So while listening to Geektime this morning I heard that the new Star Wars Kinnect will be coming out soon.  I don’t really have any problem with that.  The problem I have is that it is supposed to include a dance off feature where you can dance against or as Darth Vader.  This is wrong on so many levels it boggles my mind.  This Vader image is from the Star Wars tshirts, by the way.

It seems pretty obvious now that not only was George Lucas specifically not responsible for all the things that made Star Wars great but actually does not get the movies himself at all and possible has never actually watched them.  Darth Vader should never dance.  The very idea of him dancing is so wrong that anyone suggesting it should probably be executed for the good of humanity.  Darth Vader is in all ways cool, menacing, and deadly.  The only people dancing around him should be the people he is force choking for failure.

However, it seems pretty obvious that Lucas really doesn’t care one bit about Star Wars and would willingly show any of his characters engaged in illegal and immoral sexual acts if someone offered him enough money.  He started it with the Holiday Special and has steadily spiraled down and down.  By the way, his dumb 3D Phantom Menace comes out this weekend.  Join me in specifically not seeing this opus and no longer supporting him in any way.

Jason

So George Lucas has announced Feb. 10th as the day of evil as he rereleases his horrible movie The Phantom Menace, now in 3D.  I am calling on all nerds and, for that matter, all Americans to boycott the entire series.  As everyone knows the prequels were crap, and post production 3D is crap.  Why would you spend money to support crap?

This Empire logo comes from the Star Wars T Shirt category.

This goes beyond mere dislike of what Lucas did to his franchise.  We need to take a stand against the raping of cherished movie franchises.  Hollywood needs to realize that they don’t have carte blanche with regards to good movies just for a fast buck.  In case you were wondering what the inevitable conclusion to this ugly trend I have one thing to say to you: Highland 2, the Quickening with 500 Years Ago on Planet Zeist.  You think I’m kidding?  How about a Alien prequel that has Ripley in flight school but somehow involved with aliens?  A remake of Weird Science starring Justin Bieber and Jaden Smith as “geeks” who can’t get girls?  How about a remake of the Karate Kid starring Jaden Smith but mistakenly set in China?  Oh, wait.  That one happened. How about On the Waterfront but make it about MMA?

So do the movie world a favor and don’t go see any of these.  This goes well beyond my personal desire to see Lucas fall on his face.  Don’t take your kids to see these films.  You know the new ones will just damage their soft brains and the older ones will be so full of extra worthless crap that you will want to scream.

Jason

I was very pleasantly surprised.  I guess I should have had faith in Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy’s ability to pick a script that didn’t suck, but honestly the trailers made this look like a bad 48 Hours remake and given the fact that for the past few years Eddie has been doing Daddy Daycare and the like, I was expecting something painful.  Not in the least.

The fact is, this movie is well written, clever, and above all funny without being goofy schtick.  The humor is subdued enough to make you appreciate it, as well as the acting ability of the main characters as they deliver the lines.  Eddie Murphy’s character Slide does borrow heavily from Reggie Hammond, but does not reprise the character entirely and makes this one less clever and sophisticated, but much more street smart and, to be honest, believable.  In fact, all the characters are extremely believable, especially Josh Kovacs, played by one of my favorite actors Ben Stiller, star of the great Zoolander (Derek Zoolander Center for Children who can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to do Other Stuff Good Too image courtesy of the movie t shirt category).

The story is of Josh Kovacs, manager and majordomo of the most plush building in all of Manhattan, the Tower.  While working for some of the richest people on the planet he is living in a slum and gets hassled by Eddie Muphy’s character Slide as he goes to work every day.  He is aided by a dedicated staff of doormen, security personal, and cleaning staff including his brother-in-law concierge Charlie (Casey Affleck – Good Will Hunting, Gone Baby Gone), veteran doorman Lester (Stephen Henderson – Everyday People, the Good Heart, Keane), new elevator operator Enrique Dev’Reaux  (Micheal Peña – Shooter, Million Dollar Baby, Crash), and maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidebe – Precious.  That’s it.  Glad to see her adding to her filmography).  Their richest resident is Arthur Shaw (cough cough Bernard Madoff cough cough), played excellently by the great Alan Alda (Mash of course.  A few others but Mash is more than enough), who gets arrested for securities fraud after taking every employees pensions and life savings.

I’d like to add a thought here on the brilliance of casting Mr. Alda for this.  If there is one thing the otherwise weak Schwarzenegger film the Running Man taught us is that if you take a beloved American icon and cast him in the role of a villain, he somehow seems much more evil.  It worked for Richard Dawson, and in all ways works great for Alan Alda here.

In comes FBI agent Claire Denham (played by the one time love of my life, Téa Leoni.  If you want to see why I loved her set the way back machine to 1992 and watch a short lived comedy called Flying Blind.  She also starred in Deep Impact, Jurassic Park III, and the Family Man.  She was also married to sex addict David Duchovny.  She has gotten older, but still looks super hot), who caught Shaw and now has to see him under house arrest in his fabulous penthouse.  She gets hammered one night and tells Kovacs that Shaw must still have a secret stash of money somewhere in his place.  That is when Kovacs decides to rob Shaw.  He just got fired for going nuts on Shaw and recruits evicted former tenant Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Glory, Godzilla 1998 (eww)), Charlie, Enrique, and Odessa.  They quickly realize they don’t have the skill set required and recruit career criminal Slide, who aids them in the robbery while forcing them to prove they have what it takes to rob someone in humorous ways.

Crime comedy hijinks ensues.  I don’t want to give away much of the plot, as I liked it a lot and hope you all go see it, but at one point the ridiculous meter dips so deep into the red it actually hits infrared.  Other than that the movie is fun, super entertaining, and ends in what I thought was the most appropriate way.

The stars.  Great, fun story well told.  Two stars.  I would like to give a star for every great actor in this film, but that would actually skew it too far in the star direction.  It’s a good movie, but it’s no Wrath of Khan.  Murphy, Stiller, Alda, Leoni, even Matthew Broderick would be five stars.  I’ll just give three for great casting.  Very real characters.  One star.  Dialog and direction were great.  One star.  No annoying subplots or unnecessary characters.  Even the weird Russian girl (Nina Arianda – Midnight in Paris) had a significant role.  One star.  An ending that made sense (mostly) and didn’t have any sugar frosting smeared on it to make it more palatable to the unwashed morons of this country.  One star.  Two bonus stars for an overall pleasant movie experience that exceeded my expectations.  Total: eleven stars.

The black holes.  For a movie that seemed to work hard to stay funny in the real world, when they got to the actual robbery they went in a really stupid direction and completely blew out my suspension of disbelieve circuit (sorry, but elementary violations of the laws of physics even a grade school child could spot grinds me like sandpaper underwear).  Two black holes.  The humor, which until the robbery had been pretty low key and subtle, took a left turn down Three Stooges alley and cruised there for most of the rest of the movie (ever see the one where they are skyscraper construction workers?).  Tonal shifts 3/4ths of the way through the movie rarely work.  One black hole.  There was a romantic undercurrent that felt really undeveloped.  One black hole.  Total:  four black holes.

I will say that this movie was rated PG-13 and in all ways worked at that rating.  It was one that didn’t need to go any deeper into R.  Kudos to director Brett Ratner (who managed to insert a speaking cameo).  However, Brett, you are going to have to come up with a few more great movies to make up for X-Men Last Stand and Rush Hour.

So a total of seven stars, a great score.  Should you see it?  Absolutely.  Do you need to see it on a big screen?  Not really.  There are a couple scenes towards the end that benefit from being on a bigger screen, but like most comedies this one will do just fine on a TV.  Good second date film, IMO, in that it is funny, but not super sexual.  Also, none of the people in this movie are super Hollywood hot, so unless she has a thing for Eddie Murphy you won’t lose anything in comparison.

Thanks for reading.  I fell way behind in my movie watching this last week and will try to nail a few more down this week.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  By the way, I did great the first day at the Warhammer Tournament and got my ass beat on the second by a guy I hate like I hate the Star Wars Holiday Special, so kind of a bummer weekend.  I probably would have done better sitting on my ass at home writing more.

Dave

This post I will translate what people claim to do for a living into real language, as well as comment on what you can expect if you date this person.  Before I get into this understand that, at least for men, people with high paying jobs or who are wealthy really have no need to go to a dating site to meet women, so if there is someone claiming to be a doctor or stockbroker probably has some serious issues along the lines of lost his fact in a tragic belt sanding accident.  If you are looking to meet a doctor, go to a hospital.

Teacher. For some reason I have dated a lot of teachers (what did your mom do for a living, Dave?  Thank you, Dr. Freud), although not so much lately.  They tend to be pretty stable, with few annoying habits and plenty of free time on weekends and summer.  They also have no gray area when it comes to kids; either they love them or hate them.  When a teacher posts online it typically means they are sick of dating other teachers, so if you are one best you should move on.  For men, this guy usually falls into the hates kids camp.  However, they tend to be pretty reliable, loyal, and while they don’t have a lot of money coming in should be able to one day buy a house and retire.  For women they also tend to be the same, except they all inevitably “love to travel” and once in a while you will meet one who is a freak in bed.  Something about having to be so proper all day, I guess.

Medical Professional. This is a term people use to try to trick you into thinking they are a doctor.  They are not.  Doctors say doctor.  This person is at best a nurse, probably an orderly of some kind or at worse the guy who mops up the bio-hazardous waste or works in the kitchen.  Sometimes pharmacy.  The thing about being in the medical profession without being a doctor is you tend to get your ego punched in the stomach every day by pretentious, overbearing doctors, so if you are looking for someone  you can dominate in a relationship this might be the person for you.  Also, most of them hate doctors, so whatever your lame job is it will probably look more appealing.  For women this person is usually a nurse, so you can expect to talk a lot about either sex or disgusting work stories involving having to clean up something truly repulsive or changing an adult diaper or bedpan.  On the other hand, they tend to be pretty horny.  For guys this is more often an orderly, which is the medical equivalent of a pizza deliver guy except they don’t make tips.

Medical examiner. The one exception to the no-doctors-online rule is the medical examiner.  I’ve never met a female one, so I will not comment on what it is like to go out with one.  From what I have seen second hand male mortician actually tend to know some of the funniest jokes you have ever heard, especially if you like gallows humor.  If you have a darker side, love vampires or zombies, and/or want to creep out your friends by all means date this guy.

Lawyer. Lawyers are interesting.  Usually they are so busy with work that you will be lucky to see them one evening a week, if that.  They also, for the most part, hate their job and life but spent so much money on school that they cannot afford to do anything else.  For women this seems especially true, as I have dated a few and they all feel frustration about their life.  They also tend to have little interests outside of work and working out, so whenever I date one it tends to be a painful struggle to find something to talk about beyond the whole trying-to-remain-true-to-your-nerd-self-while-talking-to-a-woman thing.  For men this never, ever means a rich corporate law guy.  This is usually a public defender or ambulance chaser.  I don’t date men, so I can’t comment too strongly on this, but from what I have seen these tend to not be the most loyal on the planet.  On the other hand even a poor lawyer can afford a nice evening out.

Business owner. Take it from a business owner, this is never a Fortune 500,000 company.  For men, the best case scenario is a guy who has his own tech service fixing computers and networks.  These guys tend to be pretty geeky and therefore fun to date if you are a geek, but they also tend to work a lot, especially at night.  At worst this guy owns a failing Play it Again Sports and is a few months away from going back to work as a sanitation engineer.  In either case the problem with these guys is there will be good months and bad months.  One month he will be rolling in dough and the next eating Top Ramen.  For women this somehow always ends up being owning a bead shop somewhere.  Don’t ask me why.  They tend to be kind of fun and have more free time than guys who own shops, but they also tend to be pretty uninclined to hit the gym, if you know what I mean.

Of course, it goes without saying that if the business owner happens to be a guy with a website that sells nerd t-shirts and writes a hilarious dating advice blog than he is not only fun and entertaining, but also sexy and virile as hell.  You should probably sleep with him as soon as possible.

That’s it for now.  More tomorrow.  By they way, I just reread my last post and think it’s one of the best I have written, so if you didn’t read it go back and do so.

For the last posts who-would-win, I would have to bet on the half squad of Stormtroopers beating the full squad of Sandmen.  Better combat training (although Stormtroopers seem to be missing the part of their training that would teach them to hide behind cover or maybe even duck down), better weapons, and better armor.  Not to mention they are about 1,000 times cooler.  The numerical superiority of a full squad of Sandmen would not make up for that.  (Stormtrooper image courtesy of the Star Wars t shirt category)

For today the question I cross genres to ask who would win, Donkey Kong versus Mecha-Godzilla?

I’m not going to dig in too deep on this.  There are any number of sites with advice on how to kiss.  Instead, I will highlight things to look for that can make the kiss work well or fail miserably (trust me, when it comes to mistakes you can make to crash and burn, I am an expert).

1.  Clean breath. I have stated this before many times, but it is important enough to restate again.  If you think you might make out, don’t order the onion-garlic special for dinner.  In fact, operate under the assumption that you might be kissing on any given night and order accordingly.  Get your stank breath dinner plate on the way home after she rejects you for other reasons.  Also, brush, floss, and toss in a breath mint at some point.

2.  Match her tongue technique. Kissing a girl can be like trying to pet a strange cat.  The slightest bad move and she will skitter under the bed, never to be seen again.  Some women like a lot of tongue.  Some women think it’s gross as hell.  She will show you what she likes with her tongue.  Go as deep as she does and not one micro-millimeter further.  The difference between her thinking you a nice guy or a sex driven pervert is literally one lick too many.

3.  Hold her face. Most (not all) women kind of like it if you put one hand on the side of her face while kissing.  DO NOT use both hands.  Try it and see if she seems to respond positively.  Also, if you have hands big enough to encompass her entire head (I generally do) just use the the finger tips.

4.  Go gentle. Slow and easy.  Remember that strange cat.  (Actually, this advice can be applied to all your interactions).

5.  Close your eyes, and keep them closed. Some women will, at some point during the long kiss, open her eyes to make sure you don’t have your eyes open.  Somehow the romance is robbed if you open your eyes, but not if she does.  It’s called a double standard because it is twice as true.

6.  Do your best to control your autonomic responses. Nothing will kill the mood like you having to belch (or something even less savory) during the kiss, but that should be obvious.  However, given the audience I am talking to I can’t assume anything, so don’t belch during the kiss.  The important one to avoid, however, is showing your excitement in a physical sense if you know what I mean.  For some girls this would not be a real problem, but like I have said most women are constantly looking for an excuse to dump you and pitching a tent 30 seconds into your first kiss can give her the rip cord she is looking to pull.  Think about baseball or something.

That’s it for today.  Next post I will start talking about when and how to initiate the kiss.

Last posts’ “who would win” question actually seems pretty obvious in retrospect.  I think Gandalf would kick seven kinds of crap out of Harry Potter in about 30 seconds.  Sorry to all the Harry Potter fans out there, but any man who can beat a Balrog one on one will not have a lot of trouble with a pimple faced teenager on a broom.

Today’s question is kind of a “stoppable force meets movable object” one.  Who would win; a squad of Stormtroopers verses a squad of Red Shirts?  (Stormtrooper image courtesy of the Star Wars t-shirt category).

Ok, I know I shouldn’t interrupt the interview series with Danny Nero, but I just saw this movie and want to do this while it is fresh and the movie is still relevant.  Also I have nailed down the rating system and want the chance to present it.

Like many movie reviews, I am going to award movies stars.  However, unlike other movie reviewers, I am going to tell you exactly what each star is for.  Each positive thing I see in the movie will get a star or two.  For example, I might say “Plot was decent.  One star.”  Then, because I am a nerd who loves outer space and knows what happens to stars when they go bad, I am going to award black holes for negative things I see in the movie.  An example might be “After the movie I felt compelled to go upstairs and murder the projectionist in an attempt to keep other film patrons from suffering as I had just done.  Four black holes.”

At that point I will add up all the stars and subtract all the black holes and hopefully come up with a number between 1 and 10 in either stars or black holes.  So a movie like Blade Runner would have like 10 stars and one black hole (for coming out with 14 different versions and making the first release the weakest of them.  See the final cut if you haven’t) for a net total of 9 stars, an extremely good score.  A movie like Zardoz would have like 10 black holes (plot, acting, character development, costumes, chest hair, the list goes on) and two stars (for having Sean Connery in it and for the fact that pretty much every woman in the film has a nude scene at some point) for a net of 8 black holes, a terrible score.  (Blade Runner image courtesy of the movie t-shirt category)

Let’s try it out, shall we?  Megamind is an animated superhero movie that borrows so heavily from Superman comics that if it were  a lung transplant there would be no chance of tissue rejection.  It details the adventures of Megamind, a super intelligent alien sent to earth by his parents while their planet got blow up by a supernova-I mean sucked into a black hole, and his arch nemesis, Metroman, a completely different super powered alien sent to earth by his parents from a different planet that was being sucked into the same black hole.  The twist here is that Megamind, the protagonist, is the villain rather than the hero.  I enjoyed the movie too much to give any more spoilers that that.

Stars first.  Excellent plot-one star.  Animation was un-freaking-believable-one star.  Main character was very cool-one star.  Main character was voiced by Will Ferrell, whom I am a big fan-one star.  Main character was a villain-one star.  Comic relief characters were not completely worthless but were rather actually pretty bad ass in and of themselves-one star.  Dialogue was fun and well written-one star.  Female supporting character was drawn as a younger, hotter version of Tina Fey (whom I already think is pretty hot looking) and basically had her sarcastic, dry personality with short haired brunette elfin-like looks-one star.  Tons of super villain devices, robots, explosives, and weapons-one star.  Total: 10 stars.

Now the black holes.  The movie had not just one, but two comic relief characters (in a comedy, no less)-two black holes (one each).  Story was kind of predictable-one black hole.  While the writers can claim it’s a tribute to comic books all they want, it’s basically a Superman story with a twist-one black hole.  Also, they couldn’t decide if they were writing the Incredibles or not-one black hole.  Total, 5 black holes.

If you have a 1st grade eduction you can probably subtract the 5 black holes from the 10 stars and get this movies final score in my opinion: 5 stars.  However, remember that there is a range of stars (positive) and black holes (negative) so really, it’s like a 15 out of 20.  And that’s the last time I will explain that.  Essentially a 5 is very good, as even a one star movie is still in the positive.

Also, note that there is no upper limit to either stars or black holes (just like in space).  As an example, I give the Star Wars Holiday Special one star for each of the main movie stars that made the horrible mistake of showing up in it and another star for the cartoon first appearance of Boba Fett.  Then I give it one black hole for every second of it’s existance-7200 black holes.  Plus a black hole each for the appearances of Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur, and Jefferson Starship, with 10 bonus black holes for the wookie porn scene and 83 black holes for Bea Arthur singing.  Net result: 7289 black holes.

(Please note-that is not my clever way of saying you should see the Star Wars Holiday Special for some kind of nerd cred.  There is nothing good about that flick.  Trust me.  It would be better if you watched the Phantom Menace in slow motion every day for a month than watch that.  If you ignore my advice on this you will have a cherished childhood memory sexually abused, murdered, and then have the corpse desecrated.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

But I digress.  Megamind gets a 5 from me, which means it’s totally fun.  You can bring your kids to it.  You can bring a date to it.  Heck, I think I’d even bring my mom to it.  Well worth seeing, even though I had to watch it in 3d, which gives me a headache.

By they way, as far as that rating system goes, Copyright 2010 Dave Inman

No dancing or dating advice this weekend.  I am headed to LA for the LA Comic Book convention.  If you are in LA stop by and say hi.

The celebrities at this show are Todd Bridges (Willis from Different Strokes) and Daniel Logan, who played young Boba Fett in Episode II, Attack of the Clones (image courtesy of the Star Wars t shirt category).  I guess you can tell the show is not huge, but it is fun and there is usually a lot of stuff to see there.  Also, my super hot friend Olga will be helping me out, and afterward we are going to see Res Evil 3D so look forward to a review by me next week.

Talk to you soon.

I have never fit in with the mainstream crowd. This has always been sad for me, not fitting in that is. The only comfort that I have had over the years is my love of Star Wars characters. I could sit and play with my Star Wars action figures all day. In fact, I used to pretend like I was the Princess Leia figure and wore George Lucas Films t shirts to school everyday.

I never thought I would find someone to share my love of Star Wars; I never thought there was someone out there that appreciated a life that consists mostly of action figure play. Low and behold – I did. I met the love of my life at a Star Wars convention. I guess there’s someone out there for everyone.

Time to delve into a tough subject for most nerd guys.  Shutting up and letting the girl talk.

This is tough for most nerd guys.  We start to feel nervous talking  to women and the defensive mechanism is to fill the awkwardness with examples of our wit and verve.  Also, we really think we need to impress her somehow by showing her how much intellect and knowledge we have.  However, this is a huge trap (thank you Admiral Akbar) that a lot of nerds fall into for most of their life.

Here is why it is a bad thing.  If there is one thing most women love it is a mystery.  Guys that are mysterious are by nature sexy.  Women feel compelled to dig more and more until they understand the guy as well as they can (which is pretty poorly, to tell the truth, but they like to believe they have accomplished their goal).  If you shut up early on and make her work for every tidbit then by the time she has you figured out you have been in a relationship with her for a couple years.

The fact is, familiarity breeds contempt.  No matter how cool and put together you or any other guy is, you have things that annoy women just by having a Y chromosome.  As a mysterious figure out of a romance novel she knows nothing about your bad habits or obsession with Boba Fett (shirt image courtesy of the Star Wars t shirt section) or any number of other things that she will have nothing but contempt for.  As she learns of them your chance of seeing her naked drops.

Think of it as a score.  When you first meet a girl imagine she assigns a score from 1-100 to you.  If you are super good looking or super rich you are probably in the 80-90 range.  If you are horribly disfigured or just the wrong body and/or facial type you might be in the 30-40s.  Most of us end up in the middle range.  Bottom line each girl has a minimum score they require in order to sleep with you.  Every time you open your mouth you risk losing points.  Granted, there is the chance of gaining points, but unless what you are about to say is “I am the owner of a multi-million dollar corporation” then I think it fair to say the odds of losing points grossly outweighs the chance of gaining points.

So bottom line, say next to nothing about yourself.  If I have done well talking to a girl then I know a ton about her (fodder for future conversations) while she knows my first name and maybe a vague idea of what I do for a living.  That’s it.  Every thing she knows about you is less chance to get anywhere with her.

I’m not saying don’t answer her questions.  That would be weird.  But every time she asks you something answer with as few details as possible and turn it into a question about her.  For example:

Girl: “So, Dave, what do you do for a living?”

Dave: “I run a web site.  We sell t-shirts.  What do you do?”

Girl: “I work in marketing.”

Dave: “Really?  Have you worked on any campaigns I might have seen?”

See how that worked?  I answered her question and gave her the opportunity to talk about herself for another five minutes.

Eventually she will learn all your bad habits and idiosyncrasies, but by that time you should be already sleeping with her and she will develop other relationship ties that will keep her from kicking you to the curb.

This point is kind of near to my heart, as it is the one piece of my advice I really struggle with.  It is so easy to talk about myself with a girl and say too much.  Just recently I was dating a girl.  She caught the flu or something and was sick, so instead of sleeping together we would talk a lot via phone and text.  Bottom line is she learned too much about me before we slept together and I got dumped.  Remember, familiarity breeds contempt.

Next post: the Two Minute Rule.

I am probably going to get crap from 100% of my friends, but I have been looking at trailers for the new movie Kick Ass and am really looking forward to it.  It looks really fun.  I am a big Nick Cage fan as well, and he is looking very Raising Arizona-ish in this one.  I hope I am not setting myself up for disappointment, but I will definitely watch it in spite of how it’s reviewed, and will probably put shirts into my comic book t shirt section.

Of course, I loved Mystery Men, so this one will have to really suck to disappoint me.

Anyway, just got done uploading some new Star Wars shirts, including this particular gem.  I love this one.  Stormtroopers are so freaking cool. I’m going to be adding more girls shirts tomorrow too.

That’s pretty much it.  I just wanted to comment on Kick Ass after having seen the trailers.