Weee. It's finally here the 2009 autocross season has finally started and it got off to a great start even if the weather tossed us all a curve ball on Saturday with a bit of rain which slowed some people down but didn't bother others. I did take project umbrella out there but since it was heavily overcast most of the day I decided I didn't need to use it until it started to rain. Of course even though it was overcast I STILL got a bit burnt. But the umbrella did keep my camera and video equipement nice and dry an allowed me to keep filming in the rain. Well until the battery died and I ran out of space on the camera while shooting raw which thanks to me setting the camera up wrong turned out nothing but crap.

I only attended the Saturday event but I have to say there was a rather large turn out for a cold first day event. There was a large crowd of novice and first time drivers and drivers who where in the new run group called IMS. Also out there was the black Corvette with the huge monster wing from last year. He started off the day run around in circles doing god knows what (breaking in new tires?) and he ended up almost wrecking his car as he had to have come inches away from hitting one of the light poles in the parking lot. He didn't last long as on his second (third?) run of the day his car started making some horrid grinding noises and he just let loose and whipped his car around the course madly and called it a day. It was at that time that the video camera battery died right after his first corner so I was upset that I didn't get any video of that last run.

I got all my videos uploaded to youtube of course so you can check them out and I also dumped my snapshots that did turn out on to flickr as well. Next race is April 18 and 19 but I'll most likely only go to the one on the 19th as the one on the 18th is a training day for younger drivers. Hopefully by then I'll have found an actual battery that will work for my video camera.

Here's Leo taking a little spin in his Mazda RX-7

Whoohoo! Finally the autocross season started this last weekend and I was there for Saturday, which made for a fun week. I'll blog about that a bit later on in the week once I get all the videos uploaded and the pictures uploaded as well. Also this week I finally used my $20 gift certificates that I won way back during the Christmas party. Took the roommate out to dinner for his Birthday. Wasn't going to use them for anything else so thought that would be a good thing to do with them. Speaking of Birthdays mine is just around the corner as well. Where does the time go.

The rest of the week was just work and sleep. Was surprised once by the lazy co-workers actually doing some laundry for a change but that didn't last very long as I had a bunch of laundry to do last night. Sometimes I get so annoyed with them I want to get back at the girl by posting the naked pictures that I found of her (don't leave your personal naked pictures on work computers by the way) on every Internet forum board that I can think of. Of course that's really immoral and a very bad thing to do but still I can't help but want to. As for the other one he may or may not have actually quit but apparently he does that sort of thing every now and then to get attention. Hmmm...maybe I'll plant the waterwings that someone left at work on him take a picture of him holding one and making a funny demotivational poster out of it and post that all over the place.... wishful thinking but sometimes you just gotta vent your frustration about life and work. Actually if you have no idea what I'm talking about consider yourself lucky. Apparently waterwinges are the new cheapo dutch wife thanks to some one posting about it on good ol' mind destroying 4chan. I think I need to start a blog of Employee failures of the week or something, that would be fun.

Well that's enough of being a devious bastard for now and I'll have to move on to other things. Other things like Moko.cc changing how you can vote for the Moko Top girl and while I posted about that a bit ago I decided to photoshop a picture to help out a bit more and you can view that image here. Just don't forget to vote for one of those lovely ladies. I'll keep posting a moko girl until voting is over. Go MOKO!

Say farewell to yet another anime magazine, after issue 67 Anime Insider will be no more. Turns out that it was a good thing (although not a planned one) that I hadn't renewd my subscription to the magazine just yet. Guess that means I'll be picking up the last issue at the newstands though.

That leaves Otaku USA and Protoculture as the only US anime magazines hopefully they will stick around for a little longer. I guess that also means I can now subscribe to Otaku USA without feeling guilty about dumping Anime Insider. As to why Wizard actually cancelled Anime Insider without any notice is something only Wizard nows and we are left to speculate about. Was it due to the economy was it due to the readership (it would be interesting to see the readership numbers or was it just Wizard being a bunch of Dbags. We'll never know probably. However, here is a article about all of it here from one of the former editors of Anime Insider.

First lets talk about Moko.cc changing how you have to do your vote casting for the Moko Top Girl. It's not as easy as filling in the letters and numbers any more. The best thing to do now is when the pop up window opens highlight copy and translate it using google and then find out what the answer is (they give you the answer) highlight that then copy and paste that into the answer box. The answer has to be in chinese which is why you need to do all that.

Moko.cc can't keep me from voting for my favorite hottie, who's still not even past 60 yet damn it.

Anyways on to Miss Desk. Oh yes found her on Moko.cc and even used her as a hottie of the day. She wasn't a Moko Top Girl but just one of the many different postings they have and decided that I would check out the site www.missdesk.com and see what it's all about. It's not much at the moment just a few wallpapers, images and oh my a nice youtube video. In fact to save you some time from hunting it down here it is. Isn't she just a hottie though.

I think I have a man crush on Jason Stathom thanks to Truth in 24. Jason does a fantastic job narrating the documentary film of the Audi team as it prepares for and races at the 2008 24hr Le Mans race. Truth in 24 follows all three Audi R10 cars their drivers and most importantly takes a look beyond the track at the rest of the team as well. It was originally shown at a few film festivals and then was finally broadcast on ESPN on March 20th the Friday before the 12hr American Le Mans race at Sebring and the debut of the new Audi R15 race car.

I missed it due to watching the Battlestar Gallactica finale but was able to find a HD version floating around the Internet that Saturday morning. Of course I had to deal with the supper annoying ESPN score ticker bar at the bottom of the show the entire time, but it was damn well worth it. There was actually two versions a huge 3gig SUPER sized version and the smaller 1.5gig HD version that I got. However, now there is actually a Free and legit version, although in SD, available on Itunes. Me personally, I'm impatiently awaiting a DVD/BD release so that I can see it in HD minus the lame ESPN score ticker, that and I don't care to do anything with freaking Itunes.

If you like motorsports and haven't checked it out yet you definitely must watch this show. Here's a youtube video from Garage 419.

Finished this highly underrated series last night and while some people may have thought that the ending was rushed and unsatisfying I think Michiko e Hatchin was one of best series of the last fall/winter season.

A lot of why I liked the series so much is it's reality, well that and honestly Michiko is a Latino hottie and you definitely don't see a "real" hottie in anime that much any more. Since it is Brazil and hot Michiko does give us all a decent amount of lite fanservice in the varied outfits that she wears. Once again it's nice to see characters who change clothes once in a while and Michiko defintely as a nice taste in clothing. In any case I was bored with the moeblobs that have been running rampant through recent anime and this series was a great distraction from that. It also doesn't sugar coat life in Brazil during the 80's or how people would deal with the situations presented to them during that time. If you've ever seen the movie City of God you'd understand.

It isn't just Brazil and it's sordid history that makes this show great far from it. The main shining point in this show though are the characters. Michiko is your average product of the Brazilian slums and gangs a hardened woman prone to violence to solve her problems and out only for herself who busts out of jail so that she can snag the daughter of her former lover and track him down. Hatchin on the other hand is an orphaned Loli with no idea what awaits her when a woman crashes through the window of her abusive family's house. Each one has their own flaws and strong points that through out the show set them at odds yet makes them complement each other. From there the two go on a very twisted violent adventure to track down Hatchin's father for Hatchin it's to find out about her father for Michiko it's to reunite with her one true love.

Through out the twisted adventure we also meet several other interesting characters who seem to come and go (some times peacefully some times not so, like the stripper and her daughter) on a whim but all the time they add to the story. Also something interesting happens during all this adventuring when Michiko and Hatchin start becoming more of a mother and daughter pairing than just a mere woman with a tag along kid. This is especially notable at the end when Michiko gives up her freedom and running from the law so that Hatchin can be with her father. And while that doesn't work out I think that shows just how much she does end up caring more for Hatchin than being with her former lover.

What really sucks though is that due to this series not being a moeblobfest there is hardly any at all fan made art for the series and hardly any official art of it either. Thankfully there is some hope in that the art for the Soundtrack looks awesome and so does the cover art for the DVDs now we just need someone to scan it all in and share it with us all or at least those of us who like the series. I do wish that this series would be picked up for distribution here in the states as I wouldn't mind owning it so that I can show people that anime isn't all moeblobs and annoying lame orange ninjas.

The last piece finally fell into place this weekend when I stopped by Idaho Camera, a locally owned all things camera outfit here in town, and picked up my light stand for less than I could find them on the Internet for. So all total now I spent about $75 on an interesting (to me at least) way to give my pasty white ass some shade while out filming autocross events. Of course if I had known that they were only $20 here in town I would have picked one up a long damn time ago.

Anyways I put it all together superglued the base of the airfreshner Race Queen to the stand and tried it out for a little bit. It definitely so far works for what I want it to do and will give it the final test run this coming weekend when I take it out to the Expo Center for the first Autocross event of 2009.

I'm really looking forward to that because not only do I have shade I have an easy way of telling people that I'm out filming as all they'll have to look for is the Green and White Umbrella from Tein. While I don't have anything to do with Tein they had the best looking and least expensive and easily to get large umbrella. Plus they are a cool company I just can't use any of their merchandise on my lame cheapo Chevy Lumina.

I just might be able to use the exposure to get more umbrellas for next year. That's what I'm going to try for anyways as I'm not entirely sure if the umbrella will make it through the entire year. I hope it does but it is white in part after all.

A close up look of the itty bitty race queen.

Did you all have a great St. Paddy's Day this week? I had to work so I got to celebrate a we bit early with my new Nendoroid Yoko and a green beer. I'll have to do a full post on Yoko later the green beer was just beer though so nothing to report on there. Actually I'm lying, the beer is from this morning and I'm drinking it while typing this because I freaking passed out and slept the entire St. Paddy's day away and never got around to drinking my damn green beer until today.

As for what else I did this week I did finally finish project Umbrella when I decided to stop by the local camera place and look for the lamp stand there and they had one for the same price that I found on eBay so saved a bit there and helped the local community too. I'll also post more on that later. I also had to have the car smogged a yearly boring waste of money adventure which of course I passed so spent $15 to waste gas.

This week in TV land I watched the finale of Battlestar Gallactica and thought it was pretty good up until the end and we find out they land on our Earth at the time of early human development. So I don't know I was happy about most of it but meh I think they could have done just a bit more. Of course since I watched that I completely and utterly forgot about something else that I wanted to watch and that was Truth in 24 the freaking awesome documentary of of the 2008 Le Mans 24hr race from Audi's perspective. And you guessed it more on that later as I downloaded it the next day and watched it a bit later.

After that it was pretty much the same old same old. The weather is getting nicer thankfully and things are looking to get more exciting as next week is the first autox event of the year and I get to test out the umbrella for the first time. Oh well that's it for last week wonder how nest week will go.

Don't forget to vote every day for the Moko Top Girl by the way.

I can't help but jump on the band wagon for this subbed trailer for the up coming new movie for Eureka7 called Pocket Full of Rainbows which is being released on April 25 in Japan (which means some time MAYBE next year for us if we're so lucky) and I can't help but want to disect it a little bit.

When I first heard that they were going to be making a movie I was sure they were doing a time skip after the events type of deal or was that just the games? Anyways so now that I look at this I wonder if it's all I want it to be. I really did like the show back when it was on Adult Swim and honestly I'd rather see them repeat this again than Full Metal Alchemist for what the 80th gabillion time. Then you find out that the movie is going to be recycling a lot of the original series animation and doing a retelling of the story but in an entirely different direction and timeline. Insane. But looking at the trailer you can't help but be curious as to how they are going to pull it all off and if it'll be worth the wait. There's no doubt that it looks good the old and the new but did you expect anything less from Bones. I'll definitely be waiting for a subbed version some time maybe this fall. Major props to the guy for subbing it as well.




Hopefully that worked for embedding the trailer into my post but who knows.

It's time to vote for the hottiest, cuttiest, sexiest Moko Top Girl at Moko.cc but good luck picking just one out of the possible 165 ladies. I don't know how long it's going on but I do know that you can vote once per day. Since the site is in Chinese and most of the text is contained in images I found it hard to figure out just how to actually vote the first day so I thought I'd help every one else out so they don't have to try and figure it out for themselves. The really hard part of course is in picking just one of the lovely ladies. Then you click on either the lady's head shot or the hand with the number. That will open a new page for that lady and you can look at some images. After that you just click on the text box in the upper right hand corner. I included that part in the image so you can see exactly where to click. When you click there a new smaller window box opens and has a text box where you need to type in the words and numbers that you see to the left of the text box. Then click on the PINK text button. Another window box will open with another PINK text Button, click on that and you've voted. Not to hard once you've clicked on that first button really. So yeah go vote on you're favorite Moko Top Girl and even though it'll be hard to beat the number one girl at the moment I believe it'll be a show down later of the top 12 or something like that.

It took a while but someone finally subbed the Special episode of Kamen no Maid Guy that was included with the 9th Volume of the Manga of the same name.

I don't know if anyone has released the DVD version of the show so in comparison to the lite fanservice of the broadcast show this OVD is way heavy with the fanservice a shorter than average total run time at a little over 20 minutes it seems like that was bare breasts at least once ever 4 minutes. Was this a problem? Oh hell no what would you really expect from Kamen no Maid Guy and a beach/bathhouse episode which if memory recalls we missed out on during the show.

The whole gang ends up on a deserted island where a crazy old fisherman attepts to capture Naeka because he really likes large breasts. We learn that he is an old lover of Otihime and a large giant talking sea turtle returns to capture him and take him back to Otihime. So the episode revolves around the old guy trying to capture Naeka and her and the gang trying to capture him. Lots of exposed breast antics latter we learn it's all a dream of Naeka's brother. Sadly we don't get to see the female maid naked, just in a really tiny shell bikini. Yeah it was really funny and Maid Guy goes kekeke and if it ever gets licensed here I really hope they include this episode as well.

Honestly there isn't much else to say about the show it had nothing at all to do with the main story line of the series and it was just fun chuckle time fanservice. In other words a total guilty pleasure.

Time to don the green and get your drink on as it's St. Patrick's Day a day to believe that you're Irish and drink you're self silly. At least that's what the adults do anymore. It's just a non-official holiday here and an excuse to go out to the bars and party hard. This year I'm missing it myself since I forgot to even think about asking for it off and if it wasn't for Google changing their logo I would have probably entirely forgotten about it.

In any case don't forget to wear your green and drink responsibly and always find a safe way home, don't drink and drive.

Tried to find a Moe shamrock girl but couldn't so instead here's a moe girl with green hair and a beer.

CAT FIGHT! Finished watching Platonic Heart yesterday and feel seriously let down after the last episode. With there only being 5 episodes the lead up to the end was good but the ending was shit. But then really what exactly do you expect from an H-game turned anime. Actually when I started watching it I didn't know that it started life as an H-game but it does make since. After all this is actually worse than Ikkitousen in regards to clothing being ripped off during battles. There was a naked girl if not more in every episode.

The plot was pretty easy the Platonic Heart is a girls only championship underground fighting ring that girls compete in to gain pieces of the Jeweled Platonic Heart so that they can be the winner and be granted their wish. Enter our main girl Aye a simple high school girl who ends up befriending a young girl who she sees is in a fight with another woman. She defeats the other woman and finds out about the Platonic Heart and the girls part ways being friends. The next day arrives and the new friend is now where to be found so Aye enters the Platonic Heart battles to find out what happened to her new friend. Several fight later we get to the meat and potatoes as to what the real deal is. See that's the thing first episode Introduction the second third and fourth episodes are all just fights and a tiny bit of plot development. Then the last episode and the huge epic let down.

Yeah apparently the whole stupid thing was just a massive ruse of sorts by Aye's supposed friends who actually just wanted revenge on her and her mother for what Aye's parents did to their parents. OK, then enter Aye's mom who easily dispatches all of the supposed friends after they shot Aye and promise to torture her to death. The mom pretty much tells us that she did what she did because the grandparents of the friends did the same exact thing to her parents. Confused yet? So mom blows up the place that they are all in and sends her daughter Aye off to live a "normal" life and I assume the mother perishes with the friends in the building but before that she picks up Aye's phone and sees that there is still a piece missing to the Platonic Heart and we cut to the friend's mother opening the door with a look of utter shock on her face...cut to credits. OK so that last little part was pretty cool but by no means makes up for the rest of the shit episode.

Even though the show wasn't EPIC awesomeness it was entertaining enough to keep watching up until that last episode were I really felt let down. If it is licensed it here I'd probably rent it again on Netflix but don't think I'd bother buying it unless it was dirt ass cheap (it's anime so you know it wont be) but this was only part of a larger marketing force as the anime was only part of a larger mixed media franchise released at the same time including the H-game you can read more about that and look at even more pretty pictures of Aye and her combat buddies here at Sankaku Complex.

First car show of the year is always the Boise Roadster Show which was held on the Second weekend of March and while I have gone to it before I've passed going for several years due to the high volume of the same old same old year after year. This year my roommate's father entered his 65 Mustang and we got 4 day passes so decided to go this year since well I was bored and I heard there was a couple Porsche displays and a GTR. Then there was also the bikini contest. Figured what better way to break the winter doldrums and lack of any video postings than to film the bikini contest and take the 50mm lens out for a test drive.

We went on Friday evening pretty much to look about take some pictures and of course to film the bikini contest. You can read about that on the previous two posts. I found out that the 50mm lens doesn't work so well for car shows but the roommate did get some good shots of the girls with it while I was filming. So that means I had to go back on Saturday to shot the cars which wasn't too bad at all really.

I went back myself on Saturday morning and apparently so did everyone else. I got there soon after it was open for the day and the place was already packed. Of course that just makes it very hard to shot the cars with people standing in front of them talking and doing stupid people things. So yeah the cars. Actually it looked to me that there was a bit less turn out than the previous years that I've been to it. A sign of the times perhaps. I did check out the Silver GTR and it's HUGE and awesome in person. There was also a new Hyundai Genesis Coupe as well as a Nissan 370Z and while I've already seen the 370Z the Genesis coupe looks pretty nice in person as well.

As I'm a huge Porsche fan I was really looking forward to the Porsche display until I saw it and then the dealership display. Crappy displays both of them. The dealership which has a Porsche Design Cayman and a white 911 Turbo Cab at their dealership only brought a plain jane Boxster and a 911 C2 Cab. What in the piss, it's a car show bring the cool shit out for people to look at not the boring everyday things. They did have a Cayanne GTS but they've had that thing forever.

But it wasn't nearly as crappy as the Silver Sage Porsche club display. Remember them they do a show in October yeah well this display sucked and I took a picture of it to show how not to do a display. They had five cars crammed into a tiny space and had it roped off with stupid checkered triangles and the larger safety cones making it imposable to take any type of good picture since the rope was almost on top of cars. Really crappy display and the worst at the show by far. They didn't even mention anything about their own show in October what a way to pass up an opportunity to advertise. Not the worst looking cars though, no that goes to one of those god awful hideous 53 commemorative edition Corvettes sitting next to an overpriced new ZR-1 Corvette.

As for all the other stuff...well it wasn't half bad if you're into the trailer queened roadster and muscle car scene. I'm not so much but it was a good opportunity to take some more car show pictures and do something other than surf the Internet at home on a Saturday morning. I did like seeing the GTR finally and the bikini contest was also fun to watch. I'm definitely looking forward to the other car shows this year though. In the mean time you can find all the other pictures from the Roadster Show here.

Finally the Cabin Fever and carshow doldrums are over. And an interesting week was had, for a change. First we had a meeting at work this week to discuss the laundry folding problem and yet it still hasn't been resolved really. So still mad about doing all the work at work. Even though 3pm meetings suck ass I was able to give Chronic Tacos a try and I have to say the food is pretty good but the hours suck ass, well for me anyways. Then of course I went to see Watchmen and you know how that went if you read my blog.

But then the weekend rolled around and FINALLY some real change up to the world. Friday night my roommate and I went to the Boise Roadster Show to look at cars and more importantly film the Miss Roadster bikini contest. The last time I went to the bikini contest there wasn't more than a handful of girls in the contest but this time there was a record 27 girls there.

The audience was also rather interesting as well. My poor roommate had to sit next to a couple of dorks who thought that the GTR that was there was barely street legal because I shit you not they thought it could do 340mph. Then during the show there were people behind us who were making some great comments. There was some ragging on the girls in the show which I'll admit some of those girls in the audience could have been in contest themselves, I wish the cute lil' Asian girl was. But still I think it's a put up or shut up situation and it's not nice to make fun of others. OK maybe some of it was deserved but you'll never catch me saying...crap. Then there were the guys who really loved their Buffalo Wild Wings Restaurant as anytime one of the girls mentioned they worked for Hooters, Busters and even Cheerleaders they had to scream out something about
Buffalo Wild Wings. Good Viral Marketing if you ask me and I'll take that check now Buffalo Wild Wings management. No, maybe a years worth of food perhaps? Still have to try it out one of these days since it's right close to work. Then Saturday I went back with the right lens for the camera and took pictures of the cars. More on the car part of the show tomorrow.

Took me forever to post the videos and pictures from the car show but I found it interesting how much my traffic increased after posting the bikini show pictures (that my roommate took while I was filming) I added a picture so you can see for your self the jump in traffic. That was only one day and before the car pictures were added.

Well that was it for this week a bit more interesting than usual thankfully. Don't know what I'm doing for Hottie of the Day yet so it'll be a surprise or just random.

What's better than the first car show of the season? Well that's the bikini contest that happens during the car show of course. It's a great way to break cabin fever and car show doldrums. It's also a great time to add some new videos and pictures. After all who doesn't like lovely ladies in bikinis strutting around on digital film and stills.

This years Miss Roadster show was pretty big (A record actually) with 27 lovely ladies competing for $1000 in cash prizes. There was a nice variety of ladies and to be honest I was impressed by the 34 year-old mother of 7 and the couple other ladies who just recently had their own babies. Sadly there wasn't an Asian in the whole bunch. There was a cute one in the audience but she doesn't count. Actually there were a couple ladies in the audience that could have easily been in the show themselves.

You can find all the videos here on my YouTube page. I filmed each girl individually and then I filmed the winners and the group as a whole. In total I filmed 29 videos for you're enjoyment.

A few things about the videos though. I didn't bring the tripod (didn't want to lug the thing around at the show) so some of the videos are a bit shaky at time so you'll have to forgive that. I also have no idea who the people are in the background making some comments. The last thing is that since there is copyrighted music on the videos YouTube one of these days may disable the audio part of the videos. In addition to the videos I had my roommate snap away with the other camera as well so that I could have some pictures to post as well and you can find the ones that turned out here on flickr.

As for the Boise Roadster Show I'll write about that hopefully on Tuesday as I'll be doing the weekly review on Monday like usual.

Best damn holiday of the year if you get to celebrate it that is. In Japan they have a tradition that on February 14 girls give the guy they like chocolates and that is called Red Day then one month later on March 14 the men do the same for the women and give them chocolate on what is called White day. Honestly it's all just made up Holidays so that people will spend money on sweets and what have you.

Here in America it's a bit different and we have Valentine's day where the men give the girls the chocolates, diamonds, mortgages and well you get the idea. Well not to long ago someone who probably heard of White day, or just fed up with Valentine's Day decided that on March 14 the women needed to pay us back and what better way than with a great steak and a blowjob so thus we now have the best damn holiday for us guys (so long as we were good on Valentine's Day) called simply Steak and BJ day. Yeah that kicks White Day all to hell doesn't it. I couldn't find a Moe cute girl feeding her guy a steak and also since I can't post a picture of a Bj you get this lovely and tasty picture of a Steak instead, Happy Steak and BJ day.

I do. Or more to the point I watched the Watchmen movie this last Wednesday. While I did read the graphic novel I didn't read any reviews or opinions of the movies. I did know that it was getting very mixed reviews which isn't uncommon for a comic book movie and I've even heard of groups of people walking out of the movie and I can say, now that I've seen the movie, that I may just understand why.

Watchmen (wikilink) is not your average Spidy or Sups comic book hero movie no very far from it in fact. Lots of people die in this comic book movie and it's not always the bad guys either would probably allow for some of the bad reviews and people walking out if they thought this was just another Spidy like comic book movie.

Then you have another reason and probably the only thing that I can say that I really didn't care for during the movie. The gratuitous male nudity. Obviously there isn't any nudity in the comic book so when you get multiple scenes of Mr Manhattan in his blue birthday suit (even after you know that the man knows to cover up damnit) it comes as a bit of a shock especially since it just doesn't happen once or twice. Yeah maybe now I know how women feel about gratuitous female nudity in other movies. Also another reason why people may have walked out of the movie. Lets face it a bunch of comic book geeks don't want to see naked man flesh they want to see naked girly flesh.

Now we get to the last reason I think people didn't like the movie. The ending. If you've read the book more than likely you liked the book version better than the movie version. In the movie to save time they had to cut out a lot of superfluous side stories including the artificial alien which is the escape goat in the comic book. Since they had to cut that out they had to come up with a different ending which means Mr Manhattan was made to be the escape goat instead. Personally I didn't like that but it was a time saver and it was able to wrap up the story neatly and keep the rest of the end intact.

Other than a bit too much man flash and a different ending I was rather pleased with the movie. I thought they did a good job of cutting out some of the other superfluous stories and side tracks and I liked how they glossed over a lot of the history of the other older masked heroes in the beginning credits. I also liked that they didn't kill Mr. Hollis in the movie, I didn't like that part of the comic book. This is definitely an adult comic book movie though and it doesn't pull any punches or tame down the comic book in any way which is something that after I read the comic book I was afraid would happen. I would definitely recommend this film but think those that have already read the comic book will enjoy it more than those that haven't.

We can has more gory Japanese flicks! Yes, yes we can. Last week I got in the mail from good ol' Netflix another Tokyo Shock movie called Tokyo Gore Police and it didn't disappoint on any level.

TGP (wikilink) isn't going to win any Oscars and you're not going to watch it for its brilliant cinematography work or epic CGI work. No you're going to watch it so that you can laugh your ass off at how brilliantly bad and down right cartoonishly gory the movie is. If you've watched Machine Girl than you know what to expect going in. Cute Japanese girl has bad things done to her (in this case her Police officer father is killed) and she begins a life of revenge only to end up the Superpowered Monster that goes on some crazy ass killing spree that lives lots of bloody gory corpses behind. Complete with enough blood spray to paint a barn or two.

The good thing is that even though you are laughing at how bad both the acting can be at times and the so un-Hollywood cinematography and CGI the plot actually wasn't to bad and was pretty coherent for a change. I could almost see Hollywood actually wanting to remake this one since it had a decent plot to it.

If you saw Machine Girl and liked it then you'll of course like this one. However if you haven't seen Machine Girl but like really campy horror movies then I'd also think that you'd like it as well. If none of those are true odds are that you probably wont understand where its brilliance is and end up not liking it.

Are you like me and seen both films and want more? Well we're in luck actually because there is another movie from the same people called Meatball Machine that is also available and maybe even more Tokyo Gore Police in our future since the ending of pretty much promised it. The last thing I have to say about it is that while watching this film and laughing about it I completely forgot about my own troubles and that makes this a great film in my opinion. And the Japanese cuties aren't half bad either. Now I just need to watch Oneechanbara which has been sitting on the HDD for ever.

Well it looks like I'll be blogging from home for a while until the whole work and laundry thing gets sorted out and that looks like it won't be any time soon. Although I am done complaining about it since there doesn't seem to be any chance at all of it changing.

So other than complaining about work and my LAME co-workers (not all of them...just the ones that don't do laundry) honestly there wasn't a whole lot of things going on I did finish Half Life 2 and the first Episode and most of the Second Episode even though I should have been doing more important things like looking for another job.

I did manage to make it to the Anime meetup this week for a little bit of fun and enjoyment and I even won another prize. This time I picked the sound track CD to Armitage III Dual Matrix which made me want to watch that show again since it's been a long time since I've seen it. Brings back some good ol times memories though. Did have to replace the Jewel Case as it was just broken to hell and back but the CDs are fine so far.

Started reading the TPB of The Watchmen this last week and will probably be watching that this Wednesday but from the massive amounts of bad reviews I've been seeing I'm not going to be holding my breath for anything epic. The book isn't so bad though.

So yeah just another boring week in the life of Gregory. I am working on getting my schedule hopefully changed so that I'll be working Mon-Fri instead of Sun-thru so that I can actually go to the the entire day of autox events on Sundays instead of only going for the morning part. Other than that I'll leave you an image of Armitage III and like I said girls with guns...

WOW! That was surprisingly fast actually. I was able to find a subbed version of The Sky Crawlers the very morning after I posted about it's release as a raw file. Which of course meant I was able to watch it at home on Tuesday night. It is licensed for an American release by Sony Pictures but I haven't seen any details on when that might be. Hopefully soon because it is definitely on my MUST BUY list. It's also available to be saved to your queue on Netflix as well.

So of course we need to get the nitty gritty stuff out of the way. If you're a fan of Ghost in the Shell than you'll know many of the people behind this film as well. Directed by Mamoru Oshii with CGI by Polygon Pictures studio and animated by Production I.G with music from Kenji Kawai also some where in all that mess is Skywalker Ranch (I watched the credits and saw they did something but can't remember what it was) as well. With all that packaged into this film you know that Crawlers is going to look and sound fantastic. OK so the cast of characters sometimes seem like an afterthought and the basset hound seems like a more interesting character than some of the people. That all goes by the way side when you get to the 3D CG of the planes and how effing awesome they look. The chrome/polished steel? on the big bombers was WOW impressive even on my non HD LCD screen. I can't even imagine how effing sweet it'll look on BD. There are some scenes that really do just stand out not only from looking great but by the use of music or even sometimes the lack of any but the minimalist of sounds.

You know it sounds and looks good but what about the story? Well since this is actually part of a larger story there isn't any but a little bit of background on what is going on outside of the air base but that's sort of the point since this is more a story of the people on the base than on why or who they are fighting. For me it felt like watching a few older WWII fighter plane movies that I've watched growing up the new guy arrives and has to learn the ropes and we are guided along with him as he gets settled down then about half way though we switch to being more engrossed with what the leader is doing. In this case the leader is the female air commander Kusanagi who takes a liking to the new guy Kannami because it turns out that Kannami is pretty much a clone of Kusanagi's former lover. Kusanagi tries to get Kannami to do for her what she did for her former lover and that's to kill her. See that's the big twist not only is the war a farce and just entertainment for the people but the pilots are immortal adolescents called Kildren who can't age nor die unless they are shot down in a dogfight, or apparently shot by your lover. Then they simply come back as some one else with no real memories as to what came before or the ability to question what comes next yet they have the same habits, skills and personality as the one that came before. It makes for an interesting story that's for sure even if it does wander at times.

Crawlers is a great film and I gave it five stars out of five on Netflix (which is like at 3.5 stars overall) and it's definitely one that you need to watch more than once. It works a bit better when you know more about the background but you don't need to know that to enjoy it either. Don't forgot to keep watching after the credits too.

Looks like it's official Kiddy Grade 2 is dead in the water but wait not all is lost for the Kiddy Grade Franchise (and those who like it) as it's been announced that there will be a new spin off title called Kiddy Girl-and. Yeah I know the name sounds lame and I don't know what the hell they're thinking either. Kiddy Grade was one of the first series that I rented when I first started doing the DVD rental thing and it wasn't through Netflix (back then Netflix didn't have crap for anime rental) and come to think about it I can't even remember the name of the place that I did it through. Anyways I liked the show and thought it was pretty cool. Even bought the first DVD when I found a used copy at Hastings. Then I heard that they were making a sequel to it (not just the cut down movies they released a bit later) and I was all sorts of excited about it and grabbed the promo or .5 episode as soon as I could only to be let down by zero news of its pending release.

Now we have this news coming out about a new spin off show and of course that makes me all sorts of excited (well OK maybe not THAT excited but you know what I mean) again and lets hope this time they don't let us all down again. ANN has this to report on the plot:

The story is set in the Star Century year 0379, roughly two centuries after the original Kiddy Grade anime and about five centuries after our present day. The spirited Asukūru and serious Ku Fīyu work for the galactic government known as GTO. The two girls are members of ES, GTO's finest secret agents with special abilities — or, rather, they are training to become ES.

Now the question is which will we see first, Kiddy Girl-and or the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya? Anyone want to take any bets.

Seems like just the other day I was telling you that January was over and look at that February is already gone as well. Pretty slow week actually looked at some jobs but it's rather lame when you consider that you are now one in close to 250 job applicants at the moment that you really wonder if you even have a snowballs chance in hell. Of course that's why I'm still working even though I currently HATE my job. It's always better to have a paycheck than no paycheck. So to not think about any of that I've been playing Half Life 2 when I should be doing other things like I don't know maybe taking pictures, filling out job applications and cleaning the house.

Our neighbor took a little weekend trip to Portland and she asked me if I could keep an eye on her house because she didn't want her roommate throwing any parties and trashing the house. I also told her I'd keep an eye on her dogs since she was just going to keep them in the dog run with a bunch of food and water. Of course it was quit all weekend so thankfully no need to call the coppers.

What else interesting happened this week? I spied with my little eye one hell of a nice Porsche 911 Turbo (930) at a computer shop but freaking hell I completely forgot about grabbing my camera and running back there to grab some pictures so I might just have to go Porsche hunting later this week. Also the Sky Crawlers DVD raw was released this week so hopefully that will be subbed and available to watch later this week hopefully. Due to a shortage of Vol 3 of Stelliva I ended up with the fist half of Tweeny Witches instead and found that to be surprisingly pretty good actually. Scott got a better battery for the black RX8 and his dad has the magic touch as the car didn't freak out like it did last time we tried installing the other new battery. Still doesn't start though.

Last but not least I got shipping confirmation on my Yoko Nendoroid so that'll be here in another week or two. Maybe by then I'll have gotten off my duff and taken some pictures or something. And since I really didn't have any good pictures to add to this post and since March is starting the new racing season why not post a lovely Race Queen as it'll be a new season with new girls for them as well. Can't wait to see the new girls.