Demo Fun #13

Today's Demo Fun is Seek and Destroy. It is by Triad, who have already appeared in a DF. They did a ton of demos so it's no surprise.

We start with a warning.



Wow, this demo is TOO HOT TO HANDLE! And I doubt Lucifer really made this demo. He's too busy drawing every cell of anime ever made.

When we push the space bar we get to our proper demo.



Our text is rather large for the screen, so we can only see about five letters at a time. I don't understand why these guys choose to do something like this, but I'm just the idiot writing a dumb blog and they're the programmers who make these things.

Welcome to our first Seek and Destroy demonstration from T R I A D!!

Given the large font, I think they spelled out demonstration just to be asses. Lucifer Technologies Unlimited 3000 is thanked. Next he mentions that he's the master of darkness and death. Yeah, I know already. You're also the king of lies. Get over yourself and get on with it.

Lucifer tells us that one reason to make this demo is to show how much he hates someone in "this dirty SCC loving country." SCC stands for Swedish Cracking Crew, so I guess Lucifer considers Sweden his home town. I never trusted Europe. We hear a story about the dark time in Hackerdom.

Once upon a time it was a darkness, it was a world of SCC and everything was just dirty and homo. And out from the darkness cames TRIAD. The real intelligent and normal humans. The only resistants we meet on this earth is the dirty gang of necro-----rs called Swedish Cracking Crew (SCC).

The man (or men) that Lucifer hates most is ZZAPP. Lucy says that ZZAPP is part of a group called ----Games and mocks his animation. Then he says something that I can't even make out. I guess it's hard to understand what pure evil thinks, so I'll just type it.

SCC say TRIAD only crack and spread old cracks, but SCC hasn't got the crack before we spread it'? (Bad guys.)

Lucifer follows whatever this was by poining out that SCC has too much necro-parties at the graveyard. Being that it's Europe, that doesn't surprise me. Lucifer suggests that if you get a disk from SCC, think if it has AIDS and a number of other sexual diseases. Classy, that devil is. He reminds us that we should wash the disk twice.

Lucifer goes on to talk about a program on the disk called "input." Lucifer uses his huge evil knowledge to guess that the program took 10 minutes to program on their "sick" computers. After nearly dying because of SCC's bad comments and "synth phrases", he swifted off Ixion's computer and cleaned it with aceton and vodka. He calls it Absolut after drinking it.

In the next Seek and Destroy demo Lucifer promises that you'll see ZZAPP be eaten alive. Lucifer mentions that he had help with Stormlord, who thinks ZZAPP brought shame to the name SCC.

There's a message to SCC.

"Die with your babie pants on!!! ---- off and die!"

If you push the space bar again, we get to see the Seek & Destroy.





Now let that be a lesson to future hackers and demo makers. Don't screw with the top spreaders!



Stats:

Date - Sometime in the eighties.
Scrolling text - Interlaced
Font - black, white, grey, and a fourth of the screen large
Europeans - Yep
Bragging about Accomplishments - Nope
Putting other hackers down - I would have to say yes.
Listing a ton of other nerds - Nope. Too busy seeking and destroying
Harsh language - Several cusses of the f variety
Song - 4/10

Let's Make This Clear

I've mentioned here that I've been reading a thread that mocked video game webcomics. Well, yesterday someone in that thread made a joke about a woman drawer or author or websomethinger saying that she probably screams "FTW" during sexual climax.

For the record, if I ever get married and my wife says that or PWNED or some other stupid video game forum catchphrase, I will very quickly divorce her ass. I don't care if I get excommunicated or not. It's not like I can afford to be choosy right now, but I still want a woman who's, you know, literate.

It's something I feel strong about.

MST3k: Broken Down

FINALLY! This is what they should have been making since the beginning. If they had made this four cartoons ago, Jim wouldn't have faced as much mocking and ridicule among MSTies.

Today's cartoon, which is the first in 3 or 4 months, is actually clever. We start in some room that I guess is suppose to be some kind of play room. I'm not sure where this is on the ship but it doesn't really matter. Gypsy is malfunctioning, and Tom and Crow try to figure out what's wrong with her. The only problem is that they're too involved in their own activities to do anything about it. Tom is riding a train around, while Crow has his body wrapped around a boat on a bathtub.

It doesn't take long before you see what the cartoon is about. The boat looks like a certain doomed superliner while Tom's train has the word "Riff" on it. (Get it? Riff...tracks) The fact that the character played by Gypsy is malfunctioning shows that the writers (but mostly Mallon) are admitting that the cartoon had sucked when it debuted back in November. Or October. Whatever. If they can make more cartoons like this, fans may eventually warm up to this addition to the MST3k lore.

Even the little details are great. Crow's boat is really slow, while Servo's train circles around very quickly. I loved how Servo's train ran on bacon, a joke you would get if you read the Rifftrax blog. My favorite line? "You didn't hear about no guy drownin' out there, did you?"

The characters still look the same, but they must have paid someone an extra 50 bucks because the animation seems a bit smoother. Paul Chaplin turned in a fine Crow. He's no Trace or Bill, but he's better than given credit for. As for Servo, the guy who plays him is still hard to get used to. I'm trying to adjust to him but it's real difficult. Still, it's much easier with material like this and not dumb material like solitaire and comparisons.

Meanwhile in the video section, which I admit to not seeing in a while, has one of the all-time classic MST3k host segments. I wasn't a big fan of the short "Last Clear Chance", but the host segment where they made fun of it is hilarious. "A little bit, with just a little bit of mayo and a little bit of salami..."





Grade: B- More like this, please.


Edit: For some reason, the cartoon is down. I wish I had grabbed a screen pic earlier. Stupid computer.

This Week In Entertainment (3/24/08)

It's a slow week, so my Pick of the Week is a 26 episode set of The Price is Right. I wish I had this set just to count the NEW CARS.



I don't have any sets of In Living Color even though I was a big fan of the show. I should pick up this set which includes all five seasons.


Out in theaters is the now obligatory spoof movie Superhero Movie. My pass complaints about these movies apply here.

In case you're wondering

why I didn't do an NCAA Bracket this year, it's because I'm still recovering from the stupid Superbowl. Unless the Caps sneak into the playoffs I don't think I can get the energy to care about sports for a while.

Demo Fun #12

Remember this? I used to have a recurring post where I would look at demos made for the Commodore 64 and I would make fun of them. These particular demos had scrolling text where the programmer would brag about their skill. They all inevitably had a poin where they would list a bunch of other hackers and it would usually be the longest part of the demo. I've been wanting to bring it back since I last did it, which was May of last year. Today's demo is titled "Pretending to See the Light" and is one I've been wanting to do for ages. It was made in 2002 by Fairlight and the programmer is named Hollowman. Sadly, it wouldn't work properly on the emulator which kept me from turning it into an avi file. I'm using my oldest C64 emulator now, which is on my Window 98 computer.

This demo is different from pass ones I did in that it's more of a picture story. This one is very angsty, so I may come off as an ass for making fun of it. Hopefully the author has long ago grown up after making it, and is laughing or cringing at his past teenage projects while working at his high paying job.


Our demo starts with a couple kissing.



"Life" our narrator begins. "Life is all about love." Really? I thought there were a couple more things, but what do I know. And as we'll see, the author doesn't really believe this. Next we see a mind-blowing picture of two men kissing. Or maybe it's just a bad picture. I can't tell.



Take that, squares! This is followed by a picture of a heart. It's made of pulsating circles. This is followed by a picture of a nerd girl.



"I think I like her" says Hollowman. But do you know for sure? "I think she might like me". Yeah, that look just screams affection. By the way, is this a picture of her? Poor gal. Hollowman proves that he's a big nerd by next saying "Ok, let's try that conversation thing that people seem to enjoy so much." Like watching a butterfly come out of it's cocoon.


Here our H-man starts with a good opener.



Really, girls don't like horses, no matter what they tell you. Sadly, this ingenious line is met with only a "ok." Meanwhile the word "you" flies by and is eaten by the mouth. Huh. Hollowman follows up by claiming that he saw "this movie". Sadly, the chick doesn't dig his lack of details, and simply replies "ahuh." The mouth eats a "why". Because you're not trying hard? Because you spend too much time writing code for C64 demos several years after they were popular?


Hollowman tries to ask the nerd girl what she's thinking. Not much is the obligatory nerd response. I've had phone calls with girls that went just like this. True story. We see nerd girl again, and hearts float toward her forehead and make her colorful momentarily. "I am no good at giving compliments." Seeing how that involves that conversation thingie you just discovered, I can see the truth in that. "I usually don't tell people how beautiful they are because I don't want my tongue to turn black." Excuse me for a second...



Thank you. We see a picture of some kid, quite possibly our hero. Arrows are flying at his forehead.



"For some reason she don't believe me. I don't like insults thrown at me." Oh boy, here comes the goth poetry. "I may be a bad actor, but I am no liar." That doesn't even make sense. I may act like a jerk, but I don't say it! I may act like a stalker, but I don't talk like one!

Now we get some imagery. We see a blocky guy standing up with balls being shot at him. Each one hits him and knocks a block out. Finally one takes out his leg and he topples over.






No, I'm not making this up. And things are going to get weirder. Under the toppled bad graphics guy, the next caption reads "if I care that much about what she says that I must have some feelings for her, right?" Honey, I'm not paying attention to you, but I care what you have to say. Please don't dump me! "but when I could not show her love, I atleast managed to show her tears." Look, shut up! Can't you see I'm crying? "that was good enough, at least for a while." Until she found out that you were putting her picture into demos you made and shared with a hundred nerds and now the internet.

Now the demo goes back to imagery. It's bad graphics guy again.







Again, I'm not making this up. "Honey. How was it for you?" You stupid woman! Can't you tell that this artist is aching!?

Next is the part that really puts this over the top. When I first saw this scene, I knew that I had to do this in a Demo Fun someday. Nerd girl and HollowMan are standing next to each other with a heart background.



The author sets this photo as an idyllic scenario. Then he blows our minds by revealing that this isn't really the truth. "Do you like me?" "Sure I do, why do you ask?"




OBJECTION! If you like me, than why do I suddenly have a hole in my chest? A hole... where my heart was! That is a contradiction!

Hollowman reveals what he really thinks. "But to know how people really feel about you, you must push them so far that they drop the nice and caring facade that they put up." Yeah. Huh. This attitude? Not healthy or mature. Life is all about love, but the author thinks that love includes paranoia. Then, and I'm still not making anything up...











What can you say about that? Then we see our programmer fall into an open grave.



And people dump fortune cookies on him.





"Bury the dirt in the dirt." Jeez, why don't you just start wearing black already.

Naturally, like many a lonely teen, he turns it into an "Me vs the Global Conspiracies" thing.



THEY have been fooled? Look who's dating Joy Behar!

Our final picture is of bad graphics man looking all sad. "I won't be fooled by anyone again especially not myself." So, are you going to act like a big jerk to yourself to get you to reveal your true self, who is a pig with a hole in his chest?



We get the credits which I'm going to skip. Our final shot is the one above.

So long, HollowMan of FairLight! I can't wait to see your other insights into relationships.

It's St. Patrick's Day!

And I'm not writing an essay about some Irish person! Sorry.


It's not that I'm lazy or anything. Except it is. Plus, there's a little something called Super Smash Bros Brawl. I tried it online today and it was fun, even if I couldn't win even once. I need to unlock Ness to see if I'm better with him than with Lucas.

By the way, if you meet someone that tries to tie in St Patrick's Day with enviromentalism, punch them in the face. It's good for the enviroment, somehow, which makes it ok.

This Week In Entertainment (3/17/08)

Just for the heck of it, I'm picking Shemp Cocktail as this week's Pick of the Week. The set is actually kind of weak. The best shorts are public domain and Knife of the Party is a terribly unfunny short. Still, I would buy this set just for the interviews on the second dvd.



Also on DVD are a couple cartoon series I watched as a kid. The first is a Pup Named Scooby Doo, which was a more comedic Scooby Doo. By the way, did you know that there are as many Scooby Doo episodes as Simpsons episodes? I can't get over that.

The other is The Pebbles and Bamm Bamm show. Apparently after The Flintstones went off the air, Hannah Barbara kept bringing them back on Saturday mornings. I used to watch this show on USA but I can't see this show coming close to passing the nostalgia test.

Married... With Children Season 8 had a memorable meta episode. The show within a show got canceled because a housewife didn't like it. Plus, she didn't like football so Fox lost that as well. Edit: Oh wait, that was next season. Well pretend I said something nice about this set.


There's a book about the recently retired Favre. Can he just go away already?



On the PS2 is the Metal Gear Solid Collection. This series is the perfect combonation of cut scenes, conspiracy theories, hide and seek, and cut scenes. Remember, nukes are, like, bad.


On the Wii Virtual Console is Spelunker. This is a NES game that I wanted to get when it appared in the Nintendo Strategy Guide. My friend Lita had it. I've played it on emulator and it seems like the kind of game where you die a lot. Oh well.

Sunday, Lazy Sunday (3/16/08)

It's Palm Sunday. Do you know where your palms are?


Yesterday I was reading a forum thread about video game webcomics. The subject focused on more popular ones like Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Alt-Del. I've seen Penny Arcade a few times and I just don't get it's popularity. However, I haven't seen Ctrl-Alt-Del and now I'm glad I haven't. CAD had a storyline where some gamers started their own religion. Their bible was called the Instructional Manual and so forth. A bunch of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders decided that they had nothing better to do than to harass this guy and his friends. Why? Because religion sucks! Haw haw haw! There was even a comic where the guy's friend asked the leaders to disprove the video game god without disproving their own. OOOOOOH! Take that! The author was clearly in the Dawkins school of assholish atheists.

I was going to make a bigger deal about this in a separate post, but I realized that I don't have to bother. Even though I'm Catholic, I've played a ton of video games over twenty some years of my life, and you know what? It's NOT. SPIRITUALLY. FULFILLING.



In the latest "I'm an idiot" news, I just bought a new game. (Seriously, not a religion. More of a drug.) It was the first thing I got from ebay by bidding instead of just buying. I save about 3 or 4 bucks, which isn't bad and I'm not including sales tax. The reason why I shouldn't have bought this game, though, is because it's the first Resident Evil game, remade for the Game Cube. Lately I had been playing the Wii version of Resident Evil 4, and was curious about Resident Evil 2 because that had Leon. The only Resident Evils I have besides 4 is Code Veronica and Zero. I can't enjoy those as much as 4 because all Resident Evils besides 4 have giant spiders. However, 2 (for the GameCube) was really expensive since it's so rare, and I ended up bidding on the remake of the original game, which was a best seller and much much cheaper. And I won.

I have no business bidding on any RE game because I'm horribly arachnophobic. I rarely play REZero and RECV because of the spider parts. RECV is worst because it the spiders are crueler and can survive having their bodies blown off. After summoning the courage to face one of those, it's torso-less body leaped at me and crushed me, maybe even biting me. I love the soft reset option, don't you?

So now I have a game that I may only play halfway through because I know the spiders are coming. Heck, the back of the box shows a huge one on the ceiling looking down at you. And a gamefaqs guide says there's a giant spider black widow boss. Super. Plus, as a remake, they're going to add more webbing, which is death for me. Even if I can resist spiders like in Zelda, adding webs makes things 10 times worst.

Still, and this is the reason why I'm probably boring everyone who doesn't care about video games or the RE series, I have been thinking about my phobia a lot. It's silly that I can't even stand to look at video game versions of spiders. And yet when I do, every hair on my body is ready to betray me. The slightest touch can cause me to immediate panic and press every button on the controller to quit. Also, I have this irrational fear that something is going to crawl down my shirt, so I tighten my shirt around the collar. So lately, I've been forcing myself to watch videos of scenes with the spiders on youtube.

Is it possible that I can control my fear a little by getting used to these scary beasts? Maybe. I've done ok lately. No bad dreams. No sudden jump. No cussing or shrieking like a girl. If anything is going to motivate me to face a phobia like this, it's going to be a game series I would like to play more of but can't. Today I played REZero and ran to the basement where the spiders lurked. I turned off the tv so I didn't have to watch but turned my dvd-r machine on. I didn't know what was going on but I played by pushing the aim button followed by shooting several times. I kept waiting for my controller to tell me I was dead, but it never came. So I reset and watched the recording. The spiders surround you as soon as you start, but without looking, I had defeated all four of them with a weak hand gun. Seriously. I was poisoned but I could have moved on and been ok. The spiders only drooled poison on you or sort of head butt you. In a way it's silly to be scared of them. In another way, they're as big as ponies and are very hairy.

Will I show courage and be able to beat the first RE? Probably not. Most likely, I'll just bury it and play Super Smash Bros Brawl and Bully: Scholarship Edition. Still, if I can stop worrying about running into spiders for no good reason, it would be a step up for me.



I went to Delaware yesterday. I was tired and not really into it. I got a couple books, including 2001: Space Oddyssey and a Two minute mystery book. Too bad I've been horrible at reading lately. The last thing I read was Stardust by Neil Gaiman, and I've been too lazy to read since.

We went to the Dover slots later in the day. I lost about 4 bucks. Kids, never gamble. I was rapidly losing money at a penny machine! The machine I was at most had a bonus game where you could choose from five options. I won a hundred credits, and was offered a chance to win more or lose half. I figured fifty wasn't bad so I gambled. I lost, and picked one of the two loser choices. I went on a losing streak after that. Still, I got a free soda.

I also got a couple MST3k sets at Delaware. There's a store there that sells them for forty bucks, which is a great deal. I got Volume 10.2 and whichever set has The Dead Talk Back, which I haven't seen. I should do a review of that and The Giant Gila Monster, because I haven't done anything MST3k related in a while here. (I didn't think the cartoons would suck as bad as they did, really!)




Currently reading: 1984 by George Orwell

This just in!

There was no update yesterday.


And now, back to this blog.

Where a kid can be.... (Part 2)

Onto Chuck E Cheese. I have less memories about those places so my writing will be even less coherent than usual.

Like I said, the old Showbiz Pizza turned into a Chuck E Cheese at some poin, but I don't remember too much about the place afterwards. I'm sure I was getting too old. I'll talk about a couple other CECs.

The Chuck E Cheese we most frequented was rather large. I'm going to draw a map to give you an idea of how big it was. I think this one was located in Annapolis, but it could have been somewhere else. Don't ask me where because I'm not good at directions. It may or not still be around.



While Showbiz seemed to be divided into the table area and the game areas, this Chuck E Cheese was divided into several sections. There were at least three places to eat, and one of them didn't have the animatronics. Of course, it had a lot of arcade games on the other side of the room, so it wasn't exactly kiddie free for parents.

When you entered you could see the first room on the right. (Keep in my that I'm guessing at this poin.) I thought that the room contained some female bird things called the Warblettes, but on second thought I think they were backups on the main stage. Looking at this page, I'm thinking that maybe it's own band, like The Beagles. My memory isn't being specific, and all I can remember is there were more than one animatrons. I didn't like this room because these guys or gals seemed to be second stringers while Chuck E. and the gang were in the main room. I think we insisted on being in the Chuck E room after being in here.

The arcade/table room was rather modest. All I remember about it was that the arcade games seemed to be old NES games. I remember watching the demo for Gumshoe but I never played it. Or I played it and got my butt kicked immediately. I don't know.

The ball pit/games room was rather large. If this is the CEC location I'm thinking of, the ball pit/jungle gym was HUUUUGE. At least at some poin where I was already too tall to jump in. I remember going one day and having to watch my sister and our favorite cousin play while I couldn't. Oh well. Life is cruel to a (approximately) ten year old.

As for other games, I don't remember any except for one game where you had to move a marble upwards by balancing it. Not a big deal but I only saw it once. Otherwise they probably had the usual stuff like skeeball. I don't remember.

The big stage had Chuck E. and usual cast. Instead of being on stage like Rock Afire Explosion, I think the animatrons were above the stage and we could only see the heads and a little bit of their upper bodies. I may be wrong, but I just this memory of one of them lying their head on their hand. There were also several back up singers on the walls, and it was fun to watch them be brought into the act. I don't remember too much about the acts. I don't even remember if they had the monitors set up to tell you when the next show was starting. I think my favorite song they did was Twelve Days of Christmas because that forced them to use every animatronic character in the room. Don't kids love the most annoying things?

I left out tickets in my last entry. That's probably because I didn't play the ticket games too often. I think my mom poked fun at me for playing the non-ticket games, but it doesn't take long for a kid to realize that the good prizes are too expensive. You have to have real skill to get the high scores in skeeball, and most of the time you barely qualify. I was always given plastic spider rings by my parents, which I hated. (We did have several of these little CEC figures. I'm sure we still have them somewhere.)

I do remember once watching my mom paste a ton of CEC tickets into a big book. The book had several pages with pictures of tickets in them. I don't know if we ever did anything with those.

Hmm, I can't remember much else. Let's move on to another CEC location. This one is located in...I don't know. It was a much more recent one built in the nineties. We went there a couple times and I was waaay too old each time.

The first time we went my sister wanted to go because she was still just young enough. She was probably still short enough to jump into the plastic balls, I bet. Sadly, they took out most of the arcade games and put in more kid stuff. That was a recurring joke for me and my parents, by the way. That would have been a boring stay if it weren't for one arcade machine which was just a few SNES games built into a cabinet. I think I played F-Zero or some other early SNES game. Our table wasn't next to the entertainment, but I'm not sure if that place even had animatrons. It may have just been all monitors and people in suits.


The second time we went it was when I was in college. We went because my cousin was just celebrating his 6th birthday. I spent the whole time being miserable at a table, but this was shameful of me because I later found out that the whole poin of this party was because my cousin had just finished his treatment for his tumor. Everybody had thought that he had beaten it, but the tumor returned and he passed away later that year. Not one of my greatest moments as a human being. Anyway, at some poin Chuck E and some waitress started performing during a recording of Happy Birthday. Chuck E needs to work on his rapping. Part of the act was to get one side of the room to say Happy and the other to say Birthday, but it wasn't quite working.


I hate to end this post with that story of how awful I acted at this party but it's the last time I've set foot in such a place. Hopefully when I have children I won't be an ass and my kids will have some good memories about these places as well.

Where a kid can be.... (Part 1)

nostalgic.

Yep, it's been a while since I've written a Valentine to my childhood. Just remember that I'm too shy to have a girlfriend so don't worry about me breeding in the near future.


Recently at the Rifftrax Blog, Mike Nelson posted one of their recurring short entries about some odd character and how he or she felt. I wish I had the sense of humor to pull that off, because it would solve the problems I have with taking the week off after writing my entertainment entries. Anyway, the post that inspired today's post was about Chuck E. Cheese. I was the age where this place was huge to kids like me, so let me see what I remember.



The Pizza/animatronic entertainment place that I remember most is not a Chuck E. Cheese but Showbiz Pizza, which was sorta the same thing. We had one in Laurel, MD and I'm sure it was the place we went to the most. Showbiz, if you don't know, has a big stage with three separate parts and has an animatronic band known as Rock A-Fire Explosion. Observe.



The tables that you see in this picture were reserved for birthday parties. We usually got a booth on an upper level looking over the tables. I never had a birthday party at one of the closer tables, and while I probably wanted to, I think it was good idea not to for the sake of my parents. I wonder if I'd have the patience to be an adult at a place like this while my kids spent their tokens. I would probably enjoy or put up with the singing, but I think I would snap at any misbehaving kid.

Anyway, at Showbiz we would always get pizza and a big pitcher of soda. I don't think we ever got anything else, at least for my sister and I. My parents may have gotten a salad or whatever.

The thing I always linked to my memory of Showbiz was Fatz Geronimo, the gorilla. He was in the center of the center stage and was always playing the keyboard. I always thought of him as the leader of the group even though it was suppose to be the bear/beaver thing at the right. Hmm, I guess maybe there's a bit of truth to thing about monkeys making things better. Damn.

The rest of the center band was ok. The polar bear was kind of forgettable. The other two characters, a mouse and a dog, were so similar looking to Chuck E Cheese characters that I would be surprised if Nolan Bushnell hadn't sued. Mitzi Mozerella is like Chuck E with a blonde wig! Dook the space dog was pretty weird looking, and I always thought of him as the equivalent of Jasper Jowls, even if the only reason was because they were dogs.

On the right stage was a wolf and his puppet. I can't say much about them since they rarely showed up. I think they did comedy bits, but I only remember them showing up at the end of a big finale. Once they showed up, you knew that you were only seconds away from the curtains closing for a long time. Then it was back to watching those damn monitors and waiting for the minutes to tick off. Welp, time to play some video games!

As a greedy kid who lusted after video games, it was frustrating how quickly you could spend those tokens. I have a horrible memory but I still remember returning to the table and begging for more. I would occasionally get lucky. My favorite game at that Laurel location was The Goonies. I don't think the NES ever got the first version of that game, or if it did it was very early and I never had a chance to grab it. Goonies had you as one of the kids going around mansions kicking mice. You can also drop bombs and blow up doors to release items and other goonies. I once pumped the hell out of that machine and got to the third or fourth area. I'm sure by then I was getting to old for the ball pits and only concerned myself with the games.

Other games I remember include a Nintendo Vs machine, which I remember because I thought it was weird that they had Duck Hunt even when I had a NES. At one poin they had a TMNT arcade machine, and I started what turned out to be a run to get to the final boss. I actually traded anecdotes with some other kids about how it compared to the NES version. Yeah, that's my generation right there. I was also introduced to Super Pac-Man and, get this, a couple Bible games. They actually had Noah's Ark and some other game, but they were at much smaller "kiddie" machines and I was too embarrassed to play them.

I don't remember too much about stuff like ball pits. Showbiz at Laurel wasn't that big, so they couldn't have really elaborate stuff. I think it had a standard jungle gym set with chutes, but it wasn't long before I was too big for that kind of thing. I do remember one kid ride where you strap a small child in a seat and the seat circles around vertically. I may have even been a little scared of it because it goes a few feet up.

I'd like to share one anecdote that I can still remember. One time some teenagers were having a party in the birthday area. The bear (who I still think looks more like a big beaver) was actually talking to them. The teenagers started popping balloons, much to Billy Bob's annoyance. He tried to get them to stop, and at one poin one of the teens walked up to the animatron. He tried to pull Billy's tooth, and everytime the bear growled, which was pretty funny. At the end, Rock Afire Explosion had it's big number. When the song was just ending and the lights were going out, one of the teens got on stage and ran backwards into the wolf section of the stage. All the teens had a big laugh over that. The funny thing is I never saw him come out from behind the curtains. Maybe I just missed it, but after that my imagination was fired up. No, I didn't think the animatrons were real, but I did have fun imagining some guards tossing him into some underground cell.

By the end of the eighties Showbiz bought Chuck E out, which I didn't learn until recently. All of the Rock Afire stages were converted into Chuck E stages, so I always assumed that Chuck E Cheese won out, but apparently Nolan Bushnell ran into financial problems. It sounds like he's a good ideas guy who has problems with actually maintaining a business. Anyway, Showbiz in Laurel became Chuck E Cheese, and Rock Afire Explosion was no more. I can't remember what the stage looked like afterwards, but I'm sure the characters were replaced. I guess I was losing interest in the stage at this poin and only cared about The Goonies.

Later on when my sister was still young enough to join the place, they started putting guards at the door. You know you're too old for a place when they finally worry about children getting hurt.

If you think it's weird for a 27 year old to be nostalgic about this kind of stuff, check out this website. Not only do they have lots of info about both places, it also has a friggen podcast! I started listening to the latest episode wondering what they had to talk about, and the first news item was about some kid who recently got molested at a Chuck E. Cheese. Wow, just wow.

I'm going to start a new post to talk about Chuck E Cheese. I have a few more stories about that, and then I'll move on to something else.

This Week In Entertainment (3/10/08)

If only all picks could be as easy as this Pick of the Week. I have a Wii. I love EarthBound and I loved the earlier Super Smash Bros. games. I will get this one and test the online capabilities. Maybe I'll see you, the reader, online. I'll always be (name withheld due to spoilers.)


In theaters this week is the animated movie Horton Hears a Who. Question: Since when do the Whos look like monkeys? Anyway, I used to be a huge fan of Jim Carrey but I stopped watching his film when he made Man on the Moon and the only one I've seen since wasn't very good. And that was also a Dr. Suess film! Also, wasn't the original HHaW film serious and not a comedy?

I'm not sure if this is the kind of movie that I would enjoy but a documentary about the reaction to Sputnik sounds interesting.



I saw advertisements for the Bee Movie several times last year. It was a promo for THX. Never saw the movie, though.

I usually wouldn't promote a DVD set that's only has a few episodes, but Imaginationland were a decent set of episodes from South Park. The recurring joke was kind of gross, but I liked the rest of the trilogy. I wish I could show episodes like this to the writers for The Simpsons.


In video games we have the PS2 version of Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters. What's the poin of owning a PSP again?

On the DS is YAFFG, which stands for Yet Another Final Fantasy Game. This one is in the entry of "that series that continues from that game that not many people played on the GC.

I didn't think anyone would dare to release another Wii game this week, but Sega did. I guess if you don't like Brawl, you can't blow up zombies.

Irish History Month Essay #5

My essay is about Peter O'Toole. He is best known for having a hot daughter named Plenty, but there isn't a lot of info about her so we'll focus on his accomplishments.

Peter was born in 1932 in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. As a kid he went to Catholic school, so he had the honor of being beat up by nuns. Sadly, budget cuts prevented them from correcting his left-handedness due to the lack of the right ruler.

Tired of drunk monastic women calling him a sissy, he was happy to be called up by the Royal Navy. If only they could have seen him as a radioman. Still, he wanted to be an actor, so he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts as a Shakespearean actor. He would have attended a school in Dublin, but they didn't think he sounded Irish because he wasn't drinking enough.

Peter eventually made his magnificent tv debut as First Soldier in The Scarlet Pumpernickel. With this experience under his belt, he went on to his first film role, as First Trooper in The Savage Innocents. He got early Oscar buzz, but it was Kidnapped.

Peter used his success to beat out Marlon Brando for the role that defined Middle East relations. Lawrence of Arabia was a movie about Lawrence's attempts to get Obi Won to turn against one of Germany's allies. Luckily, the German's were defeated before they could get lightsabre technology. Sadly, Lawrence lost his life when his attempt to cross the desert led to a fatal meeting with Tusken Raiders.

Peter was nominated for an Oscar for his role, but he lost to a movie about bird-ocide. Peter bounced back and grabbed another nod for his role as Henry II in Becket, a wacky comedy about the drunkest arch-bishop (Richard Burton) in history. Still, this was no match for Rex Harrison's Higgins, and Rex triumphed in what the press called "The Battle of the Henrys." It just wasn't fair.

Later on in the sixties Peter faced many questions. "What's New Pussycat?" The answer certainly wasn't another Oscar lost for a role as Henry II, that's for sure. "How to steal a million?" Critics say that the answer to that is Casino Royale.

After several forgotten roles in a decade best forgotten, Peter wanted to get everybody's attention again. So what better way to do so than to star in Caligula. I'm not allowed to reveal Peter's psuedonym for this film or his best moments.

Peter was up for another two oscars in the early 80s, but all he ended up with was a rock in the middle of a wasteland. Losing 7 oscar nominations without a victory was a mystery, so to get to the bottom of everything, he took on the role of Sherlock Holmes in several movies. Despite getting into Sherlock's head, he couldn't deduce that he should have avoided Supergirl.

In his later years, people forgave Peter for his MacBeth performance and Peter was once again in the spotlight. People liked him in Troy, even if he was too old for Helen. Still, this led tol his most recent Oscar nomination when producers cast him in Venus, about a dirty old man lusting after a much younger woman. Once again he lost, but it was ok. If he had won, it would be like watching a bowler score a 299. Lately Peter has filmed a movie about a community who will aid Thomas Kinkade and inspire him into becoming a popular painter. Peter chose this film because he knew that anyone who could make Kinkade good could win any award.

Since Peter is Irish, we know that he likes to drink and he fights all the time. However he can't outdrink Richard Burton, and that's a secret shame that no one is suppose to know.

Some Nerd Died

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died yesterday. To the shock of people who read this blog, I never played that or any table top RPGs. I'll always remember him as that guy who appeared in that one Futurama episode.

While I never played Dungeons and Dragons, I have played a ton of video game RPGs, so I have been indirectly effected by his work. For that, I raise a glass of orange soda to this nerd.

Coming Soon: Panic Edition

SHATNER TO DIRECT ALERT! SHATNER TO DIRECT ALERT! YAAAAAAAARGH!


The premise is that grief can be funny. Or something.

(I'm looking for a gif of a red alarm but I can't find one, dangit.)

This Week In Entertainment (3/3/08)

My Pick of the Week is Bully for the Wii. It's GTA only you're an evil Bobby Hill at a high school. The game pissed off some guy for some reason. As much as I liked the GameCube, it really could have used more hubworld games, even if I have bitched about repackaged PS2 games.


In theaters we have 10000 B.C. It's made by the same people who made ID4 and The Day after Tomorrow, so it'll be worth watching but also be really dumb.


On DVD we have the Inspector cartoons made by the same people who did the Pink Panther cartoons. I had one of these cartoons on a 3d View Master slide once.

Also out is Horton Hears a Who. Say, is there an unnecessary 3d remake coming out soon?

There's another Dr. Doolittle movie coming to DVD. Ummm, why? I remember when I read reviews for the first movie and the reviewer said it was nothing but butt jokes.

All right! A DVD for a movie that was responsible for a lot of punchlines in the 80s, or so I've read. It's C.H.U.D.

Also a cult 80s movie is Return of the Killer Tomatoes. My mom said some nice things about the original, but after seeing a clip of it, I have my doubts.

This DVD promises that you will get higher grades in Calculus. I didn't know that all you needed was 11 hours. I wish they had this back in 99.


Turning our attention to books (because sometimes I actually find books interesting, really!!) is a book about John Adams. You know, that guy between Washington and Jefferson? Him.

Why Mars and Venus collides? Well, when two planets love each other very much...

Second Life is freaky. That's all I have to say. I'm tempted to log in but I've seen some scary stuff about Second Life at Something Awful.


Back to video games, we have the first franchise MLB game for the Wii. Go Nats! I wonder if they have the new Nats stadium and if they'll include RFK as a retro stadium. Probably not. You know what would make me buy this game in a heartbeat? If they had the President's Races at Nat's home games.

I bitch about Wii games that are really PS2 games, but at least I don't have a PSP, or I would bitch about PSP games that are really PS2 games.