live-action Japanese Spiderman from the ’70s

Recently I came across YouTube video clips of a live-action Japanese Spiderman TV show from the ’70s.  This is something to see… prepare to be surprised, even if you know quite a bit about Spiderman.

If you watched the video, you might’ve noticed it was from 1978 and it featured a giant live-action transforming robot.  How long did it take before America got transforming robots?  Something like 1984, wasn’t it?  The Japanese have been ahead of us for a while on cartoons and sci-fi technology.

According to this other video (with a different theme song, one you may be more familiar with), Spiderman has a flying car (the Spider Machine GP-7), and the giant transforming robot is named Leopardon and belongs to Spiderman.  The song says he has radioactive blood, and he wears some type of mechanical device on one of his wrists.  I’m really curious about the story now…

On a related note, someone took clips from the Japanese Spiderman TV show and made a compilation video, adding NES-style music from Mega Man.  (NES = the original Nintendo system, in case you didn’t know.)

Spiderman’s pre-fight antics look amusing, plus his voice in Japanese is awesome (“SPYDA!”).  I’m gonna have to watch one of those episodes sometime…

I need a portable incinerator

During a recent discussion on this blog, I suggested that pickles be shot into the sun or at least tossed into a local incinerator.  That got me to wondering if there are any local incinerators open to the public.  Probably not.

So I challenge our Research & Development team to invent a pocket incinerator.  Imagine how handy that would be!  If you have trash while you’re out and about, you just fire up your pocket incinerator and toss the refuse in, and instantly your garbage is vaporized into nothingness.  Then there would be no excuse for littering — and it would be fun to watch things be vaporized.  (I suspect it would be so awesome that people would start grabbing whatever nonessential items are around them, which if at work would include pens, paperclips, staplers, TPS reports, and whatever stuff you think your co-workers really don’t need that much.)

Alternatively, the trash could be teleported to an parallel dimension, but I suspect you’d need a mighty powerful battery to handle that, probably something powered with nuclear power, which you might not want to carry around in your pocket…

how turrible is this video?

After I posted the Toilet Stool Rap video, Mango-Man said he wasn’t sure if that’s what he had in mind.  So he sent in a link to a video.  It involves badgers dancing and mushrooms.  This is the short version (36 seconds), but it’s not hard to find the longer versions if you want (which are just repeated).  You might’ve heard of it — apparently it went viral a couple of years ago, and a lot of people have made parodies of it.

My analysis is that this is the lamest video I have ever seen.  I feel dumber for having watched it.  If you watched it, I apologize.  Remember, this came from Mango-Man, so let him know if you think it’s worse than hammered crap*.  He reads the comments, so let your opinion be heard.

* In case you don’t know about hammered crap, it’s the latest rage.  There are numerous ways to play, but the best way is to get a big sledgehammer and a cow pattie.  The cow pattie can be fresh or “aged” — you should try using both to see which you prefer, but I think fresh makes more of an impact.  The rest of the game is obvious — you hammer the crap.  One big smash usually does the trick, and everyone there will remember that day for the rest of their lives.  It’s guaranteed to create lasting memories, stuff to tell your grandchildren about someday…

pickles do not go with BBQ!

The other day I was at a BBQ place in Pine Bluff, trying it for the first time.  It was one of those great and turrible* experiences all wrapped into one.  I ordered a BBQ sandwich, but they put pickles on it!  Nowhere on the menu did it say pickles were included on it, nor did the waitress mention it.  I’ve ranted (numerous times) about having no tolerance of pickles, so I won’t rant on that again.  But they should tell you about such things!  They should warn you before exposing you to pickles!  I don’t know if they were trying to ruin my day or just completely ignorant of how much some people detest pickles.

Fortunately, the pickles had yet to soil the meat or bread with their evilness, so they were discarded with no harm done.  That’s a good thing, or the whole plate would’ve been returned.  (I’m not normally one to make a fuss at restaurants, but I have to draw the line at pickles.)  At least the food was great, so that was the bright spot on the trip.

There was another bad spot, though — the waitress never came back.  I finally had to ask for a refill of sweet tea, and they never brought a ticket.  Paying took a long time because they had to match people’s orders with a pile of tickets containing only codes.  I hope that type of service isn’t the norm.

Anyway, just thought I’d rant.  It’s my soapbox, and I can rant if I want to.  🙂  If you’re expecting a moral of the story, it’s that pickles should not be served at restaurants.  If I owned a restaurant…

* turrible is the worse form of terrible, and try to say it like Charles Barkley does, for full effect.