Hey look, it's a gaming PC

I'll probably have a much more thorough post about this later this weekend or next week but I just spent my morning cobbling together a gaming PC. Over the last few weeks I've been picking up parts on amazon or newegg and yesterday I finally got the last piece to the puzzle, a new case. It took a while to shoehorn everything in there, I think it's hilarious that the video card I got was a "compact" card and it's still takes up like half the space in the tower. Also it glows blue, yay?

Still to early to really know what I've got. I've only tried out a couple games. Lego Batman 3 doesn't have the random skips it used to and Fallout 3 looks glorious with every setting at max. I bought Tomb Raider for like 4.99 at the last steam sale but I haven't installed it yet, so that will probably be my biggest test. I'm looking forward to picking up a couple more current games, I'm looking your direction Star Wars Battlefront...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan

I swear every two years a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is announced, everyone gets super excited over some demo footage, then the came comes out and everyone is disappointed. So here you go...

Could Vin Diesel Interest You In Some Street Sharks

Here's Vin Diesel from a 1994 Toy Fair selling Street Sharks, it seems to be making the rounds on the interwebs this morning. Other than the way that he's dressed (and hey it's 1994, we all get it) I don't see anything embarrassing about this at all. He's selling the hell out of those Street Sharks. I'm thinking about picking some up on ebay later today. HAND SHARK!

Super Bakery Bros.

Someone recreated the first level of Super Mario Bros. using a cake and other bakery products because of course they did. What else are they supposed to do with their time. Bake a Bionic Commando cake? Come on, get your head out of your butt.

Math for Grownups

That second one really speaks to me.

2016 Royal Rumble: The Review

Apparently my neighbors sacrificed their dog to the wrestling gods so that the 2016 Royal Rumble Could be amazing....

I've been having a lot of mixed feelings with the WWE lately. RAW has been pretty horrible for a while now and the the last few PPVs have been sort of "meh". NXT (the WWE developmental show) is still freaking amazing so I'm not about to ditch the network or anything but the main product has left a lot to be desired over the last year. I wasn't expecting much from the Royal Rumble this year but Sunday night was the kind of night where the DevilDinosaur household needed a win.

Early Sunday morning I looked outside my bedroom window, just to see how the lawn was dealing with all the rain and I noticed something on our fence. Turns out it was our neighbors dog hanging by it's leash. Our neighbors have a line that runs parallel to our back fence where they can tie up their dog and it looks like he had just enough slack to jump the fence but not enough to make it to the other side. He was very dead, hopefully it was a quick death.

I talked with the neighbors, or at least the sister of our neighbor who had just moved in. I'm not sure where the real neighbor was, the sister spoke broken English so I wasn't getting a lot out of her. She did tell me that the dog had been missing since last weekend. So, we've had a dead dog hanging in our backyard for about a week. I can see why he would be hard to find considering he was still attached to his leash. /s

After waiting a few hours a friend of the neighbors sister came over and tossed the extremely rigor mortised dog back over the fence. Finally it was time to start the Royal Rumble!

Triple H won, because of course he did. TNA legend and NJPW superstar AJ Styles made his debut. Chris Jericho somehow coaxed his dad bod into almost 40 minutes of Rumbling. Sami Zayn made his triumphant return to the main roster to toss his long time nemesis Kevin Owens out. The Wyatt family continued their feud with Brock Lesnar by ganging up on him and eliminating him. Most importantly Roman Reigns looked strong even in defeat.

I give the Royal Rumble a perfect 5/7 and the dead dog in the back yard an F minus.

100 MPH Burrito

Drift Racer Matt Powers decided to put together a burrito with his Nissan 240sx. I'm not 100% sure he's ever seen someone make a burrito before because this is definitely not how you do it. You put the sour cream on first and really spread it all over the shell. That way you get some sour cream in every bite as opposed to a huge sour cream bomb at the very bottom/top.

Keanu Trailer

Here's a trailer for the new Key & Peele movie Keanu. It looks pretty funny, like really really funny. Key & Peele was one of the shows I never watched regularly or set my DVR for, but I would always catch it late night on Comedy Central while I was drawing or playing video games. It was always really funny, why wasn't I taping it? It's like South Park or the Simpsons, or even It's Always Sunny. Sometimes I take for granted that a show will be around forever and constantly in reruns so I don't bother to record it. I should probably stop doing that because YOLO.

I'm pretty sure that's 100% the opposite of how you're supposed to use YOLO but whatever. YOLO.

I Really Don't Want To...

Suicide Squad, Worst Heroes Ever

Last night DC/Warner Bros did some big special on the CW that I completely missed. The showed off some new footage of Batman V Superman (yawn), like 10 seconds of Wonder Woman footage (double yawn) and the new trailer for Suicide Squad (yaw... wait a minute). Suicide Squad looks sooooo good.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for Queen, or a blonde in hot pants, or both. Sweet Christmas this is as excited as I remember being for an upcoming DC comics movie since The Dark Knight. There's still a good amount of net nerds that are wringing their hands over Jared Leto's Joker but I don't know, it looks pretty awesome to me. I feel like it's the universe's way of making up for pulling the plug on the Nic Cage Superman movie.

Saved Links

New Doom level released by game creator John Romero. What year is this?

Report: Marco Pappa stabbed in incident with Miss Washington USA last month. How did this news story fly under my radar? It has everything, action, adventure, romance, lingerie football.

The 13 Most Nonsensical Theories About The Identity of Supreme Leader Snoke. I don't know if these are really the MOST nonsensical. They didn't really include the one where he's actually Palpatine in Vader's body.

How Batman’s Silly 1960s Series Saved The Dark Knight. Man, I LOVE me some Batman TV show. Sure it's campy but I'll be damned if it isn't super fun. I watched the TV Show movie from 1968 with my son a little while ago and he loved it too. Someone should reboot that.

The 7 Best (And Worst) Wigs of Current Comics TV. I feel like I should be watching Arrow more.

Malibu Shark Attack - Better Off as Friends

Hey kids, I'm working on a super gigantic link post that's going to take like my whole lunch break so in the meantime here's the opening track to Malibu Shark Attack's self titled release. It's like one of my favorite albums from the last couple years. You should check it out.

Deadpool's Going To Flop

Here's a bold prediction for you. I don't think Deadpool is going to do very well at the box office. It's not that I think the movie looks bad or anything, or that I hope it's going to do poorly, I just have this feeling in my gut that it isn't going to do well. On twitter the other day I predicted that it would open at like $25 million, then drop the next week to, oh lets say 15 million and by the end of it's theatrical run it will have made somewhere in the range of $70-90 million.

Ok so, flop might not be completely accurate (I'm only a paragraph in and I'm already waffling on my attention grabbing headline, look at me Buzzfeed!). I can't find official numbers but I've read that the budget for Deadpool is shockingly low. Let's say the movie only cost $40-50 million to make and it earns $90 million domestically is that a hit? Kick Ass had a budget of $30 Million and it made exactly $97 million domestically and that seem to qualify as a hit and spawned a sequel. Kick Ass 2 on the other hand cost $30 Million, made $60 Million and is considered a flop. In other Ryan Reynolds related projects, Green Lantern had a $200 million budget, made $219 million and is considered a HUGE flop.

The lesson learned is that Hollywood is weird and I'm pretty sure they do all of their accounting using puka shells and Uno cards.

I guess if my point is that I have no idea what the expectations for Deadpool are, but I have a feeling it's not going to hit them. It's certainly not going to be the key to Fox's dreams of replicating the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Cloverfield 2?

Hey kids, remember Cloverfield? Here's a trailer for the sequel, which might not be a sequel if you believe the random people on twiter who were talking about it yesterday.

There's pretty much zero official information about the movie. The title showed up on a list of trailers that were scheduled to run at like AMC theaters or something, then one of them leaked on line via Jerry Seinfeld like DeathBlow camera and boom this morning the official trailer is available on Facebook and Youtube.

Apparently the only small piece of information that we can confirm is that this movie used to be called Valencia and was only changed to 10 Cloverfield Lane at the last minute. There's nothing in the trailer that would lead you to believe it was related to 2008's Cloverfield but isn't that just like JJ Abrams? Could it be a movie set in the "Cloverfield" universe but dealing with an entirely different set of events? Maybe this is a prequel, maybe this is related to the Cloverfield project that was only briefly referred to in the first movie. Whatever the big mystery is we don't have long to wait, the movie premieres in March.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict this will make a bunch of cash, maybe not Star Wars cash but we're at least talking Star Trek cash. I know not everyone holds Cloverfield in high regard but I feel like there's enough of a fan base, plus the post Star Wars buzz Abrams has going will equal the first big hit of 2016.

Yes, I realize I just implied that Deadpool was going to flop. More on that next week.

Operation Kakongoliro! The Ugandan Expendables

There's not a lot of #content tickling my blogging bone today so here's something I saw a couple days ago that I passed on. It's a trailer for the sure to be cinematic smash The Ugandan Expendables. I really like the part where the guy kicks the thing at the other two guys then shoots them. That's a solid action movie move right there.

"Here, catch this"

RATATATATATATATATATAT

'He's On Fire': The True Story Behind 'NBA Jam'

Honestly I thought this video was going to be much longer. I assumed the "True Story" behind the making of NBA Jam would involve more than mailing a couple video tapes to the NBA. Still, I was super rad at this game and had the record for longest winning streak at the arcade near me, 15-0!

Spinoff Links

Holy Bricks! I Love Everything About Lego's New Classic Batman TV Series Batcave Set. Holy (insert Lego pun here) Batman! This is a fantastic looking set. It's nearly $300 but you're getting a lot of Lego for your money. 3 vehicles, 9 mini figs and a HUGE playset with lots of features. It sure beats the pants off the Batcave set my son already has.

They really hit it out of the park with the little details on this set, from The Joker's hidden mustache to the pictures of Martha and Thomas Wayne beside the fire poles. I really hope they make more of these sets based on the old TV show. I can't imagine ever fitting this thing in my budget but I'd love to have a Adam West Batman.... I mean my son would love it.

Kurt Busiek on Loss of Public Domain. Kurt Busiek, noted comic book writer and cool guy I talked too once, had a lot of interesting takes on copyright and public domain. It's funny to think that every time something interesting is set to enter public domain the copyright laws keep getting extended. It's almost like some big entertainment company has a vested interest in keeping others from using their beloved mouse mascot.

Agents of SHIELD’s “Marvels Most Wanted”: ABC orders pilot for Marvel spinoff. So Marvel doesn't want me to watch Agents of SHIELD anymore? The show is already on my "I'm not sure I'm enjoying this anymore and there are good shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime I could be watching" list. Take away Adrianne Palicki and things are looking pretty grim.

5 Huge Products That Failed Because Of Hilarious Oversights. I like Cracked but this is a great example of how you can't always take their lists at face value. One of the items on this particular list is the IBM PCjr a computer that was a spectacular failure. Cracked attributes the failure almost 100% to the terrible keyboard the PCjr shipped with and while the keyboard was really really bad It wasn't the single thing that doomed the machine.

You could make a much stronger argument that the PCjr was ill conceived right out of the gate, targeting a market that wasn't there. It wasn't 100% compatible with the standard PC software most businesses ran so you couldn't bring work from home. It was far more expensive than offerings from Commodore or Atari AND it didn't run games very well.

It was a serious computer that couldn't handle serious software AND an overpriced hobby computer that couldn't play most games. It came with weird features no one would use like swapable ROM cartridges and a co-axial output so you could hook it up to your TV. Rumor has it that IBM intentionally nerfed it's compatibility because they were afraid of businesses buying PCjrs instead of the hgher end work stations.

Who cares if the keyboard is terrible (something they addressed almost immediately anyway), at the price they were asking (some $3,000 in today's money) why would anyone want one?

The funny thing is that the Tandy 1000, which was a huge hit, is based on a lot of the same hardware as the PCjr but by cutting the price, simplifying the peripherals and making sure it was near 100% compatible with PC software Radio Shack sold a ton. It was the perfect entry computer to the PC market, not the flawed mess IBM tried to hoist on customers.

And now both of us know way more about the IBM PCjr than necessary.

Who Shot Best?

... The Blurst of Times: Santa's Little Helper

In what has become a bit of an annual tradition, the relatively slow Holiday season has provided me with ample opportunities to explore the depths of Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel's Holiday programing. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whichever horrible made for TV movie I watched the night before (or in the case like 2 weeks ago).

Santa's Little Helper staring The Miz, and AnnaLyne McCord is definitely a Christmas movie. You can tell because Santa is right there in the title. It's brought to you by the fine film makers at the WWE, the studio responsible for such classics as The Marine 3: Homefront, Jingle All the Way 2 and my favorite Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery. Quite frankly it's one of the stupidest most cliched movies I've seen in a while and I LOVED IT.

Within the first 5 minutes we find the Miz basically shutting down a community center full of cute kids on Christmas, because he's a grinch, so you know we're in for a redemption story. The rest of the plot follows The Miz as he gets laid off from his highfalutin corporate gig and finds himself in competition to earn the right to become the right had man of someone "famous and powerful" who unbeknownst to him, just happens to be Santa. AnnaLyne McCord plays the sexy elf sent to put the Miz through a series of tasks meant to challenge the Miz's character and WWE Diva Paige plays the sexy elf that hopes to derail the Miz so she can take the Santa job for herself.

It's the kind of movie where you know at some point someone is going to get hit in the nuts.

It happens on a ropes course because OF COURSE THERE'S A ROPES COURSE!

Anyhoo, I'd watch AnnaLynne McCord in just about anything and believe it or not the Miz isn't that bad of an actor, at least not when he's asked to play a pompous ass-clown, so a likable cast really makes up for what's a laughably bad script. In fact the laughably bad script is what really makes the movie enjoyable. If Santa's Little Helper was a better written movie it wouldn't have been anywhere near as fun to watch. I definitely give this one a perfect 5/7.

Ice Cube, Kevin Hart And Conan Help A Student Driver

Hey guys, I screwed up. B told me about this Conan O'Brien skit like two days ago and I didn't get around to watching it until just now. This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I've revised my bucket list, the only thing I want to do before I die is go get some weed and chicken with Ice Cube and Kevin Hart. Conan can come along but he better have my trap money.

Marvel's Daredevil - Coming Soon, Season 2

Hey kids, it's a teaser trailer for the upcoming season of Daredevil. You know what this means, only 2 more teasers, 4 trailers and 14 TV commercials to go! I kid, but seriously Netflix needs to Netflix and chill.

This is as good of a time as any to write a bit about Jessica Jones. The wife and I finished up the first season a couple days ago, it was fine. I'm kind of surprised the majority of people I hear talk about say they like it better than Daredevil. I thought the main characters on Daredevil were more likable and that the show as a whole was a bit more accessible for the average TV viewer (ie not a big old nerd). I will say David Tennant absolutely killed it, watching him chew scenery the last few episodes was quite the treat.

I'll still check out the second season whenever it comes around but I'm not putting in my top 10 list or anything. It was a great show to binge watch while every other show was on winter break. 7/10?

Top 5 - Gaming controversies of 2015

There's a lot of year end video list things on youtube right now, here's one of them. It's funny, these controversies were so huge that I had only heard of 3 of them. I wish I had heard about the Deux Ex pre-order bullshit. That is some messed up garbage, I can't believe anyone thought that was a good idea.

Link Town USA

How Ash Vs Evil Dead Took Everything We Loved From The Movies And Made It Better. I'll admit, I didn't really read this article past the first two paragraphs. This show is awesome, go watch it, torrent it if you have to. I won't tell anyone. I'm still pretty far behind, I believe I'm only on episode 5 but lucky for me this isn't like Star Wars where there are internet trolls everywhere just waiting to spoil things for you.

I will complain about one thing though, Starz or whatever monkey they hire at Dish to program their guide, mixed up all the episode numbers this last weekend. I have 10 episodes on the DVR and since they're all mislabeled I have no idea what the real order of them is. I watch TV so I can turn off my brain, I don't want to have to solve riddles every time I want to watch someone take an axe to the face.

The 10 weirdest video game consoles that I own. I've posted a few of these lists from Redditor Zadoc and they're always hella interesting. I was happy to see the Atari XEGS on there, I never owned one but I had a friend that had one. We used to have some series Dr J vs Larry Bird battles on that thing.

Zombie-Town USA. Have a couple hours to kill? Here's a zombie outbreak simulator that runs in your web browser. They might as well call it Unproductivity-Town USA.

George RR Martin 'astonished' by fan support over missed Game of Thrones deadline. In case you hadn't heard, GRRM (which should always be pronounced like a half burp-half growl) made it official, the next Game of Thrones book won't be released before Season 6 of the TV show. I'm glad most fans weren't full of outrage. Book readers have had it to good for to long, always knowing what's going to happen in the TV show. It's about time something was spoiled for them/me.

Top 10 New Xbox One Games for 2016

Now there's a title that's hitting all the right SEO buttons, right? Now I don't have an Xbox One and don't really plan on getting one anytime soon but there's a couple games on this list that look pretty cool. First is CupHead It's like a Mickey Mouse cartoon from the 40s come to life. I could see my son and I playing that for hours and hours.

The other game here that caught my interest is Recore. I am a sucker for robots in space and this game looks like it will have robots and some sort of dystopian/desert wasteland! Sign me up.

Can't Sleep

This was me for like a month last year.

It's National Spaghetti Day!

I've been dying for an excuse to post this Mom's Spaghetti video from Eminem and someone over on reddit said it was National Spaghetti Day, so here we are.

2015, Another Year in Blogging Done

Welp, 2015 was definitely a year. I guess it was a good one. I got a new car but I also hurt my back pretty bad and had to do about a month's worth of Physical Therapy. I'm sure other things happened too but I'm still groggy on nog.

I had a lot less posts on the blog than I did last year, which is like a 3 year trend now. It's almost like having two kids leaves you with less time than just having one. Really it's not just the kids though. Scapegoating them is fun but it's not 100% accurate. I've been getting more sleep lately, which is great but has really cut back on lining up posts the night before. Also work has been a bit cray cray this year, so it has been harder to sneak in some sweet sweet blogging time in the afternoon.

Ok, enough sob story let's get on with the year end recap. Here are a few posts that either were memorable to me, or had a bunch of hits:

Can't believe I built my retropie last January. Seems like that things been sitting in my closet for years now. I kid, I kid. Sort of. I played it with my son just a couple weeks ago, but it doesn't get anywhere near as much use as I thought it would. Still it cost less than $40 and was a fun project.

This list of My Son's Top 5 Cartoons hasn't changed too much. We're still watching WAY too much Paw Patrol but we've added the most excellent We Bare Bears into the mix so I'd call it a wash.

Murder Mystery Dinner: The Review

I'm 99.9% sure I never got around to posting a full recap of my zany adventures at ECCC this year. This 2015 Emerald City Comicon Cosplay Rodeo! was about as close as I got. This year I'll try and keep everyone more up to date on how much cash I dropped on sketchbooks and T-shirts.

The New Star Wars Droid is NOT CGI

After like 6 years of doing this I think I did my first real video game review, Pixel Gun for the Kindle Fire. I know, I'm tackling the AAA titles here. Next up I might review the newest game from Rovio. Can you believe those birds are still angry?

The trailer for Hand Job Cabin wins the award for most popular post of the year. I think I made like $0.69 from it.

The annual San Diego Comic Con Cosplay post did well again this year. Cosplay posts always bring in the hits but they're kind of a pain to put together. Maybe in 2016 I'll stop doing the round-ups and just do a bunch of single picture posts when I have nothing else to run with.

Suck My Surface.

Welcome Home Spider-Man?

2015 will probably be best remembered for the year we finally saw Star Wars Episode VII, the movie nerds like me have been waiting on since George Lucas originally told some magazine that he visioned the Star Wars saga as a story told in 9 parts. At least that's what Kevin Martin said George Lucas said way back in 5th grade. Sure, The Force Awakens wasn't Lucas's original vision for the franchise but after Ani and Jar Jar I don't think anyone was complaining. Of course while we said hi to new Star Wars wars we also said Goodbye Radio Shack. I don't know where I'll buy transistors and rechargeable batteries anymore.

Oh wait, Amazon.

And now by unpopular demand here are the top 10 search terms that lead people here:

american ninja warrior streaker
nicki minaj ass
american ninja streaker fake
handjob cabin
thunderwear
comic con costume slip
katy perry loses shorts
christmas in october
christina hendricks leather
half-life 3


Half Life 3? Yeah good luck with that one nerds. See you in 2016!