Random J topics and links

I'm clearing out and sorting through my bookmarks and I thought I would post a few here....

Bon Jovi rules in Japan!

From a posting by a English teacher in Japan about the various desk graffiti he's noticed in his classroom.

The manholes of Japan

A site showing the various manhole lids from various cities and places in Japan.

Sega's new-ish $350 realistic looking and acting robot cat

Here's the robot cat in action

You've played the game, now wear the hat!
Show the world who is the Drum Master by sportin' this right fancy headwear...

Takio drum master Hat

I'm Kitty...Fly Me

From the Mainichi The stewardess on the right doesn't seem to be feeling the kitty love as much as the one of the left (but then again, the one on the left has Dear Daniel).

You can be a washed up TV dectective from the 80's this Halloween

While it about time for the media to roll out the stats on how Halloween has shifted from a kids holiday to an adult holiday (ie, retail booze sales on Halloween are only second to New Years), these items recently caught my eye at Target.





These are costumes for grown ups and I was quite taken by the pop culture/branding savvy of these costumes. While there has always been the various adult costumes subtypes -pirates, prison convict, enamel sexy maid that are effectively evergreen Halloween items, these costumes are a little more with it in a jaded Gen X way. I especially like that that the DEVO Radiation suit outfit comes with a Spanish explanation of “costume adulte." for that big Mexican DEVO fan base. The purist in me, must however, point out that the radiation suit look predates the "whip it" time frame and the "energy domes" came 2 or three image changes after the radiation suits...Tastefully, the costume doesnt' come with a whip either. But I really love that both the Magnum PI and Knight Rider come with wigs and the Knight Rider costume comes with a "watch" with a voice chip of KITT yammering various phrases.

On a more disturbing note, you can also get some of Burger King’s current advertising icons as Halloween items as well.

While I find the ‘King’ ads extremely interesting from their rather odd tone (Giant headed person shows up wordlessly and offers a food item to some what shocked man (I don’t think I’ve seen a women as a protagonist in these ads)…i.e., a lumberjack alone in the forest cuts down a giant tree, after the tree falls the King is there with a sandwich on a silver platter…quizzical lumberjack tries sandwich and happiness ensues…closing shot of lumberjack and the King doing a log roll.----The sandwich in this particular ad is called, I kid you not, a “MEAT'NORMOUS” sandwich. From a BK press release “The MEAT'NORMOUS™ Omelet Sandwich piles three full slices of crispy bacon, two slices of smokey ham and a sizzling sausage patty between two omelet eggs, two slices of American cheese and a toasted specialty bun. This reminds me of the Simpsons “ good morning burger “We take eighteen ounces of sizzling ground beef, and soak it in rich, creamery butter, then we top it off with bacon, ham, and a fried egg. We call it the Good Morning Burger.”. However, as unhealful as meatnormous sounds, in researching these links I undercovered this heart attack on a plate…the “ Luther burger ”, which is a burger served with krispy kreme donuts as the "bun".

On a similar note, albeit a bit dated by internet standards (a whole 18 months ago), you can check out this wired news piece on BK’s non-traditional marketing with their “ subservient chicken” campaign. Wired News-Porno Hen Hawks for Burger King

BK has also another unusual campaign for their new chicken "fries" (thin fried chick strips) involving a slipknot -like band with a chicken motif (so much so that slipknot has threaten to sue BK over this). The band’s name is, I kid you not….coq roq, yeah cock rock. Like the King ads, these ads are noticeable for their low key marketing…the TV ads seem more like 28 second of a music video and 2 second of product shot. Another ad had the band members getting into a car crash and upon seeing a young woman with some chicken fries on the other side of the road. Various band members try to cross the road only to be hit by cars (they turn into puffs of chicken feathers when hit) but the studly lead singer makes it across the road to the clearly awestruck woman’s suprise.

pur3 pwnag3!

This one is for you, J

from wonderland

For those not skilled in leet, pur3 pwnag3 means "pure ownage" which is a way of saying "I completely rule"

pwn/pwned/pwnage are excellent expressions but not as excellent as Chix0r (pronounced chick-zor), which is leet for "female".

Next leet topic...the powerful modifier " teh" as in "cus anime is teh suck"

HELLCUBE!

I present my HELLCUBE.
While I've often thought this sort of modification is pretty stupid and that concept of "skins" are of the level that only 12 year olds would think are really cool, I actually found myself quite taken with this design and actually ordered it. Thankfully,Cenobites ARE NOT included. Just the right thing for your next session of Resident Evil 4 (which is actually quite good and most impressive on the Gamecube).

U R Not E

Ah, eNOS, it only seems like yesterday. It seems hard to believe to me that it was 10 years ago I enrolled in business school, moved to run down City #17 (Pre-Combine), got an apartment with my girlfriend and proceeded to squander large sums of federal loan money on an education of moderate worth. While this was a very exciting and interesting time (the power grid in City 17 collapsed the day we arrived there, a learning experience that taught us that much was different in City 17 from Racoon City ). While this is an interesting time for myself, it was also the launch period for the Sony PlayStation.

I pretty much missed out the 2nd generation of video game consoles. I had an Oddessy 2 and an Intellivision when I was younger but I had switched to PC gaming by the time the NES/SNES/Genesis era (ah, GATO on an amber monocrome screen). I rented a NES a few times when I was college……checking out Mario Brothers and trying figure out how to play Metal Gear when I didn’t have the instructions (UMMM, Ok, I’m in a jungle and I have a pack of cigarettes, now what?…I think after an hour, I managed to sneak into a truck and completed about .0002% of the game). While I was big on PC gaming, I viewed the console market as mostly kids stuff (although I had been impressed by the hype surrounding the launch of Mortal Kombat on”Mortal Monday” for the Sega Genesis.

Then I saw the “neurotransmission” ads that PlayStation used to launch the product. These ads were exceptionally cryptic and used significant amounts of split second edits intermixed with varing images of words, gameplay screen shots, and noise. The ads begin with “begin neurotransmission NOW” as if the commercial was designed less to be viewed but to be downloaded to your brain. The ads ended with the phrase “U R Not e” and “eNOS”. In both cases, the e was colored red while the rest of the text was not. I later learned that the red e was to be read as “ready”, as in “you are not ready” and ready NOS (which stood for the Ninth of September)…I’ve also seen it suggested that it is “sony” spelt backwards with a “e” instead of y…but I think the red E sounds more plausible.

For me, these ads were stunningly effective from a marketing intrusion standpoint. If I was talking to my girlfriend when one of these ads came on, I would actually stop talking mid-sentence and remain quiet until it was over. If she said anything, I would just point to the TV. But I would pick up my sentence after the ad was over, as if I had downloaded the Sony message and could now proceed with other things. The ads were actually constructed with game cheat codes as embedded images that were just barely perceivable at normal speed. The marketing folks expected that the hardcore gamer audience (who would be technically leet enough to do so) would use VCRs to slow down the commercial to such a speed where the information was clearly visible.

However, during this period of time I was living on approximately $8K a year and a $300 game machine was a bit out of my reach and would remain that way for several years. At this time, the closest that got to a PlayStation was a demo unit at EB games in a nearby rundown mall where my girlfriend and I would play Tekken (although we were more Virtua Fighter fans).

Outside a couple PC games (I was a skilled and medaled Tie Fighter pilot for the Empire), I didn’t have the time or funds for any proper video games during this period of time. But as a treat to myself on getting hired to my first post grad school job was to buy a refurbished Sega Saturn (which was already in its death throws at that stage) for $80. The next year, I bought a Dreamcast (the only console I’ve ever bought for myself on launch day and I was extremely happy on that day…but that is story for another day)..

In retrospect, it amazing how primitive some of the Playstation games seem now…No analog control sticks in the controller, something like 300 polygons on screen…I fired up Demolition Derby recently and was trying to figure out why I was so blown away when I first saw this…although at the time, dynamic damage depiction was pretty “fresh” as the kids said back then. I also fired up WipEout, which has aged relatively well…although that title had enough style to burn thanks to The Designers Republic.

Well, I had a point when I started this post but it is lost to me now…but I was thinking about how the Playstation launch and start of one of my life’s chapters were at the same time and how much things have changed since then…both for myself and the for the Playstation.

A nice sum up of the PlayStation’s history can be found here at 1up