I’m not sure what will end up being a more depressing DVD release — The Last Kiss, or the Raiders’ 2006 team video. Probably depends on the number of Imogen Heap songs.
Category: Arts
After offering his version of events, Owens said he plans to practice Thursday. He also hopes to play Sunday against Tennessee, if his surgically repaired right hand can take it. That officially would make him the first player in NFL history to be upgraded from suicidal to questionable in the span of less than a day.
Company of Heroes
Wow. This game scores very highly on my RTS rubric: full camera control, no forced micromanagement, sane multiplayer, and a forgiving learning curve. It’s so engrossing I’ll forgive it for indulging in the boilerplate “noun of noun” naming convention for World War II video games.
Dear God — Idiocracy was hilarious. It’s not a great movie, to be sure, but it’s a brilliant movie. It lags at times, and the narration is a crutch, but it’s the first movie in a long time that has been so ambitious in creating a world and actually making it believable. (Well, not believable, but you know what I mean.) It’s probably not playing near you, but if it is, please go see it — if only to send the message that no studio executive gets to fuck with Mike Judge.
Saints backup quarterback Adrian McPherson is on the injured list after last week’s exhibition game — in which the Titans’ mascot, T‐Rac, hit him head‐on while driving in a golf cart. I seriously doubt any sportswriter on earth ever thought he’d write that sentence. In other news, Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves.
Rick Reilly: You make the call. Little‐league championship, bottom of the ninth, two outs: do you pitch to the star hitter or walk him so you can face the cancer survivor? One coach chose option B and is being tarred and feathered for it. I’m not saying I’d feel good about it, but if I were in his shoes I’d do the same damn thing. Inherent in sports strategy is the recognition that not all players are of equal skill. Reilly says it’s supposed to be about fun, not strategy, but how can you have the former without the latter?
[Carlos Mencia]’s a guy who announces he’s about to be edgy, starts a joke, in the middle of it stops to remind you he’s being edgy, and then congratulates the audience when he’s done with a joke for being brave enough to get through his edginess, and then warns them he’s about to be edgy again. If he would stop with the three warnings and the one congratulation for being edgy, he could cram three more jokes in there… You should never have to go, “Hang on, people, ’cause it’s about to get fuckin’ dark! If your soul has a seatbelt, you better strap in, because —” okay, right now, you’re not dangerous.
It’s not always necessary for the author to put in an appearance himself, if only he can smuggle the Plot itself into the story disguised as one of the characters. Naturally, it tends not to look like most of the other characters… It’ll call itself something like the Visualization of the Cosmic All, or Seldon’s Plan, or The Hitch‐Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or the Law, or the Light, or the Will of the Gods; or, in perhaps its most famous avatar, the Force. Credit for this justly celebrated interpretation of Star Wars belongs to Phil Palmer; I’d only like to point out the way it makes sudden and perfect sense of everything that happens in the film. “The time has come, young man, for you to learn about the Plot.” “Darth Vader is a servant of the dark side of the Plot.” When Ben Kenobi gets written out, he becomes one with the Plot and can speak inside the hero’s head. When a whole planet of good guys gets blown up, Ben senses “a great disturbance in the Plot.”
Gaming Archaelogy: R.O.B. R.O.B. was Nintendo’s Robotic Operating Buddy, the toy red herring robot that got the original NES into stores after the video game crash of 1983. I have vague memories of this thing, but totally forgot how freaking slow it was.
I can’t quantify how surreal this is: Ladysmith Black Mambazo is asked to record a DVD commentary track for a Saturday Night Live “TV Funhouse” short: Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Outer Space (3.5MB MP4). While they’re there, they run into Mr. T. and chill with him. There’s photographic evidence. Quoth Mambazo: “It was quite an honor to have such a famous tv show do such a cartoon featuring our group.”
