i am digging these new Daft Punk RAH figures!

"Daft Punk, late 90s pioneers of the French house music scene that took the world by storm, are now ready to invade your home as Real Action Heroes. Standing 12 inches tall, these realistic dolls feature injection molded, plated backpacks. Updated to RAH301 specs. Release Date: December 31, 2004."
(now, to come up w/the $260 to get them)


-> R.i.P. (and raise hell!) Russ Meyer!

if i were a rich man, i'd get one of these in a heart beat: horse head pillow

it's one thing to be sick. it's another thing to be sick due to long hours at the office and almost no sleep to recover. friday it caught up w/me so i was down and out w/a truly unpleasant summer cold all weekend of which i'm still tryin' to get over. this was easily the most unproductive weekend in a long, long time as i was pretty much confined to a motionless state the majority of the weekend. except when i was weezing, coughing or wiping snot off my face.

last night i did manage a grueling venture to pick up some provisions with a quick stop into Mitsuwa to retrieve my book order from Asahiya (Microman Chronicles 1974-2004, which is very cool despite Asahiya's hefty markup: $42 for Y2800 cover price! ugh). i also got my j1toys membership card sans the photo of me they took a few weeks ago. ah well.

i was able to watch a fucking awesome movie that i've wanted to see for a long time: Shurayuki-hime aka "Lady Snowblood". it's a 1973 Japanese revenge flick starring Meiko Kaji in the title role. i won't blather on about it b/c it's just too goddamn good for words (plus i wouldn't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet like all the reviews tend to do these days. thanks, jerkwads!). it's also one of the films (in the long line of films) that Tarantino has riffed. in this case, for Kill Bill, natch. this is one that definitely makes the top of the movie night list w/a bullet.

this morning i attempted to "go to bed" but found myself in the rasping hell of coughing and congestion no matter how many shots of tussin i downed. however, i still managed to pull myself up for the early matinee of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. ok, so the 2nd installment wasn't much better than the 1st (maybe it was worse?) but, seriously, i have no problem dropping five bucks on 2 hot chicks fighting zombies for an hour and a half. esp. when my mind was as foggy and fucked up as it was putting down this goddamned work-induced cold virus.

RE:A is stupid, silly eye candy; teenage boy, testosterone-fueled fantasy-violence in a can for video game junkies (much like the 1st flick). did i enjoy it? hell yeah. was it a good flick? hell no. but i will say that i am motivated to play the video games now. cuz that's really how i viewed it: a video game brought to screen. being vaguely familiar w/the storyline but never having played _any_ of the games, it seemed like an 'okay' adaptation. and still 100x better than House of the Dead, which ain't saying much, i know. somewhere in my toy stash i have a Nemesis action figure and i only wish it was as cool as the one in this movie (tho i wouldn't mind a real nice 1/6 scale movie version Nemesis w/gun accessories!).

at least EbeRoeper hated the flick, which was expected, and that makes me feel a little better about liking it. i'm a bit concerned about Sky Captain coming up this weekend since Roger *loved* it and Rope-a-Dope hated it. guess we'll know soon enough.

after the viewing i stopped in bestbuy to get FireRed and LeafGreen which came out today and were onsale for $25 each. hard to pass on that since Sapphire/Ruby are still selling at their regular msrp of $35. come to think of it, i'm pretty sure i paid around $25 for mine used. anyways, it was a deal to get the new games at the sale price along w/the nintendo guide for $15. i kicked off LeafGreen tonight and it's super terrific of course and reminds me of when i first (finally) started playing the series earlier this year w/Yellow. it's the same Kanto story as the original game so it conjures up the warm fuzzies... but it's so slow going early on as you know if you played the original games. yet it's still super terrific and now i want to get another GBA:SP just so i can trade. yes, it's still a sickness.

George Iida's Dragon Head


it's hard to say whether or not i truly took advantage of the 3-day weekend. if sleeping whenever on a whim (and yet staying awake until 6AM), bidding on and winning more needless items on ebay, viewing anime torrents and watching a few DVD movies all count then i made out pretty well. feeling somewhat guilty after 2.5 solid days of indulgence i decided to do something productive today and worked on my frontroom for a large part of day.

my ghetto shelves are down to two final boards which i intend to eliminate tomorrow evening and begin the massive rearrangement. i managed to pack up _all_ my micronauts which was a tad bittersweet: happy to finally get them packed; sad b/c i've spent a lot of effort (and coin) to acquire my micros and not having them on display sucks. but it had to be done. i'm still undecided as to whether to make the leap and get the proper shelves i want or wait until i move to a new apt. i bailed out of moving to LA this summer for a few reasons and one was b/c i thought there was a possibility of moving to a different, more desirable locale. but i'm thinking that dream is quickly fading and i may be stuck here in the windy city a lot longer than i planned. so... what to do?

i definitely do not want to continue living in my current craphole. besides growing to hate my apt i've developed a major aversion to my neighbors and apt location. i wish i knew that i was going to be moving to a whole other place so i'd had least have some assurance in making my plans. ugh. i'm tired of it.

visited The Glen saturday evening w/some friends. such a peculiar place it is! residing in the middle of Glenview some city planners took the old vacated Naval Air Station and restored it into a spanking new modern *urban* suburban mini-town. and it's an odd place b/c there's no 'tweeners to found on the hopping weekend nights; it's all teens and +40 set. our party seemed to be the only representation of our age group during the crowded evening. just bizarre.

caught Hero yesterday at Crown Village and as expected, it's simply gorgeous on the big screen. and this was despite a piss poor screening (subtitles cropped off initially than overcorrected so that the top of screen was cropped; dumbasses!). theater was surprisingly full! not surprisingly it took top box office honors again (good!! take note, miramax, next time you consider sitting on a film for 2 fucking years. assholes).

today i finally finished watching Dragon Head (over 3 sittings). it wasn't an easy film for me to watch. best described as twisted spin on Day After Tomorrow meets 28 Days Later post-apocalyptic theme set in modern Japan the flick is dreary, bleak, hopeless, grim, etc (read the review story & *spoiler* warning!). based on a manga series by Mochizuki Minetaro, Dragon Head is not a bad movie by any stretch just very desperate. there was a tremendous amount of fanfare around this flick when it was released in Japan last year and i'm not sure why (maybe from the popularity of the manga?) b/c it's not particularly all that great but is worth watching. and the sets and demolished landscapes were done extremely well.

after that i watched the Korean comedy Spy Girl which kept me captivated for the entire 2hrs (not easily done these days). this is not a great movie but very watchable and reminded me of lot of the late 80s Patrick Dempsey teen/romance-comedies (Loverboy, Can't Buy Me Love, etc.) of which i am rather fond of, good or bad. read this synopsis and you'll understand what i'm talking about:



Jeong-hwa Kim in the lead "spygirl" role is the ice queen hottie that you expect will melt by films end. but Spy Girl sidesteps the easy "hollywood" ending offering a sly finale (possibly signaling a sequel; hell, they sequeled My Wife The Gangster so why not?). i recommend it, natch. check the review here (slight *spoiler* warning).