He Fronts The Most...

I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... I have always been on the fence with MC Frontalot. Ever since I discovered him after he made the Penny Arcade Theme Song he's been on the radar as a champion of geekdom and a pretty solid rapper in his own right. He's pretty underground and I think that it worked for him. He would rap about things from D&D to Magic: The Gathering to Goth Girls to why your blog sucks and you know what, it's all pretty good. Something though, wasn't grabbing me. Maybe it was a lack of production value, maybe it was just inconsistencies. I like many of his songs but he never really hit that 'next' level where I could feel comfortable calling him a 'favorite'.

After the release of his newest album, Zero Day. I can say with certainty that MC Frontalot is one of my favorite rappers.

Since Penny Arcade effectively threw him a bone his popularity has skyrocketed, and with that his income most likely has as well. Resulting in the last two albums he's made being produced with much, much stronger production quality.

At first though, he didn't have that. He just had some pretty catchy lyrics and a very solid flow. Songs like Pr0n Song, Bizzaro Genius Baby, Mountain Kind and It Is Pitch Dark jumped out to me among his song library at the time. My plus one had always had a fondness for the MC Front but for some reason I just couldn't find myself embracing him with the same life.

He released "Final Boss" In 2008. It had some solid songs, it started out strong with "Wallflower and "Tongue-Clucking Grammarian". There is a song about Canada called "Canadia" which created an interesting beat off the tune of O'Canada. Socks On was a cool song as well but overall the album was a miss. There wasn't much about it that I enjoyed and I thought maybe Front was going to outlive his welcome. I worried about him. Final Boss had kind of stumped my favor of the Front like a difficult boss would thwart my desire to play a video game.

I didn't fret, I just gave Front a rest. I re-established my vigor for other musicians of the genre like the Beastie Boys and Outkast. Front sat on the sidelines but he wasn't forgotten. Upon learning of his new album I was hesitant but got it anyway. What happened was I was overjoyed.

Zero Day was like a countdown to Frontalot establishing his legitimacy. The album starts of hot with the title track and then moves on to a D&D themed song called "Charisma Potion." which further establishes Front's credability as a gamer (If you were ever in doubt to begin with). "Your Friend Wil" is a great track where our friend Wil Wheaton proclaims "Don't be a dick" (A reference to a recent PAX [Penny Arcade eXpo] where Wil said "When you're playing [games] online, don't be a dick." during a speech he gave about gaming culture) "First World Problems" pokes fun at a lack of priorities in our culture today and "Disaster" is a great track with a catchy chorus and beat that features fellow Nerdcore rappers Schaffer The Darklord and Beefy

"Spoiler Alert" spills the beans on way too much for it not to be funny, while "Better at Rapping" Front may truly confess his feelings or just poke fun at hypothetical inadequacies, I love the result regardless. He also re-makes an old classic, reminding us why he's called MC Frontalot with "Front The Most". Hilarious skits like "The Tribulations of Muffy and Pervival" which services as the precursor to "First World Problems" and "Question and Answer Time" which features the hilarious John Hodgman help keep the album fresh and keep the humor level of the album high.

After listening to this album, I have to say, I would love to hear a "Weird Al" Yankovic / MC Frontalot collaboration! What kind of song would they make? I don't know but I bet it would be hilarious and awesome.

Overall, Zero Day is high quality from beginning to end and it's not only my favorite Frontalot album but really one of my favorite rap albums and music albums of recent memory. It combines an excellent variety of instruments as well as some classic old school NES era video game sounds in the various tracks. It sets the tone for 2010 to be a great decade for MC Front and Nerdcore Hip Hop. I highly recommend Frontalot to gamers, to rap fans, to music fans, to anybody that's looking for something a little different and fresh.

MORTAL KOMBAT!

I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... bum bum bum bum, ba ba, bum bum bum bum, ba ba, bum bum bum bum, ba ba MORTAL KOMBAT!

We all have been there...

TEST YOUR MIGHT

FLAWLESS VICTORY

FATALITY

JOHNNY CAGE... WINS

Mortal Kombat is an INSTITUTION. It defined my childhood in ways that certain other exploits simply could not compare to. I remember being young, when Mortal Kombat first came out in the early ninties... I would have been like seven or eight years old when that game came out and I remember first playing it fondly. It's gory game play and gritty graphics was so different than the sports games I was used to playing.  (Yes, even at that age I was addicted to sports games.) Something about that game scared the shit out of me. I literally had nightmares about it. Despite that, I couldn't get enough!

Had my mother known I was playing those kinds of video games, I'm sure she would have taken my Sega Genesis away and banned me from ever playing video games again desperately altering the course my life would ultimately take. Be that as it may, I can say with certainty that Mortal Kombat shaped me in some fashion. It's as cherished a 'childhood relic' if you will as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sonic The Hedgehog or maybe even Batman (though not nearly as monumental)

Mortal Kombat was one of the first movies I ever saw in the theater. My father, the great man that he was took me to saw this movie and I loved him ever more for it. Mortal Kombat was awesome, it had the attitude of the game plus it was kind of campy and awesome in a way that would've totally appealed to my age demographic at that time without being too cringe worthy for the parents. Even today, I love the Mortal Kombat movie, THE FIRST ONE.

When I think of the second one... well. I can't spoil it for you because it's that, ahem, memorable. But if you haven't seen it, or don't remember and are curious (in a way that only a TRUE Mortal Kombat fan would be) then check it out. The ending of the movie will certainly surprise you for one reason or another. If you are not curious to see the movie but still wonder about the ending, just check it out on You Tube and you won't have to suffer through one of the more truly awful movies that has ever been made. Truly awful ending... like, wow awful.

Anyway. Mortal Kombat remained in one way or another relevant as I grew up. It kind of lost its focus as video game technology grew. Mortal Kombat kind of lost itself in the glitz and glamor of 'next gen' systems, at the time the N64/Playstation era and never really recovered as gaming grew into the PS2/Xbox era. Still, fans like me loved the series enough to allow it to continue to produce up to the most recent offering of Mortal Kombat, after Warner Bros. bought the rights to Mortal Kombat and made MK vs DC Universe. It was an ultimately un-inspired game that threw the 'heroes' of the Mortal Kombat universe (if they could even be called that?) against the iconic heroes and villains of DC's comic book universe.

There's just something satisfying about being able to shoot Batman in the head as The Joker that you can't really put a price on, but I digress.

Mortal Kombat has completely failed to be relevant for a long time, and it's been hardcore fans like me that have kept its memory alive. Right around the time that I graduated high school, back in 2005. There was some legitimately strong rumblings, and a rather large internet petition, that a third Mortal Kombat movie was in the works, they were lining it up and unlike false prophecies of the past this felt like it was truly going to be something. That of course, ceased to come to fruition.

A bitterness has always lived on because I have wanted that, I know they can do better and I know that Mortal Kombat is awesome enough to be made into something better than Annihilation had to offer. Then, on Thursday, June 10th... THIS happened.



When I first watched this, as a Mortal Kombat fan and I say this with modest pretention, a TRUE Mortal Kombat fan, I felt genuine glee hit my system.

The problem with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is that it was TOO much like the video games. The first movie had a rather grounded (for the 90's...) to reality feel to it but it also delved rather fearlessly into the mythology of the video game and in the mid-90's it was a recipe of success, at least in my opinion. Annihilation failed because its attempt to legitimize the video game by replicating it at every possible foray pretty much, ahem, annihilated the movie and the video game simultaneously.

THIS though, feels different. For todays standards it has a rather 'typically' dark and grounded feel that one would expect to see in a "2010" movie, and it is also suitably gory. Mortal Kombat was so 'out there' for its time because of the gore. By todays standards, gore is pretty popular with todays movie going audience, this would be a great opportunity for a savvy filmmaker to do Mortal Kombat some amicable justice while thinking outside the box, and this trailer, even if you're a fan of it or not (Penny Arcade made their feelings clear) you can't argue this has certainly taken an outside the box approach to the material.

The man who directed that short is a director by the name of Kevin Tancharoen, he directed the movie Fame that came out in 2009. Upon learning this I kind of raised an eye brow but this was apparently something he had been wanting to do for a while. With $7500 out of his own pocket. Actors Michael Jai White (Spawn, Black Dynamite) and Jeri Ryan (7 of 9 from Star Trek Voyager) donated their time to help Tancharoen produce the short with his 'vision' of what a new Mortal Kombat film could be.

Michael Jai White is no stranger to viral marketing, producing his own short trailer for Black Dynamite which eventually lead to enough buzz being generated for the full feature to be produced. White, who played Jax in the short was in the running to play Jax in Annihilation before being cast as Spawn, spoke positively about his experience playing in the short and is also a fan of the game as well. (You can read more about his experience in some MTV interview I found...)

http://www.collider.com/2010/06/09/kevin-tancharoen-interview-mortal-kombat-rebirth-feature-film/ Tancharoen goes into some detail about his fondness for the franchise and how this has been something he has been musing over for a while, as well as some of the details for his 'vision' of a feature film and the process of making the short. Give it a read if you're curious, it certainly piqued my interest.

This feels so much stronger than previous rumblings of a new Mortal Kombat film and that's why I can't help but get excited for this. The short really felt genuine and it felt fresh. There's a lot of room to play with that and grow it into something that would be really entertaining and still do the "Mortal Kombat" justice. He has a pretty strong vision for what he wants to do and that's something that so few movies really seem to have lately. You could incorporate the gore aspects of the Kombat, the more supernatural aspects to some of the characters (since he talks of focusing on the Scorpion/Sub-Zero rivalry) and really some of the more, I suppose, 'true' aspects of the Mortal Kombat realm.

They don't need to dive into the multiple realms of the MK universe or anything like that. Have the tournament, have some awesome martial arts fights. Dive into the Scorpion/Sub-Zero relationship. Show Jaxx and Sonya Blade kicking some ass. Throw in some cool characters the fans would like to see but like he talks about in that interview, don't overdo it or it just gets to be too much. (X-Men 3, anyone?) I'd love to see Michael Jai White get the metal arms and kick some ass kung-fu style like BLACK DYNAMITE. (Hell let's just get Black Dynamite in there and fighting in Mortal Kombat.) Get some good gore in there too with some awesome fatalities and really, to me, that's a recipe for a fucking cool movie and a great REBIRTH to Mortal Kombat!

Who Gets Held Accountable?

I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... once again, recent events have forced me to spew my hatred towards society, the media, and the suits (does it ever go anywhere else really?) This BP oil disaster is probably pretty high up there on the fuck-up scale and even if we haven't noticed immediately the scope of which this severe lapse in preventative judgement will show as far as a fallout is concerned. Nobody can debate that this is something that hasn't exactly been dealt with, with a required level of urgency (Operation "Topkill"? Fuck off.) and this is an issue where the finger certainly hasn't been pointed at the right people.

As with any issue where a large sum of money is at stake, those who should be deemed accountable (aka: The oil companies) are not. They have the politicians in their pockets, it's just as simple as that. The Media is equally to blame, they may have their 'experts' on the air to speak of the potential ecological destruction or show images of cute animals covered in oil and the path of wrath of which has been paved to this point but the matter remains none the less. We are also to blame because there are far too few of us (myself included, apathy is a lovely thing) who simply don't care because it doesn't directly affect us. WHO is held accountable?

Many have scapegoated Obama, who "hasn't done enough" and that is straight up bullshit. I don't even want to imagine what would've happened if Bush was in charge during this disaster. This would've been swept under the rug just like 9/11 and spun advantageously to make the government look good while actually doing NOTHING *COUGH*KATRINA*COUGH* while his support further goes down into the tube. That's not how Obama rolls and he's paying for it when he shouldn't be. There isn't really much that Obama CAN do to solve this problem. He's not going to throw on scuba gear and swim down to the hole and try to plug it himself, thats not going to work. Wake the fuck up and smell the maple nut crunch as someone much wiser than me once said.

Do we blame society? A society that (because of the media and they're next) cares more about poor heartbroken Sandra Bullock or how big a cunt Kate from Kate plus 8 is being currently or how Michael Jacksons children are doing or so on and so forth. There's endless celebrity fodder for the sheep to flock to and they do, it never fails. That makes me so angry is that the news, LEGITIMATE news has embraced this trend and you're more likely to hear about what celebrity has fucked up now than some random old man getting stabbed and dying in the news. Or how some elderly driver lacks the proper vision to drive responsibly and blindsides a family killing the parents in a t-bone collision. (I don't have a hate on for old people, I realize how that reads it's just two extreme examples)

Do we blame the media, who only wants to make money (again, there it is, $$$) in this world where we can get pretty much anything we want information wise off the internet. So they give the people 'what they want' and they eat it up like the sheep they are. I can't blame the media for that, money makes the world go around. I can blame the media for failing to keep people properly informed. With great power comes great responsibility and the media has FAILED their responsibility without a shadow of a doubt.

The finger should've initially, and should always be pointed AT THE PEOPLE DRILLING THE FUCKING OIL! I'm not some tree hugging hippie but (as previous rants would show) I have always believed that our society lacks proper accountability  it's parents failing to hold themselves accountable or people failing to hold themselves accountable. Society loves a scapegoat but this is one instance that a scapegoat just doesn't cut it. THEY failed to have some form of contingency plan in place for just such an instance where something goes wrong with their off-shore drilling. THEY failed to man up to their failure upon the origins of this monumental mistake. THEY have failed to come up with an adequate solution for this situation and it's been over a month since this happened in the first place. Don't blame Obama because really, this isn't his mess to clean up. BLAME THEM, BLAME BP! BLAME BIG OIL. It's THEIR fuck up so why are we having such a difficult time doing that? It's THEIR fault. NOBODY elses...

I am abusing cap's lock, let me take a deep breath for a moment...

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to view the world around them consciously and for the media to provide un-biased views on the world FOR the people to view it consciously and furthermore for the powers that be to target those who are responsible for the various atrocities that occur in our world. Why can't the world just work out like that? Do we need to revert to the wild west days where everybody worked hard and if you crossed a man you got shot? Do we need to start hanging people and lynching and acting like cut-throats because NOBODY is willing to listen, or further more, do what it takes?

I'm just asking that you take the time to look at the world for once, rather than hiding in your bubble because it's easy. Look at what is happening and take a moment to legitimately THINK about it. Think your own thoughts, don't form an opinion because some fucktard on CNN or Fox News tells you to. Be objective, be critical, be an independent and free thinker. I don't think that would help this issue be resolved any faster but maybe if BP actually had the oil under their ass and the fire ready to char so to speak maybe they would be a bit more quick on the draw to take care of this.