Swoops

Reading The Wizard of Oz at the park on Ainsworth with some couchsurfers and eating gummi pears.

"Have you ever seen a turtle get down?"

Pix Patisserie, a fancy dessert cafe near my house, sometimes projects old childhood favorites in the hope that you will order more food the longer you are there. Their latest showing was "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze" and yes, this movie is nearly as bad as its title. I was a HUGE ninja turtles fan in my youth and even though I enjoyed this movie immensely I think there was always a feeling just under the surface that the turtles just weren't performing up to my expectations. Notably, TMNT II: tSotO has a decent plot for a sequel (aside from Shredder somehow coming back from the dead). We find out more about the origin of our beloved foursome and new mutants are introduced in an effort to fight "freak with freak." The twist of course comes much to Shredder's dismay when he finds out that his secret weapons have the intelligence of a two year old. Tokka and Razor (a poor substitute for Rocksteady and Bebop) were cool ideas, but looked ridiculous and are pretty much too embarassing to watch. They did however inspire me to draw this guy from a movie still I found on the internet.



I've just about given up hope on them ever making a movie version of the turtles that's as gritty and dark as the comic was instead of shamelessly pandering to children. Let's get rid of the snappy remarks, cool dude attitude, and rainbow colored masks (in the comic they all wear red). It seems that people are getting tired of the hyper realistic portrayals of super-heroes that the X-Men movies and Christopher Nolan's Batman has given us, but I think one more round wouldn't hurt anybody.


.... and could someone please tell me why the mutagen Shredder uses at the end of the movie affects his body armor too? That just doesn't make sense. Oh and Super Shredder was way too tough to die from a pier collapsing on him. 'Nuff said.

Obama Unmasked!

Over the weekend there was an article in the Oregonian about a young boy who wasn't allowed to perform at his school's talent show because some teachers, including the principal, thought some people would be offended by his act. The boy mimicked a famous youtube video of a man dancing around wearing a Halloween Obama mask, and according to his two gay fathers "he had been practicing for weeks." I understand the history of black face and minstrel shows in this country but the fact is ALL Halloween masks make their impersonator look cartoonish and ridiculous. It's kind of hard not to when you're sculpting something out of rubber, plus that's kind of the point. If this was George Bush or Bill Clinton nobody would have said a thing, but because our new president is black there's an air of hypersensitivity in the country. The boy was upset about not being able to perform, but was even more upset that someone would think he intended to mock the new president, whom he admired, in any way. He also thought it was cool that Obama has a Wii hooked up to a big screen TV in the white house, which it is. So there.

I guess what I'm saying is people should be sensitive about things that actually matter instead of taking it out on kids who want to impersonate the president, which they have every right to do, no matter what color their skin is. The end.