Whoo!  I’m getting excited about 20th Century Fox’s reboot of the X-Men series.  The X-Men are my favorite comic book franchise, and I was very upset when the whole shebang went downhill with the emergence of X-Men 3, and continued its horrible ways with “Wolverine: Origins”, which turned out to be less of a Wolverine movie, and more of a terrible prequel to the whole X-Men trilogy.  

Anyway, after FOX ruined the series by killing off Cyclops and Professor X, and never settling on a hair style for Storm, they have wisely decided to reboot the series with director Matthew Vaughn in a film entitled, “X-Men: First Class.”  

English director Vaughn got his start helping out Guy Ritchie, who did a few indies himself, but is now known for having helmed the decidedly uneven “Kick-Ass” flick.  However, for this kind of movie, I think he will be a fine choice.  He is no where near as offensive as the likes of McG or Brett Ratner.

The film itself will start at the beginning of the X-Men saga where psychic Professor X, to be played by the excellent James McAvoy (Last King of Scotland), recruits a bunch of teenage mutants to teach them how to use their powers to save man-kind from the likes of Magneto played by the also excellent Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds).

Thankfully, from the cast list, we are gonna have a fairly original cast of mutants which will include Beast (Nicolas Hoult/About a Boy), Emma Frost (Alice Eve/She’s Out of My League), Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones/No Country For Old Men), and Havok (Lucas Till/Walk the Line).  Other X-Men like Jean Grey, Iceman, and Cyclops haven’t been cast yet, but its strongly rumored that “Kick-Ass” himself, Aaron Johnson, will play Cyclops, but that is unconfirmed.  

And lastly, rumors are flying that Kevin Bacon is in negotiations to play an unrevealed X-Men villain!  That’s just awesome.  I know Kevin lost a lot of his fortune with Bernie Madoff, and probably needs roles like this to stabilize his finances, and I hope he gets it, because he is legendary.  

Anyway, I am very pleased with the way the cast and crew has shaped up thus far, and look forward to X-Men: First Class in 2011.  As news continues to break on this flick, I’ll be right here bringing you all the juicy bits.  Oh, and look out for my epic upcoming video series covering the entire X-Men saga, starting with the incredible X-Men Animated Series from the 90s.  The X-Mania on Internetclub ‘91 is about to explode.

Thank Goodness It’s Friday.

Since it’s the beginning of the weekend, what do ya say we take a trip back…way back…

To the early 90s. 

Don’t be scared! Zubaz can’t hurt you- they really can’t!

Are you ready?

Ok. Imagine what Friday was like a long time ago. You’re sitting in school, it’s 2nd maybe 3rd grade. At 3 o’clock, the bell rings and the school week is finally over. For the next 66 hours, you are free. For the rest of the afternoon you’re gonna be running, jumping, and screaming outside! When you get home, you find Dad picked up McDonald’s for dinner. Excellent! Next, it’s time for some video games. Man, what a rush! I hope this feeling NEVER ends!

Then it’s 8 o’clock.

And you know what that means.

Before there was the Internet, and before there was the independence of adulthood, there was only one thing to do on a Friday night. I’m talking, of course, about the TGIF lineup on ABC.

“Family Matters”, “Full House”, “Step By Step”, “Boy Meets World”, “Perfect Strangers”, “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper”, “Sabrina The Teenage Witch”, “Dinosaurs”- TGIF was the place for many a warm memory around the old TV box with Ma and Pa. 

It was the age of sitcom perfection, or as I like call it- “The High Sitcom”. No not stoner high you idiot- like ”High Modernism” or “High Classical”.

It was the era of genius ideas.

Here’s a show for you: 3 single men living together and raising 3 young girls. A house of love- a house full of laughs. FULL HOUSE.

Or: Middle class black family and the lovably geeky kid next door. Hard work matters. Love matters. ”Did I do that?” FAMILY MATTERS. 

Or: Dinosaur family doing dinosaur things in dinosaur times. DINOSAURS.

You can watch these shows now on Nick at Nite and TBS, but it just isn’t the same as that magical block of programming on Friday nights in the 90s called TGIF.

Over the next few Fridays, I plan to feature each TGIF show in its own blog post, and go further in depth about each of these 90s sitcoms.

To get started, I was interested to know which show you would like to see profiled next Friday. Please share your memories!

Brett Camper, a Brooklyn-based designer, has made THE greatest advancement in cartography since the dawn of mankind.

Camper has created fully functional, zoomable, 8-bit city maps in the style of the original “Legend of Zelda” video game.

The maps are entirely integrated with real world data, and you can conduct an address search just as you would on Google Maps.

On the surface, these maps may simply seem charming, but exploring the zoomable feature reveals the intricate work that was put into each and every city block. Searching through my Brooklyn neighborhood, I felt transported back to the Dutch settlements of 1600s Breukelen, where whimsical paths and brick roads replace concrete highways, and rows of crops supplant rows of houses- er…pixelated paths and crops that is.

Be sure to explore the maps! What do you think- should we stop using regular Google Maps altogether?

What better way to enjoy an East Coast heat wave than by taking a walk down Boy Band Lane??

Seriously though, I didn’t realize it, but enough time has passed to make 98 Degrees VERY amusing. Enjoy!

So, the verdict is in, and the new Spider-Man is not a cool black guy, its a poncy, English-raised American named Andrew Garfield. He was in that post-life Heath Ledger movie,  ”The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”. The director meanwhile is Marc Webb, director of the legendary chick flick, “500 Days of Summer”. And even more amazing, or bizarre, is that the new film will be shot in 3D! To me, this a whole clusterfuck of strange news. I understand they had to re-boot Spider-Man because director Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire left due to scheduling conflicts, and that Spider-Man 3 was a massive creative abortion, but I’m not yet sold on this creative team at all. Can a romantic, weepy indie director like Webb pull off a 3D action nerd extravaganza? Like I detailed in my Donald Glover post, I wanted the producers to take a more bold 21st century type leap with the franchise…instead we are getting a potential Twilight-esque action flick aimed at scooping up teenage girls along the way. As more news comes out on the development of this movie, I’ll be posting my thoughts and opinions.  Stay tuned Spidey fans.

Hey New Yorkers, do you love Mario Bros? Do you love mediocre pizza? Well great news, pizanos- now there’s a Mario Pizza restaurant in New York City!

Located at 147 E. Houston Street, Mario’s Pizza is, yes, blatantly and illegally using the Mario Bros name.

According to Yelp, Mario’s Pizza is receiving a 2 out of 5 stars rating. The slices are reportedly “gross”, “rubbery”, and “oily” but they dish out the crap at a 2 slices for $3 rate. So if you love Mario Bros and you don’t want to starve (or if you’re crazy high), head on down to Mario’s Pizza!

A part of me has a feeling that cooking a frozen pizza at home and watching The Super Mario Super Show on YouTube might be a better exercise in cheapness.

My dreams will come true on Saturday, July 24th when the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn hosts a Saved By The Bell themed dance party called ”Saved By The Bell House.”

The event info says:

“We’ll have The school gymnasium decorated in school colors (Go Tigers!), yummy themed drink specials all night, 80s/90s DJs in the back along with two performances by the awesome 90s cover band The Bayside Tigers, a non-stop 80s/90s dance party in the front lounge featuring DJ Jonathan James, plus Robicelli’s will be on hand selling delicious SBTB-themed cupcakes, and SO much more.”

Ok, so obviously this sounds amazing. But I want to see people get extra creative with this. I’m talking about a FULL array of costumes, people! Let’s see a Mr. Carosi costume or a Jeff costume (the guy who breaks up Kelly and Zack) in there. And some of you Screech’s might want to go as a Max, just to balance it out.

Oh, and I’m going as Zack, so no one better copy me.

It’s difficult to fathom a song and music video more spectacularly retarded than this, but the Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles” is just that. ICP’s brand of hardcore rap is so unforgivably bad to begin with, but it’s as if this song marks their sentimental moment, where the duo has realized, after years of dark and frightening imagery, the hidden beauty of the world. It’s essentially ICP’s “sell-out song”, which, being the Insane Clown Posse, is HILARIOUS.

Wonder what they’ll do next? Well, you’ll find out this August when an ICP movie called Big Money Rustlas (oh yes) comes to a theater near you.

What would you do if you could go back in time? Would you scare everyone with dark premonitions of the future, like an all-powerful space shaman? Or would you do something financially profitable, like selling iPods and cellphones to a culture where they didn’t exist yet, effectively making trillions of euro-dollars?

Well, you’re free to try out option A, but option B would be the cooler of the two. Especially since a Bay-area designer recently made 70s advertisements that retrofit modern technology with the past.

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