Blink

Clearly, having finished my second Malcolm Gladwell book in four days, I can't say that I hate the guy's stuff. My biggest complaint about The Tipping Point wasn't Gladwell's writing style, but rather his book structure in general. And here once again I've found that although his sentences and paragraphs flow quite pleasantly before my eyes, Gladwell just doesn't seem capable of making a coherent nonfiction book with a centralized - or even recurring - topic. In a way, he can be forgiven for his pointlessness as he tends to tackle very ambiguous subjects to begin with; The Tipping Point was about that moment when a trend or a fad becomes a phenomenon, and Blink is about the way we react instantaneously to some things without consciously using our brains to think about them. You know, gut reactions, if you will. But in 250 pages, Blink never actually got around to explaining any cognitive processes. With all due respect to Gladwell - who has even described this book as more of an "adventure through our subconscious" than a wealth of actual knowledge - there's really nothing in the book that can't be summed up as an interesting anecdote. For example, we learn that Pepsi beats Coke in taste tests because it is sweeter and taste tests are based on small sips, a proper portion size in which we favor sweet items. That's our "instant" reaction. But if we drink a whole can of each, we're more likely to enjoy Coke more because eventually the extra sweetness in Pepsi becomes a detriment. Cool. Fun fact. Interesting, and somewhat related to the concept of "thinking without thinking." But then Gladwell goes on to discuss how these sip-sized taste tests led Coke to modify their cola in the 1980s in the "New Coke" fiasco. And then he explains why it backfired. All of this was still interesting, sure, but it was totally unrelated to what was supposedly the theme of the book: snap judgments made in the "blink" of an eye. We hear about some over-aggressive cops. We learn about the early struggles and eventual success of the Aeron office chair. We hear the story of a totally embarrassing military simulation gone wrong. We learn that a hospital in Chicago revolutionized the process of evaluating a patient for a heart attack. And on an excitement level, all of it ranges from "not boring" to "pretty cool." But at the end of the book, the dots are left unconnected. And that doesn't make Gladwell a bad writer. It just makes him a bad book-maker, if that makes sense. I wouldn't say that this book needs to be avoided. I actually enjoyed it a little bit more than The Tipping Point. I just can't say that either book succeeded in informing me about its alleged main subject. But hey, no big deal. At least this book never won the Newbery Medal.

Up in the Air

Last one! (I think)

"The story of a man ready to make a connection" Ha! Get it? He flies a lot? No way! What's that you say! This is a double entendre! Bad ass!

Everyone saw this movie, and I didn’t. Sad face :-( So I wanted to see it! And I did! I think George Clooney can just do whatever he wants now. He’s made enough money and people like him enough, so it’s like, “sure that movie sounds swell”. I enjoyed this one though! It features Bella’s friend from Twilight as an uptight Cornell grad trying to ruins Clooney’s career of traveling around the US and firing people. We got on a heartfelt journey across the US as Clooney tries to convince Twilight girl why his job is needed. On the way, Clooney meets his female counterpart. They’re members of all the same rewards clubs and prefer Hilton hotels. Wow they must be meant for each other. He takes her to his sister’s wedding and has a connection with someone for the first time in a long time.

Spoiler Alert!

That woman turns out to be a total BITCH! He decides to ditch his sad lonely life and settle down only to find out she lies and is married with children (not related to the tv show). Seriously, who does that? Weddings are kinda sorta serious chick. Plus you kinda sorta boned him. That’s uh cheating and lying and misleading. Poor George Clooney. Sad face :-( The move ends very sad in my mind. George Clooney flies a million miles and realizes his whole life has been crap but now he has nothing else. So he just flies. Thus the title. Up in the Air. How clever!

I have a bad feeling everyone hates my posts.

Back to the Future 2

Part Deux!

Hokay. So, good movie! Marty McFly yo! I am tiring of my entries because by mistake I left them all for the last minute again. Also, I decided to reread a few Harry Potters in preparation for the movie, so I didn’t get a lot of logging done. Ooops!

Anyways I liked this movie. It was in the future! 2013 I believe. And guess what?!?! We have flying cars. Prepare yourself, because in three years, society is going to be utterly awesome. Complete with self adjusting jackets: one size fits all!

Marty and Doc travel forward in time to save Marty’s future. Apparently he becomes a bum with trouble maker kids. The plan goes off without a hitch. EXCEPT! Biff sees Marty! And remember the time traveling machine! Uh oh. Biff steals Marty’s plan and takes a sports almanac back to the past and becomes a super millionaire. He destroys the town, kills Marty’s dad, and marries Marty’s mom. What a disaster!

This is where things got confusing to me. Somehow, they go back in time, to the original Back to the Future movie, where other Marty is trying to get his parents to meet. They try to steal the almanac back from Biff and there are all sorts of funny things going on at the same time.

I half fell asleep and woke up confused. But I’m excited for part three! Huzzah!

I kind of ran out of steam for this entry. WHY DO I SAVE THEM ALL?!

G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra

Oh jeez! I sense another set of Marissa posts coming because she forgets to do them immediately! Ooops!

Ah, G.I. Joe. Only my most favorite action movie evah. Complete with Eiffel Tower eating nano mites, invisibility suits, and shark boats, this movie is great. At least in my opinion. Which apparently is the minority. Yes, this movie is absolutely RIDICULOUS. In every sense of the word. Probably more so than my last movie review, Wanted. However, I found it thoroughly entertaining and funny. Enough with an opinion though! The real crux of this movie boils down to this: bad girl hot versus girl next door hot.

Enter Rachel Nichols as Scarlett. Your typical girl next door hot. Oh, and she’s brilliant and can fight. The complete package basically. She graduate college when she was 12 and considers everything very scientifically. Thus, she doesn’t get love. Anywho, she’s damn good looking. (Bad news: I couldn't find any G.I. Joe pictures of her looking all adorable, so I used this one of her being bad ass)

Opposite her enters Sienna Miller as Ana. Your typical slutty beauty. A bit more rough around the edges, but still good looking. Ana was girl next door hot girl and was going to marry out super star Duke until he let her nerdy brother die during a war. She has changed and is now working for the dark side. (Side note: She did not change voluntarily. Her brother was actually alive and injected nanomites into her head thus being able to control her. Yea.) Anywho, for her transition to the dark side she trades in her blond hair and dresses for black hair and skin tight suits. She now oozes sex.

Who wins in this battle of hot girl? Who would you prefer?

Guess what? Looking for pictures, I found another blog post! And someone stole my gimick again! Jerks! Anywho, this person has a lot of might seductive pictures of both of them for your comparison. I don't think you should look at work.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

So, this is the third and final book of the Millenium trilogy.

Spoiler Alert!

We leave our main character “the girl” recovering in a hospital after almost being killed by her father, the woman trafficker. Michael Blomkvist, after saving Lisbeth, finds himself caught up in a murder investigation. Basically, the entire book he spends trying to defend Lisbeth’s honor by clearing her name. In the process, he undercovers some pretty hefty government secrets revolving around “the sector”.

End Spoiler Alert!

Overall, I think this book was the second best of the three. The first book took to long to get going for my liking. The second book was great and full of action and plot. This book is a weird combination. It’s more of a courtroom mystery. (I made up that term; it may not make sense.) The book basically centers around Michael Blomkvist’s own investigation. There is not much action. He does a bit of sleuthing. And Lisbeth is a fairly non existent character in terms of plot development until towards the end of the book. It was slow but interesting because you have invested a lot into the characters already. The second and third book really could make up one mega book, and the author does a good job concluding the story.

Like me. The end.

Side Note! So, as I was looking for the picture for this I stumble upon another blog where a guy reviews books. How about that! Anyways, I read his review, and surprise, surprise it is very similar to mine. However, I liked this quote

"The first book is a mystery. The second book turns more towards an action thriller. This third book is very “Law & Order/CSI”."

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

It seems like my Newbery book posts have grown progressively shorter and more sarcastic. So I'll do my best to make this one as lengthy and meaningful as I possibly can. Umm, Mrs. Frisby is a field mouse and her youngest son is sick and bed-ridden but there is an imminent need for her family to relocate so she seeks advice from the rats of NIMH. NIMH stands for National Institute of Mental Health and the rats are actually lab rats who have escaped, but now they have humanlike intelligence thanks to some experiments, but they still don't know if they should help Mrs. Frisby or not until Mrs. Frisby overhears a bunch of people talking about exterminating a colony of rats and it turns out they are the rats of NIMH and Mrs. Frisby informs the rats thusly and, ever grateful, the rats of NIMH help her out. Man. Where do I even begin? It's too easy to start poking plot holes into a children's book with talking animals. It's too obvious to point out all of the flaws in the story and the concept. It'd be too harsh to rip into the author for boring characters and a lack of originality. So I won't do any of those things. Instead I'll just politely point out that with this book's completion I now have just 30 books left in my backlog. The Christmas season will surely knock that back up above thirty, even if I can get it below 30 before then, but for now, yeah, it's nice to have just 30 books left. And for that reason alone, I'm happy to have read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point is a book about that special "moment" when a trend becomes a full-blown epidemic. Malcolm Gladwell attempts to explain the social science behind that phenomenon. You've seen it before. A few people in a select group begin to wear something, for example, such as Ugg boots. Soon the trend is noticed and copied, but only by a few people, and maybe only in a specific place. For years the number of Ugg-wearers continues to increase but still remains very small compared to the number of shoe-wearers in general. And then all of a sudden, Ugg boots hit the "tipping point" and within months you begin to see people everywhere sporting the trend. It's not just exponential growth. It's a sudden explosion in popularity. The concept is one we're all familiar with, I'm sure, but I was excited to read a book about it and see some histories and explanations at work. I did learn a number of interesting things, and the book was interesting (or at least not boring) from beginning to end, but I was ultimately disappointed in this read, largely for two reasons. The first wasn't Gladwell's fault at all; it was the publication date. The Tipping Point first came out a full decade ago in the year 2000. And that means it was probably being written between 1997 and 1999. And for a book based on social trends, that was a bit of an issue. Due to the time period, Gladwell doesn't use Ugg boots or Crocs as anecdotes for the tipping point. Instead, he looks at Hush Puppies and Airwalk sneakers. Wow! I'm sure I'd have cared more ten years ago, but those are two horribly dated footwear items. And back then, the information revolution really had yet to begin. Yeah, we had email and cell phones, but only barely. And we didn't have Facebook or YouTube or any form of viral marketing in general. "User-created content" has become so crucial to social interaction and trend-setting these days, and reading Clinton years Gladwell talk about the power of "word of mouth" without ever referencing the Internet at all felt as quaint as a 2000 movie review that praises The Phantom Menace for having great CGI effects. Any decade-old book will feel dated in its discussion of topical trends, but to "miss" the 2000-2010 decade is to miss a game-changing shift in the very way we communicate. And that was very unfortunate. The other snafu that I do pin on Gladwell is an inability to stay on one real track. Although every chapter was interesting, the writing really jumped all over the place, from "Sesame Street was a successful show because it defied conventions" to "crime in New York City dropped dramatically in the early '90s because of the 'broken window' effect" to "Gore-Tex is a successful company because it limits each plant to 150 workers or fewer" to "Paul Revere was able to spread his warning message so effectively because he was a very charismatic man." Again, all interesting stuff, but what does any of it have to do with that "tipping point" that this book is ostensibly about? Nothing. It'd be one thing if each of these points came back to reinforce a central point that the author was building and reiterating throughout the book. (This is part of why I think Freakonomics and its sequel were so effective.) Instead, all of the ramblings never really found each other and remained episodic and isolated. There just seemed to be a real lack of focus. In the end I didn't hate this book, but I can't give it a strong recommendation due to the aforementioned issues. I've got one more Gladwell book on my backlog, but if it wasn't already on my bookshelf I wouldn't have gone out of my way to read any of his other works.

Mass Effect 2

Oh crap! I beat this game a week ago and forgot to make a post for it. Anyway, I played Mass Effect early this year and despite its high praise was rather unimpressed. The create-your-own story was interesting, but the combat was dull, the vehicle segments sloppy, and no matter how fun it was choosing random lines from conversations, the plot was pretty trite. Well, Bioware fixed basically everything with Mass Effect 2. The combat? Much more fun! I personally loved the sniper rifle, which slowed time for a few seconds every time I looked through the scope- waves of enemies fell to my devastating headshots. The RPG elements worked much better here as well. In the first game I really noticed no difference in gaining a level, but in Mass Effect 2 you could spend experience points on cool new abilities which did indeed come in handy on the battlefield. The crappy driving sections on the Mako in the first game were done away with completely. The plot's no longer a generic "save the universe as captain hero" story, but instead tells a much more interesting tale. Captain Shepard goes down with his ship, the Normandy, at the start of the game, but is saved and kept alive in a comatose state for two years by a terrorist organization from the first game. When the purpose for all this is revealed, Shepard is faced with some tough choices that aren't nearly as black and white as the ones in the original Mass Effect. The plot also unfolds in a much easier way to follow here- a majority of the game consists of finding and gaining the loyalty of 8 new crew members. For instance, to find one member of your team Shepard starts up a prison riot, breaking a powerful woman out of jail, eventually killing the warden. Later on in the game I had the option of helping her face some memories of her past by blowing up the abandoned school/prison where she grew up. There's plenty of variation in the missions- sometimes I never even had to fire a gun to complete the job. It kept me interested throughout the entire game, and unlike a lot of the games I've logged, I really never got bored. Oh, all this time talking about the gameplay and I haven't mentioned that the game is freakin gorgeous. Really my only gripe about the game is that the few loading screens can take a little while to finish. Other than that Mass Effect 2 was a fantastic game, and highly recommended. Just be sure to play the first one, even though it's worse, to get the full story.

Catching Fire

Finally, I’m on break. And that means there’s time for some catching up I’ve been meaning to do. Last night I scarfed down the second installment of The Hunger Games Trilogy and I have some mixed feelings on the book. Prior to reading this, I’ve heard several viewpoints saying that either the book was great or read like melodramatic crap. I’m of two minds on this whole issue. From here on out I’m going to give away some important plot points, so...

***SPOILER ALERT***

The way the book opens was a little bland, at least for my taste. Yeah, we’ve got the government moving to control the citizens and the riots. Yeah, we learn of the secret and mysterious District 13. And, yeah, we hear that our heroes are unfairly recruited back into the this year’s Hunger Games - The Quarter Quells. All of this is fine and well, but the love triangle always rubs me the wrong way. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to hear a 16-year-old girl bitch and moan about her relationship issues - or lack thereof - while the whole damn world is coming apart! I’m aware that this might be a storyline that is the most compelling to some. However, I can only describe it as tedious.

This whole thing rolls on for the majority of the book until we finally enter the Game. Now I’m getting excited. I have to say that regardless how “Twilight” the series can get at times, Collins always redeems herself with the violence and gore that unfolds as all the tributes savagely duke it out against one another. Acid fog, blood rain, killer monkeys all in an arena that operates as a clock - pretty inventive. I just wish there were more and that it wasn’t all crammed into the very end.

And there’s the ending. I have to say I - probably amongst others - saw this coming. (By seeing it coming I mean that some of the tributes were instructed to save Katniss, waiting for their rebel group to save them.) While I wasn’t particularly wowed by it, I didn’t dislike it either. Let’s just put it this way, I’m motivated to finish off the series. And although I’m of two minds on this story, if I’m compelled enough to read on then I think the author has done her job.

Red Dead Redemption

With what appears to be my first post of the month, I give to you: Red Dead Redemption. Even if you’ve never played the prequel, just by seeing the front cover of the game - a mean looking cowboy eyeing you down accompanied with the Rockstar Games logo - you should be able to say to yourself, “Looks like GTA mixed with the western genre.” That is precisely what this game is.

In general, it was fun; however, RDR still doesn’t have what it takes to match his urban cousin in the future. The gun fights match up about the same as GTA’s except for the addition of the duels, which are - somewhat - cool. And although the magnificent scenes of the great plains are quite the spectacle at first, they slowly become one of the games most boring features. Ever new mission requires you high tail it across the country where you trot on horseback through this giant, stale environment in where there is nothing to do. Well, wait... on occasion you might choose to defend some poor old farmer being hassled by bandits, or you might get the chance to do some hunting, bag yourself a deer, but it pales in comparison to the city in any GTA. Where are the hidden jumps I can hurl my car off of, cops I can piss of and send chasing after me, hookers looking for a “good time” in the park? The missions and gun fights may be fun, but I found myself rolling my eyes every time I started a mission that required me to ride for 5-10 minutes before I arrived at any conflict. Lots of boredom.

Also, the game was a little to easy - even for me. Even if I do enjoy a nice walk in the park from time to time, I still want my games to provide some challenge along the way. The zoom feature allows you to instantly lock onto your enemies. So by constantly toggling my left trigger, I almost guarantee a hit with every shot I take. Add on top of this the fact you can earn more money than you know what to do with (Five Fingers Fillet - after only four wins you set yourself up to $100 for ever win after; a real easy event to abuse and make yourself rich as hell in no time), you could find yourself armed to the teeth with the games most lethal guns.

***SPOILER ALERT***

I did all this coming to the last stage, a point where you make a final stand at your hose holding off the US Army from killing your family. I slaughtered a hundred men without using my dead-eye (the game’s bullet-time feature) once. However, this only makes the ending more pathetic.

Your wife and son scurry away as about twenty men line up outside the barn you’ve locked yourself in just waiting to shoot you down when you come out. Now I’ve just killed dozens of these guys without so much as breaking a sweat, and now the game forces you out the front door into a duel with impossible odds. Needless to say, your shot down with only enough time to take a couple of other fellows with you. But why couldn’t I have run out the other side of the barn or climbed to the roof - I saw an opening up there, why the hell doesn’t the game?!

Regardless, I still had fun. In the end, though, I longed for something more.

Wait a tick! What’s this Undead-thing I’ve been hearing some much about as an added download feature to the game. Well, I reached the credit screen, so the game is beaten - and therefore blog-worthy - but maybe not finished.

Final Fantasy III

A lengthy game merits a lengthy post, and when it comes to the 35-hour Final Fantasy III, there is so much to talk about. I could discuss the job class progression I chose for my characters. I could complain about the light and uninteresting story. I could do my best to describe my affinity for the Final Fantasy series to an audience that may or may not have a working knowledge of RPGs in general. I could bitch about the brutal and relentless final dungeon and boss, bemoaning the lack of save points. Instead though, I'm just going to keep this light, simple, and informative rather than introspective. FF3 came out in Japan in 1990 for the 8-bit NES (or as it was known in Japan, the "Famicom" - Family Computer). But it never came out in America until this 2006 DS remake. I bought it and played through the first two thirds of it in 2008 and, on a few key days in the past couple of months, beat it entirely. And having finally done so, I really don't feel all the richer for the experience. FF3 just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. That doesn't mean I'm disappointed I put thirty hours of my life into it. It just means I don't think you should do so unless you absolutely love the series and feel the need to play every Final Fantasy game there is. (Like me.) I'm glad they finally released an American version of this game, and it was actually a huge contributing factor when it came to my decision to buy a DS. But would I play it again? I highly doubt it. There are better games out there. There are better handheld games, better RPGs, and even better Final Fantasy games on the DS. (Well, at least one: FF4, the other reason I bought a DS.) I'm just glad to be done with this one. Maybe they were in no rush to Americanize it because it just wasn't that noteworthy. Anyway, it's nice to take a thirty-hour game off of my backlog. Two DS games remain, but neither should be as long as this one was. Time will tell.

Dr Who Series 4

So far this is my favorite season of Doctor Who. Initially I hated Donna Noble, played by Catherine Tate, but after a couple episodes she really grew on me. Watching her comedy show also warmed me up to her. Initially she comes off as loud, brutish and irritating but over time you realize that those things are all a cover because she thinks she isn't good enough, when in this season she is actually the most important person on Earth with all plots and timelines converging on her.

To spoil the obvious this is David Tennant's last season as the Doctor so going into this season I knew that he was going to have to die and regenerate as a new actor by the seasons end but I was very happy with how they wrote this into the plot. Tennant is now one of my favorite actors. As I have mentioned he played Barty Crouch junior in Harry Potter 4 but he was also recently in a DVD release of his time playing Hamlet on stage with Patrick Stewart as the king and the Kings murdering supplanting brother. Both his role as the Doctor and his role as Hamlet showcase his ability to bounce between sanity and insanity without missing a beat.

This season is also the end of a giant four season arc that makes up the new Doctor Who series. All the seasons twine together to make one huge story line, therefore the fifth season is the same but completely different from the first four.

Like the last season this one was very light on the History. The most notable historical characters in this season are Lucius Caecilius Lucundus and Agatha Christie. Neither one of very great or very interesting importance. Instead this season spent more time finishing off the tenth doctor's story line and that they did.

This season did two notable things in my opinion. The first it focused on the things that make this show what it is. The doctor travels and sees different universes and fight different enemies while developing the plot. The second thing the show does is it is always done from a creative and interesting standpoint so that the episodes don't become repetitive and the twists aren't expected.

When the season ended I felt that the only Doctor I could accept was David Tennant and I wasn't excited to see the next doctor Matt Smith who shows up right at the end of the season as a goofy looking gangly man in a bow tie and a tweed suit.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

It's been well over a decade since I played the first Metal Gear Solid, and with my recent purchase of a PS2 I knew I had to catch up with the series I stopped playing oh so long ago. The first game left quite an impression on young me- the top-down shooting gameplay, the emphasis on stealth, and the hilariously overwrought plot were things I had never really seen before in video games, and all combined to make one of the most fun gaming experiences that PSOne had to offer. All of these aspects and more returned in Metal Gear Solid 2, which despite some flaws was certainly a worthy sequel and held up gameplay wise in the near decade since it has come out. MGS2 finds Snake teaming up with Otacon again two years after Shadow Moses, seeking to expose a new Metal Gear project on a military-owned oil tanker. Tons of shit goes down on the boat, and the whole thing was an excellent introduction. After the explosive conclusion to the intro, I was given control of a new character, also going by "Snake," who eventually comes to be known as Raiden. Raiden's a likable enough protagonist- not the hardcore manly-man that Snake is, but fully capable of getting the job done and more fun to use in hand-to-hand combat. The problem here is that Raiden's introduction was one of the slower parts of the series thus far- you're on an offshore facility teaming up with the original Snake sniffing out bombs. It sounds interesting, but it was the only time in either of the first two games that I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again with the plot not going anywhere. Thankfully when that's done the ridiculous MGS plot kicks into overdrive- if you thought the heavy-handedness of the nuclear proliferation message from the first one was bad, just wait until you see the half-hour cutscenes on rogue AI and censorship Metal Gear Solid 2 has. The thing is, in most games a plot like this would be worthy of mocking, but to me it's part of Metal Gear Solid's charm. At least I thought that until the end, where I think I had about 15 minutes of gameplay in a chunk of 2 hours. How long can you go on about conspiracy theories before it stops being funny and over-the-top and starts getting really boring? Anyway, the non-cutscene parts of this game are really fun- stealthing around, avoiding cameras, hiding in boxes, great boss fights. I just wish the game hadn't devolved into a bad parody of itself by the end, losing all the charm it's wacky plot started out with. Oh well. I'm now halfway through the "main series," though there's plenty of spinoff games here as well. Will I play the rest of them? Depends on if I get a PSP, and even if that did happen it wouldn't be for a while. But MGS3 can be purchased and played easily, so I'm sure I'll get to that soon enough.

Limbo

After updating my Onimusha beating on my backloggery.com page, I used that site's "fortune cookie" feature to figure out which game I wanted to play next. Out of my 72 unbeaten games, the site directed me towards what was probably my shortest remaining game in Limbo, an Xbox Live Arcade game that came out a few months ago. I was pleased with the decision and set out to beat the game, doing so in the span of two or three hours just now. I liked it. I liked it a lot. This is one of those games that makes for great evidence in the "video games can be artistic" debate. The whole theme here is minimalism. Black and white environments, no dialogue, no story to speak of, no music aside form some ambient sounds. Some games can really just take you away into their own atmosphere. This game reminded me of World of Goo in its ability to do so. (Actually, that game was also rather minimalistic in tone. Hmm.) Anyway, the most natural comparison to make is with Braid, another quick but beautiful puzzle platformer XBLA game. But the biggest praise for Braid is directed at its very unclear and hazy story. People rave about the hew lines of text that game offers as a narrative and go off interpreting all sorts of things. I didn't like that. I mean, I enjoyed the game itself plenty, but the Internet seemed ready to go to war over what everything in Braid meant. With Limbo, you get an even less clear plot and narrative. And to me, that works even better. Rather than be able to shove your own interpretation everywhere by using a few vague lines of text as symbolic evidence, you can think whatever you want to and enjoy it all the same. My own interpretation of Limbo - which, plot-wise, merely consists of a boy waking up in the wilderness, venturing through a bunch of traps and hazards, and ultimately finding a girl right back where he started out from - is rather unimaginative and simple. But I can totally understand where other people are coming from when they say, "the boy has gone through hell and back to find his sister," or, "the boy had to face a lot of demons in order to finally accept his sister's death." For me, that works much better than Braid's "maybe the princess is a nuclear warhead, or maybe just your ex-wife, or maybe the embodiment of time, or maybe a half-assed Princess Peach parody" debate. My only beef with Limbo was that a few times I found (and collected) an egg necessary for a certain Xbox achievement, and the game didn't give me said achievement. It's not like my Gamerscore matters more to me than the wonder of the game itself, but still - what gives? Sloppy achievement-nullifying errors ain't cool! Anyway, this was a great game, and one of the best I've played on the Xbox Live Arcade.

Onimusha: Warlords

Many years ago, I got a few hours into this game before putting it down for an indefinite hiatus. That hiatus ended this morning when I woke up and, on the second day of a four-day weekend, decided to play it until beating it. That only took me an hour and a half to do, and half an hour of that I can attribute to relearning the control scheme, the gameplay mechanics, and more or less everything in general. The most telling thing I can say about this game is that I remember almost none of it at all. Six or seven years ago, I played it almost entirely through, and yet I needed to use Wikipedia to remind me of the plot up until the point I was at, and even then I had zero recollection of it whatsoever. It's simply a hack-and-slash game that many have compared to Resident Evil with Samurai warriors instead of zombies. Puzzle elements are there, but take a backseat to mostly-pointless slicing and dicing. I guess the very definition of the word "forgettable" seems to sum up this particular gaming experience for me. That said, there are a lot of people who enjoyed this game a lot, and I know it's one of the more popular and well-known titles on the PS2. Fortunately, I didn't buy all of the sequels to this game as I've done with several other games I ended up not liking that much (Viewtiful Joe comes to mind immediately, and I'm sure I'll be sick of the Call of Duty games soon enough). I can't give this game a hearty recommendation, but if you're really big into Resident Evil (looking at you, Sween) then this game may be more up your alley than it was up mine.

The Ice Harvest

Here's another one of those $4 DVDs I went nuts on back in September. Fortunately, it was a pretty solid movie. Aside from the three guys on the cover, Randy Quaid and Oliver Platt also star in this 2005 Harold Ramis movie adapted from a 2000 novel of the same name by one Scott Philips. Alright, now that all those details are out of the way, let's discuss the film itself. Again, I liked it. But it was nothing all that special. It's a heist movie, but it's also a dark comedy. Actually it felt a whole lot like Fargo or Burn After Reading in that regard, and I wonder if Ramis wasn't at least a little bit Coen-brother-inspired when he made this movie. I thought the acting was great. I thought the pacing was stellar too, as the movie comes in at just ninety minutes in length but feels padded enough to be a full-blown two-hour drama. The gist is that two lawyers (Cusack and Thornton) have just stolen two million dollars in Wichita, Kansas. It's Christmas Eve. But, of course, their getaway doesn't go completely as planned. And I don't just mean that the man they've stolen from is out to catch them, either. What made this movie interesting wasn't the big picture at all but instead all of the small twists thrown in. There's freezing rain. There's a cop who keeps pulling Cusack over. There are incidents at a strip club. There are marital and familial woes to be dealt with. The double-crossing and plot-twisting that typically accompany dark crime comedies are present as well, and the way all of the elements, both standard and different, combine makes for a movie that, while certainly not special or amazing, holds your interest throughout. I'd actually never heard of this movie before buying it, so I'm not sure how prevalent it is on TV, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an entertaining hour and a half. Maybe it's on Netflix or something. Your call!

Call of Duty: Classic

I beat this game at two in the morning last night but was just too tired (both physically and of the game itself) to make a write-up. CoD Classic is simply a graphically-enhanced port of the original Call of Duty game that came out for the PC in 2003. I knew going in that the game would probably be rather vanilla, being the first in the franchise, and also somewhat clunky and blocky, being a game from that PS2-GameCube era of 2003. But I still managed to be surprised, sometimes pleasantly, and sometimes in  the utmost frustration. First, the gameplay. CoD seemed difficult in all the wrong ways. The control scheme was familiar and easy enough, but movement was rather slow. I know that's because of graphical frame rate limitations imposed by 2003, but it still felt annoying at times, especially when I was under fire. Furthermore, the game was very ambiguous at times in its instructions during missions. There was one car chase level I had to repeat about twenty or thirty times because the first nineteen or twenty-nine times I was shooting at the people in the cars chasing me rather than blowing up the cars themselves with explosives - but when the game's NPCs are yelling at you to "Shoot him! Shoot him!" instead of "Blow that car up!" or "Use the rockets!" it's pretty easy to make that, well, mistake. But no NPC order was more absurd than this one Soviet sniper's in the first Eastern Front level; armed with no ammunition, you're told to run straight from one coverage area to the next under heavy machine gun fire. The NPC basically says, I have the gun and you don't, so you'll need to run for it while I shoot those fuckers. And, yeah, he totally sucks at shooting those fuckers. I died at least thirty times doing exactly what was demanded of me before somehow miraculously making it. And this time I wasn't doing anything wrong. Finally, the worst gameplay occurred during a pair of tank-based levels. To control the tank, you needed to use the right stick to aim your gun, the left stick to move, and the A-button to turn. I promise you, it's even less intuitive than it sounds. But I can't rag on the game too hard for a few questionable directives and some shoddy tank controls. Let's move on to the story and pacing of the game itself. You do nine missions as an American, seven as a Brit, and ten as a Soviet. The American and British missions were fairly routine and been-there, done-that. Destroy some artillery. Capture some documents. Defend a bridge. You know the drill. I was often reminded of the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers when playing these missions, and several even felt inspired by that HBO show. Of course, that's probably just because both the show and the game were based on actual World War II missions and events. But I have to give credit to the Soviet campaign for really giving me a different and more powerful sense of what that war was like. Right off the bat, as you cross a river toward Stalingrad in a boat with a few dozen other unarmed and terrified men, a commander is barking out orders like "not one step backward!" and "cowards will be shot on sight!" Several boats on your left and right are destroyed by German artillery and planes and all your own commander can do is scream about his hatred of cowards. Finally one man on your boat jumps ship - after its been grazed by artillery, no less - and the commander and several other men shoot him in the water, wasting valuable ammunition you'll soon find out the Soviets don't have. When you land, you're forced into a line behind a supply truck where one gun is being distributed to every other man as the distributor instructs, "If you have no gun, wait for the man with the gun to fall, then you pick up the gun." I'd heard before that the Soviet army had more men than guns but I always figured the "two men, one gun" thing was a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration of how rough the Soviets had it. Apparently, not so! (Because if I saw it on a video game, it must have happened!) Anyway, later in the campaign you're part of a group tasked with shooting retreating Russians (very briefly; it's not like this is the focus of any mission or anything). Basically, one of the few history lessons I took away from the game was that, yeah, Soviet Russia was a horrible, horrible place to live. Stalin used his men as cannon fodder, only even arming half of them and then threatening them with death for thinking twice about running off into battle. The numbers don't lie, and the Soviet Union had 9 or 10 million military deaths in World War II (and that'd before the 13 millions civilian deaths). By comparison, Germany had 5 millions military deaths and the U.S. and U.K. had 800,000 combined. Shit! But as so often seems to be the case, I think I had more fun with the Russian campaign than with the American or British ones. There's just something so gratifying about waving the red flag over the Reichstag in the heart of Berlin. World at War, which I played last winter, has the same climactic ending, and in a much more awesome and over-the-top fashion, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the same mission this time around. Granted, if I have to do the same thing again in CoD 2  or 3, then yeah, it'll probably get old. Speaking of those two games, I don't know when I'll get around to them. Part of me just wants to tear through this series, Mega Man style, but I could also use a bit of a break from these WW2 FPS games. Anyway, when it comes to appropriately rating this first Call of Duty game, I'd call it fun but by no means amazing or unique; it's no Modern Warfare and it's actually rather generic if anything. But with very few exceptions, the game was still fun and enjoyable. But you're probably better off with Black Ops, even for six times the price. Man, I can't wait to play me some Black Ops.

Picture This

Thanks to a totally unexpected debut post by our newest member Brian, I have the honor of making the 500th Back-Blogged logging. And to me, it only seems fitting that the privilege belong to no author other than Joseph Heller. I'm sure I've made it clear in blog entries past that one of my many smaller goals on the way to the ultimate goal of an empty and spotless backlog is to read Heller's seven novels, months apart, in publication order. Unfortunately, I've also made it clear that I've enjoyed each work less than the previous one. Picture This was both the hardest to find Heller novel and also the most poorly reviewed; I was looking forward to reading it, but really only so as to move along in my Heller catalogue. So imagine my great and pleasant surprise when, just thirty or forty pages into Picture This, I had finally found the long lost Heller wit I hadn't seen since first reading Catch-22 nine years ago. It's tough to summarize Picture This; the novel is really more commentary than story, and is told in a completely nonlinear fashion. Also, to try to describe it would not do it any justice whatsoever. But I'll try nonetheless. So, Rembrandt sits down in 17th century Holland and begins painting one of his most famous paintings, Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer. The Aristotle in the painting becomes self aware (though he remains inanimate at all times - this isn't Harry Potter) and is culture-shocked at 17th century Holland (having just come from 4th century BC Greece). Eventually the painting ends up in 20th century New York in a museum. Now, very little of the novel, if any, is actually told from the perspective of Aristotle. Instead, an omnipresent narrator keeps jumping back and forth through space and time to do nothing more than describe these three eras, detailing major people and events that contributed to the history of Western civilization. And for the entirety of the 350-page book, Heller is ripping into everyone and everything all along the way. He's showing, without explicitly saying, that nothing ever changes. Men have always thirsted for blood, money, and power. People have always been cruel and unkind. No government has ever been able to avoid making rash and horrible decisions. All empires crumble and fade. The bullet point list of Heller's recurring morals and themes goes on and on. He's as cynical as I've ever seen him, but in an almost impossibly calm and collected manner. And it works. It works so well. With all due respect to Lewis Black, sometimes it's more efficient to merely mention something ridiculous than it is to scream about it. For instance, consider this one-sentence paragraph that ended a chapter regarding Rembrandt's ever-increasing popularity but ever-decreasing financial situation: "By the time he had died, Rembrandt could not afford a Rembrandt." Bam. So much said with so few words. Yes, Heller's back, and he's back big. Now in his sixties, he's almost thirty years older and wiser than he was when he wrote Catch-22 and it really does show. I still think Catch-22 is the better book, but Picture This is probably better-written and has a far more professionally monitored tone. The book isn't even irony-laden. It's more about lamenting than lampooning. I can understand why some people criticized Heller for being too sobering and deadpan this time around, but I absolutely loved it. In fact, numerous times while reading Picture This, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to The Boomer Bible, a favorite of mine (and Sween's!) that spends its first several-hundred pages mocking world history from the dawn of mankind to the present day. But whereas Boomer Bible is structured and monotonous, Picture This haphazardly bounces around between the ages drawing parallels only when necessary. I won't say that one works better than the other, as both are extremely effective at what they do and neither made me feel very good about humanity's outlook in general, but I will say that Heller just seems to have a way with words that few other authors possess. There's one part of the book in which Heller describes the trial of Socrates that wreaked havoc on my social injustice bone. I mean, the guy can flat out write. I've got just two more Heller books to go, and if patterns hold I should be done with Closing Time by March or so and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man sometime in June or July. But after this gem, I'm not sure if I can wait that long before returning to the Heller portion of my backlog.

Porco Rosso

Across the Adriatic Sea flies a red sea plane, flown by the WWI ace Porco Rosso. Times have changed and he is now the best bounty hunter in the islands, hunted by both Sea Plane Pirates and the Italian Government. What's a flying pig to do? Released in 1992, Porco Rosso is Hayao Miyazaki's sixth film as a director and is a triumph of animation, mechanical illustration and storytelling. Known for having common themes in his movies, Porco Rosso celebrates Miyazaki's wonder with flight, while having usual concentration of pacifism and feminism.

The artwork is sensational in two ways, fluidity and detail. From aerial combat and dog fights to a sultry singer's lips, movement so flows naturally that its easy to forget that this is all hand drawn. With animation so smooth and graceful, it's usual for animators to hold back detail to keep work moving. But with Miyazaki's animation studio, Studio Ghibli, no detail is every left behind. Every bolt and crease in the planes is tediously drawn. And while most characters aren't detailed towards realism, little detials like hair and wrinkles are always prominent in the studio's films. Even if you aren't a fan of anime or flying pigs, there are just clips that you should watch in amazement.

Now for a film so nice, I had to watch it twice. Once in Japanese and once in English. Now of course a foreign movie can be a hassle to read and enjoy visual, and most English dubs of anime stay very true with types of voices, grizzled characters get grizzled voices and so on and so on. When Porco Rosso was dubbed, its choices in voice actors were spot on with one exception. Michael Keaton. He tried his hardest to match Porco gruff personality; a personality that was inspired by 1940 leading men like Humphrey Bogart. He just misses a certain roughness in his throat that the Japanese actor had clearly in his. It's really alright though, Susan Egan's performance as Gina, the sultry night club owner was more than perfect. You know her as Meg from Disney's Hercules.

This is a classic story of the ugly underdog getting the upper-hand, and the girl. Been retold again and again; you know what you're getting into when you start the movie. But it's Studio Ghibli's diligent work and Miyazaki's style of storytelling gives you a movie with style, adventure and heart.

Miracle (2004)

I'd never actually seen Miracle all the way through before tonight. The parts I had seen included the opening montage, the formation of the team, one training montage, the hellish post-game workout in Sweden, Kurt Russell's excellent pre-game speech, and the climactic Soviet game. In other words, except for a scene in which the coach makes an unexpected roster cut, I hadn't missed a thing of any importance whatsoever. I'm kind of torn when it comes to judging this movie. I can't help but compare it to another Disney sports film, Remember the Titans, in which a ragtag group of kids learns to work as a team and overcome adversity thanks to a fantastic coach. And that's weird, because the similarities really end there. I liked Miracle. I did not love it. And although I can't speak for the world as a whole, I think that's the general consensus most people came to. The thing is, the real "Miracle on Ice" is such an awesome triumph story that it's almost impossible to dislike any movie based upon it, so long as said movie has decent acting, directing, editing, writing, and production value. And this one did. But none of the aforementioned areas were done in spectacular fashion. It's almost as if Miracle was just good enough not to be a disappointment. Remember the Titans worked so well because it was a little known feel-good story. Miracle almost didn't work because it was such a well-known feel-good story. And yet, it's tough not to like this movie. It's extremely basic and methodical in its approach to storytelling, and I could have used a lot more anti-Soviet emotional fuel to help make the on-screen game actually feel half as significant as the real-life one must have felt. But still, at the center of all the unspectacular filmmaking is a great story. It deserved a movie, and Miracle fits the bill just fine. It just seems like the movie could have been better in almost every way.

The League: Season 1

When The League was first advertised on FX about one year ago as the lead-out to the latter half of 2009's spectacular Always Sunny season, I was annoyed and uninterested. Like every college-educated white American man under the age of 40, I play fantasy football with all of my friends. I've done so for years. But if there's one thing I've learned about fantasy football, it's that any stories about any other person's team are completely boring. I therefore figured a show based on other (fictional) people's (fictional) fantasy teams would be absurdly uninteresting. But I was wrong! This show is actually pretty funny. And more importantly, very little of the humor is actually fantasy football related. To dismiss The League as nothing more than a show about a fantasy football league would be like dismissing Sunny as nothing more than a show about some friends who own a bar. I managed to catch the six-episode first season in a marathon a couple of months ago and decided to add The League to my regular viewing schedule and to buy the first season for repeated viewing pleasure. And to be honest, the 2010 season of The League has been at least as good as Always Sunny so far this year. But I'm not here to talk about the second season of The League; I'm here to discuss these inaugural six episodes. And I won't be dishonest or mislead you, dear readers; they weren't always spectacular. But each one felt better than the last. And the first wasn't even terrible! As it turns out, the five actors had literally just met each other about three hours before they began filming the first episode. So their lack of chemistry, in hindsight, makes perfect sense. Watching the first season, therefore, is kind of like watching a group of acquaintances grow closer and become friends. (Aww.) The other thing about the first season that struck me as odd was that despite being just six episodes long, it managed to tell the tale of an entire season of fantasy football. So the first two episodes handle the draft and Week 1 and thus take place in early September. But the final two episodes entail the two playoff weeks (either Weeks 15 and 16 or 16 and 17) and happen in late December. To the show's credit, the first two episodes clearly happen in the summer time and the last two are very much set in the winter. So, yeah. Production value. Still, it's just a little weird to cut out almost the entire regular season like that. But that's just a by-product of a shortened first season. The second season has already had a number of decidedly autumnal episodes, complete with pumpkins and Halloween. I also expect a nice Thanksgiving episode, and probably soon. Anyway, I've spoken at length about the show now and haven't really told you why it's funny. And the answer is simple: the characters. They're not outlandish or ridiculous, and for the most part they remind me of my own friends in some ways. And that's really why this show works. It's relatable. The scenes are largely ad-libbed and unscripted. It just feels very natural, albeit some improbable plot points put in for comedic value. Every episode really just boils down to five guys ragging on each other week in and week out. The five guys just happen to be played by professional actors and comedians. What's not to love?

Resident Evil Zero

Finally, with the beating of Resident Evil Zero, I have beaten the seven games of the Resident Evil main series. And aside from an on-rails shooter side game, I probably won't have to play another til Resident Evil 7 comes out, and that aint even announced yet. Anyway, this is the fifth game of the franchise, nestled in between fellow Gamecube games Code: Veronica and RE4. Chronologically, however, this is the prequel, taking place before everything else. You play as Rebecca Chambers, a rookie cop (there are so many rookie cops in Resident Evil) as well as Billy Coen, an escaped death row inmate out to prove his innocence. While gameplay is mostly the same as usual, a few gimmicks were introduced. First, you could switch between the two characters to use their unique abilities (Billy's more powerful, Rebecca can mix chemicals and herbs) as well as take different paths and shout out basic commands at eachother. Second, rather than multiple immersion-breaking boxes where you can stash your loot and find it again further on in the game, Resident Evil Zero is strict about leaving items places- if you can't carry that extra first aid kit, you've got to leave it there and maybe you'll come back to it later. I would have liked this idea had it not led to me completely missing the grenade launcher in the game, but it wasn't too necessary so I'll quit my bitching. Anyway these two gimmicks were just that- gimmicks! They were neat for a bit but hardly progressed the series forward, and it's obvious that the series was on its last breaths at this point- a change was needed, and it came in the next installment. And on that note, I think it's time to break down the Resident Evil series with some rankings:

1. Resident Evil 4- an easy choice for number one. A lengthy but action packed game that will scare the pants off you but never takes itself too seriously.

2. Resident Evil 2- perhaps due to my playing it immediately after the first installment, but this was leaps and bounds better as a sequel. Also of note- the top two games star Leon Kennedy.

3. Resident Evil Code: Veronica- the only other game in the series to nail the over-the-top atmosphere. The surprise antagonist here is even better than Wesker.

4. Resident Evil 5- The solid gameplay of 4 was improved slightly, but gone was the scary and fun atmosphere, replaced with a serious trek through Africa.

5. Resident Evil Zero- Tried a few new things, but ultimately didn't leave much of a mark.

6. Resident Evil 3- I played this just a few months ago, and barely remember anything about it other than the awkward villain's grunt- "Stars.... Stars...." Not very threatening.

7. Resident Evil- Seems like blasphemy to put the one that started it all last eh? But man, this was just a chore to get through. I never got frustrated with the others nearly as much as the first.

So there you have it folks, my opinions on the Resident Evil series in a nutshell. Will I continue ranking the series I play as I finish them, like here and with The Dark Tower? Yeah, probably.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 5

Holy shit. What an excellent season of television this was. It was so great, in fact, that it deserves an episode-by-episode breakdown, a format I've never yet used when posting about a season of television on this blog. I'll point out the plot and some highlights from each episode and then rate it out of five stars. Anyway, there were twelve wonderful episodes of Always Sunny that aired on FX in the autumn of 2009. And here they are, in order. In "The Gang Exploits the Mortgage Crisis," Frank and the boys decide to flip a house they've purchased at a foreclosure auction. The issue - there's always an issue with this crew - is that the original family still lives there and has ninety days to move out. Meanwhile, Dee attempts to become a surrogate mother for twenty-thousand dollars. Dennis and Mac's Honey and Vinegar routine was unforgettable, but the single scene that stole the episode for me was Dee's jack knife bellyflop. Four out of five stars. In "The Gang Hits the Road," the boys decide to go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. Charlie has never been outside of Philadelphia (or eaten a pear). Mac has a jar of urine dumped on him. Dennis and Charlie try to grill hot dogs over a bonfire in an enclosed trailer. Dee drunkenly serenades a teenage boy with Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train." There simply wasn't a dull moment in this episode. Five out of five. "The Great Recession" used the economic crash of '09 as a plot point as Frank lost all of his savings. Mac and Dennis fire everyone from Paddy's while giving free drinks to a slew of homeless people in a misguided attempt to boost the Paddy's economy. I liked the shoe-slicing knife bit and Charlie's crab people idea, but Frank absolutely steals the show in this one when the thickness of his neck thwarts an attempt to hang himself. Twice. Five stars. "The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention" was an average-at-best episode, which means it was one of the worst of this excellent season. Frank goes off the deep end and attempts to be as deranged and disgusting as possible, which leads to a fair share of laughs on behalf of concepts like wine in a soda can, making someone feel trapped at an intervention, and uncle-niece relationships. Here's something of note: out of almost seventy episodes, this is the only one I can remember in which the gang actually feels bad about the way they've treated another human being; after all the terrible things they've done, it's "salting the snail" that evokes sympathy. Three stars. "The Waitress Is Getting Married" played off of Dee's numerous insecurities and there was a great line about Artemis putting bacon bits in her hair so as to feel like a Cobb salad during sex, but this was absolutely a Charlie episode. Whether he was getting stung while trying to retrieve honey from a hornet's nest, eating whole blocks of cheese, ordering "milksteak" at a restaurant, or declaring his hobbies and interests to be "magnets" and "ghouls" respectively, Charlie was making me laugh throughout the other-wise iffy episode. Four stars. "The World Series Defense" featured a humorous subplot for each character, and that made it a great episode. Frank returned to a fumigated apartment building using a rubber hose as a breathing device, Mac wrote a love letter to Chase Utley, Charlie pushed Dennis in front of a car and got into a mascot fight (as Green Man) with the Philly Fanatic, Dee tried to decide which Phillies player she was going to charge the field and kiss, and Dennis tried unsuccessfully to explain the whole thing to a judge. Four stars. Roddy Piper makes an excellent guest star appearance in "The Gang Wrestles For the Troops," an episode which also introduced us to Ben the temporarily wheelchair-bound soldier. The boys' inability to impress anyone with their chicken-like eagle costumes and song and dance was fantastic, as was Cricket's turn as a dirty-fighting over-the-top Muslim extremist heel. And who could forget Frank as the Trash Man or Dee as Desert Rose? Nearly lost amid all that was happening was Frank's awkward gift of jean shorts for Ben, followed by a salute, all while Seal's "Kiss From a Rose" played in the background. Five stars. The cold open for "Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens" was my favorite one in the show's history, in which Charlie simply shows a speechless gang his horribly tacky commercial for what are essentially nothing more than cat socks. The merchandising bug kicks in for the boys, however, and before long the episode is full of nudie pens, dick towels, guns that shoot out hard alcohol, and green eggs, which Frank considers a "jumping off point" but never really gets away from. Charlie's utter lack of a grasp on basic legal procedure comes into play yet again and Mac's attempts to void a few contracts end up with him simply eating them. Four out of five stars. "Mac and Dennis Break Up" was a rare miss in which Mac and Dennis, well, break up. It felt boring and predictable, unlike every other episode this season, but was saved by the secondary plot in which Charlie and Frank try to help Dee get her cat out of her wall. Three stars. "The D.E.N.N.I.S. System" was an interestingly formatted episode in which Dennis explains his foolproof system for seducing women to the rest of the gang. The latter half of the episode deals with their various inabilities to succeed with the plan. The episode was solid enough, but the lack of memorable lines and moments render it another three. The same could be said of "Mac and Charlie Write a Movie," in which Mac and Charlie... write a movie. Yeah, I guess I don't need to keep summarizing episodes with self-explanatory titles. Anyway, there just wasn't a lot going on here aside from Mac and Charlie pitching a terrible action movie and Dee struggling to portray a lifeless corpse as an extra in an M. Night Shyamalan movie. This was yet another three, and barely. Fortunately, the season ended on a high note with "The Gang Reignites the Rivalry," an episode about a flip cup tournament the gang has been banned from for ten years. Highlights included Frank's skinny jeans, Charlie trying to Good Will Hunting some frat kids, Dennis and Frank trashing the home of their former flip cup rival, and poisoned beer. This one was right on the fence between being a four and a five, but fuck it, I'll just give it the five. So to recap, this twelve-episode run of Always Sunny came out of the gate firing, maintained consistency in the middle episodes, and faded down the stretch but still ended with a bang. It contained four average Sunny episodes, four pretty good ones, and four amazing ones. And not a single stinker in the bunch! Unfortunately the sixth season of Always Sunny hasn't been nearly as strong so far, but I'm sure I'll get around to recapping that at a much later date. Like, October 2011, let's say.

October 2010 Recap

October was a better month than September. We logged 30 items collectively. Trevor put away a personal best six items, and that doesn't include his ill-received Fable II post. Keith was absent for a third straight month, and I think at this point the general idea is that he'll return when and if he wants to do so; it's really on him to decide whether or not to pursue a career in the logging industry. Sween and Marissa each added five posts of their own, Webber chipped in two, and I led the way with a dozen.

A month ago, I set a personal logging goal of 7-7-7 - that is to say, seven DVDs, seven games, and seven books in one calendar month. It was hell of ambitious and I knew it'd be nearly impossible to accomplish. But by aiming high, I still did alright after falling short, finishing 3 games, 4 books, and 5 DVDs. That grand total of twelve loggings is still pretty meager compared to my own "career" average of 19, but there are two important things to point out here. One is that the 12-count is still my highest since commencing a full time job. I hate to say it, but 20-post months may just be a thing of the past for me. And this means I've got to put an even higher emphasis on not buying new items. This brings me to my second point; with only four purchases in October (two DVDs and two games), I still netted a progress of +8 on the month (or -8 if you're going by items in my backlog). That's my biggest accomplishment since June (+10) and the four acquisitions are the best I've done since January. (There were four in that month as well.)

There are a few reasons to believe November will be an even more logger-friendly month than October was. One is a pair of four-day weekends (Veterans Day and then Thanksgiving). Another is Daylight Savings Time ending, ensuring very long and dark (and indoor-friendly) evenings. A third is a simple dwindling of the primetime TV schedule. If I'm watching less TV, I've got more time to log shit. All of this having been said, I should be able to have a better November than I did an October. This means logging at least 12 items and posting at least a +8 in the overall progress column. Why not shoot for 15 (a 5-5-5, for instance) and a +10? And although I never quite seem capable of coming through on my specific goals, I guess I should make a few anyway just for shits and giggles and overall direction.

In the video games department, I'll aim to complete Onimusha, the first Call of Duty game, and Final Fantasy III once and for all. These should combine to take up no more than eight hours of my time, but we'll see. Turning to books, I think it's time I head back for some more Joseph Heller; Picture This should be easy enough to finish off. And let's also throw in kids' book and a nonfiction book while we're at it. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and The Tipping Point fit the bill just fine. Finally, on the DVD front I'll go for three seasons of television, all from FX: the most recent seasons of The League and Always Sunny and the first one of Sons of Anarchy. Anyone else got something specific?