Presents!

So I've been spending the whole month talking about receiving presents, but what did I get for others? Well...


For my parents I got my mom a copy of Weird Maryland. It seemed like a great book for her but after buying it I was afraid she already had it. Luckily she didn't, because I didn't want to have to exchange it. Still, there were several days before Christmas where I thought I should have given my mom a gift certificate for a book store. For my dad I got a copy of the Atari 2600 version of Superman. Our old copy broke a long time ago so I never played it until emulators and illegal roms became real popular. We haven't tried this game yet so there's a possibily that it's broken too.


For my sister and her boyfriend, I got them both 25 dollar Best Buy gift certificates. I thought about giving my sister a copy of Sprung, but wimped out.


For my friend Lita, I got a black iDog. I've seen those kind of things in stores so I thought she might like it. I got her a black one because she has a black poodle. Amazon wanted 69 bucks but ebay had it for about 20.

For my friend Mickey I got him a cd burned with some cool stuff, plus some extra nerdy stuff, and a King's Dominion pin. However I realized that I could send him a cd at anytime, so I sent him a 10 dollar amazon gift certificate.

For my friend Rimmi I sent a picture of Adam Busch, which was signed by the man himself. I got her this after she started nagging me to make him appear at once. I felt that this was the next best thing.

For the rest of my Internet friends, I sent 20 dollar Amazon gift certificates. I was running out of time.

I also bought Mortal Kombat: Armageddon Wii Edition for the X-Entertainment guy. I was enjoying his Advent Calendar, saw the link to his amazon wish list, and figured what the heck.



Now, looking back, I think I've learned something. If I hadn't bought all of these things, I could have gotten myself a green iPod Nano with 8Gbs.

Next year, fudge all of ya!

The Day After Christmas...

I went shopping today. I like going shopping on the day after Christmas. It's been a bit of tradition since about 2002 where I bought a GameCube and Pac-Man World 2. Ever since that year I've looked forward to going to the mall to grab a few things.

This year I had several games on my list, but I kept telling myself that I wouldn't just get games. I was sure I was going to really look and get some cool stuff. I didn't have to worry about getting a calendar this year.

So how did I do? Well, I got one game. Yep. That was it. Here it is.




Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a remake of the first game with the controls of the last one. It's odd to have an anniversary/remake when the game rewrites the story. Oh well. I'm enjoying it so far except for the terrible way you move the camera.




I was going to get a few other games. I wanted to get The Sims 2: Deluxe, but Wal-Mart didn't have it and Target had it for five bucks extra. I'm probably going to send away for it.

I actually had a DVD game based on the old Press Your Luck gameshow in my hand, but I put it down at the last second. I wanted it, but I saw a couple bad reviews at amazon.

There are a few other Wii games I want but I didn't feel like picking them up. The fifty dollar price tag was too much for me, even if I did have a few extra bucks.





I did buy a Virtual Console game on the 24th, so I might as well mention it here. I got Bonk's Revenge, which is the first TG16 game I own. It's ok. I'm inspired to write a post about video game mascots but I'll probably not get to it.

The Twenty-Fifth Day of Christmas...

Wait a minute...IT IS Christmas! Merry Christmas!

Let's see what I got for this year.





On the bottom is what Lita got me. It's a lunchbox with some Wii accessories in it. It includes covers for your Wii Remotes and Wii Nunchucks and a case for a Wii game. I showed this to my parents because they had both separately thought about getting this item for me from Wal-Mart, so they both laughed that I got this afterall. Thanks Lita!

Above the lunchbox is what my parents got me. They got me a white tshirt with the Nintendo logo, and a baseball cap with the NES controller on it. They also got me a Simpsons 2008 calendar, which will save me about 12 bucks when I go shopping tomorrow.



Here's many of the things I got at the family Christmas Eve party that was held on Saturday this year. In the middle you can see a game that my sister got for me. It's MySpanish Coach, which I haven't tried yet but will soon. She also got me the MLB gift card, which had about 50 bucks on it. The cool part is that it's good for tickets as well as baseball merchandise, so my dad and I could use it for Nats games.

On the top of the screen is a bag that held a key chain light. It's the brightest one of those I've seen. (On top of the key chain is a Nintendo rubber band that came with the hat and tshirt.)

I got a Card with a gift certificate for Target from one of my aunts. It had 25 dollars on it. She likes buy some with 25 and some with 50, but I've never had luck getting the higher values.

I got a gift certificate for Papa John's Pizza. I think it has 25 dollars on it.





This is something else I got from my parents. It's a small pillow. Isn't it cute?





Wait, what's that peaking out the back? It's green. Hmmm. Oh well, it's not there anymore. I have it.





And this is the card that my aunt gave me.

With that, we conclude what I received for Christmas.




Tomorrow, we'll discuss what I bought myself for Christmas with Christmas money. Also, I may mention what I got for others. Enjoy your Christmas week!

Advent Calendar

SUN	MON	TUES	WED	THU	FRI	SAT

Finally!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas from Tork's Blog!

The Twenty-Fourth Day of Christmas...

I was looking forward to this day. When I started this thing I thought that if I ever got into trouble, I could list gifts that I've gotten most recently. Of course, it was best to save those towards the end of the month. Now here we are! Today's gift is a book that Lita sent me in 2002 after I got her a tshirt that 8-Bit Theater once sold. She sent me this book and its sequel because she recommended the series to me but I was having problems finding the first entry.

The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic are the first two entries in the Discworld series. This is a creation by author Terry Pratchett and he's written over thirty books. The Discworld is a flat world that lays on top of four elephants who all stand on top of a giant turtle that drifts through space. The first couple books were more spoofs of the fantasy genre that (I think) had become really popular in the eighties. Over several novels the Discworld changed into more of a satire of more modern setting, although still in a vaguely medieval setting.

The first two books are about a wizzard named Rincewind. The spelling of wizzard is intentional because he's lousy at everything except languages and running away. In the first book he's hired by the leader of the largest country on the Discworld to lead a tourist around. The tourist, Twoflower, is so rich that immediately a new industry is born and we follow the two through four seperate adventures. Twoflower also has a magic Luggage box which acts as a deus ex machina whenever needed.

I'd go into detail but I should really save that for another day. I intended to do the Discworld series for my Tork's Book Club feature which I rarely do. Hopefully one day I will.

Anyway, this is a great series and it's interesting to see the early books before fourth novel, where the series really took off. Also, I just read that there will be a mini-series next year that will combine the first two books. Neat! Can't wait until it reaches here on DVD.

The Twenty-Third Day of Christmas...

Today's gift is not the one in the picture I'm including. I couldn't find today's gift. I hope you enjoy this substitute. Anyway, in Christmas 89 I got two sports toys : basketball and soccer.

These toys had clear bubble domes like this one, but they were much smaller. Instead of sticks, you moved the ball by pushing 6 or 8 buttons. The basketball or soccer would roll around on the board until it landed in a hole. Each player looks for the number next to the hole and try to push it first. The first person to push their button advances the ball further.

The soccer had a couple extra features. It had only six buttons, and the holes in the middle were for one player instead of both. You also had access to a goalie with a lever. You could slide it back and forth to block shots. The goalie made the soccer game more interesting than basketball.

Our version of soccer had it's dome crushed inward. I've always meant to poke a hole in it so I could pull it outward but I never did.

If I ever find either of these two toys I'll post a better pic.

Merry Christmas from Rifftrax!

Since it's almost Christmas, I sat down and watched two rifftraxes today. One was one I had intended to see for a while, but the other was just released. I watched the former first. We'll save the other one for later.

The first thing I saw today was A Visit To Santa, a public domain short. Since it was public domain, Legend Films offered users the option to download a movie file instead of the usual mp3 file.

The short is a cheapo film about two kids who ask Santa if they could see the North Pole. Rather than tell them to suck it up, Santa appeases their wishes which will no doubt cost him in the future. Anyway, Santa gets in his helicopter because Santa is too cool for the sled thing now. He takes the kids over to the North Pole, which isn't the least bit impressive. As Mike, Kevin, and Bill poin out, it looks like they're going to a mall.

Santa shows them a few doll houses and train sets. The toys are obviously outdated by our standards, but it doesn't even look impressive of whatever year this film took place in. This film is incredible cheap looking (and unfortunately looks washed out) and you long for the robot from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Even the parade isn't much, because they only show about two floats.

If I could sum up this short, I would do so with this photo.



The riffing was ok, but I can't really remember it. We'll see why in a second.

The download options for this short include the usual mp3 file, but Legend Films has a new "On Demand" option. Instead of putting up with Disembaudio, you can download a file that will download the movie. This is good so you don't have to sync the movie, but it comes with a catch. Instead of an mp4, wmv, mov, or some other popular video file, Rifftrax uses divx. You have to download the Divx player before you download the movie file. Not only that, but you have to get an account. I'm probably not the only person who thinks that that is a sneaky way to get people to sign up for a player they don't need, but I figured what the hell. I don't blame anybody who decides against it.

For those who are curious, A Visit to Santa is 12 minutes long and 128 MB. Also, the On Demand thing is available for purchase (AVtS only option) or rental for many other films in their catalog. I'll probably avoid it because I'm not interested in divx. Rentals are about 3-4 dollars and purchases are about 12 dollars.

You may be able to burn purchases onto DVD, but I don't know yet.


Now onto our feature...

I just had to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special before Christmas. It was too good to save till afterwards. Now I've seen this terrible movie, and I'm a believer that it's every bit as bad as I've heard.

I didn't hear about it till lately, of course. It probably wasn't until I saw it mentioned at websites like Stomp Tokyo. My reaction was probably the same as any fan of the original trilogy. "WHAT? No, you got to be kidding me. Really? No, that's got to be an urban legend. Come on, you're just pulling my leg, right?" And so forth...

But this thing apparently existed. And it really is wookies yelling at each other for most of the time. I thought reviewers were exagerating how the film starts with no dialog, but that was the longest scene in the movie except all the others. There were quite a few times during this movie where I just said "wow."

In case you don't know, The Holiday Special is about Chewbacca trying to get home to his family in time for Life Day, which is a holiday where furry things hold lite-brite eggs and wear red robes. That's not much, so there's a lot of distracting scenes that make you wonder what the hell is going on. I'm talking unfunny comedy skits, music scenes best forgotten, and a poinless cartoon. Yes, the cartoon wasn't that great. A D- on your report card doesn't erase all the Fs.

Everybody in the special embarrasses themselves. Harrison Ford is probably has the least to be embarrassed about, but he is scripted to hug Chewbacca's family at the end. Carrie Fisher can't sing and looks out of it during the finale. Mark Hamill looks like a girl thanks to his make-up. Luckily for all of them, they get small amounts of screen time. Unluckily for us, that leaves us with the rest of the cast. We're left with Art Carney, Bea Arthur, and Harvey Korman. Carney and Korman are lucky that I've seen the Honeymooners and Blazing Saddles, respectively, or I'd rant about what a bunch of unfunny hacks they are. (It pains me that Art Carney did his "stalling that causes the 'Ralph' character increasing frustrating" bit because he's usually hilarious doing so.)



Some of the scenes that doesn't involve bear-apes growling for minutes include a holograph circus act that fails to be entertaining and only fills the audience with dread since it happens so early. Soon after that we watch some big helmet bad guy harass Art Carney at a store. This place also serves as a contact to the rebels, which would mean something if I wanted to think of the Empire as so incompetant that Ed Norton could assist in taking it down.

Art Carney's character is a friend of the Chewies, so he delivers them presents. One present is a recliner that is also a virual reality machine. Faster than you can say, "masturbatory fantasy!" we see Chewbacca's dad, Itchy, dreaming of Diahann Carroll saying suggestive stuff before singing a song about whatever. I'm not familiar with her work, but the guys quickly list all the awards she's gotten, so this is clearly a skeleton in her closet. Just look at this!



Harvey Korman gets three "funny" bits, and they all suck. His first skit has him in black face as a cook on some show that Chewbacca's wife is watching. It's suppose to be funny because he has four arms. Actually, I'm just guessing that. It's not like I could tell by watching it. His third appearance is at some bar where he flirts with Bea Arthur. He has, as the guys put it, a "skull anus" which he drinks with. No really, they milk a bit where Bea pretends to pour a drink into the volcano that is his head. It'll make Star Wars fans want to scream because this features that famous bar from the first film. Still, that isn't Harvey Korman's worst role. Nope, there's a scene where Chewbacca's son Lumpy is putting together a communicator. Lumpbacca watches a video that explain what wire goes where, and Korman stutters like a robot or whatever all through the skit. I would say that it was a bad parody of Max Headroom, but I thought that was an eighties character.

You know what? Heddey Heddey Heddey! I don't even care if I'm mixing up an actor with one of his characters!

Some band shows up for a neon musical number. This might wake someone up except music skits only work when they're a break from something happening. The wobbly animated cartoon finally appears at one poin, and we learn that Luke and Han are losers who need the droids, Chewbacca, and Boba Fett's help to save them. Also, Boba is an evil bounty hunter. That would mean something if A) He had a plan, which he doesn't. He just sorta flies away after R2 and C3PO reveal they overheard a conversation between him and Vader. And B) He's an unimportant character who got defeated by a blind guy. Accept it Star Wars fans.

Let's ignore Bea Arthur's song, shall we? Although I think I've seen that giant rat thing on the Super Mario Bros. Super Show.

We finally get to the end. You see, some imperial soldiers have been mildly harassing the Chewies because they're looking for a rebel Wookie. Instead of checking the other furballs on the planet, they stay around and cut up one of Lumpy's dolls. Eventually they leave one Storm Trooper. Chewbacca and Han show up and defeat him by...actually, the Storm Trooper just trips and falls to his death. It's not really a heroic moment as much as a victim of unsafe wooden hand rails on top of a ridiculously high tree house.

The family rejoices, the human hugs everybody, and the Chewies all fly into a star where a tree is. I wish I made up that last sentence. The real stars of the first Star Trek appear just to cringe at Carrie's song. Roll credits.



Why would I write about a rifftrax but focus on the movie? I think it's because I want to show how bad the movie is so I don't have to spend several paragraphs gushing about why the riffs are so great. There's only so many ways you can say that Mike, Kevin, and Bill are hilarious, so other than list my favorite riffs (which I usually have a hard time recalling after the first viewing) there isn't much to say. This rifftrax is great, and I love the fact that they did a version of SWHS that included some commercials. The commercials are a treat and I wouldn't mind them riffing more vintage commercials. I'm tempted to do a whole post just on the commercials in the special. I can sum up the commercials with this picture.




(By the way, this movie is available at google video. Ssssh! It's a bit "legally iffy.")


I'm actually kind of sad that I couldn't watch this rifftrax with friends the first time. I'm not sure if I'll ever see a movie so bad, and it would have been great to share with other people. Sure, other people crying out in pain, but also those other people making dumb grunts and laughing at the rifftrax with me.




The short is 99 cents and the movie rifftrax is 3.99. I've also seen X-Men and Attack of The Clones but I've been too lazy to give my jumbled thoughts on those movies and their respective rifftraxes.

The Twenty-Second Day of Christmas...

Wow, it's almost Christmas. Today's gift is a portable cassette player with AM/FM radio. I got this in the early nineties. This is a Lenoxx Sound, and apparently the company is still around.

The story behind this gift is that during our annual Christmas party, one of my relatives gave me a headset radio player. That thing was orange or neon pink and had an antenna on one side. The next day we went to Uncle Buddy's and my dad's stepdad had a gift for me. He moaned when he saw me wearing the other radio headset because he gave me this gift. Luckily they were different enough that it wasn't a big deal.

I mentioned before that I used to tape Simpsons episodes on cassette, so I used to listen to Who Shot Mr. Burns on this sucker a lot. I also listened to Caps games on both radios, since that was about the only thing I used the radio for.

I broke the door, but it still works. I bet it still works but it needs to be cleaned a little.

Ok, 3 more to go!

The Twenty-First Day of Christmas...

Today's gift is a carrom board. You may have seen one of these things. It has green nets on the corners and has two sides.

This board comes with two pool sticks and several green and red disks. You can use the disks to play checkers on one side or billiards on the other. The instructions listed several games but I forgotten how many of them go. I think my sister and I just eventually pretended it was like pool.

I think there were cardboard inserts that you could stick into the disks that were numbered 1-15. In fact, there was probably a single black disk as well. There were also a few red pieces that you could stand up, probably just to knock them down with the disks and the sticks.

This picture shows a few other pieces that we probably lost. Are those dreidals?

This board was in my room for a long time. I placed it on top of a bookshelf and it stood there for a long time right next to the board for Fireball Island. It's probably in my current room tucked behind something.

I recently saw this at a toy store. It's neat that they still sell this thing.

The Twentieth Day of Christmas...

Today's gift took a while to find, and I'm over fifty percent sure it was a Christmas present. It's a pair of walkie talkies, and I got it some year.

Walkie Talkies are like one of the greatest presents to disappoin you. They seem like an awesome idea, but they never work out right. (Or maybe they've gotten better, but I doubt they would let kids have such an awesome device. Too many legal problems.) The signal is never good enough and you soon become bored. Damn movies make us believe that you could carry out all kinds of adventures with them.

These walkie talkies came with morse code on the bottom. The red button makes a noise and I guess it sends it to the other walkie talkie, but I never figured out if you have to hold down the side button to get that to work.

I never did get the idea between dashes and dots. I just thought you had to hold down the side button for one and let it go for the other, since the beep sounds different for each. Oh well, walkie talkies suck, but they're cool on paper.

The Nineteenth Day of Christmas...

Today's gift is not a video game. Hurrah! It's Milton Bradley's Hot Shot, which is a pocket version of arcade basketball. I got this in the mid-nineties when I was starting to out grow toys.

As you might be able to see I never added the stickers to the hoop and top part. I probably just didn't want to. This game has a score counter that goes up to thirty after you score. I do think I beat that score a few times. The back of the game has a lever you pull for a timer, and the basketball board goes back and forth before it runs out. All the pieces can be stored into the back if you remember which goes where, which I had to do the first couple times I pulled it back out.

Sometimes I would grab a lego character and have it dunk a few times. Fun toy.

America's Greatest Monster

is Thomas Edison!


Thankfully, the US congress passed a law to ban the eeeeevil incandescent light bulb by 2020.


The biggest winners? Kids, because this ban will save Santa!






Rot in hell, Thomas.

The Eighteenth Day of Christmas...

Today's gift is an ordinary box used to hold NES games. I got it in 1991, probably. It's blue. It's clear. The price tag says that it was under a couple bucks.

Why am I showing this? Interesting story about this thing. One year I was sooooo sure I was going to get a Game Boy. I probably heard my parents whisper those two words and I just assumed I was going to get one. I was so sure that there was this one gift left out on a table that I was sure was proof that I was going to get a Game Boy. This gift dominated my thoughts up till Christmas so I never got a good look at any of the other gifts.

When Christmas came, I was given a choice of what to open first, and this gift was it. I was so expecting a Game Boy game, since the boxes for those was the same size as this thing. I was told by my parents that some relative gave them the money to buy a Game Boy, but they decided against it because they were worried it was going to ruin my sight. They bought this case because they thought someone was going to get me the NES version of Monopoly, which never happened. So I was left disappoined that year.

The very next year I got a Game Boy.

The Seventeenth Day of Christmas...

I hate going to the video game well again, but I'm going to do it two more times. Hopefully I can come up with non-video game stuff before the 24th. Today's gift is the Game Boy, which I got in 1992, probably.

When we first turned it on, we thought it wasn't working. That's because the contrast was set either too high or too low. Good one, Nintendo!

It wasn't long before it became very popular. I had to split on another Game Boy just to shut up my sister. Little sisters are annoying.

There's an interesting story behind how I got the Game Boy. That's for tomorrow.

The Sixteenth Day of Christmas...

Today's gift comes from 1984. This picture is probably the wrong box, but it gives you an idea of what the gift is. It's a plastic container for hotwheels and other car toys.

I had quite a few hotwheels. Hopefully a future entry will include a really cool toy, but I can't find a picture of it on the Internet.

Anyway, these containers had these blue things that you put all your cars on. The containers were shaped like lunchboxes so you can haul your cars around. I have an even bigger one of these that's shaped like a cube and has a bottom that you fold out which looks like a driveway.

Ironically, as of today I don't own a car. I guess I should remedy that sometime next year.

The Fifteenth Day of Christmas...

Today's gift is one I got sometime in the last decade, but don't ask me when. It's a Dilbert Christmas doll.

We first got Dilbert in the Washington Post sometime when I was a sophomore in high school in the mid-nineties. It's a great comic that has taught me all I know about businesses. (I got The Dilbert Principal just for the comics but actually read the words one day.) So it wasn't long before I started bugging my parents for a couple of the Dilbert collection books. In my (more) illiterate days, I would go to the humor section of the bookstore and read the Dilbert books I didn't have.

Of course, bugging your parents to buy you stuff has a boomerang effect. Long after you no longer find something cool, they'll remind you of that time you really liked something. So even though I still liked the comic, I would grit my teeth a little when my parents would buy me Dilbert dolls long after Dilbert's peak. Like, this doll for example, which is just Dilbert with a Santa hat.

I am Tork, a Dilbert nerd.

The Fourteenth Day of Christmas...

I don't have much at the moment so a quick entry is needed for today. Today's gift was a game that I got from my aunts. I asked for Kid Chameleon for the Sega Genesis. This was in the early nineties after I had a Genesis and after Kid Chameleon was cheap enough to justify.

I'm not going to talk about the game. I'm just going to mention what I said at the Christmas party when this gift was handed to me. I felt the gift just to figure out what kind of box it was. Sega was still using the durable cases instead of the crap that it used later. Those later boxes were much like the crappy boxes the SNES used. I announced that I knew it was a Genesis game, much to the annoyance of my aunt.

A couple Christmas songs that drive me crazy.

I hate blogs where people spend all their posts complaining. Sometimes you'll stumble across a blog where the post that draws you in is ok, but then you take a look at the rest of the entries and hightail it out of there. I'm just not interested in daily negativeness. (Huh, negativeness is a word. How about that?) Nobody needs to read, "I'm still a pathetic loser with no girlfriend and my job doesn't pay much!!" The worst, but most common example is when people combine this with politics. "ONCE AGAIN I HAVE TO REMIND PEOPLE WHO LISTEN TO ME THAT I HAAAAAAAAAATE SENATOR KITTENKICKER!!!!!!!!!!!"

Of course, I'm sure I've had a few posts in the past where I complained about things. So let me be a little negative today. You know those radio stations that play Christmas songs all day since sometime before Christmas until January? I could complain about that, and I probably have. Well, there's one song that makes me cringe.

That song is Christmas Shoes. I'm not sure what's the part I hate about it the most. Is it the fact that it's one of the most cloying, manipulative songs about Christmas? I mean, the kid says "mama." How many kids say that? Is it the weird fact that there's a time element to it? The song acts like if the kid doesn't get the shoes to his mom in 55 minutes, she'll explode or something. (How's that premise for a Michael Bay movie?) Also, if she's so sick that she could go at any moment, I doubt she could even see the shoes. And why do they have to drag Jesus into the song?

How about the fact that despite all this, the singer takes home the message that God sent this kid to him to stop being grumpy? Yeah, God is slowly killing this kids mom FOR YOU! IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU!

If I had to put my money on what annoys me most about this song, it's probably the angelic choir at the end that repeats the refrain. It's like the song wants to believe itself to be an instant classic and is patting itself on the back.

I'm not saying that anything that happens in the song is wrong. I'd hate to see a loved one in that kind of situation and I would want to do anything to make them better, but this song just rubs me the wrong way.


And since I'm here, let me mention a remake that isn't equal to the original. Madonna, your version of Santa, Baby sucks because A) You're 60 years old, and B) You're voice is too babyish.

The Thirteenth Day of Christmas...

Forget the traditional twelve days of Christmas! We're going to have 25, baby! Today's gift is one I got from my sister sometime in the last five years. It's a magnetic dartboard you can hang on the wall.

This thing comes with three red darts and three yellow darts. It has two sides, the other being a standard dart board.

It's neat, although there's one down side. The darts are a bit fragile, so if you miss and the dart falls to the floor, you can end up with a cracked magnet. I recommend putting the dart board over a bed or couch or something.