Category: Musings

About That Shock Ending…

Don’t expect it to stick… despite claims to the contrary.

Comic books never do anything permanent; it’s just something they do to try and shock people.

The problem is that the only thing this would shock is people who don’t normally read comics.

For the rest of us, we’re just waiting on the return that’ll happen in a few months.

So this is a pretty lame grid thus far.

Did People Really Want An Irate Gamer Return?

So apparently, Chris Bores is back and he’s bringing the Irate Gamer with him.

A new video was posted on Bores’ old channel (formerly the IrateGamer channel before undergoing a name change to the CB Network before settling on the quaintly-named CHRIS-TUBE) in which Bores dies at Super Mario Bros and throws something at his TV before declaring “I’m back.”

The Irate Gamer, for those who don’t know, is a “review” show where Chris Bores portrays said Gamer who is always angry… er, I mean, IRATE at all the bad games he has to play. In an effort to be different from that other guy who is always angry at all the bad plays he has to play, he also gets irate at all the fan favorites too. If you really need more details on this fellow, there’s already a blog that touches on Bores’ body of work in much more detail than I’d care to look into.

I suppose the question remains is there an audience for the return of the Irate one because I’m not sure I’ve encountered anyone who had been wondering why there hasn’t been any new Irate Gamer videos as of late. Hell, I had completely forgotten about the poor fellow until a visit to said blog had made me aware of said video.

This is simple “hating” for the sake of “hating.” Unlike other people, if I genuinely hate something, I would not be calling attention to it. That’s why certain pieces of business will never get touched upon here. But Bores has always been that oddity that people found offensive, but I found mildly amusing for all the wrong reasons.

But in any event, hide your Skylander toys. Because the Irate Gamer is coming back whether you want it or not.

Now, if only we’d get through IG’s History Of Video Games in a more timely fashion…

The Star Fleet Death Probe

Last weekend, my brother and I played a scenario of the old starship wargame Star Fleet Battles involving something called the Death Probe.

The scenario plays out like this; the Death Probe is attacking a planet and the fleet of ships orbitting the planet has to destroy the probe before it’s too late. Big brother opted for three Romulan battle cruisers to defend the planet against the probe while I got to play the probe. This was determined on the simple basis that big brother was the planet-killer on the last monster scenario we played a couple weeks back.
One problem; according to the scenario, the planet was on one side of the board, the probe was a dozen or so hexes away, while the Romulan fleet started on the other side of the board. So while the Romulan fleet was making its way towards the home planet, I was already pelting away at it with full weapons.
The Death Probe is obstensibly a mobile starbase; its two main weapons are two Phaser-IVs (the most powerful phaser in SFB that’s normally found on starbases) and six photon torpedo launchers. It also has six standard phasers banks and two phaser-Gs (basically eight Phaser-IIIs) that can be fired in any direction. It can move up to speed 32 (speed determines how many moves you make per turn; 32 means I can move 32 times), repairs 20 points of damage, and has as much power needed for what it’s able to do.

The primary goal of the Death Probe is the destruction of the planet while the Romulan fleet’s goal is to destroy the probe before it kills the planet. For two turns, the Romulans are slowly making their way towards the planet while I’m pelting away at the planet. By turn #3, all three battlecruisers are lobbing plasma torpedoes at me, but the probe is so far off that the overall effectiveness of the torpedoes are considerably minimized (though still very damaging).
At one point, my brother decided to launch a squadron of shuttle craft to attack my probe while his cruisers kept a safe distance. Unfortunately for him, I had enough phasers to clear those shuttles away, but unfortunately for me, that meant fewer weapons to lay waste to the planet that turn.
After twelve turns, big bro’s Romulan fleet managed to destroy my Death Probe… but no before I was able to destroy one of his cruisers and do considerable damage to the planet. This was probably one of the more lengthy scenarios we’ve played thus far and was a nice diversion from the overall campaign that we’ve playing for months now.

Anyway, that’s just a fun little thing.

Reflecting On Brock Lesnar's UFC Debut

Originally posted on the old DTM Blog on February 4th, 2008:

Managed to get myself past the Brock match to see the rest of the show, whom a friend of mine foolishly blew fifty bucks on and taped the event for me. Other than a few quick moments, I couldn’t really get into the show. It just seems like after watching a bunch of sports-entertainers trying to make scripted entertainment seem real for a whole bunch of years, I’d expect a real fight to even more intense, only to be sorely disappointed as I watch two grown men in their boxers swatting each other like flies with about as much ferocity as a ball of cotton. Maybe I prefer my action to be scripted.

But let’s get back to Brock for a minute. Obviously his first UFC outing didn’t turn out too well, as after a minute of solid punches, he was caught in a leglock and forced to tap out. While I mentioned this already in a previous blog post, Brock is far from the next big choke. It’s his first match and naturally, you can’t win them all. But from the short time he was offensive, he didn’t look like a complete idiot and may do very well in his new UFC career.

So best of luck, Brock.

The Modern Take:

As is probably known, Brock Lesnar recovered from his first UFC loss and eventually became UFC Heavyweight Champion. And then he lost the title and came back to WWE in 2012, where he sporadically remains to this day… at least, as of this recording.

Unfortunately for the world of real fights and MMA, I never could find the enthusiasm to enjoy watching two people beat the crap out of each other. I can certainly respect the toughness of these individuals in regards to the training and endurance required to participate in such intense contests, but when it comes to actually sitting down and watching the fights, I find myself falling asleep faster than if I were to watch a HHH promo.

This is perhaps why I prefer the wrestling shows. Sure, the fights are all phoney-balooney and all that, but at its best, wrestling tell better stories and feature characters with larger than life (or at least very likeable) personalities that you can’t help but take a liking to. So, MMA fans. You can have your real fights and stick ’em. I prefer my fights to be staged and pre-determined.

A REALLY OLD Comment On A Forgotten MMPR "Fan" Film

Digging up the now-defunct MMPR Fan Film project, I came across a comment that was posted on my commentary video for one of their trailer from around 2014-ish. I seem to have recalled touching on this one of the prior DTM-Cast audio programs (Episode 24, for those curious), but I decided to turn the comment into a post for the sake of content and historical context from a voice not my own.

I don’t recall the name or handle of the person who posted this, as the comments on Dailymotion videos have been excised for some reason, so the transcript is from one of the old DTM-Cast posts. Somewhere along the way, I want to do one final write-up on this thing, but that’s a long way to go.
In any event, the MMPR Fan Film comment on an old video, with some minor notes on my end.

“From what I know/have heard, [the producers of this thing] apparently thought [Power Rangers] wasn’t still running and in the beginning had only seen Season 3 of MMPR and Time Force, thought they could make something off this from old fans [or at least those riding the nostalgia train] and when realizing the show is still going strong, decided that the fandom needed a ‘Dark & Gritty’ reboot.
[Because that’s all mature and stuff… the problem with that line of thinking is that when one usually tries to make some light-hearted into something mature, it’s done in the most immature way that when you see the final product, you’re wondering if the whole thing was done by three year olds wanting to be all grown-up and completely missed the point of maturity. Case in point; DC and Marvel comics. But I digress.]
Main reason discussing this will get you banned from forums [mainly Rangerboard – Rangercrew did have a thread up, but I don’t think there’s an out-and-out rule banning all discussion of the thing] is because they refused to answer questions straight, were pretty damn rude to more then a few ‘critiques’, and were just unpleasant. [I followed the threads on Rangerboard and Rangercrew and you’re spot on about all that. To my own recollection, it got REAL UGLY, REAL FAST.] That, and apparently some of the people working of this didn’t know what ‘Sentai’ was. [I honestly would be surprised if they did knew anything about Sentai.] 
One of the actors [the guy who’s playing the Red Ranger in that thing, I think] joined at a later date and tried to explain some things, but just caused even more confusion. Combine this with information changing every so often on their kickstarter and changing their minds on what this is gonna be several times…yeah. Not gonna make anyone happy.
[Yeah, if I remember, they did a Kickstarter with the intent of making it a movie with some mini-trailers or something, then it became a webseries, then it’s a movie, then it became a pitch for a SyFy Original Series, and it’s a webseries again, and they were gonna get Jason Frank to reprise the role of Tommy cause the guy’s a big ol’ publicity whore riding the nostalgia train along with the rest of them, but then he said he wasn’t gonna do it, they got Robert Axelrod to do the voice of Zedd again, but doesn’t quite have the same umph as before unless they were to enhance the voice somehow… by the way, it’s a webseries and we’re gonna have trailers for the trailers of the upcoming episodes because that’s hip and cool and… I might have missed the announcement where they were turning it into a high school musical based on a script by the same genius who brought infamous fanfic Agony In Pink or something, but I digress.]
by the way, if you don’t know what Agony in Pink is, you’re very fortunate and I’ll leave it at that.
I can agree with the comments you made here though. At no point when watching that trailer did I think this felt like any kind of PR. [For those wondering about said comments, look up the video and you’ll see my rambling thoughts there. But to sum up my thoughts on the trailer, it looked like a generic military trailer that is about as much of a Power Rangers thing as pro wrestling is a real sport. It’s just something that could’ve been its own original thing that would probably blend in with the rest of the souless, dark, dreary, unimaginative crap that’s floating around these days, but because they word drop some familiar names and terminology, it’s supposedly a more adult Power Rangers thing or something… whatever.]
Thankfully, there are some other fan films in the works which actually look to be quite interesting. You heard of anything for a fanfilm called ‘Zordon of Eltar’?” [As a matter of fact, I’ve seen their trailer and their pitch video for the kickstarter campaign and it looks like a worthwhile project. Wouldn’t mind checking that out if they can get it going. There was also that other short film that I saw called Red Rising, which I thought was a fun little thing and I even liked the leather jacket idea for the morphed Ranger. I don’t know if that was before or after GoBuster, which were Rangers in leather jackets.]

And then in 2019, we’re getting Go-Busters in the form of Beast Morphers.

The New Shattered Grid Trailer Is Shit

So, JDF just put out a new trailer video for Boom Studios’ upcoming Shattered Grid comic event; essentially a thrown-together, cheaply produced two minute diddy where JDF, playing the Lord Drakkon hybrid Ranger character a.k.a. another “evil Tommy” character that’s about as unoriginal as anything out of poorly-written fanfiction, is looking over a bunch of stock footage while we get occasional shots of some old Ranger relics as well as two of the Sentries… whose costumes are embarrassingly cheap looking and looking to be on the verge of falling apart.

Naturally, the fandom is praising this like hot stuff and already hoping we get more garbage like this. Because God knows that’s precisely what this franchise needs is more poorly-realized shit. And I am just amazed by how everyone thinks this is all kinds of bad ass and they wish the current run of seasons would be more like this. Meanwhile, I’m watching this and laughing my ass off at how lame this whole thing is. The edge is adorable and this whole thing seems to emphasize on how silly and lame this whole Shattered Grid thing is going to turn out.

You know, it’s amazing that five years after the fact, the lessons of the Legendary Farce have already been forgotten. Remember all the hype and hooplah over what was going to be the Ranger battle to end all Ranger battles? And then what happened? We got an underwhelmingly underwhelming pay off to an underwhelmingly poor couple seasons of Power Rangers. Even the extended cut did little to make the episode seem like less of a farce than it already was.

I feel sorry for JDF. It’s true that I’ve given him shit in the past – some of it well deserved – but I truly feel bad for him and wonder for his mental state. This is a man who wanted nothing to do with the failed MMPR Fan Film project or that other spoof that I’ve sinced dubbed “Power Rangers For Retards” because they’re not official Saban productions. And yet here he is participating in an official Saban production and it comes off almost as bad as those other productions. It’s almost as though he so wanted a spin-off series for his one and only noteworthy character that he was willing to do a shittier manchild version for the sake of getting the fans to eat up whatever snake oil Boom Studios has cooked up this time.

And it’s funny; a year or so ago, I whipped up a quick image of the Green Ranger taking a dump in the toilet and postulated that JDF was so desperate and pathetic that he would’ve done a movie of said Green Ranger taking a shit for two hours and the fans would eat it up. Considering the response the trailer’s been getting, that statement is coming off more and more likely these days.

Anyway, those are my two cents.