O-Links

Lou Pearlman, who created O-Town on Making the Band, died in prison. I absolutely forgot that this steaming bag of dicks was in prison. Also I almost forgot how much I loved Making The Band. Did you know Making the Band was older that American Idol and premiered the same year Survivor did? I can't believe it's been that long since we were introduced to the boys from O-Town. You see, they're from Orlando and they LOVE Motown. It works on so many levels!

WWE Hall Of Fame Manager Mr. Fuji Has Passed Away At Age 82. I guess it's just going to be stories about dead guys today. Mr Fuji was well knows as one of the greatest heel managers in the WWE but he was also a multiple time tag team champion and a WWE Hall of Famer. It's weird saying you loved Mr Fuji because looking at him through a modern lens his whole gimmick feels really racist. He's kind of like Junk Yard Dog or Kamala in that aspect. Guys that were full of talent and crazy popular but stuck in these really basic gimmicks due to their skin color. I mean he was from Hawaii for cripes sake. I guess it's only fitting that he managed Yokozuna who was really samoan.

Wrestling is weird.

22 Pictures That Prove the World is Full of Jerks. Oh man, this right here happens all the time at every grocery store I go to. The area around the checkout line is always really bad, like someone is doing the math in their head and decides screw it, I can afford those steaks and just leaves them right there. If I ever worked in a grocery store there's a 10% chance I'd end up murdering everyone.

My House!

via Nathan Pyle/Buzzfeed

Oh man isn't this the truth. Now that my kids are older you have no idea how often I catch myself saying the same things my parents said to me. It's horrible. The other day my son asked me why he can't play video games all day and I had no good answer for him. I certainly want to play video games all day I think I just sort of walked away mumbling to myself. Grade A parenting right there.

ToeJame & Earl: Back in The Groove

ToeJam & Earl! Sure, why not? Pretty much any game that was popular in the 1980s and 90s is due for some sort of reboot. I'm crossing my fingers for an arcade remake of that weird ass shooting game where you played Aerosmith and were shooting CDs at crooked record execs. DREAAAAAAM ON, DREEAAAAAAAM ON!

But I digress, this ToeJam & Earl reboot looks cute. It its only a couple bucks on steam or the Wii U I might think about picking it up. It's been awhile since I've visited the planet Funkotron. I hope it's still as funky as I remember.

Teeny Titans: The Review

For the last few weeks I've been wondering what game is going to knock Overwatch off my "kevin only has time to play one video game so this one is it" perch. I never thought it would be a $4 Cartoon Network app on the Kindle but here we are. Teeny Titans is an incredibly fun and addictive game. Not only did it dethrone Overwatch I think it scratched that Pokemon Go itch my Windows Phone can't scratch.

The game is pretty simple. In it you play Robin (of the Teen Titans) just as he discovers an action figure fighting league hat's taking Jump City by storm. Robin being Robin, decides instantly that he must dominate the league. The gameplay is pretty simple, collect figures, battle them against opponents, find and enter tournaments. The game developers recognize the similarity to Pokemon as Robin is often saying that he has to collect them all.

The battles are simply to learn but complex to master. Each character has their own unique combination of attacks and buffs, as the time in each battle round progresses you earn energy to cast these attacks and buffs. As your characters levels up you get more attacks or the attacks do more damage. There's a little bit of an RPG element involved, when you level up you can decide to add points to one of four categories: Luck, Speed, Power, Health. Like I said, it's all very simple but there are so many different combinations of attacks and buffs, it all gets very complex very quickly.

It doesn't hurt that the game is based on Teen Titans Go, a show my kids watch and I enjoy immensely. Characters from both the DC comics universe and the Teen Titans Go universe make appearances, so there's a lot of appeal to the geek crowd.

One of the weirder aspects of playing Teeny Titans was that my son started playing it last Friday and I didn't start playing it until Saturday night giving him a good 24 hours head start on me. It's the first time I've sat there asking him for help with a video game, I'm sure it won't be the last.

Anyway Teeny Titans is SUPER worth the 3.99 it costs on Amazon. It's a bit high for a kindle game but there are no in-app purchases and with the sheer amount of characters the game has it seems like something that will have very high replay value. Go buy it, 3 thumbs up.

Hey There Deathstroke

https://t.co/0NsNzCtGip

— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) August 29, 2016

Earlier this morning Ben Affleck posted this Deathstroke footage, presumably from the new Justice League movie. Looks cool to me, of course looking cool (outside of Superman's suit) has never been a problem for the DC movies. Everyone looks cool, it's just they all say and do stupid things.

Every Jason Statham Kick. Ever

This might be the greatest video on the internet ever. Better than that monkey that scratches his butt, smells it and then falls out of a tree. It's just seven and a half minutes of Jason Statham kicking stuff. I suggest you watch it multiple times.

Top 10 Most Wanted LEGO Sets of Fall 2016!

Wooo doogie, there are some cool Lego sets coming out this fall. Frankly, this video could just be full of the new Lego Dimension sets and it would be pretty accurate. I mean, Gremlins? The A-Team? Adventure Time? Yes and Please. The other sets on this list are pretty cool too. My son really like trains and I've been wanting to get him a Lego train for quite a while, the problem is that most Train sets are about $100 or more. This Holiday train is only 700 pieces, which is a bit smaller than most train sets. If it's only $80 or so we might have a new Christmas decoration this year.

I'll keep on dreaming for that Lego Death Star or the Disney Castle. Those are $300 sets easy. I love me some Lego but there's no way I'm spending that kind of cash on a Lego set. If I'm going to spend $300 on anything it's art and comic books at Rose City Comic Con. Less than 3 weeks away!

That's not The Miz, That's Mike Mizanin

I'm a bit late in posting this but... oh well? Last Tuesday on the WWE network show Talking Smack former WWE champion Daniel Bryan called the Miz a coward, to his face, and we got to see what happens when the Miz decides to stop being polite and start being real. Seriously I haven't see The Miz this worked up since Real World vs Road Rules when someone did something to someone, probably while drunk, it was probably Coral.

The internet pretty much lost it's shit over this promo, saying it was a complete shoot (inside term for when wrestlers go off script and say what they really mean). I'm sure it wasn't a shoot, The Miz would probably get fired if it was, but at the same time I'm pretty sure the Miz is venting some very real frustration. Hopefully he get more opportunities like this, he could and should be one of the biggest heels on Smackdown. Also he was pretty great in Santa's Little Helper. Hopefully that movie gets a sequel.

KFC x WWE: Sando Slam

This KFC commercial debuted during Summerslam last weekend and I swear I can't even. I'm not sure if whoever wrote this is a genius or an insane madman. The Miz doing the running man in a chicken costume CGI'd onto a giant chicken sandwich is like the 6th craziest thing about it. Good to see Ziggler get a clean victory though.

GoldenEye for the Xbox 360?

Apparently there was a small team of developers at Rare that were working on an Xbox 360 port of the N64 classic GoldenEye. The project was mired in legal issues since like a dozen different companies can claim the publishing rights to GoldenEye and eventually abandoned. Some enterprising youtuber captured about 30 minutes worth of gameplay. Looks like a pretty fun game, nothing to crazy or earth shattering. Kind of reminds me of the Tecmo Football remake they did for the 360. It definitely would have been worth 19.99 or so.

Now if we can just get someone to do the same thing with WCW/NWO Revenge. Oh man, I would play the snot out of that.

Microsoft reveals the Xbox Onesie

Yesterday Microsoft unveiled a new XBox One Slim BUT the real news was this pimp-ass Xbox onesie. Look at that thing. It's got pockets and stuff and looks hella comfy. Speaking of comfy man alive did I make a horrible mistake the other day when it comes to comfort.

A few months ago everyone in the office got new office chairs, my boss had this sweet Herman Miller Aeron chair that was only slightly worn but had a blown out piston. Being the dumpster diver at heart that I am, took the chair home and replaced the piston. Of course the Herman Miller piston was unique to the chair and not cheap but hey for $100 I was fixing a $700 office chair. Well the piston arrived yesterday and I put the chair back together and I hate it. It is so uncomfortable. I guess the best case now is to try and sell the chair on craigslist and get my $100 back? Ugh, so much hassle. Anyone want to buy a chair?

Ruin The Links

Did Millennials Ruin the Olympics? I know it's hard for older people (like the kind of people that run TV networks) to wrap their mind grapes around this but younger people just don't sit down in front of the TV as much as previous generations did. It's not a matter of getting them to tune in, it's a matter of taking the content to where they are. I mean, I'm too old to know where they are but I know they're out there. Snapchat maybe?

Former NBC Analyst Dwight Stone Calls It's Track & Field Coverage a Disgrace. Former employee calls out old boss is hardly a surprise, but I love that Pole Vault seems to be right at the forefront of the track and field discussion. Pole Vault hasn't been this relevant since Sergei Bubka was breaking the world record every 2 weeks.

The Four Women Saving Wrestling. First off, that's a fantastic illustration, top notch work by GQ. Secondly, this is a great article about the current state of women's wrestling in WWE. It sucks that it's taken so long but we're finally at the fireworks factory. Bayley's debut to the main roster on RAW last night was probably the highlight of the show and definitely got the biggest reaction from the crowd. I know this might sound crazy but when you give the audience a reason to care about something, as opposed to relegating it to pee breaks between the "important matches" people will actually care about it. Crazy huh?

13 New Marvel Cosplay Variants. In theory I really like these Variant covers, but in execution many of them don't have very interesting backgrounds or dynamic poses. The photos and costumes look a little amateurish. Maybe it's the trade dress? I don't know what it is exactly, I just know that as much as I like cosplay I'm not shelling out 9.99 for any of these.

I Watched a Professional Video Game Tournament

Sunday morning I woke up at about 6am to drive over to a friends house to watch the finals of the Overwatch Atlantic Showdown. In case you didn't hear... after losing to them in an earlier round Rogue beat Reunited in the finals. Just look at how happy they are. They get some money and a shot at a bigger tournament in Germany later in the year.

I was confused during most of it. It didn't help that I was watching it with friends so we were talking over a lot of the commentating. Also most of the commentating was terrible.

I've seen professional gaming on TV before but I've never actually sat down and watched it. It was interesting. Being a team based FPS I can't imagine Overwatch is the easiest game to broadcast. It certainly isn't the easiest game to watch. The feed switched players quite often so just when you thought you were starting to understand what was happening on screen it would change. I guess that's good practice for playing Overwatch itself. Every once in a while there was a static camera that overlooked certain strategic points, I probably would have liked to have seen more of that camera. Still, it was interesting stuff.

My main reason for watching (other than an excuse to see my friends) was to try and pick up some tips or tricks to improve my game. The teams playing however were so out of my league I don't think I really learned anything. I took away a bit of info about the maps and the best spots to try and hold high or low ground but that's about it. It's funny, watching someone pull off a series of headshots doesn't actually help you aim any better. It's almost like I've been lied to by every Hollywood montage ever.

I'll probably check out another tournament if I get a chance to. I doubt I'll be replacing any of my other hobbies with electronic sports but maybe I'll free up a half hour every now and then. Maybe I'll stop watching Little People Big World or something. Ever since the Roloffs got a divorce that show has just been depressing.

WWE 2K17??????????????

First off, as much as I would like to buy the NXT special edition of WWE 2K17, I'm prety sure it's going to cost like $400 and you'll need a wheelbarrow to carry everything it comes with, so that's off the table completely. The question is whether or not I'm interested in picking up the game at all. I mean of course I'm interested, but am I interested enough...

My wife bought me WWE 2K15 a couple Christmases ago and it's a nice little game. Nothing really special to write home about, like any wrestling game that isn't on the N64 the controls are a bit clunky and the "story" mode isn't very good. Still, its fun to pop it in every now and then, beat up my son for a couple minutes (his favorite is Kane).

From most of the accounts I've read on twitter 2K16 wasn't very good, especially not on PC. Maybe this year it will be better, long time WWE video game publisher THQ went bankrupt last year and 2K Games took the titel over. I don't know if that means anything, maybe some fresh eyes will make for a better game? I don't know, it's Friday and I don't have much anything else to post.

Pac-Dog

What the hell is wrong with some people? I mean right now, right this very instant... there are people out there that own dogs, that aren't using them to play a life sized version of Pac-Man. Some People.

Closer Links

No Man's Sky: The Kotaku Review. It's really hard to find a review for No Man's Sky that is able to separate the crashing of the hype train from the actual experience of the game. This Kotaku one does a pretty good job. Some might argue the review is a bit to generous. You could probably claim they're in the pocket of BIG VIDEO GAME but they're owned by Gawker so I'm pretty sure Hulk Hogan runs everything now.

A Closer Look At The Overwhelmingly Sexist Coverage Of Female Olympians. NBC's coverage in particular has been garbage. Yes, most of the sexist stuff has come from print and digital media but just the overall experience of watching the Olympics has been super sub par. Just a couple days ago there was one of the best Pole Vault duels in Olympic history, it ended with the hometown kid setting an Olympic record and the crowd booing the snot out of the French champion until he broke down and cried. NBC spent all of 3 minutes on it. Worse those 3 minutes were spaced throughout 4 hours of coverage. They didn't need to dedicate hours to it but 10 or 15 minutes dedicated to just that event would have done wonders. Of course the final was between a Brazilian and a Frenchman so I guess I can see why NBC wasn't interested.

One day NBC will learn that people from other countries can have interesting stories. In an international competition it's not a bad idea to actually address the rest of the world. If for no other reason than to put a face on the opposition. They're so focused on telling a "good story" they forget most stories have a good protagonist and antagonist.

I know the fact that they tape delay everything is a big hot topic but I don't care about that. I'd rather they show everything in primetime. If you want to watch events live you can find them on the internet or one of the other dozen channels they have. For me it's the almost zero effort, paint by numbers approach they've taken to the games. They could have just replayed their coverage from 2012 and I'll be no one would have noticed.

The Door to Hell, Turkmenistan. Cool little imgur gallery to someone's trip to the Door to Hell in Turkmenistan. If you've never seen or heard of this it's basically a mining accident turned eternal fire pit. It's pretty cool.

Comics Creators of 1995 Predict the Future! Wow, don't ever say that creative types aren't smart. A couple of these answers on what comic books will look like in 20 years are shockingly accurate. Doug Moench in particular with his prediction of an digital distribution model is eerily accurate.

Today's Consoles are an Amazing Value

I ran across this infographic of the original price and the adjust for inflation price of a few notable video game consoles. I have no idea if these are correct, but it was on the internet. I can't imagine anyone would like on the internet.

The first thing that jumps out at me is how ridiculous expensive the Atari 2600 was, $200 in 1977 was no small amount. I think your best values on here are the Dreamcast (natch), Xbox 360 and the Wii. The 360 had a ridiculously long life span (assuming you never got the RROD) and revolutionized the way you play consoles on-line. The Wii and DC fizzled out relatively quickly but considering how revolutionary both were AND how relatively cheap they were I can't not consider them great values. You can take your pick between the 3DO and the Neo-Geo as to which is the worst value. Both consoles were ridiculously expensive and never had a great games library. For the cost of a single Neo-Geo you could buy a SNES and Genesis and a TurboGrafx 16. Being able to swap memory cards with arcade games isn't worth that kind of money.

Smell Ya Later No Man's Sky

I'm sad to say that reviews for No Man's Sky on the PS4 are mixed at best. I'm even sadder to say that reviews for it on the PC are downright bad. There are reports of crashes, significant drops in frame rates, video card compatibility issues, stuff you generally associate with a half-assed PC Port. The game itself sounds alright, it's not like its getting raked over the coals or anything but most of the complaints I've seen is that it gets pretty repetitive, there's very little plot and the random world generator doesn't provide you with as interesting as a gameplay experience as hand crafted worlds do. I've seen a lot of gamers complain that this would be a great $19.99 indy title but it's nowhere near worth $59.99.

Sounds like the hype train has officially left the station, or did it arrive at the station? I'm not sure how that metaphor works. Either way it was fun while it lasted. I guess I'll just have to look forward to Overwatch Season 2. Maybe... and this is a big maybe, I'll pick up No Man's Sky on a steam sale after they work out all the bugs. Of course I still have Fallout: New Vegas, Bioshock Infinite and The Witcher 1-3 sitting in my library unplayed. Maybe I'll just wait for No Man's Sky 2.

Then and Now

I'm Taking my Talents to Rose City Comic Con

Welp, it finally happened. I just bought tickets to a comic book convention that isn't Emerald City Comicon. Yes, I'm only headed a couple hundred miles south to the fine city of Portland, but this is still sort of a big deal for me. The last year or so I've been thinking about how much fun it would be to travel to a bigger con in some other state. Rose City isn't exactly a bigger con, but I can drive there so my out of pocket cost isn't that crazy. I'd have to check but I'm pretty sure two days at Rose City plus a hotel for a night in Portland was less than I paid for tickets to ECCC this year.

Should be fun, Rose City Comic Con had a partnership with the old owners of Emerald City. The website and logo, even the way they distribute tickets via local comic book shops, is very much what ECCC looked like two years ago before they were bought out by BIG COMIC BOOK CONVENTION.

The convention is about a month away so I have a good amount of time to obsess about driving down there and eating lunch alone. Hopefully its a good time. I've never put a bird on anything, so that will be fun.

Prophets of Rage Bulls on Parade Live at Jimmy Kimmel

Did you know that Rage Against the Machine is currently on tour with Chuck D and B-Real as their new frontmen? They call themselves Prophets of Rage and have a new song out but if you look them up on youtube you'll find a ton of video of them performing old Rage Against The Machine songs. Sure they've gone on record saying this is a completely different thing, but this is definitely getting into Vanilla Ice "bum bum bum b d bum" territory here.

This is probably old news to some of you given that they've been on Kimmel and are getting radio play for their first single but I've been living under an Overwatch sized rock and haven't taken notice to anything in pop music for a while.

I never was a HUGE Rage Against the Machine fan. The song writing on their earlier albums was pretty terrible (Killing In The Name Of has barely one verse) but the later Albums including the cover album were really really good. I am however a HUGE Public Enemy fan so pretty much anywhere Chuck D shows up I'm willing to take a listen. He sounds as good as ever here, sure he's basically rework old Public Enemy songs into new verses but who cares. You can do a lot worse than old Public Enemy.

Everything's fine at the WB

Yikes, an anonymous letter to Warner Bros CEO Kevin Tsujihara was posted over on Pajiba yesterday implies that the upcoming Wonder Woman movie is a mess. I mean it does a bunch of other stuff too but I'm only worried about Wonder Woman. For anyone that's seen the last 2 or three DC movies none of it is very surprising. It's a former employee of WB blaming the big boss for all the failures of the studio. I'm not sure why the internet is treating it like it's such a big deal?

I blame him too. I think everyone does. I don't know, go ahead and give it a read yourself. I don't see a whole lot of substance to the letter just a lot of vitriol.

Sure Batman v Superman wasn't as big of a hit as expected and it bombed with the critics. Is anyone surprised they're sticking with Zack Snyder? I mean the movie still made a bunch of money and there are fanboys out there that will defend it to their deaths. At this point I doubt Warner Bros (and to a lesser extant DC comics) have a back up plan if these movies start bombing.

Back to my original point and reason for writing this. I'm bummed to hear that there are rumblings that Wonder Woman might be a mess. The trailer was SOOOOOO good and I think a lot (and I mean a lot) of fans are excited about a female hero soloing finally soloing a film on the big screen. You think people were upset at Superman's portrayal in Man of Steel? You do not want to get Wonder Woman fans angry.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Trailer

Boy howdy was this new Rogue One trailer a sight for sore eyes last night. It was a rough day at work, then when I came home the kids were terrors and I had a soccer game I didn't really feel like going to. After getting home late last night, injured and mosquito bitten, I sat down and watched a couple minutes of NBC's terrible Olympic coverage and low and behold Ryan Seacrest was premiering the new Rogue One trailer.

It's a great trailer but knowing they had to do a ton of reshoots and having just seen Suicide Squad (another movie that had a ton of reshoots) I'm a bit nervous. I really really want these Star Wars spin off movies to actually be good and not just Disney cash grabs.

BABYMETAL - ギミチョコ！！- Gimme chocolate!! (OFFICIAL)

I've been listening to a lot of Babymetal today at work. No one, and I literally mean no one on my floor, is in the office today so I have free range to crank up my music as loud as I want. At some point someone is going to wander in here looking for someone else and they're going to be very confused.

Everything's Fine, Nothing To See Here

Algae blooms are a perfectly normal part of swimming. I swear every other time I take my kid to swim lessons the pool is green and they're just running a local community pool. These big time Olympic venues pretty much have unlimited resources to make sure little Johnny Croatia isn't going to go to the hospital every time he does a half pike twist.

In fact I hear this is a plan on the part of Rio, every day the pool is going to be the color of one of the Olympic Rings. Next up Yellow!

Luke Cage: Official Trailer

A few days ago Netflix and Marvel announced that new seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones wouldn't air until 2018, which is a pretty long time considering the last two seasons aired about 9 months apart from each other. In the meantime we're to Enjoy Luke Cage, Iron Fist AND the new Defenders series (which will included Jessica Jones and Daredevil). I think that's a fair deal. Luke Cage still looks fantastic. Can't wait to binge watch this one.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Did you know the first Resident Evil movie came out 14 years ago? Can you believe they're still making these things? I mean there are worse things you can do with your time than watching Milla Jovovich in some skimpy outfit fighting zombie dogs.

Nothing but Links

No, It's Not Just You, Suicide Squad Makes No Sense. Suicide Squad is not a good movie, all those DC fanboys throwing a fit over its Rotten Tomatoes score need to take a chill pill. Yes, it has it's moments and it's not the complete shit show that Batman v Superman was, still it's not a good movie.

I'm glad this list of plot issues starts out with the most glaring. A team specifically created to take out an evil Superman should not container 4 people without any sort of super powers. Maybe I'll give you Deadshot because he's the worlds greatest assassin and that's something that could be helpful but Captain Boomerang? Harley Quinn? Katana? Rick Flag? This is a fantastic example of DC and WB awkwardly shoehorning their version of a shared universe into the plot weather it fits or not. Don't drop Superman's name, just say you're putting together a team full of expendable idiots to do stuff the government can't get caught doing. It's not hard and it actually makes sense, heaven forbid one of these DC movies makes sense.

It’s real: Ars Technica goes hands-on with the fabled Nintendo PlayStation. It's cool that there's one of these in existence. I mean there's not really much you can do with it but it's just cool that it exists. Imagine how different things would be for both companies if they had kep this partnership together.

50 Shows I Would Watch Based On Nothing But The Title. I'm 99.9% sure that Loose Cannons premieres this fall on USA.

‘Rogue One’ Hi-Res Images Reveal the Best Looks at Gareth Edwards’ Epic Yet. This movie had better be good. All those reshoots they reportedly went through make me nervous. Suicide Squad went through a ton of reshoots and more than likely they made the movie worse. Don't blow this Disney.

San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) Cosplay Music Video 2016

When the posts are few and far between you can pretty much bet I've been on vacation. I've spent the last few days at Great Wolf Lodge doing all kinds of water park stuff like almost drowning and paying WAY too much money for ice cream. The kids had a lot of fun and I feel like I've been run over by a truck so I guess it was a successful trip.

Here's more cosplay from SDCC, Hopefully next week I can get back on track. If I don't hit 30 posts at the end of the month I dock my own pay.

MC LARS x SPOSE - "POKÉMON GO RAP"

Any day I get a new song my MC Lars is a good day, even if it is a song about Pokemon Go. Now I have nothing against Pokemon Go, in fact it's quite the opposite. I REALLY want to play Pokemon Go but I cant because Windows Phone (queue sad fog horn).

The inability to play Pokemon Go might be the last straw for me and Windows Phone. Sure it was great when we migrated e-mail servers at work and my phone was working within seconds while everyone with iPhones was struggling for days. Yes, the camera is fantastic and the polycarbonate shell means I never have to use a stupid looking plastic case. The UI is darn near perfect but what good is a smart phone if the only smart thing it does is play Angry Birds and run a twitter ap from 2012?

Transformers: GENERATION 1 - HERO

This Transformers fan film is absolutely bonkers. The first minute or two with the RC models that are obviously RC models aren't that great but once you get to the dudes in the suits it really takes off. They must have put an assload of work into this. I hope they get a million hits.