Somewhat Manly Nerd

It’s amazing that even with an underpowered, two-and-a-half-year-old laptop, my two gaming companions of the past few months have both been PC titles. I have returned to my ongoing love affair with Team Fortress 2 and started a new and dedicated relationship with Starcraft II. Not only do I play both games a few times a week (ok, I actually haven’t played TF2 in a while), but I will continue to do so for years to come thanks to the frequent updates the games will receive.

And it’s not as if I fall in love with games easily; for example, I stopped playing Red Dead Redemption shortly after its release, quickly becoming bored of riding horses around a barren Western landscape while trying to aim and shoot with a shitty control scheme. I don’t want to digress into a Rockstar-bashfest or an argument about console and PC gaming; I’m just using my experience with Red Dead Redemption to contrast my experience with TF2 and SC2. Maybe I just enjoy games that end in “2″ this year (Mass Effect 2 was the fucking shit).

Although I love both TF2 and SC2, they are polar opposites. Two multiplayer games couldn’t be any more different from each other (perhaps UNO and Street Fighter 4 or Counter-Strike and Carcassonne). One game is a cartoonish and ever-evolving first-person shooter featuring at least one huge element of luck; the other is a science-fiction (although not exactly gritty-looking) real-time strategy game requiring multitasking, flawless execution, and a thorough knowledge of a game that is similar to its predecessor. read more…

I have to think this will be my last Inception-related post. The movie isn’t going to pass $300 million domestic and probably not $700 million worldwide, so I won’t have any reasons to make a stupid box office post.  I’m not even sure why I would post about those numbers other than the fact that they’re nice and round and big. Mmmm, round and big. But this is a good way to wrap up the Inception obsession, as I don’t think there are going to be any a better-made spoofs than this.

There are people that read this blog that have known me for almost 20 years. A few of them (and also people that have only known me since middle school) might remember when I use to do an impression of a meteor hitting the earth. I pretty much stole it straight out of Deep Impact — the music, the angle, the sound of the shockwave tearing across the earth’s surface, all of it.

This video, which is actually months old, reminds me of when I used to do that. Colbert also happens to be about 100x more talented at portraying death and destruction.

This edition of REAL TALK is brought to you this adorable video of a Corgi. It’s amazing how quickly a popular YouTube video’s views explode at a certain saturation level.

- Somehow I managed to NOT make a post about Anderson Silva’s miracle triangle armbar a week ago. The dude is fucking amazing. Just like seemingly everyone else, when Silva was taken down in the 5th round I thought the match was over, but he had enough strength left after getting punched more than in his entire UFC career to pull that shit off. Wow. GSP-Silva needs to happen ASAP.

- It’s amazing how It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is now AT BEST the third-best half-hour of television on FX. Archer and Louie have had amazing first seasons, while Sunny is in decline. Shit, The League had a fantastic first season, too.

- My ability to not buy shit has increased tenfold. The Bourne Trilogy on Blu-ray for 35 bucks? Months ago, I would’ve jumped on that like Tiger on a blonde cocktail waitress, but now I just want to sell more things. I apologize for the Rick Reilly/Jay Leno-esque joke.

- It always feels good watching guys who make a living playing golf miss 5-foot putts. Then I remember they make hundred of thousands, if not millions, of dollars playing golf.

- I need to play a roto fantasy league for money next year. And a keeper league. Maybe combine the two for ultimate fantasy baseball action.

- I don’t touch upon controversial subjects on here much, especially not legitimately important controversial subjects, but the Ground Zero Mosque bullshit is ridiculous. I won’t dedicate a full post to it because it’s too fucking simple. It’s a goddamn community center two blocks away, not even within view of Ground Zero; it’s not the 100-foot-tall minaret-topped building most people envision when they think of mosques. I understand the outrage of some relatives of victims, but some people in that group didn’t want any reconstruction at the WTC site at all. Sorry, but fuck them. I totally empathize with their grief, but life needs to go on. Republicans meanwhile, politicize a building that SHOULDN’T BE A FUCKING ISSUE, but vote against a bill that would actually help people directly affected by 9/11.

- Girls grow up way too soon. I’m going to stop checking out hot girls in the mall, because I’m sure they are all 16 years old.

- I’m not surprised at Scott Pilgrim vs. The World totally bombing, losing to Inception‘s 5th weekend. If it weren’t for Edgar Wright’s involvement, I would think the movie looks incredibly awful. Since I doubt most people care about that fact — if they were even aware in the first place — $10 million sounds about right. But I’ll still go see it; I don’t want to risk Speed Racer-like regret.

- David Wright is now officially having the worst offensive season of his career. It’s cool how Wright and Jose Reyes have declined right when most players hit their prime. Really. Fucking. Cool.

Fangraphs — namely Dave Cameron — ranked the Seattle Mariners as the 6th best organization in MLB during this past offseason. In hilariously inept fashion, the Mariners have gone 45-71, spawning the Twitter hashtag “#6org” along the way.

Although this has been a running joke for weeks, if not months, I bring attention to it now because of an increasing focus on defensive metrics and their apparent limitations (moreover, I recently attended the Fangraphs NYC event this past Saturday). Just yesterday, I came across three blog posts attacking the methodology behind defensive statistics. It’s as if bloggers were waiting to see whether the Red Sox would make a late-season push and the Mariners would do ANYTHING before totally jumping on UZR and Plus/Minus and Total Zone.

But before I delve into that, I’ll say that the Fangraphs event and its subsequent afterparty was a damn good time. Almost nothing is better than intelligent baseball discussion while drinking awesome, albeit overpriced, beer. The official Fangraphs event might have had quite a few interesting speakers and some amusing moments, but it was naturally nothing I couldn’t get from just listening to the recording of it — outside of the Bloomberg Sports presentation, which was probably the coolest part of the event. It was also responsible the best #6org moment: as the presenters pulled up video of Justin Smoak’s one HR (Dave Cameron made sure to yell out that he actually had two), someone else yelled out, “Do you have video of him getting sent to the minors?” Sadly, I doubt anyone reading this blog post will comprehend the full scope of this #6org burn. The rest of the event is covered about as comprehensively as possible by this…chick?

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I recently learned of the existence of a human being who hadn’t seen Die Hard until recently when forced to watch it by someone who loves the movie almost as much as I do.

In this person’s defense, this obviously uncultured human being happens to be a female. Granted, she’s a female who’s in her mid-20s — which makes the situation less understandable than if she were still a teenager — but a female nonetheless. Women simply don’t sit around and watch Die Hard just because they came across it on Fox Movie Channel, or have discussions about Die Hard that end up with someone — I’m not naming names — smashing a beer can on the ground in anger, or make appreciation threads about the original trilogy.

But even cured of this deficiency, she still hasn’t seen Robocop, Lethal Weapon, or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Her not seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark is particularly shocking since it’s such a classic, mainstream film. She might as well have told me she hasn’t seen Star Wars. It’s not even about the quality of Raiders of the Lost Ark (or any similar movie), but about its pervasiveness in popular culture. In some way this person AVOIDED seeing this movie.

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This is now serving the purpose of making me feel better after another atrocious Mets loss made worse by an 0-4 performance WITH 4 STRIKEOUTS by David Wright. The Inception trailer music fits the video so perfectly, having that low-key section as the dude slowly dances his way into traffic, building up to the amazing climax. Thank you, ice cream truck driver.

I didn’t think a movie could be more hyped — both in my own mind and in the collective conscious of young adult males — than The Dark Knight, but Inception proved me wrong. Now Batman “3″ is going to take marketing and internet nerd frothing to yet another level. Casting rumors will continue to flood the internet until official announcements are made. Pictures will leak off the set. Viral marketing will consume fanboys. There will be teasers for the teaser trailers. I, obviously, will fully take part in the insanity, as evidenced by my blog content leading up to TDK and Inception.

How did Christopher Nolan get to be both a critical and popular hero by the age of 40? I believe it’s time for me to make a Wikipedia appreciation post for Christopher Nolan. read more…

You may not have noticed, but there are millions of people across the world anxiously awaiting July 27. No, I’m not talking about the dudebros who buy Madden every year awaiting a demo of its latest installment — that would only concern Americans, anyhow. But I assumed you gathered what this post is actually about from its title; yes, Starcraft II releases in two days, ending a wait of twelve long years. Warcraft III was no replacement for more Starcraft, and World of Warcraft only prolonged the wait to obscene length (I can’t fault Diablo II).

I told myself that I’d go through both the original Starcraft and its expansion, Brood War, before their sequel was released. I started once the first phase of the SCII beta was over, but I didn’t even manage to get completely through the three campaigns in the original Starcraft before the second phase started and sucked me right back in. I wanted to do it because 1) I wanted a refresher on the story, and 2) I (embarrassingly) never beat Brood War. Well, it seems like the latter still won’t happen.

Fortunately, there are people like ZealousD on NeoGAF who go through the trouble of playing an entire game — albeit with cheat codes — just to record and compile videos of the story segments. Yeah sure, Starcraft might not have the “Oscar-calibre” story of GTA4, but damn if it didn’t seem fucking cool to a 12-year-old. And I still say it’d make a decent movie; it’d be better than most of the videogames adapted for film, at the very least. Granted, the Zerg vs. Terran dynamic could be said to be an adaptation of Aliens, but it greatly expands on the universe and possibilities. It’d make an awesome made-for-TV Sci-Fi Channel movie or miniseries, I think. Oh wait, SyFy.

Bottom line: I care about the story. I’m a sucker for science-fiction shit, and nostalgia holds me pretty tight with some things, and Starcraft is one of those things. I know I’ll enjoy going through the campaigns in the three installments of SCII. In the meantime, I’ll be catching up on the original:

Since the embedder doesn’t seem to link correctly to the entire playlist, here’s a link. That’ll automatically string together 28 videos that comprise the entire story — all cutscenes, in-game conversations, and pre-mission briefings. It’s impressive work.

Is it just me, or are the late-90s, low-resolution “pre-rendered CGI” cinematics still cooler than the “in-game engine” cinematics that seem so prevalent nowadays?

Actually, this phenomenon is perfectly illustrated in this trailer for Starcraft II:

Admittedly, the CGI for the Kerrigan part is fucking incredible, so using it in conjunction with what looks to be an in-game graphics engine is totally jarring and shitty. But don’t you think the cinematics in the original Starcraft are just more aesthetically pleasing then that in-game crap, even with their somewhat exaggerated and strange depictions of human faces? Perhaps I am just greedy and want everything to look like that Kerrigan CGI. Wow.

At the All-Star Break, it looked like maybe the Mets had a chance, sitting 5 games back of Atlanta and only 1.5 games back of the wild-card with a record of 48-41. Carlos Beltran was coming back. Hopefully Jose Reyes was going to come back healthy this time. Maybe Jason Bay would pick it up. If they managed to go 5 games over .500 for the rest of the season, they would end up with 88 wins — possibly enough to win the wild-card or even the division.

Now all that has turned to fucking shit. David Wright is back to being totally fucking cold. Jason Bay is getting WORSE. Carlos Beltran is clearly not 100%, yet he’s put in CF even while he’s wearing a goddamn knee brace. There’s a guy named Angel Pagan who played CF the entire first half and was one of the best fucking CF in the National League, but because Beltran has a massive ego and expects to play CF, he can’t be moved to RF to accommodate the player who’s NOT WEARING A FUCKING KNEE BRACE. Angel Pagan has EASILY been the second-best player on the team, and probably the most consistent. At least Jeff Francoeur isn’t playing.

But maybe that’s why Jason Bay feels the need to stand in for him? To generate the lost suckage? Holy fucking shit. 0-6 with 4 Ks. Remember last year when we all wondered where David Wright’s power went? His SLG at the end of the season was .447. Jason Bay’s is currently .403. Brett Gardner’s SLG is .399. BRETT GARDNER. This is NOT a guy renowned for his power stroke. This Bay contract is turning out to be a bigger disaster than I expected. Sure, he can bounce back in the next two months, but he’s not going to get any better over the length of the contract. This is BAD.

Oh, and I got to watch Oliver Perez pitch tonight out the bullpen. I want him to pull a Carlos Zambrano and just get himself kicked off the team. Somehow he didn’t blow the game, but he came pretty close, with only the D-Backs total ineptitude saving his worthless ass. Less than worthless. Please Ollie, be gangsta and stab someone else shitty on the team, preferably Alex Cora. You’ll be suspended indefinitely, and hopefully Cora will never play baseball again.

Can I even manage to spew any bile Jerry Manuel’s way? He did double-switch Ike Davis out of the game so he could move Alex Cora to 1B and Luis Castillo to 2B. That was totally awesome. And he keeps starting Barajas, who has a OBP of .265. Sure, he hit a home run. WHOOP-DE-FREAKING-DO. Maybe if he didn’t, I would have been able to go to sleep two pointless hours ago instead of watching 14 pathetic innings of baseball.

I hate this team.