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A pretty cool musical look at the history of Nintendo by the Reverse Enginears.
Of course it doesn’t. Here’s a nice argument for how ridiculously insignificant the sum of human existence is.
Words cannot describe how much I love the Mega Man series (NOTE: They can. It’s their purpose), so this vid was pretty awesome. Good trivia bits in there about the color palette.
This bag houses my new Wii U. It also has a picture of YOSHI OMG!
Guys, I got a Wii U in NY this weekend. I know what you’re thinking, stupid gimmick system, right? Maybe, but I don’t feel like it is yet. I’m having tons of fun with it so far, just gotta sink more time into the multiplayer with friends this weekend.
Movies
Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva – Not gonna win any awards, but it was inoffensive and funny in some pretty ridiculous ways. Min and I had fun watching it.
TV
The Mindy Project – A lot of people give this show grief, but I find Mindy consistently funny and pretty sharply funny most of the time. She’s still got that awkward funny down pat too. The bit with Ed Helms was cringe-worthy.
Childrens Hospital – Newsreaders episodes tend to be pretty funny, but this one didn’t have the same oomph as last season’s with all the spinoffs.
Homeland – Marathon catch-up and, holy cow, what’s going on?! Can’t wait to see the reunion with Abu Nazir, but the Gettysburg shootout seemed way implausible.
New Girl – I was not expecting a Parent Trap. Pretty strong episode what with all the Nick hitting on Jess’ mom thing. Guess what, guys? Winston still does nothing.
Happy Endings – The Native American trials thing with Dave? Uncontrollable laughter. Holy cow I loved it.
Glee – I like Grease so I didn’t mind this at all. Wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t offensively bad either.
Music
Lot of Black Friday sales up, but here’s one for the hearts of my readers.
It makes my heart swell even though I’m not literally from Latin America. It’s a beautiful song.
Books
A Confederacy of Dunces – Slow progress. Still under 100 pages.
Video Games
The Walking Dead – What a gut punch. Holy cow. I was so glad I played the finale alone because I was on the verge of tears the whole time. Strong, strong game of the year contender for me.
Dark Souls – Finally put some time into this sucker. Hey, it’s pretty awesome. I was feeling really stressed about every decision and expecting death around every corner, but that’s the real joy of the game. My other favorite thing was how sparse everything was. I was just in a place and exploring it was up to me. No quest markers, no waypoints, just loneliness and wandering. In Skyrim that’s boring because it’s a boring place and the combat isn’t fun. In Dark Souls I’m just on edge and tense and confused and I like it.
New Super Mario Bros. U – I tried out the boost mode while Min and Lee played the game. Trying to save folks (and/or impede them) is way cooler than I thought it would be. Can’t wait to mess with them some more.
Nintendo Land – Here’s one that I thought would be an unfun mess. So far I tried the F-Zero, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and Ninja games. The only one I didn’t really care for was the Ninja one, but that’s just because I don’t love light gun shooters. Donkey Kong was, by far, my favorite. I loved the little ghosts for the times. Wasn’t expecting that at all. Super fun and super cool. Can’t wait to try the asynchronous multiplayer games with people since I forgot to take wiimotes to NY with me.
GPOY (I’m Patel today)
It’s been a tough week.
Safety Not Guaranteed – A neat little piece about loss and regret. Could have probably developed Aubrey Plaza’s character a little more, but I also understand her arc. Good to see range from her too.
Happy Endings – Holy crap this episode (Boys 2 Menorah) made me laugh. These writers do funny really well. A little slapstick-y with the Dave/Alex plot resolution, but I liked it.
Key & Peele – I’m not sure that anything really blew me away in this episode, but they do have some good ideas that developed ok. Just not quite enough to push it over the edge into greatness.
Parks and Recreation – Ben’s job offers and the accounting firm were funny as was the continued development of April. How dry can I be talking about humor? There were many parts that made me express joy in the form of laughter. Ha. Ha. Ha.
The League – A little bit of gross out humor never seems to elude the show. Enjoyable enough, but not blowing me away.
New Girl – Not the most progressive handling of PMS, but the scenes with Nick getting a water massage were pretty great.
Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick came out with a new Christmas album. The Weeknd’s first label release came out. I dunno, listen to something.
A Confederacy of Dunces – The high degree of interconnectedness of its cast reminds me a little of how sharply integrated the Arrested Development writing used to be.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown – More episodes recorded, but I haven’t played a whole bunch. Min beat it! Yay!
Hotline Miami – So much weirder and creepier the more I get into it. Fell behind on recording episodes, so I need to get back on that this week.
FTL – Had a miserable stalemate with the Mantis ship during a landmark episode.
TNNS – Pretty great co-op play and sharp single player too. Wish I had an iPad to mess around with it in a better form (I tried it on Min’s and it was nice), but my phone will suffice.
The Walking Dead – Episode 4 was pretty brutal. I was not expecting it to be quite so harsh, but my mind is blown for, I guess, tomorrow.
It’s funny, an All Songs episode about music in college reminded me of my tumultuous relationship with Ashley and made me want to write a post about break-up music that I had used in the past to help me process my emotions and my feelings…
Then I was broken up with later on that afternoon.
Look, I try to stay away from posts about my emotional state most of the time here, but I needed somewhere to talk about the irony of the situation and the suckiness I’m dealing with.
Now let’s all go listen to some Stars – “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” or something…
Conan O’Brien, a man who cares not for video games, has reviewed yet another one. This time it’s Hitman: Absolution and it’s also his funniest review yet.
His completely ridiculous review has, oddly enough, made me want to get the game myself.
Back in September I still had hope for 2013
Everyone’s thinking “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” right about now, but I still can’t help but feel so betrayed.
You don’t really get to pick the teams you love. I mean, you do, obviously, but at the same time what rational human being would continue to love a team like the Marlins? Two World Series titles are rather nice, but every other year in the team’s history has been fairly miserable thanks to fire sales and borderline duplicitous frugality.
When you’re a kid and you love baseball and a team finally starts operating in your town, that’s a huge event. The Marlins have held a special place in my heart since 1993, but the trade…oh, that huge trade with Toronto. We’re sending them Josh Johnson, Mark Buerhle, Jose Reyes, Emilio Bonifacio, and John Buck and getting Yunel Escobar plus prospects/cheap players in return. Thanks for ruining the 20th anniversary of the team, Jeffrey Loria. Thanks for lying and tricking us into thinking the team had changed last year. Thanks for nothing.
I can no more change my favorite team or favorite sport than I could choose to stop breathing oxygen, but you’ve gone and taken 2013 from me, Jeffrey Loria. The thing I look forward to the most every year, baseball season, just feels so empty right now.
I’m gonna wreck it! (Picture courtesy: Italia Film Middle East)
Had me a long weekend and I managed to get back into the movie mood. Too bad none of them were quite as good as I was hoping.
Wreck-It Ralph – Not as good as I thought it would be. I mean, it’s still a decent caliber movie, but it doesn’t soar to the heights of, say, WALL-E. I felt like the video game worlds they invented ultimately weren’t that interesting, but it was otherwise pretty good.
Flight – More about alcoholism and addiction than I thought it would be. I also found the decision to come clean at the end to not make sense. I didn’t think he would have felt guilty enough or ready to admit his problem based on the entire movie before it.
Taken – For how much the internet just adores this movie I thought it would be much better than it is. Just kind of goes and then it’s done. Not a terrible way to spend 90 minutes, but it’s not gonna warrant a second viewing from me.
Casino Royale – Preparing for Skyfall by watching my favorite Bond movie…in Spanish! I don’t like the dub voices, but I like some of the translations.
New Girl – I found the punch to the face and the facepalming hilarious. Nick continues to knock it out of the park this season and, like I say every week, this show has no idea what to do with Winston.
The Mindy Project – I like this show more than a lot of the critics do. Sure, it’s not blowing the socks off of network comedies, but it’s sharp and witty and I love Mindy Kaling’s delivery.
Key & Peele – Some great sketches in the pair of episodes I watched, but the most recent one was a little weak with its material. That Michael Jackson one was fantastic.
The League – I really liked the episode where Ruxin did poorly on the Wonderlic and started acting dumb for the rest of the episode.
Childrens Hospital – It’s really hard to compare episodes to A Year in the Life, but I do love me some Nick Offerman as Chance Briggs.
NTSF:SD:SUV:: – The infomercial was pretty funny, if not a little predictable.
Saturday Night Live – The Anne Hathaway sketches started out pretty weak, but then they really picked up near the end. That Homeland sketch was brilliant.
The Amazing Race – Can’t believe that a team stole money from another team (essentially) and that the same team managed to lose their passports. To be continueds are unsatisfying, but I’m so hooked for next week!
Happy Endings – Finished my catchup of S2. Wore me out a little, but ABC knew that it might so they didn’t air one this past week. Thanks, guys!
Community – Watched “Remedial Chaos Theory” again with Min. Brilliant and classic episode. ROXANNE!
Parks and Recreation – I’m getting a little tired of the endless repeat of Chris Traeger stories. Come up with something new, writers!
The Daily Show – Long string of episodes to try and get current. I’m still prior to the third debate and the election. Just gotta keep plugging away.
Cowboy Bebop – Just a few dinnertime episodes with Min. Managed to not sing along with “Tank!” once. I’m super proud of myself.
The Thick of It – Not having subtitles available makes this…tough to watch on top of the sometimes impenetrable British political system, but it’s usually very acerbic and very funny and very profane.
EDIT: Glee – Forgot about this one. Wow, this show is…mostly not good. They really tried to rewrite history by claiming that Finn was some kind of super motivator. I don’t buy it. He’s doofy and kind of dumb…kind of like Mr. Shue! I find that I only care for Marley when she’s singing (she looks so happy and smiley when she does), but the rest of the new kids are just noise.
Still loving this Geko Jones track that I rediscovered:
And also listening to lots of Stevie Wonder:
A Confederacy of Dunces – Got a few pages in here and there. Ignatius’ character has become a real archetype for the nerdy, put upon character of the modern sitcom. The dude who thinks that the rest of the world is going to hell, but not him.
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – Very little game time in lieu of tv and pokemon.
Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask – Daily Puzzles! Love just popping in to solve them here and there.
Pokemon White Version 2 – Lost my Nuzlocke challenge against Colriss on the Plasma Cruiser. Built up a new team of six and I’m at Victory Road now.
Hotline Miami – This game is just violent, fast, and fun. If you watch my youtube page, there should be some new episodes of Dan Plays starting tonight.
FTL: Faster Than Light – Got some really fun episodes recorded while unlocking a bunch of new ships. Can’t wait to start trying them out!
XCOM: Enemy Unknown – After a three week hiatus to let my backlog catch up (not quite caught up still), I finally jumped back in because David and Min were playing Ironman Classic games of their own. So epic and so fun and I filmed an exciting episode out of it. Very cool and very fun.
I love the Drake interlude.
