I just ran across a clip on YouTube and for the last two and half minutes I was five years old all over again, grinning wide-eyed and singing along with my old pal Ernie. If watching this clip doesn’t make you smile then you need to have your smiler examined.

Rubber Ducky!

Just before my project got insanely busy, I was sent a link to “The Show with Ze Frank”.

Now, let me be very clear about this. Ze is very much a liberal (politically) and I disagree with his stand on many issues. If you are easily angered by opposing views, don’t click the link. Also, Ze is a potty mouth. If you are easily offended by crude language (Yes, girls, I’m talking to you.) don’t click the link.

His sense of humor, his talent, and his zany originality blow me away. The Show is now one of my daily reads. Ironicly, my good friend Randypants (who is a strong Christian and shares most of my political views) loves The Show too. It’s just that funny.

So anyway, with all those disclaimers in place, don’t click here.

These Jack Links commercials, “Messin’ with Sasquatch” are hilarious. But this one… It’s just “eww!”

Messin’ with Sasquatch: Water Bowl

When discussing Liv Tyler’s acting prowess…

She has the screen presence of an attractive lamp.

Ouch.

It’s been almost nine months since I posted “Who’s Your Favorite MythBuster” and that post is still responsible for the most inbound search engine links to my site. So far this year, I’ve had almost 300 hits from people searching for “Scottie Chapman” alone, not to mention all the variations of “Kari Byron” and “Silver Paint”. (Hee hee. You noticed how I just threw all those top search terms into this post to boost my traffic? Sly, man. Sly.)

Well, I’m still a huge MythBusters fan. I am painfully jealous of Steve at “The Sneeze” who has personally interviewed Adam Savage and seems to keep in touch with him.

I wasted a few minutes today over at the MythBusters official web site taking a few of the MythBusters’ Quizzes. I only got a 60 on the sports quiz and eeked out a 70 on the word myths, but nearly aced the candy quiz with a 90/100. Imagine that. Can you believe I know more about food than about sports.(</sarcasm>)

Anyway. Head over there and take some quizzes. Then come back here and let me know how you did!

Time for some geek links!

I love William Shatner. The guy has an endless sense of humor and is always willing to poke fun at himself. If you can’t laugh at yourself, rest assured everyone else will!

Shatner serenades George Lucas. (I LOVE everyone’s face when Shatner comes on stage at a Star Wars event.)

From an old Saturday Night Live sketch, Shatner trashes Trekkies. (The audio and video don’t jive, but it’s still funny.)

What could be more geek than a montage of Star Trek (TOS) dubbed to Monty Python’s “Camelot”?!

For a true 80’s kid geek, the only thing cooler than a Trek/Python parody is a LEGO/Python parody. (Watch closely for the parrot sketch reference.)

And for those of you who have never seen the original (*gasp*) or those who just can’t get enough, here is the Monty Python version of the Monty Python song. Umm. Right.

And, precisely because you didn’t expect it… The Spanish Inquisition (in two parts).

I loves me some YouTube! It’s a brave new world!

Believe it or not, I’ve seen two movies on their respective opening nights this month. I know! I’m livin’ on the wild side! I’m a mad man! You can’t stop me!

Some guys from the office (myself included) took an afternoon off and went to see X3. That’s the cool, hip, wild-side-livin’ nickname for the third installment in the X-Men series, “The Last Stand”. I think it’s great that X-Men is now a to-be-taken-seriously movie franchise. Now, if you tell a girl you have Wolverine bed sheets, she’ll think of that hunk, Hugh Jackman, whereas a few years ago, the same girl would slap you and tell you to sell your comic books and move out of your parents’ basement before trying to hit on girls. Okay, well, she’d still probably say something like that, but she’d be thinking of that hunk, Hugh Jackman, while she said it.

The first X-Men was great. I liked how they developed the characters and introduced the mutant phenomenon in a (sort of) believable way to folks not familiar with the comic books. X2 was great. They introduced more mutants, upped the ante on the special effects, and killed off a major character (of course, real fans knew that that was just a set up for the arrival of Phoenix). X3 was great. They introduced more mutants, upped the ante on the special effects and killed off a major character. Oh… Hmm… Maybe this is getting a little formulaic. Ah, who cares? It’s X-Men!

Seriously, though, I really did enjoy X3. They did a great job portraying the new guys, like The Beast and Juggernaut. (If anyone had told me that Kelsey Grammer would be an X-Man, I’d have laughed them out of the comic-con.) The movie rides along at a fast pace and without losing the story.

My only complaint was the ending. It was entertaining and “fit”, but there were several logical alternatives that made more sense. I’ll have to explain more, but it will involve spoilers, so the next paragraph uses my patented spoiler resistant technology. Highlight it to read more if you don’t mind spoilers.

Pretty cool, eh? First, Phoenix makes her debut (being the reincarnated Jean Gray) but she can’t control her powers and becomes a very dangerous “bad guy”. At the end, Wolverine has to risk his life to face her and kill her. But wouldn’t it have made just as much sense for Rogue to sap Phoenix’s power. Or even better use that “Cure” mutant kid. He just walks up to her and her powers disappear. Why kill her? On a side note, it’s totally retarded that Logan’s shirt, and even his flesh gets torn away by Phoenix’s evapo-rays, but his pants don’t even get torn. Dave and I both said (at the same time) they should have made the rest of his suit out of whatever those pants are made of. Kind of ruined the moment for us.

Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, let me say that if you liked the other two X’s, you’ll like this one too. Is it better than either of the other two? That depends on who you ask. Still, I think it’s a great movie and I’m giving it four out of five grins.

Postscript: One last thing. I’m the kind of guy that always stays through the end of the credits, just in case there’s tasty morsel hiding there and I usually get made fun of for it. Well, this time, since I was with “the guys”, I left with them and, wouldn’t you know it, I found out from another friend later that there’s a tasty morsel after the credits. GAH!! If you held your bladder for two hours, you can wait another five minutes and let me see the secret scene! Seriously!

Tammy and I saw Pixar’s newest offering, “Cars”, on opening night. We really enjoy going to the Movie Tavern. They have pretty good food, served in the theater (Brilliant!) and it’s almost never crowded. Notice I said, “almost?”

We arrived thirty minutes early, which is about thirty minutes earlier than we usually show up for a show at the Movie Tavern. Much to our surprise, the was a line … a looong line … that reached all the way from the friendly ticket taker at the back of the lobby to just outside the front door. Fortunately we managed to get our usual seats (the two seats by themselves at the back of the theater). Whew. Still, I was concerned that the two thousand* movie goers under the age of 10 who shared the theater with us might disrupt my viewing pleasure. Turns out, it wasn’t too bad.

The previews were all for computer animated movies. ALL of them! How could this be? It seemed like just a few years ago, it was a remarkable feat to produce a full length CGI feature. It’s a brave new world … and I sound like a crotchety old man**. Hmmm.

One more, bit of boring background before we start the review. A few years ago, my uncle told me a remarkable story. Uncle Barney is a very successful auto mechanic back in Amarillo. His shop is located on what used to be “Old Route 66”. He had some unusual visitors one day. A bunch of Pixar producers pulled into the lot and invited him to lunch. (At this point in the story, my jaw unhinged.) They were doing “field research” on a new car movie and wanted to talk to him. When I saw the first previews for Cars and saw the rusty tow truck with the silly southern drawl, I thought, “Holy lug nuts! It’s Uncle Barney! They put him in the movie!” Not quite. Barney doesn’t have that much of an accent, nor is he as dumb as Larry the Cableguy acts, but still. It was really amazing.

Okay. Sorry. Let’s get the show on the road. (Pa-dum Tshhh!) I am a huge fan of Pixar, so I am hard pressed to do an unbiased review. Still, Cars was awesome! Every time Pixar releases a new movie, I am totally blown away (again, jaw unhinged) by the beauty and complexity of their CGI. I remember gaping at the wide shot of the airport in ToyStory2, the thousands of ants in BugsLife, and the depth and realism of the water in Nemo. In Cars, my mouth was gaped more than it was closed. It seemed like 90% of the movie contained graphic elements never dreamed of ten years ago. Forests, waterfalls, huge sunset vistas. It was all stunning. (Be sure to look for the dim reflections of the cars on the freshly laid asphalt.) Tammy reached over and closed my mouth at least once (and I’m not making that up).

As for the story, it is Pixar as usual: Great character development, rich plot, and a good message. Tammy felt that it “dragged” a little in places, but I didn’t notice. The humor was spot on, with plenty for kids and grown-ups alike. There was one double entendre, but it was so well masked that only a few of the folks in the audience really got it. (There’s a few of us gutter-minded people in every crowd, right?)

One of the really cool things about Cars is that they used real people for several roles. The real Richard Petty and even his wife have several lines. One of the ensemble cast (the Sheriff) was voiced by a guy famous for his books about historic Route 66.

Another unusual aspect of Cars was that the environment was completely non-human. They avoided any contrived explanations of how and why the cars talked and drove themselves by completely removing humanity from the world. This is a pretty bold idea but it came off flawlessly. Even with the humans factored out, though, they stayed as real as possible (okay, I know talking cars and reality are not best buddies. Hang with me.) The physics of the cars’ movements seemed to “work” in my mind. They weren’t rubbery toys. Even though they gestured with their tires and had eyes in their windshields, the bodies stayed nearly rigid which gave it a very believable feel.

I really tried to go into this show with an open mind, so as not to taint my review, but alas, it seems a forgone conclusion that I rate this movie highly. There is no doubt that I will add it to my Pixar collection and I can’t really find anything to detract. So, I’m giving Cars five out of five grins.

* Estimation based on the decibel level before the movie started.
** Sound like because, at times, I am.

When you were born, who was on the cover of…

Time Magazine? Richard Nixon, “The Push to Impeach”.

Sports Illustrated? College football, “Notre Dame Stacks Up USC”.

Esquire? John F. Kennedy eating ice cream, “Trying to remember J.F.K.”.

Rolling Stone? Daniel Ellsburg (Some antiwar-pinko-liberal who contributed to the downfall of Nixon. Ellsburg is still around, now trying to bring about the fall of Bush.)

TVGuide? A collage, Bob Hope, Julie Andrews, Sammy Davis Jr., Elvis and more.

National Lampoon? A soap box derby kid on fire, “Sports”.

Mad Magazine? Alfred E. Newman (duh!) building a sand castle.

I stole this idea from a blog I frequent, but don’t link to. (She’s a brilliant, gun-toting, conservative Christian, but she has a poo-poo mouth not suitable for my kiddie readers.) If you ask me nice, I might send you the link.

This Friday, Tammy and I were invited to the movies by some new friends of ours in the “college and career” age group. (For those of you not familiar with Sunday School vocabulary, that means these folks are in the 19 to 24 age range.) It was a lot of fun to hang with college kids again and we only really felt “old” a couple of times. (Like when one of them said, “Oh, the Supertones were big when I was in, like, seventh grade.” Oof.)

All that is to explain why we went to an opening night movie. This is extremely rare for me. Unless it’s something I’m hyped about, I like to let the dust settle and see if the movie is worth my money. Still, “Ice Age: The Meltdown” was not going to be a total unknown to me. I really loved the first “Ice Age”, and own the DVD (that’s at least four grins, if anyone’s counting).

The first Ice Age managed to be funny even though it was pretty heavily laden with humanism and eco-nazism. The animation was revolutionary and the story was entertaining. The humor was just the right balance of silly kid stuff and clever word play. Brilliant. I was excited when I heard a sequel was on the way, but as per my usual pessimism with Hollywood, I kept my expectations under control.

“The Meltdown” was a lot of fun and I laughed out loud many times. The animation was improved over the original, but you have to be a CGI geek like me to really notice it. (The water and fur were much improved.) The humor was a little more forced in places and some of the running gags got old. There was just as much eco-nazi drivel hidden in the dialog this time (maybe more so with the global warming slant), but over all the movie didn’t come across as political.

If anything stopped this movie from being great, it was that the story was not well told. The plot was painfully stretched, with many seemingly pointless side trips and long rabbit trails that were only followed for the sake of a joke that didn’t really fit the story, even if it was funny.

The acting (voiced and animated) was excellent, the visuals were superb and the humor was enough, but in the end, Meltdown just didn’t live up to its older sibling’s standards. Still, I enjoyed it enough to give it three out of five grins.