Slow Burn

I've lived here all my life and I swear it has never been hotter. This last week of April seems to be the ultimate proof that global warming exists, and those who want to experience it first hand should really come here around March to August.

The heat and humidity have been really terrible lately, and it starts gradually from about 9:00am then slowly intensifies until 5:30pm. When the sun goes down about 6:00pm, you can still feel the lingering heat in the air. To add insult to injury, the weather bureau and media have been proclaiming nonstop that it's about to get hotter. No shit!

Recently, the LCD display of one of our old calculators melted, and it gave me a panic attack--when the green display turns black with small bubbles due to the heat, you know that's not a good sign.

That calculator was stored inside a desk drawer on our home's second floor, which is made out of wood, so it feels like a furnace during the afternoons. Being the OC person that I am, I spent a couple of days hastily reorganizing the gadgets on this floor, to the point of using a room thermometer to measure the temperature inside each drawer and cabinet.

When the temperature readings for the interiors of the storage cabinets on the far side of the rooms came out okay, I moved all the gadgets and gizmos I had there instead--and there you have it, crisis averted...for now.

Film | The Avengers

The Avengers is the culmination of the various plot threads that began in 2008's Iron Man and ended with last year's Captain America: The First Avenger. It's a fairly impressive effort that works, mostly through good long-term planning, and benefits from a roster of capable actors.

In a nutshell, the main antagonist is Loki, who we last saw in Thor. In comics canon, Loki was indeed responsible for the formation of the original Avengers, and he gets to do the same thing in the movie version, although the line-up is drastically changed; while Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and the Hulk are present, Giant-Man and the Wasp are nowhere to be found in the movie--instead, we got Hawkeye and the Black Widow.

Joss Whedon, better known for his work on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has proven time and again that he's more than capable of handling a huge cast of characters, and it definitely shows in The Avengers. But while every character was given a chance in the spotlight, the movie takes roughly a full hour setting up the plot and situations that some of those character moments don't work, particularly for the two weakest characters, Hawkeye and the Black Widow--their scenes together were unnecessary and boring as hell.

When the movie shifts into high gear during the second half, that's where it excels. Again, every single Avenger gets prolonged camera time fighting the bad guys, who are revealed to be the Chitauri, some kind of grade-Z alien species bent on conquering the Earth. But this is where it gets confusing, because I actually thought the movie's MacGuffin, the Tesseract Cube, opened portals to other dimensions--it turns out these aliens came from outer space.

And where does Loki fit into the picture? It wasn't made clear as well, because Loki and the Chitauri were just pawns of someone else, who was revealed in a post-credits scene. So what was the point of all that drama and posturing? I have no idea, really, LOL. But just like in Thor, Tom Hiddleston as Loki almost steals the entire movie.

The combat scenes were done well, a bit too much CGI for my taste though. The Hulk had lots of awesome, funny moments, a far cry from his horrendous last movie. I'm still wondering how someone with lots of money and access to technology like Tony Stark ended up with such an ugly-ass building design like Stark Tower. And since it's a Joss Whedon movie, I sort of expected that not all of the characters will be left standing alive, and I was right, heh.

While The Avengers will still open the USA on May 4, 2012, we're sort of lucky because it gets to open here more than a full week ahead of the other countries, which is why I decided to watch it today on its opening day. The huge lines were unbelievable, so it's a good thing we lined up early and managed to catch the first screening. Despite its flaws, The Avengers is the best superhero team-up movie right now, and is highly recommended.

Gizmos | Cobalt Blue Nintendo 3DS

Nintendo added yet another color to its current roster of Nintendo 3DS colors. The Cobalt Blue 3DS went on sale last March 22, 2012 in Japan, making it the sixth color variant. Let's see now: there's Cosmo Black, Aqua Blue, Flare Red, Misty Pink, Ice White, and now Cobalt Blue.


This Cobalt Blue version uses a much richer blue tone, unlike the Aqua Blue 3DS, which was more of a blue green shade. The new color remains a Japan-only exclusive for now, but there's always a good chance this might head for other regions soon.

Music | Shawn Colvin - This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)

Now this is a very good example of a remake that sounds so different and even better than the original. One of my favorite Talking Heads songs, This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), was given the acoustic treatment by singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin for her 1994 album, Cover Girl.



The first time I heard her version, I couldn't believe it was the same song, and was actually blown away by how beautiful her version was, with all those lovely-sounding instruments being used. And it's even more amazing when you realize that the song was performed and recorded live--pure awesomeness.

Film | The Muppets

I used to watch The Muppet Show during the late '70s; having just come off Sesame Street, it was great to see familiar faces like Kermit the Frog and Rowlf the Dog, plus numerous new characters that would eventually define the show. My favorite Muppet was Sam the Eagle, mainly because of his overall snootiness, LOL.

The Muppets went on to make movies, and while I thought the first one was great, the succeeding ones were rather meh. After Jim Henson's untimely death in 1990, The Muppets seemed to diminish in popularity, despite being acquired by the Walt Disney Company sometime in 2004.

So I was a bit glad when I heard that they were being "revived" with a new Muppet movie just plainly titled The Muppets. In the film, they've all gone their separate ways, but when Kermit hears the news that a greedy oil magnate plans to destroy their old theater to drill for oil, he tries to get them all back together.

While The Muppets effectively manages to pull off the return of the old gang, I found the movie somewhat underwhelming. Most of the musical numbers were awkward and out-of-place, and I thought Amy Adams was wasted in her role here. I know that Frank Oz, the original voice for Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear is no longer doing them, but hearing Fozzie with a voice that didn't seem quite right was still a bit jarring.

The new character and muppet, Walter, who was actually responsible for prodding Kermit into reuniting the whole group, is also kinda annoying. However, there's another new character that I really liked, and it's the '80s Robot, who is appropriately named since he looks like those generic plastic toy robots that appeared during the eighties, LOL.

The Muppets was released in the USA last November 2011, and I think it really sucks for the local distributor to release it here just last week, after the actual DVD release. As a result, it hardly spent a week at the theaters, which was a crying shame.