Monday, December 31, 2007

Friday, December 28, 2007

Surviving Christmas

I honestly had no idea it has been so long since posting. The Christmas holiday, along with my day off the day after and my two "work" days have just flown by. The quote marks in the preceding sentence are meant to convey the fact that while I was at work, there really was no work to be done. Well, that isn't entirely correct. I completed some much needed Six Sigma training, which was horrendously boring, and I played both Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters and Draglade, a DS music based fighting game. I was unaware I was going to be reviewing this game until it arrived in my mailbox. This happens more frequently than one might think, and while I am always surprised that I have received the game, I'm usually interested in what the game ends up being. More on Draglade later. First I must update you on the continued war between Pestilence and the leader of the Four Horsemen, grinning Death himself.

As you already know, foul Pestilence placed his mark on my children before Christmas, attempting to strike them down with both an ear infection and strep throat. On Christmas eve, Death made his presence known by appearing in a Christmas cookie. A more fearful individual would think that they were to perish either on, or before Christmas, but I took it to mean that Death was warning Pestilence away from us. Call me optimistic, but I prefer not to think that our family's Christmases from here on out would be tainted by one, or all of our deaths.

Unfortunately, this was not to be the last salvo in this war among the Horsemen. The refrigerator in the basement, our storage fridge for the spoils of our Costco milk runs, had been exhibiting a strange smell for some time. Being the lazy person that I am, I did nothing about it. On Christmas, I brought the leftovers downstairs to place them in the fridge and realized that I couldn't put my sacred leftovers in such a stench filled refrigerator, so I set off to clean it. I started wiping down the walls and the crisper when I realized that the crisper could come out. Excellent, I thought, as the smell seemed to be coming from it. I removed the crisper and was greeted with the sight of what can only be described as a foul pool of, what, I don't know. One one side of the fridge, it was a greenish-gray with a thick consistency. On the other side it was the color of caramel. Both sides smelled horrible. Cleaning it up was not a pleasant task, however I was successful in doing so. I don't know what exactly would have dripped down there to create such a fetid swamp, but I have an idea that the caramel apple pies we used to get from Costco must have leaked behind the crisper, unbeknownst to us and that, along with a constant flow of water from the humid air in the basement caused Lake Funk-o-lot.

It wasn't the way I had hoped to spend my Christmas evening, however at least the fridge is now clean. It still smells somewhat, so it has an upcoming appointment with some bleach, but for now at least you can open the door without thinking a raccoon died in the egg tray. Hopefully this marks the end of the spat between the Horsemen as I'm tired of being their mouse to bat back and forth like eager cats. If anything else happens, I'll be sure to let you know, unless it's my death, as I'm fairly certain that blogging from the netherworld is impossible.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Don't Eat the Reaper


I'm not sure what to expect when the leering visage of Death appears amongst your Christmas cookies. Perhaps it's a reminder that in these festive times, we're all just biding time until we ride the pale horse to the netherworld. Perhaps Death is sending a message to foul Pestilence, that this family is under the Reaper's grim protection. Perhaps it's just a freak of the batter and the sprinkles. It's hard to say. One thing I do know is that leaving this cookie out for Santa is a sure way to either receive nothing but coal, or to get whacked by the Elven Cosa Nostro.

May your holiday season be a safe and joyous one and may your new year find you healthy in both body and spirit.

Christmasally yours,
Brandon

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Merry Plague-mas

Almost every member of my household was sick this weekend. Only myself and one dog was spared Pestilence's diseased finger. I say one dog as I'm fairly certain that Henry is not long for this world as his body is wracked with growths both foul and oft appearing.

It started with my daughter who contracted both an ear infection and strep throat. Next to fall was Linda who was laid low with a cold that filled her sinuses with cement. Then Ben woke up with a fever, albeit one that didn't affect his mood or activity level at all. After a day and a half of debating the need to take Ben to an urgent care facility we decided that it was better to take him and get him all set for Christmas than wait and have him get sick. This morning, Linda and I both looked at his throat and it was clear as can be. By the time we were seen at the urgent care facility, only a couple of hours later, it looked like some sort of primeval swamp. I think I saw a coelacanth hanging out by his uvula. The odd thing about this kid is that if his sister harms him in even the slightest, he's quick to tears, however having a massive bacterial infection in his throat causes no discomfort.

Everyone is doing fine now. Linda's cold seems to have abated and both children are medicated to the gills with antibiotics. So far, I seem to have escaped illness however I'm sure that on Christmas day I'll awaken with every node swollen to bursting with foul contagion. I may need to have extra nodes flown in just to accommodate the illness. I'm tempted to go to the doctor's tomorrow and get my throat swabbed, but the notion of spending yet another morning, Christmas Eve morning no less, at a doctor's office, is not an appealing one. Better I should wait and ruin everyone's Christmas with my diseased person.

Friday, December 21, 2007

My Deepest Fears Realized

When the Lego Indiana Jones game was announced, I was concerned that they would also create Lego Indiana Jones sets to go along with the game. I am running out of room in my office and other than the Batmobile in the bedroom, the wife is not going to allow the home to be decorated in children's building blocks.

I was perusing the paper this evening and chanced upon an ad for some sale taking place at Toys R Us this weekend. One of the sections in the ad was for a sneak peak of toys coming in 2008. What did I happen to see, as a feeling of dread settled in my stomach but two Indiana Jones Lego sets.

*Sigh.*

Oddly enough, one of them is the exact set I felt could melt my steely resolve, namely the tomb that the Arc of the Covenant was found in, complete with a big, black Egyptian statue.

The second set is less exciting consisting of the motorcycle chase from The Last Crusade. I can only imagine what sets will come out next year, but the potential for Batman-Indiana Jones combinations may be too great to pass up.

Looks like I may be heading out to Toys R Us tomorrow.

*Double sigh.*

Thursday, December 20, 2007

For Greg

Dear Mr. Howley,

First of allow me to express my sincerest regret at not being able to be purchased by you. It is my deepest wish that I could have been brought to the home of someone such as yourself rather than the hu-man to whose home I was deposited.

I have had the benefit of spending time with a great number of hu-mans. Some were successful in seeing past the veil of GLADoS. Some ended up being consumed by flames or shot up by the turrets. Many dropped my compatriots into incinerators, although I know that you would never do that. Thankfully, one escaped and temporarily stopped GLADos and, more importantly, allowed us to be sold and spend time with you hu-mans without the fear of incineration.

The hu-man I have been sent to is nothing like any hu-man I have ever spent time with. He is...strange. He speaks of nothing but singing, yet he is not a singer. He is under the delusion that he is in a, to use his phrase, "kick-ass band" and will not cease talking about it. At night he does...things...to me. Unspeakable things. Plus, he carries the vague scent of bacon. Yes, I have a nose. It is well hidden.

I know that you live a considerable distance from this hu-man, however I am sure that if you were willing to make the trip, you could easily distract him by asking him to perform with you and abscond me to the wilds of Colorado. There we could live together along with your mate and your offspring. I am very soft and could easily comfort a small hu-man should they find themselves in a state of emotional distress.

Please consider my offer, Mr. Howley. I am not sure how much I can endure living with this hu-man. After time with him, I long for the sweet escape of the incinerator. Even GLADoS's incessant whining is better than what I have had to hear these past few hours.

Respectfully yours,

Weighted Companion Cube


P.S. He kisses like a drunk seal.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

The Rush of Performing

Partially out of a need to see what was up, as the kids would say, and partially because it's not practical to have others over to my home during my gaming time, I started up a band in Rock Band where I play bass and sing. It is, in a word, intoxicating.

I'm only playing on medium, however when I know the words to a song, I can 5 star it pretty much every time. Not knowing the song, as you would well imagine, is a much more dodgy proposition as I'm trying to figure out the singing harmonies while keeping my eye on the bass track. Often times it ain't pretty, but even with those impediments to progress, I'm still able to 3-star those songs and get fans. Once you start a gig, it's hard to back out just because you don't know the song (some set lists are generated on the fly) because you'll lose fans. Coming across such a song is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I can only imagine that this is but a fraction of the rush one must feel to perform in real life.

As I no longer want to be caught with my vocal pants down, I have continued my vocals campaign on Easy so that I can become familiar with the songs. The best part is that it doesn't even feel like practice. I genuinely enjoy the singing, so if singing these songs allows me to not only finish the vocals tour on Easy and prepare myself for my band, then that's even better. For the love of Robert Plant, I want to get singing lessons. I need help!

I can honestly say that I haven't had this much fun in a video game in a long, long time, and it is absolutely true that while the solo tours in Rock Band are lots of fun, the World Tour mode fucking blows the doors off this thing.

And in case you were wondering, your goddamn right I 5-starred "Wanted Dead or Alive" while in the band. Hell fucking yeah I did.

New Mr. Binky

My latest Mr. Binky column is up. Sorry it's late, but events conspired against me. Seriously, I had nothing to do with it.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

Just finished watching the "Final Cut" of Blade Runner. It's a great cut of the film and the remastered picture and sound are well worth the price of admission. The ending is better than the original one I remember, but I gotta say that I still have no idea why you'd think that Decker is a replicant. In fact, other than Rachel asking him if he ever tried the test on himself, I don't know why you'd even ask the question. I guess the unicorn vision and the origami unicorn are supposed to be too much of a coincidence? I don't know. It's going to take someone much smarter than me to explain it. Greg, you up for it?

Monday, December 17, 2007

The Fashion Show

I spent my lunch hour finishing up the Christmas shopping for my beautiful bride. This weekend I prompted her for more gift ideas as all she had given me prior to this was "gloves" and I didn't want the sum total of her Christmas experience to be an Isotoner commercial. After thinking about what to ask for, she told me that I always do a good job of picking out clothes for her, which, admittedly, I do, so I could do that. Oh, she added, and I love Michael Kors. Prior to this conversation, I had never heard the man's name, however I'm smart enough to know that when your wife tells you that she loves a certain designer, she's either dropping a very large hint, or she's having an affair. Either way, you lose.

How Linda even knows of this person is a mystery. My wife is not a girly-girl. That's not to say that she isn't feminine, just that he has rarely shown an interest in the stereotypical girly hobbies such as fashion and make-up. Granted, she reads In Style magazine, but I just assumed that any items found in a magazine about celebrity fashion were not attainable by mere mortals. Personally, I blame Oprah as her leering visage recently started showing up in our mailbox. Linda says that she likes the magazine, but would like it better if Oprah had nothing to do with it, something I find very odd. It is, after all, Oprah's magazine. Every month I get Cooking Light, Game Informer and Playboy and I can assure you that they all represent my interests quite faithfully. Food, boobs and video games are some of my favorite things.

Armed with the knowledge that my wife loves both Michael Kors and Calvin Klein (him I already knew about) I set out to do some shopping. From my trip to the store, the only additional information I have about Michael Kors is that the man is infatuated with belts. Time and time again I would find a very nice shirt only to pull it off the rack and find that someone had soldered a metal belt to it. I can only assume that the man has some sort of investment in a copper mine because the man's clothing is lousy with the stuff.

Thankfully I am not so helpless in the ways of female fashion to be stopped by some metallic accessories and I continued to shop undaunted. I must admit that I have no idea how people can afford to buy designer clothing. Most of my wardrobe consists of things from Target, Old Navy and Kohls, and what isn't from those stores is from the Penny Arcade store. I have simple tastes. To think that there are people out there that simply walk into a store and think nothing about dropping 90 bucks on a sweater blows my mind. I am not one of those people, regardless of whose name is on the damn thing and instead I was able to parlay multiple discounts, including one obtained by opening a store credit card, into savings of mythological proportions. Normally I wouldn't bother opening up a store card, however the savings were too much to pass up. Too much! I'm told I can cancel it any time. Actually what I was told is that the card will cancel itself, however I find it very hard to believe that even death could break the surly bonds of credit fashioned between myself and this store.

With this trip, the shopping is almost complete, save for stocking stuffers and the like. I can assure you that I will not be opening up a store credit card for these items as I have no need for a gas station credit card. I can pay for my Slim Jims with cash, thank you very much.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Take Me Down to the Paradise City

The new Burnout demo dropped last week and I am, in a word, confused.

I'm not sure what to think about the free form driving mode. On the one hand, the long loading times that plagued the last Burnout offering are a thing of the past, as they well should be as they've had enough time with the platform, however, on the other hand, I demand structure and driving around to random intersections trolling for races like they're hookers and I'm a Des Moines brush salesman visiting Vegas for the first time, makes me feel unclean. It certainly doesn't help that most of the intersections in the demo had nothing but cheery messages proclaiming that delicious content would be available in the full game, so check back then. When your beautifully rendered open world demo is bereft of races, you're asking people to buy into nothing but the idea and I'm not so sure I'm willing to put my money down just yet.

My readings on the subject of the crash junction removal hasn't made me feel much better about things as the crash junctions were my favorite part of the Burnout series. Yes, you can turn any intersection into a crash junction in the new game, which makes me wonder if the unfortunate residents of Paradise City are aware that a madman trolls their streets, considering them nothing but paints for his brutal art, but my question to you is how many of these living, breathing intersections contain nothing but rows and rows of unspoiled buses? One? Two if I'm lucky? The mind reels.

Those that I game with speak of this game as the spiritual successor to Midtown Madness, a game I have never heard of, much less played. They refer to the game in hushed, reverent tones, and describe it as less of a racing game and more of a chat room on wheels. I can honestly say that I can't think of a more horrid concept and if this is what Burnout Paradise turns into, you can count me out. The only chatting I do is via the sound of metal on metal. I speak in flames and wreckage and in this tongue, I commune with gods.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Early Christmas Gift

Greetings. Christmas comes eleven days early this year courtesy of Valve. Our prayers have been answered and behold, the plushy Weighted Companion Cube! I bought mine. Have you purchased yours? No? Hmmm. Well, perhaps you weren't as friendly with yours as I was with mine. You laughed when you dropped yours in the incinerator, didn't you? Bastard.

Yesterday was another glorious day off. For those of you that have been here for some time, do you wonder when I don't post, thinking that perhaps I've fallen off the laziness wagon and have gone back to my slothful days? No? Well, you should. The recidivism rate for laziness is quite high, especially for someone such as myself who is genetically predisposed to slothfulness. Laziness was not the culprit here though, just me being wrapped up in the fun and excitement of a vacation day. Nothing too exciting, just wrapping up the children's Xmas shopping with Linda and consuming an ungodly amount of food. Now that we have kids, simply being able to share a meal and have a normal conversation is like being on a far away beach, minus the sand and the potential for being mauled by decapod crustaceans.

I am continuing to make progress in Mass Effect. I have left the confines of the Citadel after speaking to pretty much every being in the damn place. Now I'm on some planet killing robots or some shit. I don't know. I do like that they've revamped the whole good/evil dynamic, replacing it instead with nice guy/flaming asshole. When I play these games, my moral sensitivities get in the way of enjoying myself as a murderous psychopath, however I have no barriers to being a dick. I can only assume this behavioral pattern is close enough to my real life personality so as to not cause conflict. When I knocked out someone simply because he was crazy and his rambling annoyed me, I cackled with glee. Who knew that my niche lay not in chaotic evil but lawful jackhole?

Rock Band continues to impress and on Wednesday, a cadre of coworkers will come to my home for some full scale rocking. Just when I think this game can't impress me any more, it comes out with some new effect while I'm playing, or generally just ups the atmosphere present during a performance. I am halfway through the solo guitar tour on medium and if things keep getting exponentially more awesome, I can only assume finishing the tour will result in my death from a massive rockgasm. I pity the person who has to clean up such a mess.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Another Day Off

Ah, the joys of yet another day off. One of two this week, actually.

Today was spent mostly gaming, but I also got some other things done like sanded down the drywall patch from where I sent my bowling ball into the basement wall. Don't ask.

I spent the time between Rock Band and Mass Effect. I'm continuing to make progress as a drummer in Rock Band and am really enjoying it, despite feeling like a complete spaz most of the time.

Mass Effect has to be the prettiest galactic conversation simulator I've ever seen. Conversation in this game is like the physics puzzles in Half-Life 2. You made a pretty dialog engine, we get it. Can I shoot something please? Anything? Oh sure there's some combat, but half the time I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing, or when I'm getting hit. Thankfully my death lets me know when I've taken too much damage. Yay. Unfortunately my 360 has locked up on me twice today, once after about twenty minutes of unsaved fucking about in Mass Effect, so my fear is that the damn thing is going to die on me soon. That would be bad. If it does, I'll have no recourse but to go out and buy Super Mario Galaxy, Christmas list be damned. If I have to spend the next four weeks playing Cooking Mama 2, I'm going to stab myself in the groin. Twice.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Here Endeth the Flood

With my recent completion of Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for the Wii, the Great Review Deluge of 2007 is over. Granted, I'm still working on Dead Head Fred for the PSP and recently received Geometry Wars: Galaxies for both the Wii and the DS and Cooking Mama 2: Dinner With Friends for the DS, but that's besides the point. Handheld don't take me as much time as console games what with my ability to play them for a couple of hours when watching tv at night as well as at work on my lunch break.

So far I'm really enjoying Dead Head Fred. The combat takes some time to get used to, and the camera can cause platforming problems, but it's a great concept, it looks fantastic and John C. McGinley as Fred is some inspired casting. We'll see how it holds up as I continue to play, but if things continue, it'll be getting a favorable review from me. Cooking Mama 2 on the other hand just isn't doing it for me. I guess I don't see the appeal of the game. Maybe it's because I cook almost every evening, so this game just seems like work for me. Plus, most of the time when I cook I have two children who are less than appreciative. The last thing I need is a game where someone is whining because I botched their pizza. Screw you friends of Mama! Go buy your own goddamned pizza.

I haven't touched either Geometry Wars games yet, but it's Geometry Wars so I'm sure it'll be great. I recently rented Ghost Squad for the Wii and based on my limited play time decided to keep it. Between the pre-played price at GameFly and my five buck credit, the game cost me less than 20 bucks and they're shipping me the case and manual free of charge. That's a hard price to beat, especially given that last night I unlocked Ninja mode. Don't ask.

Tomorrow is yet another day off and I intend to spend it playing Mass Effect. I'm tingling with excitement, but not as much excitement as that brought on by Rock Buddy Chip's latest gift to me, a microphone stand from his studio. Between that and the news that Peters' wife was able to score him a Rock Band bundle for Xmas, it is an utmost certainty that the band will be gotten together in January. Saving Throw will be rolling through your town in no time.

Rock on Cleveland, rock on.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Ninjas > Pirates

My son received a boatload of plastic ninjas for his birthday and despite the fact that most of the cheap-ass things are now differently-abled in some way due to lost feet and hands, he continues to play with them a great deal. Knowing that the debate over ninjas and pirates still rages on, as the family was driving back home from running errands, I asked him who would win in a fight, a pirate or a ninja.

What amazed me was how quickly he responded. His response was that a ninja would win because he has a hole in his hand that he can use to catch the pirate's sword and take it away. Seems like a sound fighting strategy if you ask me. He also mentioned something about ninjas having motorcycles which they would bring to my house and I could ride the motorcycle while he and the ninjas played. Or something. Honestly, he went on for like thirty minutes about these ninjas. The motorcycle thing, if it's true, puts me squarely in the ninja camp as well as pirates have never done anything even remotely as cool as letting ride their motorcycles while they played at my house. Fucking pirates.

In other news, British gamers should soon be able to play Manhunt 2 as the ban in Britain has been lifted. Unfortunately, the game still sucks. Zing!

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Angels and Airwaves Pictures

Well, as I mentioned before, not many of the pictures from the Angels & Airwaves show actually came out, but I put the few that did in a Picasa album. There's also a nice pic of Joy in Tomorrow for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Concert Photos

Friday, December 07, 2007

The Friday Five - The PSP Edition

Welcome to the newest Disparate Elements ploy to not have to think of something to write. I'm calling it The Friday Five and as you may have guessed, it's a list of five things. Usually I'll try and stick to a theme, but the theme may just as well be "Things I Forgot to Tell You This Week". Sometimes I have a hard time coalescing my thoughts, especially on a Friday when my bulb is at its dimmest, so this will help me get things together. Fun!

I bought a PSP this week as, and I'm not making this up, GameShark kept sending me PSP games to review despite my repeated insistence that I don't have a PSP. I'm convinced that Bill has stock in Sony and this is all part of some nefarious plan to drive up the stock price, using my own greed against me at the same time. Honestly, how could I resist the 100 bucks in review games just sitting on my desk waiting to be taken? At any rate, I bought one of the newfangled slimline systems and while it is slimmer and lighter, much of the thing hasn't changed, so today's Friday Five is:

Five Things Still Wrong With the PSP

I'm so gloriously negative! But I digress

1.) No on-board storage and no included memory stick. The fact that you need a memory stick to save games is silly enough in the first place, but to then not include one with the system is even more ridiculous. I mean, after spending 170 bucks, who wants to spend an additional 30 just so they can save their gaming progress? I realize that the PSP can do more with the memory stick like read movies and music from it, but it's still 100% necessary for game play, so include one in the box, or put one in the unit.

2.) You have to have the unit plugged in and fully charged to update the firmware. Why? This makes no sense. Maybe it's just a precautionary thing, but seriously, you get a new game console, want to upgrade the firmware and have to wait while the damn thing charges up? That's just dumb. Plus, it's a portable for Chrissakes, you shouldn't have to have an outlet handy any time you want to do anything with it.

3.) It needs firmware updates. Consoles used to be closed boxes. You bought one, bought some games, and played on it for three to five years. Now they're all so frakkin' complicated that they need multiple firmware upgrades just to turn the damn things on. Handhelds used to be the last bastion of closed-boxedness, but now this blasted thing needs firmware upgrades too. I just want to play games on the damn thing, not use it to open my garage door.

4.) Setting up wireless networking is a pain in the ass. Yeah, I'm glad it can do Wi-Fi and all that, but entering a 20+ digit WEP key with a cell phone interface is as close to hell as I've been in quite some time. If this thing is so smart, why can't I use the USB connection to put a text file on it and the system can import the WEP key and SSID from that? No good fucking reason, that's why.

5.) Games are on discs, not cartridges. UMD's are stupid and everyone knows it. The fact that the PSP has to read from a disc constantly sucks out the battery life and because it's read only, you have to buy a stinking memory card for game saves. Thankfully, the UMD has sold like gangbusters and it has heralded a new age of Sony proprietary media. Oh wait.

Now, on the plus side, that screen is still a fucking marvel of modern engineering and it is a slick looking piece of tech. It can do a bunch of new things like get RSS feeds automatically and connect to your PS3, should you have one, and it's hard to be impressed with 3D games on the DS after playing Medal of Honor Heroes 2 on the PSP so it's not all bad. I still probably wouldn't have bought one if I couldn't make money off of it, but now that I have one, I can play Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, and hopefully, review the upcoming God of War game. First though, I have to finish the aforementioned Medal of Honor and then Dead Head Fred. Time for this thing to earn its keep.

Front Page Failure

My Godzilla Unleashed review gets the front page treatment over at GameShark today, despite the fact that I gave it a big old "F". Let's hope that Atari doesn't advertise on the site or I might find myself out of doors, with a new PSP to support too!

More on the PSP later. Bowling beckons.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Droppin' Review Knowledge Like Bombs

My Zack and Wiki review is up so make haste to it! It really is a charming game. I hope it sells well, however it's not exactly positioned to do so. Getting something this quirky to sell well on a console not currently fought over by the casual gamer is hard enough as it is. Getting the aforementioned casual gamer to give it a look will be even tougher. Well, good on you Capcom for putting out things like this. Just for that, I will be buying Okami for the Wii even though I already played it on the PS2.

Support good games people! You have nothing to lose but your chains, your boring shooters and your silly GTA clones.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Day Off

I took a day off today, in the interest of culling my vacation herd. For some reason, my company allows you to carry over only exactly 40 hours of vacation. Not an hour more, not an hour less. As I conveniently have 4.5 days and not the requisite five, I'm pretty much screwed in the carry over departments, so instead I'm forced to take off 4.5 days between now and the end of the year. The horrors!

Today was day number one and what a glorious day it was. Nothing to exciting, started the day with some donuts for me and the missus, then we went to a parent teacher conference at my son's Pre-K to find out that he's a certified genius. Well, not certified, but he's quite smart. It's strange because most parents would have a feeling of "I made that kid, he's smart because I am" in these situations, but in this case, with him being adopted and all that, neither my wife nor I had a blasted thing to do with it. The best we can say is that we bought a very smart child.

After that, it was back to the house to hang out and play some Medal of Honor Heroes 2 like the good little reviewer that I am. I'm enjoying the game, but man they need to tighten up those checkpoints. This game throws a ridiculous number of enemies at you in a lot of places, many of which are far away from the last checkpoint and it can be a pain in the ass to get through such a battle and die because you were reloading as a Nazi surprised you, thereby causing you to do the battle all over again. Granted, this is the problem with any game that still uses the checkpoint save system, but for some reason, probably having to do with the fact that you have to be very slow, methodical and tactical with this game, I'm really feeling the pain of the spread out checkpoints.

After all the Nazi shooting Linda and I went out to Pure, a cool little Mexican place in out town. The food there is absolutely amazing and they have a surprisingly refreshing beer for 99 cents. It's hard to throw down four bucks on a beer when there's one on the menu for less than a dollar. Way I figure it, the buzz is the same, so why spend the extra cash. Despite the high number of tasty items on the menu, I always get the same thing which is this dish of these thick corn masa cakes split and stuffed with chile roast pork and queso fresca. It's a simple dish but it's so damn tasty I can't resist it. Add to it, the free melted cheese dip we had as an appetizer and we left with two very full stomachs.

Once lunch was finished, we wrapped up some Xmas shopping for my mom and sister and went back home. Linda was still working today so I returned to the basement to check out the online mode of Medal of Honor (I still suck at online WWII shooters, for those keeping score at home) and then busted out some tracks in Rock Band. The Queens of the Stone Age track "Go With the Flow" is giving me fits because I can't even 4-star it and I take it as a blemish on my otherwise sterling Rock Band record. It's a small timing issue and once I resolve it, I'll be back on track. This isn't the first time Queens of the Stone Age has caused me problems, but I conquered them once and I shall do so again.

As days off go, it was a pretty good one. I look forward to the other 3.5 of them being similarly splendiferous.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Angels & Airwaves Show

Once again I ventured out into the wilds of the Atlanta concert venues and once again I was not disappointed by the sheer amount of rock I found. The Angels & Airwaves show was, in a word, excellent. The band had a great stage presence and played a nice collection of stuff from their two albums. Their drummer Atom is a sight to behold. Hands down, he has to be the best drummer I've ever seen. His fills were absolutely amazing and many the time did I think he had an extra arm somewhere. The crowd was really digging the band too, and aside from some teenage punks who thought they could butt in front of me five minutes before A&A took the stage, everyone was very cool. I smacked them down verbally, for the record, with both my words and my stern visage letting them know that this cranky old man would knock them the fuck out if they kept on their present course of action.

Eventually though the sound and the jostling got to be too much for this cranky old man and I went to the back of the venue where I had the opportunity to chat up members of the very excellent opening band, Joy In Tomorrow. The lead singer Josh was particularly kind to spend some time shooting the shit with me, and as well as being an excellent singer, he's also a MD native and a Redskins fan. That's a win-win-win in my book. They're playing The Masquerade on January 18th, conveniently a Friday, so I'm planning on seeing them again. This live music thing is quite addictive.

I took 127 pictures total last night, of which something like six came our correctly. Once I've sorted through them all, I'll post them to my Picasa account and put the link up here. I wish I had gotten some better pictures, but the conditions weren't exactly ideal, especially given my pithy photography skills.

In short, it was a great night of fantastic music and I got home in time to be in bed by 11. Sadly, that may have been the best part of the evening.

Wow. I mean, wow.

My Mr. Binky column is up, and well, you should just see it for yourself. I should now know that if I mention copulating llamas in a column, Bill will be all to happy to provide pictures. My review of Dementium: The Ward is also up. What a banner day!

Monday, December 03, 2007

I Have Not Forgotten

I have not forgotten my pledge to post daily, however weekends are
hard for daytime posting and Sat. night was filled with holiday party
goodness while Sunday found me slaving over Mr. Binky's latest
missive. That brings us to Monday and here we are, you doing whatever
it is you're doing and me sitting in the balcony of The Roxy, waiting
for the Angels & Airwaves show. I expect to be very tired tomorrow.
Tales of epic rocking shall be told though, have no worries.

--
Disparate Elements
http://disparateelements.blogspot.com

Friday, November 30, 2007

On Game Reviewers and Firings

The gaming press was all abuzz today over the firing of long time Gamespot reviewer, and most recently big time editor type person Jeff Gerstmann was fired. The big deal over such a termination is that it would appear that Gerstmann was let go because of a game review. Depending on what you read, or what you believe, Gerstmann was fired because he either wrote a review of Kane & Lynch, the latest two person crime caper shooter from Eidos, or he starred in a video review of the same game. Neither the written review nor the video review painted the game in a particularly good light, however nothing all that off the mark from the current aggregate scores for the game. GameRankings has Kane & Lynch rated somewhere in the 6.5/10 scale and Gerstmann gave it a 6. As Gamespot consistently gives games slightly lower reviews than most other review outlets, this isn't all that strange. The current theory is that Eidos, which had paid in the thousands of dollars to advertise Kane & Lynch on Gamespot, going so far as to make the whole site look like either Kane or Lynch, or both, was none too pleased with either of the reviews, the video review in particular, and demanded he be fired.

Obviously, this doesn't paint Gamespot or Eidos in a particularly good light, nor does it speak very well about the state of game reviews in the first place, however all of those saying that the review system in general needs to be broken down and started from scratch are missing out on a number of very important points. How lucky for them that I'm here.

The first point is that the unfortunate relationship between game companies and the gaming press isn't going to change any time soon. Game companies pay to advertise, mostly, on gaming sites and in gaming magazines, both of which review games. As a result, readers don't have a lot of confidence that the reviewer is being honest about the game, what with all of the very visible ad dollars pumped into promoting said game. Reviewers probably don't feel like they can be honest, especially in the light of this most recent firing, as they don't want to lose their job. Game publishers feel like they're owed a favorable review due to all the money they've paid to advertise their game. However, the reason that this relationship isn't going to change any time soon is because despite all of the money people spend on games and gaming hardware, gaming is still considered a hobby and as such, the advertising in hobby magazines is directed towards things you can buy for that hobby.

Take fishing for example. Open a copy of Field and Stream and the majority of the products advertised in that magazine are products you can buy to help you fish and/or hunt. Ditto for gaming. Open a copy of Game Informer, and 90% of the ads are going to be for either games or gaming hardware. The difference between Field and Stream and Game Informer though is that Field and Stream doesn't review the products advertised in its pages, so there's no risk that they're going to piss off the makers of the Super Trout Lure-o-matic and lose some advertising dollars. Not so with gaming. Now, take something like Entertainment Weekly which is about as mass market a publication as you can get. Here's a sample of the products advertised in EW: cell phones, digital cameras, cars, tv shows and ham. Yes, ham. Most of those items aren't reviewed by EW, so they don't have to worry about losing advertising dollars. The items that are reviewed by EW, namely the tv shows, have a small statistical chance of being reviewed by the issue the ad appears in, and even if EW does review it, and doesn't like it, it's unlikely that the network will pitch a fit and demand someone be fired. If they do, EW can probably tell them to shove it, because they can fall back on that lucrative ham advertising campaign.

So, where does that leave gaming? A few options as I see it. One is to get more exposure in mass market publications. This is already happening as EW, for examples, reviews games, as does the Saturday Buyer's Choice section of my paper, the lovely Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Even Variety is starting to review games, even if they don't appear to be very good at it. The other would be for the enthusiast press such as Game Informer and the various game sites, to take advertising dollars from companies that they don't review things for. As much as I can't stand IGN, the whole idea of them getting McDonalds to sponsor something like free game guides is genius, because no one there is asked to write a review of the McRib so they can slam games all they want and not have to worry about losing ad revenue.

Part of the problem is also the fact that the gaming public needs to rely on reviews from professional game sites so much, namely because a) games are expensive and b) games can't be returned. Games are one of the few products that you can't return if it sucks or it's defective. Yes, other forms of media such as movies and music can't be returned if they suck, however if you buy a movie and it doesn't run in your player, you can exchange it for another copy in the hopes that it does. If you buy a 360 game and it has shitty ass AI, exchanging it for another copy of the same game won't fix your problem. Also, games are easily five to six times the price of a cd and more than double the price of a DVD, so the cost of buying a shitty game is much worse than buying a shitty cd.

As a result the gaming consumer needs to know that there are reviews out there they can read so that they don't waste their money on something. Sure, you can read a review on some random blog, but how do you know that the person writing it knows what they're doing. I agree with Tycho's recent Penny Arcade post about game reviewers not having super powers, however that doesn't mean that anyone can do a good job reviewing games, and I'm sorry, but spending any appreciable amount of time on the internet shows that being able to communicate effectively is probably as close to a super power as you're going to find. Again, I'm not trying to toot my own horn and make it sound like writing game reviews is rocket science, but it's not just writing 1000 words of your opinion. There has to be some objectivity in the review, as there will be plenty of times where the reviewer is reviewing a game in a genre they're not particularly fond of and they have to be sure that they're not mixing their opinions of the genre with their opinions of the game. Readers that visit professional sites do so because they assume that the people reviewing games there know how to do their jobs and as such, the reviews are as objective as they can be, given that they weren't written by robots. Going to a personal site gives no such assurances. That doesn't mean that you can't get bad reviews at pro sites, or good reviews at personal sites, but as human beings, we gravitate to authority, and the majority of the time, we'll trust something from a pro site over a personal site, simply because the pro site is professional.

Luckily, gaming blogs such as Kotaku, and Joystiq and professional sites like Evil Avatar and Destructoid that are run by real people and not corporate conglomerations are becoming more and more popular and provide people with the ability to get reviews from people they trust while still scratching that authoritative itch. It may be harder to wade through all of the other opinion and news pieces, but there's good work being done in such places and if need be, you can probably get a pretty good picture of most games out there without ever feeling like someone's review has been bought.

There's another discussion entirely to be had about whether or not game reviews should have scores, but I don't feel like getting into it right now, and in Gerstmann's case, I don't think it's relevant. Yes, his written review gave Kane & Lynch a 6, but the prevailing opinion is that he was fired over his video review, more specifically the tone therein. In that case, there was no grade to get all bent out of shape over. Plus, with GameRankings and Metacritic being so important, publishers don't give a shit about sites that don't get aggregated in those sites, so any discussion about how grading games sucks is useless because nothing on that front is changing any time soon.

For the record, I've never had any reviews changed, or received any pressure from anyone at GameShark. Incidentally, one of the current big banner advertisements over there is for Dancing With the Stars, which you may recall, I gave a whopping C-. That's not to say that I don't have to conduct myself in a professional manner, but thankfully, no one has ever given me grief over a bad review. Honestly though, why would they? I mean, who the fuck am I? Exactly.

In the end, I'm sure Gerstmann will be snatched up soon as he's been in the business for a very long time, and the dude could write a good review. It's a shame he lost a job over being honest, if that ends up being the case, and it's a shame that Gamespot, which used to be, for me anyways, the go to place for reviews, loses a fair amount of credibility but it happened, and there's not much we can do at the moment to change it. Hopefully, what we can do, gamers and the industry as a whole, is start to make changes that will still allow the game companies to make money, the reviewers to be honest, and the gamers to get quality buying advice. In that situation, everyone wins.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Some Gaming Updates

So Linda reaches out to a friend of ours that we lost touch with after college and passes on my blog name and address right when I go on a tear about Reese's peanut butter cups. Nice. Welcome to the blog Woj. I can't say it gets much better than posts about candy.

I have some gaming tidbits to pass on. Nothing all that interesting, but hey, posting every day rarely results in anything interesting. Hell, posting every week rarely results in anything interesting around here.

I started playing Manhunt 2 and man, what an all-encompassingly mediocre game. It's tough to review a game thirty days after it came out, especially a game so hyped up as this one, and not have the other reviews color your expectations. I like to think that I'm capable of separating my opinion from those of others, but if my review ends up reading like all the other ones out there, don't be surprised. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar and an unimpressive game is just an unimpressive game.

Most of the time my reviews seem to fall in line with "popular" opinion, which isn't too surprising, I guess. When I don't, it's usually for the better, which always shocks me because I hate everything. Crash of the Titans, for example really surprised me, not just because I enjoyed it so much, but because of the negative reviews written by other people. Similarly, I know I rated The Darkness higher than a lot of other sites, but I think that's because I don't really give a damn about multiplayer, so I don't care how many modes there are. Also, and I know I'm in the minority on this, but I think the story in The Darkness was better than the one in BioShock. Sure, the atmosphere of BioShock was more immersive, but I felt a lot more connected to Jackie in The Darkness than I did the guy in BioShock, whatever his name is. I'm glad I ended up being the one to review The Darkness for GameShark because the A- I gave it means it can be in contention for the various Game of the Year awards. Score!

I've played a little more Rock Band, this time on the guitar and man, I just love this game to pieces. I seriously don't know how you could go back to Guitar Hero after playing this game. The way that your band is portrayed while in the middle of a song is just amazing. Plus, "Hand That Feeds"? Oh. My. God. Awesome to the power of awesome.

After Manhunt 2 comes Medal of Honor Heroes 2. I'm quite looking forward to that one, for a bunch of reasons, but mostly to use my new Wii Zapper to fill Nazi's with hot lead. I also have Ghost Squad coming via GameFly so the light gun games will soon be all up in this bitch.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Myriad of Options

I purchased something called a Reese's Whipped today and, sadly, was surprised at the sheer number of Reese's options young folk have before them today.

Back in my day, you had a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and that was it. Oh sure, you could eat a Butterfinger if you wanted to spend the rest of the day picking peanut butter bark out of your teeth, but if you wanted the simple pleasure of peanut butter and chocolate, the Reese's cup was it. In fact, they pretty much built an entire candy empire out of this idea, and many 30 second intervals of my youth were spent watching people of all walks of life carrying open bars of peanut butter and opened chocolate bars, completely unaware of each others' presence until they collided in the most serendipitous of personal injury situations. Only by collapsing upon one another, could the brilliance of their candy situation be realized, and lo, a classic was born. For the record, taking a chocolate bar and dipping it in peanut butter tastes nothing like a Reese's. It's kind of gross, actually.

Aside from Easter, when the greatest piece of candy known to human existence, the Reese's Peanut Butter Egg, would drop on an unsuspecting populace, the Peanut Butter Cup was top dog in candy melding circles. Then, ET the Extra Terrestrial arrived in theaters, and with it, Reese's answer to the M&M. Actually, the Reese's Pieces are the answer to the question, "Name something that looks like off-color M&M's and tastes like ass pills." I have no idea how well these Pieces did, but for years and years, they and the Peanut Butter Cup were the only Reese's products out there.

Recently though, the Reese's family has experienced an explosion in peanut butter themed candy. Every possible combination of chocolate, peanut butter, peanuts, krispies, wafers, nougat, steak, asparagus and tanned moose hide has been combined, whipped together and shaped into a bar. Today's concoction was basically a Three Musketeers bar, only with a semi-brittle layer of peanut butter between the chocolate and the nougat. It was tasty, however lacking the punch that comes from a full blown peanut butter cup. My personal favorite is the Nutrageous which has something like thirteen different candies in it. Unfortunately it's like less than an ounce in total weight, so you have to eat at least a dozen of them to feel even remotely satisfied.

Thrilling stuff, I know, but I think it's important to stop every once and a while and take stock in where we are, where we've been and how far we've come. If you're ever in a convenience store or gas station, lamenting the lack of candy choices, think back to when all Reese's offered was the simple peanut butter cup. Truly, we have ventured out of the stone ages and into the glorious days of prosperity. I look forward to the days when everyone can enjoy a delicious Reese's Peanut Butter Pork Chop.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Back Home Safely

We managed to weather the traveling storm and have arrived back in GA, safe and sound. Remarkably, we were able to make our connecting flight in DC, despite having only 30 minutes between flights. We literally got off one plane just to get right back on another. The kids behaved beautifully and all in all, it was a good visit.

Unfortunately, I was awakened this morning to the news that Sean Taylor passed away last night. Obviously, I never knew the guy and have no personal connection to him, but he being a Redskin and me being a Redskins fan, I was shocked and saddened. It's stupid to feel that his death is any more senseless than the hundreds of homicides that take place daily in this country, but he's a part of Redskins nation, and I'm a part of Redskins nation, and sometimes, that's all it takes. My heart goes out to his family, his fiancee and his daughter who never had the chance to get to know her dad. My heart also goes out to Coach Gibbs and the rest of the team, who have the unenviable task of preparing for a football game on Sunday. At this point, whether or not the team makes it to the playoffs doesn't matter at all, in fact, I hope they don't, if only to allow them to finish their season early so that they have time to grieve properly and move on.

My kids and I always wear our jerseys on Sunday, and this Sunday won't be any different for them, but for me, I'll be thinking of #21 and how the team won't be the same without him. Godspeed, Sean. Rest in peace.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Post-ally Challenged

Many apologies for not posting yesterday. I completely forgot to among a full day of visits from family, child wrangling and dish washing that was capped with a delightful bout of insomnia. On the plus side, not sleeping afforded me the opportunity to watch the end of the Auburn - Alabama game. Keep it up Tigers and you may make me a fan of college football yet.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Where Technology Goes to Die

I am currently residing at a place where it takes less time for me to type out an email to Mobile Blogger via my very undextrous thumbs and send it into the ether over my phone's normal connection than it is to connect via dial-up and use Teh Intarwebs. As if by magic I am transported to 1998 when the shrieking tones of the 56.6 kbps modem heralded a new age of connectivity. Truly, this is where technology goes to die.

On the plus side, my grandmother looks well and was finally able to meet her great-granddaughter. Unfortunately, I was made to feel ancient as I saw my cousin, now a woman of 24, whom I remember holding as an infant. Thankfully we were able to communicate through the universal language of how awesome Rock Band is. Were it not for that, chirps and whistles would have been our only recourse.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

We're Here

We have arrived safely in beautiful Clifton Park, NY despite the
airline's best intentions to keep us away. Oddly enough, our luggage,
which stayed on the flight we were removed from, for fear we'd miss
our connection, made it here before we did.

It's cold and overcast here, which is pretty much how I remember it.
We won't be moving back any time soon.

To prepare for the trip I picked up Mario Party and Orcs & Elves, both
for the DS. Both are fun, however Mario Party's insistence that I be
the one to defeat the current board's boss is maddening, especially
when I keep losing to Mario. That fucker cheats. Orcs & Elves is
pure old school RPG goodness. There's a great review of it over at
GameShark. I'd link to it but have bo idea how yo do so via mobile
blogging. As it is now, my thumbs are about to fall off from typing
on this blasted phone.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The Thanksgiving Shout-outs

I know that Thanksgiving isn't until tomorrow, but by the time anyone reads this, it probably will be tomorrow, or later even. Hell, it's always tomorrow somewhere. The problem is that I'll be traveling to upstate NY on Thanksgiving and don't want to make any promises about being able to post. Even if all goes well and we arrive on time, we'll be in a house with no broadband, a place where connecting to Teh Intarwebs take roughly half an hour. For the duration of my trip, I think I'll be rocking the Mobile Blogger and posting via email with my phone. Joy.

Anyway, before I get started on the holiday post proper, I wanted to say that Rock Band is like seven different kinds of awesome. I haven't had all that much time to play it, what with all of the trip preparations, but I've had a blast, the little time I've spent with it. Once I get home and bang out reviews for Manhunt 2 and Medal of Honor Heroes 2, I plan on rocking out like a crazy person. I also plan on playing Mass Effect and spending more time with Link's Crossbow training, which is also a lot of fun, despite the little time I've had to spend with it. Whew.

Now that Thanksgiving is upon us, it's time to sit back and reflect on what we have to be thankful for. It's also time to eat like pigs, but I can't do that here, so instead I'm going to do the other thing. Bear with me while I get all sappy. I promise I won't do it often.

I'm thankful that my family and I are all healthy. That cold I went through was a bitch, but I survived it, thank you very much. I wish my daughter would eat more so that we don't have to worry about her being three feet tall her whole life, but that will hopefully come with more time and more trips to the doctor's office.

I'm thankful that I'm still married to the most wonderful person on the planet. After all, once you find someone who is willing to put up with your need to spend 170 bucks on fake instruments, you hold on with both hands.

I'm thankful for the people who take the time out of their day to come here and read my blatherings. It means a lot to me, and were it not for this place, I wouldn't have met Greg and MQ.

I'm thankful for all of the people I've been able to meet via gaming, especially Bones, as I swear he and I were separated at birth.

I'm thankful for my job as I have the benefit of working with some awesome people. In no particular order I'm thankful for having met and become friends with Hodge, Peters, JW, David and Rock Buddy Chip. Being able to spend eight hours a day at a place you enjoy and with people you like being around is a wonderful thing.

I'm thankful that I still have Dennis as a friend, even if we don't talk as much as we should.

I'm thankful that Bill Harris still writes Dubious Quality so that I have inspiration every time I sit down at the keyboard.

I'm thankful that Bill Abner and James Fudge over at GameShark decided to give me a chance, despite me not knowing a good game review from a hole in the ground. Thanks guys, I very much appreciate it.

I'm sure there's a lot more to be thankful for, but I think that's a good place to end it, as I have some new DS games to play. Guess I'm thankful for that too.

Hopefully this Thanksgiving finds you and your's happy and healthy, with plenty to be thankful for. Have a great holiday.

-Brandon

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

My Son the Comedian

One of the things you don't realize until you're a parent is that children aren't born with senses of humor. They develop, like tumors. Oh sure, you may be able to make a baby laugh by making funny faces, but there's a pretty good chance that said baby is laughing over the impending diaper change you'll be weathering. A true sense of humor, meaning that the kid starts to find their own actions funny, takes time to come to fruition.

For my son, that time is now. It is not a good time. Were it a tv show, it would be called "Bad Times".

Allow me to paint a picture, so that you get the full idea. I should preface this with the fact that I love my children, they just bug the hell out of me. I understand fully this takes me out of the running for any parent of the year awards, except for the one offered by the United Federation of Dickheads, and I'm ok with that. To thine own self and all that.

You know the guy at work who thinks he's hilarious but isn't even remotely funny, yet at every available opportunity he tries to be funny, all the while pointing out how funny he is, and asking you if what he did was funny? He probably has an annoying laugh too, and it takes all of your effort to not tell him how monumentally un-funny he is. I live with this guy. I make him dinner every night. I will be putting this guy through college. This guy is my son.

Here's an example of one of his latest routine. Prepare yourself, because it's a side splitter. He'll take a song, and change a word and then repeat it roughly 35 million times. Good stuff, yeah? Part of the problem is that he'll often times get a laugh out of his sister, which only encourages him. On Saturday, we heard "Old McDonald had a treat" all day. All. Day. By the end of the day, I was asking him to come up with a new song, a request which was summarily ignored as he continued to sing the old song, chasing laughs like a junkie chases that elusive feeling of their first high. I do have to admire his persistence though. Most people would have given up after five hours, but not him. He just kept going and going. That's my boy.

His humor isn't limited to changing the words of songs. Sometimes he'll say he has a different name. Sometimes he'll call something by the wrong name, or answer Dora's questions incorrectly. It's a hoot to have a kid who thinks it's funny to appear to be ignorant. Unfortunately, his sister doesn't realize he's joking, so she ends up trying to correct him, or worse thinking the door is a rooster.

A typical comedy routine of my son's includes him making the joke, then telling us what joke he made, then asking if he's funny and then laughing. Were he Henny Youngman, it would go something like this:

I just flew in from Cleveland and boy are my arms tired.
I just said that I flew in from Cleveland and boy are my arms tired.
Was that funny?
Ha.

Now, repeat that 50 times and you get the idea. Usually we just say that yes, it is funny, but every time I'm holding back the urge to tell him that if you have to explain the joke, it's not funny unless you're doing a routine about someone who can't tell jokes, but even then you're not explaining the joke, more making fun of someone who explains jokes, but I don't see that ending well. I've also successfully held back from trying to explain that brevity is the soul of wit. I mean, comedy has an ebb and flow to it, and while it is a great feeling to make people laugh, you gotta know when to end on a high note. People will vaguely remember that you said something funny, but they'll certainly remember when you bomb.

Which brings me to why I think his humor, for lack of a better word, can be so annoying. There was an episode of Seinfeld where Tim Watley converts to Judaism and then starts telling Jewish jokes, saying that it's OK because he's Jewish now. Jerry goes and complains to his Rabbi, or therapist, I don't remember, and when the guy asks him if it offends Jerry as a Jew, his response is "No, it offends me as a comedian." That's not to say that I consider myself a comedian, but I can bring Teh Funny when I need to, and to see such patently unfunny material coming from my offspring cuts me to the bone. I even tried to teach him the "Know what? Chicken butt." joke and it was a dismal failure. Granted it was some time ago, but I'm sure that were I to teach it to him now it'd turn into something like "Know what? Hamster engine." and be repeated several hundred times a day.

I'm sure that with time, his sense of humor will develop further and we'll be able to share some laughs, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Furthermore, I'm dreading the upcoming 4+ hours in an airplane as we head up to the frozen north. If you hear of someone being arrested by Homeland Security for assault with a horrible sense of humor, you'll know who it was.

New Mr. Binky

My latest Mr. Binky column is up at GameShark. I'm pretty proud of this one. Special thanks to Hodge for giving me the idea.

Rock on!

Monday, November 19, 2007

Preparing to Salute Myself

Rock Band drops on Tuesday and with it, I am on the precipice of fulfilling my life's dream of rocking the fuck out full time. Now, there are a few bumps in the road to superstardom, namely that I have to review Manhunt 2 and Medal of Honor Heroes 2 before I can start it, but I'm sure I can take a minute or two out of my busy schedule tomorrow to give the axe a try.

Knowing that the hammer of Rock is about to be dropped on my, your's and everyone in a five mile radius's collective asses, I am in the process of finalizing my band name. The band name is one of the most important thing you can come up with, as no one wants to spend 25 bucks to go see Frank Comely and the Up-and-Comers. I don't know, maybe they do. Anyway, here are the options thus far:

AC Zero
Saving Throw
Viaduct
Dr. Monkey
Big Casino

The first two are D&D references, which will get me in with the nerdcore crowd. Viaduct, while having nothing to do with rock, is just a cool sounding word. Dr. Monkey comes from this t-shirt, which I love to no end. Big Casino is the name of the first single off of the new Jimmy Eat World album, so the band name serves as both a tribute to an awesome band, and just a cool name in general. Bill Harris, proprietor of the awesome blog Dubious Quality is partial to Saving Throw. Linda feels that Viaduct is the most rock band sounding name. I'm partial to AC Zero and Big Casino. From Dubious Quality comes word of this super cool band name generator, which will no doubt help me with additional ideas, however if I can't pick from five names, I'm not sure I need more.

What say you teeming throngs?

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Five and Five

Oh, my beloved Redskins. We started out so strong, but alas, things have taken the usual turn for the worse. On the plus side this doesn't feel like the usual Redskins problems, and I feel like our team is much better than out record. Granted, it doesn't matter, as the record is the only thing that counts, but at the same time, this team gives me hope for the future. I will, however, offer some criticism for the next meeting with Dallas. Perhaps attempting to cover T.O. might be a good way to go. I don't know. That's just something I thought of when he scored his fourth TD against us. Just a thought.

Lots of wonderful media purchases this week including Mass Effect and Rock Band for the 36o, Live Free or Die Hard on DVD and Nirvana Unplugged in New York. A note on those last two. I just got done reading a compilation of the online diary Kevin Smith has been keeping on his ViewAskew site for the past few years, and along with an at times way too personal account of his bowel movements, he mentions the time he spent working on Live Free or Die Hard. One thing he specifically mentions is that due to the PG-13 rating wanted by the studio, they could only drop one F-bomb, and they were choosing to use it during the "Yippee-Ki-Yay" moment, but even then, it would have to be somewhat covered up however they were also filming a full blown "Yippee-Ki-Yay motherfucker" line for the unrated DVD. Upon reading the IGN review of the DVD, they mentioned that such a thing isn't the case. One wonders what part of Unrated the studio didn't quite get. Then again, at times, the only thing IGN can be depended upon is an improper use of homonyms, so who knows what's going on.

As for Nirvana Unplugged in New York, this is the famous MTV unplugged performance filmed in November of 1993. At the time, actually much earlier than this, MTV Unplugged was one of the best ways to see live music on television, and not just live music, but a reimagining of music you didn't usually see. I remember being blown away by Pearl Jam's unplugged session, as well as Stevie Ray Vaughn's. I can remember watching Difford and Tillbrook from Squeeze doing an awesome version of "Pulling Mussels from the Shells" and an absolutely roof raising performance by LL Cool J of "Mama Said Knock You Out". By '93 though, MTV Unplugged was pretty much for real big name bands, rather than the music variety show it had started out as. At the time, I was a casual Nirvana fan. I had "Nevermind" as did every other college student at the time, but didn't really follow them much past that album except to hear about the various problems Kurt Cobain was having.

When I had heard that Nirvana was going to be doing an Unplugged session, I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking it would be worth watching just to see Cobain implode. Instead, I was treated to one of the most open and honest performances I've ever seen. This was not the Nirvana you would have expected to see. Cobain, who's struggles had been so public, looked comfortable and at ease, joking with the crowd and just enveloped by this huge, fuzzy, gray sweater. For some reason, that sweater stands out in my mind, because with it, Cobain looked smaller, almost like a child, yet at the same time, he seemed like he was finally putting his demons to rest and achieving some semblance of peace.

Four months later he would be dead from a self inflicted shotgun wound.

When I heard of his death, my first thought was back to the Unplugged show and how, when he seemed to have things so well in hand, could he have killed himself? Thinking back, it almost seemed like even then, he knew what he was going to do, just not when, and it was knowing that he didn't have to fight the demons for much longer that was giving him peace. Had I not seen this show, I don't know if Cobain's death would have bothered me as much. Certainly, I recognized it for what it was, the death of not just a person, and a musical genius, but grunge as it existed when Nirvana pushed it to the forefront. However, having seen that show, his death hit me hard, as I'm sure it hit a lot of people, because I thought that he was getting better. Silly, I know, but there it is. I'll be purchasing the DVD on Tuesday and although I'm hesitant to watch it, almost like conducting a seance, I certainly will, if only to see Cobain again with some measure of peace. I can only hope he has achieved more since then.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Updating the List

A post on a Saturday? What the hell? I know. Try not to get used to it, I'm just doing this until I get back in everyone's good graces, then I'm going back to posting every other month.

The list mentioned in this post's title is my list of bands I want to see live before I shuffle off this mortal coil. It is, admittedly, a short list, however it's about to be 100% crossed off. Today, I purchased two tickets for the April 25th Philips Arena performance by a one Mr. Bruce Springsteen and his E. Street Band. Yes, that's right, soon Bruce, my beloved Bruce, will join Eric Clapton and Pearl Jam in beautiful, crossed off status. I'm sure he's very excited. I know I am.

Tickets were hella expensive, with the pair running us over 200 bucks, but as I told the wife on Thursday when I learned that tickets would be on sale today, whatever the cost, baby, whatever the cost. To be honest, it kind of bugs me that I would spend this much, as I'm not too keen on the idea that tickets for these shows are priced out of the realm of what any normal human should pay for them, but hey, the list calls and we must all obey the list. This will also mark the first time in over five years that Linda will be attending a rock show with me. After what will probably a three hour show, this will probably do her well for at least another ten years.

The show isn't until April 25th, so there's plenty of time for things to get canceled, but for now, I'm quite excited, knowing that in a five short months, I'll be taking a stroll down Thunder Road.

Bruuuuce!!

Friday, November 16, 2007

Instant Gratification

Like Prometheus, I have stolen fire from the gods and am delivering it unto you. Only in this case it isn't fire, it's knowledge, but knowledge about something hot, so it's kind of like fire, except for the ways where it isn't. Have you prepared yourself for this knowledge? Have you made ready your world view, for I assure you, it is about to be turned on it's edge, unless your world view is a sphere in which case I'll just rotate it slightly. Perhaps I'll palm it and fake a lay-up.

Here it is. I make no apologies for the ways in which your life will change once you have consumed and digested this information. It is up to you to deal with the fall out.

An instant hot water tap will change your life.

There, I said it! There's no turning back! Go out my children and act upon this mighty gift of knowledge!

I know what you're thinking, as just a few short weeks ago, I was with you. Who needs instant hot water, you say. I have a microwave, you say. I can have boiling water in upwards of four minutes. Four minutes is not a long time to wait, you say. I have a kettle, you say. I can have boiling water in as little time as half an hour. Who doesn't have half an hour to wait for tea, you say. I am here to tell you that while you may have that time, you no longer need to spend it in such a manner. With this knowledge, I have given you back four minutes a day. Four minutes! Over the course of a year, that's an entire day spent waiting for water to heat up. More if you drink more than one cup a day. When you are old and on your death bed, you'll thank me for all of the time I gave back to you with this nugget of truth.

My wife opened my eyes to the glory of the instant hot water tap as before her, I had no idea such a thing existed. Her desire for one ran deep, and once I saw that one could be had for less than two hundred dollars, I made this dream a reality for my wife. This is the type of man and husband I am. I make dreams happen, but only the cheap ones. Had her dream cost $201, she would be microwaving as we speak.

Once the tap had been procured, it was up to me and my father-in-law to install it. Several trips to Lowes and Home Depot later, including one to get a completely different instant hot water tap, we were prepared. Or so we thought. Instant hot water taps require constant power sources and traditionally, electrical outlets don't exist under sinks as one rarely has need to plug something in amongst the Palmolive. Back to the hardware store we went so that we could tap into the power running in the basement and turn the course of a mighty electrical river. Then something else happened and we needed different plumbing stuff so I went back to Lowes. Then we needed a drill bit, or a bulldozer or some other fucking thing that no normal person outside of Tim the fucking tool man Taylor would have in his home, so I went back to Lowes and I thought that if someone says "You again?" to me I was going to brain them with a ban saw and then fucking awl them to death. All the while, my Redskins were getting the piss beaten out of them by the Patriots, so you can imagine my stellar state of mind.

But I digress. Something like seven hours later, we were finished and we all gathered round the instant hot water tap, waiting the alloted fifteen minutes so that the tank could heat up. And heat up it did! Soon the tap was sputtering and steaming and generally spraying scalding hot water all over the place. Oh horrid day! What terrible violence our knowledge had wrought! As it turns out, my wife, in her zeal to not wait one moment longer for boiling water, wanted the temperature gauge on the tank turned all the way up, past warm, past hot, past seriously now, it's fucking hot all the way to super-heated plasma water. The tap, despite allowing such a ramping up to dangerously hot levels, didn't like being filled with magma and once we dialed it back a notch, started cooperating.

Having hot water as soon as you want it is a life affirming experience, like having free air or trees that bear donuts. No longer am I shackled to the microwave, or the stove, waiting for water to boil. I have used this opportunity to discover a love of tea. Before, I would drink coffee every night, but often times, after the first cup, I wanted something different. I was stuck though, as I had made two cups, because why go through all the work for just one cup, and I certainly can't throw it out. That's liquid money right there. Not any more. With my instant tap, I can have a cup of Chai tea and then follow it up with one of the many fruit zingers available to me. I think there's even a pork chop zinger that melds hibiscus flowers and salt pork. Truly a tea for the discriminating palate. With all of my freed up spare time, I have done absolutely nothing different, but I could, should I want to. Maybe some time I will. Four minutes is a lot of time to work with. I could sing a song, or pen a dirty poem. I could also hastily sketch a watermelon, or a honeydew melon, any melon really. The opportunities are endless.

The only problem with the instant hot water tap is that it resides where the soap dispenser used to and many the time have I found myself about to pour 190 degree water on my hands, thinking it is soap. No doubt my hands would come clean in this method as all of the germs would slough off with the top layer of skin, but I am unprepared for this level of cleanliness. Your needs may vary.

I realize this knowledge is somewhat terrifying as it runs counter to everything we've ever been told about hot water. Long have you lived in the muck of ignorance, thinking that hot water was something you had to wait for. I am here to tell you that it is not, provided you have two hundred bucks, a 1.5 inch hole in your counter, or the means to drill one, and the necessary electrical and plumbing skills. Small hurdles no doubt, and ones you will gladly jump once my tale sets into your consciousness, takes root and bears the fruit of enlightenment.

The time for instant hot water has come. Heed its scalding call, and through it, be reborn.

-Brandon

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Welcome to the New Place

Greetings. Welcome to the new place. Have a look around. May I offer you something to drink? No? Suit yourself. This tea is delightful.

So, what's this all about anyway? Allow me to explain.

Years ago when I started the SuburbanJoe site, things were a bit different in my life. I was a new homeowner with no kids and a solid gaming habit, but not yet to the level of heated passion I enjoy today. The SuburbanJoe site was meant to reflect that to a degree, with posts about my suburban life and the various things that go along with it. There were many posts about home repairs. Life was good. Along with the site, the name came my online persona.

After the whole infertility thing, I wasn't really into writing and SuburbanJoe went away. Around this time, I also got an Xbox Live account and, oddly enough, SuburbanJoe was taken. With that, Team Binky was born along with the confusion of anyone who met me online and wondered why I had two names. Not that it mattered much, but it always kind of bugged me, having two different tags, for lack of a better word.

When I decided to start writing again, bringing back SuburbanJoe made sense as anyone who might have remembered me from the old days would be able to just do a quick Google search and like magic, make their way to the new place. That's all fine and good except for the fact that the several years between the old site and the new site might as well have been the Triassic period in internet years. Realistically speaking, the number of people who decided to just, on a whim, search for SuburbanJoe based on something they read years ago was probably less than 2.

The problem is that, creatively, I always felt like the new SuburbanJoe site had to be like the old one, including what I wrote about, and as a result, I always felt kind of boxed in. I wasn't really into writing about what I had written about before. My interests were more gaming oriented, and less column like. I had always said that SuburbanJoe wasn't really a blog, because it followed more of a column style, however with the second go around, I wanted more of the flexibility of shorter posts that a blog brings. I know it's stupid, to have creative roadblocks over something to arbitrary, but hey, creative roadblocks never take the form you'd expect them to. Try as I might to change what the site was, I could never get it out of my head that I was supposed to be writing 800 words on mowing the lawn. Again, I know this is stupid.

At the same time that I was feeling like my site wasn't really what I wanted any more, I started writing reviews for GameShark. I've done a shit job of budgeting my writing time since then, and SuburbanJoe suffered as a result. For this I apologize. Once I started writing the Mr. Binky column, I felt even more split up as I had a site, called SuburbanJoe, a GamerTag of Team Binky and a column persona of Mister Binky. Talk about splintered.

And so we get to this site, the aptly named Disparate Elements. I'm going to be writing about a bunch of different, seemingly unconnected things here, hence the name of the site. The name also comes about because of my various online persona and how they made me feel kind of split up. In an effort to fix that, I've done a number of things. One is that I've retired SuburbanJoe, the site and the name, with the exception of my Gmail address, because, damn, that'd be a pain in the ass to change. I've also changed my GamerTag from Team Binky to Mister Binky to coincide with my column and because the Team thing never made a whole lot of sense, even to me and I came up with the damn thing.

The hope with all of this, is to remove some of the creative roadblocks I've had. I feel like I have more freedom here to post about my kids, or games, or what I've had for lunch, or whatever. I realize that I'm still going to have to take the time to write every day, and I'm prepared to do that. Lord knows I spend enough time goofing off each day. I can certainly divert some of that time to this place. I cherish each and every reader I have, and I wish to keep them coming back, and possibly get some new readers along the way. I'm also hoping to use this site to start thinking more critically about games and just generally polish my writing skills in general. At the same time, I understand the need to take baby steps, so don't expect any missives on Half-Life 2 as a allegory for socialism any time soon. Hell, I don't even know what that means.

So, for those that have been with me for the past couple of years, thank so much for coming back and seeing nothing but blank space and week old posts. I hope to change all that. Thank you also to my wife Linda, who continues to inspire me and kick my ass when I'm being lazy. Hopefully I won't need so many ass kickings now.

Enjoy the new place and stay as long as you'd like. We've got a lot to talk about.

-Brandon

New look

We're making some changes around here, as the new site can attest to. I'm still working on the best way to go about things, but I think I may be doing some name changes and such, so be prepared to change bookmarks and the like once I make up my mind.

Exciting!

Phoenix Wright review

My Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations review is up. Whee.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Crash of the Titans review

I swear that at some point in the near future I'll post something that doesn't just send you to another page full of my blatherings about the latest game du jour. That time is not now though, hence the remark about the future, so instead, head over to GameShark and peep my review of Crash of the Titans. This was an unexpectedly fun little game, and is the perfect thing to play when you don't feel like thinking much and you just want to goof around. Enjoy!

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Dancing With the Stars review

My review for Dancing With the Stars is up. Lord help us all.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

The Twofer

Two for the price of one today as we have a new Mr. Binky column as well as my review of Prism Light the Way for the DS. Read and enjoy.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Bringer of Knowledge

I have emerged from this latest bout with the tattoo needle not only more decorative but wiser. I will now attempt to pass this wisdom on to you. Are you ready? Here goes.

If you find yourself struggling with a cold at the time of your tattoo appointment, if at all possible, reschedule the inking. You may not think that getting a tattoo would have any effect on a cold, and perhaps in the case of someone healthier than myself, it would not, but in my case, my body's immune system was not up to the task of fighting off a cold and dealing with thousands of ink bearing wounds at the same time. The past few days have not been fun as I've had to deal with feeling shitty from the cold, feeling sore from the tattoos and feeling useless from my general inability to function normally. Oh, I also lost my voice which makes me an even less effective parent.

As promised, here are some pictures from the grand event.

Here I am in the chair as Zack works. For the record, that's my "I'm smiling so that I don't pass out" face. It ain't pretty.

Here's the finished product. I decided to go with some shading, per Zach's suggestion and I think it makes all the difference. Without the shading, it's a logo, with it, it's a shield. Bonus!

Here's another view, to give an idea as to the total size and placement. It's 3.5 inches in diameter for those keeping track at home.

Here's my tiny, mottled Batman tattoo before being touched up.

And here it is after having the black touched up and the yellow filled in. I know that it looks orange, but that's just because of the blood. Ew. When it heals it'll look yellow. The same thing happened with my Superman tattoo.

Overall, I'm very happy with both pieces, however I think it will be quite some time before I get another one, if I do at all. I had forgotten how uncomfortable it is to sit in that chair. Perhaps I'm just getting older, but between the needle and the uncomfortable position of my arm, I was pretty dang happy for it to all be over. The aftercare is a bit of a pain as well, but it comes with the territory I guess. For now, I'm happy with what I have and can't think of what else I'd want anyways, so it seems like a good time to stop. That is until I forget what it feels like.

For those in the Atlanta area, shopping for some new ink, I can't recommend Zack and Psycho Tattoo enough. Zack was very professional and very easy to talk to, which is helpful as chatting helps to keep your mind off of the pain. I went to the Psycho Tattoo in Roswell, technically Psycho Tattoo 2, so if you need some work done, head on over an tell 'em Brandon sent ya. Actually, you can tell them whatever you want as they won't remember who I am anyways.

Friday, November 02, 2007

I Live to Serve

Because Booster asked for it, and he's one of the classiest cats I know, here are my admittedly crappy pictures from the Jimmy Eat World show. I will post pictures of my tattoo at some point after Saturday. How's that for committed?

It's hard to tell Anita Robinson's attractiveness factor from this picture of Vida Voce, but trust me, she's cute as hell and she can make that guitar wail. If you look hard enough, you can see the suede boots. Rowr!

Here's Jimmy Eat World, early on in the show before the gauntlet of Rock was truly thrown down.

Due to a combination of our seats and the light show, Tom Linton (the guitarist) spent most of the show bathed in light, thereby strengthening the possibility of supernatural origins for him. It was quite bright at times, as evidenced in this shot.

Here, Tom begins his ascent to the Mothership.

A lower tempo number from the new record as Jim rocks the acoustic guitar. Even dimly lit, Tom commands the spotlight.


This is probably the best shot of the evening as, for once, the lighting cooperated. It's nothing to write home about, and would have been a lot better had I taken it with the 10x zoom enabled digital camera that spent the night at home. I'll bring it the next time, and had planned on bringing it this time, but I was unsure if I was going to try and wrestle the youngsters for floor seats. Plus, with a t-shirt, two Vida Voce cd's, a wallet, a phone and my keys, my pants were in danger of dropping for most of the show. The camera would have pushed me over the edge to full on flashing.

I promise to take better pictures of the tattoo. How lucky for you!

Monday, October 29, 2007

Jimmy Eat World

Greetings.

Friday night Rock Buddy Chip and I went to the Jimmy Eat World show in beautiful Atlanta and bore witness to a rock and roll revelation. The Great Spear of Rock, held aloft by James Adkins and co. was thrust deep into my heart, healing me with it's cleansing fire. Chip had a good time as well.

The set list consisted of material from their newest album all the way back to "Static Prevails" and "Clarity". They even threw in "Stay on My Side Tonight" from the EP of the same name, which delighted me to no end as it's one of my favorites. I have to say, that of all the shows I've seen, or at least seen recently, the set list management, for lack of a better term, at this show was by far the best. They moved from song to song, jumping back and forth across the albums without skipping a beat, with each song blending in to the next one perfectly. The crowd was digging it and the band seemed like they were having a good time, so everyone came home a winner. I just hope they return soon as I'd love to see them again.

Vida Voce opened for them and along with putting down some absolutely sick power-duo rock, the guitarist, and one half of the band, a one Anita Robinson, captured my heart with her combination of rocktastic guitar playing, leggy good looks and high heeled suede boots. She is, as they say, the complete package. Given that we're both married, and she's married to her bandmate, it was decided that our love can never see the light of day, and thus we must exist in quiet anguish, never to feel the other's touch. This is the decision I came to anyways. Given that she has no idea who I am, and has never laid eyes upon me, it's possible she didn't come to the same decision, nor did she have to. I'd rather not speak for her if it's all the same to you.

The only downside to the show is that I have yet to get a good night's sleep since, so I'm fairly tired. Having family visit is an exhausting endeavor, but now that they have vacated the premises, I look forward to living the stress free life. I also get my chair back, which is even more important.

Saturday Bones is taking the trip up from Teh Valley so that he can watch my get mutilated at the hands of a professional tattoo artist. Studios have been chosen and inquiries are being made. It's an exciting time. Hopefully the contagion that my daughter has been coughing into my face for the past 3 days will hold off their respiratory assault long enough for me to be branded with the mark of Captain America. I am unfamiliar with how well tattoos heal when your body is repelling viral invaders and I would prefer to not use this experience as a case study lest the answer turn out to be "not well at all". Now all I need is the proper graphic of the shield in question. I have found in my searches that the ratio of star size to ring size changes dramatically from picture to picture so I have to make sure I get the right one. Oh, the decisions that weight on a man's soul.