Step number one is that you get drunk.  Hell, you’re college students, that was probably on your agenda to begin with.  With me so far?

Step number two is to head over to the movie rental shop (no driving drunk).  How many students do we have here at CSU?  Somewhere around 10,000?  We’re going to have to organize this.  Everyone needs to confer with one another to make sure we don’t all go to the same movie store.  Or, we could all rent the movie and meet at someone’s place.  Nose goes!

Step three is the best part.  Once you are at said movie rental shop, you must rent one and only one item.  Bloodsport.  Yes, you read that correctly.  That’s a big “B” followed by “loodsport”.  Find it in the “Martial Arts” section… or more likely, the “Cult” section.

Seriously, I would not condone this sort of behavior unless you were already slightly intoxicated (you started with Step #1 right?  See above paragraphs).  1988’s Bloodsport is one of the best martial arts films of the 80’s, and as a consequent, one of worst movies that has ever made it to the silver screen.

But it’s oh so good at the same time!  Who knew Jean Claude Van Damme’s best friend was a Harley riding, beer drinking, street brawler named Ray?  And what about his arch nemesis?  A Chinese man with pectorals the size of my head named Chong Li.  Oh, dude, and seriously… the soundtrack!  Terrible, formulaic 80’s rock songs with excessive use of synthesizers and electric pianos featuring names such as “Fight to Survive”.  Also, you will not even want to utter the word “montage” after viewing this movie for fear of angering Lono (who is of course the ancient Hawaiian god of fertility and music).  I warned you, folks.

Did this post make any sense whatsoever?  Of course not, but that was the point!  I want you all to be curious enough to rent this movie, and enter the love-hate relationship with it that I already accepted years ago.  Once you see Van Damme doing the splits in mid air while jumping over a Mongolian freak of nature whilst engaged in mortal combat, you will be a believer.  In what, I am not sure.  But you will be pious.  What better time to get pious than when you are blitzed on a Friday night and watching low budget martial arts flicks?

(Apologies for the random nature of the preceding prose. Seriously, watch Bloodsport!)

Instead, let’s take a look at the Detteiu Mario video series. An intrepid user on youtube who goes by the name of daigam has uploaded a series of videos demonstrating hacked Super Mario World levels. This is not particularly interesting on its own – there are a lot of people out there who have hacked their own levels into the classic platformer, especially on youtube. What’s intriguing about the hacked levels it that they run through on their own, start-to-finish, without any input from the player whatsoever, and often in the most absurdly roundabout manner possible.

You can watch the entire series right now on youtube, in eight installments: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight. A lot of comparisons have been made to Rube Goldberg machines and even Mr. Magoo, which… yeah, seems about right. The level designer’s real name is, as far as I can tell, unknown, but whoever he is, well. He’s probably lost quite a bit of time making these things!

As Hollywood and Eco-Nazis keep pressing on with their global warming psychobabble propaganda, it sounds like a good time to bring some current events to the table, which disproves the secular Apocalypse.

Possibly one of my favorite examples of how ridiculous the global warming agenda is, is from everyone’s favorite country: Norway! Officials have now declared that the Scandinavian moose is contributing to global warming because it acts like a slob/human by burping and farting (these are things we do in front our loved ones, of course), with an approximate output of 2,100 kilos (4,630 lbs.) of CO2 a year. So what this story proves, is that all those nay-sayers writing letters to the editor that said that cow farts did not contribute to global warming in the Collegian about this time last year are feeling pretty embarrassed with their previous statements.

It turns out that anthropogenic (for you CU students, that means “man made”) global warming is a complete farce, and that even if we did all drive a Prius (whose battery development is far worse than any Hummer on the road), the Scandinavian moose would still put us over the edge and the earth would still be doomed in 9 years, according to Al Gore. Talk about your lose-lose!

The Antarctic ice levels are increasing. This disproves half of the “Gorey” details we’ve been preached about regarding global warming and our imminent doom. So if it isn’t happening on one end of the earth, that means it isn’t happening on the other, right?

Mostly! From the data that has been gathered about the Arctic ice cap, there are some absurd predictions made, like this one from the Washington Post, that the arctic ice caps “will shrink 40 percent by 2050 in most regions, with grim consequences for polar bears, walruses and other marine animals, according to government researchers.” It sounds like the polar bears are pretty screwed unless we do something about this Scandinavian moose problem. But, this report from the Washington Post, like most things that come out of the biased media, fail to report that research data about the ice levels in the Arctic only started to be recorded in 1979. So not even 30 years have gone by, and people are putting all their eggs in one anthropogenic basket already, completely sold on the idea that cow farts and Hummers are leading to the death of polar bears.

So these levels are the lowest they’ve ever been? If you believe history can be revised, you’d be correct, but that would mean you’d have to erase the entire voyage of 1905 when Roald Amundsen (also a Norwegian like those pesky moose), managed to successfully sail through the Northwest Passage in his little 10 man wooden boat. How low would the ice levels had to have been to sail through the Arctic in an archaic little boat? I’m not a scientist, but I would have to believe way lower than the levels are right now, and I don’t think you could pull it off in a 100 year old wooden boat right now either, let alone grow facial hair like this guy.

Below is a picture of Amundsen’s excursion through the “frozen” (ha!) North:

In fact, a man trying to do almost the same thing, Adrian Flanagan, was getting stuck in ice while trying to navigate the Arctic Sea in northern Russia, and needs to use an ice breaker to keep moving.  Hilarious!

Oh, and Al Gore got caught using his private jet to go across half the country, data in Laurie David’s global warming children’s book “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming” is false, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s global warming film went down the toilet.

And that, my friends, is how global warming has been debunked from north to south to Scandinavia.

Word has just got out that a spin off of the X-Men trilogy is to begin filming in Australia very soon.  The focus of the movie will be on Wolverine (the most loveable of badasses).  Few details are available at the moment, but hopefully it will be a history of Wolverine’s dark and mysterious past.  Getting a chance to see where this animal came from would be exciting subject matter indeed!  The only problem that I see is that if the movie is historical, we might not get a chance to see Patrick Stewart’s bald head!

 Hugh Jackman has been confirmed to reprise his role as the heavy metal mutant.  This is excellent, because I believe that he was always one of the strongest actors in the X-Men movies.  It would be hard to picture another actor playing Wolverine at this point in time anyway.  The other cast members are veiled in secrecy currently, but if my assumptions are correct, we will be seeing very little of the other former cast.  In the case of Famke Janssen, I think that will be a good thing.  You might be able to chalk it up to bad writing on the last movie, but Jean Gray was an absolutely useless presence on screen.

The movie is currently slated for 2008 or 2009, so it’s obviously very early in production.  No reason to start getting excited about this one quite yet.  I guess I’m a bit of a nerd and can’t help myself when I hear a geeky bit of information like this.  You may now resume your mainstream lifestyle.

(But seriously… Wolverine in Vietnam!  Insert excited nerdy sounds here!)

Let’s say you are an 18-year-old college freshman who has just started to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.  Averaging out the cost of those cigarettes, I will put the price at $4.50 a pack and the total cost for a pack a day at $135.00 a month.  Now, if you were to place an initial investment of $135.00 into a strong Mutual Fund, say a %15.00 return, and continue doing so throughout your college career, you may be surprised.

This cigarette replacing investment, if continued every month for 4 years, would give you a return of $9,161.00.  On the flip side, a continued smoking habit over this amount of time would cost you just over $6,400.00.  I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that smokers have the potential to make some pretty impressive gains.

Now just for fun, say you were able to remain in said Mutual Fund for 50 years, still somehow giving you a 15% return and you placing your extra $135.00 into the account every month.  Well, after those 50 years, when you are approaching 70 and wanting to vacation or splurge on the grandchildren, you can do both.  You will have now accumulated a massive return of over $19,000,000! 

A quick review of the good news coming from the war zone at home and overseas:

The surge is working! But the Democrats are still accusing Four star General David Petraeus of lying (surprise, surprise…)

The new bin Laden tape is out, and while there is questioning as to whether the tape is real or not, two big points are made: Osama can’t recruit many more jihadists for his effort, even though the US (the enemy according to Osama and hippies) is in his backyard, and that Osama didn’t even say anything about another major attack against the Americans, rather he just ranted on some left wing talking points, the poor guy.

Fallujah is not being controlled by Marines anymore. It’s not even being controlled by the Iraqi army anymore. This battlefield of a city has now been handed over to Iraqi police, now that peace has been restored to that area of the Anbar province.

Another terrorist attack was foiled last week, this time in Berlin of all places. The great thing about this is these thwarted attacks seem to happen on a regular basis, and we haven’t heard about one that’s gone wrong.

Democrats have given up their unilateral defeatist campaign to lose the war, which is a great sign of progress. Not only does this mean that their whole election campaign was a joke (now more than it was in November), but also maybe now they can use their majority to get some work done in supporting our troops for real as opposed to just paying lip service.

There is also some talk about why Americans aren’t sacrificing anything in this Global War on Terror (now a banned term by Democrats, mind you) like Americans did in World War II with things such as buying War Bonds, rationing gas, and saving scrap metal for the troops (like the steel penny). To that I say two things: 1) The fact that we don’t have to or need to sacrifice our lifestyles to win a war is a fantastic sign as to how well our country is managing at home and in the war zone, and 2) Your extra long lines at security at the airport is sacrifice enough to me, as is your paying 3 dollars a gallon for gas if you wish think that as being a sacrifice for the war effort(even though, oil and gasoline have nothing to do with kicking the terrorists’ butt).

But I urge you all to remember that these terrorists will not stop attacking us until we succumb to their will. Fortunately, that will never be an option to Americans. If you don’t get what I mean, watch United 93 for the terrorist hatred and the US response, some old footage from 9/11 on the news to show the devastation that can be caused when we ignore a dangerous thug, and fly an American flag to show that Americans are still standing strong against this foe, and will not say “we surrender” as a compromise to people that want us dead.

So are Americans overdue for another can of cowardice from al Qaeda? No. Is al Qaeda overdue for a can of whoopass from the West? You betcha.

Have a Happy Patriot Day, and God bless America.

Here’s the deal.  You can love Apple or you can down right hate the company and everyone who associates themselves with the white earbud wearing, unique laptop carrying, non-business oriented group of people.  However, it is a lot easier to love a company that can create products to make life easier and if you’re really smart, make you some money while doing it.

If you don’t know by now, Apple Inc. has been a great stock choice for the last 5 years.  In fact, investing in the company just 5 years ago from today would have made you over 18 times your original investment.  Yeah, that’s $50.00 turning into $900.00 in a little over the amount of time it takes some people to graduate.  However, what really surprises me is the amount of people who never saw it coming.

Personally, I always loved the idea of an MP3 player and I searched high and low until the iPod came into the market and solved my problems.  Yet, I gave the company some more time to work on the kinks and really get a market share before I thought about investing, then reality set in.  Here is a company gaining a huge share over the portable music industry and the stock value remains low, what better time to buy?  And now look at their success timeline.

First, you have the introduction of the iPod (no further information is required).  Next, a quieter move, Apple produces more iPods while maintaining their dock-style base to allow an accessory market to emerge.  Apple and Intel become one, thereby making the lovable computers more affordable and faster than ever before.  Finally, Apple begins to set record numbers for themselves in computer sales while maintaining a huge share of the portable MP3 market, selling 3 billion songs on iTunes, entering into the Cell-phone/PDA/Smart-phone market, and on top of all of that they still make incredibly smart business moves.  Think about it, announcing that you have sold 1 million iPhones in just 74 days on an open stock market Monday.

All in all, here’s to you Apple, I can only hope to see more of your products and more outlooks come true, a high price target of $205.00 never looked so sweet.

If you know your home media history then you’ve probably heard of the epic clash between the Betamax  and the victorious VHS back in the 80’s.  It was a battle between corporations that helped define the direction of movie technology for years.  Well, now we find history repeating itself with the struggle between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.  Of course, beneath the duel of formats are two major corporate powers.  Sony is pushing for their proprietary Blu-Ray technology, while Toshiba are going all out for their HD-DVDs.

I see Blu-Ray as the big expensive SUV of media formats.  It makes all your movies sound and look great, provided that your other home theater technology is up to snuff.  It has a shit-load of special features that are only going to benefit the movie companies as they make for stronger defense against piracy(by the way, I do not condone the piracy of home movies).  The strongest draw here is that Blu-Ray has a much higher data storage capacity, that is to say that there can be more stuff on each disc (a single layer disc can hold about 25 gigabytes).  The kicker that comes with all of this, however, is that Blu-Ray is much more expensive to produce.  This added cost will invariably pass down to the consumer.

HD-DVD, on the other hand, is like a small sedan.  It still has all of the options installed, it just isn’t quite as big and mean looking as that SUV.  The HD-DVD will enhance movie-watching in the same way that Blu-Ray will as it is capable of producing high quality visuals and audio as well.  HD-DVD holds less data (about 15 gigabytes on a single layer), but is cheaper for the consumer.  Also, HD-DVD players are backward compatible with regular DVDs. 

I’ve been watching this one pan out from the beginning and I am still leaning toward Toshiba.  Is it really worth the extra money to get more director’s commentary or movie previews on each disc, as you would with Blu-Ray?  And even if the picture you can get from Blu-Ray does end up being superior… how the hell am I going to take advantage of it if I still have a crappy CRT television?  Sony made a huge gamble by making sure their new Playstation 3 has a Blu-Ray player.  But I’m sure everyone knows the results there (namely a $500-600 price tag).

I don’t want you all to start thinking “Oh shit!  I need to make a decision!  I need to start CHOOSING SIDES IN THE MEDIA WAR FOR THE AGES!”  This technology is going to phase in about as gradually as DVD did from VHS.  It is true that the folks that will determine the victor here are all of you, but don’t go throwing out your DVDs just yet.  Once this technology becomes available to the average consumer, one format will come out on top.

(Please post comments if you have anything important to add on this subject!)

Stardust is a delightful little fantasy movie based on the book by Neil Gaiman.  The setting is the English village known as Wall.  In the story, Tristan (Charlie Cox) makes a promise to a beautiful girl (who doesn’t happen to actually care for him all that much) that he will bring her a fallen star.  However, in order to get to the star’s place of rest he must cross the forbidden wall and enter a mysterious magical kingdom.  Upon arrival at the crash site our dear Tristan discovers that the star is actually a beautiful glowing young woman named Yvaine (Claire Danes).  The quest to bring the star back to Wall is complicated by a hot, but brutally sinister witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) who needs the star girl to achieve eternal youth.

This is a legitimately funny movie.  It’s not the whack you over the head funny of, say, Superbad.  It’s more the kind of whimsical “That’s adorable!” kind of humor.  But guys, don’t go writing this movie off as a “chick flick”.  It’s got plenty of action and humor that you will appreciate.  And ladies, I have the sense to believe that you will absolutely adore this movie.  Believe me when I say that this movie has something for everyone. 

It may be cliché to compare Stardust to The Princess Bride this late after release, but I just did, so eat it.  The parallels are pretty obvious.  Both movies are filled with whimsical humor, both are fairy tales for the young at heart, and both feature eccentric characters portrayed by wonderful actors.

Which brings me back to Robert DeNiro, who gives the most standout, memorable acting in the film.  His character actually isn’t introduced until later on in the movie, but this speaks volumes about his effective use of screen time.  He plays a bloodthirsty sky pirate (what fantasy would be complete without physics defying airships?) with a few personal secrets.  I won’t give it all away, but he does a truly excellent job with the character.  Most of the other performances are fairly average.  They don’t damage the movie, but they do prevent it from attaining that certain mark of perfection.

Given the above text it’s probably easy to see that I loved the movie.  The combination of plenty of stuff for guys and plenty of stuff for gals also suggests that this would make a stellar date movie.  It’s true, and I find it a damn shame that the movie hasn’t received a blockbuster reception in theaters.  Go check Stardust out before it’s off on its trip to DVD.  You will be entertained!

3.5 stars (out of 4)

(Neil Gaiman is a terrific storyteller and has been writing science fiction and fantasy for some time, check him out!)