Things We Learned This Week

I have self-edited my Monty Python Fluxx deck.

I finally got around to buying Monty Python Fluxx since my comic store had a free 7-card expansion pack available with purchase. Which is good, because I have already pulled four cards from the original deck that will never be played. They all either force the players to quote Python or sing Python. Come on now.

I guess that's fine if everybody in the game is some kind of huge Python freak. I could certainly qualify. But odds are I'll never play this with such people, and I probably would prefer they not sing anyway. The cards I yanked are "What is Your Quote," "I Just Want to Sing," "Stop That, No Singing," and "Outrageous Accent." The last one requires you to talk in a funny accent. No thanks. In my opinion, a good game should be about the game, not the players. Good thing Fluxx is so modular that I can remove those four and not affect play.

And yes, that SPOT THE LOONEY image is a delicious pun.

Blackest Night, Speechless Read.

OK, so DC has been teasing for months that various dead characters will show up as Black Lanterns. Martian Manhunter and Earth-2 Superman were already spoiled in toy previews; Aquaman was revealed in a print ad. But issue #0 drops the biggest name of all: Batman?!? Black Lantern Batman??!?!

First of all, although I saw him die in Final Crisis, I haven't really thought of him as dead. Not only was there that bearded Bruce in a prehistoric batcave two pages later, but also because of the excellent Neil Gaiman two-parter with narrator Bruce talking to his mother. I didn't even know - as Blackest Night mentions - that they even buried a body. But I liked the mention that Bruce had previously requested that there would be no funeral. DC Event Marketing must have hated that.

Microwaves are supposed to be easy.

I stand morally opposed to anything that complicates a microwave cooking sequence. I don't rotate, and I don't cook in two shifts after removing plastic. And I certainly don't adjust my cooking times according to my unit's wattage. How the hell do you even know what the wattage is? This is my new thing to complain about when I'm cooking.

No, I can't believe I bought Excitebots either.

I thought about it, and I did it. Saved $15 off a $40 game (and Josh got Boom Blox for $20 thanks to the TRU twofer deal.) I went in fully aware that the game stupidly locks you into those awful Remote motion controls. It's fun, it's cute, it has plenty of modes and unlockables, even the online play works fine (the poker races are fantastic!)... but it is yet another Wii game that makes my arms hurt. This is where motion controls get the big fail. It is of some concern that Nintendo hasn't yet cleaned this up. Video games should not cause pain.

This was before Gollum learned how to get out of a sack.

Fan mini-movie "The Hunt of Gollum" was released to the internet today. It was definitely well done, considering it was made entirely by fans and painstakingly fashioned to look and sound like Peter Jackson's films... but I'm not sure it's a part of the Lord of the Rings story that bears much repeating. Aragorn catches Gollum and then loses him. And in between Aragorn spends fifteen minutes talking to a lumpy sack. I do like the forboding prequelness of it all, and they definitely captured the flavor of Tolkien's dialogue style when they weren't outright quoting his phrases.

Posted a second LittleBigPlanet level.

Locked Room Mysteries went live last night, and of course has been played by almost no one. I just don't get how you're supposed to get lucky enough to attract more than a spare handful of plays. Meanwhile bullshit levels that do nothing but litter your profile with stickers so you can paste up your own Iron Man costume rank in the tens of thousands.

Clark was high-fiving the Empire.

My comic shop's Free Comic Book Day again featured cosplayers from the 501st. When we first arrived, there was only two stormtroopers but within an hour we had TIE pilots, biker scouts and a Tusken raider. Although Clark was still nervous, this year he high fived them all (but no pictures). Even the Tusken, clearly the most alien of the bunch. One of the troopers let Clark hold his blaster. Best almost-in-character quote from one of the stormtroopers: when he overheard a dad asking his young son if these were bad guys, the trooper quipped "Bad guys? We're the police!"

So who wants to co-watch WALL-E!

I installed Disney BD-Live on the PS3 this week, meaning we now have access to the most exciting way to watch movies since the eyeball was invented. Sure. I took a Bolt trivia quiz against one other person and lost! Thanks, BD-Live!

BD-Live - which is what, barely a year old? - already reeks of corporate nonsense. It seems apparent that as every film studio rushes to implement their HD 2.0 junk, they're all going to go in different directions and create mass confusion for consumers. Imagine if different web browsers accessed different internets (like they sort of did back when the internet was America Online versus Everybody Else), and that's what BD-Live feels like to me.

On the Disney version, I had to make a Disney BD-Live account and select a Disney avatar (Pluto! Donald! The cat from Bolt!) Which of course will not pair with the Iron Man blu-ray, which also crowed about having BD-Live. I have no intention of installing custom BD-Live apps from each studio all over my PS3.