This post is part of a longer series examining the god-awfulness of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. If you missed it, the introduction is right here.

When we last left Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a group of African stereotypes got stomped by a robot sometime in the distant past. Today’s installment begins 17,000 years later, with a shot of an industrial hellscape, and another friendly caption:

SHANGHAI, CHINA. 22:14 HRS – TODAY

And what’s happening TODAY at 22:14 HRS? Well, Shanghai is being evacuated following a toxic spill in the financial district. Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, some serious-looking officers are watching the evacuation on some serious-looking monitors, chattering on about Chinese airspace and strike teams.

Then, back to China, where a decrepit ice cream truck putts along a dirt road. A speaker on the truck’s roof announces – I swear – “Any bad robot out there’s better get ready for an ass-whoopin’,” in a voice that sounds like your racist uncle’s Flavor Flav impression. There’s an Autobot insignia on the front of the truck, and a sign on the side that reads – again, I swear this is all true – “[Decepticon insignia] suck my popsicle!”

You hear that sound? That’s the sound of hope dying.

Soldiers move into position, and Optimus Prime’s voiceover fills us in on the backstory: for the last two years, he and the Autobots have joined up with a group of human soldiers to form a “classified strike team called NEST” (which I assume is an acronym for something, although they never bother saying what). We meet a few of the team members: a sleek-looking car that will probably turn into a robot at some point, a group of human soldiers, the aforementioned ice cream truck, and – just to make things confusing – a trio of motorcycles (complete with holographic riders) referred to as “Arcee.”

Fans of the Transformers’ 1980’s incarnation will remember Arcee as the token girl Transformer. They will also remember that there was only one of her. Now, somehow, she is three motorcycles that turn into three robots, but who all have one name. This makes perfect sense, so be quiet and watch the damn movie and stop trying to confuse Michael Bay because you’ll make him mess up.

Also, those soldiers? They were in the first movie, and we’ll be seeing them throughout this one. For the purpose of this review, their names are Lead Guy, Black Guy, Third Guy, and Fourth Guy. Lead Guy explains that the “toxic spill” was just a cover story to get everyone out of the city so they can fight some Decepticons.

Finally, we get what we came for: a truck turning into a motherfucking robot. Unfortunately, the robot is standing so close to the camera that all we really see are unidentifiable bits of truck twisting around and blocking our view of anything else; he starts as a GMC pickup and ends up as an Autobot named Ironhide, but how he got from Point A to Point B remains a mystery. In his robot form, Ironhide looks like a collection of random metal parts welded together into something vaguely man-shaped, not unlike the sculptures that stand in front of office buildings. I wish Tyler Durden was in this movie.

The soldiers gather around some kind of power plant or refinery or something, where a nearby crane transforms into a very large Decepticon and starts smashing shit. There’s an explosion, a weird “BWAAAAAUUUUMP” noise, debris, gunfire, the anguished cries of wounded soldiers. For no reason, some cars go flying across the screen, although we did not see them take off, nor do we see them land. Through all of this, the Decepticon is off-screen. Not in the background. Not obscured by dust or explosions. Just not there. In a couple shots, the soldiers seem to be firing at nothing. When the robot finally reappears, it transforms into some kind of one-wheeled spidery thing and takes off.

Then bunch of shit happens that I cannot make myself care about. Two highlights:

ONE: A Decepticon breaks through a wall and the Arcees pursue him, crashing through the apartment of an elderly Chinese man in the process. Just as the laws of comedy predict, the old man is oblivious to the robo-carnage going on behind him – the robots destroy his home, and he goes right on eating his soup, barely mustering the energy to glance at the giant, burning hole in his wall. If you find this funny, you are my enemy.

TWO: During that same chase, the Flavor Flav ice cream truck returns to drag this movie down into the deepest pit of Hell. The back half of the truck breaks off and turns into a (relatively) squat robot, who does a slapsticky tumble into the side of the building. The front half turns into a similar robot with a similarly offensive jive-talkin’ accent, and he smacks his partner upside the head for his screw-up. If this were a just world, I could say that they never appear again after this scene. Alas, the world is a dark and wicked place, and I will have much more to say about these two in the future.

Eventually, we get back to the giant killer Decepticon. He has somehow found his way to a bridge full of cars, and runs one over with his gargantuan tire. Now, let’s ignore the fact that the whole “evacuation” thing has been completely forgotten, and the fact that some civilians just got killed for the sake of a CGI effect, and focus on the insane hugeness of this fucking tire. Seriously, this thing is like four monster truck tires put together. And we’re just supposed to accept that?

Now, I’m not an expert on cranes. I don’t know what kind of tires they have. In fact, I always thought cranes had treads. So for all I know, some company really does make crane tires that are twenty feet tall and wider than an entire truck. But it’s a lot more likely that the people making this movie have no idea how big things are, and decided that Mister Crane-Bot should be big enough to crush everything in his path, even though there is just no fucking way that much metal could compact itself into anything resembling a piece of functioning construction equipment. But I digress.

At long last, Optimus Prime joins the fight, in the most absurd and unnecessary way possible. No, really: he drives out of a moving plane in truck-form, transforms into a robot as he tumbles through the air, deploys three parachutes, drifts the rest of the way to the ground, cuts the chutes, turns back into a truck, and pursues his one-wheeled foe. The Unicycle of Malevolence, meanwhile, has made his way to a crowded highway, where he is crushing cars, smashing overpasses, and almost certainly killing children by the busload.

And then, somehow, Optimus is climbing around on the monster’s evil head. I had to rewind twice to figure out how he got up there, and I’m still not 100% sure. It doesn’t matter; once he’s up there, Optimus does something that makes the Decepticon crash and die. I have no idea what the fuck just happened, but this sequence seems to be coming to an end, so I don’t care anymore. Optimus and Ironhide approach their vanquished enemy, who manages to croak, “The Fallen shall rise again,” out of his metal mandibles before Optimus blows his face off with a laser or something.

One of the soldiers says, “That doesn’t sound good.” He’s right. We are eight minutes and forty-nine seconds into Revenge of the Fallen, and only pain awaits us.

In our next installment, we finally meet the humans, their pets, and their robot sidekick. We do not, however, meet Mr. Dignity.

This post is part of a longer series examining the god-awfulness of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. If you missed it, the introduction is right here.

It’s not often that a movie starts sucking before it has even begun, but such is the case with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Before seeing even a second of the movie proper, we’re treated to an ominous hum accompanying the Dreamworks logo, and a series of beeping and whirring sounds as the stars in the Paramount logo fly by. This will become a recurring theme throughout the movie: things make noise when they move.

The first thing we see is a shot of some mountains somewhere, followed by a shot of something lumpy that may or may not also be a mountain. The credits – which make whooshing noises as they appear onscreen, naturally – tell use that this movie was made “In association with Hasbro.” Finally, in the third shot of the same mountains, Optimus Prime speaks in voiceover:

“Earth. Birthplace of the human race. A species much like our own.”

While he says this, two silhouetted, spear-wielding tribesmen ascend one of the larger rocks, effectively laying the groundwork for this movie’s attitude about race. They are either joined by several more warriors, or we simply cut to a shot of some different warriors – it’s hard to tell, since everything is still in silhouette. Optimus goes on, “Capable of great compassion… and great violence,” and a helpful caption informs us that it is all happening in 17,000 B.C.

We get our first look at our warriors, and indeed they are African. I have no idea if their war paint or weapons are even remotely authentic, and I’m sure Michael Bay doesn’t know either. There are at least seven of them now, and they are all staring grimly past the camera.

Some sort of big cat runs by silently, and the tribe (now up to nine!) charges it. We hear a guttural, feline growl as they do, even though the cat is no longer onscreen – clearly, the implication is that this animal-noise somehow came from one of the tribesmen.

So maybe this is what establishes the movie’s attitude toward race. In any case, Michael Bay is an asshole, the cat is revealed to be a tiger, and I have my first “What the fuck?” moment, because tigers live in India. In jungles. This scene, meanwhile, takes place in a craggy desert environment, presumably somewhere in Africa, where being stripey and bright orange is a tremendous evolutionary disadvantage, even for an apex predator.

Also, every shot of this chase seems to take place in an entirely different location, with the occasional presence of the tiger serving as the only nod to continuity. Eventually, an elderly (and therefore wise) member of the tribe makes the universal gesture for “I’m about to do something wise,” while Optimus narrates a bit more:

“For in our quest to protect the humans, a deeper revelation dawns: our worlds have met before.” You may notice that this does not actually follow from his previous statement. If you noticed, then congratulations – you are smarter than basically everyone involved in the making of this movie.

Two seconds later, none of that matters anymore; in the very next shot the warriors are calmly climbing over a ridge (the tiger now completely forgotten) and peering down at some kind of huge, pointy machine being assembled by a team of giant robots. A particularly ugly robot moves toward the camera, thus establishing himself as the leader, and the tribe decides to do something stupid.

We hear another animalistic roar, and this time there is no doubt as to its origin; it is clearly coming from the mouth of one of the warriors. We even get a slow-mo shot of him baring his teeth at his new enemies.

Just in time, it seems, since that lead robot is suddenly right on top of the tribe (he must have walked over while the camera was lingering on that one dude’s teeth), and he starts stomping on people. And then he’s somehow holding a frightened tribesman in his hand, despite never bending down to pick the guy up in the first place. He flings his victim aside, then roars directly at the camera while a set of metal feathers (?) around his face flutter back and forth.

The screen goes black, and a pile of metal scraps assemble themselves into the movie’s title – I assume that the intent was to show us the title “transforming,” but that’s kind of hard to do because it’s a title, and as such its robot form is nothing, and its vehicle form is a bunch of letters.

And that, dear readers, was the first two minutes and thirteen seconds of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I know it was somewhat joke-free, but at least you’ve seen the kind of stupid-to-watchable ratio we are dealing with. You’ve also seen exactly as much of this movie as I can tolerate for now. In our next episode, the story returns to the present, where we learn that robots can magically become bigger or smaller, depending on what needs to be smashed in a given scene.

After Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out this summer, there was a lot of talk about how terrible it was. It was not merely bad, the reviews claimed, but a two-and-a-half-hour display of everything wrong with Michael Bay’s ideas about filmmaking. Beyond that, it (quite unintentionally) exposed our culture’s fucked-up ideals, on subjects ranging from race and gender to the relationship between the military and civilians. Or so I had read; I wasn’t about to pay money to watch it, and downloading a crappy cam version seemed like a huge waste of time.

Well. It’s out on DVD now, and I decided to undertake a project. I would obtain a copy of the movie, force myself to watch it, and then review it. But instead of writing another bad review in a field of thousands, I decided to analyze the entire movie. That meant full write-ups of everything wrong with every scene, every character, every insufferable joke — every single thing that helped to make this move so terrible.

Of course, before I could dissect the movie, I’d have to understand it, and that meant sitting down and watching the damned thing. The movie is 150 minutes long; I made it to 150 seconds before I needed a break. I needed several more breaks throughout, not because I had anything better to do, but because I just needed to get the fuck away from this movie to gather my thoughts. Unwilling to return, I would assign myself little tasks during my breaks — emptying the trash cans, writing emails, preparing some surprisingly tasty BBQ pork sandwiches (a process which takes up the better part of a day) — and spent much of the actual movie on my feet, pacing around and occasionally glancing at the screen when something seemed to be happening.

And Revenge of the Fallen isn’t just long; it’s slow. Once you’ve been watching it for a while, it becomes difficult to remember a time when you weren’t watching it, and just as hard to imagine that it will ever end. All the action sequences seemed to drag on for days, but in reality they rarely took more than a few minutes. Every so often, I would pause to see how much time I had left, and it was always a lot more than I expected.

When I started watching this movie, I was already planning this review series. But if I hadn’t, I’d be planning it now, because there is simply no way I can hold back all the righteous fury I have for this steaming pile of shit posing as entertainment.

Actually, no. If I hadn’t been planning this project, I never would have watched the movie in the first place, and I’d still be happy. As it is, I am not happy, and the first review will be arriving shortly.

I have seen Transformers. The world will pay.

September 30 is International Blasphemy Day, and I celebrated the occasion by making some blasphemous shirts for the Bulletproof Heeb, and then keeping one for myself. I’ve been wearing it around town, and people have largely ignored it. Good for them.

But this day isn’t really about protesting the angry fire-and-brimstone types. Those people are easy enough to offend; we don’t need a day for it. It’s about protesting the well-meaning but suicidally stupid belief that everyone’s religion should be respected at all times. I’ve been guilty of this in the past (less so recently, I’m happy to say), and most of the people in my life are guilty of it as well. I know that if I write about atheism — and who are we kidding, we all knew that’s where I was going with this piece — it’ll alienate half of my friends, and so I’ve avoided writing much of anything for months.

Well, fuck that. It’s Blasphemy Day, and there are no renowned religious leaders in sight. Luckily, I’ve got lots of other shit to blaspheme. Time to get out the ol’ Book of Grievances, and go over some actual arguments against atheism made by my friends and acquaintances, who totally think I’m great except…

“If you’ve actually given it some thought, that’s fine. But if you’re just a kid rebelling against Christianity, then I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to reject religion.”

I will remind you that we’ve all gotta start somewhere. Teenagers don’t rebel in a vacuum; if a kid hates sitting through church, that same kid probably disagrees with the values of his community, or at least those of his parents, and has spotted the parallels. Although surly teenage arguments against conformity are unsubtle and inarticulate, they still reach a level of sophistication that many adults never achieve. They are still a form of inquiry, and express a desire for something beyond the obedient and incurious mindset encouraged by religion. If they seem to unfairly target Christianity over other faiths, it is only because you’re limiting your focus to the United States, where Christianity is nearly unavoidable. I’m sure if another religion managed to get the same level of influence over Congress, teenage goths would be just as angry at them.

“Evangelical atheism is just as bad as…”

I’m gonna cut you off right there. Yes, it is “as bad as” evangelical Christianity, or anything else that goes out and tries to convert people. But my position is, those things aren’t all that bad. Many sects of Christianity consider witnessing or evangelizing to be a major part of their faith, like attending church or ignoring all but four Gospels. I can complain about it, which achieves exactly nothing, or I can offer a counterpoint, which might achieve slightly more than nothing. I have no holy obligation to make my case, nor am I working in the service of any organized group, but if I see bad ideas or faulty logic, I’m going to point them out. If a belief works for you but not for me, I’m not going to pretend that discrepancy doesn’t exist. If a religious system appears to have a set of coherent rules, I am going to ask about those rules, and yes, I am going to attempt to examine and critique them. If I’m evangelizing, that’s because I’m pressing believers to make their case. They have a hypothesis about the nature of the universe, and I’d like to know it.

“Well, I think all efforts to convert people are wrong.”

No, you don’t. In all likelihood, you adopted that position defensively after someone called you out for making fun of Christian evangelists, as a means of deflecting future accusations of intolerance. We all say this — even I say it sometimes — and we are all full of shit. So go nuts. Mock whoever you want, and feel free to focus on things that are relevant to you (angry street preachers), rather than abstractly criticizing things that will never, ever come up (angry street rabbis).

“If science is so certain that [religious/mystical belief] doesn’t work, why don’t they test it?”

Okay. You ever see Cosmos? Carl Sagan? Go watch it. All of it. It’s on Hulu. Pay special attention to the part where he says that modern astronomy exists because of scientific inquiry into astrology. It won’t be hard, since he says it in almost every episode. Likewise, much of modern science rose out of the failures of alchemy and similar systems. We, as a species, came up with science because the alternative wasn’t working. Books have been written, studies have been published, and science has no obligation to start over from square one just because some random dude who wasn’t paying attention asked them to go over the old material again.

“Well, that doesn’t mean you have all the answers.”

That’s true, but I won’t just assume there’s a supernatural explanation until someone proves otherwise. I believe we are capable of finding any answer, as long as we have half an idea what the question is. Some people consider that view reductive, but come on — don’t you want to say you were there when they discovered something? Really give those great-grandkids a legacy to live up to? We can’t let that thieving prick Edison get all the glory!

…And that’s about it. I suppose if I had planned this better — or just had Blasphemy Day to inspire me last year — I could have turned the above text into a whole series of posts, and spent today writing about the actual value of blasphemy instead. If anything, it’s a good excuse to celebrate again next year.

Here Comes Science, the new release from They Might Be Giants, is the greatest children’s album in the history of recorded music.

I don’t have children of my own, and I don’t have any close friends with children, and I don’t even particularly like children, so I know next-to-nothing about the music that is typically aimed at them. But seeing as a quick search on Amazon suggests such inane drivel as 20 Simply Super Singable Silly Songs and Choo Choo Soul, I feel safe in my assumption. I’m also leaving out such classics as The Tiger Lillies’ masterpiece Shockheaded Peter, because that isn’t actually an album for children so much as it is an album for people who hate children. That being said, whether or not Here Comes Science is literally the best children’s album ever, the fact remains that it’s really fucking good.

Here Comes Science is TMBG’s third educational album for children, following Here Come the ABCs and Here Come the 123s. Both earlier efforts have their merits; though the subject matter is, understandably, limited. How much can you really say in a song about learning how to count? This new effort, in contrast, gives the Giants ample room to shine, which will be no surprise to long-term fans familiar with TMBG classics (found on regular albums aimed at adults!) like “Why Does the Sun Shine?” and “Mammal.”

In its purist form, Here Comes Science is an album about how awesome science is. “I Am a Paleontologist,” for example, is about how exciting it is to have a career in a scientific profession. “My Brother the Ape” is a song about coming to terms with the realization that all life on Earth stems from a single common ancestor (with joyful results). Other songs get down to the business of straight education to catchy rhythms and metaphors, like “The Bloodmobile” (which compares the circulatory system to mass transit), “Solid Liquid Gas,” (which features a neat little device where the singing speeds up or slows down in relation to the movement of the atoms in each state of matter), and “Roy G. Biv” (which is so catchy it could be a standard pop song instead of a kids’ song).

One thing I love about Here Comes Science is that it never feels condescending or dumbed-down. The information is accurate and loaded with big words that children may not know on their first listening, but which they will assimilate given time (in other words, kids who own this album are likely to have the best vocabularies in their classes — hint hint, parents). Parents can listen to the album with their kids without wanting to bang their heads against the wall, and the subject matter is sure to be genuinely thought-provoking.

The real greatness behind Here Comes Science, however, is that it features Stephen Colbert-sized balls. One would expect, in a country where the rational regularly bend over backward to avoid offending the staunchly irrational, that anything potentially controversial might be edited out. This is not the case, and They Might Be Giants are to be commended for their bravery in this matter above all else. The album’s opening song, “Science is Real,” begins with the following lyrics:

“I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like the stories
As much as anybody else
But when I’m seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science…”

When those lyrics were revealed earlier this month, P.Z. Myers (scientist/atheist blogger superhero) posted a quick commentary on his blog displaying some of the angry comments the album received on Amazon.com even before the album was released:

“As a Christian I’m offended by comparing unicorns, elves with angels. Unicorns and Elves are fiction, and angels are biblical. End of story.”
–Some idiot.

Yeah. In other words, John and John are pissing off all the right people.

The best, and most potentially influential, song on Here Comes Science, in my opinion, is “Put it to the Test.” On its surface, it’s an educational song about the Scientific Method. In reality, it’s a scathing attack on all forms of bullshit. Relevant lyrics include:

“Are you sure that that thing is true?
Or did someone just tell it to you?
Come up with a test…

…Find a way to show what would happen
If you were incorrect
A fact is just a fantasy
Unless it can be checked…

…Don’t believe it ’cause they say it’s so
If it’s not true, you have a right to know
Put it to the test…”

Remember now, this is an album for children. And while the Scientific Method is the single greatest tool for every kind of experimentation, this song has a deeper meaning. TMBG is saying, “Hey kids! You know all those adults that tell you things? All those parents and teachers and politicians and clergymen? It’s quite possible that they’re full of shit. Don’t just take them at their word. Demand proof.” And that is the best lesson any child can learn. Thank you, very sincerely, Mr. Flansburgh and Mr. Linnell, for respecting us enough to try to save our future generations from becoming tomorrow’s gullible morons.

Seven years ago today, I was minding my own business when I found a Beak, and blah blah blah. If you don’t know this story by now, I’ve told a version of it almost every year since this site’s inception, and there are only so many ways to say, “There was just a Beak sitting there by itself.”

This year, though, I actually have some good news for the annual State of the Beak address. Not about the website, mind you; that’s still unknown and infrequently updated, and I’m honestly starting to like it that way. No, the good news is about, well, everything else. For example, though I may have given up on my New Year’s resolution to complete and sell a comic book, I have managed to design a couple shirts, and to sell a few dozen of them for a small profit. It’s not enough to make a proper living or anything, but it is proof of concept — I could scale this up and turn it into a sonofabitchin’ business. I now spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about wholesalers and invoices and all the things that people much more important than me think about. I might even turn out to be good at this.

On top of that, I’ve been repainting (and thoroughly renovating parts of) my apartment, learning to prepare and roll clove cigarettes at home, and printing up a special order of shirts for International Blasphemy Day, which you can see to the right of this text.

That’s all been within the last couple of weeks. And yesterday I replaced the DVD drive in my computer.

Oh, and the fucking G20 Summit is happening in Pittsburgh (you know, where I live) right fucking now. Protesters were stomping through my neighborhood last night and applying seriously flawed methods to an otherwise good cause, which is my polite way of saying some windows got broken. I should head down there and make sure the dinosaur is okay.

In short, I have been busy doing things I didn’t plan for, even as interesting times unfold right outside my window. Also there is a dinosaur. That, my friends, is exactly the sort of life I’ve been trying to encourage (and achieve). I set aside this one day every year to reflect on how I’ve been doing — perhaps a bad idea in the current, genuinely scary political climate. But the horrors of modern life will still be there tomorrow, and I’ll still be outraged. Glenn Beck will still be lying, Congress will still be spineless, and all your favorite things will still suck.

I’ve got mere months left before I leave Pittsburgh, and for once I can say with absolute confidence that the state of the Beak is strong.