Sunday (of E-V-I-L) Funnies

Here're some comics primarily pulled from the Bolt City forums for your Halloween enjoyment. Check out the artists' homepages if you enjoy what you see; some very talented folks in the Flight community.

Modern Romance : Skank-o-ween

Superman : actually a comic come movie here

Ballad : a (seriouser) weekly comic about a zombie lad's tribulation in being resurrected

Butterflies : another one from Froghat that's just cute.

(stuff below this point is not found on Bolt City, but is excellent nonetheless)

Diesel Sweeties : a little election goodness for ya

"Real" Art : a Peter Bagge treatise on the art world

A Softer World : since the wedding last weekend still lingers in my mind, here's an appropriate strip from Softer World

Happy hauntings, peops. See you in November.

Baseball for Brain Surgeons 2

I missed this one on my way home from work, but John caught it and was nice enough to pass it along...

The one thing about ground balls... they don't go out of the ballpark.

And so, this brief yet, I believe, truly powerful TMSO feature enters its offseason. For more wit and wisdom of Tim McCarver, you'll just have to...

Wait til next year.

World Series Champions

It is a sad day. No more baseball until March.

But, this 2004 season is the most satisfying for me in a number of years. The Boston Red Sox, in my opinion the most talented team in MLB, are World Series Champions. The best team in baseball is on top of the world. This Red Sox team had outstanding hitting and great pitching. It is unlike previous World Series winners.

2003 was unsatisfying. The Florida Marlins were a flawed team, but got hot at the right time and beat the Yankees in the Series. Though, that team will always hold a special place in my heart for knocking off the Cubs. 2002 was unsatisfying. The Anaheim Angels should have lost. The Giants were the better team, had Barry Bonds, the best player in baseball, and a 3-2 Series lead. But they blew it to a flukey Angels team. The 2001 Series, though quite exciting, also had a hollow feel to it. The Arizona Diamondbacks won because they had Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. It seemed as if those two guys pitched every game of the World Series. They had no pitching depth and merely a decent lineup. But they won.

This Red Sox team was a complete team. It was utterly dominant in the Series. The Sox sandwiched winning streaks of 3 games and 8 games around the 3 games they lost to the Yankees in the ALCS. Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and others hit the crap out of the ball. Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe were all outstanding on the mound. Keith Foulke, one of my favorite players, had a Mariano Rivera-esque postseason.

I hate to sound like sour grapes. But it was nice to see, for the first time in years, the best team in baseball actually win the World Series. I'm satisfied. At least until March.

Madden Madness : Week 7.0 (and 6.0!)

O Man. Do we have quotes for you today. Week 7 was our first Madden Madness week with a run-off for winner. So, we'll have a countdown to the winner, but first the official placement of the Week 6.0 winner which Scot selected for us...

Marshall Faulk is a master at finding the soft spot.

Incidentally, there was much talk of the "soft middle" last night, with Al Michaels (a regular reader of this blog) seeming to knowingly incite John Madden into continuing his incidental pun.

That was Week 6.0; this is week 7.0, which begins with an off-handed compliment of Denver's quarterback:

These are the things Jake Plummer is very good at: calling the option or if he doesn't like it calling a time out.

I am glad that there is recognition of the tremendous skill it takes to call a time-out.

Meetings! He was the first coach to have meetings!

I don't know if it was Madden's bewildered excitement over the complicated notion of the "meeting" or... well, that's what it was. I don't know, maybe Paul Brown would like to be enthusiastically remembered for introducing meetings into the National Football League... but, that's why that's number 2, and the following is number one:

I just figured out that the Batmobile has to be black.

I could explain the context of this, but then I'd just have to explain how out of context it was when Madden finally said it. Needless to say, Al was busy describing an incredible catch when our winning quote of the week burst onto the scene.

Stay tuned for Week 8.0, the kind-of halfway point of this bold adventure highlighting the abyssmal Dolphins and the soaring Jets in a potential trap game but probably not.

Help Wanted

On this moment of its one year birthday, RF has been plotting an expansion. How exactly this happens is going to be principally determined by the new writers/artists coming into the project. I am not certain who out there is or would be interested in partnering with us, so I am asking here.

Here are the concrete things I am looking for:

Real Time Record Reviews : Reviewers : What will be the RF mp3/music blog, songs and albums reviewed while they play for the reviewer. We need a couple of quick wits with good ears to fill up the staffing in this basically-ready-to-launch project. This is a very flexible gig, since writing time is incredibly low.

The RF Galleries: Co-Manager, Assistants, Exhibitors : One of the most exciting components of the RF Zine was the Galleries section, which has not yet been revitalized in the new RF vision. I am looking for help to operate, code and solicit contributions for the Galleries. With the Galleries, I plan to also create a marketplace where viewers will be able to purchase non-editioned archival prints through RF (all profits will go to artists until the site is established) or editioned work directly through an exhibitor. So, yes, while not immediate (except for artists), there is economic potential for anyone helping in this area.

Character Blogs : Bloggers : I'm very interested in starting several character blogs, what I would essentially describe as the blogosphere's version of fiction. The prevalent idea being floated around is an Afterlife Travelogue, where reporters would be sent on excursions into various visions of the world beyond. Still, I'd be interested in hearing other ideas for entirely fictional or pseudo-fictional blogs. In concept, such blogs would run for a few months before ending via plotting.

I am entirely open to new projects completely independent of those which I've listead above; if an idea's been on your mind or you have a unique direction to take a particular idea I've laid out, I'd love to hear about it. I have some basic things I'd like to see happen with any new concept, and these are things I will discuss with you at a more appropriate time. If you know you want to do something, but don't know what, chat with me and we'll see if we can develop something for you.

Here are some of the benefits of getting in on this stage of expansion:

-Free RF e-mail address for either POP3 or Web-based use with at least 10MB of storage space.
-Free hosting of your blog and consideration for personal webspace.
-A pre-existing, growing base of readers and search hits. Invaluable for an infant project.
-Editorial assistance. We help with designing and formulating your visions into somethin' special.
-Editorial input (output?). An open environment that looks for your thoughts on our vision.
-Collaboration. Basically, I put the last two into one entry to take up more space.
-Free alcoholic beverage next time you are in Chicago. I will buy you a drink if/when you are of age and within transportable distance of me.

If that's not enough, I don't know what is.

mike@robotsfighting
(picture from Wm. Fridrich's Adventures in Typography))

Robber Barons and the Poor People They Steal From

I'd like to point out to everyone that fresh off this post transforming into an Onion headline and with the still-stinging scars of that same magazine's poaching "Standard Deviation Not Enough for Perverted Statistician" last summer, the world at large has stolen from RF/Kindling archives once again...

This time, Sean "P Diddy" Combs nabs Andy Buchenot's "Vote or Die" campaign which was turned into a clever illustration for the NCC Chronicle's 2000 Election spread.

Not that I really mind, but I would rather see Mya wearing the logo he devised (which put a cartoon skull in the open space of the letter 'D') than the generic over-sized lettering on the official shirts.

The side-note to this story is that the most heated conversation I had with my parents during college was over my desire to begin officially copyrighting Kindling/Chronicle issues and content. In fairness, their concern was that the school would then try and prevent us from reprinting our own work in places like the RF galleries. Still, the Missouri in me can't help but be worried that greater (or actual) grievances are still to come. Now is probably the time to talk to Nancy Kirby about creating a intellectual property protection policy for NCC writers/artists.

Of course, the other side-note is that I'm fairly sure the Vote or Die and Barrel of Oil incidents were independently conceived... I cannot believe the same for Perverted Statistician.

Baseball for Brain Surgeons

While I was anticipating taking a bye week for Madden Madness, Scot has offered up a gem that will become the official Madden Madness quote for week 6.0. Also, we have found another sportscaster to pick on.

Back during game 6 of the ALCS with Boston holding a considerable lead at either the very end of the 8th or very beginning of the 9th inning (depending on your outlook and my memory), Tim "Foul Out" McCarver said:

There's still a lot of baseball left to be played.

In fact, there was not a lot of baseball left to be played. There was one inning left to be played. Normal humans use the above cliche'd quotation anytime before, say, the 7th inning stretch, when a team still has at least a third of the game to overcome a deficit; the statement gains more poignancy and is even more applicable when the trailing team is showing a sign of coming back.

Tim McCarver's teasing was so blatantly false that Dave and I began discussing the need for an Official Baseball Cliche Guide, telling announcers exactly when it was appropriate to say things like "It's do or die time, for the ___s" and correcting common misstatements like "They're down to their last pitch. " If everyone is going to use such phrases, let's make sure they're being used correctly.

"Baseball for Brain Surgeons" may continue (McCarver willing) through the end of the week, when we will know who walks away from the World Series (misstatement of all misstatements) with a championship.

Gimme Three Steps

I have returned from a wedding adventure of such unparralleled Missouri-ness that I cannot speak on everything without becoming consumed by that place that is the Show-Me State. This is a very different Midwest than the one I know and love; I want to call it the South, and I don't think I'm too far off with such a claim.

But to give you a taste of sweet, Kansas City BBQ, here's a juicy little ribeye:

At the reception, some members of our table of Northerners grew upset at the lack of dancing and requested the venerable "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang in an effort to incite a rhythmic uprising. Quite ineffectively, the song convinced only our small group and half a dozen kids to wander to the dance floor while 80% of the guests blankly stared at the proceedings. Eventually accepting defeat to a southern rock dance-mega-mix, the elder members of this coalition-of-the-willing stepped down.

Now, to set some context totally out of place, when Brandon (the groom) had hired the DJ, the two had discussed the musical line-up for the evening. A conversation which went a bit like this:

Brandon: Well, what kind of music do you think you'll be playing?
DJ: I've got a lot of Skynyrd.

At which point, Brandon took it upon himself to assemble a collection of Frank Sinatra tunes and the like to be the centerpiece for his particular occasion. Now, back to the reception...

"Gimme Three Steps", the Lynyrd Skynyrd song you know that is not "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Freebird", had been a running joke at our table due to the exchange between the groom and his music maestro. So, it was fitting that it would pop up in the playlist and just as fitting that we would chuckle.

But upon hearing those salty opening guitar licks, something hit the crowd at the core of their being. By the words, "I was cuttin' a rug down at a place called The Jug," no fewer than 22 guests were cuttin' it. Young, old, not-that-old, the dance floor was packed, and I could only imagine the DJ with a vindictive smile on his face.

It was at that point that I realized I was in a different place than from where I came.

God bless Missouri, really. You have opened my eyes. Without question, your stalwart, conservative, noncredulous manner and your unparralleled-but-in-Alabama love for Lynyrd Skynyrd will open many more eyes as well.

Congratulations to Brandon and Renee Baker; may your days be filled with the promise of "What's Your Name?" and never the forlorn emptiness of "Tuesday's Gone".

McCarver Madness

Emerging from whatever rock I've been under...

Following up on "Madden Madness," I feel the need for "McCarver Madness." Tim McCarver is the "top" baseball analyst for Fox, handling the Red Sox/Yankees series right now. A few year ago, on a 3-2 count, I swear he said:

This is an important pitch. If it's a ball the hitter will
walk. But if it's a strike he'll be out.

During Game Six last night, McCarver let loose this gem:

A walk is the same as a home run.

OK, Tim. Whatever. Sadly, I think he was serious.

By the way, my nomination for this week's Madden Madness came during the first half when he said, "Marshall Faulk is a master at finding the soft spot." But I'll leave the official award presentation to Mike.

How Marionettes Destroyed the World

This little link goes out to everyone who thinks conservatives are the only ones without a sense of humor.

Kirk the Jerk from work says he read the movie as a Bush admin wet dream and found no real criticism of the left at all. He loved it. Roger Ebert, on the other hand, thinks the encompassing nihilism of the film is dangerous, as does Sean Penn.

When I hear about this movie undermining political missions and being unamerican I can't help but laugh at the Alanis-style irony of it all. Maybe that's the point. And if it is... whoa. That's heady.

A quick note for the postscript:

I generally agree with Parker and Stone's suggestion that there's no shame in not voting. The catch, I believe, is that you have to A.) Register to vote B.) Must make vocal at some point why you're not voting. If you never got a good understanding of the candidates, fine. If you did and they repulse you, great. Just let it be known.

Top five... physics equations... of all time...

Make that six. Apparently, there's a tie.

Madden Madness : Week 5.0

Lordy, lordy! I got distracted by fresh bratwurst from Whole Foods and forgot all about Madden Madness this week. Fret not, friends, for here is your Madden quote, although I admittedly did not participate in a full viewing despite a somewhat interesting game:

Mason, here, was wide open. There was no one on him.

This is actually a common statement from announcers all over announcer land: defining the term "wide open" for the viewers at home. Needless to say, "wide open" is no lower than number seven on any basic football vocabulary list; it lies only behind words like "ball" and "run" and "field". It may even be ahead of "touchdown" (but only because "touchdown" requires the memorization of the number 6). "Wide open" does not need a definition attached to it whenever used. There are words and phrases in our language whose definitions pulse through the veins of all men and women like some primordial truth, "wide open" is one of them.

So, why is it that the term cannot be uttered on a football broadcast without a clarification?

"I MEAN, THERE WAS NO ONE WITHIN A MILE OF HIM!" Yes, that is what you mean; and it's why you said he was "wide open" in the first place.

Meanwhile, viewers at home are left to explain to other viewers at home the more complex terms that led to the wide open receiver, like "play action" or "pump fake". Surprisingly, you'll never hear, "What a pump fake! He pretended like he was going to throw it and then didn't!"

Now, I'll admit. John Madden does tend to be better than most when it comes to explaining the workings of a football game during a broadcast. Sometimes, it's simple stuff; sometimes, it's obscure (did anybody else hear that thing about the free kick?). Generally, it's a good mix.

But we all have brief slumps of intelligence, and fortunately, John Madden has at least one every week! Tune in next week for Madden Madness : Week 6.0, poignantly subtitled "WTF?". Yes, ladies and gents, Monday Night Football selects St. Louis vs. Tampa Bay, and the world scratches its collective head.

Debates?

Although I generally think the debates are the real start of the presidential election, I also get bored with them quickly. These things are to debate what Bud Light is to beer. Although, I guess it's so watered down that the participants can actually come out of them without stumbling into passers-by.

What I'd like to see is a savage debate. I want candidates to not only be allowed to but also to actively address and question each other; I want rounds to go more than 2 volleys; I want the moderator to be able to cut a candidate's mic if he goes too far off topic; I want a judges booth that round-by-round scores factual accuracy; I want the moderator to report these things at the end of each round; I want the specific rules to be changed every election so that no party can develop a timeless, tried method for enduring; I want to see NOT side-by-side stump speeches that occasionally intertwine but tangled yet focussed attacks and defenses.

It'll still be more about composure than issues, but let's take the pads off and if there's room for hits to connect, let's let it happen. And let's score actual points, not feelings. Campaign stops are about feelings. The Dr. Phil show is about feelings. Interviews with the campaign children are about feelings.

This is about something more than George W. Bush looking a fraction of a bit grumpier than usual or John Kerry not truly, deeply connecting emotionally with the audience.

I find myself just not interested enough to post anything actually about the debates. That's what I'm saying.

(Cartoon posted from University of Wisconsin's The Daily archives)

Make Something Bette-r-r-r-r...

What does a rabbit with a giant mallot hunting for carrots in a surreal dreamscape have to do with diesel engines?

Honda of the UK has the answer in what could be one of the weirdest auto advertising campaigns ever. Go to the site and work your way towards "Watch the Film" where you can see rainbows and flowers explode from flying machinery.

Or, if you're the interactive type, there's a game. It concludes with a tax bill turning into a hallucinatory barbecue dance party, which must be seen to be believed.

In fact, the entire campaign is of that nature. Words simply cannot describe what has been done here.

Warning Forever

A bit like Snood for action gamers, Warning Forever cuts out the extra bits from top-down space shooters and pits your little ship against an increasingly elaborate series of enemy motherships. It's not completely a puzzle game, which is what I'm inclined to call it since games with simple rule sets and environments tend to be categorized as such. Although, I shy from that designation because you actually develop an actual skill at the game as opposed to a solution.

This tends to be how I prefer my single-player experience (sometimes, multiplayer is simply social). I'll read - so-to-speak - games that simply gobble time, and puzzle elements are generally interesting the first time around, but games that revolve around their rules design tend to engage me the most.

Considering that's the very idea behind interesting rules design, there's no real surprise there.

The game I am most reminded of with Warning Forever is the first iteration of Crazy Taxi. Simple rule sets, fast-paced action, and room for skills to be developed. Given extensive playing of Warning Forever, players will evolve into dodgers or like masters of the slip-switch in CT will become artfully proficient with the occasionally superfluous focus fire.

What may be interesting about the comparison is that both use the racing-game time-extension system as their play-time(1) defining principle, which, incidentally, governs Snood in a demented form. If time-extension is the perfect play-time system, it's because it's directly skill based. If you do a task efficiently enough, you are rewarded with a longer period of play which results in new content. Could this work in an RPG? Everyone knows the evil way of slaughtering a town is the easy way to find the stolen jewelry, but what if it were more time-consuming than neogitiating its return and thus a venture that would penalize a consistently evil character in the long run? I don't know. It's possible that the RPG base would never accept such a system.

Of course, I'm also one who argues for more completist environments in games of larger scope (making game elements make natural sense within the fictional world of the game i.e. what is xp, really?). Call me a hypocrite, whatever. That's an issue of polish which I think is on a different level from structure. Grr.

Anyway, none of this rambling is really important. Play the game.

(1) I don't know the technical term. Sorry.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Pleasantly surprised is the best cliched phrase to describe my thoughts on Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the movie which unfortunately boasts to having not a single frame without computer magix.

My expectation was for the film to get lost in that dark urban world of a Nazi robot attack so extensively revealed in the primary trailers. However, we circle the globe and almost get to space by the time the movie concludes. The environments that act as the film's cornerstones are spectacular and they turn into the subject of a well-executed (even if predictable) running joke with a camera.

Admittedly, that joke may be the most interesting plot device in Sky Captain. It's strictly linear, and the characters are low-relief at best. I don't find that a fault here, though. It keeps the movie from being something truly, indispensibly great, but I don't think it is meant to be that. The environments are where the depth is intended, and that's where the depth is.

Sky Captain is an ode to fantastic (referring to genre) pulp stories. Unlike the Indiana Jones series (or as Kill Bill did for Martial Arts flicks) it's not interested in pulling pulp environments into a more contemporary narrative. Instead, it brings technology back into its source.

Personally, there were times when the heavily stylized nature of the thing grew overbearing, as if my mind wanted some tangible, unprocessed element to hang on to. There's really not anything I would have done differently; it may just be that the film's style reaches a peak and finds itself with nowhere else to go.

A sports analogy seems appropriate although somewhat obscure:

Daunte Culpepper is a large part of why the Minnesota Vikings are as good as they are, but he is also a large part of the reason they will never be truly great [1]. Without getting too sidetracked, Culpepper is a proficient passer and a tough and fairly mobile quarterback, but he has this ridiculous achilles heel in fumbling the ball in the red zone. For every 21 points he helps the Vikings score, he keeps them from scoring 7 and even then, he's the reason they had a chance at those points in the first place. Even so, a truly great team cannot have this problem. Still, there are a scant few quarterbacks who can do what Culpepper does and none of them will ever be available. So, to replace him would mean replacing practically everything, rebuilding the team from scratch with no guarantee of even close to the perennial decency of the Vikings [2]. Good teams that simply cannot get a championship are often posed with similar questions; is it better to continue on this stalwart course of quality or to dismantle everything once the peak is reached and strive for greatness in a new way?

To bring things back into a non-metaphorical realm, is something bad simply if it is never great? Because that is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow... You decide.

[1] Don't kid yourselves; deep within you know what I say is true.
[2] If you're having trouble, replace any mention of Culpepper with "Extensive CGI Image Processing" and the Vikings with "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" or "a movie like..."

Madden Madness : Week 4.0

Possibly the most amazing thing about today's Madden quote is that he wasn't talking about football:

Hunker down more! Bend your knees! Get down! Lower, Lower! Drive! Drive! Drive!

-John Madden to one of the production guys during the surprisingly decent KC/BAL showdown.

On Demand

Well.

SBC is gone and RCN is here. Aside from a mysteriously high ping on one of the servers we game on, the world is suddenly a brighter place and it's not because of global warming.

Through our amazingly cheap package deal with RCN, we have been afforded HBO OnDemand. Once, OnDemand was a myth to me, some promised land of infinite choice. It wouldn't just be the nail in the coffin of network television, it would be the six feet of dirt above it. I could nod in a sort of third plane of understanding, but I didn't know; I had only fables of its power.

Now, like Moses having seen the face of God and returning from the mount, I bring you truth that many will only be able to know as fables.

(click full post, if you haven't already)

Today, on HBO OnDemand, I can choose at any point of any day to watch almost every movie HBO has in its prime-time rotation. I have the first half of the third season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the entire current season of Bill Maher (a show which is very good even for conservatives), the first season of Oz, the 5th season of Six Feet Under, 8 weeks of Def Poetry Jam, a chunk of early Sopranos, the oft-awarded but seldom seen Angels in America mini-series, (for the ladies) the entire 8th season of Sex and the City and some of the 7th season for context... Should I go on?

When I first heard about OnDemand, I was under the impression that anything from a station's back catalog could be accessed and viewed. While on a personal level, it's disappointing to not be able to get week-by-week analysis of the past ten football seasons with an archive of Inside the NFL (please, HBO give us old Inside the NFL seasons, please), limiting viewer access may be the move that gives OnDemand power. It creates a supply and demand structure in a non-corporeal realm.

Networks have traditionally been under the yoke of Time. If a show cannot gain pre-release buzz, be slotted in a safe time-slot, introduce itself quick enough, remain entirely accessible throughout its growing stages, it simply cannot survive. A great deal of quality programming has been abandoned prematurely simply because of scheduling. Futurama was constantly pre-empted by football games, preventing its core fans from seeing the show and its potential viewers from growing comfortable with it. Joss Whedon's post-Buffy project, Firefly needed a patient introduction to establish the basic tensions in its large cast; its some-would-argue hostile Friday night time slot (X-Files only survived here since it was moved into the slot after it had gained a large following and Carter's follow-up project Millenium died quickly) ensured a short-life. Many, many programs in their infancy have been killed by large, matured shows being murderously reslotted. Hell, large, matured shows in weak periods have been killed by bright, new programs murderously reslotted. Cable networks have tried to combat this by running successful series in instant mass syndication, a move which has been profitable but often compromises a station's purpose. Look at MTV.

What OnDemand does is break the linear barrier of time for television. A station can increase the free supply of a program faced with a difficult time-slot or in need of a cult build-up of viewers, allowing an audience to build at its leisure. Once the demand is at critical mass, a station can postpone new episodes going into the OnDemand catalog, filtering a program's loyal base into the scheduled premiere time where the advertising is. It will work for the same reason that people go to the movies instead of just renting them or watching them on cable. Just because television can escape the constraints of time doesn't mean humanity can.

More thoughts in the future, I imagine.

Madden Madness : Weeks 2.0 and 3.0

O John Madden.

Apologies for these very late Madden Madness entries. As I stated in an earlier post, internet-ing in my apartment has become a very impossible thing. This weird chapter of my life will be over by the end of next week, but Madden Madness will last on for at least another 14 weeks.

From Week 2.0, Eagles vs. Vikings (the evil twins of the NFL):

Those shoulder pads win games.

In these times of tribulation, I have learned that I must use my notebook more often because I can never know when an ISP will abruptly and without reason dismantle my connection. I actually had several quotes from week 2.0, this particular one submitted by good friend and Official Liver Dilator of TMSO, John Bertram; it was the only one strong enough to live on in my memory over the past two weeks.

From Week 3.0, the coaching grudge match of Dallas vs. Washington, proverbial words on the nature of the game:

It's all about the ball.

So far, the winning quotes exemplify how multi-faceted the wit, wisdom and madness of that loveball football scholar, John Madden, is.

Next week's potential bore match (power-D Baltimore vs. uber-offense-of-yesteryear Kansas City) could provide liters of hilarity from the legendary myth man, so stay tuned! (!!!)