world is dying and he wants a new one for his people. While not a nice guy, he fights with honor and I think is a much more compelling villain because of it.

He also took baths with a couple blue women and a bottle of wine while he issued orders. Even at 6 years old I knew he was a pimp.

I like to think that it is because of this show that I enjoy deep characters and plots that offer more than fluff. Even now when I watch it I am moved by the troubles and triumphs of Wildstar, Venture, Nova, Sandor and the rest.

Today’s episode marks the first use of the Wave Motion Gun in the series. Note the hackneyed way the American studio reused some clips to make it appear that the Gamillons evacuated. Clearly a staion crew can all fit into a single interceptor like the one Wildstar tangled with earlier, right? Whatever, we all know they really got fried. Also watch for Avatar’s speech about power and responsibility, twenty years before Spider-Man.

Intro


Part 1


Part 2

11:15am | 3/30

Confounded by the slurps and sucks from Jill, as I am daily, I massage my eyes with my fingers. Within my little squared enclosure at the Office, I can hear the muffled practices of my fellows; their typing, their inane conversations, their hushed phone calls to loved ones on company time. None of this has ever served to derail my concentration in the past. Such is my resolve to my task that I am rarely taken far from the course.

Save for one, daily exception.

Jill. Every day – every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday – every day at precisely 11:15am she drinks from her pink water bottle with a sound that can only be attributed to the worst kind of mental knife twisting imaginable. It is no mere nails on a chalkboard, this fantastically awful slurp; it is a sickening uptake of her liquid for a full two minutes and twenty seconds. Every day.

Though she sits across from my enclosure, I keep my back to her. I refuse to record her visage with my eyes and forever cement the sound into an image. I have broken pencils with a fierce grip, left sets of grooves from raked fingers on my desk. I have even cracked a tooth from a particularly clenched jaw one winter morning.

Today will be different. Today is the seven hundredth and ninety-ninth day of my periodic hell and I will not allow there to be an eight-hundredth. No, today I have resolved to take the bottle and smash it outside on the city pavement. Today my agony will be known to Jill, even if she is not aware of it as she is not aware of my name!


Ah, 11:14am! The time is near; I rise from my embattled desk and take a moment to gird myself for the assault. My other neighbors are, of course, clueless to my pain and carry on with their unimportant lives. I turn to face my thirsty foe.

Her back is also to my cubicle, a good thing for she will not be alerted to my advance! I take my three steps to cross the divide with a conviction that was surely felt by the greatest of warriors when they stepped into the fray. I am confidant. My mission will succeed and my days hereafter will be unshackled from the sucks of her sloppy mouth.

Jill was rather ordinary to look at. I assume the front of her would match the tame anterior. I see her pink water bottle in her left hand; she is bringing the lidless container to her face, hidden behind her mundane hair. I shall spin her chair and take the bottle! The surprise of my action will render her defenseless.

I enact my perfect plan, I spin her chair!

She does not shriek. She does not waver. From behind her layers of face swept hair I see her nose, proud like a mountain upon a plain of split ends. From below her simple nose a tube emerges, slick and fleshy. Coiled like a butterfly tongue, it unfurls itself into the pink, lidless bottle and begins its daily routine of slurping and sucking.

My head is draining. The peripherals of my vision narrow to focus solely upon her red and green proboscis.

“You should get back to work,” she says, though her extended organ does not falter from its liquid uptake.

If god be for them, then who is for us?

I don’t have much to talk about today. I was up all night thanks to this clip.



Funny, I know. Maraka musing over the concept of free will however had me staring at my ceiling all night.

As it turns out, apes have been found to have what we might call empathy towards other apes. An ape won’t needlessly harm another one in his group to get some food or kill a disabled ape. It won’t help the species or family line to propagate if they kill each other, after all.

I think that many of our “values” are simply survival techniques. If we ate our young, there wouldn’t be too many of us after a while since we can only really have one baby per female a year. So for humans, eating babies is bad. Killing is bad, that makes less of us, but if they have food when we don’t then it’s ok. So don’t murder your mailman, but if a nation has oil I hope they have a lot of bunkers to survive the bombs.

I’m not saying we should eat babies and kill postal workers, but that I understand that. I even understand war, to a degree. What doesn’t fit too well into all of that is war over principle. My god versus your god, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

I think war based on a belief like religion is ridiculous. It’s ugly. It’s not killing your neighbor because they won’t share the food and your people starve, it’s killing your neighbor because he wears a funny hat or won’t eat chocolate or something.

Think of it this way, if god made everyone, surely he did not make some of us with the sole purpose to torment the rest of us. It would not make sense that a being that knows everything would predestine millions to hell so that ONE cult can triumph over another. Would it?

I mean, does that mean that your enemy in a holy war, no matter how he lived his life, is doomed to hell for opposing your belief? Didn’t god make him? Isn’t he loved too? Can god make human souls knowing that they will burn in hell for all eternity?

No, war based on belief is wrong; so says my primate style brain. It’s a war between Santa and the Easter Bunny.

Otherwise, if it is true and god is on their side and not ours, then we were created to be damned to hell by him from day one.

God sounds like an asshole.

Or maybe people are morons if they think that an omnipotent, loving being cares which way they face when they pray or if they ate meat on Friday.

Why can’t people be good to each other and take credit for it instead of attribute it to an old man in the clouds? Following that, why can’t we take responsibility for our asinine holy wars without blaming said old man?

Free will or not, we need to start thinking about how we behave toward one another.

Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League... 3/28

Here’s something that kept me up all night last night: R-Type Final. I know, why the hell is he going to waste my morning with video games? Well before you go ahead and click over to The Onion or Google ‘college cheerleaders’ on Moderate Safe, just read on a little bit more.

R-Type Final was, indeed, final. The team was disbanded after its completion and the series is officially over. Done. Forever. Blessed with the knowledge that there would be no sequels, the team from Irem made an amazing game slash tribute to their liscence; a proper good-bye for the series and gave it to the world. This game is full of things that get me excited and inspired.

101. Look at that number for a moment. Think of how many things 101 is. 101 Ferraris, 101 Eddie Griffins to crash them, 101 shoes, 101 e-mails, 101 is a lot of things. R-Type has 101 SHIPS for you to choose from before you play through it.

Yes. 101. Sure, you start out with one ship on your roster, but after a play through or two they will begin to unlock pretty quickly. Well, most will. As you play you will notice that some blocks in the ship museum won’t fill up. Think of it as the game is the dealer on the corner. He gives you the first batch for free; you have to pay for the rest.

The last 50 or so ships take effort. You have to beat stages under a certain time, a certain way, or with a certain ship in a certain level using a certain weapon. Other than a vague hint from the empty dedication plaque in your museum, you are left to your own devices to unlock it.



This isn’t just a shooter; it’s a GORGEOUS shooter with a zillion options. Each ship, aside from color options, can be set up with a varying number of weaponry. Each ship uses variations of a main weapon. Each ship is SLIGHTLY different from the others. Think about that while I remind you that there are 101 of them.

I know, you think that the repeated play through would get tedious, and in most cases you would be right, except that R-Type Final not only looks so great, but some levels change depending on what you did the LAST time through. One stage in particular undergoes drastic changes in water level and temperature, so much so that it changes the way you have to play your way through almost every time.


The bosses range from easy to insane but they are all amazing to see. My personal favorite is the Battleship level where, long before Shadow of the Colossus, the level IS the boss. Flying around a massive ship, taking apart its defenses and causing considerable collateral damage to the city it’s flying over, you feel powerful.

Back to the ships, though; this game activates that part of me that loves machines. Each ship has a registry and a short history (they are also from a couple decades worth of shooter games for a final adieu) and a design that is interesting and somehow plausible.

I can spend hours thinking about their configurations, their quirks, and their weaponry. Some ships ‘transform’ when you speed up or slow down, some have powerful particle rifles or steady laser beams. Each one can find a FORCE, a little device that you can attach to the front or the back of your ship (on the fly, I might add) to increase your weapon power and block most shots. Almost all ships have a FORCE unique to its model type or family tree.

I want to sit down and make up things like this. A world of machines with numbers and functions, people to polish and oil them, parts, devices, manufacturers, paint schemes; people to fly them and crash them. This game reminds me how a person can invent anything they want and expose the public to it through MANY types of media. It thrills me that there are people getting paid to imagine these rich, detailed worlds.

It reminds me that we can share anything we want these days and SEE it realized. It also reminds me that it’s almost noon and I need to get back to work…

Free your mind 3/27

Here’s a little dirty secret of mine: I liked the Matrix sequels. Go ahead, harrumph for a bit. I understand.

Finished? Still here?

Ok, so here I go…

I think many people were disappointed with the sequels because they didn’t really pause for easy answers or seemed to borrow too much from other material.

I think it was just Keanu. I’ll admit he kind of takes away from the movies somehow after the first one. Perhaps it was the time between the first movie and the second movie that did it, but somehow he felt like a guy playing Keanu as Neo. A sort of meta-caricature of Keanu being Neo in a Matrix movie spoof that isn’t very good. Imagine if Mad TV spoofed a Saturday Night Live skit about the Matrix and used Keanu to spoof himself in the spoof of the spoof.

Woah.

Since we can agree that Ted Logan reared his ugly head and perhaps spoiled The One for us all, I’ll move on. I don’t think it was Keanu’s fault, really, but that’s a blurb for another day. (Hopefully that day won’t come soon).

Here’s my theory and I hope someday you have the time to try this: The Matrix is meant to be viewed as a six hour film.



I think the whole is greater that its parts and is much more than a kung-fu film with a green filter on the lens. Aside from the heavy Hindu and Buddhist overtones there were smaller connections from film to film. I think my favorite prediction made by a character in the first film was from Agent Smith who claimed that Neo’s death by his hands was inevitable. Sure enough, Smith killed him.

That the Architect and the Oracle were opposites in terms of how they did things, order and chaos, yin and yang, was not lost on me. Through 5 iterations of the Matrix they worked against each other - one trying to balance, the other to unbalance – until the 6th version of The One appeared and made a choice they did not see, he chose love over humanity. Was that their goal all along; to move machines and man back into the same room together? Or was that only the dream of the Oracle?


Think about this, Neo is told from day one what he will and must do. He even meets a machine in the train station that tells him about karma (though many say it’s closer to dharma but so what) and he does not fear for himself or his future because he is doing what he was meant to do. By the way, as a recycling machine, does anyone else think it was he who carried Neo away at the end? Neo knows what he has to do and in the end, despite fighting against it (rescuing Trinity in part 2) he must face his destiny anyway by the end of part 3.

There are deep things happening here. Man and machine, even after a great war, are still dependant on one another. Even the Machine God (Deus Ex Machina – that’s really its name) can’t beat Smith without using Neo as some kind of connector to him. There are cycles and destinies in the Matrix that are almost all traveled and fulfilled.

Just like the Architect and Oracle, Neo has a counterpart in Smith. It’s hinted at that once the 5 previous “Ones” chose to reset the system and spare humanity from extinction, Smith is reset as well. However since this sixth Neo chose to save one instead of many, the Smith grew out of the Machines control. Since the Architect always calculated that he would choose humanity over himself (Neo that is) I guess he didn’t whip out his calculator to see what would happen with Neo’s negative, the Smith program. Perhaps he couldn’t account for the Oracle and her “chaos” but whatever the case, Neo balanced the equation for him; the Deus ex Machina hit the total key and just like that, a new world is born. Chaos and Control, their strugle creates new life. Kandinsky would be thrilled...

Consider too that while the movies focus on eastern philosophies the western myths were covered as well. Try renting The Animatrix and watch the Second Renaissance segments (there are two). The rise of the Machines over man has some blatant Revelations imagery and symbolism. As in that whacky book you see a blackened sky, huge beasts, a new Earth, the end of man and their “rapture” to the Matrix; they even threw in a trumpeter for good measure. The Merovingian seems to cover the role ofa Judeo-Christian Satan, complete with his own Persephone and focus on free will (lack thereof) and earthly pleasures. He even prefers the Matrix to the Machine City 01 as he likely prefers to rule in Club Hel than to serve in - well you understand if you remember your Milton.

Look, there are a gazillion things to go over in terms of the themes in the movies, but I just want to reiterate my point one more time. The movies are better as a complete trilogy than as individuals. There are things in them that go beyond chases on a freeway and form a much more complex tale than it lets on. If I can BS my way this far down a page imagine what a real mind can do with the elements present in the 3 movies.

Just try not to focus on Keanu and you’ll be fine.