Up until two weeks ago I was willing to bet that everyone in the world was familiar with the phrase "talk to the hand." Then, just to be safe, I would replace the words "everyone in the world" with "everyone in America who owns a TV." So I was pretty shocked when I actually told a room to talk to my hand and wasn't met with applause for being an idiot, but instead with three confused people trying to figure out why I couldn't have said something that made at least a little sense. Later on one of them told me they remembered hearing the phrase in last year's Terminator 3. Congratulations to the writers of Terminator 3 I guess. You took a risk using an outdated catchphrase in your movie, and you managed to convince at least on person in the audience that you invented it.

So it's no surprise that there are still non-infants in the world that are unaware of Nintendo's apparently unique penchant for creating video games capable of "triggering seizures in photosensitive people." One idiot has suggested that Nintendo give them lots of money because of this, and then rank games based on their ability to trigger a seizure (sounds cool actually), add more warnings, and create a nation-wide ad campaign to keep the public informed. Aside from the fact that Nintendo received reports of only six seizures caused by Mario's Epileptic Assault Squad in 2003, this is all crazy because no one is going to pay attention to more warnings. Sometime around 1996 I bought a Nintendo Virtual Boy. It was a game system contained in a set of goggles that produced 3-D stereoscopic images using two small, red, LCD screens. Despite that harmless sounding description, the system was so dangerous they had to include a separate manual just for illustrations of the ways it could kill you.

The manual made it crystal clear that even if Virtual Boy didn't kill you, it was going to at least make you blind. And while you were playing games it would force you to pause and take a break every half-hour, just in case you were still alive. I played the games in spite of this. I was willing to die to play Nintendo.

Consumer Report starring: Calendar the Barbarian
Hi there! I purchased Lost in Translation on DVD this weekend and I just wanted to thank Universal Studios for forcing me to watch a bunch of ads for their other movies before I could get to the main menu. They were even nice enough to remind me that I could use my remote's fast forward button to make the previews play quicker. Can't use the skip button though! That was pretty ballsy of you, Universal. Not only is Lost in Translation available for free on the Internet, but that version doesn't force you to watch a bunch of ads either.

(Correction 3/10/2004: Maybe this is a Focus Features issue, and not Universal's fault. I don't know. The point is whoever is responsible for this better hope I never find out who they are, because I will write them the meanest complaint letter ever! It will be written on Hello Kitty stationary, though, because that's all I own!)

That reminds me, everyone's saying Bill Murray has turned into this great actor. I agree! Unfortunately we've all realized this far too late; he's lost his only chance for an Oscar and he's probably gonna kill himself now. I'd like to prevent this from happening to the next actor that turns out to be actually great. So everybody, start lavishing praise on Yutaka Tadokoro, also known as Diamond Yukai, before it's too late! After his rock band, The Red Warriors, hit it big he got his first role on film in 1988's fish out of water in Japan movie, Tokyo Pop. In it he plays Hiro, a wannabe rock star, opposite the late Carrie Hamilton's Wendy Reed who's down on her luck and recently transplanted from New York to Tokyo. Hiro mistakes Wendy for a prostitute before forming a rock band with her that goes on to storm the charts with its new gaijin gimmick. Hiro and Wendy fall in love, but before long Wendy's fame becomes too much for Hiro. They've split, but can Hiro's new ballad, Monkey Dancin' (it's actually called Hiro's Song), bring them back together before the end?

Yutaka's latest role was in Lost in Translation where he played the Suntory commercial director.