WWE Smackdown Live: The Review

My son and I went to WWE Smackdown Live last night. That's me in the circle holding a sign. I'm super famous now.

A couple months ago It came up randomly in a conversation with my son that the next time the WWE was in town he wanted to go. It was weird because he really doesn't have much interest in wrestling. Whenever I'm watching it he's usually got his face buried in his Kindle watching youtube or playing Roblox. So, when it was announced Smackdown was coming to town I jumped all over a couple tickets and we made a fun day of it. We visited the Space Needle first, checked out the EMP (Mo-Pop now), got a huge thing of french fries and some french fry only place at Seattle Center.

This was only my 3rd live wrestling show and the first one in about 15 years. I was expecting the experience to have changed a bit but it really hadn't. Same mix of drunk guys and families yelling at a bunch of sweaty dudes pretending to beat each other up. If you're into the pro-graps it's definitely worth your time and money to check it out. I had forgotten how loud everything is. The fireworks, the guys hitting the ring, the crowd. Oh man, the crowd. There were several time the crowd got really loud and tried to drown out the wrestlers while they were on the mic. The Miz in particular was having a lot of fun with it. Holy cow, that guy is fantastic at what he does. I think I had forgotten how much fun it was to boo someone in real life.

Anyway, we had a ton of fun. WWE puts on a good show. Key Arena is still a pretty good facility to check out small events like this (assuming you were in the lower bowl and not in the nose bleeds). Seattle Center has a lot of fun stuff to check out, it was more family friendly than I had remembered. All in all it was an A+ kinda day.

Rogue One: A Review!

Would you believe that I really enjoyed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story? I know, I'm as surprised as you are. No spoilers here, just a few quick words on the movie:

The reviews for Rogue One have been pretty positive and I think they're pretty well deserved. If I try and remove myself from the fandom for a minute I think there's plenty in Rogue One for any non-Star Wars geek to enjoy. Of course removed from that fandom there's not a ton about the movie that would make it incredibly memorable. The best parts of the movie really are in the details.

Sure the actors do a fine job but outside of Alan Tyduk's smart ass robot there's not really a break out character. It's like the San Antonio Spurs of casts. Everyone is really good and they win a ton of games but outside of San Antonio no one is buying a lot of their jerseys. The action is fine and nicely paced, there's a couple really dramatic scenes and there's the expected razzmatazz with the special and practical effects. If this is the kind of overall quality we can expect from all the Star Wars spin-offs Disney has planned I think most fans will be pretty happy.

Where the movie really shines though is how it fits into the main story of the Star Wars universe. It took 15 years but finally we have a prequel that feels at home with the original trilogy. A lot of care and detail went into making sure this movie lined up perfectly with Episode IV. Of course they didn't stop there, there are so called Easter eggs for the two new Cartoons, Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. If you're really into Star Wars cannon there's a lot in this movie for you.

Much like when The Force Awakens came out last year, some fans are probably a little too eager to call Rogue One the best or the second best Star Wars movie ever. It's definitely a good movie, better than any of the prequels maybe not as enjoyable as The Force Awakens though. I don't know, ranking the Star Wars movies basically comes down to how much you can stand Death Stars and Ewoks. Personally I'll take more Ewoks over Death Stars any day of the week.

Overwatch: The Review

Over the last week I've put in about 15 hours on Overwatch. Impressive considering I've also changed the oil in my car, done 4 loads of laundry, painted a wall, organized a shitload of comics AND mowed the lawn. Or maybe it's not impressive. I have no idea how you binge play games. 15 hours in a week might be chump change. With everything else I had going on this week it felt like 100 hours.


Overwatch is a team based, multiplayer, first person shooter. There's a big emphasis on teamwork. There's no deathmatch or even a team deathmatch. Players that go to work for themselves will find themselves on the losing end of most matches. There are no RPG elements either. You can tinker with how your character looks and sounds a bit, but there's no leveling up for increased firepower or better weapons. Matches are quick and if you don't work as a team they will be even quicker. It's a lot like Team Fortress, TF2 or TFC, take your pick. In that aspect the game feels like a bit of a throwback. It's the anti-Call of Duty.


The graphics probably aren't going to drop any jaws, but the worlds and the characters are bright and vibrant. Everything is sharp and crisp, regular attacks look cool and special attacks look cooler. Each character feels like it has it's own personality. It doesn't just feel like you're switching guns or load outs. There is no one unbeatable character. It reminds me a lot of SFII in that regard. Sure some characters are easier to pick up, but everyone has a bad matchup. Everyone is vulnerable and everyone is potent at the same time. You might find yourself stuck in a match where one character feels invincible but a new game and a new map and it's like everyone starts over as square one. After playing for a few hours you discover that certain combinations of characters can work better than others. It's not just enough to have a "tank" and a "healer" on your squad but you need to have the right tank and the right healer. There are a couple tweeks I'd like to see down the road. But Overall I feel like Blizzard has developed a very balanced game.


If there's any criticism to the game it's the lack of maps and game types. There are 4 different game types, and each type has 3 maps. That's not a ton. Especially since games are in the 10 minute range, if you play for a few hours you will see the same map a lot. Also the maps themselves don't hold a lot of secrets. They're probably a bit too straight forward for their own good. Still, Blizzard has promised that new characters and maps are coming and they're included in the cost of the game, not DLC. Hard to beat that for a game that's only $39.99.

Final Verdict: Overwatch is a must buy. Everyone should have a copy. I might get one for my parents.

Captain America: Civil War: The Review

Hey, this movie was pretty good! See you tomorrow...


I guess I'll elaborate in a spoiler free sort of way. A lot of net nerds are calling Captain America: Civil War, Avengers 2.5. With the size of the cast and the Iron Man v Captain America story line it definitely felt less like a Captain America movie and more like an Avengers film. I thought the filmmakers did a good job balancing all the characters, It never felt too overcrowded and every character got one or two small moments to shine. However, my main gripe with the movie is that they tried to tell two different stories. The Civil War story line where all the Avengers fight over a piece of legislation passed by the UN and a second WAY more interesting story revolving the Winter Soldier and the past crimes he has committed.

Maybe I'm crazy, I know as a big comic book fan I'm supposed to be obsessed over "who would win in a fight?", but I'm not. You know who wins in a fight between the Hulk and Thor? Whoever the writer wants to win.

I still enjoyed the movie plenty. The sheer spectacle of the thing was worth the price of admission. It's just at the end I felt like we were left with yet another Marvel movie with an underwhelming villain, which is INSANE to think about. Marvel has sooo many great villains yet out of 13 "main Marvel movies" the only two villains that really stick out in my mind are Loki and Ultron. A lot of net nerds have already declared Civil War the best Marvel movie to date, and while I think it's definitely one of the better ones, I'm not sure it cracks my top 5. I give it like a B+. It's the same feeling I had after watching Age of Ultron. I liked it a bunch but I felt like there were still some flaws.

2016 Royal Rumble: The Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ash vs Evil Dead: The Review

For the sake of this review lets say I added Starz to my satellite TV package and didn't download this episode by elicit means...

Last night after the kids went to bed and my wife was still on her way home from the Sounders game, I sat down and watched the first episode of Ash vs Evil Dead. Talk about a show that delivers exactly what it promised. It's 45 minutes of silly, gory fun. A perfect mix of the gore and horror from the Evil Dead 2 and the humor and adventure of Army of Darkness. (Minor Spoilers to follow)

There's a scene in the first half of the episode where Ash, still working as a stockboy, is told by his overbearing boss to carefully put away a box of lightbulbs. In classic Ash fashion, he almost immediately spills them everywhere. With a lot of writers/actors/directors that's the end of the joke. Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell extend the joke by having Ash step on more bulbs in an effort to discreetly dispose of the broken bulbs in the most half ass manner you could imagine. It extends the scene by all of 20 seconds but it takes what could easily be a throw away physical joke and turns it into a character moment. It's that kind of detail that has made all the Evil Dead movies so special and it's exactly what I wanted to see in this series.

This isn't to say the series is perfect or going to be perfect. In the first 20 minutes they were dangerously close to Stifler in American Pie 3 territory, where Ash is almost a parody of himself. They pull him back in the last third so no harm no foul. I'm looking forward to how the story unfolds over 10 episodes (plus the second season they've already been renewed for!). Writing for a TV show is much different than a movie but both of the Rami's have a lot of experience with TV so I don't see any reason not to be bullish on Ash vs Evil Dead.

10/10. Would torrent subscribe to Starz again.

Pixel Gun 3d: The Review

A few weeks ago my son introduced me to a new game (yep, that's a thing that happens now) called Pixel Gun 3d. It's funny, Minecraft is so popular that there's this whole subgenre of minecraft rip-off games. Basically take any game you've liked in the past 20 years, make the graphics look like Minecraft then take your dump truck to the bank and collect your monies. That's the long way of me saying that Pixel Gun 3d is basically Call of Duty set in Minecraft.

Like any good mobile game (did I mention I was playing this on the Kindle Fire HD 7?) the game is free but if you want to actually have any fun in the game you've got to pay, more on that later. The game has all the basic first person shooter modes: Team deathmatch, Capture the flag, a campaign mode everyone ignores... It even has levels ripped from popular games. The fact that I recognized a couple but I haven't played a popular fps in a couple years leads me to believe all the levels are ripped off from something. It's dirty pool from the designers but as a player I kind of like the familiarity. The controls are pretty decent too. It took a few matches to get used to them but once you do circle strafes for everyone!

One of the most successful and addicting parts of playing shooters like Call of Duty is leveling up and getting more gear. Pixel Gun handles this by rewarding players with coins and gems whenever they finish a match with a win or complete a level on campaign. It's pretty standard fare for a mobile game. If I had to guess I'd say I played the game for an hour before I was able to afford one new weapon. Eventually I caved and spent a couple dollars to get enough coins or gems to grab a few different upgrades. I don't mind spending a dollar or two on a game I'm going to play a lot. So no big deal. Of course once you buy cool gear you get put in matches with other players with cool gear so the games get a lot harder, making you want to buy even more cool gear, right?

Long story slightly shorter, Pixel Gun 3d is pretty fun. It's not going to kill you to try it out. I mean, I'll probably kill you. In the game. Not in real life of course.

Avengers: Age of Ultron, the review

Thanks to Audi and some people I know who bought an Audi recently, I got to see a sneak preview of The Avengers: Age of Ultron last night... although I'm not sure how much of a sneak preview it was considering it was playing at the Cinerama like 4 hours later. I'll save you spoilers and keep this short. It was really good. Maybe not as good as the Bacon Cheese Burger I got at Five Guys before we saw it, but still really good. There were some minor parts that I didn't like and I thought some of the action sequences were a bit too similar to the first one but overall you definitely get your money's worth. Two thumbs way up.

Good jorb Marvel and good luck topping it DC.

Regular Car Reviews: 1999 Chevy Blazer

Have you ever watched a car review turn into a video essay on the 1990s? Well my friend you are in luck. This review of the 1999 Chevy Blazer by Regular Car Guys is less about the 25 year history of the Chevy V6 4.2 Vortec (although that's there) and more about the hope and optimism living in the year 1999 brought to Joe and Jane six pack. Even if you're barely interested in cars, this is worth the 8 minutes.

Murder Mystery Dinner: The Review

The company my wife works for always does a big end of the year, start of the next, company party. They spend a decent chunk of change on them, last year everyone went bowling, the year before was a casino night, one year it was 3 day cruise to Victoria. This year they rented out a room at Ivar's Salmon House and had a MURDER MYSTERY DINNER!

Now my knowledge of Murder Mystery Dinner Theater begins and ends with what I've seen on sitcoms. Quite frankly I was a little bummed when someone didn't actually die in some sort of hilarious irony. Did I mention it was an 1980's themed Murder Mystery Dinner? Everyone was encouraged to wear their best 1980s outfit. I went for preppy movie villain with my Aviators, a pink polo with popped collar and my acid washiest jeans.

The evening began like most company dinners of this type do, with everyone making small talk while waiting for the food to arrive. The twist was that a few of the MTP (Mystery Theater Players) were walking around the room, very much in character, interjecting themselves into conversations. Plot points were coming fast and furious. In retrospect it was cool but at the time I thought it was weird, we were already playing? Does someone have to say "go" first? Anyhoo, as the evening went on they went over the rules, someone died, we all got clues, it was more or less what you would expect from a Murder Mystery Dinner. There was a lot more audience participation than I had expected. Early on they picked out 10-12 people to randomly be the suspects. Each suspect was given a list of facts about them and secrets, then we were assigned teams and it was up to us to ask them all questions to try and figure out who the murderer was.

A few people were obviously uncomfortable given their roles in the show but the actors really handled it well. A couple people really hammed it up so I guess it all balanced out. Overall the show turned out to be a lot funnier than I had imagined it would be. All credit due to the MTP.

Of course the big highlight was that I figured out who the killer was and our team won. Finally, watching all those episodes of Castle paid off.

I give the whole thing a 9/10, would solve murder again.

Regular Car Reviews: 1998 Subaru Forester

This review for (a heavily modified) 1998 Subaru Forest is pretty glorious. It's both informative and hilarious. I completely lost it when he told the subaru marketing team to eat a dick.

I don't get most crossovers. The old Forester's I get. It's a station wagon but just a bit taller. The new crossovers are smaller than most wagons, most aren't even all wheel drive. They're like tall hatchbacks. It's like someone said, I like hatchbacks but they're too stable. Can we build anything taller and more unwieldy?

Chuck E. Cheese's: The Review

I had a lot of fun at Chuck E. Cheese's this last weekend. You heard me right, Chuck E. Cheese's.

It had been years (around 20) since I had stepped foot inside a Chuck E. Cheese's. I remember I was out of high school and looking to kill some time before a movie started. I also remember being really unimpressed. The games were old, the place was run down and they were still ripping people off with tokens. Honestly who uses tokens these days? I wasn't very excited when my son started asking to have his next birthday there. Instead of blowing a couple hundred dollars on bad pizza and scary animatronics I made a deal with him, if he was good for his first week of pre-school we would go to to Chuck E. Cheese's. He was and we went.

The first thing I noticed when we got there was how clean and new everything seemed. It was bright and open, not at all what I was expecting. The emphasis has clearly been put on "boardwalk" style games that reward kids with tickets. There were a few traditional arcade games like The Fast and the Furious or Guitar Hero but I would say 90% of the games didn't have any sort of screen or monitor. They also had really basic games that catered to smaller kids, which was great. My son gets plenty of video game/screen time at home it was a relief that he spent most of his time there playing physical/boardwalk style games. Quite frankly, I get enough screen time at home. I was more than happy to play skee-ball for a couple hours.

Chuck E. Cheese's still uses the BS token system but this time it paid off for us. A friend of the family gave us a jar full of Tokens so we essentially played for free. Some of the games are a terrible value in that the game is over in 5 seconds and you're left with one ticket but if you were careful you could probably squeeze a half hour out of just a couple bucks. One of their big selling points is that every game costs one token. That seems like a better deal than it is since most of the time you're only getting 3 tokens for a dollar.

Logan's favorite game turned out to be this silly car ride where you get your picture taken with Chuck (as seen above). We left with 5 different pictures of him and Mr Cheese. Ironically he was deathly afraid of the real Chuck E. Cheese who came out every hour to high five everyone and lead all the kids in a song and dance routine.

On a scale of to 1 to Ms Pac-Man Chuck E Cheese's scored a solid B+. The Pizza was MUCH better than I expected but Pepsi at the soda fountain? Who does that?

The Goonies House: The Review

Last week I went on vacation with the family to the Oregon coast, more specifically the town of Warrenton which is nestled between Astoria and Seaside. Logic dictated that we visit the Goonies house.

For those of you unfamiliar, "The Goonies House" is the house that Mikey and Brand lived in, the one they were trying to keep from getting turned into a golf course. It's a real house, owned by a regular person and it's roughly half a mile off the main drag in downtown Astoria. We showed up Thursday afternoon around 3pm after having caught a matinee of Guardians of the Galaxy (two thumbs WAY up). The house is at the top of a gravel driveway and out of respect to the neighborhood, the owners ask that you park a couple blocks away at a nearby school. It was sort of amazing to not only see how many people couldn't read the clearly marked signs regarding the parking but just how many people were there to see the house on a random Thursday afternoon in August.

I don't know what more to tell you. It's just a house. I'm not sure what I was expecting, the truffle shuffle? Sloth? Mouth? Data? I don't know. On a scale of 1-10 I give the Goonies house three quarters of a Baby Ruth.

Oh yeah after leaving the house we also drove by the school they filmed Kindergarten Cop at. I took a picture of it while sitting at a stop sign. No one yelled "it's not a tumor". Two thumbs down.

My High School Reunion: The Review

On the surface the idea of a high school reunion feels antiquated, akin to George Lucas releasing Episode I: The Phantom Menace exclusively on VHS. In the year 2000 everyone could tell that DVD players were the future so why does someone so obsessed with technological advancement insist on sticking with an antiquated format? That's the long way of saying that there's a perception that Facebook (and the internet as a whole) is killing the high school reunion. Want to see who in your class lost the most hair? Look them up on Facebook (or if you're really old linkedin). Want to wax nostalgic about Pearl Jam's VS? Don't worry Buzzfeed has a quiz where you can find out which track you are (I got Dissident!).

You may have noticed that in that opening paragraph I used the terms "on the surface" and "there's a perception". I didn't feel like what I experienced at my 10 year reunion... 20 year you say? Ok, 20 year reunion, was lessened by the impact of social media. Just the opposite, I thought it was enhanced. For those that don't know, I went to a pretty small high school. Our graduating class was around 85 kids and I would say I'm Facebook friends with around 40 of them. That level of casual familiarity ended up helping someone like me who isn't the most comfortable in social situations like this.

The anxiety medication stayed in my pocket all night

It was more common for conversations to start out with "You just got a new job didn't you" or "I saw you guys moved to Texas.." than the typical "Are you married, do you have kids, etc". I won't try and hide my pleasure that some people I hadn't seen in years told me how funny I was on Facebook and that my children were adorbz (their words not mine). People can change a great deal in 20 years but the reunion felt more like catching up with friends you hadn't seen in a while than interviewing 40 strangers for a job. I also appreciated that I didn't spend the majority of the night waxing nostalgic over slurpee runs during lunch or gym class with Mr Burns. I've had plenty of time to obsess over high school. I'm far more interested in hearing about someone that flies planes for a living or stays home with their three kids than I am thinking about all the times I felt alone and detached as a teenager.

I had one short conversation with someone that brought up a lot of feels from high school. I know they were trying to convey something very nice but for half a heartbeat it reminded me how insecure I felt 20 plus years ago. Of course it was no matter, soon I was reminded that I had to catch the light rail back home before the babysitter turned into a pumpkin and the train was nothing but hoodlums and no-goodniks.

On a scale of 1-10 The class of 1994 King's High School Reunion scored an A-. It would have been nice to have had an extra hour or a bartender that knew how to make a mojito.

Squirt Guns: The Review

Good morning kiddos, over the 4th of July I bought a bunch of Nerf Super Soaker branded squirt guns and had a couple water fights (artists rendition above). I picked these up all on Amazon, the guns ranged in price from $5.99 to $9.99.

Out of the 3 guns I bought the Alpha Fire is the most like an old school squirt gun. The power and distance is completely dependent on how hard you pull the trigger. Other than the heavy plastic case the thing that makes it stand out from a 99 cent gun is that is sprays 3 streams in a sort of triangle pattern. It's impossible to fire with any sort of accurately but at the same time it's near impossible to miss your target. At max distance, which was just about 20 feet, the "splash radius" was about 3.5 feet across. This was the gun that was easiest for the kiddos to use.

The Flash Blast reminded me a lot of a compact version of an Entertech "shotgun" squirt gun that a friend of mine had growing up. You have to cock the slide on top of the gun before every shot. It has a good deal of power for a small gun but was hard for the kids to operate. Also it runs out of water very quickly. 20 shots tops. It had a slightly better range than the Alpha Fire did.

The Scatter Blast is easily the most formidable of the three guns I bought. A quick web search makes it seem that this gun is very popular to modify. Nerf sells a version that has a tactical rail on it that allows you to add ridiculous stuff like a laser scope or a shoulder stock to the gun. The gun works with a pump to fire mechanism so there is no trigger. The faster you can move the slide below the gun the faster and further it will shoot. I was getting a good 25 to 30 feet easy. The gun also has a large reservoir, I didn't count how many shots you get but it seemed like this gun was the one that needed to be reloaded the least.

To summarize, these guns are very different from what Super Soakers looked like when I was a kid. Nerf essentially bought the name and stuck it on a bunch of different guns. However, that doesn't mean the guns are any less potent. None of the three I bought could fire a continuous stream but they were also much easier to reload and look a lot cooler. I think a good argument could be made that the Scatter Blast in particular would probably out duel an original Super Soaker. At the very least there's a lot more variety in the line now.

A Trios of Reviews

WWE Network
For my birthday my wife got me a six month subscription to the WWE network. Now when the WWE network first launched a lot of people lauded it as the future of "television". I use quotes there because the WWE Network like any modern app works on Kindles, iPads, computers, etc. I still don't think that's the case. The WWE is unique in that it completely owns all of its content and is in a situation where it's old product is still highly desirable. Wrestling fans will gladly pay 9.99 a month to watch Bret Hart vs Stone Cold Steve Austin from 1997 but how many NFL fans are willing to pay a monthly subscription to watch the Bills choke away a Superbowl to (insert team name here). Anyway not the point.

The WWE Network is a lot of fun, for a long time wrestling fan like myself it's easy to just spend hours watching it. You get current Pay Per View events live as the happen, every old WWE, ECW and WCW PPV on demand, some original shows that vary wildly in quality and some random WCCW and Clash of Champions shows from the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It's not a flawless app. It froze on me a couple times during last weekend's big Money in the Bank PPV and the search feature is TERRRRIBLE. For example, I searched for Raven (one of my favorite wrestlers from the 90s) and it returned about 5 results, about 100 too few.

TL/DR, for a wrestling fan the WWE Network is well worth $9.99. There are bugs they need to iron out but as a whole the network delivers on it's promises. Solid B+

My wife is awesome, she gets an A.

Heroes of Cosplay: Season 2
Last year I reviewed Heroes of Cosplay, looking back on the review I was probably a bit too kind. I felt like the shows repetitive format mixed with some really fake drama took away from what the show was supposed to be about. Fast Forward to Season 2, which had its season finale last night, and a few of my complaints with the show have been addressed, while others have been exacerbated.

Most of the stupid fake interpersonal drama has been ditched, which is great. The problem is without the drama every episode follows the exact same format. What to wear? I'm running out of time! Oh man I didn't win the contest.. or WOOHOO I won the contest!

That's literally every episode. I mean I still watched and for the most part I enjoyed the costumes but it would be nice if the producers could figure out a way to avoid every episode ending with a contest. From what I've learned of the Cosplay community having a picture go viral or hit the front page of reddit is every bit as important as winning a costume contest. Heroes of Cosplay gets a metacritic score of 72/100

The 2014 USMNT World Cup Performance
So the World Cup is over now right?

The US Men's National Soccer team showed once again that they can compete on the highest level but they also showed just how far they have left to go before we can even dream of actually winning the cup. All we need to improve is our defense our midfield and our forwards. We're pretty set at goalie.

It's hard to complain about the results, getting out of the group of death was really amazing but if you look at the Nat's record over the last two World Cups we've only won 2 out of 8 games. That's not very good. The inability to posses the ball with purpose really kills the team at this level. Turns out Michael Bradley isn't the world class midfielder a lot of us thought he was. The striker pool is as thin as we were afraid it was. It's telling that when Jozy went down with injury we started Dempsey out of position for the next 3 games as opposed to replacing him with one of the other 3 forwards on the squad. The defense is still full of potential but young guys like Besler, Cameron and Gonzalez are still trying to find out a way to actually play together and form anything that resembles a competent back line.

But hey, the games were entertaining and a lot of people watched. That's the most important thing for US Soccer going forward. More people interested in the sport equals more money which will in time provide us better players (knock on wood). I rate the USMNT 2014 World Cup Performance as plucky.

Malibu Shark Attack: The Review

Generally speaking I'm a poor reviewer of things but here we go.

Way back in January I saw a few of my favorite rappers at the Lo-Fi in Seattle. One of them, Tribe One, mentioned during his set that he had a new Album coming out soon, Malibu Shark Attack. Well the album is here and it hasn't left the CD player of my car all week.

Malibu Shark attack is actually a group comprised of Dublin based producer Rocky O'Reilly and the aforementioned nerdcore super bad-ass Tribe One. On the opening track Tribe One describes O'Reilly's sound as post electronica indiecore-syth pop so let's go with that. It's certainly nothing like you hear on the radio today but the beats are still pretty accessible. No one's going to confuse this album with the latest J Cole album but I wouldn't say it's so far away from traditional hip-hop that it needs a special category. Of course your mileage may vary. If Macklemore was raised by Wu-Tang then I was raised by MF Doom and non-traditional beats are kinda my jam. My definition of hip hop might be broader than most.

This is why I don't review things, I'm so far away from the point.

The first couple tracks on the Album, Better off as Friends and Yo Into New York are upbeat tracks that are going to get your head nodding. Tribe One always delivers clever lyrics and these songs a no exception. Yo Into New York has a verse on it by Jesse Dangerously that's so rad it had me scrambling to look up more of his stuff. The third track, Doing it Wrong, hit me right in the feels when I first heard it. On it Tribe One gets pretty personal about his motivations behind quitting his day job to make raps. Right now I'm kind of struggling with my day job and I'm not spending enough time drawing so everything he says about the desire to make art and the feeling on wasting your life in a traditional 9-5 rang true. But enough about me, the song is super dope. It's smart, honest and heartfelt. It's everything music should be but rarely is.

The next few songs on the album have appearances from MC Lars and Adam WarRock. I'm 99.9% sure the song BDMTHRFCKR is all about Jules from Pulp Fiction's wallet. It didn't hit me in the feels like Doing it Wrong did but it's a killer track. Rocky O'Reilly really throws the kitchen sink at it. It's the most uptempo song on the album and has a chorus you really want to sing along with (swearing's fun kids!).

Dizzy Dustin from Ugly Duckling shows up on Plans for the Weekend which was an unexpected surprise. I still can't believe UD never made the leap to mainstream. The Album starts to close out with a self titled song that has one of my favorite opening verses ever. The last song Monsters Under Your Bed has pretty much the only chorus on the album that I don't really like but the verses are so solid that I let it slide on this one track. But just this one track, ok?

So there you go, Malibu Shark Attack. 10 stars. You should buy it here. Or don't buy it, take Tribe One's own advice: "save your money until you're sure I deserve it, until then download, torrent and burn it". Or at the very very least you should check out the video for Better Off as Friends below

Toy Review: Spider-Man: Spider-Cycle Chase

Hey it's a toy review? Look at me branching out into new things.

In the TMI category my son has been having a big problem with self imposed constipation. For whatever reason he's afraid to poop and will sometimes hold it in for 3 or 4 days. Kids are weird. One of the ways we're dealing with it is a reward system for him going potty. He gets a sticker for every time he goes and when he has enough stickers we take a trip to the toy store and he gets a toy. This has led to us buying a lot of Legos over the last couple months.

The last trip to the store my son was telling me what set he wanted before we even got there. He was focused like a laser. He wanted Spider-Man, Venom and the flying car. Honestly this set was a bit more expensive than what we like to spend on potty rewards (19.99 at Fred Meyer) but I'm a pushover when it comes to buying toys for my son.

It's a pretty impressive set. It's probably my favorite of all the ones I've bought him. For 20 dollars you get 3 mini-figures and two vehicles. Even if Spider-Man's spider-bike is on the small side that's a pretty good value. Plus the mini-figures you get are good ones. Venom (not pictured) and Spider-Man are a good pairing, Nick Fury almost feels like a bonus.

My favorite thing about the set is that the two vehicles are really solid. With the Star Wars and Ninjago sets I've put together there are a lot of pieces that aren't attached very well so they're always falling apart. Nick Fury's flying car is practically a tank. You can play nice and rough with these and not worry about parts ending up under the couch. The build time was pretty quick. I think it took me about 15 minutes to put everything together (minus the mini figures which Logan does) and a lot of that was done one handed holding a baby. From the box I was afraid this set was going to have a lot of large specialty pieces that wouldn't fit anywhere else once Logan was old enough to start really using his imagination but it really doesn't. Outside of the hood and windshield for Nick Fury's car the pieces are actually pretty small. There's definitely a lot of potential to really pimp these out.

Overall I give this set two thumbs up. Would buy again.

Rev3 Games and Adam Sessler's Xbone review

Quite a few co-workers know that I'm a big geek (I think all the comic books and toys I keep in my office have somehow tipped them off) so that means I've had the "Are you getting a PS4 or an Xbox One?" conversation about a dozen times. The short answer is I don't have the money for either. Not even close. Like I still owe about two grand to the hospital for baby number two kind of no money. Even if Santa dumped a pile of cash down my chimney for Christmas it would all go to bills and credit cards before I could even think about buying a new video game machine. Even then I think I'd buy one of the new Nintendo 2DS and get my Pokenmon on.

Still the next generation console race does interest me so I thought I'd post this Xbox One review by Adam Sessler. It's probably the most balanced review I've watched or read on the Xbone. Also it's the review that made me realize that even if I had the money it's most definitely not the console for me. Why spend the extra $100 on a console that's biggest perk is how well it integrates with cable TV when I have my Xbox hooked to the basement TV where I don't even have cable? Also are they still doing that thing where you have to have an Xbox Live Gold subscription to use Netflix? Screw that noise. Someone pass me the Pokemon machine.

OMG you guise, Pacific Rim

I'm a poor reviewer of stuff, so I barely do it. My only regular reviews are ..the Blurst of Times and half the time I don't even finish what I'm reviewing... then came Pacific Rim.

Pacific Rim was the raddest movie I have seen in FOREVER. For whatever reason It's been getting mixed reviews (Entertainment Weekly gave it a B-) and it was beat by Grown Ups 2 in the box office. But here's the deal no one really wants to talk about. Action movies are stupid. Even good ones like The Dark Knight or, oh I don't know lets say either version of True Grit, have ridiculous premises and giant plot holes. The well reviewed ones are usually the ones with snappy dialogue, unique art direction and great dramatic performances. Minus a couple shinning moments from Idris Elba Pacific Rim has none of that (ok it does have some pretty bad ass art direction).

What it does have is giant effing robots beating the crap out of and getting the crap beat out of them by giant Kiaju monsters. It's the most amazing 2 hour video game cutscene I've ever seen and it was well worth the money Loren paid for my ticket (I swear I'll pay you back). It excels so hard at what it tries to do it doesn't deserve its own award, it deserves its own Awards Show.

There's my review. Pacific Rim is the raddest movie I've seen in Forever. Go ahead and quote me on that, twice.