Ultra Beatdown

As I've said before, if you don't like DragonForce then you are a waste of DNA and shut up.

I've been patiently waiting like a good, little metalhead for their new album to drop and, thankfully, the standard bearers for the "extreme power metal" movement haven't let me down.

Beatdown doesn't stray far from the formula that propelled DF's breakthrough 2006 album Inhuman Rampage. The band is very unapologetic for sticking to their guns, and, in all honesty, don't have much room for growth short of changing genres.

Like most DF fanboys, I'm here for the relentless twin-guitar assault of Sam Totman and Herman Li, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of prog-rock in this 8-track shred-a-thon. Totman & Li share a bit more of the stage with keyboardist Vadim Pruzhanov, whose furious work on the synthesizer offers an nice occasional breather from the band's signature six-string shock and awe campaign.

Fortunately, though, the band holds true to its word, never straying far from their winning formula and gleefully amplifying everything the we in the mullet set dig about metal down to the superepic Dungeons-and-Dragons inspired album covers, lyrics and song titles. (Allow me to be the first to nominate "Heartbreak Armageddon" as the greatest tag ever.) And, of course, the guitars still run wild and reign surpreme.

There's much to love here, and DragonForce deserves much credit for both handling their newfound albeit modest success and for giving us fanboys everything we love about the band without simply retreading "Through the Fire and Flames" a half-dozen times on the new disc.

CURRENTLY LISTENING: Figure it out, genius...

No, seriously...

..."Foreplay/Long Time" really is the greatest song ever. I don't know why it took me three decades to figure that out.

The greatest song ever recorded EVER...

...is "Foreplay/Long Time" by Boston.

Just puttin' that out there.

For adults only...

It's not really my style to put porn on my blog, but I couldn't resist this. If there are any children nearby, I'd suggest having them leave the room before you look at these next couple of photos...

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...Seriously. This is pure, unfiltered smut.

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...OK, perverts, feast your eyes on this.



This bit of pure sex is the 2008 Honda CB1000R. Honda is clearly shedding its traditionally conservative design cues and heading into Girls Gone Wild territory. Just look at those curves, that sci-fi inspired cyclops headlight and the single-sided swingarm. Imagining this thing with a coat of glossy black paint is enough to make a grown man sweat.



The object of my desire is only available to Euros right now, but someday she will be mine. Oh yes, she will be mine.

The Devil Wears Pink

I've fallen way behind on writing about my misadventures, and don't really have much time to fix that today thanks to a slew of mundane tasks I have to attend to before I see ALIENS tonight and begin what's pretty much a solid week of work tomorrow. I'm slowly getting over a touch of laryngitis, so my coworkers will be thrilled to hear that I can't talk much.

Before too much time passed, I wanted to post the last few pics and memories of Mondo Diablo, which ended with "Chick Night": DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN and PRETTY IN PINK. I've always been ambivalent about SUSAN and hated PRETTY with a white-hot passion, and a repeat viewing of each has done nothing to change my opinions.



Nonetheless, I went for two reasons: to listen to '80s icon Jon Cryer's recollections of making the worst John Hughes film of the decade and to get one last picture of Diablo.



Cryer was quite cool, very funny and dished some great stories about filming PRETTY and, most importantly, why the film ended the way it did. Short version: Molly Ringwald wanted Robert Downey Jr. to play Duckie and never let anyone on set forget it. An ending was, in fact, originally filmed where Duckie and Andie wind up together, but Ringwald had it changed and reshoots were done.

When Diablo vented about her hatred of the ending before the films, Jason and I protested from the front row and reminded her that Kristy Swanson is quite an epic consolation prize. That pretty much fell on deaf ears, but we showered Kristy's cameo with passionate applause.

Diablo thanked everyone for coming, particularly the four of who occupied the front row for every one of her screenings. Inspiration struck, and I thought it'd be a great idea to sit her in the middle for a geek team photo, which required me to chase her down in the lobby after PINK wrapped and ask her to come back and sit through about five different pictures.

Fortunately, she is, in fact, the coolest chick on the planet and enthusiastically agreed to do it, calling us her MVP's. She sat and smiled as all four of us in the photo got it on our individual cameras, then stood, thanked us again and hugged us all(!).



There isn't one of us in the photo above who isn't in love with her. I even suspect pregnant, married Jen would switch teams.

Thanks again, Diablo. Here's hoping for a Mondo Diablo II someday.

Save me from myself...AGAIN

With the spectre of Wendy Wu still looming, I passed a billboard on Alameda pimping an ABC Family special called SAMURAI GIRL.

In case you were thrown off by the complicated title, here's the press release: For three days beginning September 5th, ABC Family will air SAMURAI GIRL, a miniseries based on a popular young adult book series by Carrie Asai. It stars Jamie Chung as Heaven, a 19-year-old girl who discovers that her adoptive father is a yakuza boss and may have killed her brother. She leaves to train in the ways of the samurai and plot to bring down her father’s criminal empire with the help of American friends.



Since it's pretty obvious I'm unable to resist family-friendly programming about cute Asian girls who bust heads, so I might as well give in and embrace the inevitable. I'll end up TiVo'ing every freakin' episode of this mini-series.

In my defense, Samurai Girl does look really hot rockin' that katana in the advertising.

Save me from myself...

This is officially a cry for help.

Today, while getting ready to get ready to leave the apartment (Makes sense if you think about it) I found myself watching something called WENDY WU: HOMECOMING WARRIOR. I'd explain the plot, but I think the title leaves precious little that needs explaining.

It was the title, in fact, that roped me in. Hell, it has the word "warrior" in it. This Wendy has got to be a kick-ass chick. Man, I love kick-ass chicks. That alone almost balanced out the fact that it airs on the Disney Channel.

I then noticed the extremely-cute-in-an-American-Eagle-billboard-kinda-way girl who plays the titular Homecoming Warrior.



I felt extremely filthy crushing on a Disney-Channel actress, but immediately did my homework and found that she's 20 years old, which downgrades the act from immoral and illegal to just inappropriate.

The real guilt lays in the fact that I had an out. I was leaving for the gym, and could very easily have turned the cable off and saved my soul from this stain it now must bare. Instead, I set the TiVo to record it, not wanting to miss a minute of the training montage that surely lay ahead. And there's nothing I love more than a training montage.

I haven't actually watched it yet, so hopefully sanity will prevail and I'll do the right thing by erasing that bewitching Wendy my video recorder and my life. I really don't need to know if she fulfills her destiny by becoming both a warrior and homecoming queen...

Or do I?

To cleanse my soul, I had to swing by Amoeba Records to pick up Dead Meadow's most recent disc and the newly released DOOMSDAY.

I need an intervention here. Help me before the sequel drops.