I never played Halo 2 very often. I’m not particularly brilliant at it, and never have been. I’m getting better, but it’s a slow process. Lindsey, on the other hand, is a fiend. She was very well known on Xbox Live, and was a very skilled player. She gave it up for a couple of years, but a few nights ago, the urge to play hit her hard, and we found ourselves playing Halo 2 online. As an added bonus, I found myself being constantly berated and vented on by my ever-loving wife because of my lack of skill.
Needless to say, we had a little discussion about both of our shortcomings, and are working together to improve ourselves in our game play and game attitude.
Anyway, for the most part we’ve been having a lot of fun with it. Lindsey has reconnected with some old Halo 2 friends, and I’m learning more and more about the game with each match played.
Episode 16 has come and gone, and with it another week in our lives. It’s odd to think that we’ve been doing this for sixteen straight weeks. Episode 16 was a standard episode, discussing the week’s topics, and whatever movies, tv shows, etc that we had watched or wanted to watch. We put together another weekly list of suggestions:
Song of the Week (Chris): Refused – Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine
Song of the Week (Lindsey): Alien Ant Farm – Movies
TV Show of the Week (Chris): Bully Beatdown
TV Show of the Week (Lindsey): Days of Our Lives
Movie of the Week (Chris): The Prestige
Movie of the Week (Linsey): Beauty Shop
iPhone App of the Week (Chris): Stanza
iPhone App of the Week (Lindsey): Pandora
Video Game of the Week (Chris): Super Mario Galaxy
Last year, Lindsey and I were sitting down to watch a movie. I wanted subtitles, as I sometimes do, so I set them up. On the screen, Lindsey saw “1/4 English”, meaning that I had chosen the first subtitle track out of the four available, and that it was English. She thought I had set the movie to be in 1/4th English and 3/4th another language. I just set subtitles on a movie now, and it reminded us of her sillyness.
Over the last few years, I have noticed a very disturbing trend in American cinema regarding the wanton display of full frontal male nudity. It has become more and more acceptable for filmmakers to show the penis in film today with no warning or consideration. Now, some people may argue, “Chris, there has been full frontal female nudity in film before. Why is this such an issue?”
I’ll god damned tell you why.
In general, the female form is far more attractive than the male, and is generally filmed in an appealing and pleasing manner. Such is not the case with the male form. It seems to be used more often as a shock effect or to get cheap laughs than as an essential plot detail.
I don’t want to see giant dong on the big screen. It’s hardly appetizing.
Remember the good old days of your childhood when you would wake up at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings to catch your favorite cartoons? All of our favorite heroes were there waiting to save the day and entertain us. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would skate in, pizza in hand, and beat the Foot Clan down! The X-Men would rush in and defeat some Sentinels! The Pirates of Darkwater would always have Ren outwitting Bloth in his quest to obtain the Thirteen Treasures of Rule! Darkwing Duck would get dangerous! Captain N: the Game Master would have to find a way to defeat Mother Brain! The Watchmen would end up saving the day through wacky hijinks!
Wait, what? You don’t remember that last one? Seriously? How could you forget the show’s classic theme song and intro? Here’s a refresher:
Yesterday a good friend of ours came up from L.A. to take care of some things. While she was here, we got to spend a few hours hanging out with her (and had some good chinese food that is doubling as my lunch). As yesterday was Tax Day, a few local eateries were offering free items to drum up business; Cinnabon offered free mini-rolls, while Maggie Moo’s ice cream parlor offered a free full scoop of ice cream. Being the type of people who can’t say no to a free thing, we hit up the Cinnabon for our free rolls, then walked across the promenade to Maggie Moo’s for our free scoop (both the rolls and the scoop were delicious). On our way back to the car, we mention going back to the apartment and playing some video games. Our friend (we’ll call her Mandy, because she doesn’t like that name, if I recall correctly) then says something that Lindsey and I both got a kick out of regarding one of our games. Specifically, she said:
“Are we going to go play City Crossing: Country Folk?”
We began teasing her about this immediately and informed her that a blog post would be made about it.
Progress update 7 brings me back to the Kitchen Observatory, where I re-entered the Beach Bowl Galaxy for the second star. This star was incredibly simple. It consisted only of tracking down a golden shell in the posession of a small penguin and returning it to the head penguin. It took all of two minutes from start to finish. The third star had you transport yourself from the water world to the stone spiral levitating over it. Navigating the spiral involved a lot of patience and timing because of certain elements. At the end of the spiral lay the star. There wasn’t a great deal of difficulty in this star, just the need for patience and timing. As I viewed the available galaxies, I noticed the Fast Foe Comet was in orbit around the Beach Bowl Galaxy. I had not experienced this comet yet, and was itching to give it a try, so I jumped right back in. The Fast Foe Comet star took me back to the stone spiral, called the “Cyclone Stone”. This definitely added the difficulty factor that was missing the first time around. This one took a couple of tries to get through, but with an updated timing, I was able to obtain yet another star in my quest to defeat Bowser and rescue the princess. As I checked the galaxy list again, I noticed yet another star available through the Beach Bowl Galaxy, but this time with a “?” on it. This star level introduced me to the Ice Flower, giving me Ice Mario. Ice Mario walks on water by turning it to ice, and can wall-jump waterfalls! The ice flower was necessary to get to the top of the level. It was incredibly fun, and very satisfying to use. Following this string of stars, I found myself at 36 stars with over 1100 star bits (some had been sacrificed to enter the previous special galaxy).
The sixth progress update finds me just outside the Kitchen Observatory, where I have unlocked another special one-star galaxy called the Drip Drop Galaxy. This galaxy is a water world with a pair of small safe islands for resting, if necessary. In this world, you are told that holding a red or green shell while underwater dramatically increases your swimming speed. In fact, it makes you outpace anything else in the world with ease. I enjoyed this element a great deal, because I have always hated the decreased speed and maneuverability of underwater play in the Mario games. While that remains the same sans-shell, with a shell you have incredible speed and far greater maneuverability than you could have imagined. After this victory, which placed me at 30 stars, I re-entered the Kitchen Observatory. I had already defeated one of the Kitchen Observatory’s one-star galaxies, and with the 30th star in my hands, I was able to unlock the second one-star galaxy, known as the Buoy Base Galaxy. This galaxy started with an underwater goal before you could attempt the ground goal. However, while attempting the underwater goal, I uncovered a secret warp pipe that gave me a secret star. The star was green, which was a first for me. After obtaining the star, I was treated to what can only be considered a “cut scene” where it was explained that Green Power Stars had a special power, the ability to unlock a gateway to a special set of galaxies known as “Trial Galaxies”. I need two more green stars to fully materialize the green gateway. After this explanation, I headed back to the Kitchen Observatory for the real Buoy Base star. It was a fun ride, and I ended my night at 32 stars with two three-star galaxies to go before facing Bowser again.
Most people have heard about the recent South Park episode that makes fun of Kanye West’s ego by means of a childish joke. We watched it via http://www.southparkstudios.com/ (Where the creators have put up every South Park episode for free viewing) a few days ago, and enjoyed it a great deal. Kanye West’s ego was heavily put in check. He was the only person in the world who didn’t understand the following joke:
Hey, do you like fish sticks?
Yes.
What are you, some kind of gay fish?
His inability to understand the joke lead him to believe people were seriously calling him a gay fish, which resulted in a violent rampage against the joke’s creators (Carlos Mencia, who is a talentless dickweed, got his ass kicked on the way).
The real Kanye West seems to have enjoyed the show and actually learned a bit of a lesson about his ego from the episode.
We have arrived at the fifth progress update of my run through Super Mario Galaxy! This one is rather shorter than the previous progress updates as I only went through a few stars due to other plans. At the end of the fourth progress update, I had yet to fight Bowser in the Fountain Observatory galaxies. Last night, I made that my first goal. It was an interesting battle, but didn’t contain much of anything new. After defeating him, I headed to the third observatory, the Kitchen Observatory. I had enough stars at this point to unlock the Bowser battle of this observatory, but decided to start with the regular galaxies to build up my star count for future observatories. My first conquest was the one-star Bubble Breeze Galaxy. This galaxy presented a new feature to the game: the bubble. When inside the bubble, the map is viewed two-dimensionally from the top. You use your controller to blow the bubble in the desired direction, avoiding giant spiked mines and other hazards. This was a fun way to get through a level. I have not yet encountered any other comets, but I will eventually, of that I am sure. Following the Bubble Breeze Galaxy, I took my first shot at the three-star Beach Bowl Galaxy. This is the first galaxy that contains a water element, and is one of those half-in/half-out levels that I so prefer to the all-in levels. It was a fairly easy star to get. At this point, I have 29 stars and over 1600 star bits.
Everyone grows up; this is how the world works. Just because we grow decrepit and old, however, does not mean we have to forsake the things that make us happy, childish though they may seem. This is the core concept of Marooners’ Rock; we geek out on the things of our past, present, and future. Society and cultural norms be damned!
