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CLONE WARS

George Lucas gets several steps closer to making movies without having to interacat with any human beings. =)

CLONE WARS launches August 18!

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I made a funny!

On my walk to the T this morning, I came up with a dumb joke.

What do you call a guy with flat feet?

Give up?

Archy!

Whaddyathink, huh? Pretty hilarious, right?

I sorta mixed up two classic comic bits to make the magic happen. You know how people get nicknamed with an ironic descriptor? Like how the big pilot guy of the Phoenix on BATTLE OF THE PLANETS (aka GATCHAMAN) is called Tiny? Or how I get called jerko all the time? Or the thug who lost his left hand some violent way gets called Lefty? Or wait, does he get called Lefty because he lost his RIGHT hand and now only has his left hand?

Nuts. I'm not sure.

In any case, ironic and funny stuff!

And then there's those jokes where you ask "What do you call a guy/girl...?" And the name basically says what the guy or girl is, like...

What do you call a girl with one leg?

Eileen!

Get it? "I lean!" Cuz she's only got one leg, so she's always gonna be leaning! Unless she's sitting, I guess. Or lying down. But y'know, for the sake of the laugh, we're gonna assume that despite her physical challenge, she would prefer to stand.

Or...

What do you call a guy who's dead?

Corpsey! See? He's dead, so he's a corpse!

The joke came together kinda backwards. I passed by this "Missing" poster for a lost orange tabby cat named Archie, and I got to thinking about whether that would be a good name for a kid, and then wondered like Homer about all the ways other kids could make fun of him based on his name (remember, he thought Bart would be perfect cuz no one could think of ANYthing to tease about with that name =), and I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head, but wondered about the name on its own and just how could it be used without any changes in a mean way, and I came up with the flat feet thing.

Hrmm... Now that I think about it, these two comic elements, the "what do you call?" set-up with this descriptive jokey expectation, and the ironic nickname answer delivering the opposite of that funny expectation, they kind of cancel each other out, eh? I guess it should really be...

What do you call a guy with feet that aren't flat?

Archy!

Ha, take that, people with arches! Oh yeah, that's the stuff! Yeah, I'm a frickin comic genius!

Or something.

Just thought I'd share.

Keep on keepin on~

I'm no expert: gas and rising prices

Okay, oil prices are going up, so gas prices are going up, so the price of transportation is going up, so the price of any item that needs to be transported by vehicles using gas is going up...

I wonder how long it'll be before Amazon starts charging extra for "standard delivery..."

Produce and whatnot, anything that ends up on sale in a store somewhere that needs to be moved to that store, is carried by players in an industry devoted to transporting such things, in general, hauling whatever, or in specific, hauling exclusively cars, liquid gases, clown suits, whatever. I don't know the numbers, but that's gonna be a lot of freakin trucks, right? A lot of freakin engines. A lot of freakin gas tanks.

Wouldn't it be a huge win if someone built an alternative fuel or hybrid adapter/modifier, engine, or replacement vehicle specifically for these machines and this industry? With passenger/family hybrids, the makers and distributors have to win sales, one by one, individual after individual. But selling to this industry, a maker wins in gross everytime it wins, potentially taking orders for fleets of units.

For the of the independent contractor, which movies and television tell me are out there, the cost of such a retooling or replacement should be subsidized (or maybe even sponsored somehow) by the businesses that ship with his truck, on both ends, if such an arrangment is possible. That is, the product business (foods, appliances, whatnot), and the retail business (supermarket, BestBuy, and such) could pay into a pool that helps pay for these mechanical upgrades. That could go for fleets as well, right? The ultimate price of a product on the shelf is influenced by the cost to transport it, so if the means of transportation uses a cheaper alternative or less fuel, that price gets to stay low.

Wouldn't this be a good and quickly money-back-making inroad into establishing alternative fuel stations? That's a limiting factor to getting a car company totally committed to production and sale of a totally non-gasoline engine, right? That you can't sell a car that can't travel more than a couple hundred miles from home base or an exotic fuel reservoir or production or conversion station. Why not start with stations that serve trucks? They're a guaranteed customer along certain routes, right?

Eh, I'm no expert.

Keep on keepin on~

FORBIDDEN KINGDOM: kickass team-up!

Caught FORBIDDEN KINGDOM last night with In, Rowan, and some of Rowan's colleagues, Josh, Karola, and Harvey. Very satisfying and harder hitting than I'd expected. The trailers painted the picture of a family-friendly action film, which, for the most part, it is. But y'know, with a young American teen as the focus and foil for the story, I figured and feared the martial arts action would be dialed down, a terrible crime given that this is the first big screen team up of powerhouses Jackie Chan and Jet Li!

I was happily disappointed by the very excellent Yuen Woo Ping choreography and stone-smashing physicality of a great extended "who do you think you are?" style-dueling encounter between Jackie and Jet's characters in a mountainside temple. Good crack. =)

All of the fights were kinetically satisfying, and they came in a couple of stylish flavors, incorporating both physical battle and mystical abilities, in different scenes, reminiscent of CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, ZU: WARRIORS OF THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS.

The story was pretty robust for a framework and excuse for setting up a bunch of martial arts melees and showdowns. Jason, new kid on the block in Southie (that's right, South Boston!) has made a habit of visiting Chinatown to pick up his kung-fu flick fix, frequenting a particular pawn/check cashing shop. When he wanders into a back storage room, he comes upon a bronze fighting staff that he's sure he's seen in his movies. The proprieter explains to him that he's had it for decades, passed down from his father and his father before him, to be held until someone appears to return it to its rightful owner.

Gosh, who do you suppose that could be?

On his way home from the shop, Jason is ambushed by a second string gang of Jets. When they find out he's tight w the old man who runs the check cashing shop, they force him to help them rob him. When the robbery goes bad, Jason instinctively grabs the fighting staff for protection. When the obnoxious sons of RUMBLE IN THE BRONX corner him, the staff mystically draws Jason across time and space to ancient China.

Here he learns that the staff he carries belongs to the immortal martial arts master, the Monkey King. The Monkey King was stripped of his staff and turned to stone by the despotic Jade Warlord, another immortal master. Without the Monkey King to keep him in check, he has ruled and terrorized China for 500 years as a tyrant. Jason's arrival, as the bearer of the staff, has been foretold in prophecy. He must return the staff to the Monkey King to free him from his stony prison so that he can defeat the Warlord and his armies.

No problem.

Unfortunately, young Jason is unskilled in kung fu and seems the person least qualified for this mission. Luckily for him, he happens upon Lu Yan, a drunken kung fu master (Jackie Chan! — see DRUNKEN MASTER 2 for his most kickass cinematic martial arts action ever! =) who doesn't take kindly to the Warlord's ways. Thrown together by fate, the master agrees to take Jason on as a student and help him on his quest. They quickly pick up another companion, Golden Sparrow, a young girl and impressive fighter who seeks revenge on the Warlord for the death of her mother.

Later, when a bandit manages to steal the staff from Jason's hands, Lu Yan tracks him down and encounters the Silent Monk (Jet Li!). Wacky fun ensues! =)

Well, okay, you can fill in the rest easily enough, but it'll be much better if you go and SEE it. =)

Jason's skills are pretty impressive. The kid looks like a Shia knock-off, but he seemed familiar to me. I can't imagine how cool and crazy it must've been to learn and train for martial arts at his age with Jackie, Jet, and Woo Ping as teachers. WAck!

Some smartaleck remarks, observations, and potential *spoilery* comments...

It's rated PG-13. There are death strikes, but from a distance. There's very little blood, some slashes and cuts, but no gaping wounds.

I don't understand how Wu Tang Clan was *not* involved in this. =)

In and I both saw the XANADU ending coming. Of course. =)

All of the story threads tie up quite nicely in the end.

Was kinda hoping for some of those Jackie Chan movie outtakes over the closing credits, but alas, none to be had.

I didn't like how they made a point of associating the White Witch with a wolf, but all of her style/sound effects seemed to be hawk-like.

I would've been happy if some of the animal sound effects, set to accompany certain styles, might've been dialed down or even removed.

Keep on keepin on~