Although I doubted it, I did make the cut for the T-Mobile's Big F'ed Up Hiptop Exchange 2004. Given how lo-fi the whole experience was, I resolved not to care about the delivery date or tracking numbers. So I was pleasantly surprised when it appeared in the mailbox a week later.

Comparing the old and new units is like comparing Mac hardware to Windows hardware; they both do the same thing, but one does it with so much more class. The Hiptop2 has twice as many face buttons, with several discretely hidden in the rubber bumper guards! The lighted scroll wheel is no more, replaced by a utilitarian scrolly bit flanked by dedicated Call Off and Call On buttons.... and though they look prone to accidental presses, they are not. For those who would miss the circus atmosphere of the lights, they have been reincarnated under a d-pad on the left hand side, which also doubles as the phone speaker!

Whoops! You don't get the Silph Scope in Saffron City. Silph Co.'s headquarters is in Saffron, but the Scope comes from beating Giovanni deep in Team Rocket's underground base, right here in Celadon. Judging from the Rocket presence and the new casino, Celadon appears to be a city decaying from the inside.

So here's the chain of events: you press the button behind the R poster in the game corner so you can sneak into the Rocket hideaway. You beat Giovanni to get the Silph Scope. You need to Scope to uncover the restless spirit guarding the final floor of Lavender Tower. You need to beat that guy - the uncatchable ghost of a dead Marowak, by the way - to meet up with Mr. Fuji at the Tower top. You need to "free" Fuji (three boring Rocket grunt battles) to get the Poke Flute. You need to use the Poke Flute to wake up the Snorlax so you can open up the next couple paths. Whew.

I actually haven't bothered the Snorlax yet, because I have plenty to do otherwise. Celadon is the home of Erika, Gym Leader #4. I think I did the Rocket base and Lavender Town sub-quest out of order, because now I have some pokemon with a level beyond that which I can control.

I have two points to give to Official PlayStation Magazine #86. First, they did an awesome avant garde cover that no one is going to like. Second, the demo disk is one of the best they've ever done. Let's get right to the sequel parade.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Is "Snake Eater" a dopey subtitle? Probably. Was "Pandora Tomorrow" a million times worse? Absolutely.

The playable(!) demo shows off some of MGS3's new features... the jungle environs, the camoflage percentage rating, and the ability to turn local wildlife into little boxes of processed food with your tranq gun. I suspect I'll be spending a lot of time trying to catch every possible animal in the game, because that just screams 100% minigame to me. The underlying point is to stockpile them to eat when your stamina meter runs down. There's even a veg option of eating mushrooms and fruit... but the game is set in the '60s; we probably don't need Snake being labelled any more of a peacenik than he already is, the anti-war hippie.

The first Superman movie was a major milestone in comics' long road towards social legitimacy, a road that remains to be completely travelled. Sure, it's cyclical - ten years prior to "Superman" we had the purposefully terrible Batman TV show, which raised comics' Q at the cost of future credibility - but I don't think anyone would argue against that film being a major tick mark on the door frame measuring height milestones for the comic book industry.

So, Christopher Reeve, I'm sorry to see you go. Somebody in Hollywood said "Let's make a superhero movie that doesn't suck and treats the genre with respect" and Somebody Else said "A fine idea, but who the hell is going to buy some guy in tights and a cape." Mr. Reeve was the answer to that question.

I have read all the ongoing Superman titles for a decade now, and I certainly knew the character well enough even before that. I've been through his entire publishing history, from 1938 onward. I've seen hundreds of different artistic takes on him, both in art and in writing. And when I look back at pictures from that movie, I'm still astonished at how well Christopher Reeve looks the part. The squinty eyes, the massive jawline, the perfect hair, the height, the muscular-but-not-too-muscular build. He nails it before he even opens his mouth. And then he gets that right too.

Since the greatest GL of all, Hal Jordan, is retuning to the DCU in upcoming issues of Green Lantern, I took the time to go back and re-read selected bits from the various Hal's fall-from-grace storylines of ten years ago. I was among those against the switch from Hal to Kyle Raynor, although I ended up becoming a fan of Kyle... and anyway the GL mythos prepares you to be a fan of the ring, not particularly who is under the mask.

Then again, the character of Hal Jordan is so powerful in DC lore that he never really went away. After renouncing his GL-ship, he spent a brief time as a hokey supervillain, redeemed himself in a very appropriate fashion, then turned supernatural as the new Spectre. As much as I miss having a guy with white age-streaks in his hair leading the Justice League, I really liked how it all ended. "Final Night" was fitting, and it was just plan cool to recycle the character as the new Spectre. Athough, I would not have use that as an excuse for a new "Spectre" series. I would have preferred keeping him in the shadows with rare guest appearances. Bringing him back as a GL will take the emotional punch out of all that... but that's pretty much how comics work. We have short memories. Even those of us who lived by stringent post-Crisis continuity back in the 80s and 90s are today suckered by a great story, no matter how it relates to what has gone before.

This weekend I purchased what I expect will be my Final Memory Cards for this generation, a GameCube 1019 and a PS2 8mb two-pack (one of which Mike wanted.) I've always been terrible at memory card management. I now have 5 PS2 8 meggers and 6 Nintendo cards of various sizes (1 1019, 2 251s, and 3 59s - one that came with Animal Crossing and one from Pokemon Box.) I can't stand to delete old saves - and I refuse to buy the cheaper third party cards - so the whole thing is ugly expensive by now.

Memory cards are a fading technology, as any Xbox fan will be happy to tell you. (Just don't let them get too smug on you, since no one is telling if Xbox2 will have a hard drive or not.) I like memory cards. I would like them more if they stored more and cost less... that would certainly take the bite out of using them. The price factor is always trumpeted by the pro-HD crowd, and it's a good example of Sony/Nintendo holding you by the balls. You want to save that game, laddie? Then you'll be buying our unique-format cards.

Mark Evanier on his blog over at newsfromme.com has some great links up to some political articles. Actually, lately he always has great links up, but these two are above and beyond good reading. I hope he doesn't mind that I'm duping his links here.

One is a gigantic 10-page NY Times article discussing Bush's reliance on faith when making decisions, which, some people seem to indicate, is bordering on dementia. Including allegedly telling a group of Amish in Lancaster County PA (a mere hour east of where I live) that "I trust God speaks through me." One of the most telling quotes is from Bush media advisor Mark McKinnon where he explains that Bush's appeal to middle America works because he's just as stupid as they are. That's my interpretation of his quote, but I'm not far off in terms of tone and language...

I scammed my way through the Erika fight, playing the odds that my lv30+ guys would deliver one-hit kills so I wouldn't have to worry much about her sleep heavy team. And now that it's over, her Gym's badge has brought everybody back in line, so no more mis-cues in battle.

Somewhere along the line, I received the Fly HM, but I haven't bothered teaching it to anyone yet. Haven't settled on who my big flier is going to be. I've used Pidgeot, Tropius, and Swellow in previous games. Maybe something unusual like that Farfetch'd? Regardless, it's too soon to bother with Fly; there's still a lot of walk/run/biking to do for exploratory purposes.

Caught a Snorlax. I've always been a Snorlax fan, so I'm probably going to put some training time into this one. His attacks aren't that great - half his move list is taken up by the slow-acting combo of Yawn and Snore - but his 150+ HP makes him a huge staller.

Somehow, Toys R Us managed to get GTA: San Andreas on the racks before their Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale ended. The local game stores all had lines out the door for GTA purchases last night; we strolled into TRU tonight and they had plenty on hand. So I am back in the familiar GTA setting well ahead of schedule! And yeah, we took advantage of the sale and picked up Silent Hill 4 and Karaoke Revolution 2.

Last weekend I impulse shopped X-Men: Legends... even though I knew San Andreas was coming, I'm only 2/3 through Sly Cooper 2 and Burnout 3, 4 badges into Pokemon LeafGreen, one level in Pikmin 2, and haven't even booted Paper Mario. I don't know why I do these things. It's a large To Do pile right now. I won't get to the unstarted games until next year... which begs the question as to why I bought them already. Well, I like helping to support Opening Day sales, all right? Without me, those 114,000 sales of Pikmin 2 during the first week of release would have only been 113,999.

Yesterday morning was the annual video game / pinball auction at Timonium Fairgrounds, which has become a Fourhman Family field trip. We show up early, Dad gets a bidder card (just in case) and we all wander around rows and rows of video games and pinball machines. Most are set to free play - if you can plug them in - so it is a crazy mad coin-op buffet. No Mappys to be seen this year. Regular visitors bring their own orange power cables.

Since most of the video games are classics (which are readily available to play these days anyway), I find myself playing more pinballs than anything else. The thing about pinball is that it sucks: there are times when there is simply nothing you can do when a ball heads down the out ramp and is lost. When you're blowing quarters on cosmic chance like that, I hate it. But when the machines are on free play, I'm happily checking out every interesting-looking model. I love the modern electronic versions, with the LCD displays, complicated goals, and prop-centric tracks. Dad is more of a classic pinball fan (he owns an Aztec and a Flip-A-Card.)