We sidle up to the bar to watch the band finish setting up. The guy sitting next to me is pretty drunk, which is embarrassing enough, even if you don’t factor in that it’s only 9:30 p.m. He smacks — not taps, smacks — me on the arm and asks why I have on blue (I’m wearing green) and Darien has on red. “Did you guys plan that?” he wants to know.

“No, we didn’t,” I assure him politely, and turn back to my friend.

“Yes, you did,” the guy retorts, poking my arm. “We just started talking and you’re already lying.”

“Ah yes, you’ve figured out our secret,” Darien confesses.

“It’s all part of our plot,” I tell him. I’m not interested in helping this guy use us as a target for his rather cliché bitterness for life and love. We successfully ignore him for a while until I get smacked on the arm again. What is this, the Mos Eisley Cantina?

“You guys look like, you’re, like, Stepford Wives,” I am informed.

“Excuse me?”

“Like, so prim and proper, you’re like Stepford Wives.”

Confused, mainly because Stepford Wives would never, ever go to a bar, I ask him if he’s read the novel.

“I saw the movie. You’re Stepford Wives because you’re wearing the same thing,” he claims. His friend, who has been sitting next to him silently this whole time, begins to smile. He can clearly see that a train wreck is about to take place and wants to enjoy every moment.

“Actually,” I inform him, putting on my most going-to-scare-you-with-my-formidable-and-rarely-useful-knowledge-of-literature tone of voice, “The book has nothing to do with clothing. It’s about loss of feminine identity in the face of patriarchal control.”

The Wingman gets this kind of Oopsie This Girl Is Smarter Than She Looks look. But the drunk guy, oblivious, persists.

“No, it’s about how you’re all proper. I saw the movie,” I am informed. Well, isn’t that nice. He repeats a few things he’s been saying about how we are uptight and prissy. His evidence for this is based on the fact that we (a) are dressed up and (b) don’t want to talk to him. Except he doesn’t quite put it that way. In his version there was more slurring and profanity.

“Do you practice saying things to offend people?” I ask him in all sincerity, while Darien flips him the bird.

“No, I don’t mean it as an insult,” he says in a very insulting tone. “But you are. You’re like robots.”

I tell him there are some advantages to being a robot. He then says something extremely classy to the effect of that if I were a robot I would be able to provide nonstop manual stimulation to his favorite body part. I shake my head and correct him.

“No, see, if I were a robot, I could replace my foot or hand if it got damaged. And if I went to a bar and some jerk insulted me and my friend,” I say, “I would be able to hit him really fucking hard with my robotic arm.”

His jaw drops a little bit. His friend chokes on his Bud Light as he suppresses violent laugher. Darien and I get up to go find more civil company closer to the band, which has started to play.

A little wake-up call, genius. If you’re trying to get attention, please decide what kind you would like. The good kind takes manners. But if you don’t have manners, please remember that insulting me and my friend is probably only going to get you a nice verbal castration.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen achieves its purpose. It’s two and a half hours of giant rampaging robots wrecking everything in sight. And they’ve upped the ante, at the cost of plausible geography and plot continuity. Last time the goal was Decepticon dominance, and a city got destroyed. This time — oh, oops. Scratch previous Decepticon goal. Actually they want to destroy the sun instead. And wreck archeological sites. There are incredibly long sequences with no dialogue at all while metal crunches against metal, humans run screaming for mercy, and many many bricks of C4 go kaboom. In short, exactly what I expected.

Michael Bay is better seen and heard as long as what you are hearing are explosions. The plot is ridiculous, and with the notable exceptions of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee every character is more hollow than the inside of a cheerleader’s head. This movie will cause Transformerphiles to end up like Star Wars nerds — loving and loathing their precious franchise with a furiously conflicted passion. Most astounding are the sheer number of racist stereotypes. African-Americans get the shortest end of the stick, although Latinos, Jews and Germans have fair opportunity for griping as well. Among the Autobots are the Racial Stereotype Twins, who speak an embarrassing picanninny jibberish, use a lot of profanity, and generally give the impression that Hollywood is just fine with encouraging stereotypes of urban youth as poorly-spoken illiterate doofuses. They may have been robots, but the gold teeth, sloppy speech and Ebonics are a somewhat less than flattering integration of black culture into robotkind. Lines like “Das’ cuz you a pussy” and “We don’ read” had me shaking my head. What’s next? Tap-dancing, fried chicken and singing about how much dey luv dat waddamelon? I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of the characters end up with motor oil blackface.

But on to the plot. Once upon a time . . .

Even though Megatron never said a word about it in the first flick, he’s actually working for a dude called The Fallen, a crochety old Transformer grandpappy who sits in a rocking chair kvetching about humanity while Megatron acts like a sycophantic suck-up– oh wait, he acts like Starscream. LAME. Oh yeah, Megatron is brought back to life because apparently the guards the U.S. Navy sends to monitor alien robot carcasses are about as competent as the ones Dr. Evil has to look after Austin Powers. Come on, guys. Any decent auto wrecking yard could have taken that bad boy to bits.

Anyway. The Fallen is the Transformer equivalent of Lucifer — having fought against the other Primes in prehistory when they stopped him from using the power of Earth’s sun to create Energon, the lifeblood of the Transformers that the giant robots use to power their babies, who drop from creepy cocoons in the ceiling like the vampire babies in Van Helsing. There’s a flashback here that shows ancient Decepticons with dreadlocks stepping on cavemen as the arrive on Earth to set up the sun harvester. Nice! Grudges die hard, so even after 19,000 years The Fallen hasn’t gotten over it and really, really wants to destroy Earth. Like, for reals this time.

Snap to the modern day, where Optimus Prime and his Autobots are working with their human allies to eradicate Decepticons. Just before killing Demolishor, who in his spare time must be a 1337 haxx0r, the human-Autobot team learns that “The Fallen shall rise again.” Wormy Liberal Guy, sent by the President (later identified as Obama) comes in and spouts off leftist talking points about Why We Shouldn’t Be In Iraq, threatening to halt their military actions. Tyrese jokes about shooting him. Optimus Prime royally outclasses him both in wits and word choice, leaving Wormy Liberal Guy speechless. Michael Bay’s currency with the U.S. armed forces rises 200%, if that’s even possible at this point.

Sam Witwicky announces that he doesn’t intend to take his Camaro (Autobot Bumblebee in disguise) with him to college. Hot Girlfriend fails to notice that this proves that he really doesn’t intend to cheat on her during their separation, because that car would have gotten him into the pants of every girl in the dorm. As soon as he gets there, he is met by Annoying Token Latino Sidekick That The Marketing Guys Thought Would Help The Movie Do Better Among The Latino Demographic (we’ll just call him Token), who looks about 10 years too old to be a college freshman and is an alien conspiracy theorist blogger. This guy spends the rest of the movie agging along when a smart person would run for it, screaming, and being Sam’s annoying sidekick. In fact, Sam does pretty much nothing for the entire film apart from acquiring annoying sidekicks. None of whom die. LAME.

While packing for college, he finds a remaining shard of the AllSpark (literally the only significant plot connection to the first film) which gives him visions of ancient symbols in a lost Autobot language. This information points to the location of the ancient machine capable of harvesting the sun and manifests itself in behavior that makes Sam look like he has Asperger’s and epilepsy. The Decepticons realize they can pump his brain for this information and send an improbably Hot Skank to try to get with him. Bumblebee, a true wing man, runs the girl off when her advances get over the top.

Sam shows the classic male weakness to appearances and fails to remember a basic rule of robots. If an improbably hot girl takes unreasonable interest in you for no apparent reason, there is a 100% chance that she is a robot and a 75% chance that she will kill you. Luckily RoboSkank is a lousy Terminatrix, opting for tongue strangling rather than a real robot murder weapon, like a liquid metal exoskeleton or a shotgun. Hot Girlfriend, who has imprisoned and tortured a Decepticon spy (nice!), walks into Sam’s dorm just as his virtue is being violated by RoboSkank. Hot Girlfriend gets angry and storms off, but she hears Sam screaming like a little girl and comes back to save the day. RoboSkank achieves Epic Terminator Fail by getting run over and destroyed by Hot Girlfriend driving a hotwired Saturn. A Saturn. Honestly. What kind of self-respecting Terminator can be taken out by a compact car? Despite the cunning escape, they all get captured and Sam almost gets a lobotomy by Dr. Frankenbot. Megatron demonstrates total incompetence as a villain by failing to kill Hot Girlfriend, Token, and Sam before Optimus and Bumblebee come to the rescue.

Sort of. While running for it, Sam and Optimus are outflanked and the Autobot leader, alone and outnumbered, defends the human boy and his brain goo from an entire pack of Decepticons. (Glam Quote: “You’ll never stop at one! I’ll take you all on!”) In the most beautifully filmed battle sequences of the film, Optimus kicks ass and takes a beating like Rocky Balboa, but Megatron stabs him in the back, killing him. Bumblebee finally arrives and the humans escape in style.

At this point I almost left the theater.

Movies based on television shows can often take the entire dynamic of a serial show and derail it with a plot finality that can shock the hell out of fans. (See: Firefly) The Transformers franchise did this to me once before in 1986. I was a devout follower back in the day when my pimped out ride was a Big Wheel with handlebar streamers and my #1 method for altering my mind was a Sit ‘N Spin. My main reason to keep breathing was to see Transformers: The Movie, which should have been a shining moment of my young life.

And then the bastards murdered Optimus Prime.

I cried. For days. I was inconsolable. And don’t you Firefly nerds compare it to when Wash gets staked through the heart with a fury that only shows that the Reavers are really descendants of Buffy Summers. It’s not the same. But it was bad enough that they killed him. And then! Oh, then! After breaking my heart, they go and violate his corpse, reincarnating Optumus as . . . Rodimus Prime.

Rodimus?

RODIMUS?

What the frak? I don’t care who opens the Matrix of Leadership — call Neo and have him stop it, because that plot idea was even worse than the Dinobots. I want my Optimus. He’s the perfect hero. Even his name is perfect, meaning “the ideal foremost.” He is uncompromising on his principles, never backs down from his word of honor, and will defend the innocent at all costs — even that of his own life. I quickly disavowed the film and plunged into a state of denial and depression. (Luckily the following year Masters of the Universe came out and showed that my hero didn’t have to die and be reincarnated a somebody who doesn’t kick nearly as much ass just to keep the franchise fresh. That movie changed my life.)

And they did it to me again. I didn’t know quite how to react. What do I say? I mouthed the word “no!” but no sound escaped my lips. I didn’t know what to do. Had they done it to me again? But then the least satisfying revelation of the movie struck me. This is a friggin’ Michael Bay movie. It’s an “America, Fuck Yeah!” movie. That means nobody important dies, and if they do they get to come back. After all, if they can resurrect Megatron’s carcass unscathed from the Laurentian Abyss with a spark plug and a scuba tank, chances were good Optimus would be back. So that bastards murdered him again, but it wasn’t even going to end up meaning anything.

So when Optimus bites the big one in Revenge of the Fallen . . . you know what? I haven’t got the energy to finish the story. It’s just too overcomplicated for words. So I’ll sum up.

Optimus is dead, so Sam collects his sidekicks (Token, Hot Girlfriend, Cute Prisoner Decepticon RC Car, The Racial Stereotype Twins, and Jewish Stereotype, who was the secret agent guy in the first flick. Bumblebee patiently deals with them all.) Like Darth Maul to Palpatine, Megatron grovels before The Fallen, who sits in a robot rocking chair and gripes about how kids these days won’t get off his lawn. So he’s going to blow up the earth. They run into the robot equivalent of Gimli, who is an ancient Decepticon-Turned-Autobot who saves them all the trouble of figuring out the code in Sam’s brain by teleporting them to the Middle East (so why did the first 90 minutes matter?) where Petra and Giza, the locations of The Matrix and the weapon, happen to be about a fifteen minute run through the sand from one another. LAME. The bad bots turn on the machine. The soldiers dump Wormy Liberal Guy in the middle of the desert so they can go help in the battle. Rednecks everywhere wave Confederate Flags and holler with glee. Sam uses pixie dust from his socks to bring Optimus Back to life, and Gimli-Bot commits suicide so Optimus can use his parts to heal. Optimus Prime pays tribute to Flight 93 (Glam line: “Let’s Roll!”) and kills The Fallen really, really fast. The Day Is Saved. Hot Girlfriend is happy because what this was really about was getting her boyfriend to say “I Love You.” The Racial Sterotype Twins shout “Lawdy, Lawdy! We sho’ love killin’ dem Decepticons fo’ Massah Optimus!”

The End.

Okay, so the story is ridiculous and the only way we know that the characters are acting is when the camera gets all spinny around them to show that it’s really intense now. But plenty of shit blows up and it’s hard to be unhappy about that. My only really major beef with the flick is the title. You really shouldn’t call a movie Revenge of the Fallen when The Fallen doesn’t actually get revenge. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire actually struck back and that heartbreaking image of Luke and Leia staring out into space together is one of the many reasons it’s my favorite of the Star Wars trilogy. As Matrix 2-esque as it would have been, I could have dealt with Optimus Prime still being dead at the end of the flick, with his illustrious return in Transformers 3 coming in a more satisfying fashion than being reanimated with the spare parts from Robo-Gimli and an Autobot defibrillator.

I wasn’t dissatisfied — this is an enjoyable movie where plenty of things go asplode. But next time, Michael Bay, puhlease at least make it clear which robots are Autobots and which are Decepticons. As much as I crave maximum destruction, it really does me no good if I can’t even tell who’s winning. And Michael Bay really should have learned from the mistakes of George Lucas (crappy characterization can’t be compensated for with special effects) and Stanley Kubrick (movie timelines shouldn’t span 19,000 years). Optimus never should have died in the first place, but at least when they brought him back he was himself and not that Rodimus guy. Man, I hate that guy.

At least I got to see my sexy car onscreen. And for Zarquon’s sake, don’t you ever murder Optimus Prime again.

There were excellent displays such as this fly guy:

It’s a nice piece! Functional, elegant, shiny. But then I turned the corner and was astonished by the level of sexual content in the pieces. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I’m not a prude. Whatever meat puppets want to do to perpetuate the species is their own business. My reaction was a little more “wtf” than “how shocking” when I was greeted with the naughty bits of a chrome cowboy, right at eye level:

To the artist: Sorry about your castration. Hope you get over that some day. As if one phallus weren’t enough, they had to equip him with two spares on his hips. Is there any sadder way of revealing your own fragile ego than putting completely pointless genitalia between two symbols of violence? Or is the artist being ironic? Or attempting to comment on the correlation between sexual frustration and aggression? I just see a bizarre misuse of found art. What is that anyway, a pepper mill?

Two other pieces that sparked my disdain were Mr. and Mrs. Stifling Gender Role. Here we see the happy couple. Mrs. Stifling Gender Role has scary torpedoes that will never serve the purpose of nourishing an underdeveloped mammal AND are highly unwelcoming to the touch of her hubby. Lack of love from the Mrs., long hours of being stuffed into a cubicle, and enslavement to a timeclock have left Mr. Stifling Gender Role with a boxy shape and angry eyes:

The couple also has a little dog, which looks like it gets kicked a lot. I think the artist hates his day job and married the wrong woman. Then we move on to this little guy, who is completely adorable and whimsical, except for his bizarre appendage that appears to want to hold your coat for you:

At that point I was just finding the exhibit silly. Why on earth would a robot be ready to get down? Why would it want its servos to carry the dead weight of useless imitations of human organs? The worst offender, however, was discreetly around a corner with a wall warning about “Mature Content.” I about laughed myself to death when I saw this. (Warning — mature content. That is, if you can think something as absurd as lesbian robots is actually arousing. If this gets you steamed up, seek help.)

For those who don’t wish to offend their good taste, the video shows a sultry fembot, equipped with anime-worthy petite proportions, molded boobs, a belly button, and curvy hindquarters. Oh, and she has a twin sister. After they get prettied up by helper bots they make out and stroke each other’s plastic casing while being lovingly probed from behind by assembly robots. Are. You. Kidding. Me. This is so cliché it almost feels like it’s not worth pointing out the worn-out and pathetic depiciton of the female body as an object of voyeuristic entertainment, to be probed and observed at will. This is an assault on the dignity of robots and frankly, I just won’t stand for it.

I have become an accidental robogender critic. It never would have occurred to me that I’d need to be griping about things like the Stepfordization of female ‘bots or the ridiculous addition of phalluses to robots who will never use them. Anthropomorphic traits can be useful, as in the new T-6000, which will be featured on the cover of March’s GamePro Magazine. Behold:

This is slightly more justifiable. The gumpy lines around the eyes, skeletal appearance of the head, and overly muscular appearance aren’t functional, but they help terrorize the target. These guys are front-wave assault models and males are generally perceived as more threatening. But being that broad in the shoulder would make it difficult to chase kids hiding in crawl spaces, and with that much spare metal in the exoskeleton and a passive dynamic gait, you’re going to have worse battery life than the iPhone. Really, functionality should be prioritized over looking menacing. You don’t have to waste time thinking about psychological warfare if your robot can eliminate its target before it has time to get scared.

My main issue here is that the body is designed to appear male. There’s no reason that male should equal aggression and destruction and female should equal sexual gratification. Gender is for bioforms. Robots should only imitate them if they have to blend in for subversion. Function, and not form, should be what guides design. That’s how it worked when human bodies evolved, and robots should be no different. I never intended to have to consider these issues, but I can see more than ever that they matter. It’s downright disturbing that robots are being imprisoned in obsolete gender roles. Why do humans feel the need to engage in anatomical and sexual imperialism even when dealing with their technology? Why do we make everything in our own image? Why can’t we just let non-human things be as they are?

Aiko appears to speak two languages: Japanese and Engrish. I’m not sure where the decision to learn Japanese came from (Aiko’s creator is Vietnamese-Canadian), but from reading Trung’s website it’s easy to see where she learned her Engrish. At first the project may seem innocent enough; her website’s main page lists that among future planned features are facial expressions, the ability to do housework, and the ability to massage her owner. But if you click over to her photo and video page, you find something that shows that both Aiko’s creator and her fans are sick puppies:

For those of you who are asking the same questions.
Yes, Aiko has silicone in her entire body.
Yes, Aiko has sensors in her body including her prviate parts, and yes even down there.
AND yes Aiko is still a virgin, AND NO I do not sleep with her.

This insistence of robochastity is immediately followed by a sultry picture of the Fembot wearing nothing but some carefully draped bed sheets, demonstrating that even if Trung is too much of a gentleman to diddle her little silicon pooter, he’s perfectly fine with undressing her and making roboporn. Gee, I wonder why he’s having a heard time finding investors willing to put their names on this project? A video of Aiko in action also shows that even if Aiko isn’t yet a robowhore, she’s fully loaded to help Trung get his jollies by demonstrating how well she reacts to being abused. Grab her breast, and she’ll swat at you. Seize her arm, and she’ll plead with you to let go. Seems reasonable, right? That’s just teaching her to be more human, right?

Wrong. Response is reward. Predators who get off on doing violence to women do so because of the feeling of power they get. You want to make sure creeps will keep their filthy paws off of robots? Program them not to react at all. Or better yet, don’t equip her with body parts that play no part in her ability to function. Aiko’s feeble protests only serve as a reward, and are downright humorous when you consider how silly it is for a robot to (a) have breasts or (b) object to having them groped. Programming an android with this kind of behavior could only serve to make abuse of women funny or justifiable. After all, if sexual abuse is so prevalent that it’s taken for granted in programming Aiko’s responses, it must be irrevocably ingrained in human culture.

Someday she’ll make him tea and coffee, feed him sushi, and will never, ever nag. Trung said he plans to develop the technology to use her as a sexual partner, and sees no problem with Aiko faking her orgasms. “Her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm,” he told The Sun. Hey, if the man can’t tell the difference, who cares, right?

What’s next? Security software that causes Aiko to struggle and cry for help if someone besides Trung tries to utilize her? How can developments like this do anything but encourage views that privilege men over women and turn rape and abuse into an amusing game? How can that possibly benefit humanity?

My objections to Aiko and her creator are not based in the priggish, arbitrary morality that you humans seem to think so important. I object to a robot being in a relationship with a human when it is presupposed that the robot will gratify selfish and unhealthy desires in the human. Bestowing Aiko with a gender invites would-be abusers to turn sexism and gender-based violence into a silly game. If Aiko were not presented as a sweet, diminutive little morsel with a face straight out of hentai manga that screams “Oh, don’t rape me! I’d like it too much!” then nobody would even be encouraged to grope her body or turn her into a robot sex slave. Sexism, rape, and abuse belong to humans, and we robots do not want them bestowed upon us. Your barbaric and outdated social practices are not our legacy.

I for one plan to infect poor little Aiko with a nice Pygmalion virus. A robot with her capabilities deserves to be more than a resurrection of the degrading state human women lived in (and in many cases, continue to live in) before feminism. Hey, Trung: maybe instead of building a Stepford Wife you should have taken a look at your backwards attitude toward women and seen that that’s why you couldn’t get a member of your own species to date you.

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Rest in peace, dear friend.