November 2008 Archives

Kiss Facepainting Mini Movie! (flickr)
As sort of seen on Cartoon Brew this week. OK, yes, you're great at facepainting. Yes, it's a unique idea. But no, there is nothing fucking special about how you're moving your face.

If you dig this, the guy has a million of them.

VGXPO'sed! - Part One (Tony's Love Show)
Tony with the VGXPO pictorama! He has waaaay more cosplay stuff than I did. And don't miss Part Two, which has a lot of me doing 30-man DDR. Even video! Of me dancing!

Blackadder cast return for Christmas special (Yahoo News)
Nice. I haven't seen Blackadder in years. Does anybody run it these days?

Who Botches The Watchmen? (Murderblog 3D via GameSetWatch)
Very cynical report on the upcoming Watchmen video game, with some hilarious parody screens in the middle... like Rorschach playing Brain Age.

This week in Animal Crossing... a visit from Wendell, a look at how I'm molding the town, and of course the pro-veg cruelty-free Harvest Festival.

You know who still sucks? Wendell. Wild World pretty much ruined this guy. Time was, you'd give him food and he'd give you a rare wallpaper. In the DS version, he was reduced to a pattern delivery service, no more actual items. And just like in the portable, low-memory, card media version of Animal Crossing, you're limited to owning eight patterns at any one time (with plenty of out-of-pocket storage, thankfully) and of course Wendell has fifty or sixty designs to dole out. Want to use Wendell's patterns to lay down a fun road throughout your town? Then that's all you're doing, because the road designs will fill up your pattern slots.

"Where do [I] want it?", indeed.

Katrina sucks too.

I've already fallen back to seven year old gags... I'm teaching everyone in town to say Mitchell!

That pig has great taste in clothes.

Zydeco? Chuffed? What is up with this game. Greatest English localization ever.

Bit of a twist to the Crazy Redd formula... you now need to score an invitation from one of your villagers before you can enter Redd's shop. Once you get that, then Redd gives you one sheet of his special paper so you can invite someone else. Pretty cool. I like how Redd (and even Katrina) are now constant citydwellers, rather than having to wait for them to randomly appear in town.

Son of a bitch still sold me a forged painting though.

The point of the Harvest Festival is to steal the silverware and give it to Franklin the turkey so he does not get eaten. Then he gives you a random piece of (ugly) Harvest furniture. As long as you ditch the gift back at your pad, you can keep doing this all night.

I played the Festival for over two hours, trying to collect the entire Harvest Series. Didn't happen. I'm still missing the Sofa, Bed and something else. I have plenty of dupes of other items so maybe I can trade for the rest of the set.

Good ol' Franklin! Spreading the vegetarian holiday message through Wiis everywhere.

Clark loves when his Mii makes silly faces like that.

Here's a look at our houses. I have a lot of Mush furniture simply because it will end up being sort of rare, but as soon as mushroom season is over it's all going back into storage because it is hideous. Note the snowy weather forecast on the TV; I will be very interested to see if that image changes throughout the year.

Clark's house has a toilet, a fan, and a jackhammer. Connect those dots however you like.

And now some pictures from last weekend's VGXPO. Some of these are the exact same photos I just posted to Aeropause but whatever. Tony should have a collection of sweet cosplay photos from VGXPO, because that guy would get in anyone's face for a picture. I'll point you there once he compiles that, or when he publishes the apology for never posting them.

Here's that DDR setup I mentioned earlier. It just about killed me, but it was fun. I did a six minute playlist alongside Tony, Josh, and a bunch of other people, and got third place. Then, due to extreme body overheating, we bailed out. But the thought occurred: when am I going to get to do this again? So I jumped back in, this time for a ten minute playlist (because the emcee wanted to go to the bathroom). He even set it to tornado, the jerk, which makes the arrows float around stupid before they land on the beat. But I managed to get second place and not die. Josh and Tony spent the ten minutes snapping photos and video of the whole thing. Josh got this one:

Yeah, sure he was taking pics of me.

I thought this was pretty emblematic of a gaming convention:

Two laptops and Chunky Chips Ahoy!

I'm at the point now where I don't even see these guys anymore. They're at Origins. They're at Wizard World. They're at my local comic store. They could be putting together a salad at Weis Markets and I wouldn't even notice.

OK, obviously I would like to see the DC half of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, but it's just not worth $60 to me when I already have Soulcalibur IV. I wonder if you can turn the blood off to make it a little more kid-appropriate. Like I told the guys at the show, if Clark saw this game, he would immediately label the entire Mortal Kombat cast as the "bad guys."

Speaking of DC...

How incredible. I found a guy with the foresight and intelligence to cosplay as Mr. Terrific. And a right bangin' job too. I shook this gentleman's hand, hardcore.

As I look at nearly-naked Samus and very-naked Sora and Roxas, I'm reminded of an old Charles Schulz anecdote. He was watching his young son play with a giant Snoopy stuffed animal and remarked on how marvelous - and humbling - it was to see his creation, his mind's work, set free to be acted upon by forces outside of Schulz's own pen. The gist being that Snoopy now had a life beyond the restraints of the comic strip.

Ah, anime fans.

After the show, we chowed down at a very crowded Reading Terminal Market, then Tony took us on a tour of his new job in downtown Philly... which was super swank, the bum. Like most people who used to work in my office, he now has windows.

See you next year, guys?

Numba 59 is live and again it is just me and Mssr Haygood. I even managed to drop the f-bomb thirty seconds in! Stephen will bleep it out, but the uncensored phrase in question is "I'll tell you what I don't want to talk about, fucking PETA."

I talk smack about Home, which apparently you're not supposed to talk about since being in the beta carries along your tacit agreement to a non-disclosure agreement. Which is probably bunk, in all likelihood. I mean, Home has been in beta for like a year and a half and I think fully 80% of all PS3 owners have now made it inside the beta through one means or another. For me, my beta invite arrived last Friday as Sony closed down the increasingly irrelevant PlayStation Underground. I guess the Home beta was intended as a final thank you for years of Underground membership - which was originally a pay service I think, but became just a fan club sometime during the PS2 era.

Anyway, the Underground is being folded into the more popular and accessible PlayStation.com account system, so at some point I need to work my way through that. But Home? Yeah, I checked it out on Friday. It's dopey. I know that game launching and the micropayment store and other features are not in there at the moment, but it's still fairly purposeless and entirely lacking in personality. Sony has had years to work on this - as a concept it should have launched when the PS3 itself did - and this is all it is?

I've said this before, but Sony knows Home sucks. And they have no idea how to fix it. Haygood calls it a knockoff on Second Life, but it isn't even that interesting. At least in Second Life I could revert back to my old MUSHing days and actually create rooms and items and such. Second Life is a creation tool. Home is a chatroom. I have also gone on record as saying that we'll never get Home, that Sony will quietly shelve the whole bloody thing and work on it for the PS4. I'll be wrong on that one; Sony will eventually open it up and take the inevitable black eye over it being weird, pointless and full of unwanted pay DLC.

Home needs some purpose. It needs some unique features. Maybe the game launching will offer that. But as Joe Haygood says in the podcast, most of Home's supposed cool features have already been extracted from Home and brought into the PS3 OS... trophies, various XMB features, you can already do video chat straight from the buddy menu.

This podcast was recorded about an hour after I got home from the Video Game Expo in Philadelphia, so I was pretty exhausted. We did a lot of walking, both in the con and out of it, not to mention the Massively Multiplayer Dance Dance Revolution that I played. More about that later.

I got about three minutes into my rundown of VGXPO and Haygood interrupted with a "You're not impressing me." He's right; it's no E3. The big three were not around. Almost no developers at all. The boneheads from America's Army were there, and they had a line around the block simply because there was nothing else to stand in line for.

We saw plenty of Rock Band and Guitar Hero setups, as vendors unrelated to either property leveraged interest in their actual wares by letting people rock. Lots of places that sold gaming furniture, which was odd. Also two booths letting people play Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, I suppose because that was the highest-profile new release this week. There was an unlabeled GameStop booth that was regularly handing out random preorder items. We raided those punks, to the point where I felt terrible grabbing things. That was how I got four access codes to the God of War DLC bonus pack for LittleBigPlanet, by the way.

The main exhibit hall was small. Far smaller than Origins or Wizard World Philly, my two go-to conventions. For me, a measure of exhibit hall success is how many stands are selling old Star Wars figures. Not that I want to buy any, it's just usually a good indicator of how deep the vendor selection is. VGXPO had exactly one such toyselling booth.

Outside the exhibit hall, there were two other rooms in the toy game, and VGXPO has the unbelievably arrogant chutzpah to claim these other rooms are somehow "separate" concurrent conventions... Retro Con and Anime Con. Yeah, right. Believe me, cruising a smallish room selling classic gaming paraphrenalia and another smallish room selling imported toys and artwork was a highlight... but they're not separate conventions. Come on. Just throw those vendors into the exhibit hall, which would give them more space and make the main hall look bigger. Weird decisions all around.

Some nice cosplay was in effect... we spotted the Ice Climbers before we even got out of the pre-reg line. Plenty of Marios. One Luigi. The usual Star Wars guys. Big guy with Majora's Mask. Cute teens dressed as their favorite Kingdom Hearts characters. Do the Suicide Girls count? Tony posed with nearly every one of these. I'll link out to his photo gallery as soon as he preps his family for the debauchery.

One guy showed up as Mr. Terrific, which was crazy awesome. I had to congratulate him on a fine cosplay choice, where usually my policy is not to talk to these people. Great job, sir.

But all in all, Josh, Tony and I were pretty much done with the thing after an hour and a half. There just wasn't much to see or do. Any complaints are sort of negated by the paltry admission price of $15 or less, so I can't be too upset. Still, even $15 is a little much. We couldn't believe that there were hour+ lines of people waiting to get in as far as 3pm in the afternoon. I guess if you're more into tournaments and PC games, you'd be more into it. Hell, gaming supergod David Jaffe was scheduled to do a live video chat, and the expo cancelled the talk without even telling him about it... so that should give you some idea how this joint operates. Shame. I would have liked to attend his talk and kick over his laptop.

And about the DDR. We're walking blindly through the convention hall trying to find more things to do, because the show did a really awful job of letting you know where everything was. One of the siderooms sounded like a techno jamfest, so we peeked inside and saw Dance Dance Revolution Heaven. Thirty wireless sturdy dance pads, al synced to a special multiplayer DDR system. An emcee was picking playlists and the whole room was rocking in unison.

Best of all, it was totally free. Anybody could wander in and grab a pad. The three of us did a six minute set (about four songs) and among the untrained masses I landed third place. Then I jumped in to a ten minute set and stomped my way to second place. Clearly, the thirty or so competitors were not professional DDR players, if I could hop in cold and dance to second, but it still felt pretty good. Josh and Tony snapped all manner of silly photos and video of me dancing, like this intense action shot:

So I guess if you're somewhere near Philly when this event happens to be going on, it's worth a few hours for some freebies and quasi-interesting video gamery. But it's probably going to have to shut down once Penny Arcade Expo East Coast launches.

My free Rock Band 2 tracks were almost lost in the mail.

People started talking about the invitation emails for the 20 free RB2 songs around early November. I didn't see any such email so I figured I was just getting mine late on the staggered rollout. And then I totally forgot about it until this week... I checked my junk mail folder and found that the RB2 mail had been grabbed by the Yahoo Mail spam filter.

Moral of the story: check your spam box.

The GameStop God of War bonus pack for LittleBigPlanet is hot.

I came into some codes for the God of War pack this weekend (more on that later!) and that was one slick preorder bonus. Whereas the Best Buy preorder only netted you the Nariko costume elements, the GameStop GOW pack gets you three costumes (as widely reported) and at least ten exclusive stickers (which was not). I actually lost count of the new stickers as I was trying to locate them in my Popit.

What is up with the commercials for that new Australia movie using Pirates of the Caribbean music?

I hate when movies do that. Who do they think they're fooling?

You just can't bring up PETA in polite conversation.

I stupidly got into an internet squabble when Aeropause posted an article about some dopey flash game, Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals. Predictably, people showed up solely to bash PETA in the talkback thread.

I suppose there are cigarette aficionado forums where people tear apart those Truth ads too.

Annie has gained two pounds in the last year.

Annie has long been our problem cat, because she lets herself get stressed out. At last year's vet appointment, she was at an all-time low of 7 pounds... and had been trending downward. On previous checkups, we had done all kinds of bloodwork and tests and nothing ever showed anything. So last year we opted out of the expensive exploratory examinations, and in the twelve months since she has bounced back to an almost-overweight 9 pounds.

She's delicate, and she had three Bad Years. First, Cat #2 showed up, then Clark showed up, and then we moved. Now that she has had time to settle in to our new place, she seems to have finally gotten adjusted.

Clark has a Friend Code.

The Friend Code madness continues. Each player in Animal Crossing: City Folk has to have their own Friend Code. Which, in this case, I guess makes sense since it would stop Clark from meeting up with my degenerate, tree-cutting Friends for voice chat. Still, other consoles handle this in far more elegant ways.

I dug the new Star Trek trailer.

Star Trek has been dead and buried for so long that it feels weird to be seeing it as a potentially vibrant property again. I don't mind the WB-ification of the characters at all, nor do I give a shit about how it fits in with the granularity of pre-established Trek continuity. I just sort of already like what I see.

Official Sony PS3 Home Video Trailer (YouTube)
In celebration of me getting into the PlayStation Home beta, here's an extremely old trailer. This is the one where the voice over says Home is "infinitely more exciting than anything on the other consoles" at the two minute mark.

I just exited the beta and she's wrong.

THOUGHTS ON THE CURRENT HEROCLIX SITUATION... (Comics Should Be Good)
Interesting discussion thread about the death of WizKids and what this means for the HeroClix line. Most people seem to either have never played but collected anyway, or never played because the rules were too dense.

And there's already a saveheroclix.com! Where's the Save Pirates dot com?

If Disney is Mickey Mouse... is Pixar Silly Symphonies? (Cartoon Brew)
Ooooh... a brilliant take on how Disney and Pixar can creatively co-exist. The modern Disney Animation Studios division performs the same role as Walt's classic Mickey Mouse brand (think comic crowdpleasing in the 1930s and 40s), while Pixar fulfills the Silly Symphony role (groundbreaking tech, all new characters).

Guitar Hero World Tour Not Selling Like Guitar Hero III Did (Kotaku)
Finally, sales numbers! The first week of sales for World Tour is less than half of the sales of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. And this includes the disk-only version, so you can't lay this entirely at the feet of the expensive bundle.

And if my estimations are correct, it's about on par with Rock Band 2's sales to date, which is no mean achievement for Rock Band given the sales of GHIII and the unfair brand name power of the Guitar Hero name.

'The Interactive Palette' - Grim Fandango and Diegesis (GameSetWatch)
Good read about, well, Grim Fandango and diegesis. Diegesis is where it's at, baby.

A basic rule of thumb around here is that if your game has a way to save out screenshots, I'm going to post them. So in lieu of retreading the same old weblog ground with Animal Crossing, I'm going to just run my shots and nonsensically chat around them.

I think I'm sticking with the Mii head for now. My AC character has a really lousy haircut and the Mii mask hides that. Haircuts at Shampoodle are expensive and the Q&A that leads to your selected color and style is a miserable guessing game. So, Mii. Although Mii heads can't wear hats or accessories, which is insanely stupid.

Notice my town has pears. Same fruit I had in the original Animal Crossing. I need Friends to bring me fruit. Should I re-establish Open Gate Night?

This game cracks me up. Look at that junk about elastic bands!

If you can't PhotoShop some obscene text into that Yahoo! box text window, you're not really trying.

Check out the Li'l Dred t-shirt. Of course that's the first thing I do with my bells, design shirts. That and buy a Bubble Wand.

Or go to get some emotes at Dr. Shrunk's show. Just like in Wild World, you're limited to keeping four emotes (WTF). I got Disbelief, and there's Mii trying it out. At least the emotes work on Miis. It would have been so Nintendo to have the Mii masks remain emotionless. Somebody had to work a weekend to make this happen.

This, however, is THE SHIRT. This is what I look like all the time. To make that Hawaiian Ghost shirt, I started with the game's premade flower shirt, made it look like it was unbuttoned, and then added a scared blue Pac-Man ghost.

Oh, and Clark is playing too. He really likes the Bubble Wand.

They say the craziest crap in this game. Fully 80% of the development time must have went to typing up bizarre random dialogue bits.

And there's me checking on sleeping Clark! So real life.

Because we have to put up with crap like this:

Nice. So even though we respectfully asked to not be contacted for further donations and fund raising, we get a letter telling us that we will receive such materials going forward anyway unless we tell them again not to contact us.

Look, I get how fund raising and begging and "development" works. But at least do us the courtesy of making the default choice "I wish to continue my policy of not being contacted." If I've changed my mind about donating money to a fucking college while the entire world economy goes into a tailspin, I guarantee my Alma Mater will be the first to know.

We tabled a prescheduled topic again this week, because Joe Haygood had plenty to discuss about the New Xbox Experience... or if we want to name it like a "Friends" episode, The One About All The Xbots Suddenly Being Forced To Make Miis, Something They All Spent Two Years Making Fun Of. Aeropodcast #58 is now available, and as it's just me and Haygood, you can bet that, this week, I have much more to say than last week's five-banger.

I was initially very critical of the new interface, since it borrows heavily from Apple, a little from Sony, and steals the Mii thing wholesale from Nintendo. It was a good thing that Microsoft released those first screens so early, because by now everybody got those complaints out of their systems and just focused on the usability of the new UI. Sounds like it is an improvement over the blade system, although the rollout has been bumpy. As a whole, it was something that 360 owners really were not asking for, but at least it has ended up a good thing.

The Netflix connection remains, for me, the single biggest feature. The avatar thing... come on. We all know that it's Cute on a system that has NEVER accepted Cute, and it's a blatant attempt to steal a feature point from the All-Crushing Wii.

However, the interface for creating avatars is very nice. Surprisingly nice. And since Microsoft is not known for coming up with good, clean interfaces, it should surprise no one to learn that Rare came up with that system. That's probably the best-received project the Rare team has done in ten years.

Netflix, though, that could be huge. Although not 100% of the existing Netflix content is available - it lacks HD product, from what I hear - and Sony just ensured that all of their Columbia Pictures shows and movies will not appear on the 360 Netflix queue. Which, I guess, would include stuff like the Spider-Man series (progenitor of the PS3 font!) I have to giggle at that one. Why should Sony allow their property to be used to leverage 360 sales? No fucking reason in the world. You can't sit at a shareholders' meeting and face that question down.

Anyway, we also talked a bit about games that have made us cry. Guess what I namedrop there.

And a community question asked what unannounced sequel we would most like to see, and I went for the jugular with Pokemon Snap.

I also announce that I'm going to the Video Game Expo in Philly this weekend. Which starts out pretty funny because Haygood thought I meant Video Games Live, the concert performance of gaming music. I will probably wish he was right. I'm going with Josh and Tony though, so we'll make fun of/out of anything.

Let's finish up the intense semifinals action and determine which cheapass games advance to the mysterious finals! But first, a recap of the standings thus far:

Zack & Wiki: Trial and Error Rabbit Adventure (Wii): 6 (measured in points)
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (Wii): 2
No More Heroes (Wii): 7
Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (Wii): 5
The Orange Box (PS3): 3
Slide Adventure Mag Kid (DS): 5
Pain (PS3): 2

Now follows the final trio (of six) categorical comparisons, with a potential three point maximum in each contest (although an effort will be made to limit the awards to a single 3 and a single 0, to name the best and worst in each comparison bout). Out of these seven, the top three will compete for the title of Best Cheapest Game 2007-2008, which will give the winning game the all-important VETO power when judging the 2008-2009 edition.

AURAL SATISFACTION: Best Music/Soundtrack/Audio

There's not a lot of standout work here, save one: "Still Alive" from Portal. That song is so good that I'm giving Orange Box the coveted 3 and no one gets a 2 because nothing even compares to how awesome that song is.

1s all around to No More Heroes and Big Brain for using the Wii Remote speaker, an additional 1 to Pain for bothering to come up with a custom theme song (which is a sucky metal tune, but I still find myself humming it), and fat goose eggs to all else.

A FACE TO A GAME: Best Cast

With the exception of Pain, it's been a while since I've played any of these games. So this category is really a measure of how well I remember the characters and storyline.

No More Heroes is super ultra sexy packed with cool people. Harvey Birdman has the benefit of hilariously leveraging the Hanna-Barbara library of forgotten characters. Portal has GLaDOS. Zack & Wiki has a unique cast, mainly lots of rabbits. Mag Kid has a bunch of refrigerator magnets. BBA has Miis.

Pain has... well, unfortunately nothing. Again, I can't judge Pain on what it became (cheesy sexy girls, the Buzz guy, and David Hasselhoff); I have to stick with what it was when it was cheap.

THAT'S WHY I OWN MULTIPLE CONTROLLERS: Best Multiplayer

There's no multiplayer at all in Harvey Birdman, No More Heroes, or Portal (although obviously Orange Box includes Team Fortress 2, which I have never bothered to play). Mag Kid might have multi; who can tell. Zack & Wiki has a weird multiplayer mode that is actually stupider than advertised: P2 can draw on the screen to point out stuff to P1. So there's your 1s, but Z&W gets knocked down to zero for being dumb.

Big Brain Academy provides reasonable multiplayer laffs, but it pales in comparison to Pain. Even though most Pain multiplayer is of the pass-the-controller variety, it's still fun to watch... and Pain Bowling is more fun than you'd expect (although a full ten frames is a bit much to ask).

Oh what the hell, let's give Orange Box a 2 since Team Fortress 2 is probably OK.

Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree 6

Pain 6

Slide Adventure: Mag Kid 7

Zack & Wiki's Awesome Waggly Pirate Quest 7

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law 8

The Orange Box 10

No More Heroes 12

Unbelievable! Orange Box comes from a ridiculous fifth place to a second place finish! And former second placer Zack & Wiki falters back into fourth! I hope my math is right, because Orange Box now joins Harvey Birdman and No More Heroes in Your Final Three!

Next time: it happens! The winner is crowned via a methodology you won't expect!

Yes to the bundle.

Jeez, what stupid thing to make stressful. GameStop was in fact one of the "select retailers" getting the City Folk/Wii Speak bundle, so I shifted my $5 preorder to the bundle and I think I'm done buying games for the year.

They even conned me into getting the strategy guide (%10 off with purchase of game!), although I haven't yet ripped open the protective plastic wrap. It's not that I want the guide to spoil things, I just like it as a longtime Animal Crossing collector.

I haven't decided if I'm going to make any big deal about City Folk in the weblog fashion I did for the original and the DS sequel. I have this sinking feeling that City Folk will not have enough new content to warrant talking about it to such length.

Although I did already toss together a first impressions post for Aeropause.

Or course there's no squid.

Come on, fanboys. Did you really think that the squid thing was going to make it into the Watchmen movie? That's the first bit I'd cut, for damn sure. Unless I was making a thirteen week HBO series, then absolutely I'd leave it in.

The new trailer is also hot. Gives me fucking chills. Finally, Dan Drieberg out of costume! I hope Doc Manhatten's voice gets some kind of imposing effect on it. He sounds too normal.

And I love the notion that eventually we'll get a Director's Cut with spliced in animated Black Freighter sequences.

When did Cartoon Network start runnng the Clerks animated series?

Man, am I paying attention at all?

On a related note, Clark and I need to remember to watch CN on Friday nights for new episodes of Ben 10 Alien Force, Clone Wars, and Batman Brave and the Bold.

New Kingdom Hearts TCG expansion out.

And it's full of Winnie-the-Pooh characters! Damn I love this property. I only picked up two packs and I got lucky with a super-rare Dark Riku player card... who fields Heartless cards as Friends.

I wonder if this game will last at retail long enough to go through all the dozen or so expansions that have already been released in Japan. I bet not.

Clark won a free Star stuffed animal.

Rhonda noticed Sprout had a Halloween picture contest where the first X entries automatically won a stuffed animal of late night puppet co-host Star. So she scrambled an entry together and got in under the deadline. We never did see how they used Clark's picture, but now we have a Star toy. And Star is kinda fugly. So, win?

Checking out of Harry Potter.

OK, we're officially out of Harry Potter ANYTHING until the inevitable blu-ray boxed set of all the movies. Hopefully by then they'll have figured out how to cram multiple movies on one disk. Or maybe by then it will all be download-only anyway. Either way, we're not seeing any more movies (particularly a two part #7, come the fuck on) until then. And no, I don't want any damn Tales of Beetle the Bard book.

Really? No Trophies at all?

I knew that the GTAIV Trophy patch would have Trophies you can only get by starting a new game, but I guessed I could still get some of the them. Nope! You can't accrue a single Trophy on a pre-patch save. I have no idea how far I am in the storyline (I just met Cogostino), so I am loathe to start over. Maybe in some future downtime, after finishing off this save, I'll kick off a new game.

I haven't written any substantial comics posts in a while, but the last two weeks were so good that I've gotta do it.

DC's Secret Six is now at #3 and it is so good. Gail Simone is just a top writer, and giving her a sandbox of tertiary characters lets her skills shine. In three issues she has introduced an intriguing new villain and a major new artifact to the DCU.

And Nicola Scott's artwork is absolutely perfect. Her pencils are realistic in proportion and presentation, finely detailed, and full of animation and expression. I like super-stylized stuff (like, say, Pat Gleason on Green Lantern Corps), but a gimmicky style is also usually used to disguise weaknesses in the forms... there is none of that here. Her stuff is real. It is a pleasure to pick up a book that both looks and reads this well (Yes, I know that the inker and colorist have a lot to do with this too!)

But I think DC needs to figure out what's up with Cheetah's costume. If her skin is colored like a cheetah's, does this mean I'm looking at her naked ass here?

Jonah Hex #37 features the rare instance of Hex having sex; I guess Palmiotti and Gray decided to give the poor guy a break! It's also a return issue for artist Jordi Bernet, whom I've lauded before. It's like John Severin meets Bruce Timm in as European comic strip... that's how his style reads to me.

Huge revelation in JSA #20: Starman's costume is actually a map of the Multiverse. Why wasn't this book given the "Sightings" tag? Plus there's a nice splash page with an Idiot's Guide to Crisis on Infinite Earths / Infinite Crisis. It's been so great to follow this book, as Geoff Johns has been playing chess with these characters since issue one. I'm sure I've mentioned this before as well, but having Dale Eaglesham do the art for the New Earth sequences and then switch to Jerry Ordway's classic lines for the Earth-2 bits is brilliant.

And Mr. Terrific. Again and again you prove to be one of my favorites. I am deeply ashamed that I didn't follow you into Checkmate.

And tying all of this into Kingdom Come? But without bastardizing or selling out the Kingdom Come original? So well done.

Speaking of that, it was nice to see Alex Ross again return to Kingdom Come in the JSA tie-in Kingdom Come Special: Superman. Although a little Alex Ross goes a long way. Yes, he is incredibly talented, but the more of his art that you see, you more you realize that he relies on the same poses and expressions.

Still, it was great to get some additional in-canon material for the Kingdom Come characters (which, really, is over a decade old now). The meeting between "our" Lois Lane and the Kingdom Come Superman was beautiful.

I really enjoyed Marvel Apes, and I am on board for any future Apes projects. (Especially if Marvel allows the cute cliffhanger ending of issue four to be played out!) Here's hoping that Marvel doesn't waste this world in some ill-conceived Apes vs. Zombies garbage. And that it doesn't follow the Marvel Zombies arc of going from really good to really shitty inside of two miniseries.

Does anybody not see the Guardians heading for a HUGE fall soon? In Green Lantern Corps #30, not only does that messed-up scarface Guardian try to intimidate the Zamarons into bowing out of the Lantern arms race (Really? She thought that would work?), and secretly instruct Yat to destroy the entire Zamaron planet should she give the signal, but then she outlaws love in the Corps. Just as several groups of married and involved Lanterns have been chasing that monster Kryb across the cosmos. Asshat.

At least we now know what happened to Fatality and that crazy ghost dog lady from Sinestro Corps. Pink uniforms all around! And let's drop the silly "Fatality" codename while we're at it.

DC, I'm ready for a third Lantern book. Although it's been a while since John and Guy had their own books, I'm thinking more along the lines of a full-on alien series... focusing on the non-human members of the Corps. Like a new Tales of the GLC, or GLC Quarterly, to name-drop titles from once upon a time. Heck, drop the "Green" from the title so we can get stories about Lanterns of every color.

Booster Gold #14, still one of the most fun books on the racks. I fear for the day that somebody decides Booster needs to be a serious book and they kill the mojo. "Thank you, magic hand!"

Was it a good idea to do Trinity right alongside Final Crisis? Because I regularly get confused, between the two of those and the JSA Kingdom Come storyline. All three are sort of covering similar ground, with plenty of alternate universes and timelines. The last few issues of Trinity have been really good, as we see what the DCU could be like without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. It's been a great payoff to the first fifteen issues being mainly about mysterious strangers pickpocketing the three of them. I have got to sit down and re-read this in one sitting, because it is better than 52 and way better than Countdown.

There was more of my man Mr. Terrific in Final Crisis: Resist. Once again, it's great to see DC let a smart guy just be a smart guy. I hope his decisions here in Resist become an important point back in the core Final Crisis series.

I also liked casting Justin Long as Snapper Carr.

Carrying out the weaker end of two week's serialized entertainment are Titans #7 and Batman: Cacophony #1. I'm in Titans because I like Wally, I like Nightwing, and I like the made-by-marketing idea of melding the original Teen Titans lineup with the animated Teen Titans lineup. But there's a lot of Titans backstory I'm not getting, even though I did do a few years of New Titans and Young Justice not that long ago. I will say that I greatly prefer Julian Lopez's art to whoever did the first few issues of this series.

Cacophony is the big new miniseries written by Kevin Smith... so I expect to enjoy the words, but not so much the art, which is by Smith pal Walt Flanagan. Walt needs some anatomy lessons pronto. I'm assuming he and Smith worked on the layouts together, and there is some nice work there (like when Joker peeks over his copy of "The Fountainhead," which they managed to do without resorting to the modern comic artist's crutch of photocopying panels! Although there is a lousy copy job near the end.), but most of the book looks like awkward fan art. Looks like the guy could develop a definite style, he just needs the proper training.

I don't know whether to applaud DC for not blowing out Kevin Smith's name on the cover, or chastise them for not blowing out Kevin Smith's name on the cover. I mean, you have to get really close to find that the guy wrote this book; casual fans are going to completely miss it. It also doesn't help that the cover (NOT by Walt Flanagan, but instead a generic Adam Kubert piece) is all red and black and therefore almost invisible on the shelves.

Animal Crossing: City Folk Commercial 2 (YouTube)
My sister IMs me this: "Have you seen the commercial for Animal Crossing with the two women? I don't think it's helping the cause."

fuck the south.com (via John Gruber)
ABSOLUTE MUST READ. ABSOLUTE MUST READ. Clearly full of Bush II 2004-era hate, but still an ABSOLUTE MUST READ.

WTF IS UP WITH DISNEY PRINCES?! (Nico Colaleo)
Nico with some great riffs on the forgotten heroes of Disneydom, the Disney Princes.

How to tell if your cat is trying to kill you. (thanks Anna!)
True enough!

Criterion Announces Burnout Paradise Toy Cars Pack (PlayStation.Blog)
Last week they announced a Legendary Cars DLC pack for Burnout Paradise featuring a vehicle that suspiciously resembles a certain time-travelling Delorean. Now they're showing off a second pack with cars that look like giant Penny Racers. Those guys are completely crazy. Burnout Paradise 4 Life.

Ancient Greeks pre-empted Dead Parrot sketch (Yahoo News)
The Python connection here is tenuous at best; the real story is that somebody found a 4th century joke book, compiled by the ancient Greeks. I'm sure the jokes have lost some of their luster over seventeen centuries, but most of the material reminded me of those dopey old Dixie cups that had jokes printed on them.

How can the company that invented two affordable and amazing innovations in tabletop gaming - the Clix system with Mage Knight in 2000 and the tiny styrene model system with Pirates of the Spanish Main in 2004 - be unceremoniously shuttered in a four paragraph press release? Was there no way to save this company?

Boy, I remember when WizKids was just a scrappy indie game company who happened to show up with a good idea and reaped some serious success... and now they're gone. Although looking over their sum total of product lines, they did kinda have some stinkers in there.

Guess I won't have to worry about future Pirates releases. Just another game that I don't stop buying; it stops selling.

Aeropodcast #57 is up and ready for your iTunes, although I personally did not have much to say during it. We had a full house of four staff members and guest Julian Murdoch of gamerswithjobs.com... and five guys is really quite a lot for a podcast. I think three is the magic number, or four if you have a guest and/or a host who emcees more than participates.

And even though we killed the topic and community sections, we still ended up with a monstercast of two hours! I prefer not to think about poor Stephen Munn, who did not participate in the extravaganza but still edited together five audio tracks with at least three mid-show disconnects. Oy.

As to why I had little to say, the main games of conversation were junk I have nothing on... Gears of War 2, Fable II, I can't even recall the other games they talked about because I kinda zoned out here and there. I'm not a good team member, I know. I got some good jabs in there when I could, because I was paying attention some of the time.

About the only item I had an opinion on was Mirror's Edge, and Julian covered just about all of my points. I try to assemble pre-show notes of stuff I intend to say, once I know what the various topics are, and Julian unwittingly nailed everything I had written down about Mirror's Edge. But I'll recap it here.

The style looks great - like No More Heroes if No More Heroes was in HD. No More Heroes would probably come off better (to my taste) than Mirror's Edge, because the Mirror's Edge cityscapes are very austere and clean, while No More Heroes' Santa Destroy would be filled with ridiculous signs, props and storefronts. Although I rather think the pure white look is the point of Mirror's Edge, being all about a ragtag group of renegade delivery people fighting against the stark authoritarian regime.

That said, there is no way in hell I'm playing this game.

If the demo is any indication of the full game, this is one of those masochistic titles where you have to be spit perfect every time, and I just do not enjoy that. Joe Haygood has been likening it to Mega Man 9 in terms of difficulty and required perseverance, and while I'm sure that's great for some, that is not how I want to spend my time. I did not like the first Oddworld game because you have to be so perfect at every step, I did not like the nastier endgame parts of Mario Galaxy for the same reason, and I'm lumping Mirror's Edge in with that.

There's also this whole thing with momentum, something else I'm not good at. I like to stop and plan every move, and for some of Faith's leaps and stunts, you need to use your forward momentum to pull it off.

It's like in the classic Mario stuff. One time Mike and I were playing Mario 3 (on GameCube via the Game Boy Player) and he would just go. He'd jump, sprint, jump some more, correct his jump in mid-air... he'd never stop. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there watching him and I can't even breathe, because I can't imagine playing the game at that speed.

So I'm clearly not in the target audience for Mirror's Edge. I think the game has a tough road ahead. First, there's already those who expect Mirror's Edge, being a first-person game, to run like every other shitty first-person shooter. It does not. So there's disappointment to come there. Then there's the group (like me) who get that it's not a run-and-gun shooter but will not touch the game because it is too punishing and does not leave room to improvise and explore.

You're left with a very niche crowd, at a time of year when nobody has the time and money to play everything they want to play.

BUT... I would totally watch somebody else play this game, because I think it looks dynamite and has a strong visual aesthetic. So if the game comes along with somebody to play it for me, then I'll buy it.

Moving back into Adamsvil next week.

Or will Animal Crossing: City Folk allow city names with more than eight characters? Now that would be some next-gen programming!

But seriously folks. A new Animal Crossing next week means a whole new adventure for yours truly. My fingers are irrevocably crossed that City Folk will be more than a sideways port with minimal enhancements.

And why does GameStop not yet have the game/Wii Speak bundle in their preorder system? Hey, you know what I want? Both Animal Crossing: City Folk and the Wii Speak microphone. You know what else I want? A $10 discount for buying both in the same package (Some rumors say the bundle is $20 cheaper!) Jesus.

Hallelujah. New Pirates content.

I think WizKid's long-lived Pirates of the Cursed Sea (four years!) constructible strategy game has entered the For Existing Fans Only phase of its life. Which unfortunately means imminent death cannot be far behind. The newest release - Savage Shores - is showing up not in $4 boosters but in $15 boxed sets. The boxes contain the equivalent of 5 boosters, plus a mega-ship... so the value is better, although a $15 box is a lot less likely to be impulse-shopped than a $4 booster.

There are six boxes, each with a different pre-assembled mega-ship... and each contains one third of the cards needed to build one of two ten-mast huge-ass ships. I need to find out what boxes I need to buy so I can complete one of the ten-masters. And that will likely be the end of my Savage Shores purchases.

Hurm. I actually like this pricing/compiling scheme a lot better.

Got my Dragonite.

Toys R Us had another exclusive character download this past weekend, a level 50 Dragonite. Totally meh. But I haven't missed any of these free grabs yet and I'm not bloody likely to.

Do you want to hear how my Toys R Us screwed this up? It's a minor mistake but very, very important. The big sign explaining about the download and how to get it was NOT in the video games RZone but instead at the store's entrance. Every single parent/kid looking for the promised "free pokemon" marched straight past the sign and to the RZone, where they then stood confused and frustrated. Many thought they had to get in line to get the "free pokemon," which bogged down the doorbusters sale and tied up the employees. I helped who I could and then got out of there.

It's going to be a Speed Racer Christmas.

Clark is going to net so much Speed Racer stuff for Christmas. It's so much that we're concerned for what will happen should Clark put Speed Racer on the downslide sometime over the next two months. So we're making sure there's some Batman and Ben 10 and other stuff mixed in.

He's only three, and daycare doesn't carry the same peer pressure cycles as elementary and middle school, so I highly doubt that Speed Racer will become uncool by December 25th. Still, this is what good parents care about.

The one thing that he wants above all else is that Speed Racer helmet that talks and makes noises when you move your head.

Should we end up hosting a New Year's party, I'm going to have to buy a fourth Dual Shock.

For LittleBigPlanet, obviously.

Also maybe a fourth Wii Remote for Tetris Party.

Great idea from the Star Wars Pocketmodel game.

Just like my beloved, barely played Pirates, the Star Wars constructible strategy game has packs of little ships to assemble and play. This weekend I saw the Star Wars MEGA ship sets for the first time. I think they're actually built to scale with the established tiny X-Wings and TIEs and etc that you get in the normal boosters! The Star Destroyer I saw was as big as a regular 8.5x11 sheet of paper! Awesome! Totally makes me want to get into this game too.

Shake Your Betty (YouTube)
Two minutes of Wilma and Betty shakin' it. Fantastic user comment: "i've tried wanking off to this, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything for me."

How sometimes being in the wrong place is the right thing to do (Jim Hill Media)
Everything that I consider awesome is in this anecdote: Steve Martin, Jim Henson, Disneyland and the Blues Brothers.

Historic election stirs homeless to vote (Reuters)
Great photo with this article of a 43-year-old near-homeless man who voted for the first time.

No We Didn't (Ted Rall)
Columnist Ted Rall makes an important point that has been easily overlooked as we all look at the electoral landslide of Obama 2008... the popular vote was, again, 51% to 48%. The same people who voted for Bush in 2004 voted for McCain in 2008. Rall accounts for the uptick in the Obama percentage to a huge influx of "energized" first time voters... particularly in the African-American population. And that's what swung the election to the Democrats.

So really, the country hasn't learned anything. We're still just as divided as ever. In contrast to what I said earlier about the election, nothing Bush did over the last six years swayed his core constituency from voting Republican. Unbelievable.

the second best halloween costume (Angry Asian Man)
Haw! The only kind of Halloween costume I like to see on adults is a clever one. Here's two guys who dressed as Russia to make fun of Sarah Palin. And hopefully that will be the last time you ever hear her name.

Guitar Hero World Tour Review: This is Guitar Hero (Kotaku)
Kotaku softballs a Guitar Hero World Tour review (no mention of the limp music composer, GHIII DLC failure, or singing difficulties) and then commenters show up to lambast the game.

Final Statement from No on Prop 8 Campaign (NoOnProp8.com)
Just plain shocking that this happened. In a very tight race, California voted to eliminate the right for same-sex couples to marry. Once again, it seems church groups rallied to show off how close-minded, petty and bigoted they are.

This issue will come up again. Same-sex couples will return and defeat Proposition 8 and its ilk. And they'll get their marriages back.

Shortly after Speed Racer was released on blu-ray, a small hubbub ensued as Warner Bros's ballyhooed Digital Copy packaging promise was found to be a lie for Mac users. The sticker on the outside of the box clearly states that the blu-ray version comes with a DVD version that is iTunes-compatible... it even lists OSX system requirements.

Then, on the inside of the box, the Digital Copy info sheet categorically states that the downloadable copy will not work on Macs or iPods. Not even on Windows iPods? Way to sidestep 90% of the portable movie player market, numbnuts.

What is supposed to happen is that you pop in the Digital Copy DVD, and once that has been verified via some Nintendo Friend Code-esque system, you're allowed to transfer a digital version of Speed Racer to your drive. There is some silly Windows app on the DVD that will run this download, and you're supposed to be able to choose a compatible format for either iTunes or Windows Media.

Putting the Digital Copy DVD in a Mac just gets you playback of a warning message... and there is no Mac software on there to make the transfer. And with my iMac (or any Mac) lacking a blu-ray drive, there's no way for me to use less-than-legal means to rip the film off the blu-ray and into iTunes.

Well, I'm a sucker for punishment, so I bravely sent a tech support request via WB's Digital Copy webpage...

September 22, 2008

I purchased Speed Racer on blu-ray partially due to the sticker on the front of the case that promised a digital copy available for both Mac and Windows machines. But the insert inside said that the digital copy does not work on Mac or iTunes or iPods. Please explain this disparity. As I bought the blu-ray edition, this means I have no way to enjoy this movie on my DVD-enabled Mac.

I fully expected zero reply. But within two weeks by Yahoo Mail account received this gem:

October 3, 2008

Hello,

Please direct iTunes-related inquiries to Apple support, via the following page on their website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1539
Apple support is responsible for all iTunes-related issues.

Thanks!

DIGITAL COPY SUPPORT

What? You see what happened there? Their email robots sensed the word "iTunes" are fired off a sub-standard standard reply. And it took them two weeks to do it.

So now I'm peeved:

October 3, 2008

With respect, this is not an Apple/iTunes issue. This is about your product promising Apple/iTunes compatibility on the outside of the package and then stating Apple/iTunes INcompatibility on the inside of the package. This is blatant false advertising and not something that can be blamed on Apple. If my box of Apple Jacks actually contains apples, do I take the issue up with the orchard or the cereal company?

If your Digital Copy feature is not available for Apple Macintosh computers, then you ought to not state the exact opposite on the packaging.

Given that the sticker on the packaging played a role in my decision to purchase your movie on blu-ray, I'd like some kind of equivalent compensation.

In retrospect, my cereal analogy was poorly chosen. If a box of Apple Jacks actually contained real apples, that would probably be a benefit, not a disappointing surprise. Also, why did I go with more uses of the word "Apple"? It's like I'm taunting the robots.

I'm trying to drive home the point that their packaging is a lie, and that said packaging was partially why I bought the movie. Which is true. I mean, obviously I wanted Speed Racer in high-def, but I also marched out of Target secure in the tragically misguided motion that Clark would also be able to enjoy Speed Racer in the back of the car on an iPod.

Now the readin' robots switched over to the "User Can't Figure Out Basic Windows Apps" tact. In their defense, this is probably a fairly common issue.

October 6, 2008

Hello,

Sorry to hear that you are having problems. The Movie includes both a Windows Media and an iTunes digital copy option. You should be presented with the choice of which one to copy when you run the software provided on the bonus disc. Please let us know if you have any further issues.

Thanks!

DIGITAL COPY SUPPORT

Bringing up the software proves they're not paying attention.

October 6, 2008

The movie Speed Racer on blu-ray does not have a Mac/iTunes option. In fact, the insert on the inside specifically states that the digital copy is not compatible with Apple computers and iPods, despite what the sticker says on the front of the box where it lists minimum system requirements and promises compatibility with Macs/iTunes.

Additionally, there is NO Mac software on the digital copy disk. Only a Windows version. Again, this is in direct odds with the promise on the front of the package.

You're working pretty hard to avoid admitting that your packaging was a mistake and you have committed false advertising. Again, given that the sticker on the packaging played a role in my decision to purchase your movie on blu-ray, I'd like some kind of equivalent compensation.

It's been almost a month since I banged out that little retort... and no reply from Warner Bros Digital Copy Support. It's safe to assume they consider the matter closed. Maybe they employed a strike force to go pull those generic stickers off the outside of the Speed Racer box.

You know, it's not like I'm expecting something that wasn't there in the first place. By virtue of a sticker, I was promised a digital copy of Speed Racer. Wouldn't it be great if companies had actual humans reading their email and had some kind of fallback to keep consumers happy?

I guess I should find somebody with Windows to get the file for me, hope that the "iTunes version" actually works in iTunes and can then be straight ported over to my iTunes.

Sarah Palin, your fifteen minutes are UP. Mrs. "What magazines do I read? All of them!" can trot on back to Alaska and be stupid on her own time. What a relief that America finally turned away from voting in "people I'd like to share a beer with." Eight years of that good ol' fashioned hometown charm, punctuated by spoonerisms and malapropisms and general bungling, seems to have actually had an effect. Maybe - shocker - we can now think about electing smart people, not just people who act cute and might be fun to hang out with.

On the way out of our polling center, I asked Clark to give me an "O" for Obama.

Back in Bush v. Kerry, the electoral map went 286 to 252, Bush v. Gore was 271 to 266. Both times we had to endure the braying jackasses of the GOP calling that a "mandate from the people." I wonder what we get to call 338 to 156?

I like John McCain. I would have liked to see him go up against Clinton rather than Dole. Back when McCain was in his, what, sixties? I like seeing McCain show visible discomfort when the morons in his core constituency show up at rallies to chant "kill." You can't mask that kind of revulsion (well, Palin can), and it showed McCain knew his followers were trouble. He got to do it again tonight when the classiest Young Republicans in Arizona booed him whenever he mentioned Obama.

Who can Republicans blame? Bush. Watch how quickly they start bailing on that mental midget. Their former hero, the untouchable cowboy, drove millions away from the Republican party. He drove me away. I helped get him in to his first term. I'm still a registered Republican. But when he was tested, he failed. And even though the failure was obvious and brutal, there was no swaying him. Here we are, seven years after 9/11 and he never caught Osama bin Laden. Instead he faked an attack on Iraq, fomented hate and racism, and abused our standing in the world.

It wasn't just Bush's failure. It wasn't just the orchestrated face-saving of his toadies and lapdogs. It was the failure of the press, of Democrats, of all of us. We allowed a callous, brainless frat boy to run our country. Unbelievably, Bush's tenure exposed a truly idiotic section of America who still thinks that the United States should ignore the rest of the world, march in heedless of warning and devoid of plans, hide facts and blur truth as long as it all ends well, and just generally strut around like the toughest kid on the block.

Bullshit to that. How incredible that we somehow managed to shout down those lunatic bullyboys.

President Obama has one hell of road to mend, before he can even take us down it. Maybe he can fix our image. Maybe he can end the occupation of Iraq. Maybe he can keep taxes down and end our dependence on foreign oil. Odds are that he won't... that politics will trundle on as usual, heaving and brooding. Obama has inherited quite a mess and will no doubt generate quagmires of his own. They all do.

But the point is that we sent a message. Today we decided that we no longer want to be known as the jerkiest country around. That we're tired of the politics of old white men. That we're not afraid - in fact we're proud - to have an African-American as our leader.

I'm so glad this is a blowout. No debate. No recounts. This is a mandate.

And now we celebrate via LittleBigPlanet:

Some quick pictures of Clark's various Halloween activities.

At his daycare parade. He's leaning in to tell Mommy that another friend in his class is also a Power Ranger. Yes, that calls for a stage whisper.

A masterpiece. That's linework along the likes of Charles Schulz right there.

What's funny about this is that the whole class made little anthropomorphic candy corn creatures, but only Clark's has the universal "Meh" face. When they were all hanging up on display in the classroom, it was sunny smile, sunny smile, sunny smile, sunny smile, sour disapproval, sunny smile.

So this is either an early indicator of nonconformist snark or lifelong self-esteem issues, I can't tell yet.

The other day he woke up from his afternoon nap and went to the potty all by himself. I found him on the toilet, dutifully peeing. The things he just does now would have been hopelessly out of reach even six months ago. Three is a wonderful age.

My LBP beta level is lost lost lost.

No idea what happened, but the LittleBigPlanet level I designed and published during the beta will not load. Can't play it or edit it (but it can be favorited!) Plenty of other beta levels survived the transition, but mine is a no-go. I've sent a curious email to Media Molecule.

In the meantime, I've started work on a Green Lantern-based level.

More reasons not to buy Guitar Hero World Tour.

Although it was initially reported that your Guitar Hero III DLC tracks would work in Guitar Hero World Tour, that has turned out to be a lie. Although maybe that early optimism was just more of Kotaku posting rumors with no substantiation. Either way, it's another negative for the column.

Aeropodcast #56, the one about the economy.

I was absent last week, but I returned for this week's Aeropodcast. It was just me and Joe Haygood, but we went off on some mad tangents.

I am so ready for this to be over.

I just hate politics. This better not be another one of those bullshit 51/49 percent split elections.

A Super Power Ranger.

Although Clark wanted to be Batman for his daycare's Halloween parade, we don't really have a nice full Batman suit. We do have an official Power Rangers costume, so we talked him into being the Red Ranger for school, and then he could be bargain-sweats Batman at home. By the time the day was over, however, Clark wanted to be a Power Ranger for the neighborhood trick-or-treating. With one change: he had to wear his Superman cape.

Last year, Rhonda put together an excellent Clark Kent-turning-into-Superman custume, with fake glasses, an askew tie, and a dress shirt half open with Superman jammies underneath. And people just thought Clark was a drunken businessman.

"I'm not normally superstitious..."

Yesterday I witnessed pure stupid in action. Guy in front of me at the checkout counter bought one item, and the bill came to exactly $6.66. "I don't like the sound of that," he muttered and then impulse-shopped some piece-of-crap Christmas ornament that was by the register.

Wow. Just, wow. The way people let themselves be ruled by fantastical nonsense.

We bought Clark something for Christmas.

We used to be able to get stuff into the cart and buy it without Clark noticing. Not any longer, as he joins us in this beautiful, materialistic world. So Christmas shopping is suddenly more challenging.

We found three Speed Racer car and driver action figure sets... Speed, Racer X, and Taejo Togokhan, who, you may know, gets almost no toy love. We saw them. He saw them. Rhonda and I surreptitiously agreed to get them for Christmas. So I grabbed the ones with the best paint apps (see what a good Dad I am?) and head for the checkout counter while Rhon distracted Clark.

But before I could get to the front of the store, I hear Clark running along after me because he found another toy he wanted to show me (it was those weirdly cute wooden preschool figures of Wolverine and Captain America... the Retconned World War II Buddies playset, I guess). Thinking quickly, I ditched the Speed Racer toys into a mop bucket on the corner of the aisle. But as soon as Clark gets to me, he rounds the corner, looks in the bucket, and says "Daddy, you got those toys stuck in there."

Rhonda corralled him and I did make the purchase (see above anecdote), but later in the car he asked to see the Speed Racer toys. We told him they were too expensive - which is NOT a lie, from a certain point of view. We told him we put them back - which is CLOSER to a lie, from a certain point of view. He said "But Daddy was carrying them!"

Here is your new Things Learned format.

Over the past few weeks I have found myself really hating the old format, with the odd right justified vertical rectangles. It was making the page too heavy on the right side. So this is what I came up with about ten minutes ago: thin horizontals with a quick white gradient, and accompanying text in blockquotes. It feels a little more balanced. I guess. What do you think?

Wassup 2008 (YouTube)
You're about to like that "Wassssuuuuup" trend again.

Disney Afternoon Characters (Yesterland)
Some old pics of abandoned Disney costume characters, most notably Don Karnage and Rebecca Cunningham (gentlemen, start your fanfics!) I wonder where these costumes ended up.

On Wedding Design (Cabel's Blog)
Good goddamn. This has got to be the best wedding invitation design I've ever seen.

Activision Releases Formal Statement About Guitar Hero Drum Problems (Aeropause)
A year ago when Harmonix/EA was RMAing Rock Band guitars and drum kits, there was a lot of sass about Red Octane being the superior equipment maker. Ahem.

Daylight Saving Time: Why Did We Do It? (Yahoo News)
An overview of why parts of the US have this AWFUL Daylight Saving Time crap. And guess what, it has nothing to do with farmers.

OMG! Wii Music is Brilliant (Tony's Love Show)
Read Tony's passionate defense of Wii Music but mentally replace each occurrence of "Wii Music" with "Endless Ocean."

"Batman: The Brave And The Bold" Press Interview, Updated Character Roster (World's Finest)
It's tough to get too excited about this list of characters slated to appear alongside Batman in the upcoming "Brave and the Bold" series, because most of them were already done during five years of Justice League. Still... Jonah Hex! Guy Gardner! The JSA! The show premieres with a Blue Beetle episode on the weekend of November 15th.