Final Fantasy V Advance

This one came down to the wire. Final Fantasy V Advance, the GBA port of Final Fantasy V is my first and last game beaten in March. Yeah, it took me a while, but getting through all of these rpgs can get to be too much sometimes- I had to put this down for a while halfway through, and my laughable monthly goals assumed I wouldn't get back to it until April. Well, I did get back to it, and it is done. Anyway, FF V. It was great! It feels a lot like was FF III should have been and more- the job system actually worked this time. Switching jobs in III was a hassle and I avoided it whenever possible, but FF V really encouraged experimentation with different jobs. Basically, the more you play with one job, you'll earn new abilities that can be used even when you got a different job. My strategy for the endgame was to level up a lot with a knight, dragoon, and samurai to earn the 'equip sword', 'equip katana' and 'equip lance' abilities, equip the corresponding legendary weapon, then combine these with the dancer job to do tons of damage with every hit. Anyway, aside from the job system, everything else seems to be pretty standard fare for Final Fantasy games at the time (by which I mean IV.) The story falls into the same usual cliches, but like FF IV before it, the game was more than the usual "you are heroes of destiny, go save the world from the bad guy!" but much more subdued than the plots of the later games that resemble bad drug trips. So yeah, no regrets about playing this one, but unfortunately for such a great series that means this is also one of the worst of the bunch. Still well worth a play, if at least to see how fun a decent job system can be.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter! Woo!

My mom gave Steve Harry Potter 1-6 on BluRay for Christmas. Well that was very kind and thoughtful of my mom, especially since I love Harry Potter! So since we live together now, I think I’m allowed to blog movies he hasn’t watched yet. So there! Take that! I’m watching HP, not you! I went into this undertaking thinking “this is kind of gonna suck until I get to HP4” How wrong was I! I haven’t seen the first three movies in a while, so I lulled myself into thinking they weren’t very good. HP1 was magical though. It’s Hogwarts introduction. And for that, I thank you HP 1. That’s really all I want to say for a review. It was a good and magical movie. (The acting kind of sucked though on the kids’ parts, so I am eager to see how the actors evolve over time though. Also, damn, they looked young.)

Shrek 3D: The Complete Collection

So, at the risk of alienating all of those fans of mine who appreciate my consistency, I'm going to shake things up a bit and make one post for all four Shrek movies that came in a compilation with the 55" Samsung 3D LED HDTV I bought two months ago. I know, I know. Have I learned nothing from Webber's Percy Jackson folly not even one year ago? At least I think I have; while Webber summarized each of the five books in that series in great detail, sometimes spanning three or four paragraphs, I'll do my best to keep individual movie reviews short and sweet. Not quite "three sentence reviews" short, but like, five or six, max. (And while I'm at it, since I've already linked to two of the most shameful moments in this blog's history, here's Trev's "I quit" post about how bad Fable II was. Whew.) Anyway, I want to say a few words about the 3D experience before jumping into the individual recaps. For starters, yeah, 3D TV is definitely a fledgling technology. I'll assume most people reading this have by now seen at least one movie in 3D at a movie theater. Some enjoy the experience, and some don't (headaches, etc.) but the vast majority seem to agree that, good or bad, 3D doesn't actually change the movie-going experience very much. And I can tell you that it's pretty much the same story in your living room. There's one key advantage (3D!) and a few disadvantages in the tradeoff: less vibrant color, blurrier background image quality, and a screen that goes completely black if you turn your head on its side. Plus, in the long run, battery life on the glasses (and initial cost on the glasses - $150 or so a pair, though fortunately the bundle I bought included four pairs). One thing I found essential was turning on a setting on my TV called "AutoMotion Plus" or something similar. This setting interpolates the images you see and essentially increases the frame rate from 30 Hz to 60 Hz. For those of you not down with scientific and mathematical terms, AutoMotion Plus makes it so that you see sixty images per second instead of just thirty. That might sound like an irrelevant difference to you, but trust me; it's quite noticeable. And unless you're watching something animated, it's noticeable in a bad way. The Internet derides it as the "soap opera effect," and it makes it such that all film-based images suddenly look much less polished and, strangely enough, much cheaper. It's like looking at people through a window instead of on a TV screen, and we must all subconsciously think that staged scenes look all the more staged and awkward without the slightly-blurry effects of 30 Hz film because, well, man, everything feels like a shitty soap opera in 60 Hz AutoMotion Plus time. But in 3D mode, each of your eyes is only receiving every other image. By turning the soap opera effect on, then, you allow each eye to once again see thirty images per second, a rate that you are used to and thus comfortable with (whether you believe it or not). So, yeah. I found that watching stuff in 3D (at least, watching animated stuff like Shrek) just felt very blurry and laggy. That was really my biggest takeaway, aside from once other basic limitation of 3D TV: night time. You want to be watching 3D stuff with as little ambient light as possible. Not only will it make the images pop better, but it will also reduce glare on your TV screen (which looks even worse in 3D, of course) and, for some reason, the background looks a lot blurrier than the foreground during the day. I don't know why this is the case. Fortunately, watching movies at home has always lent itself better to the night time than the day time, so you really won't have to change your ways very much to reap the rewards. Finally, the question on everyone's mind: is 3D TV worth it? Again, it's a very fledgling technology. If you have a nice TV that you're happy with, I really wouldn't race out to buy a 3D one. But if you're like I was two months ago, looking for a nice new TV to last you at least five years, I'd recommend going 3D unless price is a huge issue. It may not be huge right now, but it's not going away anytime soon. Video games have started jumping aboard the trend, more and more Blu-rays are being released as 3D-compatible, and soon enough I'm sure we'll see some really cool stuff like the NFL in 3D or some sweet-looking 3D wildlife documentaries. Anyway, that's just my two cents. Now, if you still care enough, here are some mini-recaps of the four movies in the Shrek collection.

Life (2009)

During my sophomore year of college (or, at some point in '07 or '08), I bought the much-hyped Planet Earth series on DVD and enjoyed it very much. So much, in fact, that my only regret was not buying it on Blu-ray (or HD DVD, I guess, since that format was still around back then too). As beautiful as the footage looked on standard DVD, I knew it could only look better in HD. So when Life, another BBC nature documentary series, came out, I knew it was Blu-Ray or nothing for me. As you can see, it wasn't nothing. Now, in a nutshell, Life was a beautifully shot and very informative nature documentary just like its predecessor, Planet Earth. But it wasn't quite as good as Planet Earth, in my own humble opinion. Crisper and better-looking, for sure, but only because of the difference between DVD and Blu-ray. I dunno. Planet Earth just had the more memorable, more breathtaking, more jaw-dropping scenes. Also, while my Planet Earth set was narrated by the British biologist David Attenborough (whose voice is far more recognizable than his name), this particular Life set was narrated by Oprah Winfrey, and quite frankly, it suffered for it. Like, on Amazon.com, this DVD set has an enormous amount of one-star ratings, all of which say something to the effect of, "Why buy the Oprah-narrated set when the Attenborough one exists?" My own answer to that question is, "because this was 50% off at the local Borders when it was going out of business." But, yeah, had I had a choice, I'd definitely have gone with Attenborough's version. At any rate, you know whether or not you'll enjoy Life (and Planet Earth, if you haven't seen it) before you even start watching it. Are you a sucker for animal behavior and ecological studies? If so, you'll love this stuff. If not, your interest will wane at points. Either way, you'll get added entertainment if you watch it with someone like my girlfriend, who coos at baby animals and shrieks in terror at insects, snakes, jellyfish, crabs, squids, hippos, spiders, and 90% of living things in general. Bonus enjoyment if you get said person to drink a little wine beforehand so that the filter between thoughts and verbalized comments is at an extreme low. Good times. Oh, and one final gripe from me. The first episode of Life was essentially just a highlight reel of the nine episodes that followed. So, while the first episode was very cool, it meant the other nine each contained one or two scenes that you've already seen in the first episode. Lame, right? Not a huge deal, but still. Anyway, Life was good, but the gold standard for nature documentaries for me remains Planet Earth.

How George Washington Fleeced the Nation ...and Other Little Secrets Airbrushed from History

How George Washington the Nation: And Other Little Secrets Airbrushed from History by Phil Mason was a very creative read. I received this book as a gift so I decided that I should give it a thorough read and a thorough evaluation. The book is as its title suggests a series of short excerpts from the lesser known side of history. A man who can break history down that nobody else can must be a genius, I thought. In reality hes an idiot who doesn't provide any provide any evidential support to his historical claims. I read half the book before I realized that this idiot is actually a genius. As a man who understands how history is written I figured out that Mason could say anything he wants and as long as he doesn't provide any footnotes or link to his "facts" the reader will not be able to call him on his bull. The typical reader for a book like this however, is probably not me.

Having a degree in history and having taken the simple steps of learning how history is written I understand that history is not too unlike science in the way that a hypothesis must be supported by an experiment that should be able to be repeated by others in the same field. In this case the hypothesis is the authors theory on what happened and the experiment is the facts usually primary sources either documents or witnesses. Taking this into account I decided to try and put these obvious shortcomings aside and simply enjoy the book at face value for what its worth. It turns out that the book is actually quite enjoyable. The "secrets" are broken down into short segments in which the author tells what he claims to be the true side of events, in some cases he does admit that they are the lesser believed side of the story and in a few cases he even admits that they are so far fetched that nobody should believe them but he does put them out there for consideration. In this regard I actually respect him, history is ever changing and the truth is a very fluid part of it. Evidence might support one truth as much as another and history continually portrays a very black and white version of situations that are often extremely complex. So with that being said I read the book for the simple enjoyment of it so I will now discuss the content of the book a little.

The author is British so in a couple cases I was forced to ignore the word "our" referring to the collective history of the British which is not my collective history. For example there is a section of the book that focuses on conspiracy theories regarding the royal lineage, kings and queens having illegitimate children that should be the true inheritors of what the author refers to as our throne. There are also a couple sections of the book that focus on British politicians and their shortcomings which I found myself skimming over because none of it made any sense to me. As an American we are not traditionally taught much about how the British government is run. I once asked my sisters British friend Claire how and when the prime minister is elected and I got an answer that equated to "they hold elections whenever they feel like it."

Other sections of the book focused on American politicians and I was forced to consider exactly what is taught to British children. In a good portion of the cases I found myself saying Yea everyone knows that. For example one section talked about how Ben Franklin was a womanizer and barely regarded his own wife and another talked about how Thomas Jefferson slept with his slaves and how many writers of the Declaration Of Independence related British control to slavery while simultaneously owning slaves or even that Einstein was not a genius at all things.

Some sections I knew were completely ridiculous others I knew but quite a few made me think that hey that could be possible. The author claimed that Shakespeare used cocaine and marijuana (which would be the earliest recorded use of cocaine and evidence perhaps of wider spread use of weed than previously thought). Other claims include that Oliver Swift once went a year without speaking to another human person, the swastika is actually a Sanskrit symbol for good luck, Cleopatra was actually ugly but it was cool cause so was Mark Antony, Joan of ark might have actually been a man suffering for a testosterone disorder, Pablo Picasso suffered from a rare form of headache that granted him his artistic gifts, and even that Salvador Dali signed thousands of blank canvases so that others could sell paintings saying they were his.

The only section of the book that drove me crazy was a section that talked about how popes aren't as Holy as we think they are which falls into the DUH category but he followed it up with a section that quotes (yea I said quotes because it, aside from the blip of Shakespeare and his drugs, actually provides evidenciary support to follow the writers arguments) the bible to show its flaws. He complains about how the church forbids murder but then shows sections of the bible where murder, retribution and even rape are promoted. It seemed like this section more than any other promoted the author's personal agenda and it appeared to be out of place with the rest of the book.

The book from a historical perspective is crap. There is no way to argue against the authors claims because its impossible to tell where his sources come from despite the fact that he uses the phrases "recent research," "a recent study," "Evidence suggests," over and over throughout this book. From an entertainment standpoint, this book was decent it made me think twice (even if briefly) about what I had been taught and had previously thought about many of histories icons.

Earth (The Book)

I think it's fair to say that The Daily Show peaked somewhere around the middle of the decade, probably achieving its most consistent stretch of greatness during the 2004 Presidential race. It was toward the tail end of this high point that the show came out with America (The Book), a parody of a high school social studies textbook that ripped into the American political system from all angles - the structure of our government, the way campaigns are run, and even the media's coverage of the political process. Maybe I was overrating it in hindsight, being 16 years old when I read it, but I really thoroughly enjoyed America and thought it was a pitch-perfect assault on 21st century politics and government. Flash forward to 2010. The Daily Show simply ain't what it once was, frankly, but I still had plenty of interest in the release of Earth six years after the release of America. I didn't have very concrete assumptions about what the book would include, but naturally I figured it would treat the planet much like America treated the country. I expected a lot of international humor along the lines of The Onion's Our Dumb World, an atlas of humanity's follies all around the globe. Instead, Earth turned out to be a 230-page satire on 21st century Western culture. There were a few pages on sports, several on religion, one page about adolescent angst, a few more on sex, plenty on guns and violence, a few on art, and so on and so forth. I can't think of any real chunk of the human experience that was left out, actually. So, kudos to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show for capturing the vast majority of the human experience in little quips and jokes. My only problem with the pseudo-textbook was that it didn't carry the same kick that America did. Government ridicule and political satire are The Daily Show's bread and butter, and that's what made America so great. This book felt far more aimless and hit-or-miss. It mocked American culture, but without any of the angry undertones that made America work as more than just a source of laughs. Maybe the absurdity of our culture is just a tired target. For whatever reason, Earth just didn't work nearly as well for me as America did. But then, maybe 22-year old me and 16-year old me had different senses of humor or different standards for considering something entertaining or memorable. I'm not trying to say that Earth sucked. There were probably two or three good laughs per page, and that's no small amount of laughs at all. Just don't expect it to be America (The Book) 2, because it isn't.

Lars and the Real Girl

Consider this a pretty typical indie comedy-drama. Ryan Gosling stars as Lars, a socially awkward man who buys a sex doll one day and treats her like a real, living person. "He's gone crazy," his brother laments. "Just play along," advises his sister-in-law, said brother's wife. Talk about marital drama! Sooner or later, all of Lars's friends and coworkers are playing along with the thought that Lars will eventually need to confront whatever it is that's making him so delusional. Before long, his anatomically correct doll of a girlfriend - Bianca - has become quite the local celebrity. Meanwhile, a real female human being begins to take an interest in Lars, who staunchly refuses to "cheat" on Bianca with another girl. He thinks this, even as he grows jealous of Bianca's newfound celebrity and fame. In the end, he finally gets over Bianca and embraces the real girl, but only after confronting some demons from his past. Now, based on general hearsay, it seems like most people genuinely enjoyed this movie. I did not. I didn't dislike it, but it seemed way too strange and unrealistic to me that a man could go around with a sex doll he considers to be his girlfriend and have his entire social network just jump aboard with few questions asked. Maybe I'm just an asshole, but if a friend of mine tried to tell me his new girlfriend was a sex doll, I'd be more than hesitant to play along. And that goes double for a simple coworker or neighbor. For that reason, Lars and the Real Girl felt more cute than realistic to me. If all of that sounds like something you'd be into, then by all means, don't let my review stop you from seeing it. It just didn't impress me a whole lot.

Ben-Hur

I started this 600-page religious epic just before Christmas, and when it became clear that it was a slow read and that I wouldn't have it done by Christmas, I decided to postpone it until Easter or so. But the thing about logging is that it not only gets put off; it happens prematurely, too. And when I decided to make March a month largely devoted to finishing current projects, I knew Ben-Hur would have to be one of the first to fall. And it was. And that's fine. No need to schedule my logging around the Christian calendar, right? Anyway, Ben-Hur made for a very interesting read. Although the subtitle is "a tale of the Christ," Jesus only plays a background role for most of the narrative. The main character is Judah Ben-Hur, a Roman Jew turned galley slave turned chariot racer turned heir of great fortune turned Jewish rebel turned Christ's disciple. His story is one of vengeance, which struck me as particularly odd given that Jesus was all about forgiveness. And make no mistake - this book is no satire, and is incredibly pro-Jesus. It is the only piece of fiction ever to have received a blessing from the Pope, according to Wikipedia. I was kind of disappointed that - spoiler alert - Judah Ben-Hur did in fact enact his revenge against the man who had done him wrong. I was totally expecting him to become a devout follower of Jesus and then learn to forgive his rival and forget all past transgressions. Instead, the narrative almost seems to celebrate the foe's demise. But on the plus side, I really appreciated the historical fiction aspect of Ben-Hur. I've never sat down and flipped through the New Testament for the story, but Ben-Hur gave me a decent account of the political strife going on between the Romans and the Jews and also the strife between the Jews and the specific sect of Jews that followed Jesus (early Christians, I guess). I feel more educated from the experience! By the way, quick aside, and not really directed at anyone who reads this blog, but can we all agree to stop saying the Jews killed Jesus, and using that to label all Jews Christ-killers? It's as silly as saying "the whites killed Abraham Lincoln," if you think about it. Anyway, one last gripe about Ben-Hur: the prose. Time and time again on this blog, I have lamented the inability of 19th century writers to create sentences that are even somewhat palatable. Lew Wallace's issue wasn't excessively fanciful language; his was an unreasonable obsession with describing every detail of every scene in the book. And he would do so in the second person, trying his hardest to plant the reader right in the middle of the narrative at all costs. "Picture yourself at a four-way intersection of roads," he'd say. "To your left, an old and cracking mud house, baked for decades by the harsh Israeli sun. On your right, a man with skin made leathery by countless summers under the same sun sells goat meat." Every chapter began like a text-based adventure game. "Charred wood in the fireplace still glows red-orange; a fire has recently been put out." Suffice it to say, that got old. But, as far as 19th century writing goes, Wallace was actually much more potable than most of his contemporaries. Reading this book definitely piqued my interest in seeing the famous 1959 film adaptation with Charlton Heston. To others, I'd suggest starting with that movie and only going back for the full book's worth of narrative if you love the story enough to do so. And that wraps up another logging post. This Abe-killing white boy is off to watch some TV.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

This film was purchased... by mistake. Let me explain. This all goes back to a Simpson's episode titled "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" in which Homer purchases a computer for the first time then begins spreading gossip around Springfield via the internet. However, when Homer starts making up stories he accidentally reports upon a real crime syndicate that leads him to be imprisoned on this mysterious island where the world's smartest men are held captive by an evil man set to remove all possible threats to his global takeover - you remember this, right? Anywho, the scenes of Homer's capture briefly reminded me of a similar movie I had seen growing up. In specific: A moment where a man is slowly stalked down by a giant floating bubble that eventually entraps him. It's weird; it's cool - and I wanted to watch it again.

Naturally, based on the title of the episode I assume this movie would be what I was looking for. It was not.

What I got was this cheesy Disney flick starring Kurt Russel as a young teen playing a college student. While fooling around with his university's new computer (you know the old ones that took up an entire room) Dexter - Russel - accidentally steps in a puddle of water while holding some power cords and somehow has the computer's CPU implanted into his brain. I like how they illustrate this. When his professors checks inside his ears they just see a bunch of flashing lights and hear beeping. Well, what ends up happening is that Dexter becomes the smartest person on the world with a computer for a brain, which then inevitably causes him to loose touch with all his small-town friends as he becomes this big-shot Einstein. But when he has a computer-like stroke and accidentally blurts out a bunch of institutions for illegal gambling under this crime boss, Dexter is captured by said crime boss and its up to his friends to save him. Yes. It's a Disney film so in the end we all learn a valuable lesson of what it is to have friends (with one always being black... just one) and keep the ones we trust closest to us.

All-in-all it was pretty boring and dated. Then again, it's a kid's movie by Disney so what should I expect. I will say this, I laughed pretty hard during the last scene where Dexter has been rescued just in time to aid his shitty school as they enter the championship round in this college vs. college quiz show. Of course he's been carrying the team the entire way, but in the last game Dexter's smarts begin to ware away - apparently this whole computer-in-the-brain thing was only temporary. As Dexter struggle for brain power his speech slows way down and well... he acts as though he's in the middle of taking the biggest shit of his life. Gasping for air while intermittently blurting out the next word he's trying to say as all the blood runs to his head. Oh, it's excellent. At the final question Dexter passes out and - for once - one of his dumb ass friends knows the answer in true Slumdog-style.

To be honest with everyone, I'm kind of pissed with this movie. Not so much that I watched it, but disappointed I didn't purchase the right movie. So now I'm throwing it out to you other Back-Bloggers. Help me find this movie (the one with the bubble trapping people), the one I truly wanted to see. I know I could just check the internet myself, but I like getting comments.

Wonderfalls: The Complete Series

For a long time, Wonderfalls was nothing more to me than part of a lengthy Family Guy punchline in which Peter lists a number of short-lived Fox programs. But then out of nowhere I saw it listed as one of the top thirty TV shows of the decade by a TV critic I respect. Then I saw it on a different critic's list of the ten best "one and done" TV shows of all time along with the likes of Firefly and Freaks and Geeks. I went for broke and bought this DVD set for fifteen bucks or so just a couple of months ago, and now that I've seen all thirteen episodes, I'm happy to have made that leap of blind faith. The premise, in a nutshell, is that there is a twenty-something Brown University graduate wasting away in a trailer park in Niagara Falls and working at a gift shop underneath the management of a high school student. Jaye exemplifies the lethargy and apathy of Generation Y, actively choosing to do nothing of any significance with her life in spite of the rest of her family's great success. And then one day a little wax lion figurine begins to give Jaye cryptic instructive messages. All of a sudden, she's got the ability to talk to inanimate animal-based objects. A mounted fish on the wall, for instance. The eagle on the back of a quarter. And these little muses guide Jaye into helping a number of other people with various problems. The show was pretty light-hearted and easy to get into, and right off the bat I had no trouble identifying with any of the characters or wondering why I should care about an admittedly low-stakes premise. Everything just kind of worked and clicked. Most episodes were just that: episodes, rather than chapters of a longer serialized story, although there were also plenty of longer-running arcs and stories. The most significant two were Jaye's apparent descent into insanity to those around her and Jaye's budding relationship with a new guy in town. Fortunately, all thirteen episodes that Fox initially ordered were produced and included on this DVD set, and the final episode was always intended to be a season finale. So there really aren't many loose threads, which is good. Ultimately, I'm not sure if I'd include this show among my own top thirty of the decade, but different strokes for different folks, as they say. In contrast to the last acclaimed one-and-done TV series I watched, Firefly, I'd say that Wonderfalls wasn't quite as rich or rewarding but was certainly easier to get into and easier to let go of upon its finale. In other words, Firefly was "better," but Wonderfalls was more easy to enjoy. The show's creators were kind enough to lay all their cards on the table regarding how they would have approached future seasons, but while it was interesting to read about some of the story arcs they planned on including, none seemed overly compelling so I really can't lament the cancelation of this show as a crying shame. But yeah, definitely worth ten hours and fifteen bucks. Count on that much.

DeathSpank

Well, it’s happened... My post Swimming with Sharks has lost it’s first place spot as the most viewed article on this damn site. And what does it lose to? The Human Centipede. A movie - if you can call it that - about a three person, ass-to-mouth monstrosity. Although I haven’t seen it, I have Googled it and can honestly say the images alone have scarred my soul and continue to haunt my dreams.

So I’ll be sure to make it the next item to slash off my back-log. Now onto DeathSpank.

OK. You’re sitting at home one boring night contemplating on what to do or how drunk you should be before doing it, when you finally decide on VIDEO GAMES and VERY. Without another notice you slam down five shots of your favorite drink (mine: St. Tum’s - a fusion between rum, tequila, Saint Germain’s... delicious, you must try it) and go to grab the car keys to race over to your local gaming supply store when the floor begins to spins. Crush by the fact that you’ve made a fatal error in the sequencing of your nightly routine, you slouch down in your recliner and begin strolling through the virtually isles of your neighborhood e-gaming market in a last ditch effort to adhere to your preordained agenda. Now while most of you might have veered towards playing an old title from your back-log instead, I purchased a game about a spunky little knight who wears a thong of justice.

I believe this game has some connections to the creators of the Monkey Island series (no, not Lucas Entertainment... something else) only because a bit of their humor seems to match up. This is not necessarily a good thing. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start by explaining the long, intricate plot:

You’re a knight - as I’ve already stated - on search for the Artifact.

...That’s all.

I mean there is a villain to give the game a bit more depth, but I think he’s only bad because he’s hindering your progress to get the Artifact. Oh... “What’s the Artifact?” you ask. Why it’s the Artifact, of course. In all seriousness, though, this ambiguity goes along with the game’s humor - just like how DeathSpank gains all his power from his magical thong he sports. While the humor is cute and - somewhat - funny at first, it gets old really fast. As you make your way across the map to find your precious Artifact you have numerous conversations with all those you encounter along the way and every line of dialogue has to be another damn joke. It just wears thin after a while - like around five minutes.

Despite its annoying humor, the game is addicting. It plays out kind of like “Diablo” for all of you that remember middle school. A run around hack-n-slash where you’re constantly picking up new armor and weapons. Oh, the upgrading. I swear, now matter how bad the game, as long as you put in place a simple yet rewarding leveling system you will get your audience to push on through your game, faults and all.

That’s what happened to me. In the span of one night I made it to the “end” of the game. Did I get the Artifact? No. Why? Well, because it wasn’t really the end of the game. Yes, I defeated the major boss who was constantly keeping me from the progressing onward, and when it finally looks as though I’m coming onto a new area on my map the game freezes up and tells me to stay tuned... there’s sure more to come in the future. WTF?! Basically, after hours of playtime, the creators reward their faithful audience by flicked them off while rubbing their XBOX points all over their naked bodies.

And the worst part off all... When they do release the next installment, I’ll be sure to sulk back to my TV, bend over, and prepare to - once again - take it up the tailpipe.

Please, don’t look at me anymore. I can’t bare the shame.

Super Mario Sunshine

I wanted to finish this game last Thursday because that was "Mario Day." (Mar 10 - get it?) Alas, life got in the way, as it so often does in this frivolous logging pursuit, and now I'll have to settle for being four days tardy. So be it. Super Mario Sunshine is the Super Mario installment for the GameCube. It was preceded by Super Mario 64 and followed up by Super Mario Galaxy, both of which are very much considered to be better games than this franchise oddity. I'll partake in that same assessment, but not for the reasons most people did. It seems like the biggest problem most people had with this game was the premise. It takes place not in the Mushroom Kingdom, but on "Isle Delfino," a beach-themed tropical island. You don't collect stars throughout the game but "shine sprites" instead. And, of course, there's the game's biggest offense: FLUDD. FLUDD is an acronym for... something. Essentially, it's a robotic water tank that features primarily as a fire hose and a jet pack. And boy, did people hate FLUDD. FLUDD even sucks in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where it is quite possibly the worst attack any character possesses. A good deal of Super Mario Sunshine is spent spraying graffiti off of walls and cleaning up "goop," a hazardous substance that a mysterious "Shadow Mario" figure has been wiping all over the island. It's easy to see why a lot of people wrote this game off right off the bat. But I didn't! I actually didn't mind the unique and different premise. Sometimes a franchise can get a little stale, and I commend Sunshine for going out on a limb this time around. But I still had plenty of issues with the game. For starters, the controls. Maybe I was used to Galaxy (which I doubt, since I haven't played that in over two years) but I was very unhappy with the way Sunshine controlled. I'd be standing at the edge of a ledge, trying to drop down slowly to the level right beneath me, only to have Mario careen off into an abyss because he leapt forward audaciously instead of just casually hopping down a level gently. Ugh. Sometimes I'd be jet-packing from one tightrope to another, only to realize that the tightrope I was trying to get to was in fact behind and above me, rather than right under me. Again, ugh. Also annoying were the over-the-shoulder third-person-shooter angles in which you could more accurately aim Mario's fire hose but be unable to move him around. This meant any time you wanted better aim at, say, a boss, you were all the more vulnerable to said boss's attacks. Why the trade off? This is Super Mario, and the only challenges in any boss fight should be figuring out the proper pattern of attack and then just not running off an edge or into an enemy. Suffice it to say, I simply didn't appreciate the execution of the control scheme. My second big issue with Sunshine was its division of shine sprites into those mandatory for game progression and those that have no use aside from existing just to be collected. What I mean is that instead of all shine sprites being equal in Sunshine, some are necessary to find and some just aren't. You need to acquire the first seven shines in each of the seven worlds in order to unlock the final level. In 64 and Galaxy you were allowed to find stars wherever you wanted and as long as you had a certain amount of stars you could access new worlds. And that wasn't the case in Sunshine. You can have fifty shines or eighty shines, but the only thing that dictates whether or not you can play against the final boss is whether or not you've collected the seventh shine in each of seven worlds. The deemphasis on "hidden" shines made me all the less likely to go exploring and trying to find them. It only made the game completely linear rather than open-ended. And at that, I shake my head. All things considered, Sunshine was a pretty good and very fun game. A number of challenging levels that seemed like the inspiration for Galaxy were especially entertaining, and the outright frustration-inducing moments were few and far between. The game just wasn't without its flaws. But few games are, and you could do a lot worse on the GameCube than Super Mario Sunshine.

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is the second of my very long books I've finished this year, and unlike 2666 which I found pretty uneven, I found Infinite Jest quite enjoyable. I'm just having some difficulty trying to describe it. It's basically the story of both a tennis academy and a halfway home in Boston, and how the lives of the people in both places are heavily connected. But there's just so much more to it. I've tried reading a few more "experimental" novels and posted them here, and for the most part I've been pretty disappointed, but Infinite Jest seemed to have the perfect blend of style and substance. There was no readily discernible plot, but merely a lot of anecdotes about both youth tennis and recovery from addiction. Wallace pretty effortlessly switches up styles several times- narrating a little more rigidly and with a broader vocabulary when talking about the school, then relaxing and using slang when dealing with the former addicts. Some chapters are told as a series of letters, some as pages upon pages of newspaper headlines, one in the form of a play, or in one case narrated with a very thick Latino accent. Under normal circumstance I'd find this pretty pretentious and unnecessary, but Wallace pulls it off well enough for it all to work. Certain parts will definitely stick with me for a long time- a dissertation on how certain philosophies relate to singles tennis matches, the difficulties of being an atheist in alcoholics anonymous, and the bizarre effects PEDs can have on a children's game to name a few. Of course at many parts I found myself drifting, but that's on me. I just find it hard to keep focused, no matter how interesting the subject matter, when presented with long blocks of uninterrupted paragraphless text. Yeah, that's my fault. The truth is, this at times can be a very dense book, and shouldn't be rushed through (it took me nearly 2 months to get through). In his excellent foreword, Dave Eggers claims that the book contains "not one lazy sentence," and I think I agree. Every time I found myself drifting, I'd snap out of it really focus on wherever I left off, and realize "this is good stuff." I could easily see someone trying the book out and hating it though, and I know Trev picked this up long before I ever recommended it. I wouldn't recommend it for backlogging purposes- it's just so long and requires lots of attention, but anyone who does pick this up and isn't turned off within the first 50 pages or so will definitely find Infinite Jest pretty special.

Changeling

Does an ambiguously happy or hopeful ending make up for an otherwise depressing and horrifying true story? Of course not! This is no feel-good movie. But it's a very good movie. Don't let the title fool you; Changeling is no sci-fi flick or horror movie. It's an intense (albeit slow-moving) thriller set in 1920s Los Angeles. The premise? Angelina Jolie, single mother, has lost her son. He's been kidnapped. But the movie isn't about a search for a missing child; just ten minutes of screen time after the kidnapping, Jolie receives good news - her son has been found! Alright, cool. She's happy. She's relieved. But what's this? Holy shit - that's not her son! The police have found the wrong boy! And what's more, they're adamantly refusing that any mix-up has or even could have occurred. In a very chauvinistic fashion, the policemen decide that Jolie is too shocked and upset to recognize her own son. One thing leads to another and she winds up in a mental institution. So what's going on here - is Jolie really going bonkers, or has the system completely and utterly betrayed her? I won't spoil the ending (actually, we're only about halfway through the film where I've left the plot dangling) but suffice it to say that the answer to everything isn't necessarily made clear. Clint Eastwood (did not go in knowing he directed this!) did a fantastic job. So did Jolie, and so did the rest of the cast. And so did the costume design team. This movie managed to be a decent period piece, very suspenseful, and also a good exploration of themes like female disempowerment. Worth a watch, for sure. Enjoy.

The House Bunny

Sometimes Steve buys me awesome movies. This was one of them. I always saw this commercial and laughed every time she said "Good Morning Pooter!" to her cat. So Steve bought it for me. I had no idea what it was actually about. And you know what? It wasn't half bad. (In an entertaining sense) It was pretty funny! Anna Faris is a lively well liked Playboy Bunny whose life goal is being a centerfold. In an astonishing turn of events, Heff kicks her out of the mansion, and she is left homeless and clueless. She stumbled upon what she calls a miniature Playboy mansion which just turns out to be a sorority house. At 27, she's too old to be a sorority girl so she sets her sights high. She wants to be a house mom! Babysit the sorority girls. Well the snooty sorority won't take her, so she goes to the unloved sorority. With her help, she turns a group of misfit Lindsay Lohan looking girls. Comedy ensues! Someday, when you have nothing to do on a Saturday, you should check it out for yourself for a so-so stupidity caused humor.

Frisky Dingo: Season 2

So, if Season 1 of Frisky Dingo was directionless, Season 2 seemed utterly pointless. Things looked promising initially when, for whatever reason, Killface and Awesome X both decided to run for President. For most of the season - probably eight or nine episodes - this was the main focus. But then with only about half an hour of season remaining, that subplot was dropped entirely and the focus shifted to a gigantic mutant half-ant fetus. Huh? The season (and series) ended with Awesome X and Killface being abducted by aliens. Apparently a spin-off was made in which Awesome X's crew - the "X-tacles" - tried to adjust to life without their leader or their antagonist, but Adult Swim scrapped it after just two episodes, neither of which was included on this DVD. Will I go out of my way to watch those twenty-two minutes of additional irreverence? Maybe, but I'm certainly in no rush to do so. I guess Frisky Dingo was just another Adult Swim show. I mean, it was better than the average Adult Swim show, but it was just as zany and quirky, which is a good or a bad thing depending on what your own personal tastes are. I didn't hate this show at all, and I would definitely watch many of the episodes again, but it just didn't live up to the bar set by Sealab 2021 and Archer. That said, what show could have?

Frisky Dingo: Season 1

Adam Reed is the man responsible for both Sealab 2021 and Archer, two of my all time favorite animated shows. As soon as I learned about this little show called Frisky Dingo that he made in between the end of Sealab and the beginning of Archer, I knew I had to check it out. And now I have done so. In typical Adult Swim fashion, Frisky Dingo episodes run only eleven minutes in length; getting through this first season of thirteen episodes was no more taxing than watching a two-and-a-half-hour movie. And in a lot of ways it felt very movie-like. Each episode began with the conclusion of the previous episode, aside from the first two episodes which served as introductions to the two main characters, a supervillain named "Killface" and a superhero named "Awesome X." I can't find the right words and phrases to describe Frisky Dingo aside from "irreverent" and "absurd" and other catch-alls for nearly all Adult Swim programming. But this was still more watchable and enjoyable than most Adult Swim programming. A lot of the awkward humor fell flat, but every now and again (maybe two or three times an episode, on average) there was a legitimately funny situation or dialogue exchange. And it isn't as if I minded watching the few minutes of "plot development" that came in between the laughs. In a weird way, the show feels like a hybrid of Sealab and Archer in that it contains plenty of the absurdity of the former but stylistically feels more like the latter. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as well as either of those two shows. But then, that's a mighty high pair of standards to live up to. You'll probably enjoy Frisky Dingo if you can stand the absurd fast-paced gibberish style of Adult Swim. That said, this is not must-see TV. I enjoyed it just enough not to mind that I was watching it.

District 9

Hours later, I've logged a second very good movie that I've seen previously. Just another Saturday night in America, folks. District 9 was the sci-fi sleeper hit success story of 2009. It's about a bunch of aliens living as refugees in South Africa. The parallels to apartheid are obvious but subtle. Other satirization targets include the corporate military construct and general xenophobia. But the film isn't even a satire, really. It's a very raw-feeling sci-fi flick disguised and edited ever so slightly as a documentary. The finished product feels very well-crafted and polished and may even make you stop and think about what it really means to be human. I'd love to see a sequel to District 9., not because the story doesn't work perfectly well as a standalone, but simply because the movie was so well-made that no sequel from the same team could possibly suck. Fortunately, it sounds like I'll probably get my wish. Unfortunately, that may take another two or three years. But, hey, that's cool. I've got a whole lot of logging to do in the meantime.

Slumdog Millionaire

So, first of all, if this movie is any indication, India is an absolute wasteland full of falf-naked kids playing in piles of garbage, shit, and dead animals in the midst of ongoing religion-based riots being subdued by a brutal and savage police force with no regard for justice. Also the food is pretty spicy and gives white people diarrhea. But now that I've gotten my "for the love of one thousand gods, stay the hell away from India" message out of the way, I can get down to brass tacks and praise this for being an excellent movie. I can't think of a 2008 movie that I enjoyed more than Slumdog, and thus, I would have to agree with and stand by its designation as that year's best picture. This is the second time I've seen the movie, having done so two years ago during its theatrical run, and it was no less engaging or entertaining this second time around. I've finally decided to embrace, rather than scoff at, the Bollywood dance number that comes during the movie's ending credits, and since that was always my biggest problem with this movie, I'm left without anything to complain about. This is practically a perfect movie, and although it doesn't stand among my top ten or twenty of all time, that omission has more to do with my own personal tastes and preferences than with this movie's shortcomings. For example, City of God was a very similar movie, and as I overstated in my review of that film over a year ago, I liked it more than I liked Slumdog. But if you haven't seen Slumdog, you should definitely go out of your way to do so. It has more or less universal appeal and is well worth the two hour running time.

The Descent Part 2

You may remember the first movie in this series, The Descent, coming out in 2006 to moderate success. I don't catch many horror movies, but I thought the original was awesome. To spoil the entire plot, a group of six women accidentally go caving in a completely uncharted cave, get split up, stumble upon a ferocious species of cave creatures, and get killed off one-by-one until the last one manages to crawl her way back to the surface, still dealing with the mental anguish of all the horror she has experienced. The Descent Part 2 was released in 2009 to little fanfare, and though I heard about it, I figured it would probably be terrible and didn't bother looking into it until last night on Netflix. To my surprise, for most of the movie I was enthralled, I thought it worked great as a sequel. Basically mere hours after lone-survivor Sarah has escaped from the cave, the police find her covered in blood and unable to recount what happened to her and her friends. Suspecting the worst, two cops force her to join in a search for her friends in the cave along with three expert cavers. Honestly, the premise here was pretty flimsy, but merely works as an excuse to get Sarah back in the cave pretty quickly after she escaped. The set-up isn't perfect, but it wasn't really in the first movie either. By also giving us a variety of characters, it was much more easy to keep track of what's going on. I found this way too hard to do in the first movie- six nondescript women who you can barely see (they're in a cave after all) running around made it hard to tell just who was still alive and who wasn't. Throwing a few men in there, and having some different ethnicities made it a little easier to get a handle on who's who, although it kinda does away with the feminist themes the first movie was praised for. Anyway once you get our group of six down in the cave, the movie was full of just as much tension as the first, and loaded with scares. Sure, a few times they pull the "a friend surprisingly grabs another's shoulder with a screech sound effect" for a cheap scare, but for the most part the movie was pretty creative about it. Unlike the first movie, the cave monsters are introduced rather early. Also unlike the first movie where the best scares came from the claustrophobia of being potentially buried alive, making the late reveal of the monsters a bit unneeded, the cave and the monsters both share an equal part of the plot in Part 2. The crew stumbles upon corpses, goes crazy, gets trapped, back-stabs, and basically does everything else that made the first movie great. Seriously, it might not be quite the same eerie movie the first one was, but if you go in expecting a little more action and not looking for some great plot (it's a movie about cave-monsters, for chrissakes. I'm looking at you, everyone on the internet who sperged about how this "ruined" the first one) then you'll at least have some fun with Part 2.

Ok, that would be my entire post if not for one thing- the completely terrible and non-sensical ending. Just like in the first movie, one person eventually makes it out of the caves and stumbles upon a new problem (dealing with the horrible things she's done in the first, still being completely lost and disoriented in the middle of the woods in the second). Awesome ending, right? Well hold on, there's still 20 seconds left. For some reason a minor character from the start of the movie shows up, whacks the lone survivor upside the head with a shovel, then drags the unconscious body back to the hole they crawled out of, presumably to feed the cave monsters. Huh? I've looked around on the internet for ANY sort of explanation for this, and everyone else is just as perplexed as I am. Apparently a part 3 is in the works, but if it has to do with some guy bringing corpses for the creatures to eat, then yeah I'm probably gonna pass.

The Boondocks: Season 3

I was excited when this season was announced about a year ago, but found it more tiring than rewarding to watch it at midnights on Sunday nights (Monday mornings) last summer. Yes, I had DVR, and could have watched the episodes the next day, but I also didn't have any kind of work the next morning for the majority of the episodes. I was left disappointed by this season, and I attributed that to higher-than-warranted expectations and also my own sleepiness getting in the way of the show's enjoyability. Flash-forward to the present, where I've spent the last week watching that same season on DVD, and I can confirm one of my attributions of disappointment causation but must reject the other one. Yes, I was too sleepy during many of the episodes to originally enjoy them to their fullest extent. There were at least three or four episodes that I remembered having seen before when watching the DVDs, but of which I had no recollection of the ending. So, good. But, even with my reduced expectations and raised awareness and enjoyment, the sum total of these fifteen episodes simply didn't compose a season that could match either of the animated comedy's first two; it was still a disappointing season. But why? There's no simple answer, but I think the simplest one is too much emphasis on Granddad and Uncle Ruckus and not enough on Huey and Riley. Many of the series' best episodes have centered on Huey's radical views and Riley's idolizing all of the "wrong" parts of African-American culture (gang violence, showy basketball, and obscene hip-hop lyrics and gestures, for example). One of the highlights of this season was an episode in which the boys went to prison as part of a "scared straight" movement. Riley made shivs and did his best to impress the inmates with his toughness, while Huey took it upon himself to instruct the prisoners on how to effectively use hostages to barter for better treatment and more basic human rights. It wasn't the funniest or greatest episode of the season, but it was a simple and effective combination of both characters and the proper utilization of their personalities. But that episode came in the midst of a stretch of four other episodes that were, effectively, "Granddad joins a Tyler Perry-like figure's cult," "Granddad's long-lost son imposes himself on Granddad," "Granddad has a beautiful new girlfriend but can't stop getting in his own way," and "Granddad smokes a lot of weed." I like Granddad, and none of these episodes could aptly be described as terrible, but the whole season just felt a little stagnant. There was also a lot less topical parody this season; in the past, the show has cleverly covered things like the R. Kelly trial and Hurricane Katrina, while also spoofing a great deal of contemporary urban culture. This season, there was an entire episode about Uncle Ruckus writing racist songs. In general, it just felt easier and lazier this time around. There was also a slight thematic shift, perhaps representative of show (and original strip) creator Aaron McGruder's feelings, in which Huey insisted that he was now "retired" from his life as a domestic terrorist and radical activist. His final quote of the season is a seeming renunciation of his former ways: "You can't fight the future; don't waste your life trying." Some fans have even read into this enough to suggest that, even if offered another season, The Boondocks is finished. I'd be disappointed if that was the case. Even though I thought Season 3 wasn't as good as Seasons 1 and 2, there's too much potential left in the characters (and in all of the yet-to-be-satirized aspects of the world we live in) for the well to be all dried out. I guess only time will tell.

February 2011 Recap

Another classic up-and-down month for the Back-Blogged project left us with thirty posts - not great, not bad. We actually had eleven posts in the first five days, putting us on an initial ridiculous pace of 62 posts, an amount that would have shattered the previous record, and in the shortest month of the year no less. Instead, everyone went on some kind of logging vacation; only Sweeney and I made any posts between the  ninth and the twenty-eighth, and I alone held down the fort between the twelfth and twenty-seventh.

Personally, I posted fourteen items in February, but my inability to commit to the mission at hand - finish everything I own, and stop buying new things - left me with eleven purchases and a net result of three. Meh. Progress is progress, but that progress is slow. I have 160 books, DVDs, and games in the backlog and at a rate of three gains per month I won't be finished for four and a half years. In terms of specific goals, I went four for six, finishing both parts of Maus in addition to Firefly and Um Jammer Lammy but failing to convert on the third season of The Boondocks and, once again, Ico.

March is a long month, made longer than most 31-day months by a lack of any days off from work and an impatient desire for springtime. So March should be a good month for logging. And in keeping with March's original namesake - the Roman god of war - I'm going to play all three God of War games. Just kidding. They're coming soon enough, but this needs to be a month of... spring cleaning. And personal warfare. You see, it's inevitable when one has a large backlog to also have a large "now logging" list. But mine has grown a bit out of control. I'm currently in the middle of eight different video games, most of which I haven't picked up in over a year. I'm also in the middle - actually, at the beginning - of four different books. The cherry on top of it all is the season of The Boondocks that I'm still in the midst of. That's thirteen simultaneous projects, and frankly, thirteen is far too many. So March for me should be a month where my primary focus and attention are given to games like Infamous, Super Mario Sunshine, and - yes - Ico. I need to keep reading Closing Time and Ben-Hur instead of starting new books. I can't and shouldn't make any specific promises on the month. I suck at delivering on those anyway. Instead, I'll just make it my month's goal to do some serious work on a specific section of my backlog: the section I am already doing work on. Anyone else got anything special planned for the long and grueling month of March?