I saw this cartoon spoofing Power Rangers the other night and I thought it was pretty funny. But then, most things that are touched by Egorapter usually are.
I confess, I watched the first couple seasons of Power Rangers when I was in high school. It’s a guilty pleasure. Saw the movie. In the theaters. But only to make fun of it. It’s one of the few moments in life I look back and wished I were also high at the time. When my buddies and I would goof around, we’d act out silly Power Ranger spoofs of our own. Heh, though, one of us still thinks he’s a Power Ranger…
Watching that cartoon got me wondering what ever happened to the original cast of that show. I know that the black ranger is still in acting, cuz I see him every now and again on a TV show. But for the rest, I did a quit bit of checking out their IMDB and Wikipedia entries. The red ranger got fat. The blue ranger’s balding. The pink ranger is a musician, but all her recent photos are blurred to hide that she’s 37.
When I got to the yellow ranger, I paused. She was looking really good in her Wikipedia photo. I thought either she hasn’t aged a day in the past 10 years or they just used an old photograph. I began to read the file and found that there’s a good reason for that: She’s dead. Died in a car accident a few years ago. I thought, “Well, I guess that’s the final nail in the coffin for the 15-year reunion next year.” (No pun intended…or was it?) I was surprised, wondering why I hadn’t heard of something like that. Something in the depths of my memory tells me that I probably had heard about it from a buddy, but most likely passed it off as just a rumor. Or maybe I knew and just forgot.
Anyway, the green ranger runs his own martial arts school, but gives me the vibe that he’s a lot like some slimy asshole club owner. I don’t really know what Bulk and Skull are up to, but last I heard, Bulk got into 3D graphics. The guy who ran the juice bar actually lived in Riverside, CA and I’ve seen him in person a couple times in passing while at the mall. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I read that he has severe heart, weight, and drinking problems.
One thing that always got me is that Power Rangers did something like Star Trek, in that they wanted to demonstrate racial equality, but how they did it turned out to be more racist than if they tried nothing. They had each ranger represent a different race, each also playing out their ethic background to it’s fullest extent. No real cultural blending at all…which is absurd considering they went to a high school in Southern California. Then they also made the subtle association of their race with which color ranger they were. The Black Ranger was black, the Yellow Ranger was asian, the Red Ranger was a redneck, and so on…
I’ll tell ya, it’s just another one of those things that make me feel old to realize that Power Rangers first came out 15 years ago. On this final note, I got to thinking that after being on the air for that long, they’ve accumulated a hell of a lot of characters… rangers, villains, monsters, supporting cast, etc. So I thought that would be an excellent basis to develop a multi-player online game based on the Power Rangers. They could call it the MMPR MMORPG! LOLOMGBBQ!!!
Okay, so I almost broke my website. I thought that moving the blog function of my site to the main directory would be a lot more complicated. So after failing a couple sets of instructions laid out by WordPress, my site turned to shit. Thankfully, after re-installing it, I found out that it was really as easy as changing one setting and altering one line of code. Luckily I was able to restore the layout style and found back-ups of my previous entries as well. Now I just gotta re-add my sidebar links and I’m back to normal!
I’m learning that updating posts isn’t as simple as I’m used to for LiveJournal. I got a post editing client, but it doesn’t quite post things 100%. On the one hand, it messes up the “Posted by” link below the entry. On the other hand, the web-based editor built into WordPress auto-formats any code I enter into it, so it makes it hard for me to do things like embed YouTube videos. If I have to edit the post for any reason (like fixing the “Posted by” link) the code for the video is destroyed and I can’t insert it again without deleting the entry and reposting it. Maybe I’ll try another client that will do exactly what I need…
Kudos or curses to Phil for introducing “Asshole Mario” to COUp yesterday. It’s always fun to see that there are gamers out there that still have a love of classic games, but are also passionate enough to design new levels for it. And challenging ones at that!
With the clever use of environmental layout and resources, one could easily bring us back to the era of “Nintendo Hard”. Sadly, these days game design seems more geared toward the cinematic aspect of immersion into a virtual world than creating a test of one’s dexterity and puzzle-solving skills. I don’t think that many games–even in the SNES generation–would encourage the kind of outside-the-box thinking, such as sacrificing Yoshi’s life as a tool in order to get across a broad lava pit.
For these videos, watching the player replay the same areas over and over and over again can get a little annoying, though there were times when the audience of COUp would cheer him on. What would make it much better would have been to add the audio track of the player himself, much like this series of Mario vids.
Myself, I don’t think I’d make it past (or maybe even to) Level 4. Every time I’d hit a hidden coin box, I’d turn into Sawyer from Lost. And if my buddy had made them for me to try out, I’d be constantly punching him in the kidneys.
My DS has been a fantastic tool in getting me to the gym more often. Most of the time, I’m on the bike machine, since my knees are in bad shape. If I bring in my DS with a nice RPG plugged into it, I pass time there soooo much better. Especially with games like Final Fantasy VI, where all I have to do is walk around and level up. Only 20 random battles and suddenly my timer goes off!
In the past few years, Dance Dance Revolution has been the top gamer workout of choice. Unfortunately, I really suck at rhythm games like that. I don’t imagine all that jumping and stomping being too healthy for my knees anyway. But playing a game while doing a traditional workout? That I can do. It’s not much for cardio, but it gets me moving, breaks a sweat, and helps my knees. So if there’s any one that finds 30-60min a day to get in some game action, by golly you to can work off that fat ass at the same time!
I was doing some grocery shopping at Big Lots earlier tonight and I saw that they have the PC version of Psychonauts for only $4! I absolutely love that game and I think it’s a super deal for that price. I was tempted to pick it up to give to someone, but I didn’t really know anyone else that would dig it. I’ll see if my sister would like it, but since she doesn’t have a PC gamepad, she’d probably only be interested if it were the PS2 version. Ashley would probably like it, but she’s too busy to play games. Heh, I’m still holding out for her to try Final Fantasy VI!
Anyway, if there’s anyone that hasn’t played it, by all means check out a Big Lots to see if you can find it there. It’s hours of fun for less than the price of lunch at McDonald’s!
Wow… I’m one step closer to having a real website! So far, a lot of what I’m working on is tweaking the style. I’ve installed a base style (Dark Pad) to start with, and I’ll be more or less self-teaching myself to adjust the code so that it looks more like how I’d like my blog to be. I really like the basic configuration that my LJ has, so it may look very similar to that, at least for now.
What may happen for this site in general is that the blog will become the main feature, with supplements on the side, so I may end up moving this to the main site. I just gotta figure out how to do that without messing anything up that I’ve already worked on.
