The Needcoffee.com Reader Survey closes at midnight tonight. And Hellpuppy Kora just heard a vicious rumor that you haven't taken it yet. So she instructed us, her human handlers, to use her powers of cuteness to instruct you to take the survey. Because otherwise, the puppy will be sad. And would you make a puppy sad? What sort of a heartless bastard are you? Yes, it's true...she does want to nom your soul into slobbery bits, but that's no reason to make her make the sad face, is it?

I knew you'd understand. You can find the survey here. I thank you. And Kora thanks you.

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The Hellpuppy Commands You!

Direct link for the feedreaders.

So do you think Jackson really wanted Prince up there, or was it something like...this?

Jackson: "If you're going to call me up here, seriously, call that freaky Prince guy up here too. Bet you a hundred he takes off his shirt."

Brown: "Okay, I'll take that bet."

They certainly were having plenty of conferences-on-the-mound--could have happened.

After the break, another Brown teamup I had forgotten happened.

Direct link for the feedreaders.

• Click here to buy James Brown stuff from Amazon.
• Click here to buy Michael Jackson stuff from Amazon.
• Click here to buy Prince stuff from Amazon.
• Click here to buy Pavarotti stuff from Amazon.

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James Brown: King of Musical Teamups

Anyway, if you've been wondering exactly what such a musical might look like, here's some footage that got posted thanks to Dread Central.

Direct link for the feedreaders.

On one hand, the Creature participating in a rawk love ballad is pretty funny. On the other hand, are they singing what I think they're singing? Wow.

• Click here to buy the original on DVD from Amazon.

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Creature From The Black Lagoon The Musical: He's Hungry

Written by: Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman
Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Ramon Rodriguez, Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving

Review: The only problem I had with the first one of these was that it tended to have things on the screen that weren't giant robots fighting other giant robots. So that needed fixing. And so it was! This time around, if you're not seeing a big bot tear another's face off (seriously, this is done quite a bit), then you're probably instead focused on some of Megan Fox's various parts. Which is acceptable. You can shut your brain down for this one. Shut it down hard.

Time: 21 seconds

• Click here to buy Transformers stuff from Amazon.

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - 27 Second Review

Ken Plume from Quick Stop Entertainment and I spend a lot of time on the phone. We have conversations that make very little sense. Then one day, I decided that we should harness our powers to ensure that gravity as we know it is kept at its current strength. But Ken would hear none of it and instead he insisted we harness our powers for this...whatever it is, entitled "Nuts on the Road."

Just remember...you've been warned.

Here we have another very special episode of Nuts on the Road. It was recorded live in front of a crowd of stunned onlookers. Some of which were nuns. Oh, one last thing: we're very, very sorry.

Direct download of the file here.

Download audio file (nutsontheroad-579.mp3)

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Nuts on the Road, Episode 579: Lonesome Mel - Rider Of The Plains

The madness continues. For more information, go here.

601. Random Vanilla Boobs.
I have no idea. Ask Dom.

602. International House of Drunkcakes.
From the mind of Miss Destructo.

603. The Kangaroo Wing Dings.
No, seriously.

604. Call the Plumber, My Shower is Evil.

605. Hello Kitty Dress-up Wolves.
Brilliant from Rikki Simons.

606. Aleister Crowley's Chiropractor (and Friends).
A.C.C. is one guy and the roster of his backing musicians changes with each album. Imagine Peeping Tom if it was fronted by Weird Al instead of Mike Patton.

607. Are You Awake at the Wheel?
Taken from here.

608. This is the War Room.

609. The God-like Walrus Quartet.
I'm not sure, but imagine Frank Zappa covering the works of Paul Winter.

610. Reaper's Dozen.
Again, uncertain, but I just imagine a bluegrass Blue Oyster Cult cover band.

New band names up for grabs each Tuesday and Thursday. When we're not...doing something else. Until we hit 700.

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700 Bands: 601 - 610

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Stuff You Need to Know: Do You Think They've Offered "Gobots" to Uwe Boll Yet?

Direct link for the feedreaders.

Why is that so terribly disturbing? Best not to speculate.

I do see very readily, though, that this strange anthropomorphic hot dog--this refugee from Upton Sinclair's The Fugitive--had an ancestor:

Direct link for the feedreaders.

Okay, that's also disturbing. What sort of mad world is it in which a giant disembodied head has a processed meat jester to cavort for the head's amusement--and then the jester simply lays down in a bun to be consumed? And we know the head is a giant one because do a size comparison between the head and the people working the concession stand. Are they merely the slaves of this floating horror, destined to do naught but produce the anthro-hot dogs in vats beneath the drive-in and send them to their grinning doom?

Man, I really need to clear my head of this madness.

Direct link for the feedreaders.

Ah, sweet. That did it, thanks.

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Welcome to the Wienerschnitzel

Don't make me use this. (I mean the inflatable moose head behind me, of course.)

No, really, I'm serious. As serious as I have ever been and the doctor says I'll get over it and be back to normal eventually.

I need your brain. I need to know what's going on in that mind of yours re: Needcoffee. Because I'm about to start doing some serious cogitations about the future of the site, and it's no good unless I get your input.

It's a short survey. It'll take maybe 2 or 3 minutes. (There aren't any trick questions.) And I would greatly appreciate it, if for no other reason than staging that photo was a pain because that chainsaw was not light.

You can find the survey here.

Thanks in advance for your help, gazpachos.

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Widge Wants You

I owned Thriller when it first came out. I enjoyed the album. I thought the videos were cool and positively loved the "Thriller" music video...and that's probably not a surprise to anybody here. I never really got into his later albums as much as Thriller, but I did always respect him as a performer. Even when his outfits, among other things, seemed to make less and less sense.

So I tried to find something that wouldn't be just a boring music video and wouldn't be something from his later years that I just never got into. And I finally settled on this snippet. Which is, I'm afraid, darkly apt.

Direct link for the feedreaders.

Among the other obits you can find elsewhere, I think I appreciate this one the best. Thanks to Bill Corbett for the headsup.

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RIP: Michael Jackson

As a bit of a tribute, here's her first appearance from I Dream of Jeannie:

Direct link for the feedreaders.

I thought about posting her appearance from The Dating Game but the guys are just so skeevy I couldn't bring myself to do it. If you want to see it for yourself, though, it's here.

But I guess that means we'll go with the classic...the original opening to the pilot:

Direct link for the feedreaders.

Thanks for everything, Farrah.

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RIP: Farrah Fawcett

Written by: Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp, based on the novel by Dan Brown
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgård, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Pierfrancisco Favino

Review: Well, they fixed the hair. And that's good. But they did well with the rest of it as well, and that's unexpected. Instead of an overhyped dissapointment, this one seems to be the unholy union of National Treasure with the first movie. Which occured in a meat grinder. That was on fire.

Also, Anti-Matter! Yay!

Time: 13 seconds

• Click here to buy Angels & Demons stuff from Amazon.

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Angels & Demons (2009) - 27 Second Review

And we're back. With even more wrongness than before. And it's full of cholesterol too. As always, we'd like to apologize to pretty much everybody who listens and, in this case, everyone who took part. No tacos were injured during the making of this podcast.

Please note: this podcast, if you haven't figured it out, is profane and not safe for consumption by children or animals. Or mammals of any sort.

Agenda:

• The cheerleader finals
• Aaron's sinus problems...in detail
• How Jon's love is like being Sisyphus
• ScottC, played by his understudy
• Widge's voice sucks
• Multitasking
• Steam emo
• The Cure as a goth vs. emo delineator
• Jon Talk Pretty One Day
• How many kinds of wrong?
• Can't get enough of your huh, babe
• Has the podcast started?
• Are you goats?
• Rox, queen of retro, and her moment
• Shoot the hostage
• Has the podcast started?
• The podcast as Hoover Dam
• Ken's hair (reprise)
• The correct line
• Your Service update
• Drunk Dialing Doc
• All About Cardboard
• The cardboard post-mortem
• The Kim Sim Update!
• What is an evil shower?
• All About Potatoes
• Narration and how to abuse it
• Widge, go to your room
• Another way to end the podcast

Thanks to Jon from The Unique Geek for helping us sound good.

You can find all of our Recommendations at our Amazon Store.

As always, special thanks go out to Clutch for letting us use their absolutely badass song, "Promoter (of earthbound causes)" as our theme music for this.

Buy Blast Tyrant, which is where you can find "Promoter". Buy their latest album, From Beale Street to Oblivion. Send them love and coin.

BTW, you iTunes subscriber types can nab this feed here. If you like us, why not rate us? We don't bite. Mostly.

Or if you want to do something else with it, the feed feed is here.

To download this episode directly, Weekend Justice Episode 30: Brought To You By The Letter Haitch, then do that thing.

Download audio file (wjustice062609.mp3)

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Your Weekend Justice #30: Brought To You By The Letter Haitch

What if Gene Roddenberry and Stan Lee had an ugly-ass baby?

ScottC's Note: Everyone, please welcome guest columnist Greg Hyatt. When asked to describe himself, this is what he said: "I was sent from the distant future to prevent a devastating war between humanity and bionic Civil War re-enactors, Stranded in the past after the completion of his mission, I currently resides in Kansas City where I enjoy superheroes, '80s cartoons and New Wave music."

There have been Star Trek novels for decades. And in the nineties, Marvel Comics made sure their characters were everywhere. We got animated series, action figures, trading cards, Pogs, and novels.

Marvel also had the Star Trek license in the nineties. Which means not only did we get a line of Trek comics, we got special issues like Star TreX and Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men: Second Contact.

And that second title is where Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men: Planet X comes in. The novel is a sequel to the comic, which takes place moments after the end of the film First Contact. The crew of the Enterprise-E didn't make it back to their time on their first attempt. They were actually thrown back to the then-present Marvel Universe where they teamed up (after a brief battle) with the X-Men. There are problems with the timeline and Kang the Conqueror asks (orders) the two groups to repair them.

Of course they do and the Enterprise crew returns to their time. (After all, you can't alter the status quo even slightly in a licensed product!)

Except Marvel and Paramount had a novel waiting. A sequel. And this time, the X-Men visit the 24th century.

Hey, it's only fair.

So, nobody can figure out why the X-Men have popped up in their future instead of returning home. As the crew of the Enterprise investigates, a planet is experiencing an interesting situation. They've got mutants. Of course, Captain Picard and his crew are the nearest ship and are sent to assess the situation. And the X-Men want in.

An alien ship is in orbit around the planet. Turns out they're attempting to harvest these alien mutants. Oh, and the government of this planet? Rounded them up and put them in a camp.

Blah blah blah, you know what happens, even if you haven't read the book. Picard's crew and the X-Men team-up and beat the aliens and save the day, returning everything back to the way it was before the novel happened.

I loved this book when I was sixteen.

Don't judge me.

Actually, go ahead. When I was sixteen I also purchased and enjoyed Smash Mouth's debut album and drank Bud Ice. That's not even mentioning my girlfriend at the time. (Wait, she friended me on Facebook. I hope she doesn't read this.)

I've kept the novel on the bookshelf since I bought it. I hadn't read it since I was in high school.

Until last week.

Does it hold up well?

No, not at all. The problem is... well, there are a lot of problems. The story is kind of ridiculous. I mean, superpowers don't really work in the Star Trek universe. Sure, Counselor Troi is empathic and Q's omnipotent and there are telepaths and shapeshifters and pretty much every alien race is superstrong, but something about the X-Men just doesn't let them fit. Maybe it's the costumes, maybe it's the social message and symbolism that mutants in general and the X-Men in particular represent.

But, when I was sixteen and I'd spend hours in my room reading comic books and checking out Star Trek books from the library I worked at? I was in heaven. Which just goes to show that I had lousy taste back then. (See my previous comment about my then-girlfriend.) I don't know how many times I read it all those years ago. Probably a lot. I was a big nerd like that. (Don't believe me? How's this: I had a CD player shaped like the U.S.S. Defiant that played different sound effects when you hit the various buttons. No, I'm not kidding.)

The book isn't entirely bad. There's a cute scene between Guinan and Wolverine in Ten-Forward. And the author makes a joke about Picard and Xavier bearing a striking resemblance a few years before Patrick Stewart was cast in the role every geek knew he should play. But the rest of the book is filled with talk of how the Starfleet crew is annoyed by the visiting/stranded X-Men (except Worf and Wolverine and a very bizarre romance between Picard and Storm), bad dialogue and ham-fisted references to previous adventures. Don't get me wrong, I love nods to prior events, but give me a modicum of subtlety.

Oh, and don't have Chief O'Brien appear in the same book as Banshee if you're not going to have them interact at all.

Because that is not right.

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Where No X-Man Has Gone Before