Return of the Koopalings!

This just in! Bowser's seven children, collectively known as the Koopalings, were first introduced in 1989's mega-hit, Super Mario Bros. 3.


They made a few appearances after that, in Super Mario World and some spin-off games, but were largely replaced by the much more boring "chibi" style clone Bowser Jr. in later games such as the Mario Party series, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy.


However, IGN reports that the Koopalings will make a grand return to prominence in the upcoming New Super Mario Bros. Wii (which looks ridiculously awesome in its own right).

The video below is actual footage of a Larry Koopa sighting!


This incredible news makes it very hard for me to resist putting this game in the "must have" category. Sigh, always so many games, so little money/time!

Jam On, Michael!

Much to Cherry and my shock, the King of Pop passed away at age 50 yesterday afternoon. My first real concrete memory of Michael Jackson had to be when I was about 12 or so. Of course, by then, he had already been a superstar, but what can I say? I didn't watch much TV in my youth and listened to little to no pop music.

Anyhow, we had just moved to South Florida, and were actually staying at a hotel while my parents looked for a more permanent place to stay. A girl (that may or may not have been an aquaintance of the family) at the hotel happened to be watching some sort of MJ music video marathon, and I sat down and watched as the King of Pop lit up the floors in Billie Jean. That's about all I remember, but I also remember my parents saying how Michael Jackson was weird (I would say this was right around the time of his first child molestation scandal), and a brief conversation about how Michael Jackson reached the peak of his popularity right around when I was born.

Later in life, I grew more and more appreciative of Michael Jackson. It might be the Asian blood in me, I dunno. MJ always seemed huge, especially in foreign countries. In fact, the news report yesterday said that he was scheduled to go on a comeback tour in England that was expected to net him over $400 million! On my first trip to China, one of my Chinese friends gave me a copy of a CD with several of his famous music videos, which I still pop in from time to time when I want to watch some old school pop. Popular Korean/Japanese singer Boa has also directly referenced many Michael Jackson videos and dance moves in her music videos. Cherry also reminisces that MJ was the first pop star that she had heard of whom fans would scream and cry over.

Regardless of the blemishes on his record or reputation, I don't think anyone can deny the impact Michael Jackson had on the music industry, and especially the music video industry. Having been in the business for 40 years, he influenced several generations, including my own. I was never able to do the moonwalk, but his dance moves are still the bar whereby dancers are judged today. A true American icon.

Office Humor from Dad

Some office humor, by way of my Dad!

21 st Century FACTS

Our communication - Wireless
Our phones - Cordless
Our cooking - Fireless
Our food - Fatless
Our Sweets - Sugarless
Our labor - Effortless
Our relations - Fruitless
Our attitude - Careless
Our feelings - Heartless
Our politics - Shameless
Our education - Worthless
Our Mistakes - Countless
Our arguments - Baseless
Our youth - Jobless
Our Ladies - Topless
Our Boss - Brainless
Our Jobs - Thankless
Our Needs - Endless
Our situation - Hopeless
Our Salaries - Less and less

So true, especially that last part!

Sibling Visit and Cherry's Birthday

Long time no write! It's been pretty hectic these last few weeks, with my siblings visiting, work, school, you know, the usual suspects. I'll try to summarize for posterity here, and also put up a few pics of our trip to Star Wars Weekends at MGM, I mean Hollywood, Studios, like the DS on Location shot at the front of the park below!


Ed and Melinda arrived at my place Thursday afternoon, just in time for kung fu class to begin. Ed gave a special (but short) class with Alex and Joe, who had showed up for practice. Ed is much better than me at kung fu sensitivity drills, such as sticky hands, push hands, and qinna (sort of like Chinese joint-locks/grappling) and is also very sound at kung fu applications, so I wanted him to give them a taste of some genuine kung fu strength. Unfortunately, Alex had a class meeting to go to by 7, so the class was cut short.

On Saturday, Melinda, Ed, and I went to Orlando to meet with Arun, his brother Nick, and their friend Simon, who hooked us up with a free ticket to Disney for the Star Wars Weekends event (his mom works at Disney so she often gets free tickets to hand out). First, however, we would go to Ming's Bistro for some dim sum. For those of you who aren't familiar with dim sum, it's essentially a traditional Chinese brunch that is served to you in little servings on carts. I especially like the turnip cakes!


We ended up getting to Disney's Hollywood Studios at about noon. Our first stop was the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, an old favorite of ours. In fact, Ed had actually been on stage for that show a few years back as one of the "extras!" However, the show is really starting to show its age, having never been really updated since it first began in the 90s. I even got caught playing DS during the beginning of the show!


Next up was the equally old Star Tours ride. For those who haven't been on it before, Star Tours was one of the first simulator type rides to appear, also way back in the 90s, or possibly even the 80s. It was pretty awesome at the time, but the ride definitely could use a facelift, or a sound-lift at least! Most video games put out way better visuals today. However, since it was Star Wars Weekend, we got to see a cool little "Jedi Training Academy" event, where little kids could learn to lightsaber-fight and get to face off with Darth Vader and Darth Maul! I wished I were about 15 years younger when I saw that!


"Star Wars Weekends" wasn't really as geeky as I expected it to be... I guess a lot of people probably didn't even know it was going on! However, one cool thing that they did was bring in some actors each weekend to talk. We got to see the voice actress of Ashoka, the new character in the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon, and the director of the same series, and the actor that played the security captain in the Star Wars prequels! I've never watched the Clone Wars show before, but after seeing some of the clips, it looked a lot better than I expected - definitely has an authentic Star Wars feel about it! The girl is pretty cute, too!


Perhaps the coolest show at MGM, I mean Hollywood, studios (I will never understand why they changed the name), is the Lights, Motors, Action show. I think I may have talked about this show in an earlier blog, but basically, this show was brought over from the Disney park in Europe, complete with their little Opel cars. It's a stunt show featuring car chases, motorcycle chases, and other stunts. By far the most impressive are the car chases, however. Seeing those little customized cars drift with ease, jump through the air, and even drive on just two wheels (tilted to the side), is amazing!


We got to do a few of the other rides and events: we watched the Beauty and the Beast show, another of our old favorites, did the drawing class, went on the Tower of Terror, and finally closed the day with the very solid Rock n' Roller Coaster, where Melinda lost her phone. Fortunately, the ride staff was able to recover it. Ed got this very cool shot of the "ghosts" on the Tower of Terror ride... they actually still do look very ghost like!


The next day was fairly uneventful. We did a little shopping and Ed made some pasta for lunch and dinner, but the main event was a special Sunday kung fu class that we held so that Alex and V could take the opportunity to practice a little more with Ed. Sunday's class was mostly sparring. It was very fun because none of us had sparred in so long. I think Ed's skill has actually regressed a bit - he had gotten really good after spending a whole summer sparring daily with Sifu Ken, but I guess after all this time without sparring good opponents, he's gotten a little rusty.

Ed and Melinda left on Monday after lunch, so I decided to head up to Gainesville that night to celebrate Cherry's birthday on Tuesday! It was a pretty impromptu decision, but fortunately, my boss let me take the day off. It was good to see her especially since she didn't come to Disney with us over the weekend, plus this was a pretty significant birthday on its own!

That's all for now, see you next time!

Sifu Des

Sort of a YouTube cop-out today... but today's video is pretty special. It features Sifu Desmond Jackson from Gainesville, a very good kung fu sifu that I worked with briefly in college and taught several sessions for our kung fu club over the past few years. I've mentioned him before, but Sifu Des has some of the best traditional kung fu I've ever experienced. That's right, experienced, not seen, for true kung fu really is about the little things that we do that might not be so apparent visually. It's difficult to explain, and the video below (the only video I've seen of him thus far) doesn't really show much either - the best way to understand Sifu Des' kung fu is to go and take a class with him and have him show you! Look him up at the Whirling Tiger Kung Fu Studio if you are ever in Gainesville!

Super Mario Bros. Protest at E3

The famous Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, took place just this last week. Some highlights from the show were Microsoft's unveiling of Project Natal, a camera-based motion-sensing peripheral that uses the player's body as control input for games. If it works well, there could be some awesome fighting games for XBox 360 in the future!



Less impressive was Sony's motion sensing controller, which was more or less a direct rip-off of the Wii's control scheme. Imitation is the best flattery!

Nintendo had a pretty solid outing themselves. Although no particularly impressive hardware was revealed, the games announced were more than enough to make a fanboy like myself excited: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Wii Sports Resort, Endless Ocean 2, and the surprise Metroid: Other M were the big hitters from Nintendo, while third party publishers showcased Ubisoft's Red Steel 2, sporting Wii's new MotionPlus capability, and SquareEnix's Final Fantasy IV direct sequel, which is downloadable off of the WiiWare channel your Wii.

Perhaps the biggest news of E3, however, was the protest below:



Who knew Super Mario Bros. was so offensive?

No Discipline

Dang. I have no discipline at all. Despite all of my efforts this last half year to get lean and mean, I was no match for the "Buy One Get One Free" deal at Papa John's Pizza today. There was actually a period in my life where I banned pizza from my diet entirely, but everyone who knows me knows that I love me some buy one get one free (and also have been much less reluctant to eat pizza over the last few years!) Unfortunately, I am only one person, and having bought two large pizzas means I'm going to be eating pizza for the next few days!


Another person that demonstrated a lack of discipline a few days ago is University of Florida Freshman All-American cornerback Janoris Jenkins, who was arrested for fighting and resisting arrest without violence over the weekend. I love my Gator football players, but sometimes they really make some boneheaded decisions. Like Percy Harvin failing his drug test at this year's combine, or a Jermaine Cunningham throwing a sandwich at his waiter, or (the worst case in recent memory) Jamar Hornsby making charges to Joe Haden's deceased girlfriend's credit card. Really makes us as a program look bad, like we would sacrifice ethics and morals for the sake of winning Championships.

The media reports that Jenkins was fighting with five guys who might have been trying to steal his gold chain when the police arrived and ordered them to stop fighting. No one did, and when Jenkins landed a final punch, an officer tased him (somewhat fitting that this was another UF incident!). However, badass that he is, Jenkins managed to get up and run from the police for about two blocks before he was arrested, a feat that is more incredible considering he was just fighting five guys! The question is, however, how did donut-snacking police officers manage to chase down a Division IA starting corner? The answer, as I later found out, was that he didn't - he actually turned himself in after likely coming to his senses. After that, UF's lockdown corner was locked up in a corner for a couple of days!

I'm anxious to see how our coaching staff will deal with this incident once all of the details get shaken out... Jenkins was a definite asset last year!