Edshugeo The GodMoor

"Condelicious, is that you?"


Well, now I'm ordering Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle. It can be gotten cheaply on Amazon. Close to the price of a rental from a few of the 3rd party vendors.

Also on the stupid but probably good list? Kung Fu Panda. It's the sequence with the chopsticks that sold me. I'd sworn off mixed animal CGI movies after Over The Hedge (and all the ones that came before). It was alright, but enough already. However I can't pass on a mixed animal CGI movie with kung fu, can I? Not if there's any actual effort being put in the fight choreography.

And Jackie Chan voices the monkey, though I don't think he can be heard in any of the trailers, yet.

Labels: Awesome, DVD, funny-ass shit, good deal, kung fu, movies, youtube

February 26th, 2008 - Added another video from YouTube...



I bet she didn't see that comin'.

Labels: Awesome, funny-ass shit, politics, tv, youtube

Maybe she can, but I doubt it. The anger and apathy towards McCain from some segments of the Republican base, could be enough to do him in (though it makes him an attractive option for a moderate like me). The possibility of a Hillary presidency would squash all that animosity. I'm sure a lot of those folks don't want a Barack Husain Obama presidency either, but it seems pretty obvious to me that rank and file GOPers do not harbor that kind of hostility towards him.

The war in Iraq could also be a problem for McCain. Though I've somehow become an Obamaholic, I disagree with him and the other Democrats (and Ron Paul - whom I also kinda like) on Iraq. But this is yet another issue that could make the election easier for either Democrat candidate.

Clinton Says She Can Beat McCain: Associated Press

Labels: music video, politics, youtube

Happy Year Of The Rat. D-Addicts has another series up for torrent download. Genius Physician Ti Ying AKA Miracle Healers.



This in addition to the usual Chinese Drama Series Of The Month. Three Musketeers with Shu Qi (torrent link). As far as I can tell, it isn't based on Alexander Dumas' novel, though that wouldn't be a bad idea.

Labels: bittorrent, downloads, kung fu, tv, wu-xia, youtube

There are some reasonable explanations as to why Newscorp's Rupert Murdoch and his clan had been throwing financial support to the Clinton campaign.

"Of all the presidential candidates on either side of the aisle, Clinton is the only hopeful who got Murdoch to reach into his ample wallet."

No Republicans? Hmmmm. That's odd.

My own uneducated guess would be that nothing would serve the Fox News network (which I watch) and some of his crappy papers better than to have their nemeses back in charge and back in the crosshairs.

I would prefer to have none of that. I'm voting for the O* tomorrow. If Clinton wins this Super Tuesday contest, I'm hoping John McCain locks up the Republican nomination so I can have a suitable backup. I've said before I won't vote for her even if she taps Obama to be VP and I won't vote for the O, if he taps her to be his.

*"The O" sounds cooler to me than "The O Man", which is kinda dorky. Though maybe "The O" is already reserved for Oprah. I dunno.

Speaking of The O, and cool, The Undercover Blackman highlighted this most awesome Super Obama Girl video last week. For the moment, it occupies the top right corner. Hah! Legion Of Doom.

Labels: Awesome, funny-ass shit, politics, youtube

The Forbidden Kingdom with Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Liu Yi Fei (Crystal Liu) and some unknown (to me) White kid for local (Hollywood) flavor.



I take it that this movie is gonna be acted in English, which may or may not be kinda awkward to listen to, since there's only about one native speaker (I think) throughout most of it. Then again, some Chinese had that issue with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

I'm just gonna hope for the best.

Labels: kung fu, movies, wu-xia, youtube

And I almost forgot to check D-Addicts for the Chinese Series Of The Month.
This month, it's Tian Long Ba Bu (Eight Steps Of The Heavenly Dragon), also known as Demi Gods And Semi Devils and also State Of Divinity.

I recently watched an 80's HK version of the Louis Cha novel starring Lueng Kar Yan, Felix Wong, and Shek Kin (Mr. Han from Enter The Dragon). I liked parts of it but disliked others, mostly the first third of the series before Lueng Kar Yan shows up and starts throwin' around beatdowns. This one is a newer production. Looks to be from within the last couple of years. Guess I'll add this to my download list.

Labels: bittorrent, dorama, downloads, kung fu, tv, wu-xia, youtube

Cool! I was gonna buy it even at 30-ish. Since Loco Roco (which was brilliant) didn't do all that great (sales-wise), they're being more reasonable on the price, which is good. More kudos for Sony. Aside from GTA IV, Patapon is the only new game I'm looking forward to in '08 so far. I'm sure they'll be others, but right now, those are the two that stick out.



I'm still playing Orange Box on the 360, now on Half Life 2, Episode 2.
Team Fortress will have to wait 'til I finally upgrade my XBox Live membership as it can only be played as multiplayer.

Next purchase will probably be Blazing Angels 2. Tried the demos of 1&2 the other day as well as Ace Combat 6 and enjoyed BA2 the most out of the bunch. AC6 is cool too, but I'll wait for the price to come down a bit.



The XBox Live Demos are preferable to me to downloading whole games for sampling the worthiness of a potential purchase. I'm assuming the 360 is hackable to that purpose due to the presence of those games on newsgroups, but I've found no reason to do that since the machine does everything I need it to do. Except connect to my PC, but I'm still working on that.

This in contrast to the PSP, a different animal, sure. It had to be hacked to do some of the things I wanted. And yes, I "demo" games on it (like the Japanese version of Patapon), though not always from Sony who are only now beginning to make proper use of their online presence for downloadable content. Whether or not they'll host as many demos as Microsoft does right now remains to be seen.



Beats is a game available from The Playstation Store for five bucks. So far, I'm not that impressed, but for $5, I don't feel ripped off. It works with M33 custom firmware, though for version 3.80 you need one of the later revisions (it's up to M33-5 as of this writing).

Labels: downloads, good deal, online retailers, PSP, video games, XBox 360, youtube

Labels: Awesome, fun, japanese, movies, youtube

Lot's of Katsu Shintaro's famous blind swordsman (and masseuse), Zatoichi showing up on the Kung Fu HD Channel over the past couple of weeks or so, and for a little while longer. Seeing how often they repeat movies, I'll have some time to catch up. I usually catch a flick already in progress, but I've caught a few of these already and they're just great.
Katsu in this role is a lot like Peter Falk in Columbo; kinda clumsy and sloppy looking, but still cool, because unlike the characters around him, we know about the badass lurking beneath the surface.

The second film looks much better than it did on DVD, but that's because the dvd was downright crummy. I didn't check the first which I also have on disc. So far, all of the samurai flicks on this channel have used decent film transfers. Some of the kung fu movies as well, though some of the lower-lower budget stuff (Bruce Li, etc.) was obviously deemed unworthy of re-masters.

Labels: Awesome, HDTV, japanese, kung fu, movies, youtube

Ms. Malik has avoided prison, which is good. Not so good is that she is still a convicted criminal, if not for writing poetry, then "of collecting information, without reasonable excuse, of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."

Right.

I didn't make any time to write any terror poems or songs, but I did record myself reading Samina Malik's "How To Behead" five times. Four before work, and once after. None of them turned out particularly well (flubbed lines and other stuff), but I uploaded the last two to YouTube, anyhow.





The poem can be read here.
Wanna download the Al Qaeda Manual? Here, but if you live in the U.K., you can be arrested for it.

Labels: civil rights, Fascism, fun, media, politics, society, terrorism, These pictures will come back to haunt me one day, World Affairs, youtube

A little over a year ago, Blogger added labels to the functionality of their blogs. Blogspot bloggers who hosted their sites on ftp rather than on blogspot itself, couldn't list their categories on the side of the webpage the way everybody else could.

I found some html code that now allows me to do just that. Now I'm in the process of going back through all the posts that didn't have labels and tagging them. Might take a little while.

Also filled that area on the top right that used to be empty, with a YouTube video. Right now it's LMF's Bruce Lee tribute, 1127. I'll change it once a week or whenever I feel like it.

Labels: blogs, kung fu, music video, youtube

One of the true icons of my youth.

Labels: advertising, death, fun, miscellaneous, youtube

Rock Band is the newest music rhythm game from the creators of Guitar Hero. I ignored Guitar Hero because I already play guitar (sorta). I feel guilty enough that I spend more time playing videogames than I do playing music. That would be compounded if I wasted time playing fake guitar when I could be playing real guitar.

Rock Band offers a little something different. In addition to the fake guitar and some kind of microphone (!!?), a USB Drum peripheral: four pads on a stand and a foot pedal for the bass drum. When I heard about that I immediately thought back to a program made earlier this year (or maybe it was last) that turned the Wii controllers into drum triggers on a PC.
Beyond the game itself are some interesting possibilities. I don't think it would train me to be a real drummer, exactly, but there's some music making potential here.

I was wrong to assume that one could choose which version of the package they wanted, but apparently you can't. The plastic drum set plus game would be a decent buy at eighty bucks, but the game only comes with instruments if you get the all in one special edition with game, guitar, mic, and drums. That's about $170.00. The drums do not come with the game. It's $80.00 and the game is $60.00. Not such a good buy anymore and the peripherals won't be available separately until late January/early February.

Next week's release is the game sans instruments, and the special ed, with everything. I guess I'll have to wait. It'll give me more time to think about this.

Currently I'm playing Half Life 2 from the Orange Box (Portal was great) on the 360 and Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PS2.

January 24th, 2008 - The Rock Band Drums will be made available on February 12th, and maybe I'll be able to find the game at forty bucks or less. Some work has been done in getting the 360 set to work on a Windows PC, so I'm looking forward to playing. Also looking forward to learning how to play. That might help.


Rock Band Drums On Windows


A Drum Machine For Your Rock Band Drums


and a YouTube video...





February 24th, 2008 - Speaking of YouTube, that's probably not a bad place to start with drum lessons, like say, learning how to even hold drum sticks. Some info I can definitely use. I picked up the set the other day, but didn't get the game yet. Also ordered a Pedal Metal reinforcement for the bass pedal, which is reportedly very fragile. Can be found on Amazon for about twenty bucks (also on eBay). I should have it in a few days. I installed the driver and the program (via the drum machine link above) and I can now play the drum set on my PC.

Labels: music making, possibilities for creative expression, PS2, video games, XBox 360, youtube

Pretty much what I've been doing for a while. This is like my theme song. Comes from a relatively recent album by Sparks, called Hello Young Lovers, which is badass in a Bohemian Rhapsody meets Meatloaf, though not really kinda way. I thought those guys were just a new wave group from the eighties, but there's way more to them than that. I vaguely recall an old Saturday Night Live appearance, where I thought the keyboardist was named Roland because of the prominent logo on the instrument. I also recall they had the movie rights to Mai, The Psychic Girl, and they were gonna make it a musical directed by Tsui Hark. The idea frightened me at the time, but now I wish it got made. Wonder if they went ahead and wrote any songs for it.

I'm still digging Bad Brains' Build A Nation. I used to like the idea of Bad Brains more than I did their records. Now they've made a album worthy of a Punk/Reggae band, though now it's more heavy rock, than punk, in my opinion.

Video Games.

Played through Me And My Katamari on the PSP. The controls are painful compared to We Love Katamari on the PS2, but I love the 8 bit version you get at the end. Sorry if that's a spoiler. Also love the theme, Katamari on the Funk. I doubt I'll get the 360 version (Beautiful Katamari) unless it's cheap and I have nothing better to do, which, I guess, is inevitable. Starting Killzone Liberation on the PSP. Demo was cool so I picked this up a week or two ago (I know it's been out for a while).

Still have to finish We Love Katamari on the PS2. I want to be done with all my games on the PS2 and then say goodbye to them. There's a bunch. I'm bad at finishing games, but lately I'm a bit more into it. Having the XBox 360, it would be easy to move on, but I can't. I won't. Grand Theft Auto 3 was a birthday present dammit! So was Dynasty Warriors 2, I think. And I just bought two or three PS2 games like 6 or 7 weeks ago (Shadow Of The Collossus, Socom II - Socom was used - 5 bucks, and one other?) in addition to a few other decent titles just sitting around like War Of The Monsters. So I will finish them and maybe pass them on to friends.

Finished BioShock and Halo 3 on the XBox 360. Bioshock is the better of the two games, though I've yet to try out the online multiplayer function of XBox Live. I actually let my free one month gold membership lapse without trying it out. Wanted to be a better player first. I can barely shoot straight even at this point, but I'm gonna join up next week or so.

I also play various demos, or Burnout Revenge if I want a quick gaming session. I just bought The Orange Box, primarily for Portal, but it includes Half Life 2 and Team Fortress. Looks like fun. Haven't opened it yet.

Movies.

Transformers was fun, but got annoying during the second hour (I think) with the comedy bit with them searching for glasses while the robots try to hide from the parents and the big bad government goons showing up. Turned into E.T. for a little bit. I was never a fan of the cartoon, though the animated Transformers: The Movie was pretty decent.

Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang was awesome, though. Picked it up at the supermarket a while back for six or seven bucks and finally checked it out. Funny as a muh-fug. Really looking forward to Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.

Also went to see Jodie Foster's Death Wish movie, The Brave One. I liked it. Not great, but good enough. Really looking forward to seeing Terrence Howard in some kinda armor in Iron Man or maybe it's sequel.

TV?

Finished Heavenly Sword, Dragon Sabre (2003), which finishes up the Condor Heroes Trilogy, though it's not really a sequel, in my opinion. In the order I watched them, this followed the 1983 version of Legend Of The Condor Heroes and the 2006 Return Of The Condor Heroes (simply called Condor Hero in the U.S. release).

After the 2007 Legend Of is released with subtitles (fansubs perhaps), I may revisit the trilogy, following with the anime version titled Legend Of but which is actually Return Of (I have some but not all of this series) and then cap it off with the 1986 New Heaven Sword And Dragon Sabre. I also have a few volumes of the comic book adaptations of Louis Cha's novels. Legendary Couple by Tony Wong is based upon Return, and Heaven Sword Dragon Sabre was adapted by Ma Wing Shing. Both were published in English by Comics One, which went out of business before completing either story.

I've got Heroes stockpiled on my cable DVR, but haven't watched any of this season, yet. I will soon.

Audio Books.

eMusic has a audio books subscription service separate from their music downloading site. I joined, but will probably cancel after my second month. Listened to After Dark by Haruki Murakami and started A Briefer History Of Time by Stephen Hawkins. The first was a novel and was a breeze to get through, despite some audio glitches here and there. The second, not so much. Though meant to be lighter reading (listening) than Brief History, it requires a bit more of my attention than I can give it during a morning commute, or while shopping. I have to take a different approach, and will, later.

My previous experience with audio books was limited to Al Franken's Lies and The Lying Liars That Tell Them. A great audio book, but I didn't hold it up as an example of the medium, because it's a collection of funny stories delivered by a comedian who knows well how to perform his work. I've been told that normally, one should avoid audio books read by the authors themselves. Consider Al Franken an exception to this rule.

Comics.

Blood Sword back issues and the new re-translated, digitally enhanced volumes (Chinese Hero - Tales Of The Blood Sword). I'll talk about those another time, but I'll say the new volumes are great, mostly.

My creative endeavors?

All I do now is dick around, but when I get back to recording, I'll use the Vox page to blog about it rather than only using it for audio links and writing a separate blog.

Labels: comics, dorama, DVD, kung fu, movies, music, music video, PSP, tv, video games, wu-xia, XBox 360, youtube

Found via AfroNerd.

Labels: music, music business, society, youtube

Thanks Valdermar and Housequake

Labels: covers, Heroes, music, music video, youtube

I vaguely recall this being the title of a barely watchable movie from, maybe, the 1990s, but I won't let any such preconceived notions get in the way of checking out a new Wu-xia TV series.

I don't know what it's about except that it's based on a Louis Cha (Jing Yong) novel from the mid 1950s. What's likely are kung fu mayhem, defiance of gravity, romantic complications, and perhaps yet another attempt by some evil bastard to infiltrate the Beggar Clan. Well maybe not the last bit, though it's been attempted in three series I've seen already, Demi-Gods and Semi Devils (1982), Legend Of The Condor Heroes (1983?), and Return Of The Condor Heroes (2006), all based on Cha's works.

The thirty episode series (fansubbed) can be sampled over at D-Addicts via a torrent. The download includes the soundtrack. It's a bit hefty at 16 GBs.

I actually have 2 more eps to go on Return Of The Condor Heroes.
I should be done tomorrow, at which point I continue watching the Anime, Jubei-Chan 2: Counterattack of Siberian Yagyu, before moving on to Heavenly Sword, Dragon Sabre (2003-ish), the third and final (?) part of the Condor Heroes trilogy.

Labels: Anime, bittorrent, dorama, downloads, kung fu, tv, wu-xia, youtube

"Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left. This is how I roll with control - NES."

Hip Hop centered around Anime and video games? Why not, I guess. An article on Garage Spin pointed me to this cat named Maja (pronounced may-juh) who spins rhymes about that stuff. I've avoided listening to so-called "nerd-core" hip hop. Something about that whole scene rubs me the wrong way, and I'm not sure why, but I figured I'd check out his Transformer video on YouTube.

Hmm. Nicely done. Next was a performance of ANIME (アニメ見る時) in English and Japanese. Holy shit! Listen to this guy...



Next up, I listened to one or two tracks on his New School Hip Hop MySpace page and I was sold. First I checked to see if he was on eMusic. He wasn't, so I went ahead and ordered the CD. That was Thursday night, probably after 12. I got it on Saturday after paying for the cheapest shipping available. It was a shock to get it that quick, but then I realized it shipped from Brooklyn. Cool. The shipping, the NY sales tax and $3.00 handling fee brought the disc up to about $15.00, a little more than I would normally pay for a CD, on the rare occasion I buy them.

I've listened to it a coupl'a times now and I'm mightily impressed. Not that I listen to that much hip hop anymore, but it's nice to see somebody do something fresh with the genre every now and then.

I'll be absorbing this record for a little while. So far my favorite is UUDDLRL, though I'm much less a gaming fiend than I am an Anime one (and not as much as I used to be).

Maja's MySpace has 4 songs not on New School Hip Hop.

The Transformer Bundle is a free download including the complete version of Transformer (the track on the CD is acappella) and Here I come, which is different from the outro remix.

More Maja videos can be found here.

Labels: Anime, downloads, good deal, japanese, music, music video, video games, youtube

There's a backstory to this, but I don't quite know where to begin. One day I may try to sort it out best I can. To make a long story short, there's an upcoming "Prince" album, Swell Tree Lens, that will revolutionize the way music is experienced. "News" about this album has been posted on the usenet group, alt.music.prince such as the following message which includes mention of George Benson's involvement in Matreshka...

Prince actually called at my house briefly in the wee hours of this morning.
He wanted a wee. Also he wanted to vomit up some bad vegetarian tripe he'd
eaten. Before he left, he managed to tell me a few more details about Swell
Tree Lens v.2 (he did struggle to talk inbetween the dry heaving).

Prince is apparently rather concerned about the modified record, as the
apartment housing made from the jewel case has, in tests, caused spontaneous
skin-peeling. Unless the host lark carrying the antibodies to this condition
can be located amongst the 12 billion larks on his Ohio farm, he will have
to instead release Swell Tree Lens version FOUR (version three caused the
extinction of the pigme echidna).

Version 4 contains all the same songs and surprises as originally intended
but with some new inclusions. The track "Matreshka What A Doll" has now been
remixed to include the sound of George Benson being horse-whipped in place
of a guitar solo, and one of the other songs (he didnt tell me which) is now
three songs.

The packaging is hoped to turn into a giant frisbee of death that gouges
people with spinning blades when thrown, although safety testing is still
underway.

Darrell

More here...

It's basically just a long running spoof of rock star self indulgence, but aimed at Prince fandom, sort of.

Labels: funny-ass shit, music video, Prince, youtube

The video of Mickey Mouse's terrorist cousin, Farfur being beaten to death at the hands of an "Israeli agent".
Funny and sick at the same time. I'd be less judgmental about it if it was a Palestinian sketch comedy show aimed at an audience older than 15.

Labels: bullshit, funny-ass shit, Islam, religion, society, terrorism, World Affairs, youtube

Great amateur short Kung Fu film. No martial arts experience between the lot of them. I'm impressed as a muh-fug.

Found via The Martial World.

Labels: downloads, funny-ass shit, independent film-making, kung fu, youtube

On TV

Craig Ferguson
is what David Letterman was like, about twenty years ago and Conan O'Brien was less than ten years ago (before Andy Richter left). Funny. A guy trying to make the best of what the network will spring for.
Apparently, multiple shows are recorded on the same day (which ruins the topicality of some shows). Also it's not shown in HD, which might be a good thing as Hi-Def has made Conan harder to look at (Dude looks ghastly).

No complaints about Jay Leno's show which is a solid, entertaining late night show in the tradition of Johnny Carson, whom he replaced. I have way more respect for the guy now than I did when he first took over The Tonight Show. I don't really make it a point to watch the show, though. If I think I can stay up, it passes the time till CF comes on.

The Showbiz Show With David Spade
here's where showbiz news belongs, aside from Entertainment Tonight, which isn't quite as funny. He should be on five nights a week.

The Sopranos
Do I keep HBO now that it's done? Hmmm. Maybe, if not, I'll need another HD movie channel. I thought it was a great ending. It won't please everybody, though.

The Daily Show and sometimes The Colbert Report.

House M.D.
I normally come in during the last ten - fifteen minutes. There's no way I'm gonna guess what's wrong with the patient anyway.

On PSP

Return Of The Condor Heroes (2006)
The box set in U.S. stores is simply called Condor Heroes, but it's based on the sequel to Legend Of The Condor Heroes, a serialized novel by Louis Cha. The anime, which is titled Legend Of... pulls the same trick, though in that case it isn't only the U.S. version, but the Japanese version as well that's mis-titled.

Anyway, it may not be completely necessary to see the prequel to enjoy this, but if you don't, you might get the impression that West Venom, Ouyang Feng is simply a crazy, funny old guy as I did when I first encountered the character in The Legendary Couple (only read the first four volumes), a comicbook adaptation of Return from a few years back (It only lasted 8 volumes in the U.S.). It remains to be seen (by me) whether his true colors re-emerge.

Prior to this, I watched the fifteen disc (59 episode) 1983 version of Legend, and decided to follow with the 2006 version of Return, instead of the eighties version with Andy Lau (which I don't have, anyway). I was gonna wait for the 2007 version of Legend, but said eff it, and bought the DVD set of the 80s version instead. Great series, but it didn't need 59 episodes to tell that story.

I downloaded the 2006 Return of... from usenet, and the 2004(?) version of the third part of this story, Heaven Sword, Dragon Sabre, from D-Addicts, which I'll watch next. I also have a 1986 version of HSDS starring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, but I'll save that for another time.

I'm up to episode eight (of forty-one). I stopped for a bit, and re-read the first four volumes of the comicbook, 'cuz I remembered some other stuff happening near the begining that didn't seem to be covered here, particularly, Yang Guo's relationship to Guo Jing's and Huang Rong's daughter, the Wu brothers, and his first meeting with Ouyang Feng. I'm seeing some of that stuff pop up in dialog and flashbacks now. Also, I found watching Yang Guo (Yang Gor) as a young boy annoying with all the crying and what not. I thought we'd be past that when he grew up (end of ep 3), but at this point he's still wandering around yelling for his Gu-gu. Otherwise, it's starting to get pretty good, though confusing with all the characters popping up outta nowhere.

I'm concerned about what's gonna happen when he finds out who killed his father, the douche-bag, Yang (Wayan) Kang. Also, that thing that happens to Gu-gu/Mistress Dragon is pretty disturbing both here (ep 6?) and at the end of vol. 4 of the comic.

The effects are very well done, but the action is a bit floaty.

Demi-Gods & Semi-Devils (1982)
TV series also based on a serialized novel by Louis Cha. A few of the episodes I had of Return Of The Condor Heroes were found to be corrupted (particularly the subtitles), so while I searched for replacements and re-read The Legendary Couple (the four volumes I had), and started this series. I now alternate between this and Return.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a prequel the Condor Heroes trilogy, but the Beggar Clan figures prominently as well as their two well known techniques, The Dog Beating Stick and The Eighteen Dragon Repelling Palms (passed on to Huang Rong and Guo Jing in Legend Of). It clearly takes place during the Song Dynasty, where Condor is close to the end.
Wikipedia places Demi-Gods at the 11th Century, Legend at the 12th, Return at the 13th, and Heavenly Sword at the 14th.

Initially, I wasn't sure if this show would hold my interest, but now that Leung Kar Yan has shown up (as Beggar chief Master Kiu), things have gotten much more interesting. Especially the fighting.

Tuen Yue who was the focus, up until recently (I'm somewhere around ep 18), is a bit annoying to me. He does have a fascinating dilemma, though; His father was such a player, any girl Yue meets is potentially his half sister. This has only ruined one relationship, so far, but I doubt it'll be the last...

edit: I should mention that the above shows aren't available for the PSP (that I know of). They had to be converted from the DVDs to MP4s using XviD4PSP by Winnydows. There are other tools out there. This is the one I use.

Labels: comics, dorama, downloads, DVD, kung fu, PSP, tv, wu-xia, youtube

I'd been looking forward to this movie for a couple of years and now it seems to be ready to go. Apparently it will hit American screens in August. There had been some bad press about the amount of money spent on this movie, and especially the failure of the film-maker's last monster flick. I was more concerned with the decision to try to create a Hollywood film, set in the U.S., starring English speaking actors. Never-mind that Korean films (good or bad) really aren't as far from Hollywood as some fans might argue.

The newest trailers look promising. Not Oscar material, but good solid entertainment. I'm being optimistic, of course. The dvd will probably be worth having just for the random scenes of mayhem, if nothing else...



Also...



and..



also this...



and finally, the first footage I remember seeing...

Labels: Korean, movies, youtube

Labels: funny-ass shit, music video, youtube

Now this is much more like it. Guitar is the first single from Prince's new album Planet Earth, coming out in about a month or so. This song was first released a little while ago on Prince's website, 3121.com for 2 bucks. This tune, available through Verizon if you have one of their phones, is a different, much better, much live-r version. The video above ain't too bad either.

I'm getting my hopes up that Planet Earth won't be the disappointment that 3121 was.

I don't have a Verizon phone, so I found the song through "alternative" means.

Labels: downloads, music, music video, Prince, youtube

Labels: funny-ass shit, music video, youtube

I kinda don't care one way or another. Not a fan. I defend his right to free speech, of course, and see no difference in how he's been exercising it between now and the last three decades. So, why now?

For me, the issue's the FCC and it's need to regulate speech on the public airwaves. I would prefer to do away with it, but that probably isn't happening anytime soon. Haven't listened to the radio in ages anyway.

I was looking for an old TV ad I remembered from the early eighties that featured Imus and station-mate Howard Stern apologizing to all of the various groups they've insulted, a long list that of course included blacks, gays, catholics, jews, etc., etc.

Couldn't find it, but I did find this one which delivered a similar sentiment.

For the hell of it, an eighties profile of Howard Stern, with a guest appearance from Don Imus on local TV station WOR (channel 9) and another channel 9 broadcast made in the aftermath of Stern being fired from WNBC.

For a recap on the recent controversy (including video), I direct you to Bol.

April 14th, 07 - Oops. FCC's got nothin' to do with this. I've mixed feelings about his being fired;
On the one hand, fuck him. On the other, where does this culture of outrage over bullshit end?

Labels: bullshit, civil rights, hypocrisy, media, nostalgia, politics, tv, youtube

That's the first and last time I'll be caught using that word.

Here's a video (up as of this writing) of Sean Hannity trying to ignite some kind of firestorm by pitting an outspoken NYC Councilman Charles Barron, naturally upset about the whole Sean Bell issue against infamous O.J. Simpson witness, Mark Fuhrman. The results aren't what one might normally expect.



Strange. I thought conservatives normally supported the rights of citizens to protect themselves, not only against crime, but against oppressive police actions as well. This would've been a good opportunity to bring up issues with both New York City and New York State gun laws. Hmmm.

Three of the officers have apparently been indicted. I don't know the details yet, but this simply means a case will actually go to trial.

But Michael Palladino of the Detectives' Endowment Association said the indictments sent a "chilling message to all New York City police officers".

"You can act in good faith and there is no margin for error," he said.

There's a margin, it isn't fifty bullets long, though.

Labels: bullshit, civil rights, funny-ass shit, hypocrisy, politics, right to bear arms, tv, youtube

Alt.binaries.multimedia.chinese has a trio of English subtitled TV series being uploaded. All encoded for the iPod, but should be playable, as is, on the PSP. Official firmware 2.8 and up, or custom firmware 3.02* and up is required. The mp4 file, which doesn't have to be renamed, would be placed in the /VIDEO folder (in the root directory of your memory stick), instead of one of the various folders found in MP_ROOT. I haven't watched these series yet, but a previously uploaded shows that was iPod encoded, Face To Fate, played with no problem, other than three or four episodes (out of thirty) didn't have English subs.

Okay, so what I see being uploaded at the moment are:

The Brink Of Law - Looks like some sort of legal/cop drama. No kung fu, but some action is involved. Here's a YouTube clip.

The Heavenly In-Laws - Weird (to me) supernatural comedy. Yuen Wah's in it (I think that's him), so maybe there's some kung fu. A YouTube clip.

The Devil's Disciples - Here we go! Now, this is more like it. Looks like Eddy Ko as the bad guy. Flying sword