geekosystem

Remember last year when we all found out that Michael Bay's Ninja Turtles would be aliens and not mutants, and then the whole Internet exploded with anger because mutant turtles who love pizza and are also ninjas are a beloved childhood memory, but alien turtles who love pizza and are also ninjas are an abomination? Turns out it's not true. So calm down.

There's something spectacular about minimalist LEGO projects. Making something that looks just enough like the inspiration requires a great deal of patience and ability to shed unnecessary parts. Sometimes a flourish is just a flourish, but other times it's what makes the character. Nick Desimone has managed to hit this exact median with his glorious TMNT builds, as can be seen above. Hit the jump to see the rest.

After it was announced that Michael Bay would be in charge of a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and the subsequent "alien" debacle, fans of the franchise were up in arms over what they feared would be a butchering of the source. Well, if the blog TMNT, NOT TANT is to be believed about the authenticity of a script they managed to get their hands on, all those concerns have been validated: The script is particularly awful in depressingly specific ways.

What you see above is only a tiny piece of a larger mural done by Ulises Farinas that depicts Mos Eisley -- the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the Star Wars universe. However, this version of the Tatooine crossroads of ne'er-do-wells is full of characters from other science fiction series. You'll see just about every Star Wars character from the original trilogy in the image, as well as some visitors from Star Trek, Doctor Who, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, Predator, Batman, The Wizard of Oz, Fallout, and many more besides. It's a veritable Where's Waldo Lando of Sci-Fi goodness.

In this series of clips, a religious program breaks down why just about every single piece of popular '90s media is dangerous for the moral well-being of children. MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Dungeons & Dragons, Goofy, rock and roll fruit snacks, The Simpsons; no one escapes unscathed. Their primary target is that bastion of satanic influence: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Granted, the sheer bulk of marketing involved with any of these people and properties is a bit disgusting, but they are far from dangerous. And why pick on Splinter because he's a rat? I like rats!

What better way to keep your head warm this winter than by dressing up as everybody's favorite cold-blooded, crime-fighting, pizza-loving mutants? If you're in the market for some righteous turtle-wear, you can order one of these Immature Radioactive Samurai Slug Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle beanies from Miss Pamela. They're made to order, so you don't have to worry about stock, but it seems like she won't make any with non-standard colors, and rightly so.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman has a really awesome studio. Awesome enough that when he decided to auction off everything in it to raise money for the Hero Initiative, a charity that helps comic creators in need, people were actually interested and started bidding on his stuff. The wealth of neat things includes original art, action figures, t-shirts, over 600 DVDs and, of course, his desk and chair. When he says everything, he means everything. The catch is, you can't pick and choose.

The newest release in the long-winded Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise is now in theatres. I’m sure, somewhere, somebody is rejoicing that fact. It’s probably worth mentioning that my despair didn’t stop said movie from raking in boatloads of cash. Literal boatloads. Okay, not really. But still, a lot of money was made.  My despair also had nothing to do with Roger Ebert giving the most recent iteration fewer stars than Mel Gibson’s latest outing, The Beaver. Yes, the one where he wears a beaver puppet on his hand throughout the film. That is what scored more favorably. This turn of events brought to mind other movie franchises that managed the trifecta but couldn’t quite pull off the fourth. Also, just to get it out of the way, I am fairly positive The Matrix would be included here were it not for the remarkably sane decision to stop at three.

This fan film takes a while to get to the three-fingered-punching point, but we could all use the occasional reminder that Raphael is cool... but crude. (via The High Definite.)

Listen, Japan. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are already mutated, there's no reason to give them stones that mutate them further, and there's definitely no reason to give said stones a secondary mutation power that mutates them a second time into even stronger mutations. There is absolutely no reason for the Turtles to be thrice-mutated.

If I may recite an excerpt from the theme song. Ahem:

We are Turtles

Shining Turtles

Our hearts combine and the miracle fusion body is

Awakened

Stop it, Japan.

(via WTF Japan, Seriously!? | This is actually real)

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Trust us. The above image is one of the more sane, but awesome, images in this repository of dozens of illustrations of what looks like a series of Russian TMNT knock offs. (Our favorite thing about it is how obvious it is that the person who drew Shredder didn't draw that triceratops) The series starts off weird, even for the Turtles, whose chief opponents were an evil samurai and a brain living in the stomach of a robot who hung out in a giant round tank-like fortress underground. But then you find the crossovers. Just... make sure you don't have anything to do a spit take with.

Prepare Your Wallet: Steam Now Recommends Games For You (That Videogame Blog) Why The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Don't Use Their Weapons (CollegeHumor) The Trailer for Source Code (Bleeding Cool) The LAPD's Stolen Art Database (BoingBoing) Mr. Peanut Speaks, Is Product of Impressive Stop-Motion Animators (Motionographer) The First Page of Watchmen Goes For $33,500 (Bleeding Cool) Amazon Expands Its Game Downloads Service (Joystiq) (pic via Reddit.)

Brittney Schnek, 23, took a 1994 Dodge Caravan and turned it into the preferred transportation of crime-fighting mutant humanoid turtles after over a year of work.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were probably the first childhood fad I ever really understood to exist. Before the Power Rangers, before Animorphs, and before POGs, I understood that TMNT was the coolest thing ever. Now I know that if I ever want to look like Krang, it will be less expensive than looking like a Turtle, but more expensive than a half-shell backpack.

The rumors are true: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is getting a film reboot. And who better to be among the producers of the new flick than Michael Bay, current frontman of the cartoon movie movement as far as any Transformers film fan is concerned. And like Transformers, this one's live-action too.