Brain Blenders

HAPPY TRAILS, GOJIRA

By J. Friendly

If you’re as devoted a Godzilla fan as I’m trying to pretend to be, I’m sure you know that Gojira is Godzilla’s real, native Japanese name.

And I’m sure you’ve heard by now that he is on the verge of retirement. According to an announcement by Toho, the studio that created him and saw him through a series of 27 films to date, he will make his final screen appearance in a film due to hit Japanese theaters in December.

Why, you ask? According to a report in Business Week (April 12, 2004), our campy hero just doesn’t have the appeal he once did in this new era computer-generated graphics and ever-more-realistic animation. In other words, he’s pretty well out of it.

Only 1.1 million moviegoers saw last year’s Godzilla film, Tokyo S.O.S . According to BizWeek , that’s “down 35% from the previous installment and just a fraction of the 10 million-plus viewers these flicks drew in the 1960s and ’70s at the peak of their popularity.”

If my reference to the Big G as a “hero” raised your eyebrows (or possibly singed ’em right off), you obviously failed to see beyond his seemingly indiscriminate paths of destruction. If you was payin’ more attention there, dummy, you’d know that Godzilla’s true mission in life no matter how crude his tactics is, as the weekly business magazine put it, “to save the planet from the ravages of industrialization.”

So after failing that utterly at his task, just look around you! How will the green guy choose to spend his Golden Years? In my opinion, his well-wishers should encourage him to go Western and I don’t mean that just as the opposite of Eastern or “Oriental.”

I’m talkin’ real West, podner. Can you imagine what a handsome figger he’ll cut in his 500-gallon cowboy hat, authentic bolo tie and two-tone, lariat-embroidered, form-fitting Cowboy-cut shirt with mother of pearl snap buttons on each breast pocket?

He’ll be gussied-up perfectly for his first blind date, and I can’t think of a better prospect than a woman almost as dragon-like as he is, Rosie O’Donnell. As I envision this playing out, Godzilla will escort his new sweaty-pie to a square dance.

As a finishing touch on his makeover, he will finally do something about that offensive breath problem, gargling from a monster-size bottle of Listerine. (With any luck, there be enough left over for her, too.)

And with even more luck just about the time Rosie confesses to him that she really doesn’t like guys the square-dance caller will holler, “STOMP YOUR PARTNER,” and that’s the last any of us will ever see of her.

For true Godzilla fans, here is how I see the best possible future: After millions of TV viewers watch Godzilla accept a gold medal from His So-Called “Highness” the Emperor of Japan (OK, that’s the only short joke I’ll make here), diehard fans will raise such a hue and cry that the Toho people will have no choice but to bring him out of retirement.

I can see it now a monster headline (translated for your convenience) reading: “GODZILLA, BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND.”

Forget the car - I'll take the watch

by: a.brain

"Fluid lines, high end internally developed manufacture movement, perfection-driven architecture, unconventional styling, leading-edge ergonomic design: the SLR chronograph, like the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren to which it pays tribute, is in a class all its own. Exclusively designed for Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren owners, the daring chronograph was designed and developed by TAG Heuer product development teams in Chaux-de- Fonds, together with the Geneva watchmaker, Jean-François Ruchonnet. The idea for the chronograph was conceived in the F1 paddock during an encounter between TAG Heuer CEO and President Jean-Christophe Babin and the director of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Project, Klaus Nesser."

Ok..ok - the car is SWEET, but seeing as how I probably won't be buying a new special edition Mercedes in the near future...the least I can do is drool over the Tag that is being released in the celebration of the car.

Wiffle Ball

by:a.brain

Whatever happened to kids playing wiffle ball? I was at a camp today and watched some camp counselors bring out the wiffle ball and bat, split the kids up into teams, and then watched as the youth stared at the wiffle ball and bat as if they were ancient artifacts.

You should have seen them swing!! Somebody should have thrown a tent over that circus. It was hilarious/sad/repulsive. It wasn't that these kids were the spazoids who are allergic to sports - THESE WERE KIDS FROM AN ATHLETIC CAMP!!! They must never play wiffle ball...or baseball..or softball. Was my generation the last of the "wifflers"?

When I was a kid we played so much wiffleball, we made each other switch hit to make it more difficult. I thought every ball ought to come with the holes around the top, to enable it to curve away from the direction you hold it. My fastball, was not WiffleBall standard, I threw mine sidearm and it was accurate!! I would put that joker on the inside of the plate, and jam up the hitter. I had a curve and a slider too...although my knuckle ball always lacked the accuracy to make it into steady rotation.

And we didn't use those wussified GIANT red bats either, we used standard skinny yellow bats, the kind you could hit your brother on the leg with and damn near cripple him. The kind of bat that went perfect on a hot Southern, Summer night when the lightening bugs were out. You would wait, in complete darkness, then just when they lit up BAM - a little yellow-green comet headed off the end of your bat. You could always tell who had the most kills too...cause the end of their bat would have little bits of lightening bug butt all over 'em.

Last point - there was no throwing the ball to the pitcher to make the runner stop. That's stupid!! You THREW the ball at the RUNNER and hoped you hit him in the face just to make him stop running even faster. We must have been hard core, cause you don't see kids outside throwing ball and playing all day anymore...maybe I'm old school and the kids today are new school. True I didn't have a KILLER Xbox or a computer, but I did have an Atari 2600!!! And if any of those new schoolers wanna piece of me in wiffle ball, get ready to have an imprint of a ball with holes in it, on your face!!

Running Sucka Free

by: a.brain

I just the ran the HIGHEST PAVED MARATHON IN THE WORLD!! Well, to be honest - I did the half, but I wonder if it is the highest PAVED half -marathon in the world. The web-site doesn't say, and I forgot to ask the peeps putting it on. Oh smell...back to the race. Two words sum it up, BRUTAL - MAJESTIC, and in that order. To run up in the Rockies is simply breathtaking - once you learn to breathe again.

Think about that - this is the highest PAVED marathon - which means there are higher marathons that aren't even paved. Dude - I am not signing up for that crazy train.

Estes Park, CO is a tourist draw, you can always tell tourist draws by the number of t-shirts shops selling the crappy t's with slogans such as "World's Greatest Uncle", or "Got Air?" in the case of Estes Park. But, I like it's charm and the number of hippies that have settled here, that are generally very friendly people with an organic outlook. Sometimes, that "organic" outlook means they don't use MODERN deodorants...which really comes into play about mile number 8. I thought I had stepped in a giant moose turd, even looked down at the sneaks and didn't see a thing...as I passed a hippie my eyes started to burn from the organic bergamot, lime, vanilla extract, frankincense, organic cinnamon, and organic clove. I just thanked him for reminding me to shower afterwards and continued rapidly.

But I digress, the first thirty minutes of the run were the worst. Due primarily to the fact that I was 8,000 feet above sea level. For a flatlander like me the elevation was a booger...wonder if I'll feel it in the thighs and calves later tonight. I think I was fairly acclimated to the change and I've been drinking enough water to float a boat. (Actually - I can answer that question right now, as my hamstring just reminded me not to bother flexing it today. Thanks hammie - I WILL remember that now.)

The only other thing worth mentioning is that as I was passing a small Asian lady she picked up her pace to keep time with me. She couldn't keep up the same pace for very long, because my legs were as tall as she was. Seriously...she was like 4 ft! But after I got about 10 feet beyond her she let out a yell. Not like an "Oh, I'm HURT" yell, but more of a Bruce Lee bout to crack some skull scream. It kinda freaked me out, and if she had been any "bigger than a minute" I would have run even faster. Couple of minutes later she yelled again and I turned slightly to see another person pass her. HEEEYAH!

Johnny Quest is Still My Hero

Dog Blog

I was raised in the golden age of cartoons and TV shows (the late ‘60s and early ‘70s). Let’s face it: 20 years from now, no one is going to be following the “Friends” series or beaming happily as their children watch it. (Case in point: has ANYONE ever seen re-runs from “thirtysomething,” sort of a depressing “Friends” show that had a huge following in the ‘80s.)

But today’s parents live in a special time, even greater than the day Disney started putting its animated movies on VHS tapes. Yes, thanks to the magic of syndication and the compactness of DVDs, parents and children can easily share special bonding moments through a few classic TV shows, confident that these shows share important values and lessons on life that we learned as children when glued to the Boob Tube.

Probably the most prominent example of masterful retro TV exploitation today would be the Scooby Doo cartoon series. And what a great bridge has been created with this franchise. First my children fell in love with the first two seasons of Scooby Doo that I watched as a child (I try to avoid the regrettable subsequent extensions featuring animated celebrities like Sonny and Cher and then worse after that, Scrappy Doo). Near Nirvana hit when we discovered the new Scooby Doo movies found on the Cartoon Network, which managed to stay true to the original cartoon but contemporized it culturally, so that both new generation and original generation were sucked right in. Cha-ching. Love it. Son, let’s go buy that Scooby Doo beach towel or better yet, Nintendo game.

But that’s just pure entertainment. Then there are the classic series where kids can learn all they need to know about how domestic life should be—complete with sibling rivalry and parental discipline—from a couple of seasons of “The Brady Bunch” (bonus: how to incorporate a housekeeper into the family). Even single-parent families can benefit from lessons of the past: “The Partridge Family” (if you can get over the fact the young children perform in night clubs around the country), and the lesser known “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (with a housekeeper-modeling bonus here, too).

Up to this point, these case studies I’ve given you have been easily accessible on cable TV. Right now, the real test of my devotion to the past is the fact that I have begun shelling out a big pile of bones to make sure my little boys get to see my favorites from childhood that haven’t been readily available on TV the past several years.

Urban Challenge

by: a.brain

Last Saturday I spent the day running around Washington DC. Not just doing the "tourist" running around thing, but actually RUNNING around DC.

Me and my boy did an Urban Challenge, and it was AWESOME. There are two parts to the Urban Challenege:

1. The Trivia Quiz - which consists of 30 multiple choice questions flashed up on screens in a room (our room was a bar in the basement of the Grand Hyatt in Downtown DC) while the players conferred amongst their team mate and then fill in the bubble on a scan-tron card.

2. Part Deux is the race itself. This is where the REAL FUN happens. The trivia quiz is just there to weed out the stupid people, which apparently included me and the GENIUS running partner of mine, and to determine which group you start with when you go. There were I think - 8 groups that went off on Saturday with many teams in each group. We went off SEVENTH, walked right outside and jumped on the little bus, put our helmets on, and off we went to the playgorund with the low swings. Not, really (but close) - we actually were sent an email on the Verizon phone (they sponsor the event) that told us we would start on clue number 3 and work our way around from there.

It is very important to note that the only way to determine if you and your teammate have been to the correct locations and IN THE CORRECT order is by taking photos and saving them to your gallery with the LG VX6000. Verizon provides the phones for all the Urban Challenge events, and just to note...Urban Challenge donates all proceeds to a very worthy cause ,Big Brothers Big Sisters. So in my mind this is a win -win scenario.

Our first clue was a reference to a type of Portuguese folk music that was popular over 100 years ago with college-age students. That also holds the same name as a type of guitar. Fado - is the style of music, guitar, and turns out a restaurant near Chinatown. We ran over there, snapped a photo and ran to where we thought the next clue would be...

Folks let me tell you the RACE was on. It was non-stop action from that moment on. I can't remember having more FUN during a race - you gotta try it. Me and running bro are doing KC on September 18th...see you there.

BrainBlenders TOP TEN!!!

Ok…after much prodding from the powers that be (Mr. Oi) I have finished “BrainBlenders Top Ten Comedies”. All I can say at this point I know the readers of this blog are “seriously slap stick”(oxymoron?). So, using a Parento Scale the results are as follows:

1. Blazing Saddles with 46 points
2. Airplane 37 points
3. Christmas Vacation 36 points
4. Fletch 35 points
5. Holy Grail 28 points
6. Dumb and Dumber 26 points
7. TIE Space Balls & Waterboy 18 points a piece
9. Trading Places 16 points
10. Old School 15 points

The first person, writers for BrainBlenders EXCLUDED, to send me the BEST movie lines from this list will win a snappy BrainBlenders T-shirt. This is totally subjective as I will evaluate each list for how fast it comes in, snappy one liners, and sheer pants-wet-a-bility of the content. Good Luck.

Old

By: a.brain

Richer than me you will never be, For I had a mother that read to me.

I spent a weekend at a retreat recently and the cross section of ages was quite diverse. There I was sitting next to a 26 year old on my left and a 65 year old on my right. A section of the conference was led by a 78 year old doctor. And when I say doctor I mean DOCTOR!! Doctorate in medicine, psychology, and ministry – wrote a couple of books, featured muscician at national venues in Washington D.C. Started a school of psychology and now tours and speaks on various topics all at 78. An impressive, renessaisance man who has spent his life in the process of studying minds and working with people.

That poem at the top was quoted by him. He said his quest for knowledge started when his mother read to him, then he asked the question: “Will our future generations be able to use this poem?”

new logo?

What do you think about this as a new logo?

Why I miss the South

Ahhhh....loyalty in a way only a Nascar fan can show it.
Thanks for the shot M.F.