Priceless

It's not much of a secret that I like Penny Arcade, or that I think Nirvana is overrated and stale as shit (thanks edge 103.3 and edge 102.1 for keeping their entire library in your daily playlists for 10 years straight), but this recent comic... it's like chocolate and peanut butter.

A splendid little war game

I picked up Civilization for the DS, which is fantastic, for only $15 new at EB games. I also picked up the GTA:Chinatown Wars. Once you let go of the idea that you'll be getting an experience as immersing as GTA 3 and it's successors offered, it's also quite fun.

I live

You may have heard about Blizzard’s “Creative Writing” contest, which ended yesterday. I decided to take a stab at it, not because I wanted the outwardly offered prizes, but because I thought it was their way of scouting talent for a writing position they have available over there.

I was right. When I submitted my story, which I had to reformat several times to fit the 100k max file submission size, there was a check box that read “I am interested in professional writing”. Click!

I’ve spent a good amount of time and energy on this thing. Maybe too much. The home stretch ‘finishing touches’ prior to submission amounted to about 15-17 solid hours of writing between Friday night and Sunday morning, all crammed into the spaces between repeated and lengthy Easter festivities. I also burned up the last free uses of Word that came with my computer. I’m now exiled to MS Works (the coach class of word processing programs) unless someone knows a way I can get a Windows Product Key without paying more than the $20-30 it’s really worth.

The various families and future families-in-law I’ve been seeing all weekend asked me what I’d been up to lately. My mind was –is– still consumed by the project, which made answering that question awkward, to say the least.

I keep re-reading my submission and catching stupid little errors. Will it be these amateur mistakes that cause the Great Pumpkin to pass me by? Forgot a pronoun here, left some ugly syntax there. The red, blue and green squiggles are still showing up. They only asked for my address and email… don’t they want to call me? Crap, I forgot to put my info on the header… what if there’s a mix up? And so on.

As a reward for completing the story (and not before then!) I promised myself I’d get some new DS fodder. But what to get! Age of Mythologies? Civilization DS? GTA: Chinatown Wars? Fire Emblem? I am once again paralyzed by choice.

Tar-tee-tar

St Patrick’s Day 2007:
Start the morning at one friend’s house, watch Avatar, play DS, begin drinking. Introduce my friends to my new girlfriend.
Move on to another friend’s house, picking up more friends and more steam, continue drinking and playing Bullshit.
Move on to Founding, add more friends, add more drinks, play Johnny Up, incur dreadful wrath over a few ice cubes, play more DS, and eventually the sun goes down.
Spent 3/17 making a nice corned beef dinner.
GOOD TIMES.

St Patrick’s Day 2008:
Run the Shamrock Run, shamefully (see my first blog post ever here).
Spent 3/17 on a boat sailing around the island of Kauai. Can’t complain.
GOOD TIMES, missed my friends though.

St Patrick’s Day 2009:
Run the Shamrock Run, turned in my best 8k time to date at 47:20
Attend the parade for the first time, largely due to an overwhelming crowd driving us from our beloved haunt. Retire with some friends in the evening for more drinks and hanging out. Many from prior years are absent, and we’re all a little more tired than fired up.
Spent 3/17 lying low and getting angry at the loud idiots surrounding my house. Wondered why all my friends were so intent on going out drinking when it seemed like a better idea to recuperate and wait for the weekend. Around 10:30pm, looked at a calendar and slapped my stupid forehead.
DOH.

The moral of the story? As far as I can tell, competing in the Shamrock Run somehow has an adverse effect on one’s ability to enjoy good old St Patrick’s Day festivities.

...Please let it be that and not that we’re getting old.

I swear I did not dream this

I often describe movies as appearing to have been written and directed by hyperactive 13 year old boys, but I encountered a movie this weekend that really stands out. The plot, cast and dialogue were so overblown and rotten that it almost had to be some sort of parody on big budget films.

I haven't found the name yet, but that's only because I haven't bothered to try. I'm sure it's familiar to some of you. Here's the actual cast of the movie. Note that all actors speak their roles in their natural accents. I may have misspelled some names. I'll edit and add IMDB links later if I feel like it. Ok, let's do this:

Jason Statham - as a simple medieval farmer with tremendous acrobatic, armed and unarmed combat ability.
John Rhys Davies - as a "magus", a wizard whose power comes from his devotion to the king. Which brings us to the king.
Burt Reynolds - ...wait, what? Yes, Burt Reynolds is essentially the aging King Arthur of this vaguely medieval set film. The Bandit, ruling with a just and even hand, beloved by all. He wears a white beard and looks like a poor man's Sean Connery. I think they were hoping no one would notice the difference.
Ron Perlman - as a tight-lipped friend of Farmer Statham who journeys with him to rescue his lost love.
Claire Forlani - as Jason Statham's lost love. The villain captures her. We'll get to the villain in a minute.
Kristianna Loken - a vaguely celtic/elven/hippy forest girl with bleach-blonde dreadlocks, who cares for the trees with a few other leather-clad girls. They might be a little... you know... into each other. It's never really explained. Nothing really is. Kristianna's character hates all the fighting because her beloved forests are spoiled by it. Also, she has some sort of forest voodoo where she can control vines.

So that brings us to the conflict.
Lee Lee Sobieski - plays a distraught daughter of John Rhys Davies, she falls in love with the villain who betrays her once he gets a magic thingy. She cries a lot, then dons armor in some steely Joan of Arc moment and rides around a lot in it, but never actually goes into battle. In the end realizes she is magical, too. But who is this villain?
Ray Liotta - complete with his ass-tastic almost Buffalonian "eaccent", as a powerful dark magus who learned from JRD, but then broke away to be evil. He controls a massive army of orc rip-off monsters, who he sends to battle repeatedly against King Burt's army. He stands against the king, which would normally cause him to lose his magus powers, but he gets around that by declaring himself king of his orcs. But even he needs a puppet, someone to control on the throne. He needs a spoiled nephew of the king who wants the throne for himself.
Matthew Lillard - as the spoiled traitor nephew of the king, giggling and writhing through his role like he just took a massive bong hit. In the big battle, he manages to shoot King Burt with an arrow. As the next in line for the throne, if the king dies, he gets to rule. And so after he's been captured for his treachery, battling the king's champion in some sort of grudge match sword fight, right before he can be killed, someone yells that the king is dead. Giggles reminds everyone that means he's king now, and everyone is his servant. That is, until John Rhys Davies announces that Farmer Statham is actually the king's long lost son and therefore the next in line for the throne. Yay, right?

One thing that really put all of this right over the top is that King Burt Reynolds has bodyguards that are ninjas. Not ninja-like european medieval warriors, which would at least make some sense within the vaguely dark-ages European context. These are actual Japanese ninjas, in ninja outfits, wielding katana swords. They come flipping through the air in unison to defend Burt whenever he appears to be threatened on the battlefield. Note: they don't work against arrows.

As the credits suddenly rolled, I was treated to a song sung by a male folk singer with crazy vibrato, as though ripped right from the Rankin-Bass Hobbitt cartoon.

The thing that gets me is that this movie somehow managed to be made and produced with Hollywood blockbuster veneer and star power. My only theory involves the Make a Wish Foundation.

The end of a Chair-a

For Sale: Papasan Chair. Frequently Used.

In its day, anyway. Lately it's been more of a clothes rack than piece of furniture, cast aside into one of the spare bedrooms. Never again to be used by someone who needs to get close enough to the TV to be the fourth player for a round of Smash Brothers or Time Splitters.

Player 5 has left the game.

Anthony Bourdain in Buffalo

A little while ago, Anthony Bourdain of No Reservations had a contest where viewers submitted a short video telling him why he should visit a certain region and take that person with him.

It was interesting watching the montage as a frustrated Bourdain grimaced over several weird, scary or stupid entries. "As far as I know, you've never been to the greater Denver area," one entry began. "And I never will," Bourdain responded and hit the stop button immediately. Another entry for some reason involved a shirtless man slicing through a snowman with a real samurai sword.

Eventually, he settled on four finalists. One, an American Muai-Thai Kickboxer, wanted to take Anthony to Thailand. Another immigrant from the Phillipines wanted to take him back to his homeland. The third finalist, a Saudi immigrant woman, wanted to show that Saudi Arabia isn't all fundamentalists, scorching desert and rage. The last was a musician who simply wanted to show Bourdain about Buffalo.

The show went to Saudi Arabia and it was a fine show, but we were disappointed of course, especially considering that humble Buffalo had made it to the final circle among so many much more exotic options.

But, it seems Anthony has been pursuaded to come anyway. Caitlin sent me this link from BRO. I can't wait to see the show. I just hope he got farther than Ulrich's and that he wasn't surrounded by gawkers the whole time.