Doom, Super Mario Bros. 3 deemed "historically significant"

Last week, a committee that had been working on it for some time announced ten of the most culturally significant video games of all time. It's similar to the National Film Registry that's run by the Library of Congress. On the list of games deemed to have historical value: Tetris, Zork, Super Mario Bros. 3, SimCity, the Warcraft series, and... get this... Doom! Yes, Doom is among the first video games to be listed as having made an impact on culture and history. But as a longtime Doom-er, I knew that already. As is often said among Doom-aholics: "Doom will never die... only it's players will".

It's a good list. But if it ever gets expanded upon I think that we should see The Legend of Zelda (the original NES game), Pitfall II and Wing Commander added to it. Heh-heh, Wing Commander: now there is a game franchise that I would love to see return in a big way!

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The clown is down

What if Quentin Tarantino directed a Burger King commercial? It would probably look something like this...

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That sound you hear tonight...

...is the groaning in agony of millions of people who just watched in horror as their brackets in the NCAA Tournament office/campus pool got completely screwed up by Duke.

Congrats to Virginia Commonwealth though on a good game.

The first half just ended between UNC and Eastern Kentucky and it doesn't look like the Colonels are gonna topple #1 seeded Tarheels. I still remember when Western Carolina almost pulled that off against Perdue in the '96 tournament: my sister was a student at WCU at the time and she said she'd never seen a college campus go so crazy, when it really looked like it was gonna happen. So far as I know though, no #1 seed has ever gone down in the first round.

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RETURN OF THE JEDI Special Edition is 10 years old today

Turns out that it was ten years ago today that Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi Special Edition came out in theaters. It was originally supposed to have opened on March 7th, but the Special Editions of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back were performing so awesomely well at the box office that 20th Century Fox decided to let them play an extra week before introducing the next one. I remember it well: it was a cold, rainy day that it opened. "Weird" Ed, Gary and I caught it that afternoon at the West End Cinema in Burlington. Of the Special Editions, this was the one that I think I'd been waiting for the most because several months earlier word came that in the final moments of the movie we would see the capital planet Coruscant for the first time ever. The Special Edition of Return of the Jedi is also notable for adding the beak to the Sarlacc, for the "Jedi Rock" dance number at Jabba's Palace and my favorite change: the new, "upbeat" celebration music at the end of the movie that replaced that annoying "Lugnuts" music from the original version of Return of the Jedi. Now the Star Wars saga ends on a true triumphant note, instead of weird Ewok stick-banging.

And with Return of the Jedi's Special Edition opening, this meant that for the first time ever, all three movies of the original Star Wars trilogy were in wide theatrical release at the same time! What at time it was to be alive. Some theaters even had all three playing simultaneously: so you could go to the cinema and watch A New Hope, then The Empire Strikes Back and wind up on Return of the Jedi without having left the theater the entire day. I didn't get to do that though but after seeing each of the Special Editions no less than four times each, it wasn't really necessary.

Anyways, happy birthday to the last of the Star Wars Special Editions! And in case anyone's wondering: I do have one of the theater-exclusive Luke Skywalker figures from that day's release (although I bought it at a toy show about 2 years later for fifteen bucks... but I still got one :-).

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Routine cursory reaction following a new episode of LOST

"We're here."

The several seconds after that is one of the most mind-boggling cliff-hangers I've ever seen in an episode of any TV show.

Great episode about Claire tonight. The thing about her and her father, I'd suspected that since last season.

Next week: Locke invades Othersville. Which is sort of like Drew Barrymore boarding the Hindenburg when you think about it.

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The $1,000 pizza pie

A restaurant in New York City is selling a pizza that costs $1,000, or $250 per slice.

Instead of regular sauce and cheese the pizza "will be topped with creme fraiche, chives, eight ounces of four different kinds of Petrossian caviar, four ounces of thinly sliced Maine lobster tail, salmon roe, and a little bit of spice with wasabi." It's also not cooked, because that would ruin the fish.

Doesn't sound like anything I'd really like to eat. Even if I had a few million bucks to spare, I would rather get my pizza from PieWorks in Greensboro or King's Inn Pizza in Eden... which may be the best pizza anywhere.

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Watch this week's MONDAY NIGHT LIVE that I co-hosted

Click here to watch last night's Monday Night Live (in Windows Media format). This was the first time that I'd co-hosted a full show and the first time that I'd ever done one with regular host Ken Echols. I had a lot of fun doing this last night. We got to show a little bit of Schrodinger's Bedroom and the show closed out with the final moments from Forcery (including the credits with Slim Whitman singing "Una Paloma Blanca"). I also got to give a shout-out to friends in Raleigh, Waynesville, and Bellingham in Washington (so hey to Chad, Ed and Jenna). And of course no episode of Monday Night Live would be complete without a call from Jaybird in Eden. So if you want to watch your good friend Chris in action, mash down on the link above and catch the show.

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They are remaking ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK

I kid you not.

It could work, given the right script and director. An updated retelling of Escape from New York would potentially have more relevant commentary on the current state of things than the 1982 original was.

But I'm still going to keep a wary eye on this. The original Escape from New York may be horribly dated by today's standards, but it's still one of my favorite movies for so many reasons (not the least of which was the casting, the scenery and the soundtrack).

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I'll be co-hosting MONDAY NIGHT LIVE tonight

Tonight at 9 p.m. I'll be co-hosting Monday Night Live for the entire hour along with Ken Echols (Mark Childrey couldn't make it tonight so he asked if I could fill in). I've been asked to bring along copies of Forcery and the promo for Schrodinger's Bedroom so looks like I'll be able to shill for KWerky Productions some in addition to the usual insanity that happens on that show. Click here if you'd like to watch it streaming live over the Internet beginning at 9 p.m. EST.

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Intro sequence from Star Wars: TIE Fighter

Star Wars: TIE Fighter came out in June of 1994. I'd been waiting months for its release: earlier that winter I'd bought the original Star Wars: X-Wing and played it like crazy on my then brand-new 486 25-mhz computer (with 4 megabytes of RAM and a 170 MB hard drive). Well on its release date I was at Babbage's in Four Seasons Mall right when they opened, plunked down the money and took it home, where I eagerly installed it (from like 6 DOS floppy disks). I spent the rest of the day blasting those bloody Rebels out of the sky, then I had to go to the seafood restaurant that I worked at. I think I spent five hours playing it after I got back from work that night.

Here's the first thing you'd see when you started the game. From the very first moments of this intro, I knew this would be one of my favorite video games of all time. Thirteen years later, it still is. Imagine: a game that lets you fight for the Empire... and let's you feel good about it too! Maybe someday LucasArts will make another good game like this that lets you give in to the Dark Side (The Force Unleashed sounds like it has potential). Anyway I found this a few days ago and thought it would be fun to post here...

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Enzyte

Who the hell buys this stuff?

I've seen two Enzyte commercials twice in the past hour or so (which is two times too many). And I mean... seriously, who in the world could possibly be conned into paying good money for this?

I only started noticing the Enzyte commercials a few months ago when I was working at the TV station. We never ran the ads ourselves, but they were part of the packages with a number of syndicated programs that we did run, so I wound up seeing "Smilin' Bob" quite a bit. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Enzyte is claimed to be a "natural male enhancer" (i.e. it's supposed to drastically increase the size of male genitalia). In the ads for it a character named Bob - who has this perpetual Jack Nicholson "Joker" grin - is shown in all kinds of situations where it's implied that his penis size is a determining factor in business dealings, golf swings etc.

The syntax of the message being delivered here: big penis = good, small penis != good.

This is what our culture has deteriorated into: one that prides itself not on intellect and compassion, but on the size of its sex organs. And I'm not sorry for saying this, but any man who bases the belief that he's "not man enough" because of feeling inadequate about the size of his member... is an idiot. And he deserves to lose over fifty bucks a month for a supply of this new-wave snake oil.

Sigh...

I really can't begin to say how disgusted I am when I see stuff like this. Twenty years ago, nobody would have marketed something like Enzyte on nationwide television. Now it's everywhere. What does that say about our shallowness and gullibility... and our overall spiritual condition?

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He's on a mission from God

27 years after Jake and Elwood did it, somebody has finally acted out in real life the mall scene from The Blues Brothers. Stephen Lowe of Augusta, Georgia drove his SUV plum through the glass doors of the Augusta Mall and drove all over the place inside the mall. He even did Jake and Elwood one better: Lowe drove on the top floor of the mall. See some amazing footage of his rampage here and here.

It must be reported though that Lowe's career ended spectacularly short of that of the Blues Brothers, as he was apprehended outside the mall soon after.

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GO WOLFPACK!

Yee-haw!!! 85-80 over Duke in overtime in the first round of the ACC Tournament.

I'm just now finding out about this! I can't believe that I missed this game! AAAARRGGGHHHH...

Speaking of N.C. State, tomorrow is March 10th. That's my Dad's birthday. March 10th is also the birthday of Jim Valvano. He would have been 61 tomorrow. Can't believe it's been almost fourteen years already since he was taken from us. I can't tell you how many people I saw crying the day he died.

Goodness gracious: has it really been almost a quarter-century since that night in Albuquerque?

Valvano was one of my heroes. And he still is. This excerpt from his speech at the ESPY Awards - just two short months before he died - shows some of why that is...

"When people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it's the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special."

And because this seems to be as good a time as any, here's something I found just the other day...

But lest we forget:

"Trees will tap dance, elephants will ride in the Indianapolis 500, and Orson Welles will skip breakfast, lunch and dinner before State finds a way to beat Houston."

-- Dave Kindred in The Washington Post on Monday, April 3rd, 1983

And then that night:

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CONFIRMED: Rorschach is REALLY gazing back in new 300 trailer!

It's probably gonna be the biggest geek story of the week and Ain't It Cool News is verifying it this morning: 1 minute and 52 seconds into this extended trailer for 300, the following image appears VERY briefly (this pic is from a cap I took and it took a bit to nail it down)...

After all these years of saying it couldn't be done... and even that it shouldn't be done...

I guess nothing is impossible: there really is going to be a Watchmen movie. There's the proof staring right back at us: Rorschach. In the flesh. Looking exactly as he does in the graphic novel. Not only that but click-on this high-res still (which also came from Ain't It Cool News)...

Rorschach is holding the Comedian's blood-stained smiley-face button, just as he's depicted doing in the first few pages of Watchmen.

This is really... well, quite astonishing. I really don't know what else to say. I wasn't quite 16 years old when I first read Watchmen and it completely blew me away. Watchmen is easily on my personal top ten list of favorite books of all time (with Number One being the Holy Bible and Number Two being The Lord of the Rings, Watchmen probably ranks ninth or tenth... but that's still good). I've probably read that book at least 20 or 30 times over the years. And from the very beginning, I have always wondered, more than anything else from this book: "what would Rorschach look like in a live-action movie?"

Well, there he is: "the abyss gazes also..." Now I just have to wonder about who in the world is going to play this psycho.

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"And starring Eddie Murphy as Tattoo!"

Dear Lord, when it rains it pours...

This has been one crap-tacular weak on the pop culture front. First it's Captain America getting killed off. Then we hear that a film version of Gump and Company (the loathsome sequel to the novel Forrest Gump) is in the works.

Now this: Eddie Murphy will star in a movie remake of Fantasy Island.

For those of you who may have only come of age in the 90s or this decade, Fantasy Island ran from 1978 until 1984 and was ABC's original series about an island somewhere in the Pacific where weird stuff happened. In the case of Fantasy Island though, people willingly came to the place on "de plane! de plane!" and they ummmm... had their fantasies come true. Even as a little kid, I remember this show being odd as hell. It starred Ricardo "Co-reeen-thee-an leather" Montalban (yes Khan himself) as Mr. Roarke, the guy in the white suit who ran the island, and Hervé Villechaize as midget sidekick Tattoo (Villechaize also played Nick Nack in The Man With the Golden Gun). Knowing Eddie Murphy flicks like I do, Murphy will probably be playing Roarke, Tattoo, all the island's guests, the hula dancing girls, the plane's pilot...

Well I guess there are worse things that could happen. It could have been The Love Boat directed by Wolfgang Petersen and featuring Briney Spears as Charo.

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Finally an (almost) complete set of Harry Potter

There's a book fair going on at my wife's school this week. She bought a few things from it and brought them home. Chief among them is this hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:

This needs some 'splainin' about why this is a big thing for me. The first Harry Potter book I bought was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire back in June of 2000, right after it had been released. I figured at the time that as fast as it was going, it might be nice to have a first edition for a collector's item. I didn't read it then though. A few months later I bought a paperback copy of the first book in the series, started to read it and then dropped it: seemed kinda boring at the time. Then about six months after that I decided to see what the big fuss was about, made myself plow through Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone... and thoroughly loved it! So then I bought a paperback of the next book: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Then I bought the hardback of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban while visiting Lisa on the 4th of July in 2001. I read that and finally started reading Goblet of Fire around Christmas of that year. The two books that followed, I bought the hardcovers when they went on sale at midnight on their publications dates.

And going back to Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone: I bought a hardcover of that when I was in Indianapolis for Star Wars Celebration II in 2002. I ran out of the convention center to the B. Dalton's down the street, got it and brought it back so that I could get it autographed by Warwick Davis (who plays Flitwick in the movies), as a graduation present for Lisa.

What this all means is that eventually, we wound up with hardcover editions of all the Harry Potter books except for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And it's bugged me to no end that there was that hole in the series as they sat on our bookshelves.

After today, that's no more. Behold the entire series to date of hardcover Harry Potter books:

It will become a complete set this coming July, when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - the final book in the series - gets published. And then we will have all of the Harry Potter books that we can show off and cherish and someday read to our children from.

Now if only there could be nine Star Wars movies sitting on my DVD shelf...

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Cursory reaction to tonight's LOST

I'm going to have to watch this again but...

WOW!!!

The mythology is definitely developing further, although this episode - titled "Enter 77" - seemed to ask as many questions as it answered.

Will try to be as spoiler-free as I can here: notice how that's now two of those things that Locke has managed to destroy?

May post some more thoughts tomorrow, after watching it again.

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