Friday Night Freak Out?

According to Wikipedia, tonight's Supernatural should be great...

123	19	"Mommy Dearest"	John Showalter	Adam Glass	April 29, 2011	3X6069
Sam, Dean, Bobby and Castiel track Eve to a small town in Oregon. The guys discover the townspeople have been converted to monsters and hybrids, but surprisingly, some of them appear to be dying. When they finally do meet Eve, she decides to torture the brothers by taking the form of their late mother, Mary Winchester.

If you somehow miss it, check it out here: http://www.iwatchsupernatural.com/.

Dark of the Moon Previews?

A new Transformers III preview?

This looks really exciting! 

Role Models

I am 31 years old and I play with action figures. Last night, I caught myself staring at my Primus figure's planet mode trying to imagine all the little roads and cities on its surface that I couldn't see. Yes, it's a toy. No, the features I was imagining are not there; but for a long moment it was almost as if I could really believe that they were - could really see where towers and plazas would be if I were able to get closer to the planet's surface. I could imagine Tyger Pax, Altihex, Kalis, the Rust Sea...here might be Vos and here Tarn or Polyhex, here might be Darkmount. I searched for the Sonic Canyons, and I wondered where inside I might find Vector Sigma.
I've been passionate about toys, especially Transformers toys, since before I had any idea that they might be kept in a collection. As I child, I had He-Man, GI Joe, and Dino-Riders figures as well. I even had a My Little Pony! (My parents were kind of progressive.) I also had MASK toys, which I loved, and they were the first toys that I really had an interest in collecting. I watched and loved cartoons like Silverhawks and Thundercats, but it wasn't only animation that I was interested in. This was the 80s, and MTV was a fledgling network. Though my family had doubts about some of the content of the videos, I saw my fair share of artists breaking the mold and forging a new path for music on television. Considering the types of show that MTV now airs, it's funny to think that my parents were worried about Madonna being a bad influence back then!
"Influence" is precisely what I'm going on about here. For many years, there has been talk about Barbie dolls and how they affect little girls. "Is Barbie a good role model?" I once heard someone ask that on the radio. Her proportions are unrealistic; we all know this. What does Barbie tell young women about how they should value themselves?

What role is Barbie playing? What role is she modeling? Mother? Wife? Woman? Can we look at Barbie and say what her values are, what her parenting style is, or whether or not she might get a bonus this quarter? If a child sees Barbie as a role model, he or she must be making a judgment about her. What judgments can we make about her, and, perhaps more importantly, how do we learn to make those judgments?
Barbie has no character to judge. She is not a person. Yes, her proportions are unrealistic - this is a common problem with women who are not real women but dolls made of plastics and paint. I'm not a sociologist. I don't know anything about the neuroscience of self-esteem. I can only speak from my own perspective. I never once looked to my toys as role models. My toys were not playing roles extrinsic from my imagination; they were my toys, and they played whatever role I wanted them to. Skeletor never beat He-Man, but if I wanted to make him kick He-Man off a cliff into a pit full of Decepticons and Inhumanoids, I could easily make that happen. I didn't look at He-Man as any example of what I should look like; He-Man lived on another planet and said things like, "We've got to stop Merman." He-Man wasn't real. I knew that. Somehow, between the point at which I was a toothless imp knowing only that my toys were things I could gnaw on and the point at which I was capable of appreciating the value of a toy as a conduit for my imagination, I learned to distinguish reality from fantasy. I never imagined that Optimus Prime's "role" was anything I should attempt to emulate. Though I deeply admired the character and totally bought the G1 series with all its flaws, I never interpreted Optimus Prime literally. Prime reminded me of my actual role model, my father.

See, unlike the character I saw in cartoons or the musicians I saw gyrating suggestively on MTV, my dad was with me from the moment I woke up until the moment I fell asleep. He made the rules of the house. He brought home food, he bought my toys, he cared for me. He watched Transformers with me. Dad is a real person with a set of clear roles to play, and he was there when I turned off the TV. I could call him right now if I wanted, and he would have all kinds of things to say about being a real person in the real world. Is Barbie a good role model? Are He-Man's proportions realistic? Of course not. I am a layman, and this is not an opinion that is informed by any science that I can cite, but I suspect that our best role models - if not our ONLY role models - are our family and our friends. These are the people who are really there in the physical world with us, interacting with us, playing roles distinct from our whims. A toy can be whatever you want it to be. The people on television are representatives of someone else's limited vision. While the media can have a powerful affect on how a child develops, in the end it is not the images, the icons, but the people in your life who should teach you how to think about yourself, how to treat others, and how you might expect others to treat you.

The Evolution of a Franchise

Of late, I've been thinking a lot about morality. I have spent the past few months reading and watching lectures and debates about objective morality as it relates to questions about god and religion, and I've learned much about the tantalizing idea that science can have meaningful things to say about moral thought and the well-being of conscious creatures. I've listened to such scientists and philosophers as Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Francis Collins, Rick Warren, and William Lane Craig give answers both inspiring and ludicrous for why we are good and what it means that we are, and I think I've got at least one blog in me on the subject. All that said, I've decided today to talk about Transformers.

Transformers Dark of the Moon is scheduled to be released on July 1 of this year. It will be, purportedly, director Michael Bay's last contribution to the long-running Transformers franchise, but I doubt that we will see Transformers fade from the market once the film has come and gone. Transformers: Prime, the latest TF animated show, is still on the air in most markets. The toyline is going strong, having a greater presence in stores now that it has in the last 10 or so years. The Prime line is soon to be announced; add to this the existing line of repaints and re-imaginings and the third movie line, and there are bound to be more than enough Cybertronian robots on the aisle to keep oblivious parents staring for minutes on end (before, inevitably, picking up the nearest pegwarmer). My point is that this should be a great time to be a Transformers fan. The mythology is rich and constantly developing. Supply answers increasing demand - be it from the retail sector or from the body of consumers itself. But there is a question in my mind. I ask this of Transformers 3 and I ask it of Ghostbusters 3. I asked it of Tron Legacy, which I thought was great. The question is this:
Is there a core to this mythology?

Many were excited to learn that Peter Cullen would be voicing Optimus Prime for Bay's Transformers films. Just as many were disappointed that Frank Welker would not be voicing Megatron, but not a word was spoken, of praise or of disdain, about the fact that the leaders of the rival factions would be named Optimus Prime and Megatron. We needn't have commented on that because it was understood. None of us expected to see a complete revision of the Transformers story - one in which familiar names and themes were abandoned utterly. We know, deep in our hearts (or sparks) that there is a core mythology from which all others branch or borrow; there is a grain of what has made this franchise great in every Transformers property developed. But to what degree has Michael Bay acted as Dark Energon, corrupting the Cybertron that is the franchise's core concepts? To what degree is Bay simply a cog in a massive marketing machine?

I waver. I go back and forth between vilifying Bay, vilifying Hasbro, and pretending with all of my being that I'm not a G1 slave. Ultimately, the truth is that Transformers cannot be corrupted by bad writing, thin characters, insane plots, or mindless fanservice. G1 had its share of those things, more or less! (B.O.T, anyone?) I will go see Dark of the Moon, and I will complain about liberties taken with themes and characters who saw their genesis in my beloved G1, but I cannot overlook the glaring truth:
Like William Lane Craig arguing that there can be no morality without a supernatural being, it is empty and pointless to say that there can be no Transformers without G1. Transformers has grown and changed and spawned many creative properties. It has diversified, as organisms' morphology diversifies with increased reproductive success, and it doesn't matter whether Michael Bay's next TF film succeeds or not. The franchise has an engine behind it that has been successfully marketing these remarkable toys and the disparate storylines that make them so interesting for more than 25 years.
So tell yourself not to worry. Sit back, enjoy Michael Bay's vision for Cybertron in whatever way you can, and if you can only grit your teeth over curse words and complaints about changes to a particular character's established personality, then perhaps you might find solace in the fact that there will always be more to see and to learn on the road ahead - and that you can always revisit G1 on DVD.

Sunday's TV Pick: Game of Thrones

So tonight, HBO launches Game of Thrones. The series is an American medieval fantasy tv series created by HBO's David Benioff and Dan Weiss that is based on George R. R. Martin's best selling A Song of Ice and Fire novel series. It's about the struggles of noble families trying to control the Iron Throne of Westeros. That much I learned from Wikipedia. I haven't read the book series but the series is on tonight!

New Twisted Metal

Twisted Metal is set to return in October to the PS3. Here is the most recent trailer.

Big Gaming Releases On 4/19

A bunch of different games are getting released Tuesday. The main two that are big names right now are Mortal Kombat and Portal 2. Now, there are other ones as well, but I believe these are the big ones that are going to be possibly the most popular. Both games have a following in the gaming community, and the other has movies based off it.
Portal hasn’t been around as long as Mortal Kombat, but whatever popularity and following it has it is well deserved. The game soon to be a game series well the sequel releases Tuesday. It all started when Portal was released in 2007. It was a different experience for gamers, who also got to experience it with Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 in the orange box bundle. Players used a poertal gun, which fired two portals of different colors, one blue one orange. Get in one, come out the other. They could be fired on ceilings and walls upon other places that might for quite an interesting experience. The one thing the new game is going to have that the original didn’t is a co-op mode with two robots as the main characters
Mortal Kombat has been around for many years. The series has many games, some that were kind of spin-offs. They are now kind of looking to go back to their roots in a sense going back to original fighting game side scroller fighting. A cool new feature with the new game is an x-ray. One of each characters moves is a gory attack that shows x-rays of where the attack struck. Cool right?

Friday's TV Pick: Supernatural. (Dur!)

So without further explaining Supernatural, since I am sure you've all ready my previous pickings and descriptions about the great series involving Sam and Dean Winchester and their epic battle against Heaven and Hell... and everything else in between. This week's episode looks like it's going to be pretty good - as most of them are. Though from what the spoiler scenes show, it looks like Ellen is alive. Though is this Ellen we know or from a different reality or a ghost? Let's find out tonight at 9 on CW!

Or if you miss it: http://www.iwatchsupernatural.com/2011/04/s6e17-my-heart-will-go-on.html

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Ok, so I don't know if you all have seen the trailer, but the new planet of the apes movie is getting some buzz as the trailer is hitting mainstream. The main star is James Franco, who has played in many acting roles. Its odd, because they are not the apes that stand on two legs and look more like humans. Think silverback gorillas with this. Apparently, James Franco's character and the company he works for are developing some kind of medicine or chemical that can heal the brain. But they test it on an ape called Caesar. Great choice of name huh? He gets really smart, I mean smart! Need I say more? It's also gonna be a prequel.

The Format Has Changed...

And for the better. I am pretty pleased with my staff I have here and Ryan's weekly posts. It adds to the character and community of this. I mean, while this site started out to be strictly for Ghostbusters and the related aspects, it's obviously expanded into a new environment.  I posted Ryan's most recent article on my facebook account and, well, we've seen a civil backlash for it. But I will support the freedom of speech of any and all of my staff. I feel that he's entitled to have his right to write how he feels just as anyone else is entitled to their own feelings.

Ryan, thank you for your posts and contributions to this site.

May the Seventh be with YOU!

Every year, around this time, I get excited for something. It's the first Saturday in May. You know, why I'm saying that... It's FREE COMIC BOOK DAY.  Yesss, you know when you get those free reprint issues from publishers that are geared to entice you into reading their stories. Check it all here:

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/

The Hopeful Delusion

I don't believe in soul mates, and I don't believe in love at first sight. Many-splendored though it may be, love is, generally, a very poorly understood thing. It seems to have found a popular description as practically thaumaturgic, perhaps an energy or a power rather than a brain state, having less to do with hormones or action potentials than with fate or magic. I speak of romantic love here, as platonic love is rarely ascribed mystical properties. But the fact is, said the unapologetic pragmatist, that both manifest at the level of the brain and can be measured and explained by neuroscience. Romantic love is not something that can strike like a bolt out of the blue, because it requires intimacy and rapport to develop. Love is based on empathy, reciprocity, comfort, and trust, and those are things that cannot be attained spontaneously (except, perhaps, by the most gullible of us). Common interests also play a big part in the way we begin to love one another, and, while you may be able to deduce that you share a particular interest with another person from the circumstances in which you meet them, the best you should hope for in that instance is a superficial understanding. You can only really come to know a person through conversation and by spending time with him or her, and it's because of this that love also requires patience.

It is common to draw a distinction between "ordinary" love and "true love." The bond of true love is usually expected to be eternal; some even insist that it transcends physical death, which is a dubious conclusion to reach given the information we have (or do not have) about what happens to us when and after we die. Platonic love is less often described as permanent. We have all outgrown friends, and it is usually at least an uncomfortable experience. But romantic love can fail for all the same reasons that platonic love does. There is no reason to assume that any particular feeling of love is truer than any other or that love of any certain intensity should remain miraculously unchanged until your dying day. We should view all of our feelings, no matter how fleeting or powerful, through the lens of logic. Referring to any type of love as true seems to cast other love-like feelings - such as infatuation - as inferior and unworthy of much time under scrutiny, when it is very often these preliminary feelings that can lead to the feeling that many call "true love" in the first place. All feelings are true, even if they are disproportionate to their causes.

Love changes because people change. Our feelings do not exist extrinsic from our minds. As we live and associate with each other, we discover nuances of personality that we may dislike. Our interests evolve, and most peoples' paths will eventually diverge, no matter how close they are from the outset. The friends you had when you were 6 years old and had a whole world to explore and a self to find within it are probably entirely different people now with interests beyond climbing trees and rambling through wooded areas with sticks for swords. The imaginary foes of your youth are all defeated; they have been replaced with real foes, and your interests have likely shifted monumentally, leaving you virtually, if not entirely, incompatible with your comrades of old. We are like ice cubes dumped from an ice cube tray: two may start out in the same shape, but they will probably melt in completely different ways. This is why distance so often kills friendships - separated geographically, you are exposed to different influences and are more likely to develop incompatible interests. Romantic love works in the same way. People change. They grow. Even the truest of love, whatever that means, can dwindle with age. Love takes time, and this is why we cannot love instantly. But, with time, love changes, and this is why it is unrealistic to assume that we might love eternally.

Much emphasis is placed on falling in love and getting married. Romantic love is seen as a goal for which anything might be sacrificed, and those without it are often depicted as less fortunate than those who manage to find it. A lack of proper understanding about feelings of romantic attachment will lead almost certainly to sorrow, no matter what it may be popular to say about the power of love. My wife and I have been together for 11 years, and we've been married for 3. I can say that love and marriage can be wonderful and sublimely rewarding, but approaching any kind of relationship with your head in the clouds and unrealistic expectations of mystical eternity will lead to spectacular failure virtually without variation. Wait until you have done most of your growing to get married. Make decisions based on reason, and do not bet everything until you really understand the odds. Magical thinking in general is detrimental to any society's maturity; if we cannot break the bonds of wishful thinking, we shall be doomed to lunge forever at the shadow of perfection and to fall again and again into sadness and failure that are only made more terrible by our hopeful delusion.

Hop: the Movie NoBunny Should Miss.

I rarely touch kids movies, nonetheless ones that are not science fiction ones lately but... HOP was worth seeing. It had a great mixture of CGI and good live acting. The plot followed E.B. who did not want to grow up and be the next Easter Bunny. Various uses of candy made for great visuals and jokes. Overall a great movie! :)

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