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30 Sep
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Posted by Musashi
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Oh lord – that headline says it all, doesn’t it? As if the rest of the world didn’t hate the U.S. quite enough, we’re now exporting New Jersey’s least attractive elements to the other side of the planet. At least the Japanese found a way to boil Jersey Shore down to it’s quantum unit – ‘Macaroni Rascals’ indeed.
…and according to this blog post, ‘Macaroni Rascals’ also appears as a subtitle for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, so maybe Macaroni Rascal is a Japanese derogative term for Italian-Americans. Either way, well played, Japan. Well played.
| Category: News | Tag: boob tube, fuckwits, guidos, jersey shore, macaroni rascals |
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26 Jul
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Posted by Musashi
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One of the things I hate about kids television programming is that kid’s shows rarely deal with how kids’ minds actually work. Typically, kid’s programming is designed to teach kids oversimplifed moral lessons or how to be a fully functional member of society (‘share your stuff’, ‘disabled people aren’t monsters’, ‘Queso is Spanish for Cheese‘) – rare is the show which simply addresses kids on their own level. So much of the programming designed for their consumption does nothing but turn their minds into soft cream-cheese. Rather than encourage creativity, they are force-fed lessons in civility and rudimentary educational skills.
Kids are chaotic, energetic, flippant, humorous, hedonistic, and surreal. In many ways they’re like borderline schizophrenics with a wicked sense of humor and nothing better to do than engage in dangerous, suicidal activities…and I love them for it.
Enter Adventure Time. Created by animator Pendleton Ward, Adventure Time follows the exploits of Finn the Human and Jake the Dog as they engage in a series of utterly surreal hijinks which are simultaneously bizarre and hilarious. Relating the plot of an episode reads like the rantings an LSD user after being subjected to the Ludovico Technique. It really is something else – my six-year-old son unfailingly giggles at every poop joke and low-brow scatalogical reference, and half the fun for me is watching him react to it. There are plenty of things here that adults will probably find amusing (a side-character called ‘Lumpy Space Princess’, dubbed ‘LSP’ by the main characters – my, we’ve come a long way from Mighty Mouse sniffing crushed flowers…) – but it’s not a show designed with loads of adult in-jokes. It truly is one of the first shows I’ve seen that perfectly captures the chaos and bewilderment of childhood.
Here’s the original Adventure Time short that aired on Nickolodeon’s Random! Cartoons. The animation is a little more crude than what you see on Cartoon Network, but it’s a very good representation of what you get with the regular series.
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25 Jun
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Posted by Musashi
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| Category: Video | Tag: boob tube, deadliest warrior, fucking retarded, nazis, viet cong |
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6 May
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Posted by Musashi
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If you have friends who watch Lost, you’re probably really tired of hearing them drone on endlessly about every twist and turn the covoluted plot takes and how ‘deep’ the show is. I am, to some degree, one of those friends. I’m probably not quite as bad as the example I just gave; I keep my love of the show mostly to myself, but I have eagerly consumed every episode since September 22, 2004 and I’ll be damned if I haven’t grown this fond of a cast of characters since Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air in 2003 (god, has it been that long?)
So please forgive me if you’re sick and tired of hearing about the show, but we’re in the home stretch and I can’t resist eulogizing my two favorite characters who recently went down with the ship (literally and figuratively). While the show has had its’ share of Big Love – Jack and Kate, Sawyer and Kate (everyone loves Kate), Charlie and Claire, Hurley and…um, that blonde chick who got shot, nobody’s love compares to that which bonded the show’s two Korean leads, Jin and Sun.
You couldn’t help but root for Jin, the hard-scrabble son of a fisherman who wanted to marry the business tycoon’s daughter – and Sun, the business tycoon’s daughter who risked everything she had to be with him. Lost was a crazy show in many ways; two lead characters who spent nearly two seasons speaking almost entirely in subtitled Korean was brilliant and daring, even moreso when the show diverged into one of its’ trademark flashback episodes. It was like watching a full-on Korean TV drama on U.S. primetime television.
Even when it seemed that all of Creation wanted them to be apart (detonating frieghters, detonating atom bombs, time displacement, parallel universes) they relentlessly sought each other out through time and space, only to be properly reunited on a crippled submarine which was to be their grave.
As romantic as Jin’s decision to not abandon his wife is, I have to wonder whether it was the proper decision. After all – isn’t their daughter now an orphan? Whatever. Lost has always been about people making bad decisions for good reasons, so it’s par for the course. The producers of Lost have maintained that the parallel world created by an atom bomb last season will somehow reconcile with the ‘proper’ world, so maybe the universe will finally find a way for Jin and Sun to live happily ever after.
I sure hope so.
| Category: News | Tag: boob tube, daniel dae kim, korea, lost, yunjin kim |
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31 Mar
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Posted by Musashi
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| Category: News, Video | Tag: boob tube, freaky, horses, OMG, philippines got talent, philppines |
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11 Feb
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Posted by Musashi
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Gaze upon the horror that is Pink Lady, a short-lived variety program that aired in 1980 starring Japanese singing duo Pink Lady (hence the title) and co-host (and occasional translator) Jeff Altman. Pink Lady are entertaining in a post-70′s kitschy sort of way, but Altman’s jokes are about as entertaining as a colostomy bag souffle.
| Category: Video | Tag: boob tube, comedy, depressing, japan, pink lady, unfunny, variety shows |
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10 Feb
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Posted by Musashi
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Hrm – I didn’t even know that CBS was prepping a Hawaii Five-O remake, but I’m a huge Lost fan so hearing that Daniel Dae Kim (who plays Jin on said show) is booked to replace the departed Kam Fong is a big plus.
Growing up in the 70′s, I watched a fair amount of Hawaii Five-O so you can count me among the mildly curious to see how the new series shakes out. I also note with some amusement that Kim is the first cast announcement. In case you’ve never seen the show, CBS hosts a number of classic episodes at this page.
…and seriously, who can forget the awesome theme song?
| Category: News | Tag: boob tube, cops, daniel dae kim, hawaii five-o, kam fong, lost |
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7 Oct
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Posted by Musashi
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I don’t have a lot of reasons to mourn the passing of Mad TV, but one of the few is that I can’t see Bobby Lee make an ass of himself every Saturday night. Check out this clip – Bobby’s parents rule. His dad is one tough man.
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2 Oct
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Posted by Musashi
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I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big fan of Stargate SG-1 / Atlantis / Etc. but I am a fan of hot Ming-Na girl-on-girl action. I’m also a Robert Carlyle fan. So you can imagine that despite my reservations, I’m actually interested in tomorrow night’s premiere of Stargate: Universe.
Honestly, I’m actually looking for a decent sci-fi sereis to sink my teeth into. Despite being a lifelong Doctor Who fan, the new series just kinda leaves me cold (yes, I prefer the classic series – cheezy effects and all) and Lost kinda lost me halfway through season 5 (although I’m sure I’ll check it out once it hits DVD).
Earlier today, io9 posted a pair of clips with the aforementioned Ming-Na about space-sapphism…and some other stuff which I wasn’t paying attention to.
| Category: News, Uncategorized | Tag: boob tube, lesbians, ming-na, sci-fi, stargate universe |
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14 Sep
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Posted by Musashi
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I can’t remember where I saw this last night, but I added to my Amazon Wish List post-haste – Ultraman: The Complete Series DVD, which comes out on September 29th, is $10.99 – one penny short of eleven bucks. That’s something like 28-cents per episode. Crazy!
My son discovered Ultraman about a year ago and scours the internet for bootleg episodes on Chinese video sites. I’m tempted to pick this up as a stocking-stuffer, but frankly I’m just as interested in watching it as he is.
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31 Jul
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Posted by Musashi
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Thuy Trang died eight years ago this September. Most people wouldn’t know that name, and who could blame them. Her career – such that it was – lasted a mere eight years, beginning with a role in the inaugural season of Fox’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and ending in a bit part in The Crow: City of Angels.
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers never got much credit, and let’s face it – it didn’t deserve much, either. A fairly lame import of Toei/Bandai’s Super Sentai series, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers was a phenomenon seemingly despite itself. All of the asian actors were scrubbed and replaced with fresh-faced American teens. Only Trang remained as the show’s only (token) Asian – and she was saddled with wearing the yellow spandex, an irony not lost on anyone over the age of 13 who saw the series.
Though nobody could argue that a role on a hit television show (even one as lame as Power Rangers) is anything less than a blessing, Thuy’s early life was anything but.
Thuy Trang arrived in the United States in 1980 at the age of seven. Prior to this, her family left Vietnam in the wake of the Fall of Saigon, boarding a refugee ship bound for Hong Kong where they would settle in a detention camp for the better part of a year. The journey to Hong Kong had been a perilous one; at one point Trang’s mother had to protect her from a mob who wanted to throw the ailing child overboard to save supplies.
Trang’s father, who fought for the U.S. as an ARVN soldier against the North during the war, arranged transit for his family and in 1980 they were reunited in California. Two years later her father was dead. Trang took up martial arts shortly thereafter and eventually enrolled in college with an eye towards obtaining a degree in engineering.
Trang’s acting career began auspiciously at the age of eleven, when she took a role in an advertisement for the cult faith Scientology, but it wasn’t until she landed the role of Trini Kwan in Power Rangers that she embraced the profession. Her role on Fox’s fledgeling series would only last one-and-a-half seasons, but in that time she appeared in 80 episodes. Trang bowed out of the series in 1994, a year before the much-hyped Power Rangers film was released. By this time Power Rangers was a runaway success, but Trang had moved on.
Trang took on little substantive acting work after Power Rangers. She had a small role as a manicurist in 1996′s lame spy-spoof Spy Hard and appeared that same year as a baddie in the critically unsucessful Crow sequel City of Angels.
Trang died in September 2001 in an automobile accident.
| Category: Feature Articles | Tag: boob tube, might morphin power rangers, power rangers, sad, super sentai, thuy trang, vietnam |
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9 Jul
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Posted by Musashi
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Big Brother season 11 contestant Kevin Campbell (and this season’s token gay guy) describes himself as ‘blackanese’ in his official BB bio. I don’t really have a problem with that, actually. My kids are one-quarter Filipino, one-half black, and one-quarter Irish…so you can imagine the racially insensitive discussions I have with my wife at home. Seriously – at one point we coined the term ‘mickblackipino’ to describe our kids.
That said, I suspect America will be tearing its’ eyes out watching his antics this summer – Kevin also describes himself as ‘ghetto, fabulous, and inappropriate’. I’m thinking there are one too many commas in that description…and maybe one too few hyphens, depending on how you want to spell ‘ghetto-fabulous’. There certainly isn’t anything ‘ghetto’ about him…not in the legit sense. Look, Kevin honey – Chula Vista isn’t ghetto. Try visiting Newark sometime and dropping that ‘ghetto’ schtick on the natives, and we’ll see how quick you end up in a body bag.
In case you think I’m reading too much into his one-paragraph autobiography, check out this interview with ‘Reality Wanted’ (maybe that should be ‘Reality Needed’). Then again – he was excommunicated from the Jehovas’ Witnesses, so he can’t be all that bad.
| Category: Uncategorized | Tag: big brother, blackanese, boob tube, ghetto, reality tv |
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23 Jun
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Posted by Musashi
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I was about to hit the sheets when I saw this on the telly. Being Irish-Filipino myself, it’s doubly funny.
Here’s another version, better quality – but shorter and not as funny.
| Category: Video | Tag: boob tube, commercial, contradictions, funny, starburst |
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23 Jun
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Posted by Musashi
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With relatives serving in both the European and Pacific theaters during WWII, I have always been a bit of a war-junkie…and I’m particularly happy to see the Pacific theater finally getting its’ due. Growing up in the Philippines, my dad had a front-row seat and has plenty of stories to tell. I’m sure the Band of Brothers followup The Pacific will deal with the land of my forebears, so count me in.
| Category: Video | Tag: band of brothers, boob tube, history, Philippines, the pacific, world war II |
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4 Jun
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Posted by Musashi
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Man, I wish this was a fucking joke – I really, really do. Unfortunately, it’s not. Kung-Fu and Kill Bill actor (and noted Tai Chi practitioner) David Carradine apparently hung himself sometime between Wednesday and Thursday in a Bangkok hotel room. I don’t have time for a proper sendoff at the moment, so I’ll just cop out and post this clip from Kill Bill 2 (my preferred film of the pair, actually – largely owing to Carradine’s performance.)
| Category: News | Tag: bangkok, boob tube, david carradine, film, kill bill, kung-fu, martial arts, obituary, sad |
