24Sep2008 1927: Mega Man 9

Capcom's nostalgia blowjob is OUT on the Wii right now and it is incredibly Mega Man. That may sound weird but a gamer sees shit like this and has to wonder. But wonder no more! Mega Man 9 is here and if, like me, you haven't played one since the Super Nintendo it's as if you never left. And you don't know the boss order! Or where those goddamn spearfish appear from offscreen and rocket right at you dammit I'm trying to jump oh nooooooooo...

iTunes pulled their two-in-one trick again. [Ha-Ash - Already Home] has both an English and Spanish version up. And they both suck pretty hard; it's a country ballad about lost love. I can't imagine that any bands actually write songs like this any more. It's all got to come from some impersonal LyricsTron in a basement office somewhere in New Jersey.

[Little Jackie - The Stoop] is a tough call. On one hand it's pop-rap describing a lifestyle (urban laziness) that I will probably never experience. Why sit outside and eat chips when you can sit inside and eat chips? On the other hand it venerates sloth and gluttony. On the gripping hand it recalls my high school days when I still listened to the radio, and stuff like TLC was bribing making their way onto the airwaves.

17Sep2008 1819: Sci-Fi Surge

After a fairly quiet summer, science-fiction TV has suddenly exploded on the scene. At this moment we're in the middle of Stargate: Atlantis, Eureka, Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, Fringe, and very shortly Heroes. This is nearly too much television to watch. What a terrible problem to have!

I would feel bad about the Palin email hack if I didn't believe it was inadvertantly enforcing open record laws.

[Unique - What's Good] gets a big ol' boy-band kick in the nuts from me.

[Brooke Waggoner - Young Friend] is pretty good piano pop. It's quiet and pleasing to my ear. From the album cover it looks like Brooke has excitingly terrible fashion sense, but her bathrobe(?) doesn't get in the way of her musicianship.

[The Republic Tigers - Buildings & Mountains] sounds a lot like a band that I can't quite recall. (google interlude) Okay, I guess Snow Patrol is as good as any. Muse at half speed? Whatever. It's some laid-back rock song with British accents and falsetto backing. Give it a go.

Now if you'll excuse me, the free singles interrupted The Ting Tings' album "We Started Nothing", which is great.

12Sep2008 2129: Shatterhand

Today on Monty's Behind the Curve: Hulu passes muster. Cuts the mustard? Whatever. Quality is high and the framerate wasn't too bad, and it introduced me to the pilot for Fringe. Fringe promises to do for science what Alias did for spying and Lost did for magic polar bears; to whit, JJ Abrams is going to make a bunch of money and nobody else will understand what the hell is going on.

The best part of Fringe? I'm going to spoil it right here. Robot prosthetic arm. And most importantly, it has some clear protective coating but is not at all meant to look like a human arm. Shit no. When life gives you the opportunity to have a fucking robot arm, you grab that opportunity and crush it into dust with your fucking robot arm!!

Between the prosthesis that Vin Diesel wore near the end of Babylon A.D., the Fringe arm, and of course Dean Kamen being awesome, it is a good time to want robot arms. I think the time is right for Hollywood to pick up an old video-game property: Shatterhand.

Shatterhand is like Robocop, except the cop only gets his hands mangled/replaced. They are made of some kind of unobtanium and immediately disqualify him from the precinct boxing league. He then spends the entire game punching robots and mutants to death. Only sissy video games need guns to fight mutants. And frankly, if Hollywood is willing to make a crime-noir movie with CG valkyries, they can remake Robocop from the forearms down.

I'm thinking Hugh Jackman for Shatterhand, Vin Diesel as the dastardly General Gus Grover, and Traci Lords as Shatterhand's love interest that is tragically crushed by a steel press within the first ten minutes. Shatterhand loses his hands trying to pull her out! Yeah. Awesome. And then the punching!

10Sep2008 1942: Your Base

Via Morgion, a supremely important chart of the candidates' tax plans. I note that McCain could say "Obama is going to raise your taxes" and Obama could say "I'm not going to raise your taxes" and they would both be speaking truths to their sterotypical "base".

10Sep2008 1821: Look Out Young Son

Man, what kind of band signs up for a Wednesday night concert nearly four hours away from me? An awesome band, apparently. Wednesday is a day for quiet contemplation of weekend plans and a wholesome dinner, but Grand Ole Party seems to think it is a day for rocking faces. And my face isn't there! You should go that MySpace link and listen to "Look Out Young Son". Spoiler: you will like it!

I get pissy when my iPod crashes and loses its place in the playlist or when I have to deal with the iPod playlist and home playlist bringing up the same songs on the same day. I don't like to hear the same song twice in two weeks. But when Humanimals finishes I usually back that shit up and play it again.

My cousin dropped some terrible news today: KILL IT WITH FIRE! It's not totally obvious from the official info on that page, so: this is a re-release of talentless prat Uwe Boll's first terrible video game adaptation. It is a re-release with for the purpose of making it intentionally hilarious, as in several bloopers have been spliced in instead of the real scenes and it has some pop-up commentary. This is the second-worst idea Uwe Boll's ever had, the first being his career.

The Reader's Digest approximation of 1001 Arabian Nights whet my appetite for the real thing. Since a physical copy of the real thing will bust most anyone's bank but is most emphatically in the public domain, might I suggest picking up a virtual copy and reading along with me? I'm going to read one Night every night, and we'll see how long my resolve lasts. Tonight I'm on the second Night, by the way, so you'd have a goodly chunk of lead-in to get through before you catch up.

[Crooked Stilo - La Charanga] is another of those "Reggaeton y Hip-Hop" mistakes. I gave it the fairest hearing I could, but this is not a genre (or combination of genres) that I can support. Rap, reggae, and in this case squeezebox? howaboutnobear.jpg.

[Crooked Hook - The Captain Will Be Your Guide] has a repetitive 1:50 instrumental intro and then some stoned guy starts yelling about guides and the place where he spends his Sundays. Then there's an extended guitar solo that abruptly doubles in tempo and a lot of crash cymbal. So basically it's 70s-metal fantastic. And hey, it sounds like it was recorded on vinyl and them mp3-ized thirty years later!

I guess "lenka" is Polish for "crooked". [Lenka - The Show] very nearly gets a pass for being very nearly self-referential. Where something like [Annie - Me Plus One] is clearly about her unearned rise to fame and impending pop-music crash, Lenka holds back just a little bit and throws in some generic stuff about love. It's cheery but utterly formulaic... oh wait, pop music.

03Sep2008 1900: Palinfreude

I don't think I had anything left to say this week, which is good because I'm laughing way too hard right now. It's not just that it reflects badly on McCain, or that it's another data point on his downward slide from "Republican I can respect" to "neocon tool". I'd still love it if it was candid live-mic remarks on how they make Skittles. Mic oopsies are just entertaining in the highly-scripted television world we live in.

[Florencia Ruiz - Al Fin] is a floaty cotton-candy pop thing. It is hard to find offensive because there is almost nothing to it.

[Russell Brower & The Eminence Symphony Orchestra - Diablo III Overture] is a cocktease. GIVE ME THE GAME CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK.

[Jazmine Sullivan - Need U Bad] is apparently a codependent pop diva in need of remedial spelling lessons and a distinguishing feature of some sort.

02Sep2008 2251: Foam Superiority

Why yes, the Nerf Vulcan EBF-25 is just as ridiculous in person. Edmond already has a deep kitty hate for this beautiful piece of machinery.

And for the lazy people that can't be arsed to visit this site once a week, I have created a Redundant Site Summary. Stick that in your feed reader.

01Sep2008 1521: Labor Day

My friends know how this sort of thing goes. I've been resisting a new bed for years now; my ancient twin-size is damn comfortable and I will not hear arguments to the contrary. But last week my latest pay bonuses came in and I decided to buy a new bed. Last Friday I checked a few web sites to see what kind of bed I want. I went out yesterday to look at a few places with Labor Day sales. And then today I went out, checkbook in hand, to buy a king-size this guy. Look at it! It doesn't have any of the overwrought scrollwork that other traditional beds have, yet is deliciously old-timey.

Just like my car and my condo, once I get it in my head to make a major purchase I find a suitable item within a week. I expect to get a lot of head-shaking over this. They'll look at that picture above, and then try to imagine my current bedroom with a giant king-size in place of the twin, and they'll shake their heads. "Monty," they'll say. And then sigh. "Monty, really?"

The only bad part is that this bed was out of stock (See? Other people like it!) and won't be delivered until mid-to-late October. And I may not be there to receive it until early November.

Until I bought the bed, this post was going to be all about how you shouldn't see Babylon A.D. I realize that if you haven't seen it by now, you probably weren't going to. I just want to make you aware that Children of Men is available on DVD, and you can watch that after five or six beers and get pretty much the same experience. Babylon A.D. tries for the same decaying-world feeling but forgets the script or tension or characters we can pretend to care about. The ending is especially disjointed; I've heard that the studio chopped a ton of footage out. That doesn't excuse the other 75 minutes from being incredibly boring and random.

The previews clued me in to the existence of Transporter 3. It looks like a return to what made the first one so great (hot woman, gruff Statham, ass-kicking) and a day's journey from what made the second one suck (little kid, happy Statham, stupid badguy plot). Between this and Crank 2 -- and fuck you, Crank is awesome -- I think the technology and audience is there for a "Transporter vs Crank" crossover. Statham vs Statham. Unstoppable cocaine-fueled badass vs unstoppable Audi-fueled badass.

Only now he's fueled by electricity or something?