December 2009 Archives

I realize I'm a little behind on this one, but I just saw "The Mummy" for the first time. I thought I should comment on it before the ten-year review period is over, so I must hurry.

America's Greatest Living Cartoon Character, Brendon Frasier, begins the movie with bad hair. Then his hair gets worse during the one scene where he is a jerk. But it's more of a Han Solo jerkiness, so you know it isn't going to stick. Shortly after this scene, his hair goes back to normal-bad. Frasier is some kind of soldier/adventurer. Perhaps one career led to the other.

Frasier, by virtue of being in the prologue, knows where to find a secret Egyptian city. He is hired, sort of, by a British brother/sister team to lead them to it. As the only living female in the movie, the sister Evelyn gets kissed right away. The brother is a buffoon who will do many unintentional things. He becomes the sidekick after Frasier loses his prevously villainous sidekick.

The backstory involves an Egyptian priest who was mummified alive after coveting the Pharoah's wife. She actually hates the Pharoah anyway, so you're never sure why you're expected to spend the movie hating her and the priest, who becomes The Mummy after being given afterlife powers as part of his punishment. Technically, I think the ancient Egyptians are to blame. If they hated the priest so much, they should have maybe just buried him regularly.

The priest's name is Imhotep. It gets chanted a lot during a bit where various plagues are released and then forgotten about.

On the way to the secret city, we pair up with a bunch if treasure hunters who will all be killed, you just know it. The first one to die is a modern Egyptian who was a jerk but not so much of a jerk that you wanted him to die. But nowhere near the Han Solo level so you don't particularly care about his death anyway.

The other treasure hunters have the personality type "American douchebag." One actually dresses like an 1888 cowboy in 1923.

The movie's biggest douchebag is the first sidekick guy, who is pretty much the slimeball from the first Die Hard in a turban and a funny voice. This guy manages to live through 90% of the film, which is impressive.

When everybody gets to the secret city, they find that George Harrison has been guarding it.

So that's cool.

George is, follow along here, one of the descendants of the Egyptians who mummified Imhotep in the first place. They have been keeping people out of the hidden city for 3000 years, including Brendon Frasier. They wear black, so you're forgiven for assuming they are bad guys after Frasier kills two thirds of them. Although since their ancestors were the goods who started this whole problem, I'm inclined to blame them anyway. I guess the guilt they feel explains why they end up helping Frasier in the end... even though he has slaughtered most of them and it's his girlfriend's fault that Imhotep's curse brings him back from the dead.

As far as mummies go, Imhotep is pretty savvy. He starts by killing the Americans, hires the weasel guy since he can speak Hebrew, and talks to Evelyn since she can speak everything. For reasons entirely unexplained, Imhotep is afraid of cats. They drive off not once, but twice, by waving a cat at him. I was looking forward to a big finish at the Cairo SPCA, but it never happens.

One of Imhotep's signature mummy powers is to open his mouth really wide. Like, Tex Avery wide. He also has a swarm of flesh-eating bugs, and eventually he resurrects a small mummy army. He kidnaps Evelyn with the idea of using her to bring back his old girlfriend, who obviously was not given awesome superpowers back in the day.

The coolest part of the movie is the cameo by Dr. Bombay from Bewitched. That guy is great.

Since an ancient Egyptian macguffin brought Imhotep back, the characters have to find a different ancient Egyptian macguffin to put him down. During this bit just about everybody else dies, except for Frasier, Evelyn and her brother. Yes, Dr. Bombay dies, but you're supposed to be OK with it.

In the end, Imhotep has his powers revoked, and then Frasier stabs him. Which seems like a huge missed opportunity to talk with a 3000 year old witness of history, especially since he's been sort of pleasantly talky the entire time. I bet after the credits rolled and Brendon and Evelyn stopped having sex, they regretted that decision to gut Imhotep.

I understand they made four more Mummy movies in the decade since this film, which I find rather startling. I remember the animated series, which was a contemporary of Jackie Chan Adventures and the first few years of Pokemon. But five movies in ten years? I want to submit this to Cosmo's "Is this franchise worth saving?"

All seemed well in Playmobil Pyramid land. The people were safe and happy, having two horses AND two camels.

The royal treasures were secure inside the central chamber. Everything gold was carefully placed in this tomb.

But a robber found a secret panel on the pyramid that allowed him and his band inside.

The bandits caught the ruling council unawares. As their supplied weapons were all gold, all the knives and staffs were therefore sorted with the treasures... so all they held was a feather and a torch.

And it all ended in tragedy.

Well, there was a Mario release this year.

And a Zelda release. So we know what's going to dominate the Wii and DS categories, respectively. Nintendo Power's overall list has some interesting choices on it.. and some very surprising omissions. Unlike the Best Of podcast at Aeropause, where I can pick from everything released in 2009, NP has their own nominations already locked in. So every year I end up having to pick games I did not play, or choose games I thought the lesser since my personal choice did not make NP's cut. (No Rabbids Go Home in any category? Geez!) This ensures the system favors popular voting, rather than actual voting. Last year, NP differentiated between their picks and the public results, so I'm going to assume they will do the same this year. That's the only way third-party games will win anything.

Anyway, once again there's no way to tell how the editors chose the nominees. You'd think they would go by their own review scores, but plenty of games they rated in the 8s and 9s (like Wii Sports Resort, Call of Duty, LEGO Rock Band and The Conduit) are notably missing. Not that it matters, since freakin' New Super Mario Bros Wii will win anyway.

For my pick, I'm torn. My top Nintendo releases of the year are not allowed in the reindeer games. Several games on the list that I did play (Madworld, Little King's Story, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Kingdom Hearts DS, Scribblenauts) all had pretty nasty flaws. Do I go with Klonoa, which was great but still just a capable rehash? No, I'll vote for Rhythm Heaven, which, despite being bitchass hard, at least brought something fresh to the table.

Overall Game of the Year
Voter pick: New Super Mario Bros Wii
Editor pick: New Super Mario Bros Wii
My pick: Rhythm Heaven

I don't know why they bother with an annual Overall GOTY award. It's just in there to dig the knife in deeper on DS and 'Ware games, because it's going to go to whatever wins the Wii category.

Wii Game of the Year
Voter pick: New Super Mario Bros Wii
Editor pick: New Super Mario Bros Wii
My pick: Klonoa

For the DS game, the editorial pick is harder to predict. They could go with Scribblenauts, even the game is largely unplayable except as a sheer novelty, because then they can write something pretentious about it. But I bet M&L takes the prize, since by all accounts it in fact deserves it.The voting public will go with Zelda, because, duh, it's Zelda. Although there could be a strong contingent to rally behind Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, I think even diehard Kingdom Hearts fans have to face up that 358/2 Days is dull as dishwater, with awful controls.

DS Game of the Year
Voter pick: Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Editor pick: Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
My pick: Rhythm Heaven

It's nice to see a robust WiiWare category this year, even if EVERY SINGLE WIIWARE GAME I LOVED is not on offer. WTF? My Life as a Darklord is way better than anything on this list. So is Swords and Soldiers. Hell, Lit and Bonsai Barber are probably deserving of nods.

The voters are going to be stymied on this category, since they probably played none of the choices. Therefore, the wins will go to whatever game Nintendo Power talked about the most. Monkey Island will get the public vote, and Lost Winds 2 will get the editorial vote. For my part, I guess it's Lost Winds. Ugh. DARKLORD, DARKLORD, DARKLORD.

WiiWare Game of the Year
Voter pick: Tales of Monkey Island
Editor pick: Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias
My pick: Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias

Even though DSiWare was brand new in 2009, the system has received a steady flow of games. But there's the same problem here as with WiiWare: you just don't have enough people buying these games to know what the hell they're talking about. I call a full MvDK sweep.

DSiWare Game of the Year
Voter pick: Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again
Editor pick: Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again
My pick: Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again

Best Graphics is a category that should vanish. First of all, you can't escape the condescending chuckles from anybody who has an HD console. Secondly, who gives a crap about graphics. Especially on the DS. Isn't one of Nintendo's biggest marketing points this generation that graphics are secondary to gameplay? Note that there is no Best Gameplay award. If gameplay is subjective, shouldn't graphics be as well? These are third-party appeasement bones, at best. "See, Muramasa? You won something!"

Best Wii Graphics: Boy and his Blob, Crystal Bearers, Madworld, Muramasa, Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles, Silent Hill Shattered Memories
Voter pick: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles
Editor pick: Muramasa: The Demon Blade
My pick: Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Best DS Graphics: GTA Chinatown Wars, Kingdom Hearts, Zelda, Mario & Luigi, Naruto Something Or Other 2, Phantasy Star 0
Voter pick: Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Editor pick: Phantasy Star 0
My pick: Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

At least the category of Best Original Score can claim some kind of artistic merit. Little King is right out, since from what I recall, most of the soundtrack is public domain classical music. Basically, you have a war here between popular franchises and Rhythm Heaven.

Best Original Score: Dragon Quest V, Zelda, Little King's Story, Rhythm Heaven, Suikoden: Tierkreis, Crystal Bearers
Voter pick: Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Editor pick: Rhythm Heaven
My pick: Rhythm Heaven

Best Sound/Voice Acting is another third-party light meal. You've got a couple celebrities and not much else. For the voters, this is an opportunity for the Silent Hill and Kingdom Hearts camps to shore up support. For NP, a chance to thank Dan Aykroyd for his fine work.

Best Sound/Voice Acting: Call of Duty Reflex, Dead Space Extraction, Ghostbusters, House of the Dead, Kingdom Hearts, Silent Hill Shattered Memories
Voter pick: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Editor pick: Ghostbusters
My pick: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

Here's another category that can safely go away, Best Music/Rhythm Game. In fact, were it not for the presence of Rhythm Heaven, I wouldn't even expect this one to exist this year. Since it's inevitably populated by nearly identical Guitar Hero/Rock Band clones. I'm annoyed and I'm not annoyed by the lack of LEGO Rock Band. This is the only category with only four entries... and NP gave LEGO Rock Band an 8.0, the same score they gave Guitar Hero 5. So, why? On the other hand, the Wii version of LEGO Rock Band is a complete cock-up, with no DLC and muddy graphics.

Not sure what to expect from the voters. Guitar Hero 5 is probably the best Guitar Hero in years, and it's still the name brand to beat among morons, but there was a lot of Beatles kool-aid to be had in 2009.

Best Music/Rhythm Game: Beatles Rock Band, DJ Hero, Guitar Hero 5, Rhythm Heaven
Voter pick: The Beatles: Rock Band
Editor pick: The Beatles: Rock Band
My pick: Rhythm Heaven

I like how Nintendo Power splits up Best Adventure and Best Action. They clearly define it by speed, and that's a metric that seems easy to understand. Best Adventure features Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles : The Crystal Bearers again, which, considering the game just came out this week, really does not have much chance at winning anything in the voting hivemind. Expect more Zelda wins.

Best Adventure Game: Crystal Bearers, GTA Chinatown Wars, Kingdom Hearts, Zelda, Silent Hill, Monkey Island
Voter pick: Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Editor pick: Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
My pick: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Best RPG is a category fraught with fanboy battles. I'd expect Mario and Luigi to win the popular contest on a squeaker, because the various RPG fandom factions will split the vote. The editors will go for something more obscure (even though M&L and Pokemon Platinum are the two best-reviewed titles on the list.)

Points to NP for dropping the word "game" from this title, as it would be redundant.

Best RPG: Dragon Quest 5, Mario and Luigi, Phantasy Star 0, Pokemon Platinum, Shin Megami Tensei, Suikoden
Voter pick: Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Editor pick: Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride
My pick: Pokemon Platinum

So far, what I think is most interesting is that you're going to see a very cohesive, strong showing from DS games. Mario & Luigi and Zelda Spirit Tracks are going to come up big, overshadowing even the most popular Wii releases. This shouldn't be a gigantic surprise since NP made the list and nominated those two games at every possible chance... but it's still interesting. Overlooking a lot of great Wii and WiiWare games makes the 2009 Wii look far worse than it actually was. See you for part 2 and another nine categories!

Sam & Max Nearly Save Christmas (YouTube)
"Ask your parents to help you place the Horsemen around a powerful magnetic pole." "Roman Polanski?"

Orson Welles and His Brief Passionate Betacam Love Affair (Gizmodo)
This is pretty incredible, a story about the last days of Orson Welles amid the dawn of betacam video recording.

Fat Princess Gets Fifth Finger, Release Date For Japan (Kotaku)
Neat cultural difference; the Japanese Fat Princess artwork was changed to include four fingers on the cartoon people rather than only three.

Young shoppers edge manga into Europe's mainstream (Yahoo News UK)
One correction for this fluffy piece on manga fans in Europe: Europe fucking loves Disney comics.

Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem (Wired)
Sometimes, it's hard to fathom how long ago we played Duke Nukem 3D religiously.

Arnold Stang, actor known for nerdy roles, dies (Yahoo News)
So long, Top Cat.

The Batman-Maker Who Didn't Know The Meaning Of GOTY (Kotaku)
Great piece about one of the great surprises of the gaming year, Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Clark showed excellent restraint this morning, starting with the small gifts and working his way up to the larger boxes.

Nice overview of the haul. This is before we revealed the big pyramid gift.

Buried in wrapping paper.

We put the Playmobil Sphinx together first, which was easy. Then we started on the Pyramid. Which took an hour.

Playmobil needs to invest in a screen printing company. The pyramid came with six sticker sheets, which was just crazy. Luckily, Clark was busy with his Bakugan, cars and other gifts while I focused on the stickers. I'd give myself an 89% success rate with them. A couple ended up at slightly off angles. I hate that.

Great fun. With these two sets, he has an assortment of Egyptian people (Anubis priest, king, two guards, a robed peasant, and a bandit) and a ton of little treasures to hide everywhere. The pyramid has several interior rooms, one of which can't be accessed at all unless you take off a wall... for added authenticity. There's a trap door slide, a room that dumps scorpions on the guys, a nice central tomb, and one of those Scooby Doo bits where the staircase falls slack.

Jesus:

You had thousands of years of telling people exactly what to say, what to think, and what to feel. Your name has been levied to control offenses as slight as wearing blue jeans to as important as who can marry who. Your guys have pretty much been the planet's de facto assholes for centuries... and now you have to nerve to come down on good, caring Americans who try to make everybody feel welcome at this time of the year?

Even though December 25th is a bullshit date fabricated by Church marketing?

Even though the whole concept of a Winter Solstice holiday pre-dates Jesus, and represents an amalgam of "Glad We're Not Dead" celebrations cobbled together because the Church knew it couldn't disrupt every pagan ritual? (You know, much like your origin story?)

Even though the proliferation of secular elements like Santa and Rudolph took place under your watch, propagated by a history of your majority supporters?

Even though the vast majority of Christmas songs still in wide rotation carry egregiously heavy religious messages?

Even though every single step is more or less 90% Christmas anyway? You know how hard you have to look to find non-Christmas stuff at the mall? The Hallmark store will probably have an endcap with dreidels on it.

No, now you guys have to get all pissy because people use "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings." Particularly in situations where we don't know exactly what everybody believes and thinks... like on signs at Target, or in TV commercials from lawyers. Situations where one group of people is just trying to blindly be fucking nice to other people, and not cast grand assumptions that everybody in earshot feels the exact same way about every little thing.

Because you guys certainly get everything right, as a group. Your hundreds of factions and distinctions all agree on everything. Never any discord there. If it's one thing you guys are good at, it's knowing that everybody in your club carries the same beliefs.

Oh wait, you don't. You've got this group here that refuses to take medicine. And a group over there that endorses polygamy. This one says gay marriage is OK. This one doesn't. You don't even know which football team is most blessed.

For all your talk about being loving and good and inclusive, you'd think you would all be a lot more understanding about welcoming people of all beliefs. But as usual, being Christian doesn't mean you're nice to everyone, it means you expect special privilege and attention. Because that's the way it's always been (according to the Church's start date, anyway.) It means you're the only option, the only truth. It means anybody else is an outsider, or at the very least, someone who needs to be converted.

It means the rest of us have to use your language, follow your laws, and maintain your traditions.

And when we don't, we have to put up with toothless, whiny billboards on the interstate. Like a wounded bear who spent years eating and roaming at his leisure, but now suddenly feels threatened because a mouse got into his cave.

Because two thousand years just wasn't enough for you egomaniacs.

That's what I think about the most this time of year.

Happy holidays.

I need that fan translation/region bypass patch to get finished.

And then I'll be playing the Japan-only Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse! Which, hopefully won't include any Remote nonsense like shaking or mid-air posing. I expect a lot of flashlight-pointing. And getting scared out of the room.

Word is, the patch is sort of like a bootable file on an SD card. It doesn't screw up your Wii in any way, and it doesn't require any unauthorized console modding. Which is good, because I'd never attempt to mod the poor thing. The patch sees the Japanese game disk in the drive and allows it to run, plus it somehow posts live English translation on the fly as you're playing. I have no idea how anybody creates something like this, but these dedicated fans did.

It is possible that a future Nintendo-released system update would wreck the patch, so I suppose I should start and finish this one without running any updates.

The patch is 99% complete by all accounts. Unless this is one huge hoax. At the very least, having a Japanese Wii version of a rare Fatal Frame game is one hell of a collectible, right?

Last week I received the platinum trophy for Katamari Forever, meaning I collected all thirty-some gold/silver/bronze trophies. Celebrate now with INFINITE SUMO!

Most of the trophies are completely achievable, although it requires unlocking all the Drive modes, all the Eternal modes and all the Classic modes. The last two I had to really work at were complete pissers. You have to rack up over 50,000 points in the Punishment mini-game, where the King tosses lava rocks at you when you fail a level. It's a dodge-'em game that is sort of random, so you can't exactly plan out a pattern to get through it.

Somehow I made it through. Eventually. Took a lot of failing.

The last non-platinum trophy you get only for completing the Collection to 100%. Now, Katamari Forever has thousands of objects to collect, and the Collection screen offers no concrete way of locating missing items. Even when you find one, it doesn't list where you found it. So it is really hard for fans to compile a serious FAQ that easily ticks off all the rares and one-off objects that you're expected to find throughout 60 Katamari levels.

Even Michael Moore would have a tough time with it.

I did find some forums where Katamari players could greedily exchange Collection info and hints, and that helped me through 75% of my missing items. The rest I just had to find on my own, chortle chortle.

If you're missing a few planets, but you know you've created them, note that the final galaxy level upgrades your katamari size fairly quickly. The smaller planets will disappear when you hit the growth spurt, the racing planets and animal planets become impossible to pick up. So you have to NOT MOVE when the galaxy part begins, and scan around to find those particular orbs... then make a run for it to clump them up before your viewpoint "upgrades."

"YOU DID IT! YOU FINALLY DID IT! THE STATUE OF LIBERTY IS STUCK IN A SNOWBANK AS THE GIANT BUDDHA LOOKS ON!"

Look at the filth they teach in Japanese schools: evolution!

Katamari needs a creation mode. How insane would that be.

This level has Santas everywhere. Happy Katamari Holidays!

Tom Servo and Crow's Mac/PC debate (YouTube)
Oh hell. MST3K is old enough that it predates System 7.

Foto File: Dave Gibson (Mark Evanier)
A great anecdote from a 1970s Comic-Con.

Take Two: Grand Theft Auto Episodes Market "Smaller Than Initially Expected" (Kotaku)
The Take Two DLC recipe for success: accept million dollar exclusivity contract from Microsoft, develop DLC for 360, wait a year to release it, make DLC the most expensive thing on the Xbox marketplace, watch sales flounder and issue terse statement about why the DLC did not sell as well as expected, then return to counting money from Microsoft exclusivity deal.

Stay tuned for 2010 when Take Two releases the "exclusive" DLC on PS3 and PC.

Toons of the 2000s (Toon Zone)
Toon Zone has a massive look back at the last decade of animation that is a great time-sink. I had forgotten just how much the kids TV scene had changed, with the gradual loss of Saturday morning and weekday afternoon lineups.

Gaming the System (Rands in Repose via Daring Fireball)
I found myself nodding vigorously many times on this one. It's a lot of psycho-science about why geeks like games.

BioShock 2 Paper Foldables (GameSetWatch)
When I see stuff like this, it makes me regret having never played a smidgeon of BioShock.

I Find It Hard To Believe This Is Over Thirty Years Old (Post Modern Barney)
Dorian scanned in an old Pogo bit that captures the Right as we know it today.

Green Day: Rock Band, Green Day: Rock Band (Follow-up) (Dubious Quality)
Two-parter about Green Day: Rock Band from Bill Harris. He makes the following points: should sell for $30-40, should have more than just Green Day in it, and will likely only be saved thanks to the song export feature. I predict no, no and yes. He also cites articles that tease upcoming Rock Band "solo" releases for The Who, Queen and Pearl Jam. Hoo boy.

"IRON MAN 2" TRAILER REVEALED! (CBR)
Like arrogant, untouchable Stark. Like War Machine. Like Ultimate Nick Fury. But Whiplash? Christ, Iron Man has the worst villains. Who's next, Whirlwind and the Grim Reaper?

We have dinner reservations at the Prime Time Diner, a nighttime appointment for the Halloween Party, and then another day at the Magic Kingdom...

11:08 AM Oct 20: Resort bus playing steel drum version of Cantina Band music.

We were on our way to Downtown Disney. The steel drum Cantina Band is intended to match the Caribbean Beach resort.

We thought we had this morning pretty well planned out... go to Downtown Disney for shopping, have the store ship our stuff back to the hotel, then catch a bus for Hollywood Studios. But it turns out you can't catch a resort bus direct from Downtown to the Parks.

So we ended up going back to the hotel anyway. We went back to the store that was going to ship our souvenirs and made them go dig our bag out of the delivery storage area, which we gathered was an unusual request.

11:10 AM Oct 20: RT @GeoffJohns0 Yes, Hawkman will have wings. And a big mace. Oh. And he and Green Arrow don't get along. At all.

11:11 AM Oct 20: Sounds like I picked the wrong century to stop watching Smallville.

Although the vacation may have brought me to a nice disconnect from work, the iPhone allowed me to keep up with everything else.

11:38 AM Oct 20: Barring arctic climes, DisneyWorld must be the largest geopolitical landmass with no Pepsi products.

Rhonda really wanted a Mountain Dew by this point of the trip.

4:25 PM Oct 20: There is a seat at the Prime Time Diner where Gertie the Dinosaur stares directly at you.

And I was in it. Small room, way on the right as you walk in, by the windows of course. Gertie's big eyes watch you eat.

Here's that cage from the second Pirates movie, as seen on the Studio Backlot tour:

Among all the fake planes from Pearl Harbor, you can still spot Jabba's skiff and a downed snowspeeder. You have to feel pretty bad for these oversized props, because they look like hell, slowly decaying in the unforgiving Florida sun and rain.

6:54 PM Oct 20: Kind of wish Hollywood Studios was less about how they make movies and more about being inside the movies.

Really. Here we are, on the verge of EVERY effect being CG, and Hollywood Studios is still showing off green screens and water buckets. Give me an impressive Indiana Jones stunt show; don't bother to stop the action every minute and explain how the stuntpeople have to fall onto rubber mats and trampolines. Boring. This park is twenty years old. It's time to change that mission statement.

6:55 PM Oct 20: On our way to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.

Monorail tweet!

7:21 PM Oct 20: Found our Disney brick! The numbers are not in order.

What is up with that. Your brick's number will get you close (IE, by the parking lot tram stop and not by MK bag check), but you still have to scan a hundred bricks once you find that vague zone. Dumb.

That Walk Around The World thing is in a weird place right now, because the dates on all the bricks are old enough to seem old (mostly late '90s) but not old enough to seem impressive/historical.

Rhonda and I were a little skittish about ponying up for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, which is a separate cost. But it was worth it. First of all, having pseudo-scary stuff all over the place was right up Clark's alley. Then we scored three sacks packed with free candy... which was also awesome for Clark. He really enjoyed looking around the park for the big TRICK OR TREAT balloons that indicated a new line of candy. The park was busy, but not offensively so. We actually got to ride freakin' Peter Pan's Flight, the attraction with the worst wait in the entire World.

But the biggest coolness was the fireworks...

When you stand in Fantasyland, they literally explode all around you. 360 degrees. I generally can give a crap about fireworks, but when you're at ground zero, it's pretty impressive.

That picture is our view from by the Winnie-the-Pooh ride, which is just where we happened to stop when we heard the choreographed music come piping in over the PA.

And then my iPhone battery ran low, so no further updates from the Halloween party.

11:34 AM Oct 21: One of my favorite Park bits is when they play alternate versions of the show music while you're in the queue.

A new day and a chance for me to catch up on some thoughts that had been floating around all trip. That's one of those subtle Disney touches... take a bit of well-known movie music and re-perform it as background soundtrack.

I also enjoy how they match merchandise to rides, like putting Cars stuff over at the Test Track store, or WALL-E toys at the exits of Mission: Space. I know you Disney is just a soulless marketing machine designed to take your money types will be ticked at that, but piss off. Like you don't spend money on things and experiences you enjoy.

11:42 AM Oct 21: Really weird being inside a lit-up Space Mountain.

That was a straggler from the Party night. They opened the new Space Mountain just a few weeks after our trip.

1:25 PM Oct 21: Tom Sawyer Island. Have not found any paintbrushes.

Disney Secret time: every morning CMs hide several paintbrushes around the island. If you find one and return it to a Cast Member, you get an all-rides Fastpass for the day. Nice perk for visiting what is mostly an outdated and forgotten (not to mention hard to get to) part of the park! I'm sure any and all paintbrushes are gone by 1:30 in the afternoon, but I was scanning the grounds anyway.

Viewing Tom Sawyer Island as chiefly a big playground, Clark had a ball there. Loved the caves, loved the fort. Small but nice restrooms over at Fort Langhorn.

4:59 PM Oct 21: Between Stitch and Monsters Laugh Floor, Tomorrowland is way better than it used to be.

I can't recall a time when Tomorrowland was this good. Even with Space Mountain on rehab. Historically, there was a bunch of dorky, lame-ass rides there (Timekeeper, plus whatever inhabited the Mission to Mars building) and then Buzz Lightyear started turning that around. Buzz, Stitch and the new Monsters show have really elevated a zone that was largely defined by a couple boring carnival rides (Speedway, Astro-Orbiter) and a single coaster.

Of course, sucky, lame-ass Carousel of Progress is still there, but that was a Walt Favorite so everybody is loathe to dump it (plus, they have nothing to replace it.) We didn't get to that one on this trip.

5:44 PM Oct 21: By the time we get home, everyone I know will have already finished Uncharted 2.

They didn't.

11:34 PM Oct 21: Clark just is not tall enough for the Splash Mountain ride photo to be worth it.

Yeah, just the top of his head. Not really going to pay extra for that.

Noticed on this trip that the traditional ride photo zone is seriously under attack. Let's be honest, they've always been expensive souvenirs, not matter where you go. So now people just hold their cell phone up to the monitor and "steal" the picture. And there's not much the park can do about that without looking like a dick.

Disney's PhotoPass system is a great riposte, connecting your ride photo to an online system where you can buy prints later, plus decorate them however you like with Disney-designed borders and character inserts. But not all of the rides have been upgraded to this level; the Splash Mountain photo area looks even more like a cattle pen than anticipated thanks to everybody reaching over each other to snap pics off the old CRT monitors.

Ten years ago, DisneyQuest allowed visitors to sort of create their own webpage... and this was back when "webpage" meant a lot of centered, bolded text plus a webcam image and an Under Construction animated gif. That sounds like something that could be brought back, with the Parks tracking your entire visit and then automatically creating an online diary of your trip... just by scanning your ticket and centralizing all the data. Complete with ride photos, high scores from attractions like Buzz and Toy Story Mania, user-submitted pictures from a connected iPhone app, Kim Possible mission status, personalized screens like the new finale to Spaceship Earth, and special messages triggered by meeting costumed characters inside the Park. Imagine paying $20 for a nice memory book that shows up in your hotel room on the last day of your trip.

Disney's hip with Apple. Let's get on that.

Here's some replays of two new(ish) Pain add-ons... the Museum environment and the George Takei character.

My favorite part is, halfway through, when George perfectly kicks the escalator control panel with his foot.

This second video begins with the impressive destruction of a dinosaur skeleton.

One of George's unlockable costumes is a yellow Star Trek suit that looks just enough unlike a yellow Star Trek suit so as to avoid copyright law.

Of all the things I've pulled out of my ditch, I never expected this:

This morning Rhonda brought the work exodus to a halt when she walked back into the house saying "There's a car in the ditch." That's one of those sentences that you're never sure how to parse. A toy car? A Power Wheels car? What ditch?

But no, a real, human-sized car. Clark had to see it right away.

After Rhonda and Clark left, I went exploring. The ditch is pretty much right beside our house, so you'd think we would have heard any ambulance sounds or screeching tires. (All we heard last night, upon reflection, was a dull bump.) I could not find any skid marks in the street, and even the hill that leads into the ditch seemed fine, barring where the tall weeds nearest the car had been trampled by people.

The car looked fine, considering the situation. The only damage I spotted was on the back door where it had banged against those tall thin trees I keep in there to scare off the short fat ones.

So I took a bunch of pictures, figuring I may have to call the Ditched Car division of the local police. I wasn't sure exactly what to do, but I assumed that noting the license plate and other general info would be a good start. This was either an accident (although the car was facing the exact wrong way if it drove down the hill) or possibly a prank (although we would have heard giggly frat boys... I spend most of my nights patrolling the house for signs of giggly frat boys on a B&E to get at my amazing collection of great stuffs.)

Then the neighbors across the street walked over and I learned there was nothing nefarious, or injurious, afoot at all. Turns out a relative was visiting and did not put his car all the way in park. They all went out to get pizza and when they returned the car was missing. Sometime during a twenty minute span, the poor thing rolled backwards down their driveway, perpendicularly crossed the street, made it over the small berm (no sidewalks 'round here), then hit the hill that steeps into the ditch.

They had a removal truck called in, and the car was extracted by the time we got home from work.

Couple lucky twists here. While a couple feet to the right would no doubt have made the eventual extraction easier (in fact, the car could have been driven out), too much farther to the right would have landed in another neighbor's kids playground. A little to the left and the dropoff would have been much steeper, potentially landing the SUV on its ass. Our house is far enough away from the road that even if it had made it to our front yard, I doubt it would have actually hit brick, but I'm sure it would have levelled our mailbox had it arced down the street a little further.

Also lucky is that, although that dropzone is precisely within our property, we've never planted anything on that side. Or done anything other than mow it, really. We cleaned up some construction detritus when we moved in, but that was it. Our side of the ditch has been lined with actual non-thorny-weed plants to varying degrees of success. So there's no landscape damage. Or at least, there wasn't when I left for work; it's dark now so I can't see what they had to mangle to get the SUV out of its muddy wedge.

We've had some interesting incidents with neighbor vehicles, that's for sure.

The surprise news out of this weekend's Video Game Awards is the announcement of a sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. Everyone is calling it Arkham Asylum 2 at the moment, but I'd guess the name will be more like Batman: Gotham Knight.

For one, this initial blast of hype keeps saying "Arkham has moved" and seems to promise an adventure outside the walls of the asylum. As I've said before, a sequel set in Gotham is a natural extension, but it will make some of those "video gamey" locked doors less impressive. For another, DC has used the phrase "Gotham Knight" many times in many places over the years, and connects the new game's location to the Dark Knight catchphrase rather nicely.

The teaser trailer opens with the camera pulling out, away from Arkham's gate. Again, the message is clear that we're not going to be stuck inside that compound this time.

Here's the weird bit... the Asylum now looks to be located right next to the rest of Gotham. It's moved. Historically, Arkham has either been a lonely mansion some miles out of town (as a dark counterpoint to Wayne Manor), or, more recently, situated on an island, Alcatraz-style.

The graffitti says "Long Live Joker." This is what Batman would call a clue.

Chaos in the streets. The thugs are the same wide, beefy brutes that populated the first game. Which is likely an indication that the sequel will be re-using assets from the first game.

It's going to kill me when I finally realize who is the highly obvious person shown on this poster. Right now, no idea.

Joker and Harley. I mean, EVERYBODY lived through the first game, so it's not like we shouldn't expect this. Maybe the change in setting means we get an expanded look at the game's version of the DCU. I hope the game doesn't fall into the Sly Cooper trap of junking up the sequel with alternating playable characters, but it would be nice to get more heroes and villains involved (especially for the various bonus modes and, potentially, online multiplayer).

Here's the twist: Joker appears deathly ill. He looks worse than usual. He's hooked up to an IV. And his famous laughter ends in a choking fit. Ragnell suggests the game could be reffing Last Laugh, a storyline from a couple of years ago where the Joker thinks he is dying, so he hatches a plan to infect the world with Joker Venom.

Rocksteady won the VGA award for Studio of the Year, chiefly because they conquered the impossible and made a rightly incredible Batman game.

No word on a release date for this one, but I'd think October/November 2010 seems likely. The first Arkham came out in the wide open summer, perhaps due in part to Eidos/WB knowing that the public might be skittish about definitively picking up a Batman game after so many terrible attempts. They won't have that problem with the sequel, so they can feel free to launch it in the crowded holiday season and have every right to expect a major seller.

I mentioned previously that I'm reading the Oz books to Clark. Last night we started Book 5, The Road to Oz. Even though sometimes I would swear he isn't paying attention, he is. He'll tap me on the shoulder to stop me and suggest a plan of action the characters could follow to get out of the current outlandish scrape. At the beginning of Road, Dorothy and the Shaggy Man are lost at an intersection of multiplying paths, and Clark stopped the story with the idea that they could use Ozma's Magic Picture to get home.

The first few books are sort of like Tolkien's The Hobbit or Rowling's first Harry Potter in that they were intended for younger readers and L. Frank Baum really had no idea how popular they would become. In the author's preface to each book, Baum indicates continuing surprise at all the fan mail he receives, and even expresses a desire to stop writing Oz books (although that may just be playful teasing.)

To that end, there's some interesting continuity breaches every now and then. Again, just like in Hobbit or Potter. Read in succession, you tend to pick up on them rather easily. To Clark's view, since we've been going from one to the next right away, it's like one big long story.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

It's like a Director's Cut of the famous movie. The poppy field doesn't affect Scarecrow or Tin Woodman (duh, they don't even breathe). They have to travel to see Glinda, she doesn't just zap in to reveal the secret of Dorothy's shoes (which are silver, by the way, not ruby. Thank you Technicolor.) The Wicked Witch appears for, like, ten pages maybe.

In this book, W.W. Denslow's art presents the Wizard as no taller than Dorothy, and Baum's text regularly refers to him as a "little man." When we see the Wizard again in book #4, Baum still calls him little, but John R. Neill's art shows him as a more classically tall and thin magician character.

The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904)

You can see Baum starting to care about continuity. The Wizard is mentioned, in fact he's cast in a dark light as being responsible for Princess Ozma's banishment. I haven't yet read if Baum addressed this in later volumes, since when the Wizard returns to Oz in #4, nobody seems to blame him for Ozma being lost and turned into a boy.

The transformation of boy Tip into girl Ozma surprised Clark. Sort of robbed him of a leading male child character, although future books add plenty of boys to the mix.

Tip's travelling party in Land is pretty hard to beat, however. Jack Pumpkinhead, King Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Wooden Sawhorse and H.M. Wogglebug T.E. The Sawhorse in particular is hilarious, because he's kind of a jerk the entire time, especially to Jack Pumpkinhead.

Major parts of books 2 and 3 were combined to make Disney's forgotten Oz movie sequel, 1985's Return to Oz. I'm going to have to dig that one up for Clark someday. Although the storyline is way off-canon, the movie does a great job of staying true to Neill's character artwork. I know Clark would like to see that.

No Dorothy in #2. Baum received some kiddie hate mail over that.

Ozma of Oz (1907)

This is a great story because: it introduces the Nome King as a villain, it brings Dorothy back to Oz (to become instant friends with Ozma), and it seriously sets up the Oz-as-kingdom we'll come to know in the next books. By now you see the formula. Dorothy (or whoever) gets lost and meets all new friends on her trip, and halfway through you get the big Oz reunion with all your favorite characters from the earlier books.

Most of this book actually takes place in Ev, a country the borders on one of the deadly deserts that surround Oz. Ozma, as a true international delegate, shows up with everybody in tow, on a mission to free the ruling family of Ev from the Nome King's imprisonment. Meeting Dorothy in Ev is somewhat of a coincidence. In the meantime, Ev has been lackadaisically ruled by Langwidere, a nasty vain princess who has a collection of heads that she swaps depending on what she wants to look like at the moment. It's gross.

With Dorothy back, we get to see Neill's visual take on her, and it becomes the de facto standard:

Although that coloring job does no favors to Neill's art, I love Dorothy as a trendy little turn-of-the-century blonde moppet! Baum also slightly changes her speech pattern, with a lot more slang and truncated words. "Invis'ble" "Prob'ly" that sort of thing.

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1904)

This is the second book in a row that barely takes place in Oz. This time, Dorothy falls inside the earth during a quake, along with her new pet cat (we haven't seen Toto since book #1), Zeb the local ranch boy, and the horse-and-buggy they were all riding in. In a typically Oz-like meetup, the Wizard also fell into the earth, and the group must make it back to the surface. Which, actually, they sort of never do. Ozma saves them with her deus ex Magic Picture.

I like that this book reveals that Mombi was once a formal Wicked Witch, having enslaved the north but deposed during the Wizard's rule. Again, this is a retcon, however; I think book #2 specifically says Mombi wasn't as good at magic as the true two Wicked Witches of East and West.

But the absolute highlight in book #4 is Eureka the kitten, who is a complete ass the entire time. (Jim the horse also ends up being a jerk.) The book ends with a veritable courtroom circus as Eureka is put on trial for eating one of the Wizard's nine tiny piglets... specifically the one he gave to Ozma as a pet. The punishment is death. It's a brilliant scene, but it comes at an odd time in the story, since the squad has finished the adventure and made it back to Oz. It's a weird element to add to what totally felt like the denouement. The Tin Woodman makes a crappy public defender, by the way.

It's a shame that the recent DS game, The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, did not take advantage of all the Oz lore to come with a decent RPG. There are so many great, distinct characters in Oz that you could have a ball crafting a unique team. I'll take Hungry Tiger, Tik-Tok, Polychrome and the Sawhorse!

(Scans from Oz-Central.com.)

WE GOT THAT B ROLL!! (YouTube)
Oh my, so good. I'm sending Tony a clip of two businessmen shaking hands as thanks for forwarding this one along.

Christmas Myths: Why December 25th? (Huffington Post)
Keep in mind that "the reason for the season" is, as usual, a combination of modern lies and ancient marketing.

Toons of the 2000s (Toon Zone)
Toon Zone has a massive look back at the last decade of animation that is a great time-sink. I had forgotten just how much the kids TV scene had changed, with the gradual loss of Saturday morning and weekday afternoon lineups.

Yakuza 3 Finally Confirmed For Western Release (GayGamer)
Never played a Yukuza game before, but I'm down for this one.

America the Eclectic and other Pagan News of No (The Wild Hunt)
I've always been curious to see stats on this: the number of Americans who self-identify as Christians yet still hold strong beliefs in non-Christian hoo-hah like reincarnation, astrology and ghosts.

TimeLostBatman (Twitter)
OK, funny idea. Batman posts updates as he battles back to modern day. The only problem is that whoever is doing this is doing it WAY TOO OFTEN. Jesus, you get like five jokey updates an hour. Pace yourself, Bruce. DC isn't publishing this miniseries until friggin' April.

A bunch of them are really funny.

DCU in 2010 (The Source: DCU Weblog)
Been a great week for teaser announcements on the DC weblog, in addition to the Return of Bruce Wayne. Wonder Woman is getting her old numbering back with issue #600, "Legacies" sounds a lot like DC's version of "Marvels," Superman has a big event coming, and Flash gets a new Secret Files book. Looks like everybody gets some love next year after letting the Lanterns lead 2009 with Blackest Night.

Am I giving the LEGO ___ brand too much credit in not saying they've already that jump-the-shark moment?

I think by now we all know what we're getting here. The Cliff's Notes version of the storyline, peppered with parody that wouldn't even made it into Cracked Magazine circa 1983.

One bit I'm really tired of is the dusty old "character is expected to produce item A, but actually produces comical item B." Here you think Ron is going to level his wand, but instead pulls out a trumpet. See also: light saber, whip, batarang.

Not only is Traveller's Tales steadfastly refusing to improve the core LEGO engine, they're also refusing to improve the cutscene writing.

It was about this point in the trailer where I started to worry about the unlockable cast of characters. Seems to me that LEGO Harry Potter might have the same problem that plagues LEGO Indiana Jones: the playable characters are all sort-of-boring human figures. LEGO Star Wars had plenty of visually distinctive aliens; far and away the best cast. LEGO Batman had about half the awesome it should have. Although the assemblage of villains was great, there were too many WTF inclusions like "zookeeper" and "policeman" and "policeman with different hat."

The trailer seems to be only focusing on scenes from the first Harry Potter book, the boring one that Rowling wrote before the Fad Bomb hit and she was able to graduate from Young Adult Fiction status. So it's tough to tell whether LEGO Harry Potter will give us anything more than multiple versions of Harry, Ron and Hermione, plus the Hogwarts teaching staff.

Seems sort of obvious that, at the least, one of the lock-and-key elements that differentiates characters will be the affiliated House. Like, you need to switch to a Slytherin character to open this door.

The first LEGO game to feature a climactic battle inside a bathroom?

Another wearisome bit of LEGO screenplay: character unnecessarily jumps into cheesy disco dance. Might have been funny when "serious" Star Wars characters did it four years ago. Not even close to funny when magical tykes do it.

Because guess what, the sequel will be Years 5-7. Joystiq notes that this trailer supplies no release date for Years 1-4, and that we're still a year away from the first part of the final Harry Potter movie release. But I would tend to doubt they would issue a trailer in December 2009 for a game not due until November 2010. More likely this game will arrive next spring in advance of the HP7 hype crush, and then get a second life at retail when that movie does come out at the end of 2010. Then you can expect Years 5-7 to show up in early 2011. Somehow I doubt that they don't already have most of 5-7 done anyway.

Oh har-de-frickin-har. Good one, Marketing.

Although we're mostly off the Potter interest train - haven't seen a movie since #4 - I can see us picking this up. These LEGO games scale well across Fourhman generations.

Three final points:

1) I no longer expect TT to have "fixed" the co-op problems. I just anticipate the game will screw you over regularly.

2) LEGO Batman arrived just ahead of Sony's Trophy mandate and never received a Trophy-enabling patch. Clark and I have that game at, like, 99%, and we would totally do again if they added Trophies to it. Not going to happen.

3) Again, I wish they had made a LEGO Speed Racer. But I understand why they didn't.

Tonight Clark decided he wanted to play some ExciteBots... which of course was one of the games that lost all save files when the Wii went belly-up. So we had to start over. Did the first six races. Man, that game could have totally been something if Nintendo had not crammed it into a motion-based Remote-only scheme.

I'm thinking of doing a personal Greatest Disappointments of 2009 article for Aeropause, but it sounds like total flamebait, doesn't it? Basically, I'd get to swing in with a snarky bash-fest and trash some 2009 releases. I suppose I'd have to do a personal Greatest Surprises to balance it out. Not sure if it's all worth the trouble.

My disappointing games shortlist for 2009 includes Madworld, Scribblenauts, Beatles Rock Band, Little King's Story, Kingdom Hearts DS, Ghostbusters, ExciteBots, A Boy and His Blob, and, yes, New Super Mario Bros Wii. Somehow, some way, I was psyched for these games and they ended up serving me short. Some have very specific failings (like my ExciteBots complaint above); others are more nebulously disappointing.

When I stand with an unpopular opinion, I always feel that there has to be more people out there that feel the same way... and they are not being served by all the gushy Perfect Ten review scores. The controls in Scribblenauts suck. Suck suck suck. Game-ruining suck. Not that every disappointing game ends up being a bad one.

On the pleasant surprise end, I'd slot My Life as a Darklord, Bonsai Barber, Lit, Deadly Creatures, LEGO Rock Band, Flower, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Rabbids Go Home, Katamari Forever, and, yes, PlayStation Home. These are games that maybe I wasn't expecting to be as good as they were. A year ago, I never would have guessed that Sony's dopey Home would end up being a decent place to dap around. I have a hat shaped like a Pooka!

Somewhere in the middle are games like Resident Evil 5, Professor Layton 2, Wii Sports Resort, Noby Noby Boy, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Critter Crunch, Klonoa, Rhythm Heaven, Uncharted 2, Pokemon Rumble, EA Active, Ratchet Future 2, NPC Pikmin, Swords & Soldiers, and Fat Princess. These are games that more or less lived up to the hype, whatever level of hype it was.

In all three categories, there's an unseen scale. I mean, in no universe is Deadly Creatures as good as Arkham Asylum. But both managed to surprise me with how they fared and the experiences they presented.

And that's still not even a complete list of everything I played this year. Or how December will polish things off. I'm still leaning towards picking up Assassin's Creed 2 this week, if I can find another $60 game to pair up with the Buy One Get One Half Off deal at Toys R Us (plus: I have another $30 in gift cards). That, or Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. In fact, I'm thinking of returning New Super Mario Bros Wii and buying M&L twice.

That's the kind of delightful snark you can anticipate in my future Aeropause article, should I write it.

This third installment takes us through Epcot, AK Lodge and Hollywood Studios in one day, and Magic Kingdom on the next.

2:09 PM Oct 18: It is downright cold in Orlando today. 60s!

There was no way we could have packed enough appropriate clothing on this trip. The temps were just too all over the place. Next time, we should probably just take one cold getup and one warm getup and then just wash one or the other every night.

2:11 PM Oct 18: The Kim Possible World Showcase thing is really cool, but time consuming if you do all the missions.

Here's a shot of one of the more extravagant Kim Possible installations: the little robot bee girl that you have to shut down in Japan.

That really is a brilliant way to make World Showcase more palatable to kids.

2:32 PM Oct 18: Won't be able to watch Batman B&B and Venture Bros thanks to them being on a non-Disney network.

Yeah, the hotel TV doesn't carry much outside the Disney family. You get the local networks, sure, but not a lot of competitor cable stations. You'll enjoy Disney XD, not Cartoon Network, thank you very much.

Thanks to Kim Possible being so engrossing, there is a huge Twitter lag until the next update.

And yes, they sell Bakugan and Hello Kitty and Naruto and Domo-kun and Pokemon and Monchichi stuff at Epcot Japan.

7:31 PM Oct 18: Enjoying the Animal Kingdom Lodge lobby. The lobby.

That was post-dinner at the buffet at Animal Kingdom Lodge. That ginger carrot soup was really, really good. At the Lodge gift shop was where I found this quasi-funny clothing sticker.

Then we bugged it over to Hollywood Studios for a late Fantasmic showing.

8:32 PM Oct 18: Dead center, Scar section, extra magic hours Fantasmic

I love Park Hopping.

10:09 PM Oct 18: Clark has now experienced both Great Movie Ride variants.

Cowboy and gangster. He's right within the proper age range for that sort of overplayed drama.

11:16 AM Oct 19: Watching Japanese TV teach English is fascinating.

We never did find anything really amazing on Japanese TV. Most evenings were period soap operas, and mornings were English tutor shows. The best program we found combined the two: a young Japanese prince had to learn English to impress a caucasian king.

11:19 AM Oct 19: Pre-park bag check is often so perfunctory that you have to wonder what they're looking for.

And it's such a roadblock! The terrorists won. :(

12:43 PM Oct 19: So how accurate are the 15 year old stats quoted at Universe of Energy?

Oy, that attraction was unnecessarily long back when the facts were closer to accurate. Now it's just tedious. Gut the Universe, please. Probably plenty of space in there for a dark coaster ride that simulates dinosaur asses becoming coal, right?

1:21 PM Oct 19: Who is the cutout head driving the surprise truck on Test Track?

I need to Google that. Has to be a tribute to somebody. And the cutout is too blatantly cheap to be an Imagineered holdover from World of Motion.

While I'm name-dropping bygone EPCOT pavilions, there was a couple of great shirts that used the old style land icons. I would have bought it except the design used that weird half-sticky plastic paint.

5:20 PM Oct 19: This may be my first time on Tomorrowland Speedway.

in all the times I've been to WDW, I don't ever recall doing the Speedway. I mean, even at it's best, it's a lame ride. So it's not like I've been denied a Disney Must-Do. But it was cool to let Clark drive. You parents who have let your kids drive will understand why I needed a neck massage afterward.

8:10 PM Oct 19: It's hard to believe that there's no pre-existing lounge singers in the Disney pantheon so they had to invent one for Cosmic Ray's.

Right? Just when you're expecting another Toy Story or Stitch overlay, Disney provides a guy who looks straight out of the Chuck E. Cheese house band.

8:58 PM Oct 19: There is no tired at DisneyWorld.

8:59 PM Oct 19: Of course, there is H1N1, judging by the wet cough princesses in the back of the bus.

That's when I decided to head back to Magic Kingdom after Rhonda and Clark went to bed. I did the math and realized I could have another two hours of Park time.

10:25 PM Oct 19: It's 10:30 and Peter Pan still has a half hour wait. Pick up a Fastpass for midnight!

They have done something horribly wrong with Peter Pan's Flight and I can't figure out what it is.

12:05 AM Oct 20: Taking a self-guided secrets tour of Magic Kingdom.

Thanks to a $1 iPhone app, I am now firmly prepared to annoy family members on future visits. "Look at the second story window of that Liberty Square building! Note the two lanterns... two if by sea, get it?"

Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden (YouTube)
Did I embed this one already? It's still great.

Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels' Generous Offe (Mighty God King via Looney Labs)
Great fanciful timeline of some very different Beatle decades. And in comments: "I can't help but think that if you're a right wing Beatles fan, you're doing something terribly wrong."

Seriously, this one is a must-read.

Game Design the Miyamoto Way: Flow and Difficulty (Desert Hat via GameSetWatch)
A good explanation of the classic Super Mario save system. I still say it's bullshit, but at least now I see the science behind it.

How to Quickly Convert a Wall Outlet Into a USB Charger (Gizmodo)
This is the most futuristic thing I've ever seen.

'Smallville' sneak peek: Doctor Fate, Stargirl, Hawkman, and more! (EW)
Man, I do regret not keeping up with Smallville. I had no idea the show has turned into a fullblown DCU Elseworlds.

Games Journalism: What Not To Say (Quintin Smith via GameSetWatch)
Good list of reminders for pro writers and aspiring pro writers.

How dare you criticize wasteful defense spending! (Salon via Mark Evanier)
Cut all spending! (Except defense. Spend trillions on that.)

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (The Escapist)
Oooo. Nice editorial about the continuing failure of third parties on Wii. But then half the comments are people walking in to badmouth Dead Space Extraction or mysteriously "agree" with the notion that the Wii sucks.

Don't Be That Guy: Blackest Night Edition (Comics Alliance)
Oh dear. A comics retailer takes a tacky, nearly naked photo to promote the rainbow Lantern rings, setting off an other gender controversy. Apparently, some scumbag retailers are fine giving up on female fans.

This is one of those entries that is really only useful to my wife when she reconciles the credit card statement.

Thanks to a tweet from Paul, I heard about Best Buy's Cyber Monday deal where you get a $20 PSN gift card for free when you buy a PS3 game off a select list. And it was a pretty nice list. So I ordered the new Buzz Quiz World game for $40 and did an in-store pickup the next day. $20 free credit! That is hot stuff.

(Man, I hate that "cyber monday" became a thing. You might as well use the words "virtual" or "electronic.")

As anybody who follows me on Facebook knows, I already spent some of the PSN credit on Rock Band tracks.

I am no better than all the dopes on Farmville. :(

Immediately upon firing up Buzz Quiz World, I landed two Trophies. Immediately. On the title screen. They were awarded for having created custom quizzes, which I did back on the first PS3 Buzz and the sequel was good enough to absorb. There is still a third Trophy related to custom quizzes that I want, where at least ten of my quizzes have been played by 25 people and have a rating of 2.5 stars or higher. If you want to help GET ME THAT TROPHY 2009, go here and take my quizzes. Tonight I posted two about Green Lantern and one snarky quiz about Aeropause.

Picked up a black Wii Remote+MotionPlus over the weekend, so that's that then. Now I have four Remotes. I suppose I'll be doing 4P Mario Bros, but I'd rather be playing 4P Pokemon Rumble. With GameCube controller compatibility, I've had 4P on all the really good multiplayer Wii games for ages... so I guess this buy was mainly to satisfy the lust for a black Remote.

I still only have three Nunchuks and now three MotionPlus, so any hopes of 4P Wii Sports Resort are right out.

Here's the big stuff, I wrangled some Play-Asia.com coupons and managed three separate orders. I have two game soundtrack CDs on the way: Animal Crossing (I think it's City Folk, but I forget. Doesn't really matter.) and Katamari Tribute, which matches up to our US release of Katamari Forever. Looking forward to those.

Play-Asia has Yoshi stuffed animals on a Black Friday sale. One of those made it to my shopping cart as well, imagine that.

Also winging its way from Hong Kong to Pennsylvania is the DVD boxed set of Korean TV drama Coffee Prince. Hopefully it's a good dub. But since the last time we watched it, we were picking it up on friggin' Veoh every week, I bet we'll be impressed.

But the absolute neatest Play-Asia grab was, wait for it, Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse for Wii. Japanese Wiis. How does that work, you may wonder? But the Wii is region-locked!

Well, some major Fatal Frame heads are 99% done with a patch that allows legit Japanese FF4 disks to play on Wiis of other regions. The patch also adds English subtitles on the fly. This is impressive stuff by any metric. Since Nintendo seems to have quietly shelved Fatal Frame 4, and nobody at Tecmo has revealed any future plans for the franchise, this crazy import/patch nonsense is the only way we're getting new Fatal Frame for the forseeable future.

Note that I said 99%. There's always the possibility that the final 1% goes belly-up, and I'll end up with the loveliest un-enjoyable Fatal Frame souvenir since "Lusty Brown Butterfly." But let's send the patch team cheering thoughts, shall we?