The Avatar: The Last Airbender

I can’t believe it. After an end-of-season hiatus, my favorite cartoon is making a comeback to Nickleodeon. Yay!!

The Avatar has been the reason why I wake up on Saturday mornings. It sits right up there with my favorites like Samurai Jack and Teen Titans.

If the word cartoon conjures up pictures of Tom and Jerry to you, rest assured The Avatar is of a different genre. Very different. The Avatar tells stories of human and social struggle themed on compassion and humanity. The stories actually have meaning. Values even.

The Avatar is the story of a little boy Aang (leftmost below) who is the reincarnartion of the Avatar, an ancient warrior who gained mastery over the elements earth, wind, water and fire and uses it to defeat the evil fire nation. While the overall plot is simple enough, it is the adventures of Aang and his two close friends Saka and Katara as they travel through strange lands pursued by the fire nation army that keep me on the edge.

I for one am relieved that the age of Hanna-Barbera cartoons is coming to and end. I’ve never fancied its portrayal of fun and adventure as hitting someone on the head with a stick. It has spawned generations of evil toddlers who, just like their heroes, settle their differences with a stick. These toddlers are now leaders of huge corporations and trust me you’ll be horrified to know how they run their companies.

If you want your kids to grow up as good people, let them watch the Avatar and Samurai Jack. Its better than the Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner crap a hundred times over.

So anyway I’m clearing out my old recordings in my Astromax to make way for the Avatar. Can’t wait, woohoo!!

Heroes: My least favorite characters

There are two characters in the tv series Heroes that I’d rather not watch.

First is Niki Sanders the single mother.

I find it mentally draining just watching her struggle with her alter ego Jessica episode after episode. They keep coming back to the same old scenes in the garage, playing the same awful background music and reading the same old script. Ever since Jessica’s first appearance, there’s been nothing new to learn about the two of them. I mean come on, get over it already. I’m not going to spend the rest of the season watching her fight the same old battle with herself when she should be out there fighting the bad guys. I think they’re trying very hard to kill an otherwise interesting character with repetitive over-dramatization.

My second least favorite character is Isaac Mendez the painter.

Like Niki, the producers are trying hard to kill him with the broken record syndrome. They keep repeating the same conflict scenes between he and his girlfriend (and anyone else who comes near him, now that Petrelli and others are coming into his studio), the same reminders about why he needs drugs to paint and the same whiny excuses about why he doesn’t know why he draws what he draws. Look, we get it already. You’ve told this story in every episode and I’m gonna scream if you tell it one more time.

Its a shame that the power of subtlety is all but lost in Heroes’ screenwriters.

Now for some strange reason this broken-record syndrome is is hovering around just a couple of characters and I’ve started to flip channels whenever its their turn on the screen. I hope I don’t lose interest the way they lost me in the series LOST – a show whose tale is constructed almost entirely on flashbacks, which is like trying to guess what you ate by looking at a turd.

Hiro Nakamura

This character from the tv series Heroes cracks me and makes the series endearing, for me at least.

For one, its his screen character. Hiro is a nerdy otaku who can bend space and time and teleport himself. His childlike characterization of an innocent guy to the point of stupid is simply hilarious. He gets taken for a ride a lot, especially by his colleague and best friend Ando Masahashi who convinces him to use his powers to do things like cheat at the gambling table.

Although Hiro trusts strangers easily, he is not above doing naughty things like swiping a comic book from an NYC newsstand after paying the proprietor in Yen. And when the situation demands it, he will put up a stubborn argument. But despite getting punched up, thrown from a moving van, bullied and insulted, he’s never glum for long. This guy doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body.

My biggest respect for Masi Oka, the actor who plays Hiro, goes to his language ability. He speaks flawless American (common), flawless Japanese (common), and his piece de resistance: English with a thick genuine Japanese accent (not common for a native American speaker). His half-past-six Inggurisu beats James Kyson Lee’s half-past-six Inggurisu any time. James is the guy who plays his best friend Ando who in real life is a true gaijin – a native New Yorker.

Here’s some things you may not know about Masi Oka.

He graduated in 1997 from Brown University with degrees in mathematics and computer science and a minor in theatre arts.

He has a 180-plus IQ. (IQ of an average adult is about 105)

Was as a child featured on the cover of Time Magazine with the title “Those Asian-American Whiz Kids”.

Speaks fluent Japanese. (obviously)

Resides in Los Angeles.

Still drives a 2000 Honda Accord.

Produces CGI special effects for George Lucas’s ILM and worked on special effects for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), War of the Worlds (2005), the three most recent Star Wars movies, and The Perfect Storm (2000).

Has a blog.

Source: Wiki and IMBD

Superheroes

I don’t know if anyone noticed but there seems to be a rash of superhero shows of late. What started off as a trickle about 20 years ago with early versions of Superman and Batman has steadily grown with latter-day versions of X-Men, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider and Heroes the tv series.

Personally I can’t wait for a real life movie of the Powerpuff Girls. I’m curious to see who will play my favorite hero – Mojo Jojo.

Some say comic-book superheroes first appeared at a time when the world suffered great conflict – world wars and dreadful crime rates – to fulfill a need. People were feeling lousy about life because the good could not defeat the bad. That was the time when the cities were controlled by the mob and people from strange foreign lands were killing their servicemen. The constant bad news was more than they could bear.

Because you couldn’t simply go out and buy hallucinogenic drugs like today, minds took off on their own and began to fantasize. Some of the more talented took a step further to literally draw out their fantasies, what became feel-good artwork portraying how villains were taken down by righteous people who wore their underwear outside and had out-of-this-world powers. These unusual men and women would set the wrongs right again. They will save the day.

The symbol must have been so appealing that people just ate it up. As a superhero all you needed was a strong righteous identity. Mystery was a big thing then so any uniform will do as long as you had a mask and cape. Oh you also need a dark origin, a notorious villain, incredible powers and a storyline and you’d have a hit. I’ve lost count of how many superheroes there must have been from Hulk to Captain America, their special powers as varied as the uniforms they wore. You could never run out of comics in the 40’s -50’s.

Well 50 years later the superheroes are still alive and well, outliving four generations of Star Trek captains. They are upgraded to include issues of the day of course. TV series Heroes for example makes mention of global warming and terrorism. Nice touch.

Superheroes will rule the world because people know conventional weapons don’t work against the bad guys. We need mind readers, laser-shooting eyes, indestructable bodies, hands that turn water to ice, people who can fly in the air. Even James Bond will die off because he is not super enough.

Malaysians are not spared – we also need superheroes to make life bearable. So will Cicakman save Malaysia? I dunno but I’m betting we’ll be seeing a few more in days to come.

Cartoons, man’s ultimate saviour

So my favorite channels on tv are 60 and 62. Those are Astro’s. I don’t watch RTM and Media Prima stuff. If you don’t know, 60 is Nickelodeon and 62 Cartoon Channel. Yeah dude, cartoons rock. Can’t live without ‘em.

People who know me cannot reconcile the fact. You? they’d sputter. Cartoons? But you talk like someone who’s wired to CNBC and Bloomberg.

Huh? Since when does what you watch define you? Well ok, maybe there is a wee bit of a connection. If I like kick-ass action movies you won’t catch me watching Mary Poppins. So what is wrong with the likes of Teen Titans, Justice League and Spongebob Squarepants?

Cartoons remind me of how we grown-ups like to make life more complicated than it needs to be. Honestly, there’s a lot we can learn from the warped mind of a kid. Why get anal about nutritional data on a cereal box when all you need is to recall the happy faces surrounding the bowl of coco puffs on telly. Health? Tell me, do you really wanna live till 100 when you can’t even pee without assistance?

I think toons are practical. If you take away their gravity defying, time cheating and body stretching qualities, you can learn more about life in 20 minutes of Samurai Jack than an hour of Lost. And my own eyes tell me that women’s reaction to Johnny Bravo is more realistic any day than to Alex “Hitch” the date doctor. If fantasy’s your cup of tea, nothing can beat manga stuff.

Cartoons are funny, realistic and to the point. They can solve any problem you throw at them in 20 minutes or less and things always end well. Now isn’t that how life should be?

Are Adrenalin junkies sick?

I’m a huge fan of Maximum Exposure, Sports Disasters, World’s Most Amazing Videos – you know, the stuff they show on AXN. What awes me is not so much the “man triumphing over nature” mantra of these shows but the incredible stupidity of man in getting himself into trouble. I mean, how else would you describe the act of jumping roof-to-roof on a bicycle, crashing down and breaking some bones and saying on the hospital bed that you can’t wait to heal so you could try again?

Ok, so most of these home-made daredevils are babies – young and always hungry for attention. They practice hard to prepare for the obligatory cameraman and audience – usually their friends who dutifully egg them on to an inch of their lives. These are the true amatuers, the wannabe schoolyard heroes. Been there, done that. We all go through our stupid phases in search of character.

But surely grown ups are different right? Well not according to these reality shows. Just watch the post-botched-stunt interviews. Notice how the adult pro and a 12th grader all tell the same story. From their hospital beds with an arm or leg amputated and flesh torn off their faces, they’d say really smart things like, “As long as I have my other arm/leg and I can move about on a wheelchair, I will continue to race / skydive / basejump / whatever. I just can’t do anything else. It makes me feel alive.”

Err, come again? The only way to feel alive is to be an inch of death? You mean being of sound health and having all limbs intact is to feel dead? Somehow I think survivors of the real reality show – the victims of natural disaster – will beg to differ.

There are those who are unwillingly thrust into disaster and those who willingly seek to cheat it for thrills. The latter is an addiction, like chain smoking. Losing one’s left lung to cancer will not deter a hardcore smoker when the right lung is still functioning. Some will admit they can only stop when they lose both lungs, have their cancerous lips removed or when they are dead. Like William Hung, they’ll say they have no regrets. So strong is the desire to quench one’s addiction that nothing else matters. Not even the impact of their deaths to their loved ones. That is the true reality behind this type of reality show. But then I’d be a party pooper to mention it wouldn’t I.

Now I believe everyone has a right to choose their own brand of excitement. Thrill seekers can base-jump, scream in glee on the way down and splatter their brain cells on the rocks below for all I care. They know the risk. But what’s really funny is how these juveniles talk all Lao Tze-like with the triumph-of-man-over-nature shit and emerge with bloodied faces and bones broken in 5 places. To think they’ll be spending the rest of their lives of their lives going in and out of therapy for a twisted backbone or some shit, and making alcohol and painkillers part of their daily diet to numb the pain. “You have to pay the price,” these kids would ominously say with a broad cheeky smile.

But if surviving the odds of nature is their thing and if they’re up for a real honest-to-goodness challenge, then I do have a recommendation. Take a plane ride and parachute down into the deep African wilderness or the Amazon jungle alone with nothing save the clothes on your back. If you come out in one piece after 3 months, then you have beaten the odds and truly deserve my respect. But all this skateboarding on top of little handrails outside the library and driving race cars around a circuit protected with helmets, gravel traps and tyre barriers, that’sno challenge. You stand nowhere next to those who have truly survived war and natural disaster.

Meanwhile I will continue to get my kicks from Max X and the World’s Most Amazing Videos, not to celebrate man’s triumph over nature but to marvel at the unlimited bounds of human stupidity.

Amazing Race Asia Memories – Lamest episode ever

The Amazing Races Asia Memories episode last night was lame. Downright lame. Ok, I knew it was a chance for some of their bigger sponsors to hawk their wares so I was prepared for some unashamed in-your-face product positioning. Interestingly they never did this in the American series. Ok fine. But what I didn’t expect was how the entire episode was nothing but a tourist video masquerading as the Amazing Race Asia highlights. How blue was the water, how dreamy the view, how vibrant was the city, how fantastic the buildings. Geez if I really wanted to know, I would have switched to Discovery Travel & Living. You guys were in a goddamn race, remember? Doesn’t it make more sense to cap it off by having the teams talk about themselves, their lives before the race, what made them apply, how they got shortlisted, what pushed them forward, their high and low points, their strategies, the inter-team tensions, and how they braved it all to the finish line. Instead what do we get? A blinking tourist commentary about the beach, island, city streets and shopping. There was nothing new to learn about the teams themselves. Cheh. What a waste of 1 hour.

And the much-touted big-secret-to-be-revealed-in-Memories was no secret after all. I won’t even waste my time mentioning it here.

Again, I noticed one thing. Whenever the camera focuses on the winning team, its virtually Zabrina all of the time. You hardly get any footage on Joe Jer and in the entire Memories show she only spoke like less than 10 sentences, and all of it during an outdoors shoot. She’s noticeably missing from any indoors shoot, including the AXN promo video of TARA with Andrew and Syeon. Could it be that the real JJ is camera shy? It was a let down for her fans who wanted to see more of her, and I sure as hell know there are plenty out there.

There was another thing missing in Memories – the fact that they entirely skipped Singapore. Hmmm… I wonder why.

Don’t get me wrong, TARA is definitely a memorable event for me but their Memories is one episode I’ll quickly forget.