Hate The Video Title, Though (Rim Is Already In The Title, Why Do You Need To Add Basket?)

Much as I hate basketball*, I actually kind of enjoyed Space Jam.

And I love Pacific Rim, so this is a thing I kind of enjoy regardless of how ridiculous it obviously is.



It's made even better, of course, by the fact that the music actually works.

*You know why I hate basketball?
I'm mostly just kind of neutral on sports in general. I'll sort of watch football if it's on in the same room, but honestly that's because when you get down to it football feels like a battle with drawn lines.
I hate basketball because 1) I'm six foot four inches barefoot, which makes me taller than most people, especially taller than most high schoolers (and I was roughly this height as of my sophomore year of high school, more or less), and 2) people think of tall people as playing basketball.
I used to be neutral on basketball, but at some point literally every new person I met during my teenage years would ask if I played it in a way that rather strongly assumed I'd say yes. I initially would respond to these with "I don't like basketball," but after the twentieth or thirtieth time, I started responding with a vehement "I hate basketball" instead. My natural disposition around most people is pretty quiet, too, and so this got quite a reaction.
It didn't help that my parents thought I should be into some sport or another, and after I proved to be terrible at soccer (I'm a really slow runner), they tried getting me into basketball, partly by demanding I shoot a large number of successful baskets in a backyard hoop they bought for that sole purpose over the course of one summer**. (Even if it hadn't enhanced my dislike for basketball, I still never had even fractionally high enough of a success rate to consider joining a team.)
Gosh, but I hate basketball.
**They probably figured that since Dad had also been tall and had played basketball in high school*** that I'd be able to get into basketball easily. Never mind that I've got roughly the same hand-eye coordination as a potato.
***Once, Dad tells me, he scored more than his entire team had in a game, and he was only on the floor for fifteen seconds. Naturally, he was the only guy who'd scored. Quite a kidder, my dad.

-Signing off.

I'm Pretty Sure I've Already Mentioned At Some Point That I Hate Basketball

Incredibly stupid thing to do with giant robots #438: Play sports with them.



That, and advertise Nike shoes. Seriously.

-Signing off.

Whoops, No Time To Blog

I ended up with a rather unexpected obligation today, so I'm afraid this is all you're getting.

Remember those NHL Guardian guys? This guy is one of them, just so you know.

I wonder if anything ever happened with that...

-Signing off.

It May Actually Be Dumber Than Those Yo-Yos

(If anyone saw this as an untitled post with no text, I was just double-checking to see if the embed worked, seeing as how sometimes I get YouTube regional blocking when I embed this kind of thing.)

I've remarked in the past that the super robot Combattler V has a pretty ridiculous weapon.



Not completely ridiculous, as they're also buzzsaw yo-yos as well as yo-yos on the end of magic forcefields/lightning bolts instead of strings, but still ridiculous.

Now, what I'm showing you doesn't technically qualify as a bizarre anime weapon, but it is a bizarre thing to make an anime about.



Grander Musashi is an anime about bass fishing. The characters use legendary lures that take design cues from mecha anime. This is incredibly stupid and hilariously brilliant. There's even a "God Legender" (i.e. magic lure), which can catch any fish regardless of conditions and control other Legenders. Seriously.

I both want to watch this and never want to watch this.

-Signing off.

Other NHL Guardians Who Are Completely Nuts

A few weeks ago, Chris Sims commented on the characters from the NHL's hockey team-themed superheroes (official bios for the characters here).

Not to knock on Sims, but I think he missed a few. (A bit late to point it out, I guess, but hey, no reason not to.)

The Capital

The guy who is associated with Washington, D.C. is "half bald eagle," whatever the heck that means, can fly and has incredible vision, is a shapeshifter, and can emit an immensely powerful sonic scream that causes him to turn bright red.

Just like any other Washington politician, see?

The King

This guy? Protects Hollywood from movie-related crimes. Seriously, in his little PDF story comic, he keeps a guy who calls himself "Hitchcock" from stealing the Academy Awards. No, really.

The Senator

The Senator, who rounds out the Guardians' governmental personage lineup, is credited as being great at motivating his allies and destroying his enemies' hope. He also has telekinesis (not mentioned in his bio but shown/mentioned in his story) and the power to neutralize enemy superpowers, and supposedly was once an actual gladiator. I'm not even sure how that could be any crazier.

The (Jersey) Devil

Then we have this guy, who is supposedly descended from the legendary cryptid called the Jersey Devil. He also "doesn't so much defeat his opponents... as completely annihilates them."

Dude. That's how it could be crazier.

The Predator

Predator is described as having "adamantium" fangs (seriously), can devour any matter or energy, can vomit up consumed matter and energy in the form of a "slightly radioactive slime," and can also disrupt electronics with his screams (once again not mentioned in his bio, but shown in his story). So he's got the powers of Matter-Eater Lad (with a disgusting bonus), G1 Frenzy, and has Wolverine claws in his mouth.

I'm not even sure what more I could say about that.

-Signing off.

Japan Again

The other day, I learned something stupid awesome about Japan that I hadn't really known before. (This is not an unusual occurrence-if I didn't periodically learn something stupid awesome about Japan, I probably wouldn't be interested in learning about Japan.)

So what did I learn? Well, I learned that this anime...



...has a Japanese pro wrestler based on it.

Yes, you read that right.



A Japanese pro wrestler based his career, and for that matter, apparently his gimmicks, on mimicking an anime protagonist. (By the way, the wrestler is better known than the series.)

Oh, Japan, how you amuse me.

-Signing off.

That's A Sport I'd Watch

You know, it's probably pretty obvious from the fact that I don't really talk about sports at all here, but I'm not a sports fan. I'm really not a sports fan.

I mean, really.

Part of the reason I'm not a huge sports fan is because I've never been athletic enough to get involved in sports, and as a result, am relatively minimally aware of the mechanics of the games. (Exceptions to this include soccer, which I played [very badly] for a few years when I was a kid, basketball, which everyone asked if I played for years because I'm 6'3" barefoot [my answer was always "I hate basketball," primarily because everybody was always asking if I played it], and football, which is reasonably simple and watched religiously by my mother and very casually by my father. That, and I read an essay for a class that explained the difference between modern American football and its original incarnation. I don't get excited about football, but it was a fascinating essay.) Further, a lot of people call their particular sport "the GREAT AMERICAN GAME/PASTIME/FISHCAKES."

Excuse me, but I don't see what makes your sport the American game. There is only one sport that can truly claim that title, although I don't watch that one either: Stock car racing.

What qualifies stock car racing as the American sport? It's quite simple:

1. The game involves cars, the chosen form of transportation for Americans, even now.
2. The game is a race, meaning that the winners and the losers are determined by the speed of the competitors. Americans are always in a hurry, and racing is thus representative of their natures. (I, by the way, am rarely in a hurry, even though I'm nearly always on time, and that's one of the primary reasons I don't watch racing sports.)
3. The game is blatantly commercial. The participants' vehicles are positively slathered in advertising. How much more American could it get?

There's only two things the game is missing that could possibly make it more American than it is already:

1. Semi trucks, full of products associated with the sponsor companies, replacing the cars. (And there'd be a rule or something that they'd have to drive like actual semi truck drivers, who seem to think they're racecar drivers anway.)
2. Dilapidated highways upon which the races take place.

...Is it just me, or would that be totally awesome? I know that if nothing else, I'd watch/read a TV/comic series about something like that.

(Note: The commentary here is not meant to be criticism of American society. I'm simply stating facts. I'd rather live in America than just about anywhere else.)

(Further note: Yes, I know that there was at least one comic book series about racing semi trucks on highways, and that some people have probably treated semi truck racing as some kind of underground sport. I want to see an official, corporate sponsored one, where the semi trucks have great big NASCAR-style advertising covering them completely.)

(Final note: Obviously, I'm being rather frivolously silly with my commentary. I don't care.)

-Signing off.