The Help?

Ah, this brief moment is nice. Juliet is sleeping (or fake sleeping, doesn’t really matter) and I have a second to do what I do best: fail tremendously at attempting to pick the top 5 at the weekend box office.

1. Rot Pot A
2. The Help
3. The Glee Movie Thing
4. Final Destination 5
5. 30 Minutes Or Less

Yeah, so, weird weekend. I don’t honestly think that Rot Pot has much of a chance this weekend, or rather it shouldn’t based on it’s relatively weak opening last week, but this upcoming weekend is a smorgasbord of movies that people will see, just not rush out to see. The Help is an early Academy Award attempt about overcoming adversity, Final Destination 5 could be named Saw VIII and no one would know the difference, and Glee has a movie which may in fact just be The Hannah Montana Miley Cyrus Best Of Both Worlds Tour In 3D. Don’t kid yourself, America. When Hollywood does the same concert movie trick for your television show that they did for Hannah Montana, then maybe you’re in the same demographic. 30 Minutes Or Less is a comedy that looks a bit better than the fare offered up the past few weeks, and is probably the heavily advertised Harold & Kumar movie for this season.

As opposed to "A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas", which is also this season's Harold & Kumar.

Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be venturing out to the movies this weekend (for multiple obvious reasons). I do have to return to work tomorrow, though, which should give me a bit of time to reflect. Of course I might just go there and sleep for 3hrs. Sleep is a lot like reflection, I’m told, and I’m all for what people tell me.

Actually we kind of just have to make it through this weekend, as my mother-in-law will be in town to help out with Juliet starting Monday evening, which is good because the baby has a big week ahead of her. Aside from the multiple pediatrician and physical therapy appointments, she will most likely be forced to try on every single one of her 400+ outfits to find which best represent her state of being. She is most likely not prepared.

She was also ill-prepared for how big her new pants and hat combo would be on her. She didn't let it get her down.

Back In The Swing Of Things

Ah, just like old times. Friday afternoon, writin’ a blog that’ll probably be about box-office predictions, a scathing feud brewing (that’s right, brewing AND scathing), a terrible cup of Maxwell House coffee; yes all is right in the world again.

To be fair, Teddy was probably talking about the freshly drawn blood from a grizzly bear he slaughtered with his own hands.

Box office things!

1. Transformers 3: Transformers… Too?
2. Cars 2
3. Zookeeper
4. Horrible Bosses
5. Larry Crowne

Yikes! This week is pretty tricky (Dangeresque reference notwithstanding) because another wave of terrible movies attempts to flank box offices, surrounding our precious money and forcing the masses to succumb. Bad Teacher is replaced by Horrible Bosses (titled as if not more aptly than its predecessor), and THE ZOOKEEPER finally erupts into our reality: truly a dark day for mankind. It has all the dangers of Furry Vengeance, but is not specifically aimed at children. If you haven’t seen it, Red Letter Media does a pretty clever little thing with it.

Sadly, critics will be unable to tell you if this is a screen from Zookeeper or Furry Vengeance. Actually, just thought of a new game...

Last night was the first for me in a seemingly endless series of government-mandated birthing classes at the hospital that we’re supposed to go to when like, the baby is happening. It was unsurprisingly a lot like any of the classes I’ve ever taken in college, in which you have to introduce the people sitting next to you, you have to split up into groups for participation points, someone forces the class to extend an extra 15 minutes because they won’t stop asking asinine questions, and you’ll probably get kicked out for telling that tasteless joke that you’ve been saving for just such an occasion. Not to say I didn’t learn anything, but it turns out my suspicions were confirmed when they proved Lamaze to be the biggest scam in the history of western medicine. It’s literally just relaxation, which, to be fair, we had to take as a class in middle school (a class that my friends and I were regularly kicked out of). They wanted you to breathe no more than 10 times in 60 seconds (for those of you playing at home, try it yourself! I was able to get down to 3 breaths, but hey, it’s not a contest). From what I was able to gather, there was no technique to it, it was honestly just relaxing. INSTRUCTION: Just breathe like you’re relaxed. RESPONSE: Ok… wait, there’s over 2hrs left in class?

I also learned a lot about what a baby is, but most of my questions I fear will remained unanswered. How do I communicate with my infant? Is telepathy involved? Are babies legal? Alas, I will just have to wait and find out.

Baby fugitives are 10x more deadly than adult fugitives.

I’ll see ya guys around.

The Saturday Special

Whoa? What’s with all the new theme going on here? Isn’t it a little… sophisticated? Maybe a bit too… classy? I dunno, it just seems that without the skyline you might forget you’re in a city at all, and that’s the last thing I want. REMEMBER WHERE YOU ARE, FRIEND! You are home. It’s all right now.

Don't feel like this. Don't wear a suit while reading my blog.

Man, what a terrible weekend for movies. Transformers Three? Bad Teacher One? CARS TWO?! Yikes. Looks like with a weekend this bad, I might have to pull an old trick out of my hat:

BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS!

1. Transformers 3: Of The Moon Darkly
2. Cars 2: Git ‘R Done
3. Bad Teacher
4. Larry Crowne
5. Super 8

Honestly I have no idea what “Larry Crowne” is. I know it’s got Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and I’m pretty sure that’s all I need to know to put it in the top 5 because honestly with that much suck going on at the box office, you really need a transparent date flick that one can only assume is a steady mix of “You’ve Got Mail” and “Runaway Bride” to round everything out. BONUS PREDICTION: Michael Bay will also apologize for TF3 (as he did with 1 and 2) within a month or two. Not that he’ll really need to, but hey, it’s what makes him the pretentious ass we all love to ignore until he blows up some sort of helicopter semi on Rt. 53 making us late for work. Damn you, Bay.

Man, what’s with all this new music I got? Why’s it all like, pretty damn good? Actually, that’s what’s so frustrating about 2011. It’s a great year for music and video games and (a couple) movies, and that’s where it ends. I know it’s only just turned July but I’m already calling it: outside of entertainment media, 2011 is a throwaway year. Pack it up, year! We know you’re just wasting our time until next year!

Anyway, music. The new Bon Iver, the irresistible soul of Florence & The Machine, new Kaiser Chiefs, and the new Fleet Foxes; and that’s just what I got yesterday. Obviously we’ve already had the new Decemberists album, and the Jayhawks have apparently gotten back together to release a new album (“Mockingbird Time”) this fall, which is also when the new Wilco album (“The Whole Love”) is coming out. I also recently discovered The Avett Brothers, Lucy Rose, Justin Townes Earle, and Band of Horses–all of which are definitely worth checking out. Indeed, it almost seems like too much music, and I’m bordering on sounding like some of my rivals’ blogs (which will go unnamed), and that the last thing I want. Also, you’re welcome for the links to the samples of all that music. Took me forever.

Really though, definitely seems like a throwaway year so far. Now, I know some of you out there are thinking, “aren’t you gonna like, have a kid within a month?” and the short answer is yeah, fine. That doesn’t count, though. I think it’s only fair that I group that event with the timely release of the new Jayhawks and Wilco albums. Now, I may not know a lot about parenting, but I do know that most production companies save their good releases for late summer, and those guys are filthy rich for a reason. I digress: throwaway year. Sports have been generally disappointing, and they’re doing road construction all over I90. True, these things are mostly out of my control, but it seems that the universe is just kind of biding its time until the year is over and it can get on to more important business, like time travel, intergalactic transportation, and world peace. 2012 will indeed be a big year.

It's gonna be A LOT like this

So, yeah, I’ll be over there waitin’ for all that to happen. I’ll let ya know how it turns out.

90 Day Review

Afternoon, everyone. How’s about a regular post for once? Let’s go with some box office predictions, followed by a harrowing tale.

BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS!

1. Harry Potter and the Well of Mystery
2. G-Force
3. Bruno
4. Transformers 2: Mr. Magoo
5. The Ugly Truth

Yes, with the unleashing of the government’s latest weapon of mass destruction (G-Force), I’m predicting that Ice Age will fall out of the top 5, or at least down to number five depending on how many people decide to waste their money on the new romantic comedy “The Ugly Truth”. “(500) Days of Summer” and “The Hurt Locker” remain in limited release, so naturally they won’t factor into the equation. So, all in all, you have HP and Bruno rounding out the probably-semi-decent movies, and three sure-failures, with “G-Force” releasing as the greatest insult to film since… well I guess only since “Transformers 2”, but still. EVERYBODY LOVES TALKING GUINEA PIGS!!!!!!!

Remember when "G Force" were the Guardians of Space?

Last Sunday I had the terrible misfortune of choosing to attend a Chicagoland “Wedding Expo” that was held at the Doubletree Hotel up in Oakbrook. I’ve been to expos before, and I know how they work. No matter how much interest you have in the type of expo, they will all inevitably be terrible times for a couple reasons. Even when I went to E3 (and, you know, I really like video games), it was ultimately ruined by: millions of people shouting loudly in your ear and stealing precious oxygen from your breathing room, idiotic and apathetic booth reps that cannot answer your questions but corner you and demand you ask them anyway, and the general lack of understanding on the part of both the companies and the establishment that the people who are attending are indeed people (however loud and obnoxious they may be), and should be accommodated for as such. This wedding expo was no different, except for that they decided to hold the entire thing in a couple hallways of a hotel which forced the thousands of unwed to crawl over each other as they attempted to survive.

I mean, like, you know those attractions at museums that pretty much just force you to walk as a group of people in a line along a path while some guy on a speaker educates you on the history of earthworms or the future of electronics or something? It was like that, but with the essence of chaos filling in for the guy on the speaker.

The brides-to-be were all forced to adorn stickers that read, "V.I.B". No effort was spared to completely demean and demoralize all in attendance.

Really, though, it’s not even that simple. Pretty much every one of the thousands of brides-to-be (and to be fair, the half dozen guys who decided to get roped in to going) were attending because they had absolutely no idea what a wedding was and figured that this was the place to be to find out. Also, they were attending to take part in the giant raffle to win a free trip to somewhere. It is very, very sad how wrong they all were for thinking that this was the place to be for either of those things. When you walk in, you’re given a card with the names of the 100 or so booths on the back, and a spot next to each name for the booth attendant to sign. You see, in order to enter into the raffle, you have to get 80% of the booth attendants’ signatures. This means that even though you don’t want to talk to some douchebag about how awesome a DJ he is, you have to otherwise he won’t sign your card.

This is a very real photograph of the DJ in the middle of his speech. Obviously I had to use my camera to prove that I had indeed endured this.

Sam and I wasted about an hour with this bullshit until we just walked the fuck out, disposing of the card and most of the pamphlets we were handed in the nearest receptacle. Seriously guys: if you are ever in the position where you are getting married and think that you might be able to find some sort of vendors or information at one of these wedding expos, BE FOREWARNED! You will not, and you will also lose large portions of your soul in the process.

This is the lobby of the hotel at which I'm getting married, by the by. Drinks will be served here free of charge for a FULL HOUR.

Next week is my last week of school before I am A) out of school for a month, and B) going to be starting work again. Unfortunately this means that I won’t really have a break to get back into the full swing of blogging for you guys, nor will I have much of a break to catch up on movies. Maybe though, just maybe, my new job will be horrible enough for me to be able to share some exciting stories with you. Cross your fingers!

On Holiday

Hey everyone, much like I’m sure that you don’t have much time to read my blog this weekend, I sadly don’t have very much time to write one, which puts us on rather even ground. I’m actually pretty booked today and am going to be downtown this evening to watch some fireworks from sort sort of Navy’s pier. I hear that aside from being an anti-patriotic spectacle (being held the day before Independence Day), it doubles as a semi-reenactment of the Great Chicago Fire. Edutainment is the only word to describe this sort of event. Maybe I’ll take pictures that you may be able to see in my Twitterfeed. Only time will tell.

PREDICTIONS!

1. Transformers 2
2. Ice Age 3
3. Public Enemies
4. The Proposal
5. The Hangover

Yeah, sadly I don’t think “Transformers” will be knocked the fuck off its high horse this weekend, but who knows? Maybe you’ll all go out and see “Ice Age” or “Public Enemies” a few hundred times and together we will defeat Michael Bay in the ultimate battle between good and evil. Actually it’d be more like mediocre and evil, but it’s all the same.

A true mad-hatter

All right everyone, have a good holiday. And, if you’re going to be setting off fireworks that’s fine, but you kids don’t stay up too late, because some of us have to work in the morning.

Robots Plus Ancient Egypt Equals…

If you’ve stumbled upon my blog today hoping to get a review of “Transformers 2: RofL RotF”, then I’m sorry to say that I have not seen it, and do not rightly plan on seeing it proper any time in the foreseeable future. This was my attitude with the first Michael Bay “Transformers” as well, and although I did end up seeing it a few months after it came out on video, it succeeded in meeting every single one of my expectations. I believe my final grade for it was D+, though I may be mistaken. Among the many, many, many problems with the movie, the easiest one to target for people who actually liked the movie is that it really didn’t have a hell of a lot of action, which is typically Bay’s forté. Aside from the opening airbase destruction sequence and a police car chase sequence, there were only two battles in the entire movie: one which lasted 5 minutes, and one which lasted 15. This meant that most of the movie was sight-gags, horrible dialogue, and the transformers just kinda settin’ ’round on screen not really doing anything. The new one looks very much the same but with worse sight-gags (I hear they introduce 2 new redneck stereotype autobots), and one gigantic 45min fight scene at the end of the film to make up for the lack of action in the two films combined. Jesus.

"Decepticons? Aw heeellll naw"

PREDICTIONS:

1. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Nerds
2. The Proposal
3. The Hangover
4. My Sister’s Keeper
5. Up

“Transformers” is sure to rake in over $100m, but the good news is that it didn’t beat “The Dark Knight” for a Wednesday opening night, so we can all sleep at least a little easier. And, we still have “Harry Potter” coming out soon to take some steam out of Bay’s sail, and I got my fingers crossed that HP6 ends up beating TF2 (note: not Team Fortress 2) in total gross. Only time will tell.

Next week should be interesting with the debut of the Johnny Depp vehicle “Public Enemies”, and a family movie to finally dethrone “Up” (“Ice Age 3”). The week after that is “Brüno”, which is getting the same press treatment that “Borat” did way back in the day, and I can only hope that the movie itself doesn’t crumble and fall apart the way that “Borat” tragically did. The week after that is “Harry Potter”, and some movie called “500 Days of Summer” that all the critics are banking on for Oscar glory.

I'm actually an offbeat romantic comedy about true love. *sigh*

Speaking of Oscar glory, I want to quickly address how I feel about the Academy changing the long standing tradition of having 5 best picture nominees by doubling it to 10 for this upcoming year: I don’t care. The Academy maintains so little of my respect out the gate that there’s really not too much they can do anymore that will really rile me up. I’m more or less forced to watch it every year, and naturally I’m happy that on some rare occasion someone will get an award that they actually deserve, but by and large they fail in almost every category across the board, so I’m not gonna take this whole 10 nominations thing too seriously.

All right guys, have a good weekend and try not to see “Transformers” unless someone’s paying you to go, and you’re drunk, or stoned, or wearing a blindfold and listening to an iPod (or any combination of those you can muster).

Basement Tapes and Campfire Songs

Hey everyone, as promised I’m here bright and early to dust off the registers, draw the blinds up, flip that “CLOSED” sign over and officially declare this Friday post officially open for business.

Truth be told, I’m not actually selling anything, but I suddenly like the idea of “the glass city blog” being some sort of convenience store of the future in which everything is free and somehow related to box office predictions.

BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS:

1. Year One
2. The Proposal
3. Up
4. The Hangover
5. Whatever Works The Taking of Pelham (1 2 3)

Jesus, that is one ramshackle list and I want you to know right now that I take no credit for how inaccurate it will be, unless of course it’s spot on the money, somehow. “Year One” has been getting an indecent amount of exposure lately, and it seems like a pretty sure bet for the #1 spot. “The Proposal” is that Russian date movie I was talking about on Monday, and considering that there are literally no other date movies out right now (with the exception of whatever “My Life in Ruins” is, and the new zombie Nazi thriller “Dead Snow”) I’m betting that it’ll rank like, #2 I guess, but surely in the top 5 somewhere.

I wasn't joking about that zombie Nazi movie.

Indeed, “Whatever Works” does get released this week on some unannounced amount of screens and if it happens to be playing anywhere around here I might try and catch it, although I am rather tempted to just wait until it goes to the $2 theater by my house. I know, I know, Woody Allen + Larry David in a “dark comedy” originally written in the 60’s for Zero Mostel seems like it all adds up, but Woody hasn’t made a descent comedy since “Small Time Crooks” which was almost a decade ago. And, I actually went to the theater for both “Anything Else” and “Melinda & Melinda”, so I have every right to be wary. On the other hand, he’s been on a sort of roll lately with “Matchpoint”, “Cassandra’s Dream”, and “Vicky Christina Barcelona”. Now, if only any of those were comedies…

I’ve recently uncovered a ridiculous plethora of rare Jeff Tweedy/Wilco tracks that’s kind of blown my mind an overwhelmed me, lately. I should explain that I’ve been on a bit of a Wilco kick lately after hearing their new album (which streets ON A WEEK FROM TUESDAY), “Wilco (the album)” so at some point this week I decided to finally complete my Wilco collection in the same way that I spent ridiculous hours searching for every single song that Uematsu or Bob Dylan or The Decemberists ever had anything to do with. This approach has always been trouble for me, as it becomes a never-ending project that consumes my entire life. At least with Wilco, so far, it’s paid off rather well. I ended up downloading a 60 track collection of every song of theirs that’s ever been featured on a CD single anywhere, and there are some pretty astonishing gems in there including American Folk Music Festival tributes, acoustic live duets with Jay Bennett, demo tracks from early albums like “A.M.” and “Being There”, and a song that the band did immediately after the break with Uncle Tupelo that was their demo to get them signed as a new band. It’s all very intense, but it doesn’t stop there. I also realized that they released a few EPs overseas that no one apparently knows about, so I had to track those down as well. On top of all that, there was an entirely separate 18 track demo album for “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” aside from the 21 track demo album that already exists. And one for “Summerteeth”, too. And “Mermaid Avenue”.  Goddam. The good news, though, is that (aside from “Summerteeth’s promotional CD single being titled “Summerteeth and Sum Aren’t”) it seems like minus about a half dozen individual songs, I’m about done with all this (which is about what I could say for the aforementioned other artists’ collections as well). I fully realize that only maybe 3 of you out there reading this might be vaguely interested in any of this, but TO THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE, let me know because I’d be more than glad to share these extremely organized and good quality rare tracks with you. Congratulations, you brave, brave three!

The camel's name is Alfred, by the way.

Along those lines, I get to follow along this musically inspired route this weekend where I’ll be playing a solo live show in Rock Cut State Park. It’s part of a mini-tour which I’ve entitled “Woodland Tales & Domestic Ales”. Not really. Anyway, I haven’t quite figured out the tracklist, but I think I’m being paid in appreciation, so, it doesn’t really matter I suppose.  So any of you who haven’t bought tickets don’t worry, they’ll be on sale at the event pretty cheap and there are still some seats available. See your local vendor for details? The venue actually seems rather rustic, so my phone might not even work there and I won’t even be able to hook you up unless you get at me ahead of time.

On a related note, have you seen these commercials for the crazy special one-hour Jon & Kate plus 8? Neither have I, but apparently the media everywhere has been holding their collective breath to see what on earth this special episode that promises a “big announcement” could possibly be. Yeah. I’m hoping for some sort of crossover, like with George Lopez or something (like they did on “Freddy”). Maybe the announcement is that there is A SURPRISE MUSICAL GUEST like U2 or Susan Boyle or something. Boy, that’s gonna be one hell of a show.

The truth is out there.

OK, well that’s it for now. I’ll see you all Monday with the recap.

Everlasting Everything Friday

Okay everyone, we have a lot to cover here, so let’s just jump right into it.

BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS!

1. Up
2. Land of the Lost
3. The Hangover
4. Night at the Museum Too
5. Drag Me To Hell

Needless to say, I am not very confident at all in this week’s predictions, considering the theaters will be saturated with a lot of very dismissible titles. I mean, “Land of the Lost”? “The Hangover”? Not to mention Krasinksi’s indie romance flick “Away We Go”, and Richard Dreyfuss’ mainstream romance flick “My Life in Ruins”, which even after studying its IMDb page, I STILL can’t tell if it’s an actual sequel to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. I think that unfortunately it probably isn’t, because the last time I checked “My Big Fat Greek Divorce” was still in pre-production. Ahem. Anyway, I still need to see “The Brothers Bloom”, and “Moon” comes out next week, so I think that even with all this eye-of-the-storm mediocrity I might still get away with spending my money in a worthwhile fashion.

It's like a more adorable "Juno"...

That is, if I can pull myself away from Watanabe’s not-very-new one-season anime “Samurai Champloo”. I’m about half way done with the 25 episode series, and it’s strikingly similar to his earlier work “Cowboy Bebop”, which is about all I can hope for. Anime is something I very, very rarely delve into, and you can rest assured that once I finish the series–although I may subject you all to video game and movie industry news–I will try my hardest not to further isolate this blog by talking anime.

I quickly wanted to mention though that the infamous “cupcake” update for the G1 Android phone has finally been released, and if you’re out of the loop then I’m not surprised. Essentially the G1 is the free market’s answer to an iPhone, and it runs the increasingly popular Android OS based off a Linux kernel. And now if you’ll allow me to go on a bit of a rant while trying my best to emphasize that the phone market as it exists today has more than enough room for a great many smart phone brands to coexist. Really, iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry thing, whatever–it’s all fine and can all be good for different people. Anyway, the nice thing, though, about the G1, is that when it was released, it could already do everything an iPhone could do for a lot less money. And it ran on a 3G network right out of the box. First gen iPhone purchasers will already note that they had to wait until Apple released a new version of their phone, which had to be bought separately for it to get this functionality. And now that that’s happened, they have to wait 6 months for yet another iPhone to come out to get the new functionality that G1’s over-the-air update just provided for free. Now, don’t get me wrong; the iPhone is a great product and they are pretty much just copying and pasting Nintendo’s business model for their line of phones. What I’m saying, though, is that for me it makes a lot more sense to spend hundreds of dollars less, not get locked into a 3 year contract, be able to download free applications, record and send video, copy and paste text from any application onto a clipboard, and generally live better. What’s REALLY funny, though, is that I don’t even hate Apple. My friends will be the first to attest that if I had the money, I would’ve traded in my Compaq for an Apple laptop a long time ago. It’s just that as cool as their phone is, I’d rather go the free market route. Viva la revolucion!

Fight the power!

Okay, let’s see. Already talked film, anime, and technology, what else… how about television? Tonight I finally got a chance to check out Conan in his new L.A. digs, and to my relief it is almost exactly what I expected it to be. If you’ve seen it, I’m sure you’ll agree with me in thinking the whole throw to Andy Richter thing is a little weird, but then again I guess it was way back in the day, too. Aside from that it’s pretty much just classic Conan with a new set (and probably a new demographic, but, who keeps track of those things). Much like I’ve always done, I’ll continue to record his shows on my DVR when he happens to have a guest on that I’d want to see (this actually doesn’t happen very often). Also, NBC is trying to force me to be excited about an upcoming fall show they’re throwing out there called “The Community” which is a pretty awful looking sitcom about a guy who has to go back to community college because he was banned from being a lawyer…? I think? It really doesn’t look very good, but it DOES star Joel McHale and John Oliver, and I don’t think it has a laugh track, so… I’ll be forced to give it a chance.

It um, also stars Chevy Chase.

Okay, and now my late-week E3 bullet point coverage that I couldn’t get around to yesterday. I’m sure on Monday I’ll do a final recap, but until then:

• First of all, what the hell, Activision? I know your company has nothing left to lose, but you know how you don’t win back fans? Suing to stop the development of a highly anticipated holiday game starring Jack Black. Yeah, that’s about the last thing you do.
• Nintendo announced that they developed an entirely new handheld system, got it ready for launch, and then threw it away. This DOES NOT surprise me, as I’ve already pointed out that their business model rarely has room for *actual new products*, and they tend to prefer just re-releasing their old products with new cameras built in.
• Final Fantasy XIV, as much as it will be a game that I am not going to buy, IS INDEED apparently going to be composed by Uematsu. That’s a pretty weird thing considering he hasn’t handled a solo FF soundtrack since FFIX, and that he’s only committed one or two songs per game for the last two, and isn’t doing anything with FFXIII. Weird indeed.
• Nintendo couldn’t help but announcing the very obvious news that they’re working on a new Zelda game for the Wii. Considering that their last one was “Twilight Princess” (a game which I believe spawned the “Twilight”‘ vampire-themed novels), and that it was launched simultaneously on the Wii and the GameCube, I guess this new Zelda will be the first true Wii Zelda game. Nothing about this bullet point impresses me in the slightest, other than the hideous revelation that “Zelda” fans and “Twilight” fans are always one in the same.
• I guess most hands-on impressions of the PSP Go are pretty good, but I’m still not convinced that I should go out and buy one. I assume what will happen is that 3 years from now, there’ll be one or two exclusive games for it that I need to buy, and it’ll be a bridge to cross at a much later time in my life. I’ll probably already have many children and we will all be living on a farm somewhere spending our free time reading “Twilight” and playing “Twilight Princess”. This is why I don’t ever look that far ahead into my future. It fucking terrifies me.
• Tony Hawk’s latest game will force gamers to awkwardly stand on a skateboard-shaped controller on their living room carpet and attempt to emulate what it’s like to be a real skater. Yeesh.
• EA Sports announced that they are already working on a game that is like Wii Fit for the 360 and PS3 which will make use of Microsoft’s “Natal” and Ps3’s motion sensing technologies respectively. Hooray.

And that’s about it for now, at least as far as all that goes. I’ll see you guys on Monday with more SECRET NEWS THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW!

Leaked image of the "PS3 Slim"? WHO KNOWS???