Another week as a vegetarian. This still sucks.

The thing is, it MIGHT be better if A.) I had the budget to cook whole “Indian-style” meals for myself or B.) it was possible to actually order decent no-meat food outside of upscale restuarants.

Seriously on “B,” though – if this has taught me one thing, it’s that people aren’t kidding when they say American (Western in general?) food-culture is way too meat-centric: EVERYTHING has some kind of meat base – I couldn’t even order cheese sauce for the dipping of tortilla chips because it just “came with” ground-beef in it. At even “classy” fast-food places (think Panera Bread) a “filling” salad means a salad with a sammich’s worth of chicken on it.

Stirred a can of “Vegetarian Chili” in with my mac-and-cheese for dinner Friday night. Tasted okay, texture of what I’m assuming was beef-style tofu was alright, but the lack of beef aftertaste totally kills the illusion. I’ve determined that “meat substitutes” like Tofurkey (it’s actually called that – I always thought that was a parody-name!) are not for me.

Either way, once the 30th gets here I’m done with this shit – largely because I hate it, but ultimately because it’s just not working. I’ve lost precisely the same amount of weight (re: not much) as I did the last time I went on SlimFast without cutting the meat, so clearly too much protein (and cutting portion size) is not my problem – which is actually a little disconcerting, to be honest. I’m doing a regular 2000 calorie workout (not including weights and crunches) and only eating one solid meal a day – at this point I’m just going to bite the bullet and see a nutrionist.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.2.5.swf

“Intermission” is about infamous script-changes.

If it turns out there’s no heaven, and instead just a longer-form loop of THIS… I think I’d be okay with that.

Happy 25th, old friend.

The ONE thing that left-wing and right-wing political advertisers can agree on this year is that demonizing China is a can’t-miss strategy: It “works” on both kinds of paranoid white people, and Asian Americans aren’t a big (or monolithically one-sided) enough voting bloc for you to “worry” about offending.

With that in mind, behold the latest evidence of human awfulness from right-wing propaganda outfit Citizens United:

Remember, America: LEGIONS of dirty, cackling, dark-skinned murder-machines are waiting JUST over the ocean to swoop in and take you over. Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Anyone else get the feeling that the REAL reason they aren’t releasing that “Red Dawn” remake is that they don’t want it to be associated with shit like this?

And just keep this mind: Wherever you live, there’s someone near you who sees absolutely NOTHING wrong with this kind of xenophobic fear-mongering.

If Harry Knowles is the Odin of internet movie-geek journalism, Devin Faraci – late of Nick Nunziata’s Chud.com – is Loki. It’s best to think of Devin as the “dark side” of the Promoted Fanboy archetype; a frequent commenter on Chud’s forums who landed himself a job writing for the site itself and became, for a time, the infamous “public face” of the whole enterprise… largely based on his outsize, hyper-confrontational personality, penchant for picking fights and “running down” the kind of projects and “sacred cows” other sites (and the “nerd ephemera” in general) were more friendly and/or deferential toward. A month or so back, he quit the site for a mysterious new project, then had a VERY public “falling-out” with Nunziata on Chud’s own forums.

Well, now we know where he went: Running “Badass Digest,”a blog/site affiliate of the Alamo Drafthouse brand. It’s early yet, but the idea seems to be a kind of “Men’s Magazine” for the geek set. Check it out.

I know people tend to “hate” Devin and for myself… yeah, his self-hating geek “schtick” – “I’m better than you because I used to be an activist, I recognize that all this stuff I’m reporting on is stupid and lame and juvenille and if you actually DO take any of it at all seriously you’re a sad pathetic loser, did I mention yet that I used to be an activist?” – gets tired as hell…

BUT the guy can write, and he’s a unique voice in what does become an awfully same-sounding chorus in this business. Every Rainey Street needs a Dale Gribble, I suppose. So… welcome back, Devin.

Alright, going to bed for real now, but real quick…

Sam Raimi. “Day of The Triffids.” For real.

Hat-tip: KOTAKU

Joe DeRosa, age 11, wants to be Samus Aran – the armor-suited lead character from the “Metroid” video-games – for Halloween. Not exactly something you can buy at Target, and not exactly simple on a design level. Fortunately for Joe, based on the DeRosa Family Blog, he comes from a whole family of DIY tech-wizards and MakerFaire afficionados… and they’re building a Varia Suit from scratch.

Below the jump… MAGIC.

Here’s the video, from the kid’s YouTube Channel, of him and his father making the Arm Cannon. I say again: Here’s a kid and his dad, building the Arm Cannon from Metroid in the garage.

I’m literally speechless – it’s like if Norman Rockwell illustrated an issue of Scott Pilgrim.

The rest of the project (still in-progress) can be seen on their Family Blog, which also shows their construction of a previous project: An animatronic replica of the dragon from “Eragon” – yes, it breathes fire.

Obviously, the final layer of coolness/interest in this is that the one thing “everybody knows” about Metroid is that, under the armor, Samus Aran is a woman. This fact does NOT appear to be a big deal (or even matter at all) to Joe, his father, or anyone else involved (it’s not mentioned anywhere on any of their sites.) That shouldn’t be surprising or even worth noticing, but, let’s face it: It is… and it’s all kinds of kickass. Gender-role-ignoring cosplay as a father/son bonding experience for a postcard-perfect American Family… it’s like a time-traveling transmission from a better tommorrow.

There is NOTHING about this video, this project, this kid and his family that is not just incredibly awesome. I’m going to sleep now – I haven’t gone to sleep feeling good about the human race in forever, and I want to try it.

At this point, it’s all but innevitable that I’m staring down at least 2 years of being furious at the “Tea Party” for, well… pretty much every single thing they’ve said they want to do, plan to do and are historically likely to do.

BUT for right now, I’ll at least thank them – in a roundabout sort of way – for this…

Bloody Disgusting says that Relativity Media’s long-gestating Nick Cave/Steve Norrington relaunch of “The Crow” is ramping up again, and that the producers have offered the title role to their first choice: Mark Wahlberg. Apparently, this is for real.

LET THE PHOTOSHOPPING OF STILLS FROM “MAX PAYNE”… BEGIN!!!

I “get” the iconic stature of “The Crow” in the popular culture – Brandon Lee and all that – but beyond that isn’t it one of those franchises that “belongs” to the era in culture/music/fashion/etc in which it came out? To me, making another “Crow” movie makes about as much sense as making another Superfly, or a “modern” All In The Family. Part of the reason the franchise stalled-out in the first place is that the audio/visual “atmosphere” associated with the first film – i.e. all the stuff that set it apart from any other generic “revenge from beyond the grave” story was “over” before the second one even came out. Having ANY actor running around looking like Robert Smith as a transgendered ninja-clown is going to be as out of place as bellbottoms and tie-dye.

You have to imagine Wahlberg – the quintessential “all-American-guy” leading-man – has been offered a ton of genre/superhero roles at this point, and he hasn’t taken any of them… yet. So there’s no garauntee he’ll accept this one. If he does, I’d expect a significantly different interpretation of the character than we’ve seen before… and not just because it’s hard to imagine Wahlberg not physically assaulting any makeup-artist who comes near him with a mascara brush.

This has been innevitable for at least a year now, but it’s still a pretty cool new checkpoint for the “this is really happening” cycle to cross, at last: As of yesterday, the still-in-pre-production “Avengers” movie has officially transfered it’s “rights” from Paramount to Disney.

Disney bought Marvel Comics with a plan in mind: They wanted an equally-massive “boy brand” to compliment their massive “girl brand” re: the “Disney Princess” franchise(s), and buying a few thousand superheroes all at once made a certain amount of sense – except it came with a “catch”…

Between the late-1990s and 2009 when the Disney deal was struck, Marvel had already spread-out the FILM rights to a lot of it’s “A” characters among multiple studios – so even though Disney now owns, say, Spider-Man… they don’t have the rights to make MOVIES about him.

Strictly in terms of the film-rights, it breaks down roughly like this: Sony Pictures owns “Spider-Man,” Fox owns “X-Men,” “Daredevil,” “Ghost Rider,” “Fantastic Four” and various ancilliary characters; while Marvel Studios and Paramount had a joint-agreement on the Avengers-connected franchises (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Nick Fury and the rest.)

Under the terms of this deal, when “Avengers” and “Iron Man 3” come out in 2012/2013 (and their hoped-for sequels after that), they’ll come out under the Disney banner – Paramount will retain the rights to “Captain America” and “Thor,” both still releasing in 2011 (but if they’re both hits, look for Disney to buy THEM “back,” too.)

For fans, the immediate-takeaway here is overwhelmingly positive: “Avengers,” even before the Disney deal, was meant to serve as the “hub” of the shared-universe-continuity Marvel is hoping to finally bring from the comic world to the film world… and now, there’s NO extra red-tape keeping it from interacting with the VAST majority of characters and properties owned by Disney/Marvel. If they want, say, Luke Cage or Doctor Strange or Black Panther or whoever to show up in a big “Avengers” movie to promote THEIR feature; it can happen easily.