25 years ago today at FAO Schwarz in Manhattan NY, the first Nintendo Entertainment Systems went on sale in the United States. Home video-gaming had died completely in the U.S. three years earlier in The Crash of 1983, and Nintendo had to package the device with a toy robot in order to convince retailers to carry it.

The system launched 18 available games: Balloon Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf Gyromite, Hogan’s Alley, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Mach Rider, Pinball Stack-Up, Tennis, Wild Gunman, Wrecking Crew and, of course, Super Mario Bros. 

I still have mine.

As of today, I’m one full week into a diet-experiment in vegetarianism (NOT veganism, though I’m largely switching to whole-wheat pasta and leaving out eggs for the most part) I’m aiming to stretch over the month of October.

I hate it.

I’m gonna stick it out, but I’ll tell you right now: This sucks. I have NO CLUE how legitimate vegetarians put up with this shit. I ate an entire bag of carrots and a whole pack of mushrooms for supper last night, and I was still hungry.

Granted, I’m also on Slimfast, but still – if there was a pig walking around near me right now I’d absolutely be tempted to pounce on it and just eat the damn thing…

Realistically, there will probably come a day when I’ve matured sufficiently to no longer be captivated by suspiciously-timed, certainly-not-at-all-publicist-generated gossip-dumps about beautiful actress/singer/models being “outed” as bisexual – but it’s not today.

Has “I’ll be in my bunk” jumped the memeshark yet?

I remember being back in High School when the whole “pretty-much every woman born after 1978 or so is bi or at least looking to take a shot at it” thing started to hit; attempting to explain to an older lady “counselor” (they had us doing these godawful weekly “sit in a circle and discuss topical young-people issue” things) why it was such a “big deal” for guys our age to “discover” that famous women we were (probably) only ever going to gawk at and/or fantasize about were “into girls.” My top-of-my-head explanation back then: “It’s sort-of like if you found out Christopher Reeve actually could fly.”

I’m still kinda proud of that one…

So… “Top Gun 2,” huh?

Of course, it won’t be called “Top Gun 2” – it’ll be one of those Title: Subtitle sequels. “Top Gun: Something-Plane-Related.”

Here’s my question: Does anyone give a shit?

Granted, this could easily be one of those “oh, right, you live in a different world than most people” moments – but as far as I’ve ever seen “Top Gun” has for a long time been up there with “Dirty Dancing” or “Young Guns” in the pantheon of 80s nostalgia-trip movies where the remaining appreciation is entirely ironic; i.e. people remember it mainly to goof on it for the cartoonish misrepresentation of the Air Force, the cheeseball score and soundtrack, the furiously-sincere pouting from Crusie and Kilmer and the comically-blatant homoeroticism. Hell, I honestly doubt that most people under-20 are even AWARE of it… unless maybe their parents or older siblings showed it to them.

Am I missing something? Is there really a big enough contingent of people out there for whom “Top Gun” is still this big, important piece of the culture – and who’re really eager to find out what’s going on “now” with Maverick?

Apparently, all it takes is ONE: The “cute” part of the story is that this is essentially a “fanboy” project – David Ellison, son of ridiculously-wealthy Oracle Corp founder Larry Ellison, is a film school grad and aviation-afficionado (he produced and acted in “Flyboys,” which was basically Top Gun in WWI) and HE’S the one leaning on Jerry Bruckheimer to make TG2 happen – though, as that linked-article pointed out, they’ve first got to figure out what the make the movie about now that the Air Force is less dedicated to dogfighting and more about precision-bombing.

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

“Intermission” is about “Secretariat.”

Have we seen this yet?

Nissan has a new electric car out, “The Leaf.” Here’s how they’re advertising it:

Two things immediately jump to mind:

#1: Yes, that’s adorable, agreed. Well done. On the other hand… uh, Nissan? Electric Car manufacturers in general? Guys? Yeah… “buy this car and Gaia will thank you” is the epitome of preaching to the converted, y’know? Like it or not (and believe me, I don’t…) if you want to actually sell electric cars, you kinda have to make an ad for Michael Bay’s America – i.e. the thousands-strong nitwit-army that looks at this and goes “dude bro, that’s sooooo ghey!”

#2: Um, Internet? This has been out there for like a month – so WHY can’t I yet find a “parody” version where The Bear then heads across the street and mauls some douchebag with a Hummer? C’mon, get cracking!

People may have already seen this in one form or another, but what the hell – slow news day…

The setup: What appears to be a Japanese version of Scare Tactics staged a fairly-elaborate prank; convincing a trio of extremely young children (“Santa Claus age” I think would be the Western shorthand re: how likely they are to have “bought” this) that they needed to defend their home – and a conveniently holed-up news crew – from an attacking Zombie. To complete the illusion, a guy in a sure-to-traumatize-a-six-year-old Zombie costume comes trudging onto the scene. Here’s what happened…

Egged-on by the reporter but mostly left to their own devices, the kids (understandably) freak the hell out… but then proceed to set “Home Alone”-style Zombie traps, “beat” the attacker into submission (he’s “going along with it”) and attempt to suffocate him with saran-wrap. The oldest-looking one goes at him with a plastic sword, shouting “I will destroy you!” and berrating the reporter for not helping them. You would not want to be in Zombie Guy’s place had they not (presumably) made sure nothing that might actually HURT was at their disposal – these kids are not fucking around.

And people wonder why no one ever wants to fight Japan hand-to-hand….

According to The Wrap, we now know which villain actor Rhys Ifans will be playing as the main heavy of Sony’s Spider-Man reboot: Dr. Curt Connors, aka The Lizard.

Fuck. That is all. Just… Fuck…

Okay, perhaps a little more – but still “fuck” basically covers it.

No information is provided (yet) as to what the character will actually “do” in the film, but in the broad strokes this would seem to make perfect sense: The reboot is (still, supposedly) aiming to transform the franchise into a “Twilight”/early-“Buffy” style high school genre flick, and Connors usual origin as a science teacher who turns into a monster after using genetic experiments to try and grow his amputated arm back would fit very snuggly into that kind of template – it requires VERY little explanation (“What is ‘The Lizard?'” “um… he’s a lizard.”) his story-arc can occur independently of Spidey’s until they cross and being a schoolteacher he can be “around” the main plot without bending the story (such as it is) into knots.

However…

If you recall, the original three Spider-Man films spent a bunch of B-story time setting up Dylan Baker as the Lizard-to-be. So now, not only will fans (to say nothing of Baker) not get to see that storyline culminate, they’ll see a cut-rate version in it’s place. Joy.

Chris and Kyle, aka “The Armchair Thinkers,” had your’s truly as their guest on the Podcast this week. I thought it went pretty well, Judge for yourself.

http://player.podtrac.com/player/link.js?button=play&w=210&h=0&type=link&feed=http%3a%2f%2fideopod.com%2ffeeds%2farmchairthinkerspodfeed.xml

Armchair Thinkers Facebook Page.

Armchair Thinkers on iTunes (I’m on EPISODE 9)

(Incidentally, I’m in the middle of trying a dietary experiment wherein I’m going vegetarian for the month of October at the moment.)

Via Gizmodo, here’s a lady in New York who left a Happy Meal sitting on her table and took a picture of it every day for six months. Spoiler: Nothing Happens. Preservatives, nutritionally-neutral products, etc.

Look, I get the whole thing where companies should be required to post their ingredients, of course. And I get “they shouldn’t deceptively market to poor people,” and all of that. But the whole broader “Rraaaargh!! McDonalds… BAAADDD!!!” stuff is getting to be one of those things that makes me hate my own culture and “people” (re: whitebread, nominally-liberal, coastal) and vaugely understand why “the rest of the world” resents us so damn much. If you’re officially so “comfortable” that just the IDEA of mass-produced “budget” things is repellant to you – I’m sorry, but somebody needs to kick you in the bum. Hard.

Yes, it’s surprising that there’s enough salt/preservatives/whatever (or so-little legitimate nutrient value) in there that it “keeps” for six months, and it’s a big clue that it oughtn’t be the STAPLE of your diet. But do y’know what McDonalds would’ve called this footage 30 years ago? An advertisement. Even disregarding the meat – the fact that the BREAD doesn’t seem to have gone moldy would’ve been some kind of “breakthrough.” We’d be air-dropping that shit into the Third World, and the guy who came up with “EverBread” would have some kind of philanthropy award.

Here’s an experiment: Get on a plane with some Happy Meals, go to the most war-torn hell-hole imaginable, show them this video and tell them you’ve got food that “keeps” in open-air for six months. You’ll probably be elected Jesus. Then tell them that where you come from, we’re so fucking RICH that we’ve got whole supermarkets DEDICATED just to food that goes bad really quick, because eating is basically pleasure/recreation here and we’re into “rustic charm.” See how well that goes over 😉