Wolf Gnards

NBC has already started their big Heroes marketing campaign, and in preparation I've been developing the Hiro Meter. The Hiro Meter doesn't gauge Hiro's power levels, but how much he has let down the Asian community. I love Hiro, I love Masi Oka, but he really has become the William Hung of superheroes. I've always been very vocal about NBC's continued emasculation of Masi Oka, and I'm interested to see if it continues in Heroes 4th season. The problem is everyone loves Masi because he's as cuddly as a Mogwai, he's as close a human being can possibly get to plush toy, but to keep him at this cuddly marketable state, he needs to be kept nice and degradated. Every season is the same for Hiro: he goofs his way through a mission, something terrible happens to him (someone he loves dies, loses his powers, etc.), he manages to shine for three seconds and save the world, something worse happens to him (he's trapped in time, brain explodes). Heaven forbid Hiro kisses a girl or uses his powers to the fullest. No one else on the show gets pantsed half us much as Hiro.

So, as the fourth season of Heroes begins Monday, September 21, 2009, it will be interesting to see if Hiro continues his cycle of humiliation, or the writers finally let his character grow some much needed gnards. For this purpose, I've created a finely tuned meter that can detect just how much Hiro has disgraced Asians everywhere with his Uncle Chen stereotypical antics, or if he's actually been a positive Asian influence. And, of course, why must Masi Oka be positive Asian role model? He's just an actor after all, but he's just about the only Asian actor on TV. He's all we got, and I want someone kids can look up to. Otherwise this happens.

How will Masi do? Will he be a positive influence, or should we just let Mickey Rooney take over the part?

From my grab bag of goodies, here's an email from a new Gnard follower:

I just came across your website, and it's like coming home...

I was wondering if you've ever pondered this about Gremlins, which to this day (and I'm a physician) still gnaws at me:

The three rules for keeping a Mogwai are well known: never get them wet, keep them out of direct sunlight, and NEVER feed them after midnight. The problem is, every given moment in time is after the preceding midnight, so when can you actually start feeding them again?

I've discussed this with scores of people, and every person eventually comes up with sunrise, but this is utterly arbitrary: why does the sun being in the sky make a difference? And furthermore, IF that was indeed was the case, should the time at which one STOPS feeding be sun DOWN, not midnight (well before which it is dark everywhere).

Most importantly, whenever the safe time to feed again actually is, it's never explicitly stated, so the ensuing hijinx were inevitable.

I would love your insight - perhaps I'll finally get some sleep.

JPC

Well, JPC, as a physician you probably know that Mogwai physiology is entirely dependent on both the Mogwaian metabolic rate and relative blood sugar levels. During transformation, Mogwai form more of Chrysalis than a cocoon. This means the furry little critters use all that chickeny goodness (or whatever midnight snack) to form a gooey sludge in their blood called Hemolymph the crucial ingredient for gremlin metamorphosis.

The never feed after midnight is probably more of a good rule of thumb than a strict doctrine. There's most likely a window of opportunity when a Mogwai's body is primed for transformation. Perhaps, 11:50 PM to 3:00 AM, or 12:15 AM to 12:45 AM, whatever it is, it's easier and safer to just say after midnight. The reset cycle is determined not through time of day, but through the Mogawai's own internal clock. Meaning when it wakes up. It's the same with diabetics, hormones are released during sleep that can regulate blood sugar levels. Magwai hormones simply regulate demonic energies.

The one flaw, of course, being that since Mogwai and gremlins turn into steaming piles of goo in sunlight, they would most likely be nocturnal creatures, and wouldn't sleep at night at all.

Some more helpful tips...

In a Heeb Magazine exclusive, writer/director/(dare I add Ghostbuster) Harold Ramis responded to Wolf Gnards. Yes, that's right--this is not a typo--Harold Ramis responded to your friendly neighborhood Wolf Gnards. Of course, he responded to Heeb which got the link from Tony Hawk who followed the Bill Murray Digg parade, but in the roundest of ways Harold Ramis responded to the Gnards.

As you may or may not know, Digg picked up my article on the amount of time Bill Murray spent trapped in Groundhog Day. Which in turn caused a series of computers to explode with my hosting service. But if anything good came out of this, I can, at least, say I made Harold Ramis blink. Not just blink, but email. Take out his laptop, open up Outlook, and type a brief paragraph.

Harold Ramis emailed the Heeb offices with this message:

"I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and alloting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years… People [like the blogger] have way too much time on their hands. They could be learning to play the piano or speak French or sculpt."

I 100% agree with him. When I thought of charting Groundhog Day, I thought it would come out to be 100+ years. It could take Phil any number of years to learn any of the things he mastered. Instead I had to work with the average, and I was surprised at how quickly his feats could be accomplished. 8 years, 8 months, and 16 days is more or less the minimum amount of time he needed.

What Ramis said in those ellipses the world may never know. It was probably something like, "That being said Wolf Gnards is as sexy as he is witty, a virtual playground of ungodly delights."

Now as to Heeb calling me a spaz and Ramis alluding to the fact that certain spazoids may need to get a life, let me remind everyone that they took the time to respond to a spaz. What's lower on the totem poll? The geek or the geek who feels the need to correct geeks?

Bill Murray tried to take down the Nards, but Wolf Gnards is back and not nearly as big as ever.

My article about Bill Murray in Groundhog Day through a combination of luck and stupidity became #1 on Digg's trending topics. Alas, like Icarus, Bill Murray flew just a tad too close to the sun. For every single person on Digg came to my little website, and that was about 100000 more than usual. Those numbers are reserved for the porn biz and the porn biz only. Pop culture nerds sites do not get cut the same sort of slack from hosting companies.

My host server then, of course, yanked my site, and I had to go pleading and begging and explaining how much a loser I really am. And I don't usually get ever single Digg user checking out Wolf Gnards every day. And while they should (because the Nards is awesome), they shouldn't because it will make my website implode. So, my hosting service put the site back up and I got a stern talking to about never being successful again.

But Wolf Gnards is back in business, tell your friends, but your friends' friends, well, they can just suck it.

Men may seldom make passes on girls who wear glasses. But the red blooded nerd is not limited to such trivialities. Not only will we make passes, but we thrive on girls who wear glasses. Quite frankly not enough females break out the prescription lenses.

So, I put together a list of the top celebrity women who rock the sexy librarian glasses look. And I'm talking full on four-eyes-can't-see-no-date-on-friday-night-glasses glasses. Famous girls in over-sized sunglasses hardly count. Additionally, I want women who really wear glasses, women who are known for glasses, not some secretly squinty starlet. You can definitely find photos of Zooey Deschanel, Hayden Panettiere, Alicia Keys, Rosario Dawson, or Anna Faris wearing glasses, but that doesn't mean they wear glasses. We will have no pretenders here.

Thora Birch almost made the list solely because of her role in Ghost World. However, her part dictated the glasses, her glasses didn't dictate the part. Likewise, Sienna Miller is very hot as G.I. Joe's vision impaired Baroness, but hot or not, that doesn't count toward Sienna's glasses cred.

1.Lisa Loeb

I don't know what I love more about Lisa Loeb, the fact the she loves wearing glasses or that she hates wearing pants. Lisa's number one in glasses and number one in our hearts.

2.Tina Fey

I can't really say much more about Tina Fey than I already have. Her scar, her glasses, her alleged lack of self esteem, makes me believe that she's attainable. Plus she says things like, “By the hammer of Thor,” let's see 20/20 girls pull that off.

3.Janeane Garofalo

Janeane Garofalo is perhaps the first lady to shove the Hollywood image system aside and let her glasses shine. She helped a whole generation of young women wear black, make snarky comments, and be proud of their glasses.

4.Chloe Sevigny

Chloe wears glasses. Often in public. That's about it. She also performed oral sex in a movie. That kind of shows off where glasses rate in our society. It takes a girl willing to perform fellatio on screen to wear glasses on the red carpet.

5.Velma Dinkley

Brainy. Cute. Does all the work. Short skirt wearing. Not a bad dancer. Why would Freddie ever waste so much time with Daphne? Scooby-Doo's Velma paved the why for glasses wearing cartoon characters like Daria Morgendorffer.

Who's your favorite girl in glasses?

* Girls with Glasses update

Lisa Loeb is launching her own line of indie cute girl glasses.

I swear this will be the last post about Weird Science, I'll move on to more relevant movies like Real Genius or Krull.

I was looking around for a video of Gary & Wyatt building Lisa, but couldn't find anything. The closest thing I could find was the pilot episode of the TV show, and while Vanessa Angel is insanely hot, it hardly did the trick. It looks like NBC has that clip on lock down, which makes perfect sense because it's such an in demand commodity (I make fun of this, and yet I spent hours looking for it... not a typo... HOURS).

Oh well, I might have found something better anyway. Watch this to see how the movie Weird Science should have ended.

How Weird Science Should Have Ended

If you liked that, check out How It Should Have Ended for other endings to classic movies.