Game On: Week of Jan. 28

Here is my column from last week. I reviewed Dead Space 2 and Plants vs. Zombies. Thanks to the Seattle Times for publishing.

Idiot of the Day

Fox News is the leading news channel in the country, and during arguably the biggest international news of the young new year, it doesn't know where that news is properly taking place.

Man Card Member, No. 404431

It's been a while since I posted a Man Card item, but everyone knows I earn my Man Card every single day. No one doubts that, right? Just in case you needed proof, I got it done again today.

My IT director alerted me to a deal going on with memory upgrades for MacBook Pros, where I could double my memory for just $100. Sweet deal, and you can't pass up a chance to make your machine run smoother and handle the heavy beasts of processing power (I'm looking at you, Adobe). Ran some errands with the wife and hauled her to Micro Center, which is a place that is exactly what it sounds like: a warehouse of computer stuff. And it's not all warmly laid out like a Best Buy; no, this place looks like somewhere you'd find Jim and Malvin hanging out daily.

So I got the memory chips, went home and got into man mode. Got out some tools, took apart my MacBook Pro and replaced the memory. It's like the laptop is happier with me already. I even took a little time to get out the can of compressed air and remove some dust and buildup in the fan and other areas of the interior, which is never a bad thing for a laptop. In all, a good manly experience of taking apart machinery and improving it.

Friday Funnies

Of the countless video game trinkets that pass my desk, they all bow the throne of my Troy McClure figurine, something I acquired almost a decade ago from the wife as a thank-you gift for putting up with her during her time in law school. She was never further than eight steps away from a law book nor eight steps from killing someone with said law book. It was a special time for her.

Anyhow I was regarding my Troy McClure figurine and laughing internally at all the fun times McClure brought to The Simpsons. Plus, it was a double-dose of goodness since I have always been a big Phil Hartman fan. SNL, Newsradio, The Simpsons, he was as good a comedian as any I'd ever seen. So because of that I give you a tribute to McClure, who if you never saw his bits you just haven't seen greatness. Even a website (being poorly designed doesn't help) can't do his educational and movie roles justice.

Let's just remember, everyone: "Don't kid yourself, Jimmy, if a cow ever got the chance he'd eat you and everyone you care about!"

More Kevin Spacey

Just because researching yesterday's post got me finding little Spacey trinkets. He was not the greatest Inside the Actor's Studio guest ever, but his renown for doing good impressions is put on display.

Bobby Darin

I've always been a Bobby Darin fan. Not that I can claim to have screamed it from a mountaintop or anything, but when it comes to crooners from the '50s and '60s, he's tops on my list. Mainly because of one song, Beyond the Sea. Love that song. Damn I love that song.

Not that his others were not great, but when you have that one in your pocket, you're doing just fine. It was even better a couple years ago when Kevin Spacey starred, directed, produced and maybe even catered the crew when he made Beyond the Sea, a biographical film about Darin's life. Spacey is a surprisingly good dancer and singer, at least when it comes to covering Darin's songs, so there's an extra talent he can fall back on if he keeps doing shitty movies like KPax and not doing fantastic films like Usual Suspects.

Here's Spacey doing his take on Mack the Knife. Good stuff.

My Heart in a Jar

For years I ate fruit as breakfast. Or maybe a muffin or a bagel. Because damn I love a bagel. The Jersey in me shines through when a bagel is placed nearby; I'll devour a sack of bagels like my dogs attack a rawhide.

Early last year, I decided to abandon that and start eating oatmeal on a regular basis, because I've read too many articles that getting the fiber in regularly is a good thing for the ticker. I've always been a big fan of eating a handful of almonds every day, but adding in the oatmeal is apparently another good way to keep the ticker going strong. Plus, as the wife constantly reminds me, "Grandad has eaten oatmeal every morning for his entire life and he's 429 years old a going strong, so think of that when you make that face about oatmeal." Fair enough.

But apparently I got this off on the wrong foot. I got hooked on the instant oatmeal packets (preferably the Cinnamon and Apple flavored one), and thought I was in a good place. Then a number of people told me that those packets don't have half the nutrients you actually need, and the oatmeal is on the crappier side of oatmeal.

Now I've gone whole hog. Got myself what seems like a storm shelter's worth of oatmeal, and every night I pack a little jar. 3/4ths of a cup of oats, some currrants and a pinch of brown sugar. Yeah, it's more work than the instant packets, but it's nicer to use fresh ingredients and putting all of it together regularly is another way to get closer to the real thing instead of relying (and buying) someone else's creation. Now I've just got the same oatbag, (or oatjar, depending on how you look at it) and in my goofy mind my heart is happier already. My heart is in this jar's hands, so do good for me jar.

Game On: Week of Jan. 21

Here is my column from last week. I reviewed Little Big Planet 2 (my first 5-star review of the year) and Kingdom Hearts Re:coded. big thanks to the Globe Gazette of Mason City, Iowa for publishing.

Friday Funnies

The last year or so has all been about getting the wife hooked on TV shows that don't have the name "Real" or "Jersey" or a Kardashian involved. Seriously, I used to like Bravo when the showed replays of Newsradio, but now they're making me consider treehouse living with all the bullshit they show.

After I introduced her to the majesty of The Wire, which I still consider the best television show ever made (at least in the drama genre, top 3 otherwise in overall greatness), it was time to introduce her to another show that I was amazed she'd never seen, The West Wing. Not sure how she missed it, but apparently she did. My mother, naturally, was a big goober a bought the entire series in box set, so we borrowed it from her and have been plowing through the series at breakneck speed. Once again, the wife has become hooked, and I pat myself on the back for keeping our household Bullshit TV-free for another month or so.

The West Wing isn't full of drop-dead humor like a Newsradio or Scrubs, but every once and awhile the seriousness of the policy discussions gives way to a moment of levity. Like this one, for instance, where Bartlet loses his shit on the phone to the U.N. Secretary General, which had the wife laughing for about 3 minutes straight.



Or this one, in which the staff encounter some unruly ruffians in Indiana. And yes, I'm sticking to my guns that Indiana is full of ruffians and idiots (sorry, that's just what you learn when you live in Louisville).

Idiot of the Day

Do I feel sorry for this girl? Nope.

Do I secretly fear this will happen to my brother? Yep.

So note to Michael: Chill out with the walking/talking/driving/eating/sleeping/whatever while texting. Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

Game On: Week of Jan. 14

Here is my column from last week. The games I reviewed were EA Sports Active 2 and Lost in Shadow. Big thanks to the Uniontown (Pa) Herald-Standard for publishing my column. I think this is a new newspaper for my column to appear in, which is always exciting to see.

My Computer is a Stalker

At the end of the year, I cleaned out my iTunes of all the episodes of podcasts I listened to that way I freed up the space on my machine and just de-cluttered it altogether. The only podcast I had left was an episode of the B.S. Report, from sports columnist Bill Simmons. When I stepped away from my office for a meeting, I came back to a freaky scene. I know that when your computer goes to sleep, the Mac will randomly screensavers. One time it will be a rotation of your photos, another time it will be Apple tips, another time it will be album covers from your iTunes music.

To my burning eyes, this time it decided to rotate the cover of my podcasts. Problem being, I only had one episode of one podcast, thus turning my computer into a dual-screen display of full stalkerism. Damn. I swear I listen to other podcasts. Some fantasy football, some Photoshop techniques, Adam Carolla, a few other actors, etc. I was just screwed by the lack of episodes for my Mac to pull from. Shit, I'm hoping Simmons doesn't turn up in a ditch somewhere, because I'm looking like a prime suspect. I didn't do it, I swear!

Game On: Week of Jan. 7

Here is my column from the beginning of the year. The games I reviewed were TRON: Evolution and Bejeweled 3. Big thanks to the Seattle Times for publishing.

Friday Funnies

Damn, all my dreams of dating Wonder Woman when I was a kid are kinda dashed now. I don't think Linda Carter would have been that mean, though it would have been damn funny to see her play this part.

My Brotherly Advice

My mom and brother are in town for a couple days, and yesterday I taught my brother the finer points of grilling. More specifically, I walked him through the joys of smoking ribs for 4 hours and the goodness that comes from making your own barbecue sauce from scratch.

This was big for me, because you see, I don't get to impart brotherly wisdom upon him often. I get broken-hearted and little misty when I think about the fact that he was born just a few years too late. This created the situation that while we had a lot of fun when he was young, it meant I left for college and professional life during some of those formative years, where I could have been there to talk to him about school, chicks, sports and more things about sports and chicks. You think it doesn't matter, but as the big brother, it does rip your heart out even 15 years later when you think about all the years he needed to talk to someone and I was stuck down in shitty Murray, Ky.

But this is a happy post, so forgive me the moment of soft, gooey introspection. Yesterday was about men. Men making fire. Men drinking beer. Men cooking ribs. Making Sauce. Working temperature and flavor until it hits just the right spot. And then you consume it. Heartily. We cooked those ribs so well four of us ate three racks all by ourselves. Rib overload and a heavy case of the itis? You betcha.

My brother has a girlfriend, and he doesn't need my help in that department (or he's certainly not asking for it since I'm married so he probably would consider my advice a lure into those trappings!) so I have to hang my hat wherever I can. And if grilling be that place, then so be it and I shall claim it.

ps - In the greatness of the ribs, I never got a pic of us cooking them or enjoying a beer over the smoker, so instead I'm running a pic of the delicious apple pie the wife made for dessert.

What I've Read (sorta): Dead or Alive

My holiday tradition continued this past year, when the wife and I drove from DC to Kentucky for the holidays. To pass the long hours of driving through the Disneyland of Depression that we commonly know as West Virginia, we listened to a book on tape. We had lots of options this time around, but we settled on the new Tom Clancy novel, Dead or Alive. This was mainly because it was 22 hours long, which soaked up almost all of the drives to and from Kentucky.

I've never read a Tom Clancy book, only seen a couple of the Jack Ryan movies based on his books. Dead or Alive is apparently the 900th Jack Ryan novel (OK, it's not that many) but since I only know Ryan from the movies, it's weird to know he has since been president and has created some shadow military group that doesn't operate within the purview of the Pentagon and U.S. government. Sounds fishy, but what do I care? It's fiction.

The book hums along at a good pace, with plenty of characters to get to know, modern-day political issues dealt with, and a healthy heap of military excursions that involve men, guns, and men doing things with guns. I've since seen this book on a shelf in a bookstore, and considering it looks like it runs about 8,000 pages, I'm glad that I listened to it on tape to pass the time on the drive instead of wasting weeks reading it. I'll use the book as entertainment to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel, but when it comes to actual flipping pages and dedicated reading, I'll stick with my nonfiction, like what I've started reading now, Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse.

Game On: Week of Dec. 24

Here is my last column for 2010. Feels good to have finished my sixth year of writing this column, and I hope 2011 brings more opportunities to expand my column's reach and audience. The games I reviewed were Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. Thanks to the Nashua Telegraph for publishing.

Game On: Week of Dec. 17

Here is my column from just before Christmas. The games I reviewed were Fable III and Gran Turismo 5. Thanks to the Nashua Telegraph for publishing.

Friday Funnies

IFC has recently revived a bunch of great TV shows and is showing them regularly, which is a great chance to find good comedy that some have forgotten or never took the time to appreciate. Larry Sanders, Arrested Development and Freaks & Geeks, just to name a few. Freaks & Geeks is great because of the talent pool it assembled before all these people got richly famous. Seth Rogan, James Franco, Jason Segal, Judd Apatow and a cadre of others who make fantastic cameos (Joel Hodgson from MST3K, Jason Schwatzman, etc.).

Freaks & Geeks was not peppered with hilarious one-liners so much as it was a great take on high school life and the cliques everyone forms and the inability to escape those trappings once you fall into them. Good stuff.