Merrick here...


...with what is certainly one of the strangest AICN posts ever (and that says quite a bit).

Earlier this afternoon, a reader sent in an image highlighting what he claimed was the Silver Surfer's chromy nut sack. He said this screen grab came from the currently posted trailer for FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER.

Initially, I had my doubts -- who wouldn't? It HAD to be fake. I mean, the notion of Surfer cruising around with his metallic junk swinging in the wind just didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Finally, curiosity got the best of me (it wasn't the homo-erotic kind of curiosity...not that there's anything wrong with that), so I jumped to the QuickTime HD version of the trailer and started frame-by-framing through the scene in question.

And, sure enough, there it was...the Silver Surfer's shiny package!

At first, no one believed me. But then I showed Harry -- and suddenly the potentially mad rantings of a crackpot reader with way too much Photoshop on his hands became post worthy. I then showed it to a close friend at another site, who was amazed that the story was so easily corroborated.

You can see for yourself (you know you want to) HERE! Shows up 'round 1:02-1:04 on the timecode -- it's when the Surfer is fly-surfing towards us in the first part of the tunnel sequence.

Testicular attributes are not evident in the rest of the Silver Surfer sequences we've seen thus far, so I'm assuming this matter is akin to the infamous "Jessica Rabbit has no panties" frames in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? I.e. something animators sneaked in (momentarily) just for kicks...and just to see if anyone would notice. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, HERE'S MORE INFORMATION (scroll down to the "Additional Information" header for some hot frame grabs..."grabs" seems like the wrong word in this context).

All of this happened as Harry and I were debating an another e-mail, sent by a long time reader named BLooD-HuNTER.

BLooD-HuNTER sent along some pictures of the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 motorcycle Ludacris paid around $120,000 to customize. BLooD-HuNTER says no one's seen this motorcycle yet except for Ludacris, and the people who put it together for him.

We were debating if this was "cool news" in the AICN sense...and then the balls happened...so I'm not sure a final determination was made about Ludacris' ride. But, in a reality where the Silver Surfer's stuff gets its own headline...why the hell not?

See the motorcycle HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

I guess now we know what they mean by "Rise" of the Silver Surfer!? I'm sorry...but somebody had to say it.

[[[e-mail Merrick]]]