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The original She-Wolf … and I don’t mean singer Shakira’s “She Wolf” song back in 2009. Remember the video? That was a sure-fire booty-shaking epileptic seizure attack, but I digress. Now back to the original She-Wolf, the 1980s creation by X-Men famed writer Chris Claremont and British artist John Bolton, the two created Marada the daughter of Rome, warrior and sorceress.
With the help of Michael Jordan during the 80s and 90s, Nike made leaps and bounds becoming not just a stylish sneaker company and sports apparel brand, but also a fashion leader. Many competitors have fallen among the wayside, but Nike is still standing. How does Nike still keep things fresh? How do they keep from being boring and stale? How do they keep setting trends and leading? Well, Business of Fashion (BoF) takes an inside look at Nike’s in-house team HTM made up of Nike Chief Executive Mark Parker, Designer Tinker Hatfield and Cultural Consultant Hiroshi Fujiwara.
If you want that old school feeling of writing down notes and ideas on paper with a writing instrument, then here’s FiftyThree’s Pencil and Paper iPad app. This stylish digital stylus is built for the Apple’s iPad and their Paper iPad app.
Iconic streetwear brand A Bathing Ape (BAPE) is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. This video takes us on a journey of 20 years of BAPE and where many streetwear brands and labels are fallen by the wayside, BAPE is still here kicking it and rocking the fashion industry.
From the “Down Under”, custom sneaker artist Sekure D is a big “Minions” fan and he shares the love with these one-time custom Nike Air Jordan V’s.
While we enjoyed NYCC by day we ended up dining at NINJA NEW YORK by night.
Our host of Ramen’s other Half, Jonelle Marie, shares her first impression of fine dining in Tribeca’s one-of-a-kind Ninja New York Restaurant!
While there, we were looking for that secret door – you know, the one you would open and discover the artistry of Ninja acrobatic sword fighting and trickery like a James Bond flick, but it was impossible. The place was a maze and when we asked to take us to your leader, they sent us numerous of Ninja PR henchmen to divert us from straight answers about what laid behind the echoing walls of their zigzagging cave-like paths that only Batman would appreciate. Though mystified by their stories, we had one of the most entertaining dining night outs I’ve had in a long time.
I would have to say Ninja New York is one of the most entertaining and delightful places to dine if you’re looking for fun and hearty authentic Japanese cuisine food. And you’re almost guaranteed not to have a dull moment from your first step in and out of this place!
Xcar Films checks out the Euro-spec Vauxhall Astra VXR hot hatchback. Along with the race red color, the snazzy aero-kit and 20″ wheels, the turbo-4 generates 279 horses. This Astra VXR can really give the Ford Focus and Fiesta ST hatches a dogfight.
The groundbreaking hip hop album by the Wu-Tang Clan “Enter the Wu-Tang – 36 Chambers” was released in November 1993 and 20 years has passed since that iconic album. Now DC Shoes and Wu-Tang collab and celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the album.
It can be very hard making your kids eat everything off their plate and with all the other daily distractions in life, but food artist Samantha Lee can probably make your kids eat everything off the plate while having fun.
Ever find yourself in the middle of the dreaming something big and a light goes under head – “Wow, I have the next great idea!” and you have nowhere to jolt down the notes? If you don’t have a iPad or snazzy smartphones handy and you’re old school, you can write down your notes on these new Moleskine Star Wars Collection notebooks.
If you like collecting weird vinyl toys and underground urban fashion – there’s a convention for it! It’s DesignerCon! The two-day collectible show DCon took place this past weekend at the Pasadena Convention Center in sunny Southern California. The Ramen crew went down to check out all the cool stuff with guest host Shannon Murray. We also interview 3 cool artists: Kathie Olivas, Amanda Louise Spayd and Shing Yin Khor. Here’s the recap and highlights from DCon:
For more, go to: DesignerCon.
DICE recently released it’s latest Battlefield incarnation to the masses and fans looking to destroy things on a large scale will probably dive into this game. While I step aside from the multiplayer destruction, I take a look at The Art of Battlefield 4.
Ramen and a Half interviews Andrew Sumner to find out what Titan Entertainment Group is all about at New York Comic Con. 
First and foremost our team at Retrenders reviews many of Titan Books and we’ve grown to love what they do, because we simply love the content they publish and re-publish. Titan Entertainment is known to reinvent and revive content that had once had their moment in time from cult classics novels, comics, and they publish niche content about historical arts, artists, musicians, early filmmakers and much more. It’s as if Titan reflects on fascinating content and say – “This is entertaining – let’s revive it!”
Titan Entertainment Group is also an official licensee of Doctor Who products and works with popular media entertainment and culture. You can find out about their latest releases and featured products at Titan Merchandise.
It’s late at night, a young man wandering in the streets finds a pair of magical sneakers on the streets.
So here we are with another Assassin’s Creed game. They seem to be coming out with a new one every year just like all of the Call of Duty games. After playing the the previous game, Assassin’s Creed 3, I wasn’t so sure if I would be picking up this game at all, but I ended up getting my hands on it anyway. Right from the start I didn’t like the protagonist. He didn’t seem that likable during the beginning of the game, but after a few hours, he sort of grows on you.
The story in this game was pretty good, even if I did have a few questions at the end of it all, but I wasn’t able to get as invested in it as I did in the previous games in the series. The main reason was because of who you controlled in the modern time; it was just some random guy. You play him in first-person mode while out of the Animus and are never given a name and you aren’t able to even see what you look like. The one character I enjoyed the most out of the whole game was the I.T. guy, John. He made the modern portion of the game bearable and had an important role in the story. The characters Rebecca and Shaun showing up was also a plus – it was nice seeing and hearing them bicker again.
Besides that though, the real fun was when you were able to sail your ship all around the seas. Taking on little gunboats for small loot or attacking the large Man o’ Wars for some better salvage, it never got old. There was so much to do out in the ocean; sail to a nearby island and search for treasure, go deep sea diving, harpooning for sea creatures like whales and sharks, or just have fun destroying ship after ship. Finding floating pages of shanties was pretty neat also. Singing songs while sailing around was like listening to a pirate song radio station – and it did get annoying pretty quick. One could probably get really drawn into all the pirating or even the side-quests and forget all about doing any of the story missions. And to be honest, is that such a bad thing?
I give Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag a 7/10.
If you grew up in the 80’s in the States, you might remember the VW Scirocco. Currently in the US, we only get the Volkswagen Golf R, but not this Euro-spec Scirocco R. This little hot-hatch has a 2.0 Liter Turbo 4-Cyclinder generating 262 horses. This Ignition episode takes a look at the Euro-only 2013 Scirocco R.
It’s been a busy couple of weekends just button-mashing in the living room after big releases like GTA, Arkham Origins, Battlefield 4 and now comes Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. This new installment takes you back to 1715 where Pirates rule the seas and you are thrown into the dark, gritty world of pirate life.
I had been waiting a long time to play Batman: Arkham Origins – the third installment in the Batman: Arkham series. The first one (Arkham Asylum) was pretty good and I had fun with it and the second one (Arkham City) had me playing the game to 100% completion. In Origins, the game world is double the size of the one in Arkham City. Starting off in a new area, Blackgate prison, was nice, but the game soon kept sending me back to places I’d already been to in Arkham City, like the Steel Mill, the Gotham City Police Department, and in the Final Offer (Penguin’s ship). Visiting the BatCave saved me from all the familiarity though, where one can walk around and talk to Alfred plus you can even get to see a prototype Batmobile in the cave. It was actually pretty cool since you didn’t have to stay inside the city for the entirety like you did in the previous game.
Throughout the game, Batman is being hunted by eight assassins. The first is Killer Croc and the fight here was a lot better than in Arkham City. The fight with the Electrocutioner was useless and it actually bothered me that they put him in this game since he didn’t seem to have anything to do in this game, apart from giving you a new upgrade. The other bosses, on the other hand, were fun to battle against, such as Copperhead and her many shadow clones who got on my nerves a bit until I got a rhythm down, Firefly who was easy to beat but enjoyable to fight with, and even with Deadshot and Shiva – and they weren’t even a real boss fight. By the way, you could skip those two if you didn’t care about completing everything in the game.
One other thing that irks me is that even though this game takes place five years before Arkham Asylum, you seem to have much better technology in this game which just messes with the continuity of the story. For instance, in Origins you can get a glue grenade, so why wasn’t there a glue grenade in the Asylum and City? Plus, what about the Electrocutioners’ gloves? This game gives you many new upgrades that would make the Batman from the first two games say, “What’s that?”
Although, even with all the stuff that makes me just shake my head, the game is still pretty darn fun to play. The story in this game is well written and it’ll have you hooked. And when it comes down to it, the game was good – not great, but good. I give Batman: Arkham Origins a 7.5/10. One final note, don’t forget to check out the scene after the credits. Trust me, you won’t want to miss it.
It’s a tuned JDM Mitsubishi Evo GSR … oh, wait a minute … it’s an econo-box base Mirage with Hello Kitty stickers. This limited edition Mirage will be tuned by Sanrio to kick-off Hello Kitty’s 40th birthday.
Veronica Mars fans are eagerly awaiting for the new movie to come out and here’s a sneak peek of the film with cast interviews.
One of the best pop-culture art galleries here in the States is Gallery 1988 located on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, CA. Since 2007, Gallery 1988 has showcased their own annual “Crazy 4 Cult” series celebrating the magic of movies. With each year passing, the “Crazy 4 Cult” art show draws large crowds and stars in Hollywood looking to snap-up movie-inspired art pieces. Titan Books releases a new volume Crazy 4 Cult: Cult Movie Art 2 which collects various art pieces from the series.
Curated by artist and dunny fan Big C, the custom Dunny event took place at Kidrobot SF.
UK-based street artist and political activist Banksy always has something to say and point out. Check this short clip out:
I have been playing the Pokemon games since Red/Blue. I bought the new Pokemon game (Pokemon Y) that recently came out for the 3DS, and I’ve been enjoying it to no end. I’ve been stuck on the “Wonder Trade” section of this game, helping me trade for the other starters in the game. Wonder Trade is a function in the game that lets you trade away any Pokemon you don’t want for another to anybody around the world. You won’t know what Pokemon you will be getting though so it is a bit of a risk. You might give away a level 50 Pikachu and receive a level 3 Caterpie. However, if you don’t want go sit through all the random trades to get what you want, you can always try GTS (Global Trade Station). GTS lets you choose which Pokemon you are looking for and see if anybody is trading it, provided you have Pokemon they want to trade for. The only thing that’s not great about GTS is getting the message “A communication error has occurred”, which forces you to end the game and restart it. Just be ready to get that message over and over.
I bought the Nintendo 2DS last Monday so that I can play the new Pokemon game. Since I didn’t already have a 3DS, I thought that the new 2DS would be a good buy. It doesn’t have the 3D feature in it which was fine with me because I never liked it to begin with; it always got me dizzy. Without the 3D I had thought that the battery life would also be a lot better. I was wrong on that. The battery doesn’t last that long. My original DS probably had a better battery life than the 2DS. For a portable console, it may not last too long if you’re out and about. Playing with it connected to the charger will probably be your best bet while you play.
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