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• Filipino Americans demand for apology from ABC and Desperate Housewives Petition

As someone who was part of the Voltes V generation, I was always puzzled by the popularity of the Transformers.

Don’t mean to poo-poo on anyone’s Cybertron party but the Transformers, when it first appeared on tv in the mid-80s, was to me a lame attempt by an American toy company to capitalize on the giant robot craze that first swept Asia in the 1970s. The ‘kua-kua-kua-kua-kua’ sound that I recall the Transformers making when they morphed into cars or planes (oooh, how imaginative) still grates on me to this day. The biggest thing that bothered me about the series though was the anthropomorphization of the mecha robots. The depiction of the robots as sentient, mechanoid beings with personalities was so unappealing to me. And, come on, moving lips on a robot? Does its face have, like, special metal alloy that’s pliable enough for mouth motor movement? I know with cartoons we’re supposed to suspend our disbelief but I didn’t think we’d have to do it to this extent.

What I liked about the Japanese robot shows that preceded the Transformers was that the robots were controlled by humans. There was a clear human/robot dichotomy. Humans directed the giant robots from within a cockpit usually inside the robot’s head. The appeal behind shows like Voltes V and Daimos (or even Voltron) was that they gave us a glimpse of a believable future wherein we are the masters of hulking masses of metal created to help us fight evil. That’s what captured children’s imaginations then, I believe.

Having said that, I think I’ll give Michael Bay’s film version a chance – a chance, perhaps, to undo the ridiculousness of the earlier versions – and to entertain us at the same time.

(I couldn’t believe I cared enough to write about, and get bent out of shape over, cartoon robots. Yay, I’m, like, twelve again!)

• Why HD movie downloads are a big lie | George Ou | ZDNet.com I haven’t downloaded an HD movie before but I found this article (and comments) informative about new HD technologies and even things like VoIP.

Remember the kids’ “Peanuts” video from last year? Well, I uploaded it to Google Video last week and it’s now live! It got formatted funny though ’cause it’s got black space to the right and bottom of the video. I think it has to do with the fact that I submitted it as a .mov file instead of the preferred mpeg or mp4 format. I’ll fix it later.

Speaking of Peanuts, I was able to effortlessly record the Charlie Brown Christmas Special (1965) on ABC last Friday, thanks to our new Comcast DVR box. Yup, we got that instead of the Tivo box/service combo since we were alrady Comcast subscribers. We had TFC and GMA thru Comcast for a little while but my wife and I found that we were hardly watching them. So we thought of putting the $19.99 that we were paying to a more worthwhile service. We cancelled the Filipino channels and got the Comcast DVR service instead. Not only did we get the neat recording features (I now know what you Tivo users are raving about) for the same price but we also acquired a couple of dozen more channels.

So anyway, I had the kids watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special a couple of days later. They liked it and identified with it because they also had to practice and perform Christmas songs (just like the Peanuts characters) for church last Sunday. I liked how Linus quoted Luke 2:8-14 to state the true meaning of Christmas.

I was walking back and forth in front of the TV (as it is in between the home office and the kitchen) while my two-year old son was watching Sesame Street, when something on the screen caught my eye. I turned to the TV and lo and behold, I see Elmo, in a full-body shot, riding his tricycle around Sesame Street. With the camera shooting from a high angle, Elmo is shown pedaling - yes, pedaling - while singing a tune. Now, how can this be? Where is the person who’s supposed to be controlling Elmo’s mouth movements?

There’s no way this could’ve been one of those scenes taken initially with a green screen background. I mean, Elmo was weaving in and out of the area between Hooper’s store and the apartment’s front steps, all the while being surrounded by other kids in tricycles. With the camera on a crane moving about and following Elmo around, this would’ve been a difficult scene to put together. This couldn’t have been CG work, either (does PBS have the budget for that?). It would’ve been overkill (unless there’s some sort of charitable CG work that Lucasfilm has meted out to Sesame Street in appreciation for Frank Oz’s contribution to the Star Wars franchise over the years, but I doubt it. Too far-fetched.).

Has Elmo finally gone fully remote-controlled? I can’t say. No matter what muppet wizardry the CPB has come up with, Elmo on wheels has certainly impressed this dad who himself grew up watching the muppets. But back then they were only shown from the waste up.