PRIME

PRIME
Originally uploaded by davecobb.

Optimus Prime, disguised in his cinematic truck form, outside the Arclight Cinemas first thing Wednesday morning.



Happy Fourth!

TWITTER

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I've decided to try out TWITTER. I won't be using it to blog, really -- but I'd love to see if it's a good way to keep up with local friends around SoCal, since it's mobile-phone-accessible.

Then again, I joined the similar DODGEBALL and nobody around here used that, either. But, that service seemed to be very dependent on specific venues (clubs, parties, etc), whereas Twitter seems to be more based on *people*, the idea being that you sort of "send up a flare" around town to your friends when you're doing something impromptu. I think the challenge is that, in LA, most of the time we all make plans via email/phone anyway -- it's too spread out to just "go out" and hope you run into your peeps. So maybe it'll never catch on here, at least not outside club-hopping twentysomethings.

Anway, I'm going to give it a shot. Anybody SoCal folks want to join me and try it out?

Check out Twitter.comto find out how it works via web, IM, or SMS.

TRANSFORMER-RIFIC!

I went to see the first showing of TRANSFORMERS this morning with fidgetcub, flyrail, mattycub & zombietruckstop at the world-famous Cinerama Dome & Arclight Cinemas. Not surprisingly, the theater was sold out most of the day, even for our 10:40am showing.

It was my second time seeing it, and I liked it just as much -- if not more -- the second time (even with a packed theater, first-row seats and not-so-great air conditioning -- read Matty's post for more). Judging by the crowds and audience response, it's pretty clear it'll be ginormous. They had four of the vehicles on display outside the theater, and of course, Matty and I completely geeked out (click to the right for more pix!).

Plus, check out this great article in Wired, detailing the Transformers' 1980s rise to nerd-zeitgeist power:

"Next time you're in a cubicle farm, take a look around. You'll see your Nerf guns and your lightsabers, your Spider-Men and your Vulcan ideological iconography. But that's mostly over in IT. Among the straights — the non-Jedi crowd — you'll see Transformers. A Constructicon here, a Dinobot there. And everyone can sing the theme song. That's not by accident. Transformers is a movie in 2007 because of the toy-media industrial complex invented in the 1980s... If you are deeply psyched to see a live-action Optimus Prime beat up a live-action Megatron, you are not necessarily a sci-fi dweeb. It simply means that everything went exactly according to plan."