I even offer $50 to the person who can arrange for Dave Barry and I to meet. I'd love to take him to lunch and discuss how I could fill in the shoes he left behind. I'd also like to ask him how he's been getting on these past few years without any shoes.
Ok, back to business. I've been mostly doing "Today In History" sketches, analyzing the historical events that occurred on each day in...um...history. But I'm finding more and more days are quite devoid of good material to work with. It's hard to turn the opening of some concentration camp into humor. So I may still throw in a "Today In History" every now and then, but I'm also planning on straying out to other topics. Like today for instance. We'll be discussing:
Mecha robots
Basically, these are fictitious robots that are gigantic. They usually have some resemblance to humans (in shape, not size or function) which allows them to act like humans. Often they do battle, so they act like humans by doing martial arts, sword fighting, and I'm sure they could make obscene gestures at their opponents. Sometimes though, when they're not protecting Japan from radioactive experiments gone horribly awry, they like to lounge around the house watching television, just like humans.
Fun idea, right? Putting the "fiction" back into "science fiction" right? Not anymore. Carlos Owens decided to build one in his own backyard.
It's 18 feet tall and weighs about a ton. This thing is steel, cables, and hydraulics. He imagines these being used in war ultimately, so naturally he programmed his robot to raise its arms, bend its knees, and do a sit-up. So the mecha should be able to at least pass basic training.The thing that kills me is that it only cost this guy $25,000 to make. It's like Carlos just built a new car for himself. I sure hope he rides his mecha to work. That'd be sweet. He could get any parking spot he wanted. Actually, he'd probably need most of them.
I'm not sure if Carlos' mecha can transform into a boombox or anything, but I still think this is pretty sweet.
Of course, Carlos wasn't the first one to make something like this. His is the most similar in design to the Power Rangers' one, but there were a few predecessors:
Landwalker (Japanese)
A hexapod walking tractor (built by Timberjack)
T-52 Enryu (again, Japanese)
The best part of those videos is the guy remotely operating the T-52. He's twenty feet away with his arm movements controlling the robot remotely. And he's got a hard hat on, just in case the tent he's in collapses.
I must say, I still prefer Carlos' model. Even if he has put the mecha robots on hold for right now because he's working on something else that he describes as "perdy frikken kewl!!!" I am not exaggerating, those are his exact words. There were even three exclamation marks. I don't know what could be "kewl"er than these mechas! I mean, this guy did anti-ballistic testing on the carrier chassis for the augmentation suit with promising results! I really don't know what that means, but it definitely sounds worthy of governmental funding.
So I was searching around on YouTube for reasonably awesome videos having to do with mechas, and I came across this:
Japanese Spider-Man show (with a mecha Spider-man robot for some reason)
I was also reminded of Robot Chicken's interpretation of Voltron. I'd recommend jumping this video to 35 seconds in. Voltron (a mecha) is forced to compete in a dance-off against one of its enemies. Voltron gets "served". Not the best video quality, but it's the thought that counts.
Pictures:
Fake Mecha
Real Mecha
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