Saturday, September 25, 2004
The Name Is Suck. James Suck.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED, JAMES?!?
After taking a brief hiatus for a few years from another beloved childhood franchise, that being the James Bond movies, I finally took the plunge and decided to rent Die Another Day and see what ol' 007's been up to.
I was, to put it mildly, less than impressed.
I am realistic about these things, and I am well acquainted with that curious phenomenon we know as Change, or the Passage Of Time, but it is still something of a shock to see someone who so suave, so debonair, so damn CLASSY be reduced to this.
I'm a traditionalist. For me, it's all about Goldfinger, Thunderball and all the other original works based off the previously written novels by Mister Fleming, so perhaps it's just me being a stodgy old codger, but I mean COME ON...
I understand the need to keep a franchise "fresh" and "relevant" to the changing tastes of the audience, but I also think that an audience likes a particular thing/franchise for certain fundamental characteristics it possesses that no other intellectual property possesses. Or perhaps it's more fair to say that it possessed these characteristics first. So to go and completely overhaul something to the point where aside from the name it's almost unrecognizable to its ancestors is perhaps not the best way to go about "updating" a property for today's audience.
Case in point:
James Bond Is Not A Surfer Dude
The opening action sequence already gave me a bad feeling about this. James Bond belongs to a sophisticated world of intrigue, danger and international conflict. He does not sit around thinking, "That is a MOST bodacious wave! EXCELLEEEENT!" and grab his board to go hang ten or suspend 8, or tie 5 to a ceiling or whatever it is that surfers do. And yet here, witness! 007 is riding the crest of a gnarly wave before hitting the sands of a North Korean beach!
The James Bond I knew was an incredibly dangerous yet intelligent and cultured man. He played in casinos and exchanged witty repartee with friends and foes alike. This James Bond would have been better off as an instructor in some catch-all extreme sports center, shouting out phrases like "Dude, I've got, like, a license to surf!"
James Bond Is Not A Tehm-In-Ay-Tah
Why, James, WHY?!?
Why are you subjecting me to the same insipid and ultimately insulting one-liners after someone's demise that I can get in a dozen other randomly selected "high octane" action films?
After explosively decompressing a jetliner and causing 3/4 of the bad guys to get sucked out of holes in the hull:
"Your friends bailed."
When his side kick, Halle Barry is fighting another bad ass spy girl:
Spy Girl: I can read your every move.
Halle takes a book on the floor and throws it at said girl, distracting her long enough to stab a knife through the book and Spy Girl's chest.
Halle: Read THIS, bitch!
James Bond nearly goes off the edge of a waterfall but manages to grab onto an ancient Korean bell as his hovercraft topples over:
Bond: Saved by the bell!
James Bond Is Not Directed By The Brothers Wachowski
It's probably just me, but I've always thought that every shot, every cut, every angle selected in a film should have a purpose to it. Throwing in gratuitous editing and shooting techniques for the cool factor is just not enough. While the Brothers Wachowsiki in their amazing first Matrix film introduced the concepts of bullet time, interesting editing, camera angles and camera speeds, it was all done in the service of the story, to illustrate how the freedom fighters acutally had powers that went beyond the limitations the Matrix imposed on them. Not only were these fight sequences and editing techniques incredibly cool to look at, they also pushed the story forward and entertained the audiences.
This same crazy post-modern editing seems horribly out of context within the James Bond franchise, with crash track shots through environments, slow motion combat that is entirely too reminiscent of other action/fighting pictures that have come out recently, and an incredibly insulting assumption that all the audience wants is good action. We're pickier than that, we want good action that propels a good story with good characters. I can appreciate the amount of technical perfection that went into crafting these sequences, but it's lost on me if I don't give a damn what happens in the first place and provides a viewing experience that will amuse me for the whole of five minutes until I move back to something more memorable, like Lord of the Rings or the original Star Wars trilogy. Or Thunderball.
James Bond Is Bond. James Bond
Where is the wit? Where's the intelligence? Where's that suave sophistication?
While I understand that movies are all about escape, there is a different kind of escape unique to each film. Lord of the Rings is an escape to a fantastic, mythical past that never was, the original Star Wars trilogy is an escape to a future we all want to live in, and James Bond is an escape into a high stakes, classy world of urbane intrigue and intelligent covert operations. James Bond is a man with CLASS. His one liners have a peculiar quality of being clever rather than "punny". What I witnessed was some good looking clown firing guns like Rambo and shouting out stupid lines after death without an Austrian accent. James Bond relied on his wits and intellect as much as he did on sheer brute force and expertise in combat. This Bond, as with so many action heroes of late, relied mostly on ammunition and coincidence to get him out of tight scrapes.
In short. WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE *REAL* BOND, JAMES BOND?!?
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED, JAMES?!?
After taking a brief hiatus for a few years from another beloved childhood franchise, that being the James Bond movies, I finally took the plunge and decided to rent Die Another Day and see what ol' 007's been up to.
I was, to put it mildly, less than impressed.
I am realistic about these things, and I am well acquainted with that curious phenomenon we know as Change, or the Passage Of Time, but it is still something of a shock to see someone who so suave, so debonair, so damn CLASSY be reduced to this.
I'm a traditionalist. For me, it's all about Goldfinger, Thunderball and all the other original works based off the previously written novels by Mister Fleming, so perhaps it's just me being a stodgy old codger, but I mean COME ON...
I understand the need to keep a franchise "fresh" and "relevant" to the changing tastes of the audience, but I also think that an audience likes a particular thing/franchise for certain fundamental characteristics it possesses that no other intellectual property possesses. Or perhaps it's more fair to say that it possessed these characteristics first. So to go and completely overhaul something to the point where aside from the name it's almost unrecognizable to its ancestors is perhaps not the best way to go about "updating" a property for today's audience.
Case in point:
James Bond Is Not A Surfer Dude
The opening action sequence already gave me a bad feeling about this. James Bond belongs to a sophisticated world of intrigue, danger and international conflict. He does not sit around thinking, "That is a MOST bodacious wave! EXCELLEEEENT!" and grab his board to go hang ten or suspend 8, or tie 5 to a ceiling or whatever it is that surfers do. And yet here, witness! 007 is riding the crest of a gnarly wave before hitting the sands of a North Korean beach!
The James Bond I knew was an incredibly dangerous yet intelligent and cultured man. He played in casinos and exchanged witty repartee with friends and foes alike. This James Bond would have been better off as an instructor in some catch-all extreme sports center, shouting out phrases like "Dude, I've got, like, a license to surf!"
James Bond Is Not A Tehm-In-Ay-Tah
Why, James, WHY?!?
Why are you subjecting me to the same insipid and ultimately insulting one-liners after someone's demise that I can get in a dozen other randomly selected "high octane" action films?
After explosively decompressing a jetliner and causing 3/4 of the bad guys to get sucked out of holes in the hull:
"Your friends bailed."
When his side kick, Halle Barry is fighting another bad ass spy girl:
Spy Girl: I can read your every move.
Halle takes a book on the floor and throws it at said girl, distracting her long enough to stab a knife through the book and Spy Girl's chest.
Halle: Read THIS, bitch!
James Bond nearly goes off the edge of a waterfall but manages to grab onto an ancient Korean bell as his hovercraft topples over:
Bond: Saved by the bell!
James Bond Is Not Directed By The Brothers Wachowski
It's probably just me, but I've always thought that every shot, every cut, every angle selected in a film should have a purpose to it. Throwing in gratuitous editing and shooting techniques for the cool factor is just not enough. While the Brothers Wachowsiki in their amazing first Matrix film introduced the concepts of bullet time, interesting editing, camera angles and camera speeds, it was all done in the service of the story, to illustrate how the freedom fighters acutally had powers that went beyond the limitations the Matrix imposed on them. Not only were these fight sequences and editing techniques incredibly cool to look at, they also pushed the story forward and entertained the audiences.
This same crazy post-modern editing seems horribly out of context within the James Bond franchise, with crash track shots through environments, slow motion combat that is entirely too reminiscent of other action/fighting pictures that have come out recently, and an incredibly insulting assumption that all the audience wants is good action. We're pickier than that, we want good action that propels a good story with good characters. I can appreciate the amount of technical perfection that went into crafting these sequences, but it's lost on me if I don't give a damn what happens in the first place and provides a viewing experience that will amuse me for the whole of five minutes until I move back to something more memorable, like Lord of the Rings or the original Star Wars trilogy. Or Thunderball.
James Bond Is Bond. James Bond
Where is the wit? Where's the intelligence? Where's that suave sophistication?
While I understand that movies are all about escape, there is a different kind of escape unique to each film. Lord of the Rings is an escape to a fantastic, mythical past that never was, the original Star Wars trilogy is an escape to a future we all want to live in, and James Bond is an escape into a high stakes, classy world of urbane intrigue and intelligent covert operations. James Bond is a man with CLASS. His one liners have a peculiar quality of being clever rather than "punny". What I witnessed was some good looking clown firing guns like Rambo and shouting out stupid lines after death without an Austrian accent. James Bond relied on his wits and intellect as much as he did on sheer brute force and expertise in combat. This Bond, as with so many action heroes of late, relied mostly on ammunition and coincidence to get him out of tight scrapes.
In short. WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE *REAL* BOND, JAMES BOND?!?
Thursday, September 23, 2004
The Super-Super Hero
Okay, so here's my approach to the ultimate super hero...
On an alien world with an advanced culture, a loving couple with the husband as a genius scientist, gets exposed to radiation and thus guaranteeing their baby is a mutant, a child of the atom, an "X-Man" if you will... The mutant child is soon determined to have the mutant ability to breath underwater and telepathically communicate with fish. Before celebrations for this Aqua-X-Baby can take place, he is rocketed as an infant from his doomed planet, since its unstable core will shortly cause it to explode, a fact ignored by everyone on the planet except our hero's dad.
His ship crashes in Kansas where he is raised by kindly American farmers who teach him decent values like laughing at those less fortunate than him, and dealing with his anger by taking a gun to school and shooting everyone in sight. It is here on Earth that this alien mutant also finally realizes that the yellow sun of Earth grants him super human abilities on top of his already formidable ability to talk to fish. Alas his parents die of a horrible disease that he can't cure (An exotic African variant of cooties with strains of Anthrax) and devastated, he is adopted by rich parents who treat him so well he quickly forgets his old parents. The wealth of his new parents comes in especially handy when disaster strikes. While wandering down the street and mocking a blind man for his financial inferiority, a truck carrying radioactive material crashes and a cannister of said radioactive material spills over our hero's eyes, blinding him but granting him an uncanny sense of hearing that acts almost as radar. The radiation also mutates a rat and some turtles who come across our young hero as he wanders away blind from the accident scene. These animals, who are mutated by the radiation into having ninja skills teach our hero in the ways of being a teenage mutant, blind, radar enabled, nigh invulnerable, flying, super vision, super strength enabled human who can breathe underwater and talk to fish.
After being trained in ways of the mutant ninja, our hero is once again found by his rich parents, who, despite the fact that he is now blind (Excepting telescopic, microscopic, infrared, heat and X-Ray vision which all work fine...) they take him to see a showing of Zorro, get mugged and shot before his eyes, causing him to finally wonder if maybe criminals might just be a bad thing. He realizes that criminals, just like he himself, are a cowardly, supersitious lot. He dedicates himself to fighting crime, but first realizes that he must acquire skills to fight crime aside from his near omnipotent mutant/yellow sun super charged/mutant ninja skills. A bat flying through the window seals the deal and he decides he'll try to model himself as a bat. Sadly, this amibtion is nullified the very first day he returns to school when a field trip to a radiation demonstration goes bad; a spider irradiated from the demonstration bites him, granting him the abilities of a spider.
With still more abilities under his belt, he pursues the cause of science and crime detection to further his future efforts to fight for justice. He feels that it might be necessary to have some scientific backing while he studies medicine, so he specializes in weapons of mass destruction as his major, with heart surgery as a minor and for his final credit on his course, creates a gamma bomb. Things go horribly wrong when some punk kid shows up at the testing ground and our hero goes out to try and save him by listening for him--or using telescopic vision when hearing doesn't work--and manages to shield him with his invulnerable skin, but also gets a healthy dose of gamma radiation that results in him turning into a hulking beast whenever he gets angry. The same explosion also causes him to wander and get lost in a cave where he finds an old walking stick and strikes it anger. As he does this, lightning strikes and he is transformed into the Norse god of Thunder while Odin descends and reveals that the soul of his son is embedded within his mutant, ninja, solar super charged, fish talking, anger transforming, spider like, avenging bat soul.
Transformed by this revelation, he is more determined than ever to fight crime. He returns to his studies, working on his chemistry when lightning strikes a cabinet next to him filled with chemicals, dousing him with electrified chemicals granting him the abilities of super speed and stretching his own body to elastic proportions. He graduates, and our mutant, hulking, spidery, solar charged, ninja trained, blind, super speedy, elastic, fish talking hero goes the mountains of Nepal to meditate, and he finds the last sorceror of Earth, slowly dying. He trains our hero to become his successor, the sorceror supreme. He also happens to tell him that if he says the word "Shazam" he'll become the world's mightiest mortal, always a handy thing to have, though our hero doesn't have the heart to tell the sorceror he's already the world mightiest mortal/alien/whatever. This training also happens to take place near the site where a space guardian of the Earth sector with a power ring crashes and is also dying. He finds our hero worthy and gives him the ring of power, telling him that the safety of Earth ("And it's sorcerous ways!" the dying sorceror reminds him) is now in his hands.
He decides to go home, but rather than take a plane or fly, he takes a ship, forgetting he can fly under his own power(s) and when the ship sinks, gets "stranded" on an island, forcing him to learn the art of the bow until he remembers that he can fly under his own power, or use his new ring. He uses the ring and it shoots him into orbit where he meets an ancient, god-like galactic power that threatens to eat the Earth unless he agrees to become his herald. Our hero agrees and the god like being promptly forgets the whole deal and just up and leaves. He returns to Earth prematurely when a crashing bit of white dwarf star knocks him on the head and causes him to crash, but also, when he puts it in his palm, allows him to shrink and control his density.
Upon his return, he encounters a Playstation console, is enamored with Grand Theft Auto and decides to become a game developer instead.
Okay, so here's my approach to the ultimate super hero...
On an alien world with an advanced culture, a loving couple with the husband as a genius scientist, gets exposed to radiation and thus guaranteeing their baby is a mutant, a child of the atom, an "X-Man" if you will... The mutant child is soon determined to have the mutant ability to breath underwater and telepathically communicate with fish. Before celebrations for this Aqua-X-Baby can take place, he is rocketed as an infant from his doomed planet, since its unstable core will shortly cause it to explode, a fact ignored by everyone on the planet except our hero's dad.
His ship crashes in Kansas where he is raised by kindly American farmers who teach him decent values like laughing at those less fortunate than him, and dealing with his anger by taking a gun to school and shooting everyone in sight. It is here on Earth that this alien mutant also finally realizes that the yellow sun of Earth grants him super human abilities on top of his already formidable ability to talk to fish. Alas his parents die of a horrible disease that he can't cure (An exotic African variant of cooties with strains of Anthrax) and devastated, he is adopted by rich parents who treat him so well he quickly forgets his old parents. The wealth of his new parents comes in especially handy when disaster strikes. While wandering down the street and mocking a blind man for his financial inferiority, a truck carrying radioactive material crashes and a cannister of said radioactive material spills over our hero's eyes, blinding him but granting him an uncanny sense of hearing that acts almost as radar. The radiation also mutates a rat and some turtles who come across our young hero as he wanders away blind from the accident scene. These animals, who are mutated by the radiation into having ninja skills teach our hero in the ways of being a teenage mutant, blind, radar enabled, nigh invulnerable, flying, super vision, super strength enabled human who can breathe underwater and talk to fish.
After being trained in ways of the mutant ninja, our hero is once again found by his rich parents, who, despite the fact that he is now blind (Excepting telescopic, microscopic, infrared, heat and X-Ray vision which all work fine...) they take him to see a showing of Zorro, get mugged and shot before his eyes, causing him to finally wonder if maybe criminals might just be a bad thing. He realizes that criminals, just like he himself, are a cowardly, supersitious lot. He dedicates himself to fighting crime, but first realizes that he must acquire skills to fight crime aside from his near omnipotent mutant/yellow sun super charged/mutant ninja skills. A bat flying through the window seals the deal and he decides he'll try to model himself as a bat. Sadly, this amibtion is nullified the very first day he returns to school when a field trip to a radiation demonstration goes bad; a spider irradiated from the demonstration bites him, granting him the abilities of a spider.
With still more abilities under his belt, he pursues the cause of science and crime detection to further his future efforts to fight for justice. He feels that it might be necessary to have some scientific backing while he studies medicine, so he specializes in weapons of mass destruction as his major, with heart surgery as a minor and for his final credit on his course, creates a gamma bomb. Things go horribly wrong when some punk kid shows up at the testing ground and our hero goes out to try and save him by listening for him--or using telescopic vision when hearing doesn't work--and manages to shield him with his invulnerable skin, but also gets a healthy dose of gamma radiation that results in him turning into a hulking beast whenever he gets angry. The same explosion also causes him to wander and get lost in a cave where he finds an old walking stick and strikes it anger. As he does this, lightning strikes and he is transformed into the Norse god of Thunder while Odin descends and reveals that the soul of his son is embedded within his mutant, ninja, solar super charged, fish talking, anger transforming, spider like, avenging bat soul.
Transformed by this revelation, he is more determined than ever to fight crime. He returns to his studies, working on his chemistry when lightning strikes a cabinet next to him filled with chemicals, dousing him with electrified chemicals granting him the abilities of super speed and stretching his own body to elastic proportions. He graduates, and our mutant, hulking, spidery, solar charged, ninja trained, blind, super speedy, elastic, fish talking hero goes the mountains of Nepal to meditate, and he finds the last sorceror of Earth, slowly dying. He trains our hero to become his successor, the sorceror supreme. He also happens to tell him that if he says the word "Shazam" he'll become the world's mightiest mortal, always a handy thing to have, though our hero doesn't have the heart to tell the sorceror he's already the world mightiest mortal/alien/whatever. This training also happens to take place near the site where a space guardian of the Earth sector with a power ring crashes and is also dying. He finds our hero worthy and gives him the ring of power, telling him that the safety of Earth ("And it's sorcerous ways!" the dying sorceror reminds him) is now in his hands.
He decides to go home, but rather than take a plane or fly, he takes a ship, forgetting he can fly under his own power(s) and when the ship sinks, gets "stranded" on an island, forcing him to learn the art of the bow until he remembers that he can fly under his own power, or use his new ring. He uses the ring and it shoots him into orbit where he meets an ancient, god-like galactic power that threatens to eat the Earth unless he agrees to become his herald. Our hero agrees and the god like being promptly forgets the whole deal and just up and leaves. He returns to Earth prematurely when a crashing bit of white dwarf star knocks him on the head and causes him to crash, but also, when he puts it in his palm, allows him to shrink and control his density.
Upon his return, he encounters a Playstation console, is enamored with Grand Theft Auto and decides to become a game developer instead.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
I Just Bought My Childhood
And it was only 4 DVDs long!
Ah, the original Star Wars trilogy... What can I say about it? For years, these movies were a sole source of happiness and inspiration. Watching them and comparing them to the new films not only brings back a nostalgia that's somethin' fierce, but it's also an amazing documentary on film about how one can slowly go mad over the decades... But enough of this, I got another stupid idea...
Tentacle Girl
The girlfriend mentioned one fine day that there's just not enough quality Hentai out there. For those of you that are totally clueless as to what I'm talking about, Hentai is a term for a specific brand of Japanese animation that usually involves incredibly cute young girls with ridiculous bodily proportions that end up getting sexually assaulted by men/ninjas/other dimensional monstrosities with multiple prehensile tentacles and usually seem pretty horrified by said assault until they A) Discover that they're really getting into it, in which case, their squealing continues, but now it's not quite so horrified, or B) They get ripped or split into little pieces.
So anyway, she was darn right about this, quality Hentai is darn hard to find, whether it's the cheap animation done for these super porn/rape anime programs or just the outright bad writing, or, as is usually the case, both. She mentioned that she'd like to see a girl who HAD the tentacles for a change, specifically on her head. As is usually the case, the seemingly innocent comment exploded into my brain and I didn't just pick up the idea and run away with it, I double packed it, put in those bubble wrap sheets, and Fed-Exed it to all four corners of the world...
A Wandering Nun. With Tentacles.
Our story begins with a poor innocent, a young Nun belonging to the order of the Sisters of Perpetual Motion who also happens to be incredibly hot with ridiculous bodily proportions and is for some bizarre reason the only nun in her order to wear really form clutching habits and stockings.
One day this young nun discovers that one of the monks in a nearby monastery is, *GASP!*, working for the other side, as it were, and is actually undertaking black mass ceremonies in an attempt to bring the depraved forces of hell back into this world so he can finally get some of that fine, fine lovin' that he was constantly deprived of in high school. Unfortunately for said monk, the plan backfires when our innocent (yet incredibly hot) nun discovers his plot and interferes with his ceremony to offer his body as a host for one of the more depraved beasties of hell.
This nun, through sheer force of will, innocence (And incredible hotness which is really distracting when you're trying to concentrate) manages to interrupt and foil this summoning attempt, but it comes at great cost; by throwing herself into the midst of the ceremony and actually coming into contact with said depraved demon, she takes on some of the aspects of this demon, most of which her purity and innocence (And incredible hotness) are able to contain and control. But one thing she cannot push down completely is the manifestation of many tentacles that have now replaced her hair. Agile tentacles. Demonic tentacles. Tentacles that are out lookin' for a good time...
The nun is promptly thanked by the Church and then cast into permanent exile, as an incredibly hot nun with demonic qualities about her isn't the kind of material the Church is looking to use as promotional material for recruitment drives, and so the genesis of our amazing series begins. Like the very best TV series (IE, The Fugitive, Kung Fu, The Incredible Hulk and The Littlest Hobo) the newly christened Tentacle Girl wanders from place to place, trying to help people while at the same time hiding a deep dark secret. She now possess demonic powers, that usually manifest as her tentacles growing in size power, normally resulting an explosive orgy where people have the sexual experience of their lives, or die, quite often one after the other. Hers is a classic struggle of trying to control her literal inner demon while at the same time trying to use that power for good, and try to pretend that all that squealing she does when tentacle time happens is actually squeals of distress at having to participate in another heathen yet mindblowingly exquisite sexual experience.
A typical episode might go something like this.
Mugger: Hey, give us your money!
Tentacle Girl: Please! Leave me alone! I don't have any money to give!
Mugger: I don't believe you! You're too hot not to have any money!
Tentacle Girl: But I'm so innocent...
Mugger: That just makes you incredibly hotter...
Mugger makes a grab at Tentacle Girl, pawing her thigh, this begins The Change.
Tentacle Girl: OOOOOH NOOOOOO!!!!
Tentacles explode from under her habit and engulf every man and woman within 50 feet. Tentacles now push everyone into a sexual frenzy and people are jumping each other, or any available tentacle while tentacles more or less do the same.
Music: 70's wawa guitar porno music kicks in.
Mugger: OH MY GOD!
Everyone Else: Inarticulate gurgles of ecstasy.
Tentacle Girl: This is TERRIBLE! PLEASE DON'T DO THIS TO ME AGAIN! AND DON'T IT HERE! OR HERE! AND PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T DO IT HERE, OH, NO, NOT THERE!!! NOOOO!!!
Afterewards, the mugger is arrested by dazed cops, unable to even remember what language he usually speaks. Cops bowleggedly drag the mugger away but then stop.
Cop 1: Hey, that incredibly hot nun saved us all!
Cop 2: I'll say, I didn't even know I was gay, but now I'll be a much happier man!
The cops hold hands.
Cop 2: Where'd she go, anyway?
The Incredible Hulk Piano solo plays in the background as Tentacle Girl slowly trudges down the road, her thumb occasionally extended to passing cars. Drivers sometimes stop, get out of the car, ogle her, then climb back in and drive off. She sighs and continues to walk.
IS THIS NOT SHEER GENIUS!?!?
And it was only 4 DVDs long!
Ah, the original Star Wars trilogy... What can I say about it? For years, these movies were a sole source of happiness and inspiration. Watching them and comparing them to the new films not only brings back a nostalgia that's somethin' fierce, but it's also an amazing documentary on film about how one can slowly go mad over the decades... But enough of this, I got another stupid idea...
Tentacle Girl
The girlfriend mentioned one fine day that there's just not enough quality Hentai out there. For those of you that are totally clueless as to what I'm talking about, Hentai is a term for a specific brand of Japanese animation that usually involves incredibly cute young girls with ridiculous bodily proportions that end up getting sexually assaulted by men/ninjas/other dimensional monstrosities with multiple prehensile tentacles and usually seem pretty horrified by said assault until they A) Discover that they're really getting into it, in which case, their squealing continues, but now it's not quite so horrified, or B) They get ripped or split into little pieces.
So anyway, she was darn right about this, quality Hentai is darn hard to find, whether it's the cheap animation done for these super porn/rape anime programs or just the outright bad writing, or, as is usually the case, both. She mentioned that she'd like to see a girl who HAD the tentacles for a change, specifically on her head. As is usually the case, the seemingly innocent comment exploded into my brain and I didn't just pick up the idea and run away with it, I double packed it, put in those bubble wrap sheets, and Fed-Exed it to all four corners of the world...
A Wandering Nun. With Tentacles.
Our story begins with a poor innocent, a young Nun belonging to the order of the Sisters of Perpetual Motion who also happens to be incredibly hot with ridiculous bodily proportions and is for some bizarre reason the only nun in her order to wear really form clutching habits and stockings.
One day this young nun discovers that one of the monks in a nearby monastery is, *GASP!*, working for the other side, as it were, and is actually undertaking black mass ceremonies in an attempt to bring the depraved forces of hell back into this world so he can finally get some of that fine, fine lovin' that he was constantly deprived of in high school. Unfortunately for said monk, the plan backfires when our innocent (yet incredibly hot) nun discovers his plot and interferes with his ceremony to offer his body as a host for one of the more depraved beasties of hell.
This nun, through sheer force of will, innocence (And incredible hotness which is really distracting when you're trying to concentrate) manages to interrupt and foil this summoning attempt, but it comes at great cost; by throwing herself into the midst of the ceremony and actually coming into contact with said depraved demon, she takes on some of the aspects of this demon, most of which her purity and innocence (And incredible hotness) are able to contain and control. But one thing she cannot push down completely is the manifestation of many tentacles that have now replaced her hair. Agile tentacles. Demonic tentacles. Tentacles that are out lookin' for a good time...
The nun is promptly thanked by the Church and then cast into permanent exile, as an incredibly hot nun with demonic qualities about her isn't the kind of material the Church is looking to use as promotional material for recruitment drives, and so the genesis of our amazing series begins. Like the very best TV series (IE, The Fugitive, Kung Fu, The Incredible Hulk and The Littlest Hobo) the newly christened Tentacle Girl wanders from place to place, trying to help people while at the same time hiding a deep dark secret. She now possess demonic powers, that usually manifest as her tentacles growing in size power, normally resulting an explosive orgy where people have the sexual experience of their lives, or die, quite often one after the other. Hers is a classic struggle of trying to control her literal inner demon while at the same time trying to use that power for good, and try to pretend that all that squealing she does when tentacle time happens is actually squeals of distress at having to participate in another heathen yet mindblowingly exquisite sexual experience.
A typical episode might go something like this.
Mugger: Hey, give us your money!
Tentacle Girl: Please! Leave me alone! I don't have any money to give!
Mugger: I don't believe you! You're too hot not to have any money!
Tentacle Girl: But I'm so innocent...
Mugger: That just makes you incredibly hotter...
Mugger makes a grab at Tentacle Girl, pawing her thigh, this begins The Change.
Tentacle Girl: OOOOOH NOOOOOO!!!!
Tentacles explode from under her habit and engulf every man and woman within 50 feet. Tentacles now push everyone into a sexual frenzy and people are jumping each other, or any available tentacle while tentacles more or less do the same.
Music: 70's wawa guitar porno music kicks in.
Mugger: OH MY GOD!
Everyone Else: Inarticulate gurgles of ecstasy.
Tentacle Girl: This is TERRIBLE! PLEASE DON'T DO THIS TO ME AGAIN! AND DON'T IT HERE! OR HERE! AND PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T DO IT HERE, OH, NO, NOT THERE!!! NOOOO!!!
Afterewards, the mugger is arrested by dazed cops, unable to even remember what language he usually speaks. Cops bowleggedly drag the mugger away but then stop.
Cop 1: Hey, that incredibly hot nun saved us all!
Cop 2: I'll say, I didn't even know I was gay, but now I'll be a much happier man!
The cops hold hands.
Cop 2: Where'd she go, anyway?
The Incredible Hulk Piano solo plays in the background as Tentacle Girl slowly trudges down the road, her thumb occasionally extended to passing cars. Drivers sometimes stop, get out of the car, ogle her, then climb back in and drive off. She sighs and continues to walk.
IS THIS NOT SHEER GENIUS!?!?
Labels: Anime, Movies, Stupid Scripts
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
A Salute To The Second Stringers
For some reason I was seized with a mighty sense of pity and love for those unsung individuals who are largely ignored in the DC universe. Yes, I'm talking about the second string heroes. The guys who always seemed to hang on the fringes of the Justice League (This is back when they had a big satellite orbiting the Earth with teleport booths on the roof tops of every major city, and had annual visits with the Justice Society from Earth 2) and only ever seemed to be really useful every 5th issue when it occurred to the writers they hadn't been doing much lately and should probably have a situation calling for their unique talents. Witness for example:
The Atom
What happened?!? I LOVED this guy! Maybe it was the Uber Geek in me, but I thought that red and blue suit of his was just too cool and the guy could SHRINK! WOW! Not only that, but thanks to that piece of white dwarf star he had in his palm, he could also control his density, so that even though he was the size of a Star Wars action figure, he weighed as much as a full oil tanker, or was practically weightless.
True, his abilities only really came in handy when some giant robot made out of kryptonite was rampaging through the city and had a tiny hole in it somewhere but man, he could SHRINK! That's gotta' count for something in this world...
Elongated Man
He stretched and... well, that's about it, really. This guy had the whackiest origin I've ever seen, since he got his ability to stretch as a result of soda pop. Sort of. Seems that young Ralph Dibney had a thing for circus contortionists and noticed they all drank the same soda pop. After realizing there was one ingredient in the soda that no other brands used (Something called the Gingo plant from the Yucatan) he distilled the stuff, started drinking it regularly and BEHOLD! He can stretch.
God, I love comic book logic...
All this guy ever seemed to do was travel the world with his wife Sue, solving mysteries and hooking up with the League for a little crime busting. Where is he now?!?
But if there's one guy I really feel for, the one who is deserving to the entire world's compassion, it's this guy:
Aquaman
He swims, breathes underwater, and talks to fish. Not exactly the most versatile repetoire of abilities. Poor Aquaman's been kicked around the DC universe more times than Pele's favorite soccer ball. What do you with this guy? I've seen the attempts to save him, what with cutting his hand off, killing his son, having his wife divorce him, go back to her home dimension, then come back and try and kill him... HOW DOES THIS BUILD CHARACTER? Superman is a boy scout, Batman's got psychotic angst all sewn up, how does sticking a hook on this guy's amputated hand and have him swim around--BUT CRANKY!--make for a more complex and engaging super hero?
I feel for him, I really do. Not only was he unfortunate enough to have quite possibly the most embarassing costume ever (Come on... Green and orange?) but I recall a Super Friends episode where he, for once, had the ability to save the Earth and screwed up miserably as a result of his efforts being part of a carefully orchestrated plot to conquer the Earth. You gotta' feel sorry for a guy when the only way he can save New York city is to talk a bunch of fish into creating a huge Tsunami to drown the city, only to find out you just contributed to an artificial Greenhouse Effect.
Poor bastard... Cut the guy some slack...
For some reason I was seized with a mighty sense of pity and love for those unsung individuals who are largely ignored in the DC universe. Yes, I'm talking about the second string heroes. The guys who always seemed to hang on the fringes of the Justice League (This is back when they had a big satellite orbiting the Earth with teleport booths on the roof tops of every major city, and had annual visits with the Justice Society from Earth 2) and only ever seemed to be really useful every 5th issue when it occurred to the writers they hadn't been doing much lately and should probably have a situation calling for their unique talents. Witness for example:
The Atom
What happened?!? I LOVED this guy! Maybe it was the Uber Geek in me, but I thought that red and blue suit of his was just too cool and the guy could SHRINK! WOW! Not only that, but thanks to that piece of white dwarf star he had in his palm, he could also control his density, so that even though he was the size of a Star Wars action figure, he weighed as much as a full oil tanker, or was practically weightless.
True, his abilities only really came in handy when some giant robot made out of kryptonite was rampaging through the city and had a tiny hole in it somewhere but man, he could SHRINK! That's gotta' count for something in this world...
Elongated Man
He stretched and... well, that's about it, really. This guy had the whackiest origin I've ever seen, since he got his ability to stretch as a result of soda pop. Sort of. Seems that young Ralph Dibney had a thing for circus contortionists and noticed they all drank the same soda pop. After realizing there was one ingredient in the soda that no other brands used (Something called the Gingo plant from the Yucatan) he distilled the stuff, started drinking it regularly and BEHOLD! He can stretch.
God, I love comic book logic...
All this guy ever seemed to do was travel the world with his wife Sue, solving mysteries and hooking up with the League for a little crime busting. Where is he now?!?
But if there's one guy I really feel for, the one who is deserving to the entire world's compassion, it's this guy:
Aquaman
He swims, breathes underwater, and talks to fish. Not exactly the most versatile repetoire of abilities. Poor Aquaman's been kicked around the DC universe more times than Pele's favorite soccer ball. What do you with this guy? I've seen the attempts to save him, what with cutting his hand off, killing his son, having his wife divorce him, go back to her home dimension, then come back and try and kill him... HOW DOES THIS BUILD CHARACTER? Superman is a boy scout, Batman's got psychotic angst all sewn up, how does sticking a hook on this guy's amputated hand and have him swim around--BUT CRANKY!--make for a more complex and engaging super hero?
I feel for him, I really do. Not only was he unfortunate enough to have quite possibly the most embarassing costume ever (Come on... Green and orange?) but I recall a Super Friends episode where he, for once, had the ability to save the Earth and screwed up miserably as a result of his efforts being part of a carefully orchestrated plot to conquer the Earth. You gotta' feel sorry for a guy when the only way he can save New York city is to talk a bunch of fish into creating a huge Tsunami to drown the city, only to find out you just contributed to an artificial Greenhouse Effect.
Poor bastard... Cut the guy some slack...
Labels: Comics, Random Blargh
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