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Along with a staggering number of the rest of you, I saw the Watchmen movie over the weekend.

I first read the Watchmen comics when I was 15 but, unlike some of my favorite comic nuts, was never really dying to see it on the screen. Not because I thought it would necessarily be a heartbreaking failure -- just because I don't think everything needs to cross genres.

And my assessment of the movie is basically that: What, exactly, was the point of this?

(No real spoilers you wouldn't have gotten from the trailer beyond this point)

You can't make this stuff up.

Just in time for the reboot of the film series, the new collection from Genki Wear will begin with three scents:

Tiberius (Captain Kirk's middle name)

Red Shirt (from the uniforms of low-level, often doomed crew members in the original series).

And...well...Pon Farr, folks. Pon Farr.

Wait, wait, wait...

The Green Hornet movie, written by and starring Seth Rogan, is now going to be directed by Michel Gondry?

Somebody's punking me, right?

You may remember The Green Hornet from the 1960s TV show - straighter than its campy cousin Batman and featuring Bruce Lee as loyal chauffeur and sidekick Kato.

But the property's been around since the 1930s, when it was a hit on the radio.

I'm a little worried that like fellow radio heroes The Shadow and Doc Savage, this update's going fail. But with a script by Rogan directed by Gondry it may be so gloriously strange that I have to see it anyway.

Did an interview with local blogger, DJ and GoTriad contributor Joe Scott, one of the men behind The Mix Tape Film Series and the new Midnight Madness: Beer and a Bad Movie, which begins in March.

More info here.

For reference -- here's the trailer for Troll 2. You will need beer.

Update:

It seems there's an upcoming documentary about Troll 2 and its cult status as a "best worst movie." (Thanks to Ian McDowell for the tip)

MTV has a feature asking comic book writers who their characters would vote for this year.

Super-heroes, from Iron Man to the X-Men, seem to be going heavily for Obama. (Insert your own ACORN joke here...)

Creator Erik Larsen left no room for doubt as to how his hero, The Savage Dragon, would vote...

It looks ugly as sin -- but you could say the same thing about a Volvo.

But who cares? The new car from Zero Pollution Motors can run on compressed air, gasoline (106 miles per gallon), diesel, biodiesel, ethanol or vegetable oil. Also: Indian carmaker Tata is going to market them in the U.S. at $20,000 a pop.

It can go 35 mph running on just compressed air and can go highway speeds for 800 miles at a stretch with the motor running on any of the other fuels it accepts.

We could see them as soon as 2011.

Over at BoingBoing Cory Doctorow is taking a look at a new book about Bat-Manga - the explosion of Batman comic books created for the Japanese market during the 1960s, when the classic Adam West TV series was being marketed there.

The best part of the story? Apparently the Japanese man tasked with selling Batman to his countrymen thought the stories weren't strange and outlandish enough to go over there and made Batman even weirder -- adding robots, dinosaurs and villains that rise from the dead.

My thing is...the American Batman was never weirder than he was in the 1960s. He was already traveling in time, going to different worlds, fighting aliens and magical villains, disguising himself as other super-heroes and...you know, regularly battling one of the weirdest rouges galleries of villains in comic book history with some of the most outlandish gadgetry imaginable. And the Japanese thought that wasn't enough? You'd have to seriously look at their manga and anime to truly wrap your head around that one.

The book, Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan, is available now.

Check out more photos from the book (including weird Japanese Batman toys) here.

BoingBoing Gadgets has the best review I've read yet of T-Mobile's G1 Android phone.

For those coming late: Android is Google's new, open source operating system for mobile phones. It is being offered first on the G1 model smartphone and has been hyped in some corners of the Net as a possible "iPhone Killer."

Reviewer Joel Johnson says not so fast on that one, but found much to like about the phone.

From the review...

Having recently lost some weight, I'm down to one pair of jeans that aren't so big I have to hold them up with my belt pulled to its last hole and the denim scrunched up around my waist like I just arrived at Ellis Island.

So, I went shopping for a new pair of jeans this week. And found that it's almost impossible to buy a pair of jeans these days that haven't been distressed, specially washed or rinsed or treated during their dye process to give them some unusual look or feel. Beyond that, there are so many "cuts" from which to choose that it literally gave me a headache.

In the end the winner was... Levi's 501's.

Now I'm ready to escape from a chain gang and be chased through the woods by dogs and guys with shotguns to the terrifying sounds of Nine Inch Nails...

Even these aren't made the way they always were -- and my pair says the venerable American icon is now manufactured in Mexico and Egypt. But still - their simplicity wins the day.

Here's an interesting photo essay from NYC photographer David Friedman's trip to a denim distressing factory in Kentucky.

It's weird and wonderful to see how these high-end jeans get beaten up.

Why is still beyond me. I like breaking a pair in myself.

I know I've posted about the new "I'm a PC" ads from Microsoft before -- but now that I've seen this one with a solo Pharrell Williams I'm just...puzzled.

Nowhere in this ad does Pharrell or anyone else make any arguments for a PC being better than a Mac -- not for music, not for art, not for anything that Pharrell could actually speak to with authority and passion. He just talks about loving music and says that he uses a PC.

All right...and?

They've seen the actual "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, right? It's true that the Mac guy looks cooler...but he also makes an actual argument for what's so great about Macs in each commercial. This is what makes the commercials so great.

These things...they just makes me feel sorry for Microsoft. It's like they're the kid who never learned how to debate intelligently, who just starts rambling and screaming. "Am not! You are! Oh yeah? Well, hip musicians and music producers use me too, you know..."

All in one take. Impressive.

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

Have you seen these new "I'm a PC" ads that Microsoft has out there as a counter-punch to the popular "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" Mac ads?

Yeah. Apparently, they were made on a Mac.

That's how I like my irony, baby -- nice and stinging.

Seeing Burn After Reading last weekend got me thinking of my favorite Coen Brothers movies -- and why I've inexplicably been inserting an "h" into their name without realizing it.

Apparently I wasn't alone (at least in contemplating my favorites).

This list attempts to rank brothers' movies in terms of sheer greatness -- which means, of course, there will be many many disagreements.

I've gotta agree with putting The Ladykillers at the bottom, at least...

UPDATE: Slate also has an interesting piece on the politics of The Big Lebowski, which is celebrating its tenth birthday this year.

Converse has hired a motley crew of interesting artists to design versions of their Chuck Taylors for the Product Red line of clothes, shoes and accessories that raises money for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Companies from Gap to Apple to American Express have designed products for the campaign, but these shoes may be my favorite. They seem to run from $50.00 (not much more than you'd pay for an average pair of Chucks these days) to $90 (which, in my estimation, is way too much to pay for a pair of sneakers but not too much for art that's part of a charity project).

Here are some of the designs that caught my eye:

Chucks by Warwick Kay

Chucks by Camilla Engman

Chucks by Ana Ventura

Chucks by Grandpeople

See them all at Converse.com. Go to the "Product Red" section and see if there's anything you like. Ten percent of the proceeds go to The Global Fund.

For their 25th anniversary, they've re-issued the G.I. Joe guys of my childhood just as they were when I hung them with nooses made of yarn, buried them in tin Band-Aid boxes and sunk them in the bathtub, their ankles weighted with a stack of pennies.

They're like little plastic time machines.

This one, the Native American soldier "Spirit Iron-Knife" (swear to God), comes with an eagle. An effing eagle!

Kevin Smith says: "I saw 'Watchmen.' It's f%&^ing astounding." (profanity redacted)

I don't have any tattoos, but I do love seeing other peoples'.

Wired has a great gallery up today with photos of geek tattoos they saw at this year's Comic-Con in San Diego. They're comic-book heavy, but there are also some Tim Burton- and Calvin & Hobbes-influenced ones.

Local blogger, DJ and Go Triad contributor Joe Scott is helping to organize a film series at the Carousel Luxury Cinemas on Battleground Ave.

The Mix-Tape Film Series will give many of us a second (or in some cases a first) chance to see some great (and some...er...cult...) films on the big screen.

First up on September 3: a personal favorite -- The Big Lebowski.

In the coming months: everything from the high-brow perversity of Blue Velvet to the low brow juvenile nostalgia of The Monster Squad.

I'm not really a big-screen, 35 mm fetishist, so there are only a few of these I think will be really improved by seeing them in the theater (Edward Scissorhands chief among them) -- but tickets are $3, popcorn $1.25 and beer's $1 so I'll probably end up seeing quite a few of these.

You should too.

Cracked.com has a hilarious (and surprisingly educational) list of The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High.

The list includes Coca-Cola, Psychoanalysis, the discovery of the DNA and (wait for it...) The Ten Commandments.

It also includes the following caveat: "To make the cut, an accomplishment has to be considered great by people who could pass a field sobriety test. So no Grateful Dead music."

Cory Doctorow gave a talk at the Cambridge Business Lectures Series.

Really fascinating stuff - the Internet as the world's most perfect copy machine, Digital Rights Management, why Paris Hilton's genitals are like the undead on the Net, etc. Worth listening to.

A new book from the Harry Potter universe has been announced.

The Tales of Beedle The Bard is being called a classic of the wizarding world translated from ancient runes by Hermione Granger, with extensive commentary by that clever old queen Albus Dumbledore.

Check out this undeniably wonderful 5-in-1 inflatable sleeper-sofa.

I'm a little old for it now -- and already have two inflatable beds for camping/guests which my girlfriend thinks are "ghetto."

But for $61 shipped, I definitely would have rocked this in a dorm room.

Students at MIT have been tinkering with a 1976 Porsche 914 -- converting it to run on electricity and go 100 mph for 135 miles without a recharge. Plug it in for five hours and it's ready to go again.

Check it out.

Now this is one strange story:

"This could make for one odd family reunion: Barack Obama is a distant cousin of actor Brad Pitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt's girlfriend, Angelina Jolie.

Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society found some remarkable family connections for the three presidential candidates -- Democratic rivals Obama and Clinton, and Republican John McCain."

It was a story some time ago that Obama and George W. Bush are 10th cousins. But the researchers have also found that Obama is distantly related to Harry S. Truman, James Madison, Dick Cheney, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson and General Robert E. Lee.

Clinton has a few notable distant relatives herself -- many of them French Canadians. But Jack Kerouac is canceled out by Camilla Parker-Bowles. A connection to Alanis Morissette is less impressive when we learn she's also related to Celine Dion. A connection to Madonna is, at this point in our cultural history, sort of neutral.

Wired has a great piece about counter terrorists looking to the online game World of Warcraft for ideas on how to stop real-world terrorism.

From the piece:

"Warcraft has a history of in-game terrorist activity. Early on, players found a curse in a high-level dungeon that would turn them into living bombs. They would then teleport to major cities and detonate themselves, killing nearby players. These suicide bombers gradually began to target areas where large number of players gathered, usually at auction houses or banks. Eventually, attacks occurred with enough frequency that some players simply avoided dangerous cities."

LucasFilms released the following photo from the set of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

How excited am I about the new Indiana Jones flick? This is me at a movie theater recently, when I caught sight of the new Indiana Jones poster for the first time...

Famous (infamous?) hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang bought one of the One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop, picked it apart (literally and figuratively) and posted this review.

I've written a bit about the XO Laptop and recommended it as a holiday gadget gift in an N&R Life section centerpiece just before the holidays. It's fascinating to see someone get one and look at it with this kind of scrutiny.

And here I thought it couldn't get any stranger than House of M or Infinite Crisis.

The United Nations has teamed with Marvel Comics to produce a comic in which the heroes and the U.N. join together to solve conflicts and fight disease worldwide.

The move's supposed to help the U.N. rehabilitate its somewhat tarnished image -- but I'm not sure that saying: "Hey, if we had some super-powered underwear perverts working with us, we could actually get this stuff done." is the best possible message.

People keep laughing at me when I tell them I may make my next car a Smart car.

But I test drove one a few months back for the paper and actually liked it. GQ gave it a spin this month and came away impressed as well.

The fact that they get an estimated 40/city and 45/highway is a huge draw -- but they're also attractive (and attractively priced -- the convertible model is $16K), comfortable (believe it or not) and fun to drive.

I got mine up to 60 mph on the test drive -- but the GQ writer got on the highway and went up to 80 for over an hour. I don't remember the last time I needed to go faster than 90 mph, which is the Smart's top speed -- so I'm not sure what the downside of owning one of these would be.

I forgot to mention that I did a feature on cool (and most available and affordable) tech gifts for the holidays.

Here's the list, with links.

Check out this totally sweet Iron Man made of LEGOs.

Here's a link to a whole LEGO gallery.

Blimey!

Check out this flashlight in the form of the Sonic Screwdriver device from the long running BBC science fiction show Doctor Who.

And it's just $13.

Here's a clip of The Doctor with his favorite tool:

And here's a video review of the actual flashlight (or torch, for you anglophiles):

Less than a week after J.K. Rowling's outing of the Harry Potter series' master wizard Albus Dumbledore more than 7,000 novelty t-shirts have been sold celebrating the occasion.

Above (from left to right): The "I Always Knew" Dumbledore Pride t-shirt and the more pithy "Wizards are Gay."

You can get them here.

Got a sneak-preview DVD of the new Bionic Woman revamp.

My expectations were very low -- but it's really good.

And not just compared to the original, of which I've seen only a few episodes but with which I wasn't terribly impressed.

Like Battlestar Galactica (brought to us by the some of the same folks) this is a darker, scarier, more political version of a 70s classic.

It also manages to be sexy without being cheesecakey or exploitative -- no mean feat. The titular bionic woman is played by the gorgeous Michelle Ryan, who manages to be tough and sexy without (at least in the pilot) overtly exploiting her sexuality or leaning on her good looks as a crutch.

Her adversary, the evil (and beta model) bionic woman is played with femme fatale flare by Battlestar's Katee Sackhoff.

The two manage to have a brutal super-cat fight on a rooftop in a rainstorm without it looking anything like a beer commercial or one of those effing Charlie's Angels movies.

The show's apparently had some creative troubles, but the cast is strong, the writing is good, the effects are impressive and I for one am going to be keeping an eye on it.

The show premieres Sept. 26 on NBC and will air on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

Wow. Props to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who has announced a $100 Apple Store credit to anyone who bought an iPhone when it was released.

This comes in the wake of the announced $200 price drop just two months after the product was released.

Said Jobs in his statement:

"..even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these."

A few strange and wonderful comic-booky things this week:

- The movie version of Alan Moore's seminal WATCHMEN now has an official Warner Brothers movie site, complete with production blog and cast list. It's happening...

- Edward Norton is not only playing The Incredible Hulk in the new movie (which is rebooting the character and hoping to wash the taste of the last one out of our mouths) -- he also pitched in on the script. Also, TV Hulk Lou Ferrigno, who is now a Los Angeles Reserve Deputy Sheriff, has apparently filmed a cameo for the film.

- Over at Blender, alt-country rocker Ryan Adams (whose new album is doing a lot better than I predicted) gives what should be some obvious advice about starting a comic book collection. Kids -- take it from me, a guy who, years into trying to purge his house of comics, still has boxes of them: if you're not hooked, don't start.

- Director John Singleton is attached to films about two of Marvel Comics' most prominent black characters - The Black Panther and Luke Cage. Singleton isn't talking about which will be produced first, but he does throw out some ideas about casting here. I'd personally be against model Tyrese Gibson as Luke Cage. I'm sure he has the physique but I'm not sure he has the chops. I'd go with Wesley Snipes -- no, I don't care that he already played Blade.

Sad news.

The Flash Gordon pilot is not very good.

Now -- let me preface this by saying that the DVD I've seen was a very, very rough cut.

Special effects were missing and text would roll across the screen explaining: "THIS THE PART WHERE A GIANT SPACE SHIP APPEARS, WHICH IS WHY EVERYONE'S LOOKING INTO THE SKY AND GASPING!"

There were a number of scenes where the actors were walking past green screens that I'm assuming will eventually be lavishly created other-worlds or where a pivotal plot point was revealed with an effect that just didn't happen. Some of the sound and music cues weren't there yet, either, or shots were just missing, replaced with black screens that said: "ESTABLISHING SHOT, HOME."

But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that the concept has been reimagined in a way that isn't (yet) very interesting. It's very much like that first season of Smallville where, if it hadn't been for the fact that you know this kid is going to grow up to be Superman, you probably wouldn't have watched a show about a bunch of poorly developed high school characters running around in Kansas fighting a different mutant monster created by meteors every week.

But there are two important differences between these two series....

Joss may be one of my favorite people in the entertainment industry. Not only was he responsible for Buffy, Angel and Firefly, but the man's genius also extends to comics, public speaking, writing music, and dancing. (It just doesn't seem fair, does it? Although, maybe the dancing bit is not quite accurate. But Numfar -- aka Joss -- never fails to make me laugh.)

Now, coming from Comic-Con, Joss has revealed that he is talking with the BBC about making a 90-minute movie, "Ripper", about Rupert Giles, Buffy's Watcher on the TV show. And Anthony Stewart Head is apparently already on board.

Also in Joss news, he is already plotting season 9 of the Buffy comic, and Oz will be making an appearance! "The Angel: After the Fall" series will be 12 issues, picking up where season 5 of Angel left off. And here's a free comic he's collaborating on with Fabio Moon, called "Sugarshock" -- I just read it, and I have already bookmarked it for future issues.

On Thursday the US Postal service is unveiling its Marvel Superheroes postage stamps at the San Diego Comic-Con (known in some circles as the Nerd Prom).

I still have a sheet and a half of the DC Superheroes stamps. Unfortunately, I so seldom use actual stamps that I may have them forever.

Am I going to buy the Marvel ones? Absolutely.

According to Footurama the powers that be at Skywalker Ranch and Adidas have finally ackowledged that there's a lot of Star Wars Geek/Sneaker Fetish Geek overlap -- and they've created these to get all of them off:

That's right. Darth Vader sneakers.

You heard me, son.

The Darth Vader sneaker is, reportedly, a patent leather version of the Adidas Superstar with gold tags and lace ring.

Ugly as Vader himself, these things are somehow still just awesome.

Those of you laughing don't know the power of the Dark Side.

No firm release date but rumors have them coming out for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.