JsARCLIGHT

From the way I see this movie being marketed, they have no intention of playing up the link to the original story. Every ad I see is just a bunch of really bad looking CG, Will Smith mugging for the camera with his typcial a-hole routine and a plot that is paper thin at best, cliche at worst. I, Robot might as well be called "Will Smith Sci Fi Movie 2004" as the primary audience that will be attending this movie most likely has no clue what the original I, Robot is about let alone care. This movie is nothing more than yet another tired Will Smith property with recycled CG, "oh hell no" one liners and probably enough things going boom to keep the audience from demanding their money back. My guess is next summer or the summer after we will see the sequel, "The Robots of Dawn"... once again in name only with Smith continuing to prove to america how arrogant and ignorant we really are.

Boss. Any idea on when these are due out? My fidgeting is becomming more of a tremor than nervousness.

You know what is funny? It's been 10 years for me too and I can clearly remember that whole day... and yet I can't for the life of me remember what I had for lunch a week ago. Let's just say college had some booze and other fine smokeables that have most likely harmed my medium range memory zones. I used to help this guy Morris Lenninkamp (whom I always called "Lenin") run his tables at the Chicago comic cons in college to score some extra loot. Sad thing was I'd spend my day's pay at the con first thing before the doors opened most of the time, sniping the good deals at the con before the fanboys could get to them rather than pay that pesky electric bill... ... ahh, college... Anyway back on topic I always wondered how old and how "into" anime people were when they saw DYRL. I myself was in my second year at CAI, the year before I was introduced into hardcore anime fandom by my roommates. So I myself was already a collegate hardcore anime dork with several all night anime sessions under my belt when I saw DYRL. DYRL was also what got me into the "real" shows behind Robotech and soon after I tracked down all the fan tapes of the original three.

Holy crap, we were at the same con! That guy you bought your tape from was he reeeeaaaally fat and wearing a (if I remember right) stormtrooper t-shirt with some sort of a mullet? That was the guy I got mine from before the sales floor opened on the first day. He had all his tapes in these like long cardboard boxes. ... and might you remember a dealer with black dobie gillis hair, mustache and glasses and his helper who was a tall, annoying flock-of-seagulls swoop haired looking dork? That tall swoopy gen-x looking scumbag was me!

But the ALF cartoon fit so well smooshed between Bill & Ted's Excellent Cartoon and Galaxy High on saturday mornings! Hey did anyone catch the premier of the ALF's Hit Talk Show show on TV land this week? I was too busy running through Vegas like a cat with it's ass on fire to watch... and cry.

The shotgun the launcher was made from was a Franchi SPAS 12 (Special Purpose Assault Shotgun). I have never seen a functional prop of the pulse rifle but from what I have seen from the pics online of the original "hero" props they appeared to be quite works of art.

In about 94 I think when I was browsing the used video boxes in a Chicago comic con looking for anime tapes and I found my first copy of DYRL. It was a fansub of the original... bad video quality, tons of translation errors and no box, only a cheaply before-laser-printer quality home-made label on an old BASF 2 hour tape. I watched that thing until the tape disintigrated. Bought Clash of the Bionoids about two years later thinking it was the same thing just dubbed... man was I ever wrong. The time and tide changed and (insert batman bat symbol transition to camera) now I have a nice FX "Perfect Edition" DVD and am quietly waiting for a legit high quality domestic R1 release. You'd think two giant multinational companies could put petty differences aside and just release the damn movie already in a legit, original form for us over here. Hell, they can even chop the crap out of it and make a Robotech movie for all I care just as long as they give me the pure uncut columbian that is DYRL.

This internet "who are you?" test has once again proven to me that I do indeed suck.

Wow, go away for a week and wham, tons of traffic on the weapons banter thread. Oh well, I got some extra loot on my trip and I'm all set to buy my Springfield M1A1 this week. Need to wait until some other issues are cleared up first with my insurance company before I know exactly how much I'll have to spend on it. Springer here I come!

It was always my impression that manga characters are drawn with large eyes so they can be more expressive. The eyes are the windows to the soul after all and the larger you draw someone's eyes the more range of expression you have. You can exaggerate sad and happy. This also carries over to the mouths of some japanese manga characters as they also possess the ability to go from tiny to 1/2 of the head in one emotional change. I have also always thought of anime and manga drawing styles to be a hybrid of the hard edged, realistic style that american comics tend to use most of the time and the fanciful cartoony disproportion of the Disney and Warner Brothers characters. They blend the two quite seemlessly. As for the whole race card issue I think Agent One hit the nail on the head, race is not present. The characters are the characters. When the manga artists want to present race as an issue they tend to go overboard (like previously mentioned about "dark skinned" characters) and press the character into stereotype. It also lies in the back of my mind that japan and a good deal of the world are corrupted by Hollywood. America's number one export to all countries both enemy and friend is Hollywood fantasy... and the vast majority of american celluloid fantasy features caucasian characters in the leading roles so on some levels anime and manga may be unknowingly emulating Hollywood. Who knows... all I know is it was a unique art form to the Japanese until the rest of the world got ahold of it and started copying the "anime" style and mutating it into a new form of cartoon I like to call Anglo Anime (shows like Totally Spies and Teen Titans are prime examples). But that is another issue alltogether.

The armor is basically "clamshell" style... two halfs clip on and surround the pieces they cover such as arms, legs, hips, groin, etc. The chest is held on by a special replacement heat shield and tiny clips that attach to the chest... ergo the reason why it cannot fit the two seater valks as the valk must be able to accept the standard size heat shield. The backpack is actually quite a smart design, the booster nasalles are attached to a U shaped mount. You slide the U mount under the backpack, positioning it between the backpack and the back of the valk. The boosters then snap onto the mount and hold themselves to the mount, sandwitching the backpack. Any 1/60 valk that can accept a standard size heat shield, FP or non FP vareity, can wear the armor. A few days back I actually tried to shoe horn the armor onto my 1D... all the parts but the chest fit perfectly... mostly due to the different design of the 1D's chest area and it's inability to take the standard heat shield. The same will go for the Super O and Elintseeker.

I myself never quite understood the reasoning behind discharging a weapon out of or into water. Water, being a fluid (dur-hey), has some nasty properties to it that will cause that round fired underwater to be unstable. Sure it will fire (provided the right instances are met with the weapon and ammo) but the trajectory will be erratic and let's not forget that lovely WHAM of the powder discharging. Has anyone ever been underwater when a firecracker went off underwater? Let's just say there is a reason the fish die. Plus a bullet fired underwater that exits the surface of the water might become even more unstable in flight due to the shift from one element to another. Also a nasty trick of nature, the "distortion effect" that bodies under and above water suffer from. If you happened to be underwater aiming up out of the water at a precise target, it's position would not necessarily be where you are aiming and vice versa for shooting into water... even though shooting into water can be quite dangerous. Water can bounce a bullet just like concrete if the angle is right. The only people I can picture ever even remotely needing a weapon that can fire while submerged are the SEALs... and most of the time they are taught to surface before firing due to most of the reasons above. I think a weapon that fires underwater is more a case of the manufacturer thinking it up, making it happen and touting a feature rather than it being an actual benneficial and useable thing. After all, how many firefights occur in the deep end of the pool?

Wolf is just really dirty and some say possibly corrosive soviet bloc surplus ammo. I shoot it as plinking ammo when I just want to tear through the rounds and not spend a whole lot on ammo that goes like poop through a goose. Another reason people do not recommend you use Wolf ammo is because of the laquered steel cases it uses. I keep hearing that that laquer burns itself off onto your breach after a certain amount of time if you don't regularly clean your weapon and it can cause misfeeds and jams... especially in weapons with gnat's ass tight tollerances. Plus, and this is just a personal issue with Wolf, the ammo stinks. I mean it smells. Fire off a mag of Wolf ammo and tell me that the cordite does not smell really, really raunchy. Those Russians must put some chemical mix in that powder that has one part ass because when enough Wolf rounds go off they start to stink up the place... to the point that your eyes and nose burn and start to water. As for the Glock followers I see the mag bodies from time to time in Shotgun news. I have never really looked for the followers. My guess would be they would be available on some level as "replacement parts". A lot of makers don't like to sell preban mag parts as they have a nasty tendancy to not be used as replacement parts but rather used to manufacture illegal post ban high caps. I can do some looking before I head out on vacation this next week. And Chowser, are those high caps you have for your Glock factory or are they the Scherrer (sp?) after market mags? I have two Scherrer 29 round mags for my 27. They are almost a foot long and make that little bean look like an SMG at the range... besides adding like a pound and a half to it's weight. Those Scherrer mags are great... just as good if not better than factory. I know a guy who has a SF Glock 18 with a few of the 9mm Scherrer mags and they run flawlessly.

The ammo and the cheap milk are about the only things that can lure me into a Walmart. They sell Winchester .45 ACP and 9mm quite reasonably priced... or at least much cheaper than at the range. Hell, the Wally Worlds in my neck of the woods carry shotguns, hunting rifles and all manner of "common" long gun. One Wally World out in the sticks even carries Mini 14's and AR15's. The down side is they only carry common ammo and only in commercial packs. If you shoot anything that is not either ultra common or a hunting round they don't carry it... and everything only comes in 20 round (rifle) or 50 round (pistol) boxes. The only place cheaper than Wally World is a gun show where you can buy a metric ton of that shitty but reliable Wolf ammo for pennies on the round.

Or if you can strip out that stock spring and put in a Wolf spring or another aftermarket spring. The only gun I own that does not get full cap on it's mags are my AR's short magazines. 18 or less... and that is due to that lovely jamming and stovepiping issue. As for the .50 pistol, it needs a lower price... but I think the price is more reflective of the low production numbers and the engineering that went into the gun. After all, shop Wilsons and Kimbers can cost that much. I myself prefer common ammo weapons, things I can go to walmart and buy five boxes of ammo on the way to the range for like $50. The frankencaliber and hand load weapons are nice but they just cost too much money for my tastes. You can get rather nasty .454 or a .45 LC revolver for under $600 nowadays so the lure of a big bore self-loader is not all that much for me. Edit: Damn... sign me up for one of those Captain America subcompacts when they ship.

And for Captain America: Always nice to see an industry man in a forum I frequent. I know you can't say too much about your design but I hope you are not planning to include any "gimmick" features on the compact you are making. Things like accessory rails that some makers put on their subcompacts are just rediculous... cough cough XD cough cough. Who do they think is going to put a bulky ass illuminator on a pocket pistol? Also my suggestions, take them however you will but I have found these things to be indispensable on carry firearms: A decocker (if it does not increase the size of the striker action... assuming you are making the gun "hammerless"), polygonal rifling (lasts longer but depending on barrel length it might not work... ok forget that one) and at least one finger groove to help grip the gun. If my 27 did not have those finger grooves that little guy would jump out of my grip in two shots... darn slippery glocks!

I may not think my carrying a gun will affect much of anything... but I will still carry it as soon as the SLCPD gives the go-ahead. After all, 1 in a million is still a percent change and I'd rather the loon in the crowd with the piece be me than some trigger happy nut. Plus the CCW law that passed here in missouri only got through due to a congressional (missouri congress, not federal) 2/3rds override of the governor and a popular vote. I think the day it came out of the supreme court (due to the injunctions and lawsuits immediately brought by the "gun grabbers") I think I saw a anti gun person burst into flames out in the street.

Yes, as a sadistic Apocalypse Now freak I have several cuts of the movie on both DVD and VHS. I have the workprint edition, three different releases on DVD and a horde of various edits on VHS. The strange thing is how different the movie becomes with each version... the whole drive and theme changes, the feel and the vibe drastically changes tones between certain cuts. My notes on the Workprint edition: Beware of this edition those of you who like a nice clean movie. This cut is very, very rough. Some scenes you remember no longer make sense and some new scenes get lost inside of longer cuts and several alternate takes. The pacing and tone of the workprint reflects Coppola's mind at the time of filming... shattered, fragmented. It is so long and so disjointed in spots that it requires several viewings to properly digest and interpret the new material and how it changes or distorts the "true" movie. My notes on the destruction of the Kurtz compound: This "ending" was in actuality the demo of the set that Coppola set cameras and filmed. He was told by the Phillipino government that he could not just leave that massive set intact on their land so during construction the set was designed to be demolished by explosive. Coppola had his crew wire it with enough charges to level a town and topped it off with a few flares, skybursts and fireworks to get a certain "look" from the footage. He was basically being an opportunist and shot the footage "just in case he might need it". After his umpteenth re-edit of the film he left it on the cutting room floor after deciding that it was not needed to end the story. For those looking for it, the footage is available in one alternate cut of the movie known as the "black" edit. This version of the movie eliminated a few scenes and changed the overall feel of the movie as well as adding in the compound airstrike at the end. This is not an official edit and was made by some guys who just found the footage and decided to chop the movie to make it work... kind of like those guys that re-edited the Phantom Menace to remove Jar Jar. Heck, in the black edit Chef survives! He is the one that calls in the airstrike! The only other place (other than the workprint edition) to find the footage is on the second DVD release in the special features section, it is listed as the "alternate ending" but all it is the retouched footage set to music. Final notes on Apocalypse Now: I myself find it so interesting how this movie continues to change and mutate itself. One version tells one story, another tells a different one and yet another shows you the madness behind the eyes of it's maker. If you just like to see stuff blow up and don't care for the plot buy the basic common release and leave Redux alone. If you want to see a twisted and alternate view of the film, a view that changes the story and characters slightly, check out Redux. And if you are a total sicko addict like me that loves to see rough unused footage and revels in alternate takes, lost plot points, omitted story elements and other crazy stuff that will give you nightmares... check out the workprint. But like Dante said in the inferno, abandon all hope ye who enter here. Edit to add some notes on Hearts of Darkness: If you intend to get and watch the workprint, buy "Hearts of Darkness: the making of Apocalypse Now". It is almost required viewing to propperly digest and understand the workprint. The workprint and HoD are like peas and carrots, salt and pepper. Plus Hearts of Darkness adds even more footage and elements to the amorphodite image that is Apocalypse Now. After all, until you have seen the footage of Coppola with a pistol to his head threatening to "end the movie with him", Brando claiming the movie is out of control and predicting his own death and the footage of Marty Sheen having a heart attack and barely being revived you have not seen sheet.

The only compact I own is my Glock 27. I opted for him because I prefer the .40 S&W to 9mm for that little extra punch it has. While I have no real beef with the magazine capacity of my subcompact pistol I fail to see why people like me (technically a civilian) who carry it purely for self defense between your office and the parking lot need more than 9 rounds in a single magazine. If you empty that magazine and have to do a change your are in over your head... hence why the big trend in the subcompacts for a while there was increasing the caliber at the sacrifice of the magazine capacity. I myself am thinking of trading in my 27 on a 36 just to upgrade to .45 ACP. Who needs the extra three rounds in the 27 magazine when you are using the most potent man stopper there is? The only other main argument for a civilian like me needing high capacity mags is "panic fire". The logic being if you are in a panic situation your first reaction is to pull and shoot until the mag is empty... but hell, that takes effort. In my CCW class that I re-took a few months back when missouri approved the CCW law, the first thing they taught you was the draw and double tap. Draw fast, get off two shots on target center mass and then run like a bunny. Almost all the times a common business-looking man like me will ever in the dreamiest dream even draw that weapon in public is when a lone mugger tries to pull something on you. If they are in pairs then you are pretty much screwed right there as a close combat engagement with 2 on 1 unless you are ricochet rabbit that second guy will shoot you before you have a chance to hit him after shooting his partner. I always find it funny that the more I trained for civilian carry the more you see how pointless it really is. How many times in reality will that one singular situation raise it's head when you are the only one in a crowd with a weapon who can take down a bad situation? 1 in a million? 1 in a billion? Shoot, most of the people I know who got their CCW permits would get themselves and everyone else killed in a situation like that... and most people who get CCW permits let them lapse after the first year when they realize just as I do how pointless it is. Leave the law to the law and keep your big weapons (shotguns and other man splatterers) on hand for what they are intended, home defense. Statistically you have a better chance of being assaulted in your home than you do on the city streets.

Wine tasting?!? Apocalypse Now?!? DAMMIT! When did these two things get combined and no one told me? Great, now I'll have to go out to Kalifornia again!

While I do like the occasional Bakshi piece I think that most of his popularity came from the illicitness of his cartoons back in the day. Back when he was turning out Fritz the Cat and his other racially/sexually racy stuff it was counter-culture, it was renegade and it was risque. Tell someone they can't see something and they will flock to it. But as time went on and the sheen of the racy raunchy cartoons wore off he turned to more mature and less juvenile attempts like American Pop. To me, Pop is his best work... or at least his most truly mature... of the things he made himself. It is far too simple to write off his movies as "crap" or "stupid" when viewing them allongside other works of current day. Pop is one of those pieces that if you did not see it in the theaters back when it came out, in the context of the day, it would seem simple and low tech now. Just like kids today think Scarface is nothing to be upset over it was the "movie that ruined american cinema with horrible vulgarity and violence" back when it came out... along with other noteworthy bashes by other critics of the time. I will agree that the vast majority of Bakshi's early and middle works are very juvenile and "cheap" (read = sensationalist) but a few of his more serious later works are quite nice. Bakshi was a pioneer, mainly in the realm of pushing the limits of what common society thinks animation can show.

If we are talking carbines of WW2 then the true birth of the assault carbine was the Ranger's special M1A1 with it's side folding stock and short barrel. Albeit the 30 cal round it fired was about as powerful as throwing rocks but with the stock folded it could easily tuck into a jump kit smaller than a thompson. Some people confuse the Thompson, STEN, M3 and MP40 with assualt carbines but they are submachine guns. A true assault carbine fires semi/full auto, is a shortened or specially adapted version of another full size rifle and is chambered for the same rifle ammo the full size gun fires. Case in point: the M4A1. It is a shortened version of the M16A2 and fires the same caliber ammo... hence it is a carbine. But the Colt 639 is a shortened version of the M16A1 but it is chambered to fire 9mm pistol ammo so technically it is classified as a SMG. Carbines were generally only issued to paratroopers or other special needs troops that needed a smaller/collapsed weapon that was lighter weight and easier to handle in a parajump or to rear echellon troops or "schmucks in trucks" who need a small weapon they can easily store in the vehicle. In Being an ex "schmuck in a truck", my primary weapon in the field was a CAR-15 (precursor to the M4 but with a slightly longer barrel, mine still had A1 sights... I still think it was a rebuilt XM due to it's hodge podge configuration but that is another story for another day) that I kept in a little rack on the passenger side "dash" of the Hummer... if the SHTF and you have to de-ass from the truck in a hurry you just drop the map and the binocs, grab it and go.

The Sturmgewehr 44 is a highly prized collector piece in the US. There are a few of them still around in the country here and there but they command very, very steep prices. Even steeper than Thompsons or MP40's. Heck, you could buy a GE Minigun for about the price one of these in working condition costs on the collector market. But never fear, there is always one for sale sometime, somewhere on the legal market... they just cost more than a ferrari. Also take into account that they are pre-68 NFA firearms, meaning they require quite a bit of paperwork just to own... but they are still legal to own in most states. I myself have never seen a fuctional one in person. I've seen one DEWAT once a while back behind glass in a museum but that is about it. I'm really suprised that some airsoft company has not made one of these before. They seem to be quite popular. I've seen one non-gun/model gun of it before... quite nice, but I think it is now a "Classic" and it too commands quite a price.

Vince Vaughn?!?!?! NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Vince Vaughn + Speed Racer + Live Action - Racecar action = me on clocktower with the PSG-1. There's Vince! BLAM! There he is again! BLAM! ... and again! BLAM! AAAarrrrrrrrgggghhhhhh! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Click. uuuuggghhhhh... go to your calm place... go to the calm place... find your power animal... it can't be this bad... it can't be this bad.... sob... sob...

My impressions of the F2000 are that it is another "me too" next gen weapon based on old gen tech. What does it offer that the current slew of "next gen" fantastic plastics don't? Nothing. The only "plus" it has in it's collumn that it's compeditors don't have is the bullpup design, and at times that can be a negative (just ask Einfeld about the L85). Most of it's "futuristic features" it touts were rolled out on the Steyr AUG back in the late '80s... except that the AUG bests it by having a one button snap quick change barrel assembly and clear magazine. If given the choice between the set of Bullpup rotating bolt 5.56 weapons that are out there (the Einfeld SA80 (L85), the Steyr Army Universal Gun (AUG) and the FN F2000 and a few other lesser russian and european models that have yet to be worth much other than a blurry pic) I would still take the oldest of the lot, the AUG above the others. The thing to keep in mind about the modern world of weapons is that there are the same number of players in the game today as there was back in the '60s when the whole "lighter, smaller, faster rate of fire" doctrine first came about. I can name off hand at least three weapons designed and built by other companies at the time the M16 and AK74 ruled the roost and almost all of them have gone by the wayside in the favor of those two megagiants of the arms world. The same thing is happening today... one or two companies will field a small handful of truly remarkable small arms and everyone will buy those. The others will all fade into history just like the competitors of the M16/AK74: the AR18/180, the M63 Stoner system, the Valmet series, the CAL paratrooper and it's 5.56 FAL brothers and the AR70/90. All those guns had nothing really wrong with them other than the fact that the major warring peoples and police agencies of the world never bought them.