Garth

Still haven't had time to put together a real comprehensive post on my trip, but to tide you all over here's a couple of videos of me at the tournament:

My match from the men's team randori event:


The freestyle kata I did with Ash:


I don't think there's any video of my individual randori match, or my koryu dai san suwari waza with Aaron from the kongodantaisen.

Captain Lou Albano, dead of natural causes at 76.

To soothe the pain of his loss, here's a few videos to remember him by.

This game has to be seen to be disbelieved. Metal Wolf Chaos, the heartwarming story of a President of the United States and his trustworthy mecha. Think Air Force One in mecha anime form, but with dialogue ten times worse.



And speaking of SIPPING some DELICIOUS DARJEELING TEA, behold the Chap Olympics, a sporting meet for "traditional gentlemen who are against the vulgarity of modern culture", including events such as the Three-Trousered Limbo, Pipe Relay, and a competition to mix a dry martini (without the aid of a butler).

The second bit is my favorite.

Also, ant chavs:

First, there was Clerks: The Animated Series. Then, there was Shortpacked!. Now, there is...

Hey padparadscha, I found where your dolls should plan their next vacation:



It's even got miniature houses of ill repute!

• Kyle Urban was perfect as McCoy. Quinto did an excellent job as Spock, but Urban was dead on in that part. More than an imitation, he really seemed like a younger version of the character, a lovable-humbug-in-training. His "Dammit, Jim"s felt natural, and not like the TOS callbacks they were. Of course, Kirk gave him plenty of opportunities to say it...
  
• Kirk is the worst liar ever. He couldn't be more obvious about being responsible for the Kobayashi Maru test's "glitch" if he tried. And his "Huh. Strange." reaction to the future ship's greeting "Ambassador" Spock is like holding up a flashing sign saying "I know more than I'm willing to say".
  
• Gaila was hot and I liked her. And Kirk's response to her saying she loved him was hilarious. I hope she lived.
  
• I wish they'd given John Cho more to do as Sulu. After his big action scene on the drilling platform (which was cool), that's pretty much it for him. I think they should have had him try to pry Spock off of Kirk (after all, Kirk did jump off of the platform to save him), but that's fanwank territory. Cho did a good job with what he had.
  
• Enterprise seems to have been retconned out completely. Good riddance.
  
• Star Trek IV: Save the Whales The Voyage Home, though, is still in continuity, because the point of divergence for the new Trek timeline is well after the Enterprise crew prime visited San Francisco. Spock Prime still totally gave some punk on a Muni bus the Vulcan neck pinch, ha!
  
• On the other hand, I'm not even going to try to reconcile the semi-elastic timeline of ST4 with the strictly diverging one from this movie. That way lies madness.
  
• Simon Pegg's Scotty is pretty far from the original. I'll chalk that up to being exiled to an ice planet (which I assume never happened to the original) and going a little stir-crazy.
  
• The joyride scene was pretty pointless. Sure, it was a parallel scene to Spock's academic childhood, but it didn't really add much to Kirk's characterization. And it went on too long. I'm nitpicking though.
  
• Making Spock the Acting Captain made perfect sense. But why off Earth did Captain Pike promote Kirk to First Officer at the same time, when he was just this side of being a stowaway?
  
• In hindsight, Nero was kind of a weird villain. I mean, he was just a miner. Yet somehow his future mining vessel is loaded for bear and fully capable of taking on Starfleet. Sure, he got the drop on them, but still.
  
• I totally didn't recognize Winona Ryder.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It was a great, fun adventure flick. But one major element doesn't work for me: I just can't believe that new-timeline Kirk and Spock could really trust each other, despite Spock Prime's optimism. They just don't seem to be heading in that direction. Particularly from Spock's POV, Kirk has done almost nothing but antagonize him (to the point of making him actually lose his cool). Even after they beam onto Nero's ship together, Kirk is still obviously keeping things from Spock. Spock Prime's insistence that "oh, you're going to be bestest buds, I promise" seems pretty weak, especially when you consider that they're not really the same people as the originals: their life experiences are different and so is their behavior. I guess we have to trust in the power of nostalgia-fueled destiny.

Brief thoughts on trailers:

• That caveman thing with Jack Black looks like an utter turd. Pass.
  
• Transformers 2 looks like the action will be just as hard to follow as in the first one, and I don't care. CONSTRUCTICONS, mother fuckers! And it looks like they may be combiners! As long as a sufficient quantity of shit blows up while Shia LeBouf runs around in a panic, I will be happy.
  
• I will only go see the movie of Land of the Lost if they have Dr. Steel's title song on the soundtrack. Nothing else will get me to sit through that much Will Ferrell and that many obvious jokes.

Finally, I leave you with a video on how to talk like William Shatner: