Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 15, 2008 in Dr. Who
Until I watched this video I had no idea that there was an entire genre of songs inspired by Harry Potter — in this video our friend from England Nerimon takes this concept to the next level with Trock which stands for Time Lord Rock. By the way the idea of writing science fiction folk songs has been around for eons — it’s called filk singing. Any way Nerimon’s work reminds be a slight bit of Perl Jam, just without the guitars and a bit of geek thrown in.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 14, 2008 in Comic Books
The latest meme in comic book circles on Flickr are artists creating icons of themselves using the website faceyourmanga.com. Of course not being a poor artist myself I just screen grabbed an image and cropped it in Photoshop. Other than costing too much my problem with the service is that look of the artwork isn’t very manga like.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 13, 2008 in Star Wars
The above skit was from a 1977 episode of the comedy show The Richard Pryor Show which aired on NBC. The show only ran for a few episodes, was a mega hit — but at the end of the days Richard Pryor’s comedy was a little bit to racy for broadcast television. By the way the costumes in the skit were used with permission from Lucas and I believe that this skit was done before in infamous holiday special.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 13, 2008 in Videogames
Shown above is a trailer for My Aquarium a WiiWare game by Hudson Entertainment. The advantages of this virtual aquarium are:
1. No hard feelings when the fish die from you not cleaning the tank.
2. No need to buy yicky fish food like worms.
3. No guilt that you are taking the poor critters away from the wild.
By the way the aquarium concept reminds me a great deal of the old After Dark screensavers for the Mac from the early 90s — as I recall they had a fish tank themed screensaver:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 13, 2008 in Star Trek
Confession time: I’ll admit it that I’m a grumpy old fanboy when it comes to the fact that William Shatner won’t be in the upcoming Star Trek film, but I have to say that Paramount is doing a great job of fan outreach. Thanks to their webmaster program I’ve managed to get some copies of posters for the upcoming film. Above is the main poster (click on them to see at full size), below is a version with “Kirk” (quotes used out of respect to William Shatner):
“Customized Hasbro Star Wars vehicle customized by professional Graffiti artists EASE and JK5 under the direction of SUCKADELIC. All tags are written in the Aurebesh language, a fictional letter system created for the in-world use for the 6 Star Wars films. The largest tag on the side of the vehicle spells the word REBEL. 16x18in.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 12, 2008 in Videogames
Ah yes the good old days of 2004: There’s nothing quite as fun as being Ultraman and getting to spend hours trying your Kung Fu on a wide assortment of giant rubber suit creatures! Above and below are video for the game Ultraman Fighting Evolution 3 which came out in 2004.
Update: Special thanks to Jenn Frank for * cough * correcting me!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 11, 2008 in Animation
I was blown out of the water by the above illustration by Juan Molinet which is titled The Ogoh Ogoh Demigod of Cartoon Movies (it’s always a pleasure to see an icon like Mickey Mouse reinvented). Jaun is based out of Argentina and you can find his Flickr site here.
The latest trend from Korea are contact lenses that give you that “big eyed Anime look” — it seems that the look has been popularized by J-Pop star Ayumi Hamasaki. The results to me look a bit more disturbing than anything, but I guess it’s a safe alternative to surgery for those into cosplay, and at $32 a pop they work on a low budget. One place selling them online is shop-crazy.blogspot.com (note: I can’t vouch for them as a shop) and the contacts are manufactured by gngcontact.com. Here’s afull chart of what’s available:
Here was a life story that should inspire us all: Born in 1942 Isaac Hayes started his life in extreme poverty: His parents died when he was young and he grew up picking cotton in Covington, Tennessee. His first public performance was at the age of five singing at a local church — and soon after that he taught himself how to play multiple instruments including everything from a piano to a saxophone.
“Go on a flight with Tony Stark! Blast off with the armor-wearing, comic-book hero as he takes on air-powered rocket form. While Iron Man may be most well known for the armor that gives him superhuman strength and his extensive, built-in weapons system, its his ability to fly across the sky at supersonic speed that inspired this awesome air-powered rocket launcher. Made of cushiony foam, attach the included glider to the superhero-shaped rocket. Load the rocket onto the launch pad and build up some force using the pump. Then, press the launch button to send Iron Man soaring up to 40 feet in the air! When the rocket reaches maximum altitude, the glider will detach and soar away. Watch where it twists and turns as it makes the descent back to Earth. Reach for the skies with this awesome flying figure!”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 10, 2008 in Animation
The above BBC animation for the Olympics was designed by Jamie Hewlett (who is best known for the comic book Tank Girl and co-creator of the band Gorillaz). I’m not blown away by the animation, but the character designs look great!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 10, 2008 in Japanese TV
The Japanese obsession with Ronald McDonald in fan videos is so strange! The above video is a reference to to the song Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms from the Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars game.
It may be a pipe dream or a fantasy, but this fanboy would love to wake up one day and find out that there was a breakthrough in warp drive technology that would make interstellar space travel possible in my lifetime:
“It is possible to travel faster than light. You just wouldn’t travel faster than light.
Seems strange, but by manipulating extra dimensions with astronomical amounts of energy, two Baylor University physicists have outlined how a faster-than-light engine, or warp drive, could be created that would bend but not break the laws of physics. “We think we can create an effective warp drive, based on general relatively and string theory,” said Gerald Cleaver, coauthor of the paper that recently appeared on the preprint server ArXiv.org.
The warp engine is based on a design first proposed in 1994 by Michael Alcubierre. The Alcubierre drive, as it’s known, involves expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would rest in between the expanding and shrinking space-time, essentially surfing down the side of the bubble.”
This girly gangsta J-Pop band is called Hi-Prix and features Miki (who is 18 years old) and Hina (who at age 17 is the younger of the duo). I’ve been listening to people tell me that “hip hop is dead” for over 20 years now, but I fear that Hi-Prix could be the one act to put the nail in that coffin…
Shown above is the IBM 026 Printing Card Punch which is from the Vintage Computer Festival website. If you’re a lover of antique hardware there’s going to be a show coming up in September that’s worth catching:
The 5th annual Vintage Computer Festival East will be held on Saturday, September 13th and Sunday, September 14th, at the InfoAge Learning Center at Wall Township, New Jersey. The event is sponsored by MARCH and VintageTech. The exact daily schedule will be announced shortly.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 8, 2008 in Comic Books
This wonderful lavish display of red hair is a detail from the cover of Secret Invasion: Inhumans by illustrator Stjepan Sejic. This issue will hit comic shops on August 13th:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 8, 2008 in Videogames
Yes I know: You eat, sleep, and drink videogames! But dreaming about videogames isn’t enough so to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders Taito has created the above pillows to ensure that you spend your REM cycles in style:
“The pillows are colored black and decorated with pixel images of Space Invaders in a shade of drab yellow and drab gray. There’s a reason why the pillows are colored black – they provide the perfect contrast for the Space Invaders designs which glow in the dark when the lights are low. Two styles are in stock and shipping today as follows:
(A) Two large Space Invaders (Top Pillow)
(B) Space Invaders logo with rows of invaders (Bottom Pillow)
Each pillow measures 53cm (20.86″) in length and 33cm (13″) in width which is larger than Taito’s original measurements when they started accepting preorders. The pillows are big enough to accommodate human heads, pets, and assorted wide loads.”
Ummm, I hope those ‘human heads’ are attached to bodies!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 6, 2008 in Comic Books
This Kyle Baker cover for Special Forces #3 is brilliant for the sheer comedy value, it’s like something from the golden age of Mad magazine. That or I love seeing Mickey get it…
