"Three Columns for the Price of One!"

Since the guy who uses that phrase rips people off all the time, I don't mind doing it to him. Moving on:


Leave you childhood memories in your childhood: Netflix is awesome. You can find everything short of Second Sight, Madhouse, and porn on there. This was made evident by the appearance of  Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the show almost every kid in America loved.

Lord Zedd: Looks like the baddest
man on the planet. But he isn't.

Eleven-year-old Flan loved it. Twenty-seven-year-old Flan? Meh. Lord Zedd wasn't as badass as I recalled, I didn't really need to hear the PSA's about how hard work and perseverance pay off and how trees produce oxygen, and it's sickening how all six of those Power Brats won every competition they were in.


The biggest thing? Jason the Red Ranger just bends over and let's Tommy the White Ranger take over leadership of the Power Rangers. I can picture the conversation:


Billy: "Zordon what about Jason?"


Zordon: "Jason has been a fine leader. But for some reason all the children love Tommy and the amount of power it takes to keep my giant head floating in this tube isn't cheap."


Jason: "It's ok guys. Even though I'm a proven leader, saved you more times than I can count, kicked Tommy's ass when he was the Green Ranger, and am a better fighter than all of you combined, we're a team. I believe in you Tommy, even if you are a whiny b**** who can't get to second base with Kimberly."


Trini: "Yeah, we're a team!"


Zack: "And no one member is better than the other!"


Kimberly: "Totally!"


Tommy: "Thanks guys. I'll try not to let my low self-esteem, sexual frustration, multiple missed roundhouse kicks and annoying 'seet-hyuaw' grunts get in the way of leading the team."


Alpha: "Aye-yi-yi-yi-yi!"


On the plus side, Amy Jo Johnson? Waaaaaaaay hotter then I remember.


MMPR wasn't the only show I watched from the good 'ol days. Marvel/Disney dropped the majority of its animated series' on Netflix, among them X-Men and Spider-Man, which are exactly like I remembered: X-Men was great for two and a half seasons before taking a nosedive and Spider-Man told great stories but featured some of the lousiest (and laziest) animation you'll ever see.


Lastly, I watched one episode of the original He-Man and The Masters of the Universe cartoon. Awful. I've moved on to Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is good stuff.


PS3 RIP: A few months ago I made a "deal" with myself where I wouldn't play any video games until my degree was finished. An unhealthy obsession with winning PS3 trophies led to this.


This decision was recently made easier. A couple of weeks ago my Playstation 3 got the Yellow Light of Death with my Watchmen Blu-Ray stuck in it. Got the disc out but when the customer service rep told me it would cost $130 plus shipping and taxes so I told him to screw and said I would get a Samsung (which he agreed with, way to promote the brand buddy) and that's that. So I'm borrowing my parents BD player which they don't use until I graduate or I hit the lottery.


Summer of superhero movies: So I recently watched my fifth (and final?) movie of the summer. I will rank them from worst to first:


5. Captain America: The First Avenger- Good story with good acting from Haley Atwell and Tommy Lee Jones. But something was off with Chris Evans and Hugo Weaving, the beginning should have been the ending and the ending should have been cut altogether, and apparently someone at Marvel thought it was too much to have Nick Fury actually command the Howling Commandos. Not awful, but not great either.


4. X-Men: First Class- Didn't think they could pull off an X-Men film without Wolverine in a major role, but I was pleasantly surprised. The Xavier-Magneto relationship made the movie. It dragged every now and then and I couldn't have cared less about most of the mutants in the film but overall good stuff.


3. Transformers: Dark of the Moon- While this trilogy deserved some of the bashing it's received, particularly regarding the accuracy of the various Transformers personalities, one has to remember two things:


-These are three films about giant robots dragging Earth into a civil war.


-These are Michael Bay films. In both instances your brain is not required.


As far as DOTM goes, it still amazes me that Bay hires a Victoria Secret model for the female lead and people are surprised she can't act. That, and the ending bothered me a bit. The real Megatron wouldn't take s*** from anybody and the real Optimus Prime isn't that big of a p**** that he needs the help of his arch-nemesis to defeat someone.


2. Green Lantern- Almost exactly as I pictured it: A little slow, a lot of aliens, and Mark Strong as Sinestro=fantastic. What I didn't expect was how good Ryan Reynolds would do as Hal Jordan. Great film that was true to the characters. Unfortunately the box office sales have been below average so that might derail any chance of a sequel.


1. Thor: In terms of superhero films, Thor is right behind the Iron Man and the Nolan Batman films. Action, acting, story, faithfulness to source material, it's all there. Everything was great, I have nothing bad to say about this film.


That's it. Out.