[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Part of our woes come from this man hitting the DL (and his lack of performance)”] [/caption] The Marlins have dropped seven straight games, dropping them five games behind the Phillies and now two behind the Atlanta Braves and it’s been agony to experience. Losing Josh Johnson was a problem, but we’ve even had great pitching performances from our starters (including one of his replacements) that the Fish have botched. The loss of Hanley Ramirez also doesn’t help things, although his presence has yet to really be felt at the plate. I’m hoping that this DL stint will fix whatever’s been ailing him. ...

Project Café now has a “real” name, kids: Wii U. The video above will explain just what it is while simultaneously confusing the hell out of you with respect to just what this thing is. I have a lot of faith in this idea. It’s ridiculously cool and it could have tons of potential, but I’m just scared that, despite its ability to handle the current generation of games, it’s going to be left in the dust as the competition shifts generations too. I guess I don’t have to worry about that until 2012 (EDIT: good catch, Dave), but that’s my only real Wii U concern. All I want now is to be able to play it already. ...

I’m gonna stick to tv here, but this is a general purpose post, really. Remember in the early aughts when the death of modern tv was imminent due to reality tv? Original programming was over! Reality tv was so cheap and got such high ratings that soon we’d all be watching The Bachelor, Survivor, and American Idol 24/7! What happened instead? Nothing, really. There’s a smaller field of original programming, I suppose, but I think that allows networks to focus on fewer, higher quality shows. I mean, think of all the great tv that has happened since the end was near: ...

Oh boy, can’t wait for this one. Looks like all the old favorites are back: Chloe, Sully, Elena, and, obviously, Drake. Gonna be sweet.

I already love Michael C. Hall from Dexter, but Ben Schwartz, who hilariously plays Jean-Ralphio on Parks and Recreation really sells this clip.

So bro, I played this sick game Call of Duty this past weekend and it was totally awesome. There was, like, a free weekend, so I played the multiplayer and I told all my bros, “Hey brahs, put away the beer pong, quit taking bong hits, pop your collar, and let’s get our Call of Duty on!” Oh man, that’s real tough to shake. I keep lapsing into bro-speak ever since I played the free trial weekend of BLOPS, as I like to call it. Frattiness aside, CoD actually wasn’t that bad. In fact, I’d rather play CoD than Halo and I’d say it’s almost as good or better than Counterstrike. ...

I got this idea from Kill Screen (who got this idea from Pitchfork) to talk about my gaming life in five year increments. Pitchfork does it with music and really it can be done with any media, but I’m doing games. AGE 5 (1991) One of my first video game memories is sitting in my parents’ living room in Hialeah watching them play a Bowser level in Super Mario Bros. I remember being scared of the creepy black castle level. This was the launch year for the SNES, but I’m sure we didn’t get it until 1992 or 1993. Instead we mostly amused ourselves with Contra, Mega Man 2, and Bubble Bobble. ...

Here’s another breakdown of the media I’ve been consuming: Video Games: I haven’t talked about these for a long while, so I’m just gonna go over recent history, post-robbery. L.A. Noire - Just beat it last night. I think that the game premise shows a lot of potential, but the true masterpiece will be any game that piggybacks off of this one. Why did they feel the need to open world this? It only creates dissonance between the character as portrayed and the character they want him to be. Also: interrogations are neat, but very tough. ...

Ok guys, blog posts may be more or less frequent now that I’ve been robbed. Either the business of replacing stuff and dealing with the cops will take more time or I’ll have more time to focus on this blog. For those who don’t know, I was robbed last night. I lost almost all of my 360 and PS3 games along with their corresponding systems and my 3DS, among other things. It’s kind of a bummer, but thankfully no one was hurt and, aside from save files, everything else is replaceable. ...