Birthday happy hour last week (Photo by Eric)

Another year, another birthday. I continue to get older and, oddly enough, wiser.

Movies

In the Loop – I’m a big fan of Iannucci’s work and this movie doesn’t disappoint. Well, except for the fact that its ending is depressing and mostly based on real life. That part’s a huge bummer.

TV

The Thick of It – Oh man, the part where Hugh used Glen’s developmentally challenged son in a story to get out of trouble…wow…

Mythbusters – It sure takes a long, roundabout way to get to a point, but the baseball myths were all super cool to see proved/disproved. Can’t believe they left the humidity one only at plausible. I thought that was fairly definitive.

30 Rock – Not a bad finale, actually. I loved the way they wrapped everything up with Jack and Liz. Good show. I should watch the intermediate seasons that I missed.

Parks and Recreation – The in-show calzone joke thing is perhaps the most amazing thing to ever be put into a sitcom.

Justified – No one on tv is cooler than Raylan Givens. I really liked the one where he had to deal with Lindsay’s husband. This show kind of makes me want to live in Kentucky.

Community – I don’t think the show is as strong without Harmon…at least not so long as they’re gonna keep trying to ape his style. Community Babies was a particularly strained attempt to hit his level of meta.

The Mindy Project – Mindy is still pretty much the same person as my roommate. I find this show a lot funnier than the critical consensus.

New Girl – Speaking of funny shows and shows I haven’t praised nearly enough, New Girl has finally made me realize how incredible it is. It’s just been firing on every cylinder this year. Totally loved the awkward backwards moonwalk. I need to work that into my repetoire.

Archer – Still don’t really care for Ron Cadillac at all. Funny episode nonetheless.

Grammys – I’m sorry, but Frank Ocean >> Mumford & Sons.

Music

I’m not kidding…Listen to Frank Ocean

Books

Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball – I really love the Steve Bartman chapter. My favorite part of the book each year that I read it.

Video Games

Spelunky – I actually had me some good runs go horribly bad. Allowing the scepter of Anubis to kill you was a real jerk move, Derek Yu.

Fire Emblem: Awakening – I wasn’t expecting to get this until everyone was talking about how great it was. Know what? It’s fantastic. Addictive and fun and tough to stomach losing units, but still worth playing. Didn’t know you’d be able to customize your main character, but I love that about this game too.

Maybe it’s ripping off They Live a bit, but I really dig the way that the city seems to hate Dante.

Not a lot of things going on last week because it was busy! There was a Super Bowl that the Ravens were winning! So much fun being out in Baltimore last night.

Movies

Next week, I promise!

TV

The Thick of It – This show is so mean (like Veep!) and I love Tucker’s “bollocking face”.

Happy Endings – I think the sight gag of Marlon Wayans, Jr. giving a reluctant lapdance to Jane because he was covered in stripper glitter was the biggest laugh of 2013 so far.

New Girl – I wish they’d kept it “won’t they,” but I strangely trust New Girl in S2 to handle this Jess/Nick thing fairly well. They’ve been firing on all cylinders and this season has been a real Nick highlight.

Archer – Best Archer episode of this young season so far. Full of callbacks (almost too full) and brilliant humor. Hilarious episode.

Girls – There was so much brilliaant drama in this episode I don’t know where to start. Ray and Shoshana were the clear highlights, but Jessa and Thomas John’s fight was brilliantly acted out. This show is really clicking right now and I hope it stays strong.

Music

Beyoncé runs the world right now.

Books

A Confederacy of Dunces – Finally finished the book. The convergence of all the plots was so funny and tight and perfect. It’s definitely a book that rewards reading it all the way through. Everyone has a neat/proper ending and Ignatius’ fate felt strangely right.

Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball – An annual prepping for baseball season read. I love Will Leitch’s insights and his love for his Cardinals. I don’t know of a baseball book that I enjoy reading more.

Video Games

Spelunky – Thanks to a new Elgato capture card courtesy my mom for my birthday, I’m now able to capture console footage and use it to show the world how bad I am at Spelunky. So much fun, you guys!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown – Man, those Second Wave switches are almost way too hard to deal with. Gonna lose this game and start a new one.

DmC Devil May Cry – Who knew that this game would be so fun/awesome? I’m digging the combat system and all of Ninja Theory’s great character work. This game is stupid in all the right ways too. Loved that intro with the bat and junk food in front of Dante’s junk.

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.

Movies

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.

TV

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.

Music

Still loving this Geko Jones track that I rediscovered:

And also listening to lots of Stevie Wonder:

Books

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.

Video Games

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.

No More Heroes is good for some easy cosplay. Travis Touchdown is pretty awesome (Photo by Elliot Trinidad)

Last week felt super long! Thank god it’s all over. At least I enjoyed myself plenty. Week two of the swimming experiment continued as well, reminding me of how woefully out of shape I am. Glad to have seen Kai again too. It’s a bummer that she no longer has work/business in Baltimore.

Movies

Prometheus – I went to see this with Ian last Monday. Despite what some critics might tell you, it’s not aggressively terrible. I think that my lack of prior Alien knowledge is what allows me to enjoy the movie so much. I came in with zero preconceptions and zero expectation and I left having seen the coolest surgical procedure ever and a pretty sweet squid vs. Engineer fight. This is not an A+, high-caliber piece of cinema, but it’s a fun summer film. Oh, before I forget, Michael Fassbender as David was INCREDIBLE.

Rampart – Woody Harrelson plays a dirty cop who is all kinds of damaged. The movie kind of starts in the middle and ends in the middle, but it was interesting, if not fragmented. I think most of you guys wouldn’t really dig it.

TV

Futurama – I’ll admit that the fat robot in the Mars University episode was pretty funny. I’m enjoying pushing through this show a few episodes at a time. I hope to get some more in this week.

The Thick of It – Watched the entire first series (I mean, it’s only three episodes. British television, everybody!). The first episode wasn’t particularly funny at all. It was just a lot of meanness and snarkiness, although it’s situationally hilarious in retrospect. In fact, it’s making me smile quite broadly. This show, in case you didn’t know, was Armando Iannucci’s show about English politics that precedes Veep (although it seems that they’re making a new series for 2012). It’s biting and it’s downright mean most of the time (meaner than Veep), but it’s still quite funny, especially past the first episode.

Music

You can get “Black Sheep” by Metric off of the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, but if you want the Brie Larson version I recommend searching for it on last.fm where they have a downloadable 128 kbps one you can get. Great song.

Here’s another good Metric song:

Books

1Q84 – I’m in so hard for this book. It has gotten so good. I finally know how Tengo and Aomame relate to each other, but I’m not even 1/3 of the way done with this epic. So far the Little People are the scariest thing I’ve ever heard of. I think Aomame is gonna end up infiltrating Sakigake and maybe Tengo is gonna have to save her and Fuka-Eri. We’ll see.

Video Games

Diablo III – Inferno…yay? As you might expect I’m more interested in playing new or unfinished games so I haven’t logged into D3 in a while. I’ll get more time in this week during Marlins games (unless I end up reading between innings instead).

Civilization V – The Gods and Kings expansion pack came out and I’m really enjoying it. The new Faith system is neat and I enjoyed founding Buddhism, but I have yet to see how it will impact the whole game so far. Haven’t put too much time into it (sometimes I try and rest my arms when I get home since being on the computer all day makes my shoulders hurt), but I expect to win as the Siam empire!

No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise – There’s so much going on in this game that it’s hard to pick out just one thing. It seems that Suda51 is intentionally satirizing the video game fan and his pathetic existence in Travis. He has a lust for blood, is an otaku (he is mocked for this), and he endlessly and pathetically lusts over women. Most of the other assassins are similarly psychopaths and the game pretty heavily breaks the fourth wall. For what you’d think would be a mindless game, this has some hidden depth that I’m thoroughly enjoying.