Better living through toy robotics.
Buffy was a very robot-friendly show, what with the Buffybot and April.
James Marsters, who played Spike, the bad guy too cool to be killed, has a real-life band called Ghost of the Robot. Marsters certainly didn’t light LTR’s fire with his singing voice on the (in)famous “Once More, With Feeling” episode of Buffy, but the band’s music is probably more about the ‘tude than the harmonies. Which is OK by LTR.
Ever since LTR—a life-long baseball fanatic—started watching anime, he has been intrigued by Japanese baseball. (Even though the only anime he has seen that even references the sport is FLCL.)
American Major League Baseball kicked off its 2004 season with two games in Japan between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Yankees have an unbelievable lineup this year, and they’re showcasing former Yomiuri Giants slugger Hideki Matsui, who made the leap from Japan to America in 2003 and remains extremely popoular across the Pacific. Despite the fact that the Yankees’ payroll is six times larger than that of the Devil Rays, Tampa pounded the Yankee pitching, and won 8-3.
It’s fun to note some of the differences between attending a baseball game in America and Japan.
Women in pink-and-green kimonos presented Torre and Devil Rays manager Lou Piniella with bouquets. Many of the ads on the outfield walls were in Japanese kanji script, and women vendors walked through the aisles selling whiskey.
At the Tokyo Dome there are “sushi stands and sake bars,” while in America, allowing for some regional variation, you will find hot dogs (or other even less friendly sausages) and lousy beer in plastic bottles.
However:
Some of the Japanese fans wore green Statue of Liberty foams on their heads. And when Matsui came to the plate, they banged their Thunder Stix.
Which goes to prove that baseball is a sport that unifies diverse cultures, at least in the act of wearing goofy head-dressing and pounding pieces of plastic together to make noise. It’s a beautiful thing.
The past few days have been a blur of pool halls and library book sales for poor LTR. On the subject of pool halls he has nothing to say; however, old habits die hard, and he just can’t resist buying dirty old used books.
During lunch on Friday he took a walk to the Peachtree Branch of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library and ended up with the first four volumes of Michael Moorcock’s “Dancers at the End of Time” series, Moorcock’s The Jewel in the Skull, and mint copies of Frankenstein and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (hardcover). Total cost: $2.75!
Lady Crumpet told LTR about a sale at the main DeKalb County Public Library branch in Decatur, so he made my way over there on Sunday (bumping into Lady C. and her husband in the parking lot!). Although he arrived too late for anything but the dregs, he found some good stuff:
Total cost: $2.50!
Anime on DVD reports on the perfect gift for the animaniac librarian or bibliophile in your life, the Limited Edition of the Read or Die TV Box:
The LE version will not be a traditional Artbox. Instead, it will be a faux-leather book with DVD trays instead of pages with room for the rest of the ROD the TV series. Both the LE DVD Book (as we will refer to it) and the regular edition will ship with limited edition two-sided pencil boards that feature the artwork from the R2 cards. [via ANN]
It comes out in June.
The three-part R.O.D. OAV (Original Animation Video) is a fun, pulpy anime about a secret agent for the British Library with very unique powers who is charged with recovering a stolen book to save the world! Little Toy Robot was introduced to it by Tangognat, who also really digs it. The TV series is supposed to be a little different, but he can’t wait for it anyway.
In Cynthia Ozick’s Puttermesser Papers, a lonely Jewish woman accidentally creates a golem, Xanthippe, who helps her become mayor of New York.
That’s a very tenuous introduction to this interesting story:
PRAGUE, March 23 (JTA) — When you run for U.S. president, you have to be prepared for opponents finding skeletons in your closet.
But in the case of Sen. John Kerry, the senator’s past may reveal not so much a skeleton but a Golem, the legendary Jewish man of clay.
A respected Czech historian is claiming that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee may be a descendant of the great Rabbi Judah Loew (1520-1609), a famous Kabbalist, philosopher and talmudist known as the Maharal of Prague. [JTA]
Not surprisingly, this story is not spilling much ink. This is not so much because it may be bunk, but because nobody cares. Nobody but Little Toy Robot. Don’t say you weren’t warned when Kerry summons the earth elemental to do his bidding for November.
LTR is heartbroken to hear that Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, the second best thing about the Boston metropolitan area, is closing for good.
Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop will shut its doors for good in May. The year long attempt to save the store in a new location will come to an end. A loss of former customers who thought the store had closed at the end of 2002, compounded with an overall loss of business to chain stores, and to the changing shopping patterns on Newbury Street, made continuing the struggle impossible.
Score another hit for MonkeyBrain!
LTR received his copy of Wizardry & Wild Romance, the reprint of Michael Moorcock’s survey of epic fantasy fiction, and read it in one evening. In addition to an excellent cover by John Picacio, the book features an introduction by China Miéville called “Michael Moorcock—Extreme Librarian”:
Reading Michael Moorcock’s history of literary fantasy is like walking an immense, brilliantly stocked library, through which you don’t know the way, following a librarian who walks briskly, nodding and pointing at various books as he goes.
The book also has an afterword by Jeff VanderMeer, and Moorcock’s 140 pages or so are padded by some contemporary book reviews and an updated “Sources” section. (In fact, the whole text is updated, with references to Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings movies and probably other, more subtle changes.)
Chapter One, “Origins,” begins with an interesting and clear-cut examination of what is and isn’t epic fantasy. Moorcock accepts the imitative and commercial aspects of epic fantasy’s Gothic roots. The summary of Amadis of Gaul is a occasionally funny but a bit long. Otranto is mentioned.
The Second Chapter, “The Exotic Landscape,” is the highlight of the book. It is a look at, to quote VanderMeer’s afterword, “the way in which setting becomes a kind of character.”
The rest of the book is useful as an idiosyncratic guide to the development of sword and sorcery literature, a miniature encyclopedia in essay format. It is also a fairly well developed polemic against certain idols of fantastic fiction. Moorcock’s study suffers at times from breeziness and informality, but perhaps the best a book like this can do is leave the reader pining for more.
This is a week of drastic highs and lows in LTR’s little cartoon world.
He has devoted hours of each day to studying the stratagems and theories of the great Flying Shark vs. Flying Crocodile debate. This fills him with endless joy.
But then he discovered that one of his favorite shows, Home Movies, is being cancelled.
LTR has been with this show from Day One, when it was filmed in slightly nauseating Squigglevision. Even during the Dark Times when LTR was denied Basic Cable by the Evil Lords of Fiscal Responsibility, he would walk uphill in the snow every Sunday night to watch it.
He particularly likes the episode that features a rock opera based on Kafka’s Metamorphosis:
He is Franz Kafka!
Franz Kafka!
Be careful if you get him pissed…
Franz! Franz Kafka!
He’ll smite you with metaphor fists!
Writing all he can, he’s just a man
A warrior of words taking a stand
He is Franz Kafka!
[Spoken: Oh look, but there he is, what will he say?]
I’m a lonely German, a lonely German from Prague!
Kafka! Kafka! Kafka!
Hopefully, we will be lucky enough to see some DVDs of this fine, funny show soon.
“Questions will be asked… and destroyed… by answers!”
Tonight, Adult Swim kicked off Flying Shark vs. Flying Crocodile week. Who will win? LTR (whose money is on the more aerodynamic Flying Shark) will be following this with great interest, and he will check out the results next Sunday night.
And speaking of Adult Swim, Sealab 2021 artist and fellow Atlanta robophile Christian D. was awesome enough to send LTR a batch of D.J. Clunky stickers and an original robot drawing in the mail! LTR is going to apply a sticker to his car immediately.
Every week VH1’s show Best Week Ever chooses a celebrity who had, well, the best week ever.
For the third week of March, 2004, robots had the best week ever.
A robot Christ was used for crucifixion scenes in Mel Gibson’s new film, The Passion of The Christ.
The £220,000 electrical body double was made because the weather was too cold for actor Jim Caviezel to be filmed in just a loincloth, says The Sun. [Ananova]
The indefatigable LTR has found a picture of the robot here.
LTR hopes that, if Pluto is indeed stripped of its planetary status, it does not become a depressed alcoholic astral body, one that sidles up to middle aged women in bars to say, “I used to be something.”
But then again, LTR does not wish to live in a universe in which a planet is allowed to be named Sedna. Quaoar, however, is an awesome name.
On a happier note, LTR finds the fried chicken at Watershed absolutely delicious, and wishes that everyone could be as fortunate as he was to counter the high price with good company.
“A thing is about to happen which has not happened since the Elder Days: the Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong.”
[pic from Coast to Coast AM]
Do you check your referral stats every twenty minutes? Intrigued by both WebTrends and Web trends?
LTR digs Web metrics — errr, analytics. He was very happy to find this well written, concise overview on the subject(s) written by Jim Sterne.
There are plenty o’ robots at the Monster Blog, and lots more besides.
Click on “Meet the Monsters” for an index of your favorite beasties from Silver Age Marvel comics, arranged by origin. For example, scroll down to “Technology Gone Wild” for Robot Man.
Eric Krugg was a builder of movie monster displays. One day, Krugg met Diane Harper, whom he fell in love with at first sight. Diane rejected Krugg, telling him she was “waiting”. Krugg vowed to Diane that if he couldn’t have her no one would. Driven by his obsession, Krugg spent a year building a robot in human form. After testing the robot, he sent it on a mission to kill Diane, figuring no one would be able to link him to the crime. Later, as Krugg waited in his home, the robot man returned with Diane. Diane thanked Krugg for building what she was “waiting” for–a mate; Diane then revealed herself to be a robot. After pushing Krugg out of an open window, the robotic couple left.
Robotic couples are the real “power couples.”
This particular brand of double-crossing reminds Little Toy Robot of the great Robert Sheckley’s story, “The Robot Who Looked Like Me.”
