Go to YouTube, find a video of a band from the 80's or 90's, and read all the comments from kids who are hearing them for the first time.

Examples:

Comment on Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine:

The singer is kinda weird at first but u get used to him

Comment on Aerosmith's Cryin':

Whos the girl in this vid,, iv seen her loads =S whats her name??

Comment on Van Halen's Jump:

The singer, I forgot his name, kinda has a creepy way of moving, but maybe it was just the 80's.

Sigh. I'm going to go play some shuffleboard now. Get off my lawn!

If you think Americans are provincial and ignorant of other cultures, these Amazon.com customer reviews of Planet Earth will do little to change your mind:

David Attenbrough [sic] just doesn't measure up to Sigorney [sic].

I expected Sigourney Weaver's voice and got John Cleese.

My wife and I were entranced by the beautiful music, the soothing voice of Ms. Weaver, and the astonishing videography. What we go was rather different. Mr. Attenboroughs nasal british accent is quite annoying

If only they had gotten someone with a voice that would do the series justice. David Attenbrough's [sic] monotone is not the timbre voice that this series needed

I would have prefered Mrs. Weaver as narritor [sic] But Mr. Attenborough was o.k.

This is the British Version. I can't find the American version, which is narated by Sigourney Weaver, not some British guy, on Amazon. Otherwise I think the content is the same, but Sigourney is better.

Sigh... Sigourney Weaver narrating a BBC nature documentary is about as appropriate as Sir David battling killer space aliens.

Ladies and gentlemen, the inimitable Danny Choo:


Via Jean Snow. (I previously blogged about Danny's stormtrooper antics here.)

I can't wait to see the big showdown between Optimus Prime and Megatron.

Movie? What movie?

From the NYT review of Paul Verhoeven's "Black Book":

Having first earned international attention with crudely effective Dutch entertainments like “Soldier of Orange,” Mr. Verhoeven went Hollywood, starting in the late 1980s, with increasingly slicker, steadily less effective entertainments like “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls.”

In the movie Idiocracy, Mike Judge predicted (at 1:27 into the clip) that Fox News would use this kind of mangled English after 500 years of Americans becoming increasingly stupid. But the Times is using it today.

It's one of the great motorcycle music videos of all time: Amazing, by Aerosmith:


As this time capsule of a video makes clear, teenage boys back in the early 90's would often fire up their PC's, pop on their virtual reality helmets, and realize their ultimate dream of zooming through the desert on a crotch rocket while getting it on with Alicia Silverstone. And hey, dig those crazy 3-D computer graphics!

...at speaking Japanese.

Ugh. You'd think a movie meister like Spielberg could find a dialogue coach.

Okay, it's not a new movie, so it's really the feel-good movie of 2004. But anyway, I rented Torque last night, and, boy, what a movie. Giddy, silly motorcycle fun. It only bogs down a little bit when the obligatory plot kicks in: something about drugs hidden in a bad guy's motorcycles, and the good guy being framed for murder, and the FBI trying to track him down. But make no mistake: This movie is about watching people do impossible stunts on bikes: It's like the Matrix of motorcycle movies.

Sure, Torque contains countless examples of MMM's. After all, it's impossible to jump your bike on top of a moving train, drop down into the passenger compartment of one of the cars, ride through the inside of the train, and scoot out onto the tracks. But it looks awesome.

Halfway through, I paused the DVD, jumped on my X-4, and did a lap around the Shuto expressway. It's that kind of movie. Two thumbs up.

My finacee and I had our first video chat (via webcam) with my parents yesterday, and of course we discussed our upcoming wedding. I felt eerily like grown-up Lisa talking to Marge by videophone in the "Lisa's Wedding" episode of The Simpsons.

"Lisa's Wedding" first aired in March 1995, before the Internet, let alone video chat, really caught on. But it's set in 2010. Hmm — only a few years off.

The Associated Press reports:

Prime-time television actors don't buckle up or use motorcycle helmets nearly as often as people do in real life, according to researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Researchers studied 79 prime-time television programs on ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX over a four-week period for the study that was published in the journal Injury Sciences. The study found that characters used seat belts 62 percent of the time, motorcycle helmets 47 percent of the time and bike helmets 9 percent of the time.

...The study was conducted as a summer project that included two medical students, Alison Reiland and Stephen Tanner, who spent the first day alone in separate conference rooms watching shows such as "Dancing With the Stars" and "Without a Trace."

I spend a lot of time in law school watching TV, but I didn't get credit for it.

Via Gen Kanai, Ironic Sans has the coolest idea for a building ever:

The people of Tokyo should construct a giant building shaped like Godzilla. Imagine what it would do to the city’s skyline, and to the tourism industry. People would come from all over to take pictures. His eyes could flash red so airplanes don’t hit him. There could be an observatory in his mouth so people could look out over Tokyo. One of his arms could house a bar, and the other arm a restaurant. They could serve drinks called Mothra Martinis and dishes like Grilled Gamera Steaks, with a side of Mashed Potatoes.

Of course, since Godzilla is known for smashing buildings, turning him into a building is wonderfully ironic.

RottenTomatoes.com has some new information about the upcoming Ghost Rider movie starring Nicolas Cage:

The movie, starring Nicolas Cage as the motorcycle-riding Johnny Blaze, a.k.a Ghost Rider, was originally scheduled for release this past summer. However, last June, the filmmakers realized: "We needed more time to make the movie we wanted to make," says Cage. That being the case, "Ghost Rider" was given a new release date: February 16th, 2007.

Cage explains, "We had to change the date because we still had a lot of things we wanted to do. It was pushed for several reasons: one reason — and the most important reason — it wasn’t ready. And [director] Mark [Steven Johnson] had some big ideas for the character."

One of Johnson's ideas was to add an action sequence in which Ghost Rider battles a helicopter. The added scene would also provide more insight into Blaze's character.

Sure, because without the helicopter battle, audiences might have thought Ghost Rider was just another super hero. But now, with the helicopter battle scene in the movie, they'll know he's a super hero who battles helicopters.

I saw it last night. I must admit, while I had some doubts about Daniel Craig as Bond, he was quite good in the role. Lean, mean, and tough, with none of the cheese of, say, Roger Moore. Good movie, with nitpicks as follows:

(1) Do we really need that guy Mathis telling Vesper (and us) what's happening at practically every stage of the poker game? He was always sharing useful tidbits like, "Bond just pushed his chips to the middle of the table. If Le Chiffre has a better hand, Bond will lose everything!" Jeez. He's like the John Madden of hold 'em.

(2) Too much cutting from shot to shot during the parkour chase. We see a guy jump... and then we cut to a different shot of him landing somewhere. It made it look like typical Hollywood stunt work, instead of parkour.

(3) It rehashed the conspiracy theory that someone sold airline stocks short to profit off 9-11, when the orders in question were actually part of a options trading strategy by investors with no ties to Al Qaeda.

(4) You might think a fight inside a sinking building in Venice would be exciting, but you'd be wrong.

(5) The Japanese player is named "Fukutu", but the sound "tu" (pronounced like "2") does not exist in Japanese. His name would have to be "Fukutsu". This is an actual Japanese word meaning "persistence, fortitude, or indomitability", but is not, as far as I know, used as a person's name.

(6) That scene with the rope was just WRONG. Eeeyarghh.

I don't like Jay Leno, Martha Stewart, or Borat. But somehow, this "Tonight Show" clip featuring all three of them is kind of awesome.

Via the I'm Not Obsessed blog, here's a photo of Brad Pitt riding a scooter in Vietnam with Angelina Jolie:


Very nice. I was thinking about getting a custom paint job for my own scooter, but adding an Angelina Jolie in back would be even better.

More here.

First Mel, now Kramer. To all the other actors out there whose work I've enjoyed, can you please not ruin everything with a crazy hate-speech rant?

In the following segment from "Scare Tactics", another mark falls for the ol' vampire biker trick:


I love the classics.

FOLLOW-UP:
Obviously, this has to be fake, right? (I don't mean the vampires, smart guy, I mean the girl's reaction.) Well, according to one theory, the basic set-up is genuine, and the victim, filmed by a hidden camera, isn't in on the prank. (At least one past victim has even sued the show.) But afterwards, the producers have everyone act out some supporting scenes for extra footage to edit together on TV. Hence, some parts of the segment have a hokey feel to them.

I rented Pixar's Cars on DVD, and it's as bad as I'd heard. It's the first Pixar movie aimed squarely at kids, with only a few scraps here and there to hold an adult's interest. For example, there's a quick appearance by a Hummer that sounds a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other than that, feh.

But here's something neat about the Japanese DVD in particular: Using the "Angle" button on your remote, you can switch between English and Japanese for some of the signs seen at various points in the movie. For example, here's angle 1:


And here's angle 2:


Neat.

Domino's Pizza in Japan is offering a terror-licious "24 Entertainment Pack".

My God, I hope this isn't actually tied to some sort of product placement on the show: "Jack, we only have two hours left to foil the terrorists' latest plot, and I'm starving!" "Then we'd better call Domino's — they deliver in under 30 minutes!"

Here's Scarlett, looking classically beautiful in a white dress at the premiere of her new movie, "Prestige" — even if Hollywood Tuna calls it "the worst dress ever", with photos that kind of back that claim up. Of course, no dress, however bad, can defuse Scarlett's megatons of babe-itude.

And, in other news unsubstantiated rumor, can this be true?