The Toys That Made Us: The Review!

I'm on like day 5 of Christmas vacation and the kids are starting to drive me crazy. Hats off to all you stay at home parents.

This afternoon while the kids decided to take a break from trying to kill each other (or me) I watched a couple episodes of Netflix's new documentary series The Toys That Made Us. As the title would lead you to believe it's all about toys. There's only a handful of episodes each devoted to an iconic toyline: Star Wars, He-Man, Barbie and GI Joe. I caught the GI Joe and Star Wars episodes. It had a lot of good info and was infotaining enough for me to plan on watching the next couple episodes.

The series is not without it's flaws, the historical recreations are kind of silly looking and the humor the writers try to interject through the narrator is not ideal. Still, I felt like I learned a bunch about toys that I didn't know, so mission accomplished.

On the GI Joe scale it wasn't quite a Snake-Eyes but it wasn't a Refrigerator Perry either. It's a solid Flint.

SOUL CALIBUR 6 Trailer

This new trailer for Soul Calibur 6 looks really good... Wait, that can't be right. Soul Calibur 6? When did 3, 4 and 5 happen? How old am I? What year is it?

Back in the day Soul Calibur was one of my favorite fighting games because even if you had no idea what you were doing you could still win a few rounds and look super cool doing it. I swear learning how to pull off moves in that game actually made you worse at it. Kind of like how Injustice is now. This could be a fun one to play with Logan, although I'm not sure I want Ivy or Sophitia kickstarting his puberty this early. That's a can of worms I don't want to have to deal with ever.

Death Star Construction Timelapse

If you have two minutes to spare today you could do a lot worse than watching this CGI animation of what assembling the Death Star might have looked like. It's a fun reminder that the Empire is enormous and pretty much has an unlimited amount of resources at their disposal. I mean when the first one blew up they were like "eh, lets make another one but bigger!"

Oh yeah, I saw the new Star Wars movie all the kids are talking about. It was good, very good. I'm not the kind of person to rank movies but it's in the top half I guess? I don't think I liked it better than any of the original Trilogy but I've only seen it once, I've seen the OT like a thousand times so it's kind of hard to compare it right now. I definitely think some of the fans upset over how any characters have changed or what you can or can't do with the force need to relax. It's a movie about space wizards, not a Chilton manual to repairing a car. There's a bit of room for interpretation over how everything works.

I'm excited to go see it again, maybe over Christmas break or something. I actually have a full week off from work for the first time in a year. Who knows how to party?

Not this guy anymore, I might take the bulk of that week on reorganizing my comic books.

The One Device For Everything

READY PLAYER ONE - Official Trailer 1

I could have sworn we've already seen the first official trailer for Ready Player One but Youtube is telling me that this new trailer is in fact the first one. Whatever. I AM NOT EXCITED FOR THIS MOVIE AT ALL.

I really, really like the book and had no idea that all the cool nerds actually hate it. I learned that fact via twitter and have pretty much been reminded of it since it was announced that Senor Spielbergo was directing it. My entire twitter timeline is filled with hot takes over why this is going to be terrible and how the book is the worst. It's depressing because.....

This movie looks terrible. I still love the book but yikes. The trailer like the everything the cool nerds say is problematic with the book turned up to 11. It's not a love letter to the 80s anymore, it's basically just "intellectual Property: The Movie". I don't even know if I'm going to be able to check it out in theaters. Maybe I should just read the book a couple more times. I can take comfort in knowing I'm not looking forward to the movie in a way more special way than all those cool nerds out there that just don't like the book. They think they're so cool with their fancy shoes...

Who Is The Fastest Man Alive?

Half Life 3 Portal 3 A new game confirmed!

I've never seen or played any of the Bridge Constructor games by Head Up games but they just announced a Portal themed game so it quickly caught my attention. It's not exactly Portal 3 or anything but it looks pretty fun. My son loves Portal and he loves these kinds of builder puzzle games on the phone and kindle so I'm sure we'll play a ton of it.

I don't know what it is about Portal and Glados but he absolutely loves that game and the whole lore behind it. He's weird that way, he just picks up these seemingly random fandoms and just runs with it. You should hear him go on and on about how Luigi is the real hero of the Super Mario universe or how the timelines in the Zelda games all work out. It's just weird, hopefully we'll be able to channel all that useless knowledge into something more than just being really good at trivial pursuit like his old man.

Is there an Issue?

My Xbox 360 is making a terrible noise lately. I think something is wrong with the disc player, if you're just watching netflix or whatever its fine but the second you pop in a game it's like a tiny little lawnmower. I don't want to have to get a new Xbox 360, that's ridiculous but my son has like a hundred games he still plays on it so I don't want to just throw it in the trash and forget about it either.

Maybe I should go on craigslist and see if someone wants to trade a stroller or a diaper genie for one? Of course then I'll end up getting murdered via craigslist all because I didn't want to spend $40 at gamestop. There's really no way to win here.

Thomas The Tank Engine: Extreme Stunts!

If you've never struggled for hours getting your wooden train tracks to match up just right you might not find this video that impressive. BUT LET ME TELL YOU HOW AMAZING IT IS.

I swear the person that put this together must have sold their soul to the devil to get Thomas to land that corkscrew at the 28 second mark. I'm totally going to try and do this tonight, only to get extremely frustrated after about 20 minutes and then I'll start randomly yelling at my kids. Sooooo essentially it'll be like every other Monday night.

Batman Ninja First Look

Looks like they're making a Batman anime where Batman gets teleported back in time to feudal Japan and becomes a ninja. Cool? I don't know, looks a thousand times better than Justice League does. Although I do have an issue that they're calling him a ninja and then dressing him up as a samurai. I don't know, Warner Bros does these big animated features a couple times a year and I never watch them. I caught the Dark Knight Returns one on an HBO free preview weekend and it was ok.

But hey it's DC/WB we're talking about "OK" might as well be 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for them.

Avengers: Infinity War Official Trailer

Earlier today marvel released the first trailer for the hotly anticipated Avengers: Infinity War.

It looks fine.

I don't know what to say, I'm not as super excited over this as the rest of the internet it apparently. By no means do I think it looks bad or anything it just kind of looks exactly like I expected it to look. Even the bit at the end with the GOTG played out exactly like my son and I imagined it was going to after seeing Thor: Ragnarok. It's probably just me, I'm still thinking about Ragnarok and not ready to move on to the next movie.

Unless it's Black Panther. Black Panther looks epic.

How about this, call me once I've seen Black Panther, then maybe I'll be in the mood for more Hulkbuster armor or whatever.

Daisy Ridley Builds A Millennium Falcon

The fine folks at Elle Magazine, which I guess is still a thing, had the clever idea of interviewing Star Wars: The Last Jedi star Daisy Ridley while she builds a Lego Millennium Falcon. I'm not sure how they'll put that in the magazine but as far as youtube content goes it's pretty cute.

Smart of them to go with the off the shelf Millennium Falcon and not the new UCS Falcon, that would have been less an interview and more of a Hoop Dreams documentary where the film crew has to live with her for the next 4 years.

You see the UCS Millennium Falcon is like 8,000 pieces and takes hours and hours to build. "It's smart. It's a smart line, and a smart crowd will appreciate it. And I'm not going to dumb it down for some bonehead mass audience!"

Ernesto Is Pretty Bummed

Rampage Trailer: A thing That Exists

I have no idea what studio executive was tripping balls enough to green light a live action movie based off the old Rampage video game franchise but God bless him. Or her, could easily have been a lady.

This is amazing, I mean Rampage hasn't been relevant in years and here we are, it's staring The Rock for pete's sake. What a time to be alive, outside of the political mess that's on the brink of ruining everything for everyone, if you were a geek in the 80s and 90s you couldn't ask for more. All those nerds are adults now and they're just churning out the most self-indulgent, nostalgic, media your 12 year old self could have possibly hoped for.

I mean if they can make a Rampage movie the sky's the limit. We're 6 months away from a Alf Pog 12 part mini-series on HBO.

EA Says: "Downvote This, Pleebs"

Yesterday a gamer went on Reddit's very popular Battlefront subreddit and voiced their opinion that EA was gouging gamers in the soon to be released Battlefront II. Some poor idiot from EA responded by inserting their foot very very far in their mouth.

The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.

As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we're looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we'll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.

We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.

Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.

The response garnered 683,000 downvotes, a locked thread and a thousand memes on every major social media platform.

The original complaint is that in a game that costs $59.99, you're going to have to play 40 hours to unlock a single popular character like Luke or Darth Vader. You of course can skip those 40 hours if you want to pay for extra credits or lootboxes. It's WAY more confusing than it needs to be but the The Verge has a pretty good rundown of what's going on here. EA has already backtracked on the policy a bit, but frankly I think they made the policy outrageous in the first place so people would accept the nerfed version. A version what's still a pretty shitty monetization strategy. They're treating Battlefront II, a full price, giant release from the biggest game publisher as a free to play game you might download on your phone.

Some old timey gamers like myself might harken back to the days of Street Fighter II, where if you wanted to play as M. Bison you had to beat him first, but I don't think this is very comparable. We're talking an on-line shooter, in theory you're competing against other games, some of whom may have done the grind or paid the extra $$ to unlock characters and features you can't use while trying to beat them. It's more like playing Arcade Street Fighter II and your opponent has access to all the bosses because they put in two quarters instead of just one.

But Kevin, don't you love Overwatch? Doesn't that game have lootboxes and micro-transactions? Aren't you a giant hypocrite?

Well yes, I'm sure I am but not over this. Overwatch does have lootboxes you can both earn while playing and buy. However none of the items you get in Overwatch lootboxes effect gameplay in any way. All the characters and maps are available to everyone. New characters, maps and gametypes are added all the time for free. The stuff you get in lootboxes is 100% cosmetic, it fun to have cool new skins for your favorite heroes but it doesn't change anything about your character, other than the way it looks or sounds.

Of course EA isn't the first company to pull this kind of garbage. Big ticket video games cost a shit load of money to make these days and publishers are trying to squeeze consumers out of their cash anyway they can. Season passes are somehow just a thing we're completely ok with these days, which boggles my mind. I mean as long as consumers keep paying it companies will keep doing it. It's one of the reasons I'm cool with just buying old games on Steam, once a game is a year or two old all that additional content is usually included.

Disney Is Doing Big BIG Stuff

Earlier today during an Earnings call Disney CEO Bob Iger dropped a bombshell of Star Wars news on all us nerds. Disney is developing a live action Star Wars TV show that will air on the soonish to be launched, as yet untitled, Disney Streaming Service. He didn't stop their, they made it official that the Marvel Deal with Netflix would end in like a year or something AND that they were working on a brand new trilogy or Star Wars movies. This new trilogy will introduce new characters set in a part of the Star Wars Universe we've never seen.

Big stuff right?

I'm sure the speculation will run rampant over what the TV show and the new Trilogy will be about. Like a decade ago when Lucas was still in charge of his own universe he had supposedly written 50 episodes of a Star Wars show that at the time was just too expensive to shoot. I'm sure this new show won't be related to that at all, but its a fun fact for everyone. I'm hoping the TV show follows some smugglers or better yet some bounty hunters. I'm kind of hoping the movie takes place during the Knights of the Old Republic era. I know in this day and age prequels are all tired and junk but how cool would that be to visit a time and place where Sith were everywhere, not just one or two crusty old dudes hiding in shadows.

As far as the Marvel stuff goes, I don't even know if that was new news. Netflix bought out Mark Millar's Millarworld brand of comics specifically so they could get some sweet superhero content they actually own. It's all about owning that content these days. I know everyone creamed their jeans the other day when it was rumored that Disney would be buying Fox's film side because we could finally get the Fantastic Four and the X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. BUT there's more to Fox than just terribly run Marvel movies. Owning all of Fox's films would be a HUGE get for them when it comes to launching their streaming service. Disney has a lot of content for kids and families to offer but not as much adult fare as other movie studios. Sure Fox is a pretty terrible studio but they've had big, well respected hits recently like the Martian, Life of Pi, or the Taken franchise.

It sounds like the deal was put on the backburner but there's zero chance Disney doesn't try to keep adding to its library in anticipation of their new service. I could write a whole other blog post about how it's actual quite bad that Disney is growing like this but I don't want them to blacklist me from seeing the next The Last Jedi.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi "Awake"

Merry Christmas, it's a new Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer. Although I'm not sure you can call it a trailer if it's only 45 seconds long. Is there such a thing as a post trailer teaser? That's more like what this is.

There's a lot of new stuff in this that hasn't been shown in the previous trailers so if you're avoiding even the most minor of spoilers it's probably not a bad idea to skip it.

We're only a month and a half away, do I need to start thinking about buying tickets? I don't HAVE to see it opening night but it would be fun to at least see it opening weekend. After months of my son saying he doesn't want to see it, now he says it looks ok. Maybe I'll check it out Saturday afternoon on opening weekend. Easier to get free babysitting for the girl on a Saturday. Obviously I'm not the first person to point out how expensive going to a movie is but holy jebus. A family of three with popcorn AND babysitting. That's like $100 for a night out. I could start working on building my own Astromech for $100. That's the reason I'm seeing Thor: Ragnarok next weekend instead of this weekend and trust me I REALLY want to see Ragnarok.

Oh well, I guess that's the price of doing business. At least when I'm old my kids won't throw me in the cheapest home they can find. Will you Logan? LOGAN?

Happy Halloween!

Confidence

Tiny Links

Super Nt is a $190 FPGA, HDMI SNES. Woo Doggie, this here is a sexy product I don't think anyone is going to buy. It's a SNES Clone, not an emulator it uses actual hardware reverse engineered from Nintendo to replicate the SNES experience. Even the SNES or NES Classics Nintendo is releasing are microcomputers running emulation software. The big difference between the NT and the SNES though is that it has native 1080p output via HDMI. Again, it all sounds very cool but who is this for? People with a large SNES cartridge library but a broken SNES? Or people too lazy to buy an HDMI adapter?

SNES Classic: The Kotaku Review.Speaking of Retro gaming, Kotaku did a pretty nice review of the SNES Classic. Seeing pictures of it in action you really get a sense of just how small it really is. It's only about twice the size of my Raspberry Pi, which is tiny. It definitely sounds like a fun toy, but at almost $100 it's a hard pass for me. My entire RetroPi set up cost me about $30. If this thing was closer to $50 I'd say it would be a must buy if for nothing else than Star Fox 2.

The 11 Best Tiny Houses You Can Buy on Amazon. I'd buy a tiny house on Amazon. I think putting one int he backyard would be super cool. Instead of a man cave I could have a man house. A place away from the family to do all my man things. Or maybe we put the kids in there and just check on them once a week or so. What could go wrong?

Nostalgia Overload: Oldschool Video Game Magazine Ads LOL, look at this dork. Who plays a game like that? Does he think it's one of those keyboard guitars?

New Black Panther Trailer

Holy Mackerel, this movie looks super cool. I mean it looks so cool that I'm wondering why it took Marvel 3 Iron Man movies, 2 Avengers movies, 3 Captain America movies, 3 Thor movies, 2 freaking Guardians of the Galaxy movies to get here. This movie is going to be huge and Marvel and DC are going to look stupid for not pulling the trigger on a POC Superhero movie sooner.

And no as much as I love Blade it doesn't count, that movie came out well before the golden age of superhero movies we've been living in since 2006.

Neither does Catwoman or Hancock.

I'm a pretty big fan of the Black Panther (I have a pretty cool print of him by Larry Stroman on my wall at work), not so much the current run by Ta-Nehisi Coates, more the Christopher Priest run from the 2000s. Just based off the trailer its hard to say exactly where they're pulling the story from, looks like it might be sort of a Greatest Hits of BP stories, which I'm fine with. Marvel Studios has shown they're very good at distilling complex stories into 2 hour popcorn fare.

If if superhero movies aren't your thing, it'll be fun when Fox News tries to report on how well the movie does at the box office. 2 to 1 odds at least one of their anchors thinks this movie is about the political Black Panthers.

America's Giant Fighting Robot

A couple years ago a group of American nerds challenged a group of Japanese nerds to a good old fashioned Giant Robot Fight and well... here we are. Tuesday, October 17th at 7PM PT, the fight will be streamed on Twitch. Because why not put it on twitch? I think in October Discovery Science channel is wall to wall pumpkin chunking coverage.

I guess the fight has already taken place. In a very cricket like pace, the whole thing took like a week. They had days between rounds to get the robots back into fighting shape (which doesn't say a whole lot about the robots). Sounds like we're still pretty far away from our inevitable Robot Jox future. Thanks Obama.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Trailer

Guess what? Star Wars: The Last Jedi still looks pretty cool. Shocking right?

Get that Sauce

Every once in a while you run across a story, neigh, an event that's just so craptacular you become obsessed with it for way longer than necessary. This last weekend Sauce-Gate was that story.

In case you were blissfully out of the loop let me fill you in: A couple weeks ago (maybe months, I don't care) Rick, from the adult swim cartoon Rick and Morty, went on some screed about McDonald's Szechuan Sauce, a limited run dipping sauce available WHEN THE MOVIE MULAN PREMIERED. For whatever reasons this really hit a nerve with all the Pickle Rick's out there watching at home and a groundswell of demand for Szechuan Sauce started to... well, swell. Someone in the McDonald's promotions department thought they were being clever and were like "f-yeah" let's give the nerds what they want. They ran some posters and announced that for one day, October 7th, a few participating stores would be getting the cartoon sauce, so have at it nerds. It did not go well.

Several stores had no idea they were on this promotional list, a few stores got posters but no sauce, some got sauce but only like 20 packets. Demand was so great that at some locations, and oh I wish I was making this up, the POLICE HAD TO BE CALLED. The pictures on twitter were amazing. A few McDonald's locations had hundreds of fans, line up for hours only to get turned away. The outrage on the net was so strong, it trended on twitter all day, it was really amazing. I still can't stop thinking about it, hence this post.

By Sunday most of the sane people on the internet were endlessly dunking on those complaining they didn't get their cartoon sauce. McDonald's gave one of those really half-hearted corporate apologies and said later this winter they would make a boatload more sauce and come to your house and pour it down your throat until you choked. At least that's what I assume it said, I didn't read it that close.

On a related note I tried a couple episodes of Rick and Morty this weekend after hearing about all the hub-bub. It was pretty funny. Not drive around all day looking for a McDonald's with a couple packets of special sauce funny, but pretty funny. On a cartoon comedy scale of The Cleveland Show to Archer, it's like Season 11 of the Simpsons, where you're still laughing but you're also wondering why the show isn't as good as it was anymore. I'll probably watch a few more episodes but not until I catch up with Lucha Underground (only 10 episodes behind!)

Pacific Rim: Uprising Trailer #1

Hey kids, this looks really cool. I know some people were disappointed with how shallow the first Pacific Rim was but jebus, a robot hit a kaiju in the face with a cargo ship. What more are you looking for? I'm a bit disappointed they played switcharoo with the main character BUT John Bedoya is awesome so in the end it'll probably end up an upgrade. I'm definitely looking forward to canceling the apocalypse again.

2017 Dragon Con Cosplay Showcase

It looks like Rose City Comic Con isn't a big enough comic book conventions to have some videographer come in and do one of these slick cosplay showcases, so here's one from Dragon Con which took place the weekend before ECCC. Dragon Con is still pretty much THE place to Cosplay. San Diego gets the most mainstream media attention and technically New York is the biggest convention but for whatever reason Dragon Con is the one where like every serious cosplayer goes to flex their creativity. If I was a single dude it's also the convention I'd probably most want to go to as I've heard it's like the convention for hooking up. Again, who knows why. The heat? Good BBQ? Adequate mass transit? We'll probably never know why....

Do Your Human Impression

Red Dead Redemption 2: Official Trailer #2

Wow, this game looks neat.

I'm not thrilled with idea of getting a new console just to play it but I guess at this point that's sort of tradition. When the original Red Dead Redemption came out my Xbox 360 Red Ring of Deathed me and I was already at my second free refurbish so I had to go out a buy a new one. I think they were $199 at the time.

$260 to play my favorite game of all time was well worth it though.

I'm glad this comes out in spring of 2018 and not for Christmas. I'm pretty set on getting the family a Nintendo Switch this Christmas and I don't want to have to deal with buying two new consoles right around the same time. Even I recognize that's pretty terrible money management.

Man, why can't this just come out for PC instead? Why does Rockstar hate the PC?

Shark!

TOMB RAIDER - Official Trailer #1

Yesterday my tweet feed got really worked up over the premier of the new Tomb Raider trailer. There were a lot of "Is this the first good video game movie?" takes, which first off is ridiculous. Mortal Kombat was the first good video game movie. Secondly, I don't think this trailer looks that great. Call me an old crank but this just looks like 2 hours of the cut scenes from the video game.

Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE the new Tomb Raider video games and I think they're ripe for adaptation but this almost looks to close to the source material. The action scenes don't look super cool, they kind of look ridiculous and full of questionable CGI. Also if the movie follows the breakneck pace of the video game, we might as well call it Crank 3: Jungle Boogaloo.

Which I guess would be cool... I don't know. I think I just talked my self into liking this trailer.

Jimmy Kimmel on Bill Cassidy’s Health “Care” Bill

I'm not sure when Jimmy Kimmel became the voice of political reason but F it, Donald Trump is president, anything's possible. Last night he gave a very clear and concise reason why the new Cassidy Graham healthcare bill is straight trash. He didn't end his monologue with girls bouncing on trampolines or anything but it's still worth your six minutes.

The thing I don't think most people realize or acknowledge is that insurance companies are these huge profit driven businesses. They only make money by paying out less than people pay in. I feel like a lot of Americans believe insurance is some sort of savings account, you pay in every month and when you get sick you get to make a withdrawl. That's why you see so many people fighting for lower premiums for younger healthy people. They're not pulling as much money out why should they put more money in? Why should they pay to cover all sorts of procedures they'll never, or likely never, use? They don't want to admit that the basic insurance model is socialism, with the insurance company taking 30% off the top. Everybody contributes so that the people that need to use it can.

It's a fine model when you're talking about your car or your house. It's terrible when we're talking about real human beings. No insurance company should say "sorry, you've had enough" when it comes to medical treatment. Even the shittiest people are priceless, and private insurance hinges on putting a price on everything.

On the plus side, I feel like we're closer than we've ever been to adopting a single payer system. Just ten years ago it would have been political suicide. Now the most popular Senator in the country is actively pushing a plan. That's kind of amazing.

I'm not crazy, when it comes down to it I'm pretty jaded against all things politics. I'm sure that a single payer system would be a giant clusterfuck too, but our current system, and the old system the GOP wants to go back to, is straight up class warfare, where the rich and the healthy succeed and the sick and the poor either die or go bankrupt trying to stay alive. That's about as far from the American dream as you can get.

Sorry for getting on my soapbox, next post will be about video games I promise.

Success

Unmaking Links

The Making and Unmaking of Iggy Azalea. This is a really interesting article on the rise and fall(?) of old Igloo Australia. It's funny because after reading the article it's hard to say that she didn't work hard for her success, but you could definitely make the argument that even with all that work she didn't really "earn" it. It'll be interesting to see if she ends up a flash in the pan or if her career can recover from some very strong criticism.

Hydra And Red Skull Cosplay Banned By Rose City Comic Con. I've seen these Hello Kitty Nazis at ECCC before. I guess they were at RCCC somewhere, also there was another group just dressed up as SS troopers that somehow I missed. I'm pretty fine with the ban. Portland has a bit of an issue with Neo-Nazis so even ignoring the current political climate I can see how they would want to address this in this way. Frankly with all the nut jobs out there and mass shootings going on I get a bit uncomfortable anytime I see cosplayers in realistic military gear. I'm cool with fake weapons and like Halo combat armor but some of these guys that want to dress up like characters from COD are just a bit unnerving. I guess that's a weird hair to split but I'm totally splitting it.

Fan Films to Watch Right Now. I've seen the Punisher short film listed here and it's definitely legit, really makes me wish Thomas Jane had gotten one more chance at Frank Castle. The Power Rangers one is a bit less engaging, it's too over the top and in love with its own concept. Still if you have a few minutes to burn it worth checking out this list, there's some other good ones on here.

Rose City Comic Con 2017: The Review

It was fun! The end.

Ok, I'll elaborate. This last weekend I drove down to Portland to attend Rose City Comic Con for my second time. It was a lot of fun. The convention is about half the size of Emerald City Comicon (yes, the two conventions spell the words comic con differently) but half the size is still 40,000 attendees over 3 days. It's a big convention that attracts a good amount of celebrities and comic book professionals. Since it's about a 3 hour drive I spent the night in Portland on Saturday. The original plan was to go down with my wife but something else popped up so I was flying solo.

Did I mention already that I left my pass (ie ticket) at home? Yep, I arrived to the Oregon State Convention Center about 20 minutes after the doors opened Saturday morning to realize that I had left my freaking pass back in Seattle. I'm very lucky that the convention staffers were awesome and my wife was smart texting me a couple pictures of my pass at home and I was able to get a replacement. Man, I don't know what I would have done. Drive back home? Buy tickets at the door and blow my budget? All the options were pretty crappy.

The convention itself was pretty standard RCCC fare. I bought some comics, visited some writers and artists, watched a few panels. More or less the same stuff you can do at Emerald City except there's more space to walk around because the Oregon Convention Center has a great layout. Getting to panels is a bit weird because for some reason RCCC insists on labeling the panel rooms something different than what the convention center does so none of the signage matches. However, once you've found a room they're easy to find again. I didn't catch any of the big celebrity guests this year. Weird Al was there but his panel was on the day before I drove down, William Shatner's was too late on Sunday considering I had to drive back home that night. The rest of the big celebs that actually interested me a bit had conflicts with some smaller panels on comics that I really wanted to see.

I spent about half of what I spend at ECCC, which is good because I'm still broke from plumbing issues last month. The comic book selection was great. Lots and lots of dollar bins. You can always find high priced key issues at a convention but finding really good stuff in the dollar bins is tough. I also bought some prints from a few of my favorite artists and got a couple sketch books. The best part of the whole thing is I got really inspired to produce more art. I've even committed myself to getting a booth at an artist alley in the near future. Not at RCCC or ECCC, those tables costs a ton, but at one of the smaller conventions that have popped up around the region over the last few years. Don't get me wrong most of the artists at RCCC draw circles around me, but there were a couple booths where I was like "eh, I do better work that this". And at a smaller convention the overhead is pretty low... anyway this isn't what I was writing this review.

I'm looking forward to going back to RCCC next year. I'd love to spend the full 3 days but man, getting a hotel was pricey. Also I don't think I want to go by myself next year. If my wife can't come I'm definitely taking my son. Walking around all day looking at cool stuff but not really sharing it with anyone is kinda boring. It's cool for a couple hours but then you find yourself eating dinner alone at the bar and it's like... ugh. Making friends with strangers is a game for 20 year olds, not 40 year olds.

Economics 101

Best of Eric Andre Show

You ever watch the Eric Andre show? I've caught a handful of episodes when I'm up late looking for something on TV to drown out the silence while drawing. At times it's really funny. Kind of reminds me of the old Tom Green show. When your entire schtick hinges on zany behavior it's inevitable that some things will fall flat. The 46 minute highlight reel is probably too long for most to sit through but I watched about half of it the other night. Lots of good stuff in there.

I read somewhere that a lot of the guests he had on his show were completely unfamiliar with it so some of those shocked reactions are genuine. I'd love to see some follow up on that, like a quick interview with the guests after they're leaving the studio. It looks like a few celebrities had fun with it, while others probably fired their publicist.

Happy Force Friday Everyone!

Did you know it was Force Friday today? Do you even know what Force Friday is? Basically it's the day our Disney overlords have decided to make merch for the next Star Wars movie available in stores. Some stores are doing "events" but for the most part its a big social media ploy to get people talking about cool new toys.

And no new Star Wars toy is cooler than the UCS (Ultimate Collectors Series) Millennium Falcon. It's been a good 10 years since Lego has released a UCS Falcon and this one makes the old one look like a pile of crap. It's roughly 7,000 pieces strong and will only run you about $800. I'm not going to lie, I'm tempted to buy one and store it in my garage for the next 10 years. The UCS Falcon that they made 10 years ago is incredibly expensive on the secondary market. It cost something like $300 new and now in the box unopened they can go for around $1,500.

Considering this is the second UCS Falcon they've made and it's already really expensive, I doubt you'll see that some sort of return on investment as the original set but it's still pretty tempting. Of course if my son ever found out that I bought one of these and never let him play with it he's probably kill me in my sleep. Maybe I'm better off just admiring it from afar.

Street Fighter II anyone?

Capcom, in conjunction with some company I've never heard of called iam8bit, is re-releasing Street Fighter II for the SNES. It's kind of cool until you realize it costs $100. Seriously $100 for a 16 bit game that was released 25 years ago. It glows in the dark and comes with a box, so I guess that's worth the extra $75 it costs at Game Lobster.

Frankly if it's not Turbo or Championship edition I'm not paying more than $9.99 for it. If I can't use E.Honda's hundred hand slap, and move, what's the point?

Marvel's Inhumans - War For Their World

Sooooo, Marvel's Inhuman's debuts in theaters this Friday. Have you bought your tickets yet? Has anybody bought their tickets yet? Marvel may have spruced up the CGI on Medusa's hair but man, this still doesn't look that great. Certainly not "I'm gonna pay $15 and go see this in the theater" great.

I guess it's cool and all that a concept as weird as the Inhumans is getting a TV show but man I just wish it didn't have to look so mediocre. It doesn't look like the next coming of Game of Thrones, it doesn't look like the next coming of BSG or The Expanse, it doesn't look like the next Lost, it looks like some middling studio exec put the minimal amount of effort into combining all three of those shows. I mean, if this was exclusive to Yahoo or Crackle it would seem just about right.

Who knows, maybe this will be awesome. I've been known to be wrong every now and then. Just last Sunday I thought it would be a good idea to start watching the Game of Thrones finale at 11:30pm. It was not ideal.

You Can All Be Lesbians

I have never heard of the CBC show Mr D, that this clip comes from but I don't think it really matters. It's funny because kids have no frame of reference to things from the past.

Usually I say that sarcastically but in this case, it's actually very funny. My son has asked me a few questions just like this when I start talking about how it was like when I was a kid. The other day he wanted to know what WWII was like...

An impressive Japanese Rube Goldberg machine

Ever since Chunk did the truffle shuffle I've liked Rube Goldberg machines. There's just something satisfying about watching them do their thing, physics in action and all that jazz. This one popped up on my tweet feed yesterday and hoooo baby is it good. The thing they do with the flipping whiteboard might as well be considered magic. If they did this 100 years ago I'm positive they would have been burned at the stake.

Overwatch: Rise and Shine

Two Overwatch shorts in as many days? It's Christmas in August. Speaking of Christmas, it's getting pretty close to Christmas time.

Yeah, I know I sound like an insane person. But a large part of my job consists of projecting estimated sales 3-4 months in advance and guess what's 3-4 months from now? Plus the other day at Costco they were already selling Halloween costumes. Crazy huh? Pretty soon we're going to have two shopping seasons. Christmas and January.

I'm pretty pumped for Christmas. This will probably be the first year my daughter gets it 100% and the last year my son is still going to believe in Santa. I've already heard some kids he knows talking shit about the jolly guy so I wouldn't be surprised if actually had issues this year.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, this Overwatch short is pretty cool. Like I said yesterday Blizzard put so much work into the history and background of these characters. It's pretty amazing. I can't think of another first person shooter that cares about the characters as much as Overwatch does. Sure some shooters build these really incredible worlds but more often than not they don't put half as much thought into the characters than inhabit it. You can take the main characters from Gears of War, Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield and they're completely interchangeable. They're not so much as characters but a projection of what the developers think is hero wish fulfillment.

Of course well developed characters doesn't keep me from wanting to smash my keyboard in every time Hanzo hits me with a scatter arrow from across the map. Stupid Hanzo.

Junkertown: "The Plan"

Blizzard announced a new map for Overwatch yesterday. As per their usual they did it with some flair. Over the last year a few people have asked me what I like so much about Overwatch and I'd say the biggest reason is that the game has TONS of personality. There are plenty of great FPS out there but short of Boarderlands I can't think of a game with such interesting and fun characters.

I mean I've been playing Halo for 15 years and I can tell you maybe 2 things about Master Chief. I've been playing Overwatch for just over a year and I can tell you a ton about all 25 playable heroes. Sure, a game has to be fun to play. That's like rule one about making video games. But if you can make the game fun to play AND have a bunch of fun, interesting, diverse characters? That's where you really strike gold.

Speak RX-1

The President's a Moron

Man if you missed the presidents 15 minute press conference on "infrastructure improvements" yesterday you should really check it out. Odds are you've probably been bombarded with quotes from it already but in my humble opinion you really need to watch the whole thing.

The immediate takeaway is that he talk like a child who forgot to study for a book report. For someone who has the best words he sure hooks onto one small phrase and repeats it into the ground. I lost count at the number of times he says he wanted to get the whole story before making a statement. It's especially stupid when you remember he did put out a statement immediately after the events in Charlottesville and it was intentionally garbage. If you take him at his own word he didn't wait to get all the facts to lay blame on "both sides" of the protest there.

It's just all so amazing. Yesterday the president went on national tv and said that there were lots of fine folks on the alt-right side of the protest. I guess they just happened upon the protest being held by nazis and white supremacists by accident? Anyway, I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet but I've heard this documentary on Charlottesville put together by Vice is pretty much required viewing. I'm going to check it out on my lunch break, for some reason I doubt I'll be less outraged after watching it.



The Amazing thing is this won't hurt the president at all. The odds were pretty good he wasn't getting re-ellected in 2020 anyway and there's zero chance a republican controlled congress is going to impeach him over been too casual with supporting racists. Half of those guys in congress owe their jobs to racists, they're not about to bit the hand that feeds them now. They'll just make some statements for a couple weeks and boom, tax cuts for the rich next month. Ugh, this country is so depressing.

Don't Worry Son...

First Look of Josh Brolin as Cable

A couple hours ago Fox (by way of Ryan Reynolds) released the first couple pictures of Josh Brolin as Deadpool's # frenemy Cable. For those not completely in the know Cable is one of the X-men. He's a mutant from the future sent back in time to stop Apocalypse before his rise to power, kind of like if the Terminator was a good guy. At this point he's probably the most popular/well know mutant to not have appeared in any movie yet. Dude was super popular in the 90s, so much so that he's what a lot of people think of when they think of terrible comics from the 90s. It's too bad, when Cable came out he was different an interesting, it's not Cable's fault that he was so popular they tried giving guns and leather jackets to the Avengers in an attempt to look cool and hip.

But back to the point, Josh Brolin looks really cool here. So much of what Cable is about is just in the way he looks. I mean you don't need to know a thing about him and just by looking at this you can tell he's some sort of grizzled war vet, with cybernetic parts, the glowing eye hints at some mutant powers to come. Here's hoping Deadpool 2 is just as good if not better than the first one. It feels like Fox is just starting to really get a hang of what to do with the X-men, it would be too bad if they took took a set back all of the sudden.

Old Links

Atari’s new Ataribox console will be like an NES Classic. As much fun as it it to imagine an Atari revival this thing looks like it's going to be a huge failure. There are already a half dozen different Atari retro consoles on the market and it's not like anyone is dying to play Yar's Revenge again. Don't get me wrong, I loved my 2600 when I had it but Atari games aren't that fun to play these days. I'll play combat or boxing for a few minutes but that's about it. This thing has Ouya written all over it.

By the by, I know all these links are super old but I bookmarked them and never got around to using them last month. I'd like to say that this month I won't be just as busy and will have more time to blog but that's a total lie. I'll probably be lucky if I get to 10 posts this month.

Frank Darabont's Furious Emails to His Walking Dead Coworkers: 'Fuck You All'. The e-mails they have published here are pretty funny. It's obvious at the time Darabont was writing them he either thought he was getting fired or really wanted to get fired. It's amazing to think looking back on it now that Season 2 was pretty much DOA due to AMC's insistence on cutting the show's budget in half. Now a days its the biggest thing on TV. The showrunners could probably get an old space shuttle if they wanted to do a couple zombies in space episodes.

Star Wars' Firing Reveals a Disturbance in the Franchise. Lots of people wrote about this but the Hollywood Reporter probably had the best breakdown of the exact reasons Lord and Miller were fired from Han Solo. It's pretty interesting stuff and goes to show you Disney is not messing around with the Star Wars franchise. That's probably a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. We're probably never going to see a director go completely off the rails and turn in a crap movie but on the other hand there's no room for a real talented auteur to come in and carve out a piece of lore for him or herself.

Japan’s Most Ridiculous Wrestling Promotion Hits Somewhere Near The Big Time. DDT-Pro Wrestling is crazy pants. Like they have some ultra serious looking matches with some of the hottest young talent around and then they'll follow it up by putting a title on a table. Like literally a figuratively, the table's the champ now. I wish I could justify spending the cash on their subscription service but I'm already spending too much on other stuff every month. In the meantime I'll just have to keep following them on twitter, which is still pretty fun.

2017 SDCC Cosplay

Our friends at Sneaky Zebra (I say friends because one of them e-mailed me like 3 years ago) posted this cosplay video of last week's big ol San Diego Comic Con. It starts out with a guy firing up his Zune so you know it's going to be good.

Speaking of Zune's did you know Apple officially discontinued the iPod nano and shuffle today? It's tough finding a stand alone mp3 player these days. I know its because the market for them is pretty dried up but it still sucks. I actually prefer using one over just my phone but I know I'm in the super duper minority. The last one I bought was made by some Chinese company I'd never heard of. Maybe I should stock up on them in case they all disappear forever.

Overwatch League Players Will Get Paid

Quite a few months ago I passed along the info on this new Overwatch League thing Blizzard is trying to create. Essentially they're setting up their own Lingerie Football League but it's for video games and there are less wedgies (I assume). Since the official announcement details haven't exactly been flying from camp Blizz but today they had a big blog post that highlights some specifics of the new league. The big one is how much players will make.

The League minimum is 50K and they're requiring team owners to offer health insurance, some sort of 401K/retirement program and housing during the season. That's not bad. I mean it's weird/not weird that they expect you to move into a house with your team. That's pretty standard stuff for professional gaming I guess, but it's certainly not ideal if you want any sort of family life.... which I guess if you did you wouldn't be a professional video gamer, but whatever, I digress.

The minimum salary will be boosted by winnings earned in the league and tournaments. $3.5 million is supposedly up for grabs during the first season. On paper it sounds great, it will be interesting to see if Blizzard can make it all work in practice. One of the big obstacles I see stopping it is presentation. You need viewers for a league like this to work and there's a pretty big difference in watching streams on twitch and actually watching an entire 6v6 match up. Fighting games and strategy games lead themselves to showing all or most of the action on one screen. With an Overwatch tournament you have to be constantly switching first person points of view to tell what's actually happening in a match. The one tournament I watched was ok but it was less than ideal. The presentation leaned heavy on the announcers explaining what was happening.

I wish everyone involved luck, the more professional video gaming out there the better. My son is going to need a job eventually.

Thor: Ragnarok SDCC Trailer

One of the trailers that made a lot of hay at San Diego Comic Con last weekend was this new trailer for Thor: Ragnarok. It's not hard to understand why, it's funny there's some cool looking action and the character/art design is really interesting bad ass.

Almost no one claims the first two Thor movies as their favorites of the Marvel Universe, which is a shame, I think Thor is a much more interesting character than Iron Man or Captain America. Marvel just hasn't found the right mix of action, humor and drama to really connect with the audience. So far Ragnarok looks like it's on the right track. It's like the made a Guardians of the Galaxy movie with the Avengers and Jeff Goldblum.

This comerical for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is perfect

I did not enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 as much as I did the first one, however this commercial for GOTG2 is pretty much the most perfect thing ever. I want to live in this commercial or at the very least get a cool polo/sweater combo like this smooth dude here. If you look closely he has two collars popped. TWO!

Ah! Bear Attack!

ESPN: Not a Fan of Virtual Butts

Last Sunday ESPN broadcast the EVO 2017: Street Fighter V finals. Yeah, professional video games on ESPN. It's been happening for a while now so that's not the surprise here. The surprise here is that ESPN made a gamer change his fighter's skin because he was playing as Cammy and Cammy has been all about the thong since 1993. Specifically he had to change from Cammy's default outfit to her "formal-wear" DLC outfit.

It's kind of funny to me that ESPN would have an issue with this just a week after they shipped their body issue. That thing is full of butts. Just butts everywhere. Also ESPN shows a lot of Beach Volleyball and while those ladies aren't jumping around in thongs the typical beach volleyball outfit shows a lot of cheek. Maybe they were worried that since this was a video game tournament there would be more kids watching? I don't know, seems like a weird hair to split.

Abandoned Soviet Space Shuttles: Exploring The Unbeaten Path

I think I posted a link a while ago about the abandoned Russian Military base that still houses one of their space shuttles. If I didn't I apologize because this is kind of a cool history thing. Essentially the Soviet shuttle program was abandoned decades ago and the base was just shuttered but a lot of stuff was left in it, including an unfinished shuttle.

The base is pretty well knows but I guess it's not the easiest thing in the world to get to, there's still active Russian security keeping people out of the site. These guys from this YouTube channel I've never heard of made the trek out there and took a ton of cool footage of the base. Apparently they lost a lot of their footage but what they have is well worth taking a quick break from TPS reports.

Get Bent Komo 4

A couple weeks ago John Oliver did a segment on Sinclair Broadcast Group, highlighting how they're requiring stations they own to run conservative editorials and how they're trying to expand their footprint across the nation. Around the same time The Seattle Times also did a story about Sinclair focusing on how a lot of the staff at Komo 4 weren't very happy with the mandates from their new corporate overlords. This whole thing is gross and a pretty good example of how unfettered capitalism and the free market screws all of us.

Crosscut has more about that here.

It used to be that media companies like Sinclair were heavily regulated, it was something like they couldn't own more than 6 stations and never two stations in the same market. If they're allowed to acquire Tribune Media they'll own something like 220 stations including two in Seattle. The only people that's good for are the people that own Sinclair. It's certainly not good for the public, who are supposed to own and control the airwaves.

Anyway watch the John Oliver segment then watch the rebuttal from jackhole Boris Epshteyn. It's amazing that his takeaway is "um actually... terrorism is important". You can't even argue with people like this. They just immediately surround themselves with strawmen. No one is saying Terrorism isn't important Boris, we're saying your terrorism reporting is garbage and is politically motivated. It's a difference any rational person can see.



Gah, I need to stop writing about this and just get back to the salt mine. Thinking too much about this will just ruin my day.

Healthy Dinner

Beastie Boys | Sabotage | Sesame Street Mashup

You're welcome.

Microsoft's Xbox One X Benchmarks Revealed

Digital Foundry did some pretty thorough bench marking on the new X Box One X. Yeah, the video is a bit long but there's a lot to unpack with the new X Box One X, you can't just slap "4K gaming!!!" on the box and be done with it. These days with the millions of dollars companies spend on marketing it can be a bit hard wading through the ridiculous stuff like "enhanced pixels" to get to the actual important stuff like 10% lower rendering times.

Anyway, I'm still kind of on the One X bandwagon. I mean if I have to be dragged back to console because those jerk faces at Rockstar won't publish Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC then I might as well get the best and the shiniest.

Here's a Dollar...

Marvel's Inhumans - Official Trailer

It's a bird, It's a plane, no it's the trailer for Marvel's Inhumans and it doesn't look very good! There's a lot to unpack in this trailer and I don't really have time to write paragraph after paragraph on the Inhumans but yikes, this looks super boring and nothing like the Inhumans I grew up with. I guess the fact that Marvel demoted them from a feature length movie to a TV show that will premier in theaters says a lot about how confident they were in the property.

For those not in the know Marvel comics lore says that hundreds of thousands of years ago, giant space faring aliens called Celestials visited Earth and split the population into Humans and Inhumans. Humans were given the ability to evolve while Inhumans couldn't except through the introduction of a MacGuffin called the Terrigan Crystals. This somehow lead to Humans dominating the planet and Inhumans living in seclusion in a secret base on the moon.

Then 10 years ago Marvel movies started making huge bank and Marvel realized they gave away one of their best intellectual properties in the X-Men and Mutants to Fox for pennies on the dollar. Marvel needed a replacement for Mutants and turned to the Inhumans. The Terrigan Crystals were blown up and a cloud of mist roamed the earth randomly turning people with trace amounts of Inhuman DNA into super powered beings. Agents of SHIELD has done about 3 seasons of TV taking old mutant storylines and applying them to the concept of Inhumans. It's kinda trash and it's my least favorite thing at Marvel right now.

Back to the TV show, man this looks boring. It's like the decided to remake Game of Thrones but without all the violence and sex. Also what's the point of filming a TV show in Imax if all the scenery is going to be super dull? I'll probably check out a couple episodes of the show just because I'm a completist but I can't imagine going to a movie theater and paying 15 bucks to watch it. Good luck with this Marvel, hopefully you get those X-Men rights back soon so we can go back to the Inhumans being all freaky deaky like they should be.

Dog 911...

Are You Ready For Some Mini-SNES Action?

Hot off the heals of it's very successful (and nearly impossible to find) NES Classic, Nintendo has announced that this September they will start selling a mini-SNES. $80 gets you the system, two controllers and 21 SNES Classics including: Super Metroid, Super Mario World, F-Zero, Star Fox and a previously unreleased Star Fox 2.

I'm a bit torn on the whole thing. For $80 I could put together 3 Retro PIs and load up pretty much every SNES title every made for free. Of course as cool as the Retro PI is it never quite feels like the "real thing" and I'm assuming with Nintendo's stamp of approval this is going to feel pretty genuine. I don't know, this Christmas I either want to pick up a Xbox One or a Nintendo Switch, I'm probably better off saving my cash. However if you don't want to go through the hassle of putting together a Retro PI, I'd probably jump on this. Those classic SNES titles are heads and tails better than the NES classics. Excitebike is fun to play for like 10 minutes, but the other day I put in a good 3-4 hours with my son on Legend of Zelda a Link To The Past.

Ah, why even bother thinking about it? This thing will probably be impossible to find in stores and getting one on Ebay will cost like $200. If I ever run across one maybe I'll grab it and try to flip it on ebay myself.

Everyone Play Dead!

Game of Thrones Season 7: Trailer #2

Wooohooo CleganeBowl CONFIRMED! Ok.... maybe it's not you know confirmed confirmed, but in this trailer I definitely see Sandor Clegane with a sword looking ready to chop a sucker up in the Dragon Pits outside of King's Landing. I'll eat my hat if he isn't facing off against his zombie brother Sir Strong.

This new trailer is seriously hot fire. The last one they had was cool and all but it didn't show off a ton of action, this trailer is like WHAM POW! Here's some dragons, John Snow is fighting wildlings, THIS ONE DUDE'S SWORD IS ON FIRE. I'm beyond excited.

Mammoth Links

The top ten games to watch for after E3 2017. Lists like this remind me that I need to take a break from Overwatch for a while. Of course then Overwatch starts a new event and I'm all like "I NEED THAT NEW WINSTON DANCING EMOTE" and I'm back to where I started.

The Mammoth Pirates. This is a really interesting photo essay on dudes that hunt for Woolly Mammoth tusks every summer in Siberia. It looks like horrible work, and it pretty much destroying the natural environment but I'll be dammed if I don't think it's cool that there are guys literally harvesting 10,000 year old bones out of the frozen ground. I had no idea that was even possible.

The Untold Story Of WCW’s Glacier, And The Battle To Find Personal Happiness In Professional Wrestling. Warning, this is a very long article. Double Warning, it's also very very good so find a couple minutes in your day to check it out. Glacier was a sort of Mortal Kombat knock off wrestler who worked for WCW back in the late 90s, but the story isn't 100% about him. It's hard to describe but it's sort of a slice of Americana if Americana had to fight off skeleton warriors.

It’s so hot in Phoenix, planes are physically unable to fly. Turns out hot air provides less lift than cooler air and some smaller planes can't get enough lift to safely take off. Science is kinda heartless that way, it doesn't care if you have to get to Flagstaff by 2:30. It's hot, so you're staying put.

As a follow up, I once spent a couple weeks in Phoenix when it was in the high 110s, it might even have reached 120 that summer. It was incredible. You can barely catch your breath its so hot out. No one was outside doing anything, people were barely driving around. It was like a ghost town. Like a fool I tried to go for a bike ride one day, I got 2 blocks from the house and was like NOPE.

How To

The DuckTales Main Title Sequence

Cartoons are really the only TV Shows that have cool title sequences anymore aren't they? Sitcoms now have cold opens and usually like 5 seconds of a jingle and that's about it. I'm not even sure what Dramas do. I watch a bunch but I can't even remember if say, The Expanse even has a title sequence.

Anyhoo, I like this new version of the classic DuckTales theme and I really like the new art style. If there's some way I can get over the new celebrity voice cast I might actually be able to enjoy this show.

Holy Links

How To Track Down The Holy Grail Of Subarus. I don't have any particular interest in Subarus but this article about a pilgrimage to Car Do Subaru Mitaka a Subaru dealer outside of Tokyo is pretty cool. Someday I'd like to have a car that has a really active community like Subaru does. Nothing against my Mazda 6 Wagon but there's not a lot of 6 Wagon clubs in Western Washington. I mean there totally should be, but people don't know what's cool around here.

What Microsoft got right and wrong at E3 2017. First off, Xbox One X? LOL.

The new Xbox looks like the system that probably should have come out when they launched the Xbox One but didn't because it would have cost like $1,000. Even if it's an extra $100 if I had to choose between the XBX or the PS4 Pro I'd pick the Xbox. It's the first console in a while that can sit beside your average gaming PC and look good, I mean it can't go toe to toe with a high end PC but next to a hodgepodge like mine it's very comparable.

It's too bad that while Sony was showing off all these cool exclusive games (or at least semi-exclusive map packs and DLC) Big Redmond was "stuck" showing Forza 7 and Crackdown 3. Also a lot of talk about backwards compatibility, which to me always seems weird. You have a chance to really make hay with your newest and shiniest toys and one of your big announcements is a game that came out 17 years ago? Good luck with that.

Still, if I end up forced to get a new console because those rat bastards at Rockstar won't put Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC I'll probably get an Xbox One X.

Sony PlayStation at E3 2017: The 15 best announcements. Speaking of Sony and their cool exclusive games, just watch the footage of the new Spider-Man game. Holy carp, that looks super fun. All the VR stuff they showed off looks doofy to me but I don't know. Maybe this time Virtual Reality will stick and not just be some brief fad.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2: Free DLC, better weapons, and new character classes. Do I dare get on board the hype train here? I finally got a chance to play Battlefront a few weeks ago and it was a pretty cool game. I know it got a lot of hate with your "hardcore" gamer but I don't know. What I saw I liked a lot. If they've taken that same experience and added to it? I might just have to drop the $59 and put down Overwatch for a few weeks.

Black Panther Teaser Trailer

I guess there was a big basketball game the other day and during it Marvel premiered the first teaser for Black Panther. I say I guess because the NBA has been dead to me ever since they moved the Sonics to Tulsa or something.

The trailer is super dope, extra super dope. I'm not the biggest Black Panther fan in the world but I have a pretty big soft spot for Christopher Priest's 60 or so issue run on Black Panther from the early 2000s. I'm hoping this hits that same sweet spot for me. I just watched Ant Man again a couple weeks ago and man did it hold up well. Something really refreshing about a movie where the hero doesn't necessarily have to save the planet or plant the seeds for the next Avengers movie.

Now I fully expect the last infinity gem or stone or whatever it is they call it in the MCU to be in Wakanda but outside of that I'm hoping this gives us a sort of contained techno-jungle adventure. Black Panther has a lot going on in his own world. I'm cool if Thor and the gang stay home for this one.