lets change it up! AKA Top 5 Albums you must own.

5 - Type O Negative - October Rust
 I was tempted to go with Bloody Kisses, but to be honest October Rust has a more diverse set list and contains some of the greatest songs Type O have ever made. From the go-go inspired "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" to the horror rich "Wolf Moon".

4 - Rites of Spring - End on End
  Rites of Spring only album to be released, at least to my knowledge. They had a unique sound for the time, a combination of raw sounds and emotional lyrics. They've often been compared to Fugazi, I think it's a fair enough comparison, although Rites of Spring album is noticeably less tuned and clean.

3 - Alkonost - Alkonost
  Combining Russian hard rock and ancient hymn rhythm Alkonost is a majorly over looked band in the metal scene, maybe it's because they're Russian and rarely tour outside of Europe? Their debut self titled album has a nice mix, and some major call backs to the old progressive rock albums of the 70s and the song "War is Close By Us" features some of the best guitar work I've heard in a long time.

2 - Faith No More - Angel Dust
  Before Angel Dust, Faith No More had a mash-up funk sound like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That all changed when they released probably one of their best albums. The album went from funk to hard rock, showcasing Big Jim's guitar styling and Mike Patton's amazing vocals.

1 - Stone Temple Pilots - Core
  What can I say about Stone Temple Pilots that hasn't already been said? Core is one of the most listenable rock albums I've ever heard, with fast aggressive songs like Sex Type Thing to slower more classic hard rock songs like Plush. Scott has always been one of the best vocalists, and he had an amazing ability to make even the most heterosexual of men question their values.

IT'S... ROBOCOP!

  So it seems Detroit is getting it's own RoboCop statue, finally the career of the late 80s officer will finally get his reward he deserved from his community. He first made headlines when he killed Red Foreman, and later Made Headlines by being a series of really bad sequels and saving WCW wrestler Sting from a steel cage.

Reuters has the article here: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/17/us-robocob-statue-idUKTRE71G4FI20110217

  If only people in Cleveland could band together and create a rival, I've been dreaming of seeing a Snake Plissken statue in Public Square for a longtime, although I'd settle for Buckaroo Banzai.

Tales From the Bargain Bin! Raiders of Galaxy Part one

  Right away we start of with a really.. bland just bland intro, the music sounds almost like a high school band playing discotheque that sounds as if it was recorded on a Victor Wax Reel. The first thing I noticed was this, the title isn't actually "Raiders of THE Galaxy", it's actually "Raiders of Galaxy" and it proudly displays this in red an white during the power-point opening.

 Now that those awesome credits are done we get our first shot of animation, and boy.. does this ever look cheap. I understand limited budget means you can use wide matte shots and crop them down to so it it appears things are moving, but this is going too far. It looks as if they had a child paint a picture of the Moth-man in watercolors on an animation cel. Next we see Mr. Moth-man addressing "Andrew" (That's what he calls him) Commander of the solar system, although to be honest he looks more like blue version of Piccolo fro Dragon Ball Z.  The acting on Piccolo's part is a real shame, it's sad when you're actually have less charisma than the stagnant animation cell you're voicing. Well, Mr. Moth-man who's name hasn't been revealed yet, orders Andrew, Space Master to conquer to Earth and become toe commander of the solar system.. There's no real reason given, he just commands he conquers Earth, then again if a translucent cardboard cut out was yelling at me I'd probably do whatever he said too.



  "These last few days we have had strange interference from unknown frequencies. Have you noticed?" Say that in the most monotone uncaring voice you can muster and you're well on your way to voicing a character in this movie.  We are now inside a space station manned by what looks like a woman and the entire national sex offender registry dressed in the old uniforms of Team Voltron. The leader is apparently Captain Mustache, and he stands tall even though the entire base appears to be having seizures. I'd like to point out the piss poor job the betweeners did on this, each frame has slightly different line settings which causes characters and backgrounds to spontaneously bouncing up and down, I'd like to thing this is caused by a DVD transfer but as it only affects certain cels it's obvious the people who credited this just didn't give a fuck.   All we gather from the conversation between  two satellite communications personal is that there's some kind of communication strangeness happening from an "unknown origin", however we then see through the viewscreen of Satellite Sex Offender-1 a bright ass glowing object. I wonder if that could be the cause, you know, considering its coming right at you and shit.

You're going to get raped.

 The station is moving off course! The engineer "doesn't know how this could happen.", again these people are either the worst actors ever or they see this kind of thing happen so much it doesn't surprise them. I'm sure a giant destroyer UFO of death could show up and they'd still bugger on with indifference.

A giant UFO of death shows up, and finally the crew whip into action by standard around stagnantly with the same facial expression, one woman is so surprised at this she forgets she's in a space adventure and appears to have just gotten a cum facial. The Captain's declaring a state of emergency and in his words, "You know what that means!" apparently it means being hit by space lightning and cutting to an old man on a microphone.

Suddenly, Voltron shows up. No seriously, look. That's team Voltron piloting the giant colour coded robot. Okay, so.. Apparently it's a bunch of little boys flying a giant mecha, or test driving it. They're flying through space on a "flight test" and happen upon our UFO of Death, the lead little boy decide it's time to fight! and so, we get.. Voltron attacking with his laser-sword and the same two reaction shots of the giant robot being hit with lasers and the UFO being smacked around inter-cut with a static picture of the crew bouncing up and down. The giant mecha separates and turns into what appears bad swipes of the vehicles from Gatchaman and start kicking the poorly drawn UFO's ass, deciding it's had enough the UFO retreats to a nearby planet that's somewhere in Solar system. It's a gas giant, yet it turns into a tiny rock planet in shots that aren't painted mattes.

 That's the strongest robot from planet Earth, says the frogman, lets find out more from the investigation agency. I can only pray that whoever made this is no longer working in the animation industry. I can appreciate sub-par animation, one my favorite shows was poorly animated "The Adventures of Clutch Cargo" but director Joseph Lai is literally making me hate the fact that I defend cartoons on a daily basis, apparently he not only still has a job but is cranking out more and more schlock at an alarming rate according to his IMDB profile, sure most of it is strictly made in Hong Kong but if this man can keep his job maybe it's a sign I should move to Hong Kong.

  Back in the movie we cut to the children pilots of Voltron playing a game of what I assume to be baseball  with a rejected design for Mr. Roboto from the Styx music video.  The lead child doesn't want to play, and is upset about how he sucks at the game when compared to a fucking robot. Well, Mr Robot will have none of that and scolds the two children for not wanting to play.

Totally an alien, not a pedophile.

The Gunslinger is hiding in the bushes, or is that Indiana Jones? I can't tell. He appears to be an Android judging by his glowing eyes yet he removes a film camera from his pocket to snap photos of Voltron whizzing around. Mr. Roboto uses his processor to deduce that the simplest explanation is that Indiana Deschain is a spy from outer-space. Brilliant, that's always what first comes to mind when I see a creepy guy hiding in bushes near young children playing and snapping photos. "That makes sense!" says the boy, "He was taking photos of the research center, and even taking photos of me too!" Yeah, my first conclusion is still spy.

Behold, the USS Land Battleship!

  Back on the USS Land Battleship team Voltron is discussing the incident with Peter Cushing who reveals everyone has known about the space UFO and aliens and shit for a while but they can't defeat them, even though Vehicle Voltron beat it's ass into retreat earlier. Later that night, Peter Cushing is informed that the Korean Space Station has disappeared and he has no clue how it could have happened! Here's a hint, remember that UFO you remember talking about, you know, the one you said was kidnapping space bases and stuff earlier, maybe it's that. Seems the old man is a bit senile in his old age.

 The Aliens have made a duplicate of Angie's mom! She's girl who was first a guy and no suddenly a girl again, I get the feeling this was pieced together from various animations and then filled in by bad animators to pad things out. I'm only twenty minutes in and I can't believe it. I have actually found a movie so bad that I want to turn it off. I am literally debating just turning this off and throwing it away. The Ghost of Angie's mom plants a bomb on Voltron's head and jumps off a 100 ft Mecha unharmed and without any movement. Now.. We're at a karate fight, and this is the most amazingly piss poor animation I've ever seen, cels are bleeding together and stagnate frames flipped or reverse.

 Yeah, she's an alien alright and look out! That UFO of Death? Yeah. It rushes in and starts attacking, but first it transforms into a Gigantor wearing a viking helmet! Team Voltron waste no time and jump into action and immediately start sucking, they're no match for giant golden Gigantor and neither is the animation department apparently, the battle is yet again the same footage re-used over and over, endlessly it seems. You might be wondering why I keep referring to the mecha and characters by the names of more famous pop culture icons, and the reason is simple, throughout this entire movie they say one characters name and that's after 20 fucking minutes into it. "Angie", Well, they did talk about Andrew lord of space but he hasn't shown up. His role of conquer was replaced my Captain Frogman it seems. This is the point where I'm just going to turn this off. There's no reason for someone to make something this bad. I actually feel like I'm losing my sanity watching this.

 It may be a bit of a downer for me to just give up near the beginning, but I feel I'd be better for it. The movie's script is poor, the acting is beyond sub-par, and animation makes me cringe. That's the problem with distributors like Digiview, they do nothing but buy cheap Korean animation and re-dub it, put a dollar price tag on it and hope enough people will buy it. Although, I'm starting to think that no one did buy this as Digiview no longer has a website. I'm debating buying the domain name they had just so I can put a smug little joke up at them. I'm still trying format out as well, maybe I should live blog every second of the film and condense everything down, but that doesn't give the time to properly insert every joke I want to make or criticise everything else. This movie is also rather long for a dollar bin animation, clocking in at around 80 minutes. I'll revise my sentiment. I'm not giving up, I'll continue this next week in another exciting adventure of Tales from the Bargain bin!

Cartoon Classics! The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Season 1 - Episode 1

. I'm currently on my Jonny Quest kick and for the most part the original series was good, aside from intense dislike of the plot to the episode "The Devil's Tower" I'm moving my attention to the follow up series started in 1996 called "The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest" taking place roughly ten years after the original series, well, explicitly stated to take place 3 years after the original series on the DVD sleeve and in the first episode featuring Doctor Zin. This is a bit confusing as Jonny in the current episode "The Dark Fathom" is stated to be 13.. in the original adventures he was 11, I don't know. Maybe Jonny as a 4 year old was given some kind of super growth hormone. Anyways, Best to start at the beginning.. "The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest Presents: The Dark Fathoms"

   The intro to the show is pretty standard, it's a ZX spectrum rendering of a flight through the Grand Canyon with clips playing on its wall, over scored with an amazing rendition of the Jonny Quest theme song. I have to say, I do miss the original opening where we seen the Quest family on scenic vacations to the safari or amazon doing fairly standard things like: running, swimming, flying on jet packs, and murdering every brown person they see. The new opening is rather bland, aside from a few clips blurred by giant green scan lines we see nothing that sets the tone of the show, nothing to hook a first time viewer, the clips aren't even rather good, in order it's: Jonny falling down a hole a few times, Jonny standing in a boat with Hadji, Doctor Quest talking about something, and glass breaking.

The opening scene, things are going to get tense now! We open on an epic Pirate battle between.. Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark dressed as Nick Fury from Marvel: 1602 fighting Blackbeard Black Jack.  Now we cut to the present day, and see two gits bitching while scuba diving. They're hunting for oil.. Yes, it only takes two scuba divers and a fishing boat to find oil. They're in the Bermuda at least, why are they complaining? I'd gladly Scuba dive in Bermuda all day. A fog comes in from the east, or west, or somewhere and this is when you know shit is going to get real, they find a pirate ship but it's too late, at least you think it's too late. This being Ted Turner's Cartoon Network you couldn't get away with more than 3 punches without having to make the rest of gruesome or violent scene nothing but up close porno style face shots.

At the Quest Estate.. in Maine, or is that a Church that Doctor Quest happens to live in? Being set 3 years after the original series we have to establish stuff is different, the Quest family no long live on retirement dream Palm Key, no longer live in a swank retro-futuristic bachelor pad kissed with the style of the 1964 New York World's Fair. Doctor Quest, it seems traded all that for Wayne Manor, and also apparently decided trade his "Just for Men" selection too, as he's now sporting black hair and beard instead of his famous red. He's listening to the recounting of the scuba diver, and decides he must know more about this ship. He asks out loud for a search of the "Ivory Web" his table lights up, yes, apparently Wayne Manor was merged with Encom tower. This kind of bugs me. This show takes place 10 YEARS after the original Jonny Quest series, which had Benton talking about how he was assigned to hunt down Nazis after the war.. Now we see him using full on PCs and creating the world of Tron in his spare time (more on this in part 2.)

  Anyways, Wayne Manor pulls up all the Wikipedia article on the ship and Quest gets excited. He says he'll take the case! I might at this point like to say Quest apparently no longer works specifically for the government, and neither does Race. He's went from dynamite one man RAND Corp. to a rich man's T.A.P.S. oh, he makes a nice comment about how he'll enjoy the case because he needs to see some sun, I bet he would see sun all the time if he lived somewhere in Florida..  After this we see a pretty good scene setting up Jonny as a hotheaded young man, and Hadji as an Indian escapist wonder, it's pretty good.

 The Quest crew heads to Bermuda in their boat and we see Race and Jesse for the first time, no real complaints aside from the shoehorning of an imaginary daughter for Race in whom I suspect was added solely so we can prove Race and Benton ARE COMPLETELY STRAIGHT, or something. It was established early on that this series would have a different look and see that readily with Race, he doesn't look a lick of the supposed 50 and instead looks like Captain America from "The Ultimates" with white hair, same hair cut as well. They also gave him a really bad stereotypical southern accent, which doesn't play well. After adjusting to this we get a some nice looking shots of Quest Bell 1 being lowered into the sea, and some more moments between Jonny, Hadji, and Race. Notice I haven't mentioned much of Jonny and that's because most of the scenes he's in are pretty good.

 Sure he looks older, but he doesn't feel as useless or thick as he did in the old series, sure he's still a bit hard headed and easy to anger, but he at least has good dialogue and good interaction with Hadji.  Anyways, Jonny and Race are outside Questbell 1 and find the wreck of the ship, perched on a cliff. It's well animated and the designs are pretty good looking, no complaints there. You also get some pretty tense music to set a mood of "something might happen", but that's completely killed with Doctor Quest chiming in through his bluetooth headset "I hope something doesn't happen." and badly foreshadowing something does, the fog comes and SURPRISE! Ghost pirates! they kidnap Doctor and do a good job of sabotaging only the computer systems. I guess when you're dead for 200 years you can spend all your time reading up on how to crack computer systems. I don't know why we only explicitly see Jesse being kidnapped, at first I thought she was left alone but she shows up on the pirate ship in the brig anyways. I don't know why they did this. I can bet if this had been the 1960s series we'd not only have seen her kidnapped but gotten a scene of her being brutally raped.

 We cut back to Jonny, Hadji and Race in a pretty tense scene, not much to bitch about, it's actually tense.. so instead I'll bitch about Race's hair, man this character design is stupid. Jonny and Hadji again are the saving points, including a scene where Jonny basically points out the stupid argument that ghosts of Pirates circa Jack Sparrow wouldn't exactly know how to destroy a computer system and then sets sail to find his dear old dad. On his quest he runs into the pirates, who of course aren't really pirates but dicks on a Motorboat in costumes. Doesn't stop them from royally fucking up his day. Now we see Jonny on an Island encountering the fake Pirate Captain, again some good stuff. The character design is nice and the island design is pretty cool too. Really does give a pirate story feel to it.

Jonny frees Doctor Quest after being knocked out or something, it's not really explained, but lo and behold they're on a nice fancy ship from Ye Nowin' Times and Doctor Quest realises that maybe these guys aren't ghosts at all! They find the machine that makes all their great special effects which is labeled "Fog Machine" "Projector" etc. I never understood the logic of these overly elaborate treasure schemes, more often then not it seems like they spent more money on the technology used to protect it than you'd gain from finding the treasure. I know if I was protecting a treasure, I'd spend some money.. I'd spend it on a gun. That seems like a cheaper and quicker alternative than just trying to project people away. Anyways, We see Doctor Quest and Jonny get attacked by the Pirate Captain, this scene is surprisingly gruesome featuring some cool axe throwing and some blood, really more than I was expecting. The pirates are foiled and there ship blows up. Once again the day is saved and the Quest clan is safe to investigate the ship! However, before any investigation is done we have that scene showing the pirates being carted off by a law boat, you know, to show no murderous pirates who kidnapped and attempted to kill the protagonists died. Jonny and Hadji investigate the wreck and all goes well.. Until the water goes cold, and the ship falls off the ledge in a "Oh, but maybe there really is a ghost" scene.

 This wasn't really a bad episode per-se, and maybe I'm being too trivial about the changes, I just don't see the point on enforcing the ideas that this is the same show only a few years later when the writers and artists obviously aren't paying attention to the original anyways. Sure, the character designs suck, Race is useless because he can't beat a man to death, and Jesse is the most annoying character ever created.

  However good this pilot was, I can only say it's going to get worse from here judging by the teaser for the next episode. Here we see Race Bannon as a young man in 1974,  pointing a gun at a terrorist who has a shit loads of nerve gas hidden in the city of Chicago, Race  refuses to shoot the terrorist bastard who appears to be set on killing millions instead opting to talk to him, cut to a show of Jesse hacking into the SSI to find a social security number, and I shit you not, The kids going into the world of Tron as if it were rendered with CGI Mego dolls.