On this most joyous day of my birth, please join me in an online movie marathon that I think pretty accurately depicts everything that is cool.
Enjoy!
Sep 25, 2008
Sep 23, 2008
Cool Stuff This Week: Spaced and The Boys
As Sheree already stated, Spaced is awesome. It's great that a show like this existed, and before I go on, I'd like to take you with me on an angry tangent about American TV. Okay, Spaced was on for two seasons (14 episodes), which is around the same length as some great American shows (Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development, Firefly, Twin Peaks). The difference? All of the good American TV shows were canceled, whereas Spaced went off the air because the creators wanted to start making motion pictures. That being said, I'm glad that Spaced was birthed across the pond. Otherwise, who knows how many episodes might have been prematurely destroyed by a short-sighted American TV network?
Anywho, the show must really be seen to be believed, so here's a brief taste that Danny showed me a long time ago. Oh, and this quote's pretty good: "Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like f***king Shaft!"
On another, comic book related note, I recently cracked into a pretty good one by Garth Ennis called The Boys. In brief, it's about a semi-superpowered team of CIA spooks who make sure to hold superheroes accountable for the collateral damage that their exploits inflict on the innocent. Interestingly enough, artist Darick Robertson contacted Simon Pegg to use his likeness for a character named Wee Hughie whose girlfriend gets killed in a skirmish between a superhero named A-Train and some ignominious supervillain. As a way to deal with his grief, Hughie accepts an invitation to join The Boys from the aptly named team leader Billy Butcher.
Since it's a Garth Ennis tale, there's a lot of twisted stuff in here, most of it perpetrated by costumed superhero types. They're all about dogooding and justice while they are on camera, but in their secret fortresses and lairs they indulge themselves in bizarre excesses and deviant behavior that come as a byproduct of their apparent invincibility. So, you don't feel so bad when The Boys beat the snot out of a group called Teenage Kix directly after outing one of their principal members and ruining their public image. It's especially gratifying when Hughie, recently doped up on "super-serum" type pharmaceuticals, accidentally punches a hole through Blarney Cock's chest.
The action seems to be mounting up to a major confrontation between The Boys and America's leading superhero team, The Seven (Basically like the JLA, if the JLA let their celebrity status run away with them and turn them into a bunch of pricks). It's probably gonna be pretty messy.
How's that for a piece of fried gold?
Anywho, the show must really be seen to be believed, so here's a brief taste that Danny showed me a long time ago. Oh, and this quote's pretty good: "Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like f***king Shaft!"
On another, comic book related note, I recently cracked into a pretty good one by Garth Ennis called The Boys. In brief, it's about a semi-superpowered team of CIA spooks who make sure to hold superheroes accountable for the collateral damage that their exploits inflict on the innocent. Interestingly enough, artist Darick Robertson contacted Simon Pegg to use his likeness for a character named Wee Hughie whose girlfriend gets killed in a skirmish between a superhero named A-Train and some ignominious supervillain. As a way to deal with his grief, Hughie accepts an invitation to join The Boys from the aptly named team leader Billy Butcher.
Since it's a Garth Ennis tale, there's a lot of twisted stuff in here, most of it perpetrated by costumed superhero types. They're all about dogooding and justice while they are on camera, but in their secret fortresses and lairs they indulge themselves in bizarre excesses and deviant behavior that come as a byproduct of their apparent invincibility. So, you don't feel so bad when The Boys beat the snot out of a group called Teenage Kix directly after outing one of their principal members and ruining their public image. It's especially gratifying when Hughie, recently doped up on "super-serum" type pharmaceuticals, accidentally punches a hole through Blarney Cock's chest.
The action seems to be mounting up to a major confrontation between The Boys and America's leading superhero team, The Seven (Basically like the JLA, if the JLA let their celebrity status run away with them and turn them into a bunch of pricks). It's probably gonna be pretty messy.
How's that for a piece of fried gold?
Sep 9, 2008
I Eat Ganados For Breakfast...With Skim Milk.
So...close....to....falling...a....sleep.... Must....write.....weblo....g.....
Hoo boy, Tuesdays and Thursdays are lo-ong. As I write this, I'm in one of my four classes and I am having a hell of a time keeping my eyes open. Wanna hear about Resident Evil 4 and how I just barely finished it? You do? Okay. I'll tell you about my experience doing battle with Las Plagas.
So in this freaking sweet game, you play as a dude named Leon. Leon's pretty badass! He survived Resident Evil 2 and saw Raccoon City nuked by the American military as the T-Virus got totally out of control on his first day as a cop. Apparently, Leon is so impressed by the government's testosterone driven use of overkill that he decides to become a government security agent. A few years after the eradication of Raccoon City, Leon gets called to Europe to investigate the kidnapping of the U.S. president's daughter. At first, he thinks it's the work of an obscure Spanish death cult that harbors a secret terrorist agenda. And he's right! Except that the majority of the cult members have been enslaved by sentient parasites known only as.... Las Plagas. This means that once you figure out that shooting cultists in the head is the best way to kill them, the Plagas pop out of their bloody neck-stumps with tentacles and bones and try to eat your face.
Throughout his mission, Leon remains pretty dense as to what's really going on (he's just here to get the president's daughter and get out! What the hell are Las Plagas anyway? Who cares?) but he eventually figures it out when he gets injected with a Plaga of his very own. Once Leon starts to cough up blood and lose control of his will, he figures that something bigger is going down after all.
As the mystery unravels, it becomes revealed that a guy named Osmund Saddler is the leader of this cult (meaning he can control the Plagas themselves. He has this crazy staff that has eyes and tentacles that makes this possible), and his grand, malevolent plan involves injecting the president's daughter with a Plaga and sending her back home to infect the president and eventually....the world. As Leon's old friend/new nemesis Jack Krauser notes: "A conservative mind wouldn't understand the good that we're doing..." Sick burn, conservatives!
At this point, I imagine that many of you are saying to yourselves, "Alex, this game came out like, three years ago. How come you're just now getting around to finishing it?" Well, friend-o, I'll tell you. First, I didn't get a Gamecube for awhile. I purchased one for the express purpose of playing Resident Evil 4 because I played a demo whilst I was working at Gamestop. I played it pretty steadily, until I got to the freaking scary island facility and the freaking scary regenerators/iron maidens. Regenerators are genetically altered freaks of nature that can't be killed! That is, can't be killed until you get a thermal imaging scope for your sniper rifle. Then you have to shoot the Plagas that are responsible for growing back the creature's limbs after you blow them off with a shotgun.
So, I fought a couple of them, enduring their inhuman mouth-breathing and glowing red eyes for a pretty good amount of time. It was always such a relief when their metabolism sped up and caused them to implode. But there was this one encounter that scared me so bad that I peed a little in my pants and had to stop playing outright. I was faced with a regenerator, I accidentally shot its leg off, it slithered towards me like a giant snake, hopped up, and took a bite out of my shoulder! I couldn't handle the sheer shock of what happened, so I shut off my Gamecube and changed my pants. I didn't touch it again until it came out on the Wii, and decided to give it another go. I manned up, if you will, slaying all manner of Cronenbergian abominations until I stood face to face with Osmund "crazy legs" Saddler himself (well, it was face to face until his head blew up and turned into a scorpion made out of muscle and gravy). I blew his terrorist eyeball-mouth to kingdom come, rescued the president's daughter (on a jetski!), and blew up the island. It was awesome!
Resident Evil 5 is due out sometime next year, and I am stoked to once again play it, get too scared to finish it, and then come back years later for another attempt. It'll feature running zombies, a la 28 Days Later! F***k yeah!
Hoo boy, Tuesdays and Thursdays are lo-ong. As I write this, I'm in one of my four classes and I am having a hell of a time keeping my eyes open. Wanna hear about Resident Evil 4 and how I just barely finished it? You do? Okay. I'll tell you about my experience doing battle with Las Plagas.
So in this freaking sweet game, you play as a dude named Leon. Leon's pretty badass! He survived Resident Evil 2 and saw Raccoon City nuked by the American military as the T-Virus got totally out of control on his first day as a cop. Apparently, Leon is so impressed by the government's testosterone driven use of overkill that he decides to become a government security agent. A few years after the eradication of Raccoon City, Leon gets called to Europe to investigate the kidnapping of the U.S. president's daughter. At first, he thinks it's the work of an obscure Spanish death cult that harbors a secret terrorist agenda. And he's right! Except that the majority of the cult members have been enslaved by sentient parasites known only as.... Las Plagas. This means that once you figure out that shooting cultists in the head is the best way to kill them, the Plagas pop out of their bloody neck-stumps with tentacles and bones and try to eat your face.
Throughout his mission, Leon remains pretty dense as to what's really going on (he's just here to get the president's daughter and get out! What the hell are Las Plagas anyway? Who cares?) but he eventually figures it out when he gets injected with a Plaga of his very own. Once Leon starts to cough up blood and lose control of his will, he figures that something bigger is going down after all.
As the mystery unravels, it becomes revealed that a guy named Osmund Saddler is the leader of this cult (meaning he can control the Plagas themselves. He has this crazy staff that has eyes and tentacles that makes this possible), and his grand, malevolent plan involves injecting the president's daughter with a Plaga and sending her back home to infect the president and eventually....the world. As Leon's old friend/new nemesis Jack Krauser notes: "A conservative mind wouldn't understand the good that we're doing..." Sick burn, conservatives!
At this point, I imagine that many of you are saying to yourselves, "Alex, this game came out like, three years ago. How come you're just now getting around to finishing it?" Well, friend-o, I'll tell you. First, I didn't get a Gamecube for awhile. I purchased one for the express purpose of playing Resident Evil 4 because I played a demo whilst I was working at Gamestop. I played it pretty steadily, until I got to the freaking scary island facility and the freaking scary regenerators/iron maidens. Regenerators are genetically altered freaks of nature that can't be killed! That is, can't be killed until you get a thermal imaging scope for your sniper rifle. Then you have to shoot the Plagas that are responsible for growing back the creature's limbs after you blow them off with a shotgun.
So, I fought a couple of them, enduring their inhuman mouth-breathing and glowing red eyes for a pretty good amount of time. It was always such a relief when their metabolism sped up and caused them to implode. But there was this one encounter that scared me so bad that I peed a little in my pants and had to stop playing outright. I was faced with a regenerator, I accidentally shot its leg off, it slithered towards me like a giant snake, hopped up, and took a bite out of my shoulder! I couldn't handle the sheer shock of what happened, so I shut off my Gamecube and changed my pants. I didn't touch it again until it came out on the Wii, and decided to give it another go. I manned up, if you will, slaying all manner of Cronenbergian abominations until I stood face to face with Osmund "crazy legs" Saddler himself (well, it was face to face until his head blew up and turned into a scorpion made out of muscle and gravy). I blew his terrorist eyeball-mouth to kingdom come, rescued the president's daughter (on a jetski!), and blew up the island. It was awesome!
Resident Evil 5 is due out sometime next year, and I am stoked to once again play it, get too scared to finish it, and then come back years later for another attempt. It'll feature running zombies, a la 28 Days Later! F***k yeah!
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