1. a random, steady, unvarying, electronically produced sound
2. nerdy notes from suburbia
We just couldn’t make it through the winter without a good storm I suppose, so we were dealt a good one. Two to 3 inches of snow, followed by a solid inch of ice, followed by several more inches of snow. It really shut things down for a couple days. Too bad there’s no such things as ‘snow days’ in my line of work. As long as I have power and internet there’s no excuse for me not putting in full days. Still, working from the couch is pretty nice!
Filed under General News
No, it’s Joel McHale, and it’s still a felony! If none of this makes any sense to you, then congratulations for having higher standards and not wasting a moment of your time on the crap comprising pop culture. For the rest of us, we have The Soup on E! to help us wallow in it.
Last weekend, D and I caught Joel performing downtown. McHale’s been filming The Soup for over four years, but launched into a live standup tour last year. As you might expect, even without the clips and teleprompter, he is one funny dude. Along with his animated stage presence, his tales of Ryan Seacrest, Dick Clark, Tyra Banks, and his son Eddie (the genius/retard) were a hoot. From what I’ve read, preSoup Joel got his start in an improv group. It showed. While his set material was good, some of his best moments were improved remarks about audience members in the front row. The constant cracks directed at the ‘pirate woman’ were great. He said the only logical reason to be dressed like that was if she just got off work from a cheesy seafood restaurant. “Arr, would ye like to hear the specials?” I’m sure glad we were in the second row instead of the first!
Filed under General News
Another Lanwar has rolled around again and not a moment too soon. It’s been six months since Team Boom Tape last graced the grounds of the University of Louisville. Small group of just three of us going this time, making up our part of the roughly 150 attendees.
As usual lots of different games were played over the 28 hour event – lots of WoW (as is typical these days), various FPS games like Team Fortress 2, Unreal 3, Call of Duty (4 and 5), a little Halflife 2 deathmatch, and several RTS games (C&C; and even a few Starcraft matches). It’s gotten more common for gamers to pack up a console along with their computer, so there were plenty of Xbox games going on and a few Wii ones, too. One group even had a Rock Band setup going most of the night, which made for an excellent break between computer matches. But the real standout game this time was Left 4 Dead. There was always either a campaign or versus game to jump into, and we had some great competitive matches.
Tournament-wise TBT had great fun crashing and burning again. We scrambled to pull together a TF2 team at the last minute and with little practice took a swift beating in the first round. Few of us had played TF2 much since the last summer LAN and boy it showed. Of course, there was also another Duct Tape Wars competition, and for the third time in a row TBT has failed to meet the lofty expectations of everyone else. This year’s challenge was to design an airplane of some sort which would carry a computer mouse “passenger” and make it as far across the room as possible. After burning half our time with the phone-a-friend tactic, our resulting creation would’ve sunk to the bottom of the Hudson River. For what it’s worth, the other teams didn’t fair much better.
When it was all said and done TBT walked out of the LAN without winning a single prize, but we had a great time and vowed to make a return to Duct Tape glory at the next MillionManLan in July.
Filed under Lanwar
Just a note that I’m beginning to post something I’m listening to every week (give or take) over in the sidebar. Just spreading a little musical love this year. Party on Garth!
This week’s pick, “Dawn of the Dead”, falls squarely into my recent mode of all things undead (with reading “World War Z” and playing “Left 4 Dead”). This track by the British group Does it Offend You Yeah? is a guilty pleasure of mine of late. Along with that ultra poppy hook, I gotta give props to the combination of the Killers-esque guitar line, some very unexpected steel drums, and the tribal “Ooos” and “Ahs”.
Filed under Music
