Almost Ashamed That I Think This Is Cool

Michael Jackson is in talks to mount an elaborate show in Vegas, complete with, wait for it...

A 50-foot-tall, laser-shooting robot replica of himself.

Remember "Moonwalker?" The straight-to-video production featuring Michael Jackson as a protector of kids vs. a vicious Joe Pesci? There's a sequence in there in which Jackson transforms into a giant robot (pictured at left--more pics from Moonwalker can be found here).

This new plan sounds like he wants to make that special effect come to life. A giant laser-shooting robot wandering around in the desert, visible to landing airplanes; will it just wander around out there randomly, all the time, like a giant Roomba, or just during shows, I wonder? While I love the audacity of hte plan, it kind of creeps me out that it's Michael Jackson proposing it. I'm all Jackson'd out.

Maybe he could battle it out with a big Celine DionDroid, though. That might be fun.

More International-Small World Crap

Just because I find it fascinating how the global economy is shrinking the world and making this kind of stuff commonplace:

Next year, a plant in Ardmore, Oklahoma is supposed to begin producing cars for MG, the bankrupt British company that has been resurrected in Nanjing, China., to sell in the US market. Chinese British sports cars for Americans via Oklahoma.

And here I just bought a Chevy, an American repackaging of a Japanese redesign of a Korean car. Damn.

Debating a Waste of Money

Money was tight over the winter, so I stopped smoking good cigars and made do with Blackstone Cherry pipe tobacco cigars, tasty but cheap. Now money's flowing a little better, so I've recently bought some good authentic cigars again. Problem is, I'm getting tired of my little black plastic travel humidor that only holds like 5 cigars. I want something more substantial.

Problem is, I want something out of the ordinary. I mean, this is nice, but dull. These are gorgeous, but really expensive. This is a little over the top, but I love the metal plate on the inner lid.

Then I thought, you know, I have a friend who paints decorative boxes and does really awesome work. I should buy a cheap plain humidor and commission her to decorate it. But her stuff, while beautiful, is more girly-fantasy oriented than I want. I want a box that looks like it sat on the desk of some dude from the East India Company while he composed dispatches commanding troops on steamships to raze Burma. Manly, but not plain. And not insanely expensive. You know?

Is that too much to ask?

Incredibly International

So I've been involved in a writing contest which has had some incredibly ironic results, but I can't really write about them until the whole thing's over at the end of the month. So until then, here's something vaguely interesting:

Shooting has started on a live-action version of Blood: The Last Vampire. Blood was originally a Japanese animated cartoon about a girl fighting vampiric monsters on an American base in Japan during the Vietnam war. The movie is being filmed in Argentina by Ronny Yu, who is Chinese, and stars Ji-Hyun Jun, a Korean actress. It's being financed by Pathe, a French distributor. It's not quite as international as Lost, but it's close.