Star Wars Facebook: Red Squadron

 

If the illustrious Red Squadron from Star Wars (and that’s “Episode IV: A New Hope”,  for you younginz….)  used Facebook, what quizzes would they take, what information would they share?  Well, if there were any food quizzes, good ol’ Porkins would be all over it.  We might learn why his parents were weird enough to name him “Jek”, which apparently means “guy who eats too much and has pointless facial hair”.  We might learn about why Wedge mysteriously survives all three original trilogy movies for no apparent reason, or why Biggs doesn’t…Hmmm….

• Biggs: facial hair, doesn’t survive. 
• Porkins: facial hair, doesn’t survive. 
• Luke: no facial hair, survives. 
• Wedge: no facial hair, survives. 

I get it now.  Maybe the key to surviving an assault on a Death Star to keep shaving regularly.  Is it the clean-shaven boylike innocence of youth that allows one to destroy armored battlestations with reckless impunity, or maybe just the fact that the facial hair gets itchy and distracts you so the TIE fighters can get you? Ennh. You worry about the towers. I’ll take care of those fighters.

Star Wars Facebook: The Empire “Likes” Back

The puzzling thing about Facebook is the “like” feature.   It’s pretty strange, really, you can just “like” posts by your friends. Maybe it’s just a quick way to acknowledge a post, but it seems pretty inaccurate most of the time to say you “like” a post completely and unconditionally.  John’s mother is coming to visit…Sally likes this.  Huh?  What the heck?  Does that really mean anything?  It’s just so final sounding.  It indicates the kind of enthusiam that mundane events like a visit from your in-laws just usually don’t generate.  Imagine the equivalent phone conversation.  “Dude, you mother-in-law is coming for dinner?  I like that, man.  I like it.  No, seriously.  I like it.  What?  Yeah,  L-I-K-E.”

You’d be sounding pretty weird in no time.   On Facebook, you can say more if you want, but there’s always the one-click “like” option to indicate global blanket approval so you don’t have to bother.  I’d imagine, though, that if you were in the Evil Galatic Empire, you’d find yourself “liking” a lot of the things your higher-ups would tell you…particularly higher ups like Grand Moff Tarkin, Admiral Ozzel, Captain Piett, and of course, Darth V.  Especially when they demonstrate the power of the Death Star by obliterating the planet Alderaan.  Or, try this: “Like, ZOMG, Darth, I like, so totally liked that way you, like, tried to hunt down those like, Rebel Scum in our trench. ROTFLBBQ, FTW.”  Use Facebook, and like, unleash your inner Silicon Valley Girl.  Gag me with a TurboLaser.

Rock Band: Mos Eisley

It’s a well-known fact in Star Wars fandom that the Mos Eisley Cantina Band only knows one song.   When they kick back and relax after work, safely at home after a long day of weirdos such as Greedo, Walrus Man, and Han Solo shooting and chopping up the customers at their only steady gig, what better way than with Rock Band?   Of course, the standard Fender Strat controller isn’t compatable.  You have to get the special Bassoon–O-Phone controllers to play it.  They’d better score some overdrive soon, or else that blue elephant-man Max Rebo and his weirdo stalk-lipped blob singer Sy Snoodles will start stealing all the gigs.

But who are the Cantina band, and why did Wal-Mart release action figures of them?   Only Wikipedia and the “extended universe” book sequels know for sure.  According to the package for the action figures, the lead guy’s name is “Figrin D’an”.  Hey, whatcha figurin’, Dan?  He must always get stuck spliiting up the check for everyone.  It’s a dumb name, alright.  Even if we leave questions unanswered (like what kind of ring would you make from a fig, exactly?), it really sounds like figurine, which might exactly be why they decided to release D’an and friends as action figures.  Maybe it’s a tribute to George Lucas’ own genius in keeping the merchandising rights to the franchise.  The rest of the band is called “The Modal Nodes”, which is actually a weird music theory joke based on medieval composition techniques.  So, we can safely leave that aside.  And…moving right along….

Don’t look for Rock Band: Mos Eisley anytime soon.   You’ll just have to make due with Rock Band: The Beatles, Rock Band: Unplugged, Guitar Hero: Metallica,  and new track packs being released for Rock Band–Unplugged, Metal, and Classic Rock.  More Boston and Rush, yay.  No Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes.  Get over it already.

Governator: Ignition, or How Ah-nuld Destroys the World

It seemed almost like one of those time-paradoxes was created, when (spoilerz) California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared as a T-800 Terminator in the latest, and fourth, film in the franchise, Terminator: Salvation. Like, he couldn’t be in the movie since he’s currently governor of one of the most economically-ravaged states in the Union, and would probably cause some sort of ethical conflict or something. So they used data from facial scans of Arnold to create a prosthetic mask worn by a similarly-built bodybuilder, plus some CGI, to create the effect of an Arnold-based Terminator. It was a very realistic effect – not “****ing amateur” as Christian Bale might say.

In real life, Arnold was on hand at the unveiling of a new super laser, developed by the National Ignition Facility (um… yeah, for real), that will be used to ignite a fusion reaction, creating energy the way the Sun does. Plus, I’m sure it will have other military uses, like, um, blowing up Alderaan or something. So, let’s see: the NIF is creating a miniature Sun right here in the US, and CERN may create miniature black holes over in Europe with it’s Large Hadron Collider. Hmm… sounds like Judgement Day is closer than we thought…

– Nigel Matrix

Lastday. Carousel Begins.

Carousel is the mother of all spectator sports.  The participants don’t really have a chance, but still, it’s better than getting disintegrated just because some war computer on planet Eminiar (Star Trek: TOS) has declared you a casualty.  Life is perfect until age 30, when your metabolism craps out, and you get all tired and fat.  Err, no, wait, that’s our world.  In the world of Logan’s Run, you put on a stupid mask that would make Jason Vorhees proud, and then you fly up into the air and blow up.   Or, you can run away, avoid every Sandman you see (they terminate runners–“Exit niiiiiigggghhhtttt…you’re off to never-never land….” ) and maybe Box, the insane refrigerator robot, will freeze you all up just before you get outside to the impossibly ivy-covered US Capitol, where a nameless old man hangs out with cats.

Or just maybe, in a slightly better (but still stupid) future, your head would explode into broccoli instead.  Then the lifeclock–the crystal implanted in your hand to show what stage you’re at–might be a bit different.  Still, you have to love Logan’s Run, it gave the department of redundancy department food for thought with its innane Sandman taunt: “Run, runner!”.   Shop, shopper!  Eat, eater!  Wash Your Car, You Car Washing Person!  Well, about the runners: either someone’s little strip of carpet, or someone’s stockings are in trouble…makes you feel for the broccoli option.  Explode Into Broccoli, Exploder Into Broccoli Person!

LOLAliens

Xenomorph Parasite's Whimsical Diction Becomes Internet Phenomenon

It’s a crab, it’s a hand, it’s a crab-hand-tail face sucky thing.   From the twisted minds of H.R. Giger and Ridley Scott, let’s present the oddest of odd life-cycles: that of the Alien species from movie of the same name.  Okay, first there’s an egg.   So far, so good.  Then the crab-hand face sucky things come out.  Okay, creepy, disturbing, awful…but not outside the realm of possibility.  But wait, the face-sucky hand-crab long-tail thing (FSHCLT) then attaches to a victim and then somehow seeds the victim with a different kind of egg…and then the adult stage grows inside the victim until it bursts out.   I don’t think they actually talk much about it, but some form of egg or zygote is definitely implanted in the victim by the FSHCLT which then dies.  Let’s imagine that it’s an egg, for argument’s sake.

So let’s get this straight: there’s an egg, a larva, and the larva dies and lays smaller eggs which produce adult young.  Any species you know that makes two different kinds of eggs, and alternates generations between physiology and types of eggs?  Kinda makes you wonder what a Xenomorph omlet would taste like.  With all that slime they always show, maybe it tastes like a cheeseburger.  But I bet the FSHCLT itself would taste more like Shrimp Cocktail.  Mmmm…bugs from the sea, bugs from the sea….

Sulu Jonses White Castle

 

Medical Personel Mystified By Unprecedented Gristle Cravings

The casting for the new Star Trek  movie was mostly top notch.    Well, okay, a lot of people really could have been Kirk or Spock, your basic angry hothead or cold logic-driven types.  Nah, the one that was really impressive was Dr. Leonard McCoy.  We all know and love DeForest Kelly’s performance, but how would you describe it, really?  Cantankerous?  Is that even a word anymore?  If it is, McCoy owns it.  No matter, Karl Urban pulled it off with flying colors. Makes you miss the old sickbay scanners just a tad, though.

And John Cho delivered a spot-on performance as Hikaru Sulu.  Cho is a Sulu of action, not slowly delivered repetitions of the same line (“Captain.  Phasers.  Locked.  And.  Ready.”)  And he’s so good in the role that it’s hard to recall his earlier performances as stoner accountant Harold Lee in the Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle movie and all its various sequels (Harold and Kumar Go To Amsterdam, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, and the forthcoming A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas…no, I’m not kidding….)  At least until you leave the theatre and start thinking about it.

I only had one gripe with the new ‘Trek and that’s no matter how big a metaphor it is, you just can’t build a starship in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa.  You’re going to get corn weevils in the warp nacelles.  As a comedy, I only had two gripes about the first Harold and Kumar:  1.  There are White Castles in both Edison, NJ and Greenbrook, NJ that are closer, and 2.  There is no actual hill in Cherry Hill to hang-glide off of.   So that’s why it made sense to go to Canada to film it, I guess: if the actual geography of New Jersey doesn’t match the script, go to Canada.  Do not pass White Castle, do not collect “Slider” pack….

Trek On.
–Raven

Star Trek: What’s the Matter?

So, what IS the “red matter” in the new Star Trek (2009) movie? Could it possibly be some exotic form of Silly Putty? Remember that stuff? It came in a little plastic egg, and you could squash it and stretch it, and it also bounced pretty good. It was actually a type of strange material somewhere between solid and a really slow liquid. The grooviest thing was the way you could flatten it onto a newspaper or comic book, and then peel it away to reveal a copy of whatever was on the page, which you could then proceed to deform as you wished. Hey, don’t laugh, Generation Facebook! This was before scanners and Photoshop, and even photocopiers weren’t that readily available back in the 70s when I was a kid (and Silly Putty was around since the late 50s, so it really was the “analog Photoshop” of its time).

I did think the whole red matter MacGuffin was awesome. Although, I’m not sure if it totally qualifies as a MacGuffin, since it actually provides a function in the movie, even if we don’t really find out exactly what it is – just what it does, which is to (spoilerz) create massive singularities with a convenient script-enhancing, cool-cameo-enabling time-travel component.

As a huge Star Wars fan myself, I have to say this new Star Trek was just incredible – J.J. Abrams and his writers definitely injected some Star Wars genetic material into the Trek DNA, bringing a lot more energy and higher special effects standards to the mix. But the characters really brought the story to life for me – all of them were excellently casted and portrayed spot-on by the actors, with just the right balance of homage to the originals and a fresh take on them.

Nero, the tattooed, Romulan villain of the movie, wasn’t the most interesting evil space alien, but he had a few cool stand-out moments when he wasn’t busy napping or trimming his five-o’clock shadow. His facial tattoos did remind me of another famous sci-fi prequel villain who also sought revenge… someone a bit redder and, er, hornier shall we say (see, everything always comes back to Star Wars for me – sorry Trekkies).

– Nigel Matrix

Earth Day PSA with Kevin Costner

I’ll have a glass of whatever he’s drinking… On second thought, if I’m on a boat with Kevin Costner’s future fish-man, I’ll pass on that drink. Though I guess they’re drinking that on the Space Station now. And we probably all will be in a few years if the environment continues to degrade and drinking water becomes scarce.

The Costner sci-fi epic Waterworld is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, though. I usually get sucked (appropriate word) into watching it whenever it’s on TV, and have to pull myself away since watching the whole movie feels like losing an entire day. The only part of The Postman I thought was cool (spoilerz) was with Tom Petty appearing as himself, somewhat.

So, please, do your part to recycle and conserve energy, plant trees, etc., so that humankind can continue to live on this planet, without the need for any new Costner epics. Though that jet-ski stunt show at Universal Studios kinda rocked.

Happy Earth Day! (Can you really be happy about a day with such a downer message?)

– Nigel Matrix

More Than Meets the Eye-conomy: Autobots to Receive Gov’t Bailout

It’s the economy, stupid, uh, future. So I’m guessing Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen will be another totally awesome, robot-battling, high-speed-chasing, more-explosions-than-ever-in-the-history-of-cinema car commercial for General Motors. Um, which will be pretty ironic at this point. With GM possibly bankrupt by the time the movie comes out, Revenge of the Fallen will take on a new meaning. Maybe the Autobots can help revive the fallen auto industry. They just need to start finding more Green forms of vehicles to transform into, to help with Global Warming and creating new Green jobs. How about transforming into mass transit, like buses, trains or trolleys? Or bicycles? Maybe a solar-powered land glider? I think the Chevy Volt electric car is supposed to make an appearance in the movie, though I heard that car may cost like 40K, so not sure how that’s really going to help revive the auto industry. Hey, you know what would be really cool – a transforming Segway! Okay, maybe not cool, but, well, interesting. Or not.

– Nigel Matrix