Summer blockbuster season has arrived as 1987 brings us Adventures in Babysitting and Innerspace while Double Dragon hits arcades. 1997 goes galactic with Men in Black and Starfox 64, and 2007 crashes with the first live-action Transformers movie.
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I dislike Will Smith outside of the Bad Boys movie but Men in Black has two of my favorite comedy scenes, him dragging the table loudly during the test and shooting the little girl during the training exercise then totally justifying it in a “Is he fug’n with them or is he just on a different thought level” not only really made me laugh but told you everything you needed about the character and i found him very reflective of myself because “playing dumb/genuinely being a weird thinker” is how I’ve always been.
Midajah who is best known for being Scott Steiner’s…girlfriend? Actually met Big Poppa Pump due to her illliteracy causing her to mistake a marquee reading “Big Bad Booty Daddy Scott Steiner” with “Cherry Poppin Daddy’s and Scott Stapp, by the time she realized her mistake she had fallen in love with the largest arms in the world, the rest as they say be history.
I ain’t seen Bad Boys II. 😉
Transformers 2007 the worst? yknow theres sequels…..
Man i wish brett had been made to watch it.
I tried so hard to enjoy that Transformers movie. I went with two friends, all of us fans of the original toys & cartoon, to see it in Times Square with a crowd. The show was sold out, so we bought tickets to the next show and retired to the ESPN Zone to get LOTS of drinks (hey, we were in Times Square, so all our choices were gaudy theme restaurants). We got so loaded to ensure our expectations for the film could not be any lower. By that point we would make routine trips to dollar theaters with copious amounts of alcohol so as to enjoy all manner of lesser motion pictures, calling the experience “40 and a Movie.” We’d seen lots of ho-hum flicks and enjoyed them all on some level. So surely it would work for a big-budget movie about robots fighting? I’ll bet we stumbled into our seats and at least one of my friends snuck in more liquor to ensure the buzz wouldn’t stop.
Transformers still sucked. I have never seen any of the sequels and do not anticipate giving the series a second chance. But at least I’ll never forget getting sauced up in the ESPN Zone pre-disappointment.
1987- still not alive but I love Touch of Grey
1997- My father had a 3 cd rotation of that Cherry Poppin Daddies cd, No Doubts Tragic Kingdom and Smash Mouth Walking on the Sun. These cds would be in rotation for months and blend together in my mind.
Men in Black is fantastic, loved it as a kid, still do.
2007- Saw Transformers with a sort of friend of mine who I never saw out of school. It was a bad movie to go with a bad date, she had hoped I was as religious as she was and would date/join her on a religious retreat her church was sponsoring. That lead to akward conversations. On the way home from dropping her off, I saw deer running across the street, stopped and watched a small deer run into my parked car and fuck up my passenger door. >_<
As someone who saw the original cartoon for what it was (a shameless toy-grab with no regard for plot or characters), I went into Transformers with very low expectations and they were met. It wasn’t the worst thing I ever saw. It was stupid, I recall there being more than one masturbation joke, and a lot of stuff blew up. The best thing I can say about the film is that there were moments where I laughed genuinely, but the thing I couldn’t forgive it for was the special effects. The transformations just looked like a jumbled mess where as the old cartoon at least made an attempt at making the transformations look believable (except Megatron, that was always stupid). I hated the look of all of the robots and felt the movie was way too long. I still didn’t hate it, but I also never felt even the slightest pull from any of the sequels to go see them so I’m rather amazed they’re on their fifth film at this point. Also, I remember they marketed a ton of action figures for this film, naturally, but they were strictly action figures. I encountered them at my cousin’s house because his young son had a bunch of them. They were Transformers toys that didn’t transform – who allowed this to happen?!
Oh man, the Replacements were the best. I have vivid memories of listening to Pleased to Meet Me on my walkman while mowing lawns in the summer of 1987.
As a Brit I had to laugh when it was suggested some coin didn’t catch on because it looked too much like the quarter. Doesn’t seem to be a concern when it comes to your notes does it? 😛
And thank God for the smoking ban. At the time I worked in a bar/restaurant and I used to hate having to serve the smoking area. Although now it just means they’re concentrated on the door area so you get blasted when you’re trying to enter/leave.
So, I actually liked the first Transformers movie upon first watching it. I had a lot of fun with it, and since I didn’t have any real nostalgia for the series outside of Beast Wars, I wasn’t all that offended by it. However, the seams fell apart after subsequent viewings, and yeah, I don’t really care for film now. I never watched the 2nd movie due to the terrible reviews and news of a pair of, let’s say, culturally insensitive robots. I gave the 3rd movie a shot, and just like my experience with the 1st, I liked it. But, history soon repeated itself, and I found myself questioning why I ever liked it in the first place!
When the 4th movie came out, I actually went to the theater to watch it, simply because I had nothing better to do. I was super close to buying a ticket, but common sense prevailed, and I walked away; I definitely didn’t miss much by skipping it.
I saw Innerspace with my mom in the theater, it’s weird to think of Robert Picardo being the scary bad guy. Adventures in Babysitting is one of those 80 kids classics, like Goonies or Explorers, that had kids having interesting adventures, that get poopooed these days, but I think it was the best era for live action kids movies.
I don’t know why you’d want a whole pocketful of coins when you can have an easy to carry wallet. The smallest bill in Japan is about $10, and having so many smaller value coins all the time is annoying to me.
I rented Transformers when it came out, and fell asleep long before the robots do anything interesting, there was SO MUCH stupid crap with the stupid people I didn’t care about at all. It was like Godzilla (the new one or the Japanese ones,) why use the interesting characters so little?
High concept is usually used to mean something that’s pitched by saying, “what if…” like Jurassic Park, “what if there were a park with dinosaurs running around…” I think Chris means to say more highbrow than high concept, I’ve heard lots of people use it that way, and I didn’t know what it really meant until a few years ago.
I agree, their diatribe about the ridiculousness of a paper dollar bill is weird. My pockets are heavy enough without having to carry coins for damn dollars. Paper is light.
Or we just get rid of cash. Win win!
I love the original Men in Black, and seeing the movie in the theater for my birthday on July 5, 1997, is one of my last good memories with my dad. After the movie, we went to orientation for my new high school, and since my dad was a high school teacher (at a different school) I felt like we finally had something to talk about. Later that year I learned that he had been having an affair and my parents had a messy divorce and he stopped trying to be a good influence, so it’s strange to think back on that particular fun day I had with him.
Happy 20th Star Fox 64! You all know what that means!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKF0PET6hCc
I loved Men in Black. In a per-internet world though, it begat one of my biggest “lost media” holes. The culprit was a made for tv parody movie; National Lampoons Men In White featuring BTTF’s own Biff (Thomas Wilson) It must have been five or six years till I finally discovered it on the internet, having asked at least every kid in my school if they knew what I was talking about. It doesn’t hold up at all, at least above Meet the Spartans, and it will always personally hold this aura around it, as a strange nearly forgotten thing from my childhood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsVGAN9NXtk
Men in Black came at a time in my childhood when I realized WTF I was doing, and what I liked. Pokemon had yet to come out for another year, and I learned to enjoy video games at the pizzeria on the other side of the block, tasting the fun of Metal Slug while playing some Marvel Super Heroes vs Capcom. Comic books were really cheap (not knowing because of the continuing after effects of the crash), and basically Simpsons everyday.
Speaking as a Brit living in the US, trust me – American money (and dollar bills) is SO much more convenient than UK money. UK currency is ridiculous – there are eight different coins (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1 and £2) and they’re all oversized and heavy as shit. If you need to break a £10 note for something small and the vendor doesn’t have any fivers, you walk away with a metric tonne of metal in change. Everyone constantly walks around with a fistful of useless coins jingling in their pockets.
Star Fox 64 coming out gives me a memory of the exact DAY twenty years ago. It was the birthday party of a friend, and I brought the game over, having picked it up earlier that day. This particular friend was a basketball nut, and a fanboy of Shaq in particular. So before we could play Star Fox, we had to sit through the movie Kazaam. It sure was a movie.
Unpopular opinion, but I love the first Transformers. I say this as a kid who grew up loving the cartoon, toys, and animated movie. I think it was robbed of it’s technical Academy Award nominations. And it was my favorite movie of 2007.
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It works for me because it really does keep it simple, obviously showing that Spielberg was heavily involved in developing the movie. I love the action, the humor, the fantastic visual effects that still look stunning ten years later. The whole theme of “Without sacrifice, there can be no victory” is the kind of thing that I will always be a sucker for.
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I know people give Bay crap for his love of the military, but the sequence were Bumblebee is captured and tortured was certainly the most brazen criticism by a mainstream movie of the torture controversy gong on in Iraq at the time. The scene was brief, but effective.
I’m with you. That first movie I’m fond of too. It’s so much fun to rewatch.
Since I know nobody else is going to make this their deep cut from this episode, Sara Bareilles is my favorite singer ever. Really. Right around the week that Little Voice was about to drop, I saw the “Love Song” video, and I was immediately in love, thinking that there was some great injustice in the universe if she didn’t eventually turn into some kind of MASSIVE deal. That said, “Love Song” isn’t even the best song on that record, just the ONE song she’d be known for for a long time (“Vegas” , “Bottle It Up”, “Morningside”, heck, basically the whole album is sublime.) I’ve seen her live more than once and it’s always a WONDERFUL show, she’s a hilarious, dry witted woman (With a bit of a surprising sailor’s mouth) that has NEVER disappointed.
Since then, she’s released 2 more great albums, and in 2015, she composed and wrote all the music for what would become the Broadway Smash musical “Waitress” (Based on the film of the same title by the late Adrienne Shelly). When the show’s original lead actress, (“Beautiful” Tony Winner Jessie Mueller) left the show, Bareilles actually took over the lead role for a run that ended just last month, and if I do say so myself, it’s incredibly gratifying when I visited New York to see the show live to see a GIANT image of Bareilles and her name on a Times Square billboard 10 years after I swore she had to hit it big. Sometimes you know a great thing when you see one.
(By the way, “Love Song” in fact has nothing to do with her telling off a specific lover but actually is a covert “Screw you” to her record company from when she was writing “Little Voice” and was told she didn’t have enough love songs on the album for a pop record. That’s in fact one of the best things about Bareilles in fact, she’s EXCEPTIONAL at writing great “kiss off” anthems, like that and 2010’s “King of Anything”, and admittedly very much enjoys that she can get away with telling people what she REALLY thinks if she smiles the whole time and makes it catchy)
P.S. If you need a closer song for an end of a “Comment” 302010 show (Sorry this is so long), and want a great track off “Little Voice”, “Morningside” is catchy and upbeat and would be great (Not saying you have to, just ya know, if you want 🙂 ) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWRiEgFs8vQ
cudos to Hank for bringing up Lindsay Ellis. Channel Awesome can be pretty cringe, but she puts out great content. Also it might be the gayest thing i like on youtube. looooooots of musicals.
I used to like the Michael Bay Transformers movies but I think I slowly began to realize after the 4th film, they’re not worth it and since last year I found out Michael Bay had Megan Fox was his car in order for her to win her role in the first Transformers film which, oh boy…
Anyway, I argue there’s never been a good Transformers movie. Not even the animated film, that I wouldn’t consider good. Fun but not very good. I like the soundtrack though. But I have a major dislike of G1 as much as the live action movies to the point where I thought of if I were to pitch a crossover to IDW, I’d pitch Godzilla vs. Transformers G1 just to have Godzilla go all Jason Voorhees on Autobots and Decepticons with a hint of Lucha Underground wrestlers like Godzilla would wreck Optimus Prime like how Matanza wrecked Rey Msyterio at Aztec Warfare or Godzilla wrecking Megatron like Rey Mysterio did to Matanza as payback and when rescuing Prince Puma. I have a dark mind at times with 80’s cartoons I’m not fond of I admit. Apologies! Sorry Dave!
Anyway, believe it or not, I saw Out To Sea. Yes, I saw Out to Sea of all films. Like, I don’t know why I was invited, guess nobody found a babysitter for me. I mean, I don’t remember a single thing about it and it’s been years since I’ve seen the film. Even then, I don’t think my 6 year old self understood the plot, I was more interested in Men in Black which I did see afterwards finally like a few weeks after Out To Sea. Incidentally, Out To Sea was how I was introduced to Brent Spiner. Not even Star Trek: The Next Generation or Gargoyles. Could be worse. I could have been introduced to Brent Spiner via The Master of Disguise.
Also, Men in Black I was obsessed with as a kid. I even watched all three films. Second film sucked but the third film redeemed itself thankfully. I even watched the cartoon which by the way, did not know it went for four seasons. Amazing!
I’ve only ever seen the first Transformers movie. Didn’t hate it, but I had no desire to see any more of them. A year or two ago, I decided to sit down and try to watch the others. I got a few minutes into the sequel, when one of the robots farted. I jumped off my couch, ripped the disc out of the player, threw it at the wall, and yelled “Fuck this shit forever!”
I’ve never seen another one.
This is actually my birthday week. I would have been turning 5 and 15 in 97 and 07. I absolutely loved MIB as a kid and that goes for MIB II as well. I haven’t gone back and watched the second one for fear of tarnishing the good memories I have of it. However I have gone back to the first film several times and am pleased to say that everything about it still holds up. I also remember there being Burger King kid’s meal toys for the movie. I still remember the toy neuralizer I had that actually slid open and made sounds just like the “real” one in the movie.
As for Transformers I didn’t actually see it until it came out on DVD months later. I remember loving it at the time but I haven’t watched it since nor have I watched any of the sequels. In hind site I know it was a bad film but that didn’t stop me from liking it back then. Maybe it was the perfect movie for my 15 year old brain. On that note I actually wrote a review of it for my highschool English class. I remember praising the movie’s effects and giving it an overall favorable review. I know longer have that review unfortunately but maybe that’s for the better. I’m sure it would make for some cringe worthy reading.
So, as a Canadian I loved the little part about the Canadian $1 coin being introduced. This coin has an image of a loon on it. Which is what led to the nickname of “Loonie” for the coin.
When the the $2 coin was being discussed, I remember a lot of press about what animal or symbol to put on it that people couldn’t “make fun of” (What about Bart? Let’s see… Bart, Cart, Dart, E-art… nope, can’t see any problem with that). I can’t find any evidence but I’m sure they actually spent a fair bit of money on the issue.
Eventually they settled on a majestic Polar Bear. How could anyone make a funny name out of that? Well, they didn’t. They just called it a “Toonie” (Two-nie)
I always wanted “doubloon” to catch on. Pity.
So. I’m a serious metalhead. Lifelong, dedicated. I’ve even got the holier-than-thou attitude, and call everyone posers. DEATH TO FALSE METAL!
Anyway, I asked my now-wife out on our first date, after having talked to her almost exclusively online for a few weeks. I got into the driver’s seat of my all-black ’72 Monte Carlo and realized to my horror that the album collection for my shitty shitty CD deck consisted of Kreator, Blind Guardian, Iced Earth and Slayer discs. I can’t pick up a hot blonde chick with my TRUE metal collection! Metal fandom is something you slowly REVEAL to a girl after you’ve already ROPED her. You can’t just blast Dead Skin Mask at her, she’ll jump from the car at the nearest opportunity!
So I rushed to the local K-Mart (back when K-Mart existed in Canada) and looked for “techno,” thinking surely that’s what the normies listen to these days. I ended up stumbling by accident onto Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land and Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole. I grabbed them in a rush and threw them into the ol’ Monte and picked up my girl.
It worked, of course–the badass car, but also the surprisingly badass electronic music that I ended up really enjoying. Prodigy in particular is in many ways a METAL act–but with electronic music instead of metal music. I still listen to it occasionally.
I am a diehard Transformers fan, involved in the fan community and I do a weekly Transformers podcast (http://www.transmissionspodcast.com). I was genuinely excited for the first live action Transformers movie at the time and enjoyed it just for the fact that it thrust Transformers into the cultural zeitgeist. But of course it’s the Monkey’s Paw wish – now Transformers is only known for terrible soulless live action movies that make no sense and don’t even feature the robots that much. I would say a large chunk of Transformers fans (myself included) don’t care for the live action movies precisely because they don’t try to put forward a coherent story with compelling or at least interesting (robot) characters. And I also think the robot designs are ugly.
But I would like to offer a defense of the general Transformers franchise that can be source of legitimately good and interesting sci-fi that centers on the concept of living alien robots that can change shape. Yes, the original fiction was and still is just window dressing to sell toys. But there are genuine bright spots of good story telling in the many iterations of cartoons (particularly Beast Wars in the 90’s and Transformers Prime from a few years ago) and the comics.
Transformers comics (from the original Marvel US and UK comics of the 80’s to the IDW comics of the last 10 years) have a plethora of good storytelling, compelling characters, and interesting concepts. In particular the recent IDW comics series Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye has gotten critical acclaim in the last few years as a quality sci-fi comic. I gifted a Transformers Humble Bundle to Henry a couple years ago, hoping the LaserTime crew might give it a chance and discuss it on a Cape Crisis episode, but alas that didn’t happen before Cape Crisis went on hiatus. Henry should still have access to those books so I’d encourage you guys to take a look. Start with the More Than Meets The Eye series and if it hooks you, also track down the Last Stand of The Wreckers miniseries.
In particular, the current IDW series has actually ended the million-years-long Autobot/Decepticon war, and explored how both sides deal with postwar life. And this has been a status quo change that has stuck for the last 5 years and does not look like it’s going to be reversed, a rarity in comics.
For everyone else, here’s links on ComiXology (both series are on ComiXology Unlimited right now so you can read them if you’re subscribed):
https://www.comixology.com/Transformers-More-Than-Meets-the-Eye-2011/comics-series/7279
https://www.comixology.com/Transformers-Last-Stand-of-the-Wreckers/comics-series/3786
Comics Alliance articles praising More Than Meets The Eye:
http://comicsalliance.com/tags/transformers-more-than-meets-the-eye/
Article in The Guardian praising More Than Meets The Eye:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/02/transformers-lost-light-comic-same-sex-partnerships
More Than Meets The Eye Series on the Transformers Wiki:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Transformers:_More_than_Meets_the_Eye
Funny you guys talking about the Hong Kong handover. I am moving to Hong Kong sometime in the next two weeks.
I’ve been to HK once before and I really like it. The city has a cool vibe, and I’m really curious to go back and see if it’s changed.
Also, I miss Canadian 1 and 2 dollar bills. I hate having so many coins, though it’s not as bad as Japan.
How was that segment not political?
As a fan of swing revival music I just want to say the Cherry Poppin Daddies suck ass. Bands like The Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire were great bands that should have been the face of the genre. The Squirrel Nut Zippers modernized swing by applying it to straightforward rock instead of 90’s ska garbage. Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire mixed swing with classic rock, orchestral, folk, and indie rock influences to make music unlike anything I’ve heard before or since, even in Andrew Bird’s solo work. I hate that The Cherry Poppin Daddies and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are the faces of a genre I unironically love. It’s like being a rap fan in a world where Vanilla Ice is the only rapper people know.
I remember seeing a teaser trailer for the first Transformers movie where the camera pans over the desolate terrain of what appears to be the moon and then someone dusts off a metallic emblem covered in dust and it is revealed as the transformers logo and it was dramatic quiet theme song music and I audibly guffawed and said far to loud: wait transformers??? Like…the action figures?? This is a joke right??? And everyone around me stared in disbelief at, what I assume to have been, my lack of respect and ignorance. But I stand by my reaction to this day.
I’ve only recently discovered The Replacements about a year ago via a documentary on PBS. Alex Chilton is now one of my favorite songs ever.
I remember being on the bus freshman year of high school (’94 -’95 ish) and a friend handing over his walkman to have me listen to some wacky music. It was like nothing I ever heard so I borrowed the tape so I could make a copy. There was no band name or album title written, so it was basically a joke tape that I’d occasionally listen to for a laugh. A couple of years pass, I fall in love with The Prodigy and Fat of the Land. So, I check out their older albums. Turns out that tape I thought was funny music was Prodigy’s first album.
So, Transformers. Loved the cartoon as a kid, but only had the movie on VHS to get my nostalgia kicks. For whatever reason I was indifferent about a live action movie being made. Saw the trailer, didn’t love what I saw. As it got nearer to release I see a premium Bumblebee toy (live action movie version) at Target. For whatever reason the design for the new Transformers clicked. BumbleBee’s doors in robot form became kinda like wings. I don’t know why my brain accepted it, but it just did. After that I got on a cartoon kick. I watched the entire series leading up to the live action movie. So I got a total refresher course in just how good/bad the old show was.
Which leads to me buying tickets for the movie a week ahead of time (something I never do). And going to the first showing (something I hadn’t done in years). Obviously everyone in the theatre are superfans. We’re hooting and cheering at all the little crap (i.e. the Hasbo logo, character introductions). Overall I just had probably the best movie going experience I ever had. Watching the movie a second time and losing the natural high of that opening night experience I was much more aware of the movie’s flaws. But I still enjoy watching the movie for the cool action scenes.
The sequels have had diminishing returns in terms of interest for me. The second movie was really bad, but had even better action scenes that I enjoy watching. I vaguely remember the third movie, it was the last I saw in the theater. And I think I watched the fourth one once. Overall I don’t hate the live action movies and can watch them for the action stuff. I really want a reboot instead of sequels. They’ve screwed up so many of the Transformer characters that I wouldn’t mind seeing them try to make something a little more accurate to the old cartoon.
You wanna know something? I LIKE THE TRANSFORMERS 2007 MOVIE. I still watch it every so often (watched it a few weeks ago again actually) and don’t find that much wrong with it. It’s dumb, it’s over the top, but it is fun. I don’t give a rats ass about that cartoon from the 80s who’s only purpose was to sell toys for kids. If you have so much nostalgia for that that you can’t like the 2007 movie then more power to you. I only watched Beast Wars prior to that and when this movie came out, I was 19 and liked it. 10 years later, I still like it. I don’t watch the sequels much and haven’t seen one in theaters since the 3rd one.
Oh and I’m proud to say I grew up LOVING the ninja turtles (saw them in concert when I was like 5) and DIDN’T rage and shit and pitch a bitch all over the internet with the Bay produced reboots. I liked them and thought they were fine. I’m ok with things I love being reinvented years later for new audiences. I still have all the old stuff to enjoy. Shame most people can’t get over this fact.
Also the Linkin Park songs on the 07 movie were great. Still jam out to those on rare occasions.
And MIB fucking rules. I watched that movie all the time as a kid. Saw both sequels in theater and dig them. Will Smith was the fucking man and I miss that era of Will Smith Summer blockbuster gold.
Also want to add I love Star Fox 64. I remember playing it on my friend’s n64 and he had surround sound and like a 35 inch tv so it felt fucking incredible. I was convinced it was the coolest thing ever. Few months later I finally got my first n64 and a relative got this game and we played it a lot. N64 games were so expensive for a kid though (me) so I never actually bought this game until Virtual Console on the Wii in 2009. I ended up getting a copy of Star Fox 64 in like 2000 by trading with a kid in my apartments. I traded him Robotron 64 for it, which I remember because I bought that game cheap and hated it. Huge win for me.
I saw License to Wed in theaters this weekend in 07 I think. It wasn’t bad, I enjoyed it.
Speaking of music and Transformers. I’m not a fan of Linkin Park, but their songs did work well with the movie.
Also Muth Math did a version of the old Transformers theme. It wasn’t in the movie but it was on the soundtrack. I don’t think it’s great, but it did lead me to their first album which I do really enjoy.
And lastly did you know Stan Bush made a song called “Til All Are One” for the Michael Bay Transformers but it wasn’t accepted for the soundtrack? It’s not as good as Dare or The Touch, but it’s still good if you like that kind of sound.
Still remember walking out of Transformers and asking my sister “So which Decepticons lived and died?” By the time I saw the movie I had beaten both DS games, so I was super attached to characters like Barricade (voiced only in games by Keith Motherfuckin’ David) who had gotten real development in games I loved but got reduced to throwaway schmucks in the actual movie. Needless to say, I was dissatisfied with the actual film.
1) I’m pretty sure TOMORROW NEVER DIES, the Bond movie of 97, was originally supposed to involve the British handover of Hong Kong back to China as a major part of its plot, but because of various difficulties and the eventual release date of November, they dropped that aspect entirely – though they do end up in Hong Kong during the second half of the film.
2) I saw Transformers as an eleven year-old in 2007, and enjoyed it quite a bit. By the time Revenge of the Fallen came out, I had grown out of it, and every future movie after that would not interest (and somehow would get worse). I still think that first movie is totally passable, fine entertainment. Yes, the humans suck and it should just be about THE FUCKING TRANSFORMERS, but it’s not as obscenely stupid and offensive as the later entries, Shia does his best with the material, the plot is straightforward, and the Transformers actually seem MOSTLY like they should be. It’s also not as blatantly ashamed of its premise as, say, the Bay produced TMNT movies. 10 years and four sequels later, I wish they’d just fucking stop these movies. We don’t need a “cinematic universe” and spin-offs. It seems like overseas/ China is the only reason why we keep getting them.
The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies were the first-ever concert I went to, almost certainly around this time since Zoot Suit Riot was the biggest deal in the entire world for some reason. I was 16 and my friend was 17 and had a car; we drove into the mythical land of Toronto (where I now live) to see the show. Ozomatli opened for them.
But of course there’s an awkward story about the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies concert: I told my grandfather where I was going, which led to a story about how he’d lent sheets to an army buddy who was seeing a youngish, and very innocent, girl; after a while, his friend told him “You don’t want them back.”