Jurassic Slowpoke: T-Rex Walking Animation

The Tyrannosaurus Rex has been the king of dinosaurs for decades, ever since it was first put on display in 1865. Jurassic Park gave it a big boost by portraying it as a fearsome predator, sort of a gigantic lion. Yet one scientist has been leading a charge that the T-Rex was not a predator at all, but a scavenger. Of course, this isn't a very popular view, but he's looking more and more right over time. For example, a recent computer modeling experiment seems to show that, because of its weight distribution and its leg strength, the T-Rex couldn't run more than 25 mph, and would take 2 to 3 seconds to make a sudden turn. In other words, I could outrun the T-Rex, much less a stegosaurus.

Freakin' Sweet: Iron Man Trailer

I had my doubts about the new Iron Man movie, especially when I heard Tom Cruise was attached. Well, Cruise is gone, replaced by Robert Downey Jr. And the trailer is out. And it's freakin' sweet.

Call Centered: Spelling "B"

The following is from an actual conversation between me (a call center representative) and a very elderly and grumpy caller. All names have been changed to protect the irritating:

ME: Yes, sir, the copay on that medication is more expensive. There's another medication called Birolax...
GRUMPY: I can't understand you. You don't speak English.
ME: [pause] Sir, I'm 34 years old, I've been speaking English all my life.
GRUMPY: Well, I can't understand you. What's the name of that medication?
ME: It's "B" like Bravo, "I" like India, "R" like Romeo...
GRUMPY: No, don't spell it out. Just say the letters.
ME: Okay. B-I-R...
GRUMPY: What?
ME: B...I...R...
GRUMPY: I can't understand you.
ME: "B."
GRUMPY: What?
ME: "B" like Bravo.
GRUMPY: Don't spell it out, just say it.
ME: Okay. "B."
GRUMPY: What?
ME: "B!"
GRUMPY: [pause] What?
ME: [screaming] "B!!!!"
GRUMPY: What?
ME: [pause] Sir, I don't know how I can say the letter "B" any clearer. It's "B" like Brave or Boy.
GRUMPY: Oh, "B." Okay.
ME: [continues to spell out the medication with no problem and ends call]
CUBICLE NEIGHBOR WHO OVERHEARD THE CALL: You should have said "B" like "Butt-head."

Jokebook: Homeward Bound

This guy's wife gets a cat and he hates it. So one day, while his wife is gone to work, the guy puts the cat in the back seat of the car, drives a few blocks, and lets the cat out. When he gets home, the cat's sitting there on the front porch.

So the next day, the guy waits until his wife leaves for work again, then throws the cat in the car, drives a mile away from the house, and tosses the cat out. When he gets home, the cat's sitting there again on the front porch.

Well, the guy's furious. So he waits until the next day, then throws the cat in the car, and drives as far and fast as he can, making all the turns and doubling back he can to throw off the cat. He dumps out the cat and heads home, but realizes he can't figure out where he is.

So that afternoon, his wife comes home and answers the ringing phone. It's her husband. He asks, "Is the cat there?"

She says, "Yes."

The guy says, "I'm lost. Put the cat on the phone."

Related posts:
* Jokebook: Police Phobia
* Jokebook: Vow of Silence

Celery and Panties: The Artwork of Art Frahm

What do celery and ladies' underwear have in common? No, it's not a joke, at least not technically. It seems that back in the 50's, there was an artist named Art Frahm who painted cheesecake photos of women who had their panties suddenly falling down their legs in public. And all the paintings featured women carrying groceries with celery sticking out of it. Truly a bizarre fetish, one that is completely unrealistic. There's a website called the Institute of Official Cheer that analyzes his work and how bad it really was, very funny stuff. Makes you wonder how much of this stuff would hold up to that kind of scrutiny.

Ancient Chinese Secret: China vs Rainclouds

The Chinese aren't content with suppression of freedom of speech and democracy. They even want to suppress the weather. It was recently revealed that they have a plan to try to change the weather for the 2008 Olympics. If it looks like rain, the Chinese are testing equipment to disperse the rainclouds. To me, it seems somewhat sinister that they are so dedicated to the Olympics going perfectly that they even want to alter the weather. I don't know. Maybe it will work, but there's something strange about going to all that trouble over clouds. Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just use a tent and issue umbrellas?

Movie Rule: Garbage Disposals

Movie Rule #6639: Garbage disposals will always attempt to mangle people's hands.

It was actually my nephew who brought this one to my attention. He's ten years old and when he came over, he had never seen a garbage disposal in real life before. When he saw it, he asked, "Does it ever chop up people's hands?" At first, I was horrified, like "No, why would you think that?" Then he said, "In the movies, garbage disposals always chop up people's hands."

Which is true. Especially in horror movies. Someone scrapes something into the garbage disposal and hits the switch. It doesn't work, hmm. Or they drop something into the garbage disposal. So they reach down into the drain. Then the possessed house or the ghost or the computer virus or the blob hits the switch and then there's screaming or blood or all of the above. Or the disposal goes off a split-second after the person manages to pull his/her hand out. Which, of course, rarely happens in the real world. I personally am not stupid enough to reach into a garbage disposal, and even if I was, the odds of it coming on spontaneously are slim-to-none. But in movies, it happens every time. When was the last time you saw someone in a movie scrap some chicken bones into the sink, hit the switch, grind up the bones, and walk away? I'd like to see that.

Examples: Final Destination 2, Heroes

A Mighty Flop: A Mighty Heart's Failure

Angelina Jolie's new movie A Mighty Heart was, by financial standards, a colossal failure. A lot of people (including this guy at blogcritics who clearly has an axe to grind against her and this guy at the Huffington Post who makes a more balanced argument) are blaming the movie's failure on Angelina Jolie's off-screen antics. I think that's certainly a fair guess. I think the subject matter is also a factor. I agree with a reviewer at AlterNet who described the problem as one of plot: the movie's not about Daniel Pearl or Mariane Pearl as people. The decision to dramatize the agonizing two weeks of her struggling to save her husband and ultimately failing was a bad idea. A movie about Daniel Pearl himself or even their marriage leading up to his kidnapping would have been a much better subject. I know I personally am not really interested in experiencing two hours of a wife desperately trying to save her husband, only to find him beheaded at the end of the movie. As far as Jolie in "blackface," that is pretty offensive. She should have just played it as herself. Without the makeup.

In a related story, I haven't seen so many bad puns in movie reviews since Catwoman.

Related:
The Average Catwoman Review
It's Not Brad's Baby

Meltdown: Britney's VMA performance

You know, it's easy to pile onto Britney Spears after her disastrous performance at the 2007 Video Music Awards. Which is why I like it. It's easy.

I personally was not too surprised. Her actions over the past year shows she's far too unstable to go back to her old pop princess self. I seriously doubt the old virginal, church-loving singer-dancer Britney ever existed at all, but was merely a creation of her PR, which couldn't keep the cap on the bottle for long.

The question to me, though, is why she melted down so publicly in the first place. Couldn't someone have stopped her? The answer is no. There's an article on MSN that brought together all the theories and facts that leaked out this week showing how her people couldn't stop her from destroying herself. But as far as her outfit, it couldn't have been that bad: for all day after her performance, all of Yahoo Photos' Most Viewed photos were of her.

Related:
Britney is Chaotic
Unlike A Virgin
Britney Spears is an Idiot

Where's Monkey Migraine

In case you've been wondering where I've been for the last month or so, I have not abandoned the blog. I've been working on uploading my Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel, "Really Wild Things" to fanfiction.net. Fanfiction.net has, without a doubt, the worst uploading system I've ever seen. Ever other story site I've been to has a simple form you can paste text into and then hit "upload." With fanfiction.net, I need to cut out the invidividual chapter I'm posting from the text document, save that as a separate text file, upload that text file to fanfiction.net, convert the file into a story format for the website, then go to another screen that has my story listed, click on an option to add a new chapter, then select the text file for that chapter, and hit the button to add it. Having to do that with each chapter for 41 chapters means that I don't have a whole lot of free time left to work on my blog. But rest assured, I'm still here.

Oh, Nooooo: The History of Lemmings

Ah, Lemmings, one of the greatest games of all time. If you've never played it, you missed on an experience more addictive (and more twisted) than Tetris and Solitaire combined. The basic premise: you have a group of lemmings that do nothing but walk in whatever direction they're facing. Your goal is to get them from the entrance to the exit. In-between you'll find mousetraps, pits, gaping holes, and other obstacles that have to be avoided with the help of special lemmings that will dig, build, or explode in various useful ways. Back in the day, Lemmings was so addictive to me that I had to delete it from my computer just to get back to a normal life. You can play a version of the game at oldgames.dk. If you have a Palm Pilot, you can even download a freeware version of the original Lemmings. But did you ever wonder how the game came to be? Neither did I until I stumbled across an article by one of the game's creators. It's a remarkable window into game development at a time when a handful of people could create a multi-million dollar game all by themselves. Once you're done reading it, go back and email 3D Realms on why their company of hundreds can't get Duke Nukem Forever out the door in seven years.

Seinfeld: Kramer at the Laugh Factory

Not Again: The New Anti-Marijuana Ads

When I first saw the latest ads fighting marijuana use, I thought they were the worst ever. Crudely drawn and poorly-animated cartoons showing aliens and dogs walking away from stick-figure men as they smoke pot. I thought "no way this is going to work." That's why I was so surprised when a columnist in Slate said they were the greatest anti-pot ads ever. Since he makes some good points, and I admit, I'm not exactly the target audience for these ads and the columnist is an admitted drug user, I'll go with it. But if this is what it takes to reach those dope-heads, then I think they're even worse off than I thought.

Screwcybersquatters.com: "The Simpsons Movie" Name Returns to Fox

A cybersquatter has been kicked to the curb when he tried to charge FOX $50,000 for the domain name "thesimpsonsmovie.com." In case you're not familiar with it, a cybersquatter is someone who buys up domain names in the hopes of getting someone who wants the name to pay them for it. In case you can't tell, I hate cybersquatters with a passion. It's a scourge that hasn't been adequately dealt with, in my opinion. You can type in any word in the dictionary and odds are that you'll find a placeholder page advertising some search engine or web hosting service, wasting space that some people who might have put that site to good use can no longer have. Worse yet, some cybersquatters will buy up other people's names or movie URLs to basically hold them for ransom. That's the case in this one. The cybersquatter even used the URL to promote his podcast and advertise a pornographic Simpsons website. Thankfully, the EU has ordered him to give up the site. Here's hoping this will go a long way towards convincing these losers that nobody's gonna pay them for their crappy URLs.

Top 10 Alien Myths

Space.com has a countdown of the Top 10 Alien Myths and the explanations for them. Some of them are obvious like the Alien Autopsy video, others are surprising like the explanation for flying saucers. All are fun. Except they never explain the little aliens that live in my sock drawer and demand a nightly sacrifice of Hostess Apple Fruit Pies. Some mysteries can never be explained.

The Lady Drowns: M. Night Shyamalan

I used to be a diehard M. Night Shyamalan fan until I saw The Village. That could've been a good movie...if it hadn't been for that lame twist ending. I didn't see Lady in the Water because it looked even worse. Turns out I wasn't alone. Lady in the Water was a disaster, so much so that he couldn't get a US studio to fully finance his next film and had to go to India to help finance his next project. Talk about a one-hit wonder.

News Nuggets

NEWS - Dr Jack Kevorkian, noted for helping terminally-ill patient commit suicide, was released after serving an eight-year prison sentence. At the press conference, he celebrated by killing everyone in the room.

SPORTS - The San Antonio Spurs beat the Cleveland Cavaliers to become the 2007 NBA champions. Nobody cared.

SCIENCE - Hundreds of people waited in line for the release of Apple's new iPhone. And in a related story, hundreds of people have no lives and are mindless sheep desperate to fill their empty lives with the latest gadgets to serve as useless status symbols.

ENTERTAINMENT - Paris Hilton was seen partying and smoking marijuana just days after being released from jail and claiming that she never overdrank or used illegal drugs. This came as a surprise to absolutely no one.

MISC - An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch. We were going to make a joke about that, but don't think you can.

See you next Tuesday.

How To Keep Me From Reading Your Blog: Lesson 7

If you don't see what's wrong with this or this is what your blog looks like, then you are the problem.

I know it's been over an hour since my last update. Sorry! I know my regular readers depend on me and risk commiting suicide if I don't update at least twenty times a day because this blog is the center of their lives, as well it should be. I promise this blog will be updated more recently from now on! I have big surprises in store, including the simple and effort-less method to becoming a millionare, the key to peace in the Middle East, and the cure to all known diseases. I'll have all that tomorrow!

Last updated March 14, 1997

Related:
Lesson 6
Lesson 5
Lesson 4
Lesson 3
Lesson 2
Lesson 1

Stuntman: Death of Captain America

Well, Captain America is dead and the media is all over it. They actually reported on his funeral at Arlington Cemetary. I'm surprised the media is buying into this. Anyone who knows comic books knows this is a hoax for two reasons. One, no one is truly dead in comic books. They bring characters back from the dead all the time. Heck, Captain America was already frozen in ice for forty years. Second, is Marvel really stupid enough to kill off one of its most popular characters during the height of his popularity? I say no. And in such a lame way as getting shot by some nobody lone gunman? Doesn't Captain America wear body armor? I would only even slightly believe it if the Red Skull did the deed. That's like Batman facing the Joker, the Penguin, Bane, and the Riddler, and then getting killed by a carjacker trying to steal the Batmobile.

James Bond's Pocket Change: Canadian "Spy" Coins

In January, the U.S. government announced a new security threat to its contractors - Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden in secret compartments inside. There was a big uproar over who might have planted the highly advanced devices and why. Was it the Iraqis? The Russians? The Canadians? And how could these devices track individuals? It had to be highly advanced nanotechnology.

But the mystery has been solved, supposedly. The Defense Department concluded there were no tiny transmitters in the coins after all. In fact, they were just regular Canadian coins with a protective coating. Security experts at the time said they doubted the validity of the claims since no transmitters that small could transmit that far, and even if they could, a coin would be a lousy thing to track someone with since the target could easily spend it or leave it somewhere. So the whole thing turned out to be a false alarm.

Or was it? Yes, it was. Or was it? Yes, it was.

Related:
James Bond's PDA

Flashback Friday: The Black Hole

The Black Hole was a movie back in the late 70's about an evil scientist with a plot to send himself and his crew into a black hole. I only remember a few things about the movie - like the theme song, which was awesome. Another is the evil robot Maximilian. He rocked. I remember my horror at seeing the robot advance on a man with spinning propellers for hands and the man's body jerking as Maximilian chopped him up. Fortunately, they didn't show it. But how cool would that be to have a robot that would hack people up at your command? I even named one of my cats after him.

The ending of this movie is what I remember most and baffled me. After the ship enters the black hole, I vividly remember the villain floating up to the body of his robot Maximilian and the camera zooming out as he is somehow inside the robot as it stands on a rock ledge in a flaming pit. I remembered thinking, even as a child, where all those flames came from. Later, when I learned about oxygen, I wondered how there could be fire in outer space.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that that ending was supposed to imply that the spaceship had passed into the spirit realm and the heroes had gone into Heaven while the villain ended up in Hell. Hardly a fitting ending for a science-fiction movie.

Trivia

* The Black Hole is considered a colossal failure, both critically and commercially.
* It was Disney's first attempt to create a PG movie production.

* The movie was supposed to be an adaptation of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I don't know how they got this story out of it.
* The robot name "V.I.N.CENT" is supposed to be an acronym of "Vital Information Necessary CENTralized". B.O.B.'s name stands for "BiO-sanitation Battalion," while S.T.A.R.'s is an acronym for "Special Troops/Arms Regiment."
* V.I.N.CENT and Old B.O.B. were lame attempts at R2D2 clones.
* Neither the novelization or the comic adaptation used the Heaven/Hell ending.

Links
Disney's Unofficial The Black Hole page
Wikipedia: The Black Hole
Ultimate Disney: The Black Hole
Space.com review: Does 'The Black Hole' Still Suck?
Toy Archive.com: Blackhole

Youtube: That's What She Said

Ah, "that's what she said," the game that entertains men throughout the nation. Youtube has a lot to say on it. Here's that's what she said according to the Office. And that's what she said according to Star Wars.

The Emperor's New Groove 34: The Death of Disney Sequels

There's been a big shake-up at Disney, all for the better in my opinion. One of the new mandates has been to cancel all direct-to-video sequels of Disney's popular movies. Says one of the new bigwigs at Disney, they "generally dislike direct-to-video sequels because the quality of the stories and production usually pales in comparison with the originals." Amen to that. I mean, does anyone really want five hundred sequels to The Emperor's New Groove with the level of animation found on Saturday morning TV? Here's a list of planned Disney sequels that were thankfully cancelled:

The Little Mermaid 5: Ariel On Ice - The Little Mermaid's ship ends up going off-course in a storm and ends up in Antarctica. Now she can't swim in the water or walk on land; she has to ice-skate everywhere. This was an attempt to create a movie that leads directly into a Disney On Ice production.

Toy Story 4: Product Placement - An interactive DVD that features a parade of the latest and greatest toys. If the viewer wants one of the toys, they can just hit the "enter" button and purchase it automatically from Amazon.com. There was a minimal plot planned where Buzz and Woody end up locked in a toy store overnight, but the real purpose was to create a new engine to drive toy sales.

Cinderella 4: Regime Change - Due to protests from his people and human-rights groups, Prince Charming declares his kingdom a democracy and calls for open elections. Things get worse when Cinderella's evil stepmother is elected President and Cinderella is stripped of her royalty, forced to become her stepmother's servant once again. Though devastated at first, Cinderella learns from her friendly animals and her fairy godmother that true happiness comes not from beautiful dresses, pretty shoes, material wealth, or fame, but from within. This was intended to end the so-called Disney Princesses' licensing campaign, which research showed was making little girls materialistic and egotistical. That one might not have been so bad.

Breaking News From The New Yuk Times

This just in from from the New Yuk Times: Angelina Jolie Adopts Thailand

Movie Rules: Monkey Business

Movie Rule 9,145: All primates walk on their hind legs, show big, toothy smiles frequently, and give the thumbs-up sign.

Anyone who knows anything about primates knows that all three of those behaviors are completely unnatural to primates. No primate, including the chimpanzee, walks on its hind legs in the wild. Primates prefer to walk on their hind legs with support from the knuckles of their hands. This was particularly obvious in Every Which Way But Loose, where they had an orangutan with incredibly long arms that had to walk with its arms straight up in the air or hold onto a human to maintain its balance. As far as their smiles, showing teeth is a sign of aggression among primates, so they would never smile on their own. And if I have to explain why the thumbs-up signal isn't natural to the primate, then you need to get out more. But unless the movie is a serious portrayal of primates like Gorillas in the Mist, you'll see primates running around on their hind legs, smiling, and giving the thumbs-up, even when they're fresh out of the jungle.

Examples: Every Which Way But Loose, Planet of the Apes, Monkey Trouble