The new screenshots of “WWE Smackdown vs. Raw” for the PlayStation are amazing if a little creepy. The detail is incredible in all the screenshots, but the shot of Booker T is nearly photogenic. I think.
Monthly Archive for July, 2004
Sometimes on Slashdot, as on Fark and Metafilter, the comments are better than the actual posts.
This track, which you can download from the comment linked above, bears a striking resemblance to the old chestnut “Hard Times” by someone called “Fresh Bush and the Invisible Man,” from a bygone George Bush era. I had it on CD at one point, but apparently ~blakeh is the only one who knows where a copy is.
I managed to catch Anchorman twice this past weekend. I saw it for
the first time with Abbey, Jennifer and Jonathan on Friday; I liked it so
well I caught it again with the Sepatown Film Society of Greater Detroit
the next day.
Immediately following the second time, I was washing my hands in
a theater restroom and one of the movie theater employees asked me what
I’d seen. I told him “Anchorman,” and he said “that’s dumb, I’m not
going to see it.” “It was very dumb,” I replied, “and that’s probably
why I liked it so much.” I tried to persuade him that this was a very
smart kind of dumb, but the john-mopper insisted that it was no different
than any of the dozens of shitty teenage gross-out films available on any
given day, and therefore beneath his time.
I can accept our friend the AMCustodian’s closed-mindedness — in
fact, I applaud him for having standards and admired his candor, even if
insulting your customers’ viewing habits isn’t the best way to endear
yourself to them — but it’s kind of nice to see someone from the mainstream media express my views.
[It should probably be noted that a number of the actors that are named in this article appear in "Starsky & Hutch," a Warner Brothers picture, which I would certainly include curiously enough is now available on DVD today. Warner Brothers is, of course, a sister company of CNN.]
In case you’re still curious about Anchorman, here is a clip [QuickTime, 16.8 megs, about a minute-and-a-half to two minutes] that reveals little of the plot but manages to accurately and succinctly portray the film’s absurd fun. [File from official website, thank plasticbag.org for direct link]
Heard their track The Richest Man [this is an iTunes link] on the Disney cruise last winter — they were in heavy on the on-ship video channel.
Since then, I have read up on them a bit and gather that they are one of those Evanescencey “please don’t hate us because we’re Christian” kind of bands — they are on Maverick Records [until recently “Madonna’s vanity label”], but at the same time most of the write ups you see about them are on Christian rock sites. Google them, for real tho. The message of “Richest Man” is that material goods are essentially unimportant. Which, sure, is true. The song is great, though — sort of a Nickelbacky Creed minus the oily torsos.
A head-spinning series of fast-paced flash-animated commercials for Panasonic’s Japanese ISP, Hi-Ho. The original host appears to be gone, but they are archived by at least two sites:
PANASONIC.
Still having major fun with Samurai Warriors, but man, Nobunaga’s missions are tough. I can’t understand why, in everyone else’s scenarios, he rolls around unleashing hell on all his hapless rivals, but when you get to his missions, he’s a weak little schmuck. It never took him twelve hits to defeat the average grunt when I was playing against him, thasferdamnsure.
We have two characters left to unlock if the FAQs can be believed. It figures, too, that they refused to confirm an Xbox port until literally days after we purchased the PS2 version. Though I can’t say for sure whether the Xbox version would have better graphics [i.e. less slowdown and flicker — the PS2 version’s players look fantastic, and boy does it pay the price].
I have also recently purchased Max Payne 2, GTA 3 for Xbox [gotta love the Blockbuster pre-played sales], and WWE RAW 2 [this one on clearance for $10 at Target], but haven’t had appreciable time to play them what with Samurai Warriors continuing to give and give, and getting Abbey the new Harry Potter game for her birthday. Speaking of that game, the PS2 version plays like a clockwork smurf [i.e. good]. I haven’t heard any further reviews or reports that corroborate our terrible experience with our Xbox copy, so maybe I just got “a bad disc” or something.
I’m finally going to check it out tomorrow, but if you live in England, Auntie Beeb has already done the legwork for your pirated Spider Man 2 DVD. No American periodical or news bureau, to my knowledge, has conducted similar research on our soil.
In utterly unrelated news, the Spider-Man 2 game is totally rockin’. I have been warned not to play too far before I go check out the film [hopefully Wednesday], so I can’t say much yet besides swinging around New York is awesome, both because the swinging mechanic is so neat [I’m still getting the hang of it — much like the Tony Hawk games, practice makes you eventually able to defy gravity] and because the game map is a very distinctive-looking city in much the same manner as the GTA games — each [“friendly”] neighborhood has its own look.
I was a little disappointed in the reimagining [in the first Spider Man film] of Spider Man’s web shooters as some sort of mutation of Peter’s body — I always liked imagining Peter building some little wrist-mounted web shooters — but not having to worry about restocking web fluid makes it easier just to swing around and freestyle off the buildings [busting flip-tricks in the air increases the amount of time you can use Spider-Reflexes, which is sort of the game’s “Bullet Time.”
Finally, I can imagine that foiling all the random robberies and rescues that come up as you swing through town on your way to fight Doc Ock or one of the other guest villains might eventually get tedious, but it hasn’t happened yet.
The foreign perspectives are nearly always more interesting than whatever they say Stateside. Particularly when they contain quotes like “He is one of my favourite actors. Of course, there is Peter Sellers” and “Brando… may not be good textbook material unless you invent certain things which he didn’t intend himself.”
Noting these for future, um, reference, I guess.
- Parker Lewis publicity photos and photoshops
- Sir Mix-A-Lot and a fat kid freestyle and, um, play with sex toys
- Anti-Flatulence Underwear: “Wear them for the ones you love.”
- Old rock videos in ASCII with MIDI soundtracks
I feel this person’s pain.
These days I frequently have to step back and tell myself to stop getting so excited about, say, my new vacuum cleaner, or the feed-trimmer/edger my wife just got from her folks as a birthday present. But I can’t help it. We move to a house of our own in about a month [we have an overlap of about a month between the start of the house and end end of the apt. lease] and we started packing this weekend.
And I can’t help but be transfixed by those front-load high-efficiency washer/dryer sets whenever I see them in a Sears store. You know the ones I mean. The ones right on the end that are the Sears store brand. I am also very excited about the electric lawnmower my wife’s dad is handing down to us because it’s light and quiet. But it’s not all about the appliances. I am getting a whole room to myself and my computer crap, and that is gonna ROCK. I’m getting a glass L-shaped desk to put all my Mac crap on. And a 30-inch HD Cinema Display to put on the desk. Okay, wishful thinking on the last part.
