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March 26 Shin Tanaka-Officer Tier, Peter Callesen-God TierI've been playing around with papercraft lately. Generally speaking, papercraft can be divided into three categories, Paper Models, Kirigami, and Origamic Architecture.
Paper modelling usually involves taking a 3 dimensional object and polygonalizing it. Then creating the polygonal object using paper or cardboard. In some cases, such as Shin Tanaka's quirky designs, he creates 3 dimensional figurines by using clever paper curves.
Kirigami is a lot like origami, except the use of small cuts is allowed. Cutting the paper is usually frowned upon by serious Origami practitioners. They're probably just looking for someone to rag on. According to wikipedia, Kirigami is also more focused on pattern design, rather than creating objects using paper.
Origamic Architecture is similar to a pop-up card, except more detail is placed on the architectural design of the subject building. There are some pretty amazing designs out there!
 Notre Dame by Yee's Job in Montreal. This is pretty wack. And then there's Peter Callesen. It's hard to describe exactly what he does, or his ability in producing life and movement, using just an ordinary sheet of printing paper. If the world of papercraft was equivalent to Koei's Dynasty Warriors franchise, Shin Tanaka would be the resourceful Zhou Yu while Peter Callesen would be the all powerful Lu Bu.
<> March 24 Vidya GamesLets talk about the use of video games as a medium for sensitive topics.
First off, the very controversial game titled Super Columbine Masacre RPG! which reenacts the events leading up to and following the Columbine Highschool incident. The game uses the RPG Maker program with a very traditional 3rd person overhead view and retro 16-bit graphics. The battle system, also, is similar to RPGs developed during the 16-bit era, with enemies appearing in first person view, just like Dragon Quest. The game attempts to humanize and explain the actions of the two gunmen, Ed Harris and Dylan Klebold, through flashbacks within the game showing the bullying and torment they experienced. Predictably, the reactions to this game were both mixed and extreme.
At one end of the spectrum, gamers, sociologists, societal outcasts, and so-called media experts regarded the use of a video game to depict the psyche and motivation behind the two gunmen as vital and valuable.
SCMRPG doesn't intend to validate the crimes committed, but tries to offer insight into why and what pushed two young men to deliberate, plot, and execute a bloodbath at their high school. Through the use of an RPG, a Role Playing Game, the player is given options and possibilities that may or may not affect the outcome. When we to say to ourselves "I refuse to put myself into the shoes of these monsters. I refuse to understand why these two terrorists killed and hurt all these innocent children" we are essentially saying to ourselves that we refuse to understand the reasons why and what drives people to commit these acts of violence. Personally, I find this kind of game to be a bit tasteless, especially the part of the game where the two gunmen are in Hell and converse with their favorite video game characters. Did I just ruin my argument? Still, video games is just a medium for a message. Murder and crime can be attributed to video games just as much as violent movies, violent music, violent books, or violent .. sweaters. The imagination and deliberation in controlling a violent character in a violent setting can be just as vivid as reading a well written violent story. The experience is different for everyone. Another thing to note is that the creator of the game, Danny Ledonne, was extremely meticulous in detail, which may not neccessarily mean the game play is unbiased, but offers an accurate retelling of the masacre from a different perspective. Again, the last statement regarding accuracy does not carry over to the segment of the game set in Hell. Fuck!!
One important thing to note is that in the end, SCMRPG! is just a game, albeit a game based on an actual event, but a game nonetheless. The player always has the ultimate choice of turning the game off and telling themselves that they do not respect the story, the portrayal of history, or for any other reason, and refuse to continue their virtual experience, just like any other medium.
At the other end of the spectrum, everyone else.
Family and friends who experienced loss or tragedy from the Columbine incident felt the game, at the very least, trivialized the tragic incident. Super Columbine Masacre RPG!, to many, stepped over the line of proper moral judgement, respect, and would (at it's worse) motivate and educate the very same group of people who would be susceptible to acts of mass murder. Afterall, if a serial killer is found with a copy of SCMRPG! or Grand Theft Auto, news outlets would be all over that like a certain ethnic group at a watermelons/fried-chicken/iced-tea-festival. Actually, I hate this spectrum. Fuck you, Conservative America! If Grand Theft Auto sells 20 million copies, there should be 20 million little fuckers out there toting SMGs, stealing cars on a daily basis, killing cops, and flying helicopters into the Statue of Liberty. The focus on the miniscule percentile of people who own Grand Theft Auto titles or have downloaded Super Columbine Masacre RPG! who also commit acts of murder is smaller than the probability of lightning striking twice in the same place without the use of a lightning rod or other metalic or tall structure. Why do we blame video games for the few times we find a murderer who also happens to own a violent video game when we don't praise the other 99.999% of healthy, productive, and morally upstanding citizens who ALSO enjoy violent video games? Shit, son.. Hitler enjoyed painting, but Van Gogh didn't hate Jews. I'm not too sure about that, actually. That last statement has no truth to it.
Using a more subtle approach, Resident Evil 5 pits the protagonist -once again- into a hoarde of flesh eating zombies. This time, however, our zombie-killing hero Chris Redfield finds himself in Africa, against waves of African Zombies. The controversy of having a white zombie-killing hero killing an army of black zombies raised alarms in the West, though Japanese game designers failed to understand the problem. Masachika Kawata, the producer for Resident Evil 5, stated that "We can't please everyone. We're in the entertainment business - we're not here to state our political opinion or anything like that. It's unfortunate that some people felt that way," though there is inherently a political statement being made about a disease created by science that bites humanity in the ass. Fuck it, I love killing zombies, no matter what race, gender, sexual ethnicity, or flesh-preference they have. Thank you, Biohazard, for providing me the means to satiate my bloodlust for the undead!
December 10 Lyrical IngenuityYou can probably tell that I love watching movies from Hong Kong. Among the multitude of genres churned out by the Hong Kong movie industry, the late 80s to mid 90s was, in my opinion, the golden era of Chinese cinema. The amount of thought, effort, and money that went into making many of those movies was almost nonexistent, still they were able to produce solid and entertaining films. One of my personal favorites is a movie starring a young Jet Li and a mid-aged Jackie Cheung called High Risk (the illegal vhs dub was titled "A Man Called Bold"). In it, Jet Li plays an ex-Special Forces Unit member whose troubled past (wife and son exploded by a bomb on a bus that he was unable to diffuse) catches up with him. In an amazing turn of events, Bold finds himself in the middle of an elaborate jewel heist, the mastermind being none other than the bastard who blew up his wife and son. Anyways, that's not even the best part. The best part is when an African American hacker working for the bastard villain is able to decipher the code that keeps the glass jewel cases locked. He exclaims in english "Oh Yeah!" while the subtitles read "bingo." I usually turn the movie off at this point, since any other scene following that would be like eating dogshit after a 10 course banquet at a lapdance factory. I assume Jet Li ends up banging Chingmy Yau (the babe and love interest in the film), avenges his son and wife, and becomes the greatest hero in China.
Here are some romantic lyrics, lets go out ok?
September 05 Funny Movie Titles (cont)Hong Kong cinema. Fuck yeah! I can't get enough of it. I recently stumbled on a youtube octilogy of GameBoy Kids, starring Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok, Ng Man Tat, and Andy Lau's love interest Rosamund Kwan. The story revolves around Andy Lau, who plays a savant thrown into the midst of a vicious gang war for the head of the organization. It being a movie from Hong Kong made in the 90s, you can be sure there'll be plenty of wacky hijincks. In one scene, Andy Lau and Rosamund Kwan are stuck in their bedroom while a cadre of baddies are shooting at them from outside. To make their escape, they fashion a large slingshot and, while riding an inflatable orca, fly out of the bedroom and sled down a fallen-over tube. What the fuck.
I also love the titles. "Lucky Stars Go Places," "The Dead and the Deadly," "The Supreme of the World of," and my favorite, "Vampire Settle on Police Camp." Literally Frightening! Literally!!!
Foreign Releases of The HappeningThe happening stars beautiful actress Zooey Deschanel with rap star Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg as estranged husband and wife who are fleeing from an airborne neurotoxin released by plants that induce suicide among it's victims. Do not be fooled by the title of this movie, not much happens in the movie. Still, I would give The Happening a very happening 5 out of 5, solely based on it's foreign release titles.
"..In France and the French-speaking part of Belgium, it was released under the name Phénomènes (Phenomena) on June 11, 2008. In Spain, the film is known as El Incidente (The Incident). In most Latin-American countries, it is known as El Fin de los Tiempos (The End of Times). In Italy, it is known as E venne il giorno (The Day has come), in Hungary the title is Az esemény (The Event). In Bulgaria the title is Явлението (The Event). In Turkey it is Mistik Olay (The Mystic Event). In Russia the film got the title Явление (The Phenomenon). In Germany and Sweden the original title was kept.."
Shit! The mystic event? We are fucking fucked. August 11 une danse bitchin' de FrançaisTechno is back, and Frenchier than ever!
I'm sure this type of dance is active as fuck, but if there aren't any backflips or gravity-defying moves, you ain't impressin' me much. Thanks a lot, various dance-themed entertainment (You Got Served, America's best dance crew, Bring it on, and Shall we Dance?), you've forever ruined techno-dancing for me. I've discovered, however, that this dance is great fun for drawing, since it's never occured to me to draw people consciously moving that way. I also like how the dude on the right can't restrain himself from dancing. My favorite part; when they're stuck in a small enclosed space with a giant capital Y. "we must get out of this boring room. we must DANCE." It's almost a bad pun, "WHY must we dance? *french laughter*"
You might've noticed that Shall we Dance is on that list of movies and shows that have ruined non-stunt dancing for me. You might also have never participated in a full-out ballroom dance competition, so you might not know what the fuck you're noticing.
April 24 Treat yourself to some chicken while helping the world, 5 cents off shake and bake, one drumstick at a time Known for her Naked Happening outside New York's stock exchange (1968) and various hippie orgies, Yayoi Kusama was regarded as a leading post-modernist living artist. Let us first recognize two facts: having sexual orgies with a bunch of drug addicts will not stop (a) war, and it is impossible to affect the New York Stock Exchange with polka dots, unless you are buying or selling them. That being said, Hippie culture seems like nothing more than validated hedonism. Let's raise awareness of this disease by throwing a bitchin' concert! Make love, not war! The very concept of having fun is comparably as important and reactionary as revolting against the technocracy. On that note, we do not live in a Orwellian dystopia, it is really not as bad as people make it out to be. Certainly, not everyone is living in a monotonous, bleak, and unfulfilled world, and subversive drug and sex abuse isn't going to free your body and mind, though you might get some bitchin' STDs.  Holy Shit, Polkaroo's wife!! And I missed him again? March 16 It's close to midnight, something evil's lurking from the dark If there is one genre I love, it is the zombie thriller/comedy/drama. One needs to look no further than a zombie movie to see humanity at their most depraved, or most noble. Take the novel I Am Legend, for example. The book gives us an insight from the supposed monster's point of view, juxtaposing Neville's humanity (saving Ruth) with his somewhat monotonous killing of sleeping vampires. Another zombie adaptation worth mentioning: John Romero's Living Dead series. The connecting theme between his movies, asides from zombie hordes, is that in times of crisis, humans lose their humanity. It underlies both the obvious monstrosity of the walking undead with the more subtle monstrosity of human betrayal and hatred. 28 Days Later further develops the theme of humanity as the root of the zombie invasion by suggesting that humans created a virus based on human madness and hate, which when exposed to humans, infected them and turned them into mindless killing machines. On an unrelated note, the film I Am Legend is almost the exact opposite of Castaway Will Smith vs Tom Hanks New York vs Deserted Island Dog vs Volleyball Zombies vs No Zombies  Ignoring the fact that this is a Zombie cosplay, why is a nurse wearing a red miniskirt with fishnet stockings and a jean jacket? And have you ever seen a nurse with that stupid red cross symbol? Whatever, you can see her bra! SWEET!! March 14 Now you're a man, MAN! M-A-N MAN MAN! MAN!Johnny To movies are like instruction booklets for
manliness. Let’s take a look at two of
my favorite movies; The Mission and Exiled.
Both movies have a cadre of badass hitmen. Both movies have a lot of bitchin’ gunplay. Both movies have Simon Yam as a bastard
villain.
 From left to right: Francis Ng, Roy Cheung, Anthony Wong, and Lam Suet. They give new meaning to the term "Badass Triad Gun Masters On a Mission To Right Wrongs, Drink Booze, and Shoot Lots of Guns." ----- Japanese names. What gives? This fad is as outdated as henna tribal tattoos and Shaquille O'neal endorsed video games.  March 01 I am not intolerant. I hate every group equally. There was quite a stir at the University of Colorado after Max Carson's racist satirical article, War On Asians, in which Carson describes in detail the many stereotypes of Asian American culture. Carson felt the need to respond to what seemed like racial tension between White and Asian students at his university. This tension was actualized as an epiphany (all great actualizations occur in this medium) when he courteously tried returning a racketball back to some Asian students sharing the court. The story, ad epistulis But last week, I had an epiphany. After my friend and I finished working our abs at the Rec Center, we decided to head upstairs to tighten our buns on the StairMaster. As we walked down the hallway, a rubber ball bounced out of one of the racquetball courts and landed at the feet of an Asian in front of us. He picked up the ball and leaned over the railing of the court nearest to him. "Hey, that's not ours," I heard a guy call up from the court. The Asian stared down at him for a moment, and then held the ball out to him. "That's not ours," the guy said again. Then another voice called out from a different court, "Hey, does anyone see a ball up there?" The Asian looked over, confused. "I think it goes to that court," I said, pointing to the one nearest to me. The Asian stared at me blankly for another second, and then he looked back down into the court next to him and offered them the ball again. "That's not our ball," the guy called up. "Excuse me," I said. The Asian whipped his head around and scowled at me. "I think it goes to that court." He paused a few seconds, and then he said, in a perfect American accent, "Okay," and tossed the ball into the court next to me. That's when it hit me. The Asian was so jaded by his experiences with the whitebread, brainless tree sloths of CU that even though three people had explained to him that he was trying to return the ball to the wrong court, it was inconceivable to him that we might be right. How do you say "Okay" in a perfect American English accent? They're two letters of the Alphabet!Maybe, Mr. KKKarson, he didn't speak English, and wasn't jaded by his experiences with the white, brainless, marsupial-like baked goods at your university. While the full article was said to be satirical in nature, the only humour I'm gleaming from this opinion paper is the ignorance of it's writer. "In America you speak English or get the fuck out!" "I'm taking night school" "Learn faster!!" So, while angry pro-rights groups have been shouting First Amendment! First Amendment! if I were living in the States, I'd be touting my second amendment rights and shooting any silly hate-mongering CU students foolish enough to attempt kidnapping me and making me play DDR. Especially if that CU student happens to be the King of England.  Doctor Fu Manchu organized many educating rallies in order to raise awareness of the Asian-American Stereotype and it's detrimental effects on American culture. He enjoyed beach volleyball, crossword puzzles, and babies (not to eat, but to play with. In the non pedophelic way. Goddamit) February 24 If 100000000 People Join My Organic Bycycle Carbon Point Spa Facebook Group I Will Perform Felatio To A Third World CountryFor all our absurd humanitarian efforts, nothing strikes me as more ridiculous than the facebook application. While good in intent, it combines the trend-factor of facebook with the seriousness of global crisis to exacerbate this growing 'think globally act locally' movement.
-Organic Furniture (wool mattresses, sustainable bamboo hardwood flooring, and reclaimed pine armoires) Not that I'm implying that what we do does not have an affect on the world around us, but the opposite; buying organic wood chai lattes still depletes something somewhere, joining a facebook group that buys carbon emission points doesn't solve the problem of an overusing and lazy community, our problems are not so shallow and meaningless that they can be solved so easily. And lo, the naysayers rise up and accuse me of ignorance, that these environmentalists are raising awareness about the global issues of sheep depletion; raising awareness is great as a first step, but is it really the cure for the multifaceted problem of helping the environment? In all honesty, writing a letter to John Baird about tax increases for heavy polluting industries would probably do more good than bitching about free-range chickens fed on organic chai on the facebook group titled "Stop Killing Free Range Chickens who Feed on Organic Chai! 100000 Posts and I will Dance around Naked!". Our problems are not so simple, and while we have been waiting for the technology card to play itself and solve all of our problems, facebook is simply not our techno-jesus that'll redeem all our sins. Per Esempio: the argument that popular environmentalism is a new subculture that targets middle/upper class yuppies who buy organic and sustainable in the efforts of seeming globally aware. While scathing in their commentary about the dogs who don't purchase organic, the lower-class peons are out making a living and putting a food on their tables.. who has time to go to organic chai bicycle spas? You know what that sounds like? Yet another divide that separates the rich from the poor.
 The modern-day Yuppie's fascination with organic/local can be traced back to their childhood dream of living in a Swiss Robinson Crusoe Treehouse. Check this treehouse out! It is sick, dog January 31 Awww Muffin :(:(:(:(:(:(:(According to Scientific American Mind, close to 10% of men and women in America are taking drugs to combat depression.
Holy shit!
That is a lot of Depressed Americans.... or is it? Dun dun dun.
The article is titled The Medicated Americans, and it's a pretty good read. What really got to me were two contrasting pictures. The first one is of some girl at a party looking bored at some party with the caption reading "Diagnosis confusion: if she were actually experiencing severe depression, she couldn't have summoned the energy to get to the party." That's right! Stop faking for your Tofranil fix, you junkie.
The second picture is another girl balled up in bed, with the caption reading "A clinically depressed person may not be able to drag herself out of bed." Sounds more like clinical laziness! I kid, I kid.
A few interesting facts about the medicated American:
Twice as many psychiatric drugs are prescribed for women than men
Most likely a psychiatrist did not prescribe her antidepressants: family doctors now prescribe such medications
The rate of prescription is growing, while the rate of psychotherapy visits are decreasing
The article then goes to draw a very distinct line between common depression (described as being bummed out or 'in the dumps.' haha) and clinical Depression, with a motherfuckin capital D for emphasis. This shit is frealz!
"A true diagnosis of major depression involves some combination of most of the following: inability to feel pleasure of any kind whatsoever, loss of interest in everything, extreme self-hatred or guilt, inability to concentrate or to do the simplest things, sleeping all the time or not being able to sleep at all, dramatic weight gain or loss, and wanting to kill yourself or actually trying to kill yourself."
January 14 more missing than one missed call in 'One Missed Call'This movie was a balls off the walls laugh-fest. Western horror film makers seem to think that the more scares they can fit in a 120minute time frame, the better the horror movie. This is the same idea as a strawberry cake maker who makes a strawberry cake completely out of strawberries.
Lacking all the necessary devices that make a movie good (or believable), Eric Valette's One Missed Call gets two floppy thumbs down.
Why is it that Americans are so bad at remaking Japanese horror movies? Are the producers and writers actually thinking to themselves "needs more cheap scares" when watching the original movies, or is the boogeyman-around-the-corner their own simpleminded contribution to someone else's story?
Asian horror is deeply tied in to asian folklore, which is why when you watch a Chinese horror movie, someone tapping a pair of chopsticks on an empty bowl at an intersection means a lot more to a Chinese audience than an American audience. Same goes with haunted objects (cell phones, video tapes) which is connected to Japanese Shintoism. Asian horror films tend to pace a bit slower as well, with the plot revolving around solving a puzzle rather than escaping the boogyman. The terror in The Ring wasn't the white haired girl crawling through the television, it was the anticipation of coming death, and the mystery behind a seemingly normal object. Takashi Miike's original One Missed Call, though peppered with the cheap scare, still created the feeling that evil and supernatural elements can be found anywhere at anytime, whether it's the curse of a video, or a voicemail from the future. It's drawing from all these factors that have made the Asian Horror circuit respected around the world.
This isn't to say that the American Horror genre is a shallow. The cult classics of American Horror relied heavily on it's own rich history and background. Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, and The Exorcist used religious themes to create a supernatural environment, one that was believable and terror-inducing. The Halloween franchise is responsible for other slasher type movies such as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and draws heavily from the American serial killer motif. The Blair Witch Project combined the believability of a documentary with the realism of a handheld recording to create a new genre of American horror.
Despite all this, One Missed Call lacked pacing, decent acting, or a coherent plot, while completely ignoring the Original's resolution. It was an hour and a half of "I'm going to die tomorrow...*one day later*.. OMG I DIED."
November 23 Flash Point, AKA City With No MercyStarring Donnie Yen, Louis Koo, Fan Bing-Bing.
Everyone is saying how this movie is SPL2, but to me it feels more like Rotting Dogshit part 1. This movie was so bad! Louis Koo overacts, and is mostly useless for the duration of the movie, that is unless you view hostage/punching-bag to be useful. Fan Bing-Bing plays the other airhead/hostage. The only redeeming factor in the movie is the Amazing Donnie Yen (ADY) who busts up terrorists left and right. At one point, Mr. Yen pulls a goddamn German Suplex on random criminal 1. Too bad he doesn't make a meaningful screen appearance until close to 30 minutes into the film. Seriously, wtf.. it's 30 minutes of watching Louis Koo getting his ass kicked, overacting, kissing ass to terrorist scum, and getting his house blown up. Even Donnie doesn't give his best performance, with the culminating punch in the final battle being a wind-up popeye punch. If you're looking for hardcore Donnie porn, this movie is not for you, but for any diehard Donnie Yen fans, I guess this is necessary viewing material.
November 09 Flying Cops, HIdden CriminalsI have devised the perfect recipe for shooting a Hong Kong cop movie.
The basic Hong Kong cop movie consists of several ingredients:
1 part badass cop
1 part dextrous/intelligent cop
1 part sacrificial-lamb cop
1 part supervisor cop (Wong Sir, or Lieutenant Stone)
5-10 parts of terrorists (it is more enjoyable with foreign terrorist, so that we de-humanize them)
3-5 chase scenes
A liberal dose of martial arts
A teaspoon of romance/family issues
Candy glass
Explosions
Knead the explosions, candy glass, and martial arts together. Mix in 1 chase scene. Take the terrorists and mix in the first three cops individually, pour in 2 chase scenes. Make sure the first three cops are now at brother-status. Bake at 500 degrees with some romance or family related issue. prepare the movie in either an abandoned warehouse, sewer, or evacuated business building. Brutally slay sacrificial-lamb cop. Pour in another chase scene. Garnish with everything else. Serve with an explosion and reunite family/love with the surviving cops.
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