Chris’s note: Ah, my ignorant little spam message. Everything you said is so sadly untrue. You are a false posting, a computer generated lie. You have no son. Additionally, this is not a blog, and we here at The Sci-Fi Guys strive to be as unimpressive and unhelpful as possible. So few words and so many errors. Perhaps you should get a job at FOX News.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/legion/

CNN) — Les Paul, whose innovations with the electric guitar and studio technology made him one of the most important figures in recorded music, has died, according to a statement from his publicists. Paul was 94.

Les Paul, whose innovations helped give rise to modern pop music, played guitar into his 90s.

Paul died in White Plains, New York, from complications of severe pneumonia, according to the statement.

Paul was a guitar and electronics mastermind whose creations — such as multitrack recording, tape delay and the solid-body guitar that bears his name, the Gibson Les Paul — helped give rise to modern popular music, including rock ‘n’ roll. No slouch on the guitar himself, he continued playing at clubs into his 90s despite being hampered by arthritis.

“If you only have two fingers [to work with], you have to think, how will you play that chord?” he told CNN.com in a 2002 phone interview. “So you think of how to replace that chord with several notes, and it gives the illusion of sounding like a chord.”

Guitarists mourned the loss Thursday.

“Les Paul set a standard for musicianship and innovation that remains unsurpassed. He was the original guitar hero, and the kindest of souls,” said Joe Satriani in a statement. “Last October I joined him onstage at the Iridium club in [New York], and he was still shredding. He was and still is an inspiration to us all.”

“Les Paul was a shining example of how full one’s life can be, he was so vibrant and full of positive energy,” said Slash in a statement.

Lester William Polfuss was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. Even as a child he showed an aptitude for tinkering, taking apart electric appliances to see what made them tick.

“I had to build it, make it and perfect it,” Paul said in 2002. He was nicknamed the “Wizard of Waukesha.”

In the 1930s and ’40s, he played with the bandleader Fred Waring and several big band singers, including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the Andrews Sisters, as well as with his own Les Paul Trio. In the early 1950s, he had a handful of huge hits with his then-wife, Mary Ford, such as “How High the Moon” and “Vaya Con Dios.”

His guitar style, heavily influenced by jazzman Django Reinhardt, featured lightning-quick runs and double-time rhythms. In 1948, after being involved in a severe car accident, he asked the doctor to set his arm permanently in a guitar-playing position.

Paul also credited Crosby for teaching him about timing, phrasing and preparation.

Crosby “didn’t say it, he did it — one time only. Unless he blew the lyrics, he did one take.”

Paul never stopped tinkering with electronics, and after Crosby gave him an early audiotape recorder, Paul went to work changing it. It eventually led to multitrack recording; on Paul and Ford’s hits, he plays many of the guitar parts, and Ford harmonizes with herself. Multitrack recording is now the industry standard.

But Paul likely will be best remembered for the Gibson Les Paul, a variation on the solid-body guitar he built in the early 1940s — “The Log” — and offered to the guitar company.

“For 10 years, I was a laugh,” he told CNN in an interview. “[But] kept pounding at them and pounding at them saying hey, here’s where it’s at. Here’s where tomorrow, this is it. You can drown out anybody with it. And you can make all these different sounds that you can’t do with a regular guitar.”

Gibson, spurred by rival Fender, finally took Paul up on his offer and introduced the model in 1952. It has since become the go-to guitar for such performers as Jimmy Page.

“The world has lost a truly innovative and exceptional human being today. I cannot imagine life without Les Paul,” said Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar, in a statement. “He would walk into a room and put a smile on anyone’s face. His musical charm was extraordinary and his techniques unmatched anywhere in the world.”

Paul is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Inventors Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is survived by three sons, a daughter, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Until recently he had a standing gig at New York’s Iridium Jazz Club, where he would play with a who’s-who of famed musicians.

He admired the places guitarists and engineers took his inventions, but he said there was nothing to replace good, old-fashioned elbow grease and soul.

“I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one,” he said in 2002, “and it will probably whip the guy with 20 notes.”

Hey! G.I.Joe was a decent movie……compared to Transformers 2

Let’s face it, having to decide which of these movies was better is like being forced to choose between two bowls of shit, where the only difference is the smell.

For me, the funk of G.I.Joe was overwhelmed by the vile putrescence spewed forth from Transformers. At least G.I.Joe’s storyline, despite it’s incredibly, pathetic bastardization of established canon, had a modicum of coherence with no glaring contradictions or obvious racial stereotypes.

OH and you know what else it didn’t have: A GIANT ROBOTS WITH FUCKING BALLS.

Rubik, a magical cube-like creature with more superpowers than the Justice League and X-Men combined, fell out of an evil magician’s stagecoach and into the hands of the Rodriguez children, three Hispanic kids who were, conveniently, fucking geniuses at solving a Rubik’s Cube. Rubik and the kids fought against such enemies as malevolent sorcerers and elementary school bullies. Rubik himself was a slave, and belonged to whomever solved him last, which was sometimes forest animals.

I’m afraid a Lego movie might make exactly that much sense. And if you think I’m just being negative, please consider that we live in a moviegoing world where G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra has so far made over $100 million, and already had a confirmed sequel.

http://www.getthebigpicture.net/blog/2009/8/12/warner-bros-puts-it-all-together-for-a-lego-movie.html

Transformers fan drank gasoline to gain energy

A young Transformers fan in China was drinking gasoline for five years trying to become a “valiant fighter” like Optimus Prime, the West China Metropolis Daily reports.

A 14-year-old boy, from the town of Yibin in Sichuan, first saw the animated saga about robots from outer space able to transform into vehicles, electronic items or weapons when he was nine years old.

The youngster was so impressed that he began drinking fuel on a daily basis to obtain energy and become a mighty warrior like the Transformers.

He started with smelling the gas of cigarette lighters, the boy’s father told the newspaper.

When his parents find out about it, they had a serious talk with their child. And it kind of worked, as the Transformers-lover never touched lighters again, switching to motorcycle fuel instead.

“But afterwards we found our motorcycle’s gasoline was always disappearing, and one day when we found the boy drinking half a bottle of gasoline stolen from the motorcycle, we were too shocked to say anything,” the father said.

The parents locked the motorcycle away, but the obsessed boy started stealing the gasoline from neighbors, drinking two or three bottles a day.

Only after that did the parents decide to take him to a hospital. The doctor said the boy was unable to gain supernatural strength, but had mental disorders and had a strong “gasoline dependence” instead.

“Since my son start to drink gas, his intelligence quotient dropped sharply and he couldn’t figure out addition and subtraction of sums within 100,” the father said. “Before that, he was a very smart boy, and he could even repair the television. But now he doesn’t know the answer of 7 plus 17.”

But the doctors from the 4th Hospital in Yibin city promised to do everything to help the boy ‘kick the gasoline addiction.’

Meanwhile, the Hollywood blockbuster Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is now showing in cinemas across China. The film has set the country’s box-office record, gaining 400 million yuan (US$58.4 million) in 19 days, and breaking the previous record set by Titanic ten years ago.