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Spotlight: Allan Keyes- Fun With the Internets: News from Comic Con

30 Jul

July 30. 2012


Spotlight Week is here! All week we’ll be reading a variety of guest posts from some generous and creative people, all of whom have generously donated their time and efforts. I appreciate them all.

Starting us off is no stranger to The Tepid Ride, Mr. Allan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is my real-life brother and I  am very glad he’s taken a regular Monday gig here. He needs no further introduction, so here we go!

Anyone here play video games?  I’ve been a video game addict since I was a kid. I was playing games back when Pac- Man was single.  My current favorite is the Gears of War series. How could it not be? Look at the featured weapon:

                       

That’s right. It’s a high-powered assault rifle equipped with a chainsaw! Combine the killing power of a high-caliber weapon with the killing power of a buzzing chainsaw and this is what you get. How to describe the resulting instrument of gory, over-the-top violence? Royal diesel.  After all, who among us HASN’T wanted to create something like this?
 Thus affirming my belief that America is the greatest country in the world. We’re so well-armed that we can combine our weapons to maximize our destructive power in imaginative new ways. TAKE THAT CHINA!!!!

Anyway, I’ve been following the news from ComiCon, and there were several announcements of eagerly-awaited video game releases that I think are worth sharing with all you, even if you’re not quite as hardcore a gamer as me:

5) MAYHEM! MADNESS! MURDER! 

I think the title is a bit redundant though. I mean doesn’t mayhem usually follow naturally as a result of a rampage? I can attest that mayhem has indeed accompanied each of my rampages. Of course, my rampages have also been accompanied by getting tasered and then soiling myself in the ensuing convulsing, so let’s call it good.

Anyway, I like this game because it reminds me of an awful wrestler from back in the day – yes, he was a wrestling accountant:
 

This gentleman wrestled as Irwin R. Schyster.   Hey, IRS! Get it! GET IT!??! I’ll say this for Vince McMahon, he never made the mistake of being too subtle.  Of course, this is a perfect segue to the next high-profile release for Xbox:

4) WWF vs. WCW

 …..hey wait a minute. This isn’t new, it’s kind of old and busted. We’ve seen quite a few WWF vs. WCW releases over the years.  What’s the deal? Oh……………….not this WWF:
 

THIS WWF:

 

I gotta admit I like this one better. I think that panda can take the Hulkster (they both sport the same ‘stache and beard).  But this is a blatant rip-off of AWESOME FOX reality show Man vs. Beast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_vs._Beast , a show that pitted men in feats of strength against champions of the animal kingdom.  Here is just one synopsis of the competitions held:

“A group of 44 dwarfs lost a race against an Asian elephant to see which could pull a commercial jet a certain distance first.”

And this is why you come to MR. BTR folks. There’s very few places on the net where you could ever hope to read about something like this. What drugs was the creator of that show on?? Who even thinks of having dwarfs challenge an elephant at anything!??!?!?  I’m drooling just reading those words. I MUST SEE IF THIS IS ON DVD ANYWHERE.  You don’t get quality TV like this anymore, though Hardcore Pawn comes close.

 

3)  Everything old is new again!

An old classic gets a facelift:

 

You all knew this was coming.  For classic game fans, this is also available as part of a GameStop-exclusive “Before and After” two-pack along with another updated classic:

  

2) Get Your Freak On!

Love the Kinect. It allows you to play your game by moving your body in the appropriate way. So I have to admit, this one is an absolute natural:

 

This game has several unique levels. You can master solo play, or get up for group mode, where you can play with up to 5 people. Sure to be an orgy of fun! (This game requires a special controller, which is sold separately in adult shops near you)

Did you know that this is not the first pornographic video game? Not by a longshot. I present to you Custer’s Revenge:

 

Good lord. Folks, this is real and was available for the Atari 2600! The video game industry was so new, Atari couldn’t keep 3rd-party pornsters from manufacturing for its system. Good times my friends, good times. Anyway, the “plot” of this game was pretty straightforward: Custer arose from the grave (in more ways than one) and got his “revenge” on those damned injuns by molesting a squaw while arrows rained around him. No, seriously:

 

How’d he get his pants off over his boots? I must say, this is the hottest use of pixels since I learned that I could use an upside-down calculator to spell the word boobs. Gameplay was easy: Custer earned points for each……thrust. Sometimes an arrow capped him and ended the level.  “Swedish Erotica” my a$$.  This is about as erotic as a pair of batwings:

 

 And the most exciting release announcement from Comic Con….(and maybe containing a few future spoilers):

1) Hitting Rock Bottom:

 

 

Nowhere to go but up, right?

 

UGH. Maybe not. Nevermind that loser with the cheeseburgers, I’m the one who suffers for his art.

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Your Honor, I move for dismissal on the grounds that the movie sucked (Classic Legal Nonsense Repost)

17 Jul

July 17, 2012

Silly lawsuits never go out of style. Enjoy.

From November 4, 2010

Coming up is a story that you’d expect came straight from the United States, where it is every citizen’s right to file ridiculous lawsuits and waste the court’s time with nonsense. In fact, it has been estimated that if all frivolous lawsuits were dismissed immediately, and no further frivolous lawsuits filed, the entire legal load of merited cases could be handled by Judge Judy in a single afternoon, leaving the Supreme Court free to do what it does best, which is age at an alarming rate.

Of course not every lawsuit is frivolous, just ask these fine folks who filed suit, as found in The Huffington Post:

  • In 1991 Richard Overton tried to sue Anheuser-Busch for $10,000 because upon drinking copious amounts of Bud Light, beautiful women didn’t come to life in a tropical setting, as shown in the commercials.
  • Allen Heckard had a unique problem: people constantly told him he looked like basketball star Michael Jordan. Except Heckard saw it a bit differently, Michael Jordan looked like him. Naturally, he decided to sue Jordan and Nike for $832 million for his “emotional pain and suffering.”
  • In 1995, Robert Lee Brock attempted to sue himself for $5 million claiming he violated his own civil rights by getting intoxicated and committing crimes. He was serving a 23 year prison sentence at the time and thought the state would have to pay because he was incarcerated.

So obviously the legal system is pretty busy these days.

This problem is not unique to America. This story comes from China, where if they saw what passes for Chinese food in this country they would have a good laugh:

A lawyer in Xian, China, filed a lawsuit in September against a movie house and film distributor for wasting her time — because she was exposed to 20 minutes of advertisements that began at the posted time for the actual movie to begin. Ms. Chen Xiaomei is requesting a refund (equivalent of about $5.20) plus damages of an equal amount, plus the equivalent of about 15 cents for “emotional” damages — plus an apology. [The Guardian (London), 9-8-10]

Are you as shocked as I am? Imagine- only $5.20 for a movie! OK, she sat through some commercials, big deal. I sat through Starship Troopers and I paid around $8 for that. Other lousy films I paid to see were Batman and Robin and Any Given Sunday. Trust me, if anyone deserves to be sued it is Oliver Stone for that cinematic piece of crap. And Starship Troopers? If you voluntarily rent this film knowing that it is near the pinnacle of Casper Van Dien’s craft you deserve what you get. But this when he was only a new bad actor, not an established bad actor. I was young, I was naive, I was disgusted that the film wanted me to root for the Nazis.

But I digress.

I actually think that Ms. Chen Xiaomei should consider herself lucky. Not only would that film have cost around $12 in America ($145.50 in NYC, $195.50 for 3D) but while waiting for the commercials to end she would have likely consumed here entire 7.50 bucket of popcorn and 7.50 large soda. (Of course, she could have easily saved some cash by purchasing one of the theater’s combos, where the soda and popcorn would have only cost her $15.)  That amounts to $27 even before the coming attractions, and of course doesn’t take into account a date, which this female attorney didn’t seem to have.

I hope she wins the $10.55 she is suing for.

All this brings me (nearly) full circle from lawsuits to movies to lawyers. Can you imagine that this lawyer values her time so little that she is filing suit and spending time arguing a case for $10.55? (Ironically, the case is about wasting time.) She is either a very poor attorney or has very low self-esteem, either of which would also explain why she was alone at the movies in the middle of the day.

At any rate, and perhaps more importantly, she is also suing for an apology. Yes, an apology. She wants an “I’m sorry” from the theater, which makes me wonder if this case was filed in Ms. Wagner’s third grade class. I wonder if the judge will sentence them to shake hands and make nice? Or perhaps to kiss and make up, which may work out well for Chen Xiaomei if she can parlay that kiss into a date.

However, I may be minimizing the importance of the apology. No less an esteemed legal mind that Judge Marilyn Milian of The People’s Court says that small claims court is usually not about money, it is about the principle. She must be right. How else to explain the case, from the crotchety old Judge Wapner era, where one man sued another for 65 cents, the cost of a can of soda?

Frivolous lawsuits and bad movies will always be with us. True as that is, it is hard to believe that there are not many movies about frivolous lawsuits. Even if they were, however, they would not be prosecutable. If so, I’d have sued Jennifer Lopez for Gigli years ago, and put an injunction on Ban Affleck in the process. That man must be stopped before he acts again!

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