An Anatomical Experience for Children

What do you call a designer who creates a slide that looks like a giant penis that spooges children? A mad genius, that's what.

My 25 Favorite Video Games of All Time

As I'm sure I've mentioned time and again, I'm not really a video game guy. I find them unusually frustrating and hard to deal with; it's been a problem ever since I was about 11 years old, actually. But that said, I've certainly enjoyed my fair share of games, enjoyed them, and have fond memories of many. And since there is just nothing to do today, I decided I'd make a list of my favorites.

So these are the 25 games I've enjoyed playing the most. They're not necessarily my out and out faves (from a pop culture standpoint, those would be Pac-Man and Space Invaders), but the games I've had the best times with. So, in ascending order...

25. Gauntlet (NES)
My sister and I used to get into this game and play it for hours and hours. It looks so simple, but it had its overwhelming moments, especially in 2-player mode, where any mistakes you made could get the other person killed. This game may actually be a huge factor in the fights I had with my sister; we both get frustrated pretty easily, and this game could get you like that.

24. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (PS2)
Kind of like a more fully-animated version of Gauntlet, in a way. Becca and I had hours of fun getting lost in this game and journeying through Middle-earth and killing lots and lots and lots of orcs. I like games where you just get thrown in and have to fight your way out, and this was one of the best times I had doing it.

23. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
I liked all of the Mario games for NES, but this was far and away my favorite. Frustrating as hell in some places, but really fun.

22. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game (arcade)
I don't know how much money in quarters I must have fed into this machine. I remember playing this game with my sister at the arcade over and over and over again. It was one of those sideways scrolling action games, and we just played and played and played until we'd won the damn thing. Carl and I played this game, too. Konami also made an X-Men game like this, and it's still the best X-Men game I've ever played (although I haven't played any since the Capcom arcade games and Sega Genesis).

21. LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (PS2)
All of the LEGO games will be on this list. Are they all the same game? Sure. But they're also all fun. They're the perfect combination of an action game and a puzzle game.

20. Metroid (NES)
Another game I just loved to play for hours at a time, even though I wasn't always as good at it as I wanted to be. I played this at a friend's house and then took off and bought my own copy of it.

19. LEGO Batman: The Video Game (PS2)
Easily the most fun I've ever had with a Batman game.

18. Galaga (arcade)
When I could get my mom away from it, this was always a neat game to play.

17. Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (PS2)
I like these kinds of first-person shooter games. I especially enjoyed this one just because Becca and I got so into it. She was on vacation from work and we just sat and played this game for a few days until we beat it. I enjoyed the heck out of that.

16. Tetris (PC)
Well, come on, who doesn't love Tetris?

15. Pokemon Snap (N64)
I generally found this to be a relaxing (if sometimes difficult) game. It was a neat premise; you got in a cart and went through a Pokemon habitat and tried to take really good photographs of them. A charmingly simple concept that took a surprising amount of skill to master. And it was a nice break from action games.

14. Army Men: Sarge's Heroes (N64)
Damn, I enjoyed the hell out of this game. This was just a fun game. It was one of the few video games to teach me the value of patience, too. I tend to overreact.

13. LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (PS2)
The major reason this scores over the other LEGO Star Wars game is that you can import the characters from the first game and you can play bounty hunting missions. The most fun I've ever had with a Star Wars video game.

12. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)
This and The Ocarina of Time are my two favorite Zelda games ever. Appropriately epic, the way I'd always imagined them to be in the eighties.

11. Mario Kart 64 (N64)
I'm not usually a fan of racing games, but this one was a lot of fun. Plus, I dig all the Mario characters (nearly making this list: Super Smash Bros. for the N64). I don't know, it was just a lot of fun to play. Is it true they've added Pac-Man to the lineup for the Wii version? Because that's just too freaking awesome for words.

10. Dr. Mario (NES)
I got lost playing this game during the summer of 1993, when there was all the flooding. When I wasn't working, I sat and zoned out on Dr. Mario. It was very relaxing. Well, focused, maybe. Took my mind right off of how tired and annoyed I was.

9. Banjo-Kazooie (N64)
This game was really weird and really neat. A lot like the puzzle/action combination of Mario or the LEGO games, but really, really bizarre. It was a little extra neat because the main character, Banjo the Honey Bear, reminded me so much of Billy Bob from Showbiz Pizza. I can't explain it, but playing this game made me feel like a little kid in a really good way.

8. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GameCube)
This has the distinction of being one of only two games I've ever played on GameCube. It's also, in my experience (so far), the Zelda game with the best animation. It looks like a cartoon, and I love it for that.

7. Ms. Pac-Man (arcade)
All due respect to my beloved Pac-Man, but Ms. Pac-Man did have way better game play. This is the first and last arcade game I was incredibly good at.

6. Space Invaders (arcade)
The experience of playing this game at a loud arcade is something everyone should enjoy at some point or another. I remember when this game was so popular there was a line to play it.

5. Super Mario 64 (N64)
After getting the NES around 1987 or 1988, I didn't make a major platform upgrade until Becca bought the Nintendo 64 around 1997. It was a real jump in quality, and I have really fond memories of that platform because it was mine and Becca's first together. It came with this game, and we sat and played it together for hours and hours during a particularly heavy winter. I will always have fond memories of this game, no matter how much it frustrated me.

4. The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (N64)
I've always loved the Legend of Zelda games, and this was such an improvement over the last one I'd actually played, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, that I was blown away. I'd always wanted to see Link fully formed in an epic landscape, and this was certainly it. What I love about the Zelda games is that you can just play these things forever and ever. There's so much to them that it's not over and done so quickly. Of all of the Zelda games, for whatever reason, this one is my favorite.

3. LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (PS2)
The perfection of the LEGO game, at least for me.

2. Sid Meier's Civilization III (PC)
It caters to everything I want: it's long and involved, it takes strategic planning, it's a world-building game, and it's based in history. There are entire days of my life that have gone missing because of this game. I played it so much that I had to take it off of my computer. But it's just sitting there, waiting to be reinstalled...

1. Centipede (arcade)
There was nothing to this game but a rolling ball and a button. And yet, it was awesomeness in video console form. Sometimes the simplest things are the most wonderful.

Kristen Bell Mondays

Song of the Week: "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay"

Oh, man, this is one of my favorite songs of all time. Restrained, but emotive. Succinct, but powerful. Laid-back, but passionate. It's deliberately a more relaxed sound than Redding's usual style (apparently his record label considered adding a gospel chorus because the song was "too pop oriented"). There's a lot of pain in this song, a lot of acceptance of the world as it is. I can relate, certainly, when Redding sings "Looks like nothin's gonna change; everything still remains the same." Yeah. This song has the benefit of being true, which is much better than being flashy. Redding was one of the great singers, and this song, which was released just after his tragic death in a plane crash in late 1967, became the first posthumous #1 single in US chart history. And it can't be just because he died. It's also one of the most inspired songs in music history.

Twilight Summarized by a Smartass, Chapter 10

As I realize with dawning horror that I'm not even halfway through this book yet...

Again, more of the talky-talk. This book has suddenly devolved into chapters of Edward and Bella just talking and talking and talking and having nothing but the most inane conversations. They're both being really guarded, and it's really a drag, because the conversation is just two idiots skirting around the main issue, like it's somehow going to make things silly (too late!) just talking about being a vampire.

I've just never seen the appeal of vampires in fiction. Never. I'm not a vampire guy, I don't dig vampires, and I'm usually surprised if a vampire in a story isn't total bullshit (I never expect them to go as far as "interesting"). I don't get the idea of women in stories like this one being incredibly attracted to vampires, and I don't get where something that's dead has any kind of human appeal (and I especially don't buy that vampires want or need to fuck). Vampires are like sharks to me; they've reached an evolutionary dead end, and all they need is to kill, feed, and keep moving. Sharks mate and make new sharks; vampires do the same by turning people into vampires. I don't know how sex or romance or anything like that would appeal to something that can't really do anything with it.

And Stephenie Meyer does what all vampire stories do now--she just throws out the parts of vampire mythology she doesn't like and dismisses them. Oh, sure vampires can walk around during the day, silly. She doesn't give herself any parameters or limits for Edward's vampirism to run up against, which would have at least created some tension and some drama. Instead, he's just got superpowers she can't think of anything interesting to do with. The only limitation here is Stephenie Meyer's awkward inability to tell a compelling story.

I guess what I'm saying is that Stephenie Meyer has a vampire here. She could do anything with this vampire. And what is the grandest thing this monster/super-being/tragic creature/evil murderer/whatever does with his life? Pretends to be a teenager and goes to school and falls in love with the most self-absorbed teenager in history. Whoo. Epic. I can see why this is 500 pages long, there's a lot to that.

Ugh.

You'll notice I'm not mentioning a lot of the actual story here. That's because it's just more tap dancing, more conversations, more bullshit. If you're going to write a conversation, please, make sure the characters say something. They have nothing to talk about. Edward reads Jessica's mind so that he can find out how Bella really feels about him, and he's pained to discover that she thinks she cares more about Edward than Edward cares about her. Their conversation at lunch is basically three pages of "I love you more" "No, I love you more" "No, I love you more, and I still don't know if I'm going to kill you yet or not, so let's hang out all the time!"

And you just long for something more substantial, like an Archie comic or a Bazooka Joe wrapper.

Bella casually compares Edward to a Greek god in this chapter. That pretty much says it all about the stupidity and lack of talent on display here. Bella, by the way, has made herself completely subservient to Edward. It's depressing, considering how oh-so-pleased she was with her independence and her supposed lack of conformity. Now she's taking orders and letting Edward dominate her like, well, any kind of god. Stephenie Meyer's Mormonism coming through.

This is all just so depressing.

Sunday Hottie 240

HOLLY MADISON

Yo, Joe! Episode 27

Lasers in the Night

Look, Quick Kick sucks. He does. He's just awful. He's only there because they wanted a Bruce Lee rip-off, and he has no personality except that he constantly quotes classic movie lines with his terrible impressions (every guy thinks he can do the best Bogart impression, and the fact is, none of us can; oh, and your impressions of Christopher Walken suck, too, so please stop doing them). Fun-loving guy who quotes movie lines and does impressions? That sounds like everyone I hate at a comic book convention.

So, in this episode, this chick Amber is bored with her college classes but thinks Quick Kick is interesting. Apparently she doesn't own a record player. She goes to see Quick Kick at a G.I. Joe martial arts expo on campus to go, in her own words, "hunk hunting."

*sigh*

This is the kind of episode that would've had me flipping channels that afternoon. I think ThunderCats might've been on at the same time.

Anyway, Quick Kick goes through the usual martial arts expo stuff (a reminder that martial arts are not just for fighting, but for discipline, followed by chopping a chain in half in a very disciplined way). Quick Kick is impressed because, in true lazy writing style, when he asks for a volunteer from the audience, Amber gets in a lucky punch and nearly collapses his lung, from the sound of it.

Amber really likes Quick Kick, even after his idiot Porky Pig impression, and runs after him so he can do his idiot Bogart impression. She giggles and a montage follows, with Quick Kick dating a college student and clothes and settings right out of some terrible late-forties movie about teenagers courting. She mistakes his James Stewart impression for John Wayne, and he giggles and everything's perfect, and they're sparring in the dojo together, and it's basically Bruce and Linda Lee.

Hilariously, what ruins it all is that Amber says she wants to join G.I. Joe. So he tells her about military training and how you have to put in all of this time and effort and become one of the best in your field to even be considered and--oh, no, wait, that's right, G.I. Joe will take anyone with a costume and a gimmick who walks up to the door that day. That was pretty much Quick Kick's entre into the service, wasn't it? "Uh, well, we met a guy in the Arctic who saved us from Storm Shadow, and he's a stuntman and can fly a plane... and, uh, we don't have a guy who does impressions yet, so why not?" Jeez, not even a background check?

Anyway, Quick Kick thinks it's too dangerous for Amber to join G.I. Joe, which comes across as awful damn sexist considering he works with two women--Scarlett and Cover Girl--who can really handle themselves in the field. (And attention-craving Lady Jaye, but I keep hoping she'll get over her crippling neediness.) It really is the late forties, after all. At least in Quick Kick's head.

Suddenly, as if to get a taste of the horrors that could potentially await Amber, we cut to Gung Ho on an island, running away from Cobra soldiers and casually punching snakes. Why he's alone on this island I don't know, but he gets captured by a Cobra with a laser whip. Cobra Commander and the Baroness are pleased with his capture, and the Baroness is given an assignment.

Cut suddenly to the G.I. Joe electronics lab burning to the ground. Duke, Scarlett, Lady Jaye, and Bazooka rush in to look for anybody; Lady Jaye hears a cry for help but gets knocked out, so Bazooka has to drag her out. The building is totally destroyed. Duke sees a Cobra Rattler flying off and figures they were looking for the new guidance system, which was moved to the Joe HQ for exactly this reason.

Well, things sure have soured between Quick Kick and Amber. He brings Lady Jaye flowers in the infirmary, and when Scarlett makes a light joke about "your new girlfriend had better not hear about the flowers," Quick Kick immediately gets pissy. "The only flowers Amber would be interested in are those wrapped in enlistment papers." Wow, what a bitch. Quick Kick, I mean.

And then the lights are cut and there's a mysterious intruder.

But she's really Amber!

And let me tell you, Quick Kick is pissed. But you know who's even more pissed? Duke. Bow howdy, is he mad. How mad? Interrogation mad.

Seriously, guys? An interrogation chamber? Why, because she didn't just walk in wearing a sailor suit? All Amber wanted to do was join G.I. Joe, and I guess this was her misguided calling card, but you gotta admit, breaking into Joe HQ was pretty ballsy and impressive for a college student with no apparent military training. Amber looks to Quick Kick for support, and he totally hangs her out to dry (and he does it with his crappy John Wayne impression, too). Duke basically says "Aw, fuck it" and lets her go. He even lets Quick Kick show her around. Maybe he's thinking about it.

Amber is way too pissed at Quick Kick to care about Skystriker arcana, so she runs off and he follows. Meanwhile, a tech who goes by the fearsome codename Alice is fitting Lady Jaye's Skystriker with the new guidance system. I wonder what Alice's story is. She kind of looks like Majel Barrett. Really, anyone who isn't Lady Jaye or Quick Kick is more interesting than what's going on in this story, and you don't see too many women in G.I. Joe, despite the big three. Alice really feels like she's only there to show that G.I. Joe doesn't discriminate based on gender, since Quick Kick is being really high-handed and sexist with Amber.

Well, someone finally notices that Gung Ho's been gone an awful long time, so Duke gathers some Joes together (Scarlett, Bazooka, Breaker, Alpine, Roadblock, Dusty, Spirit and Flint) for a briefing. His last transmission was from a place called Snake Island, which probably should have been a red flag long before now. Amber bursts into the room, mortified, and Quick Kick hauls her off.

Duke: "Can't you get a handle on your woman, Quick Kick?"
Flint: "Heh, this is why I don't date!"
Alpine: "Sure, THAT'S why. Got nothing to do with your crippling fear of women."

Meanwhile, Destro makes it back to Snake Island and contacts Cobra Commander. "You've arrived just in time to witness my latest stroke of genius!" the Commander hisses. That raises a red flag for Destro, but let's face it, Destro is the smartest guy on this entire show. "What is that madman up to now?" Probably thinking It's like I have to childproof the damn base and put a babysitter in charge every time I leave.

Doc (Doc! Nice to see you for a change! Doc is so underused it's a damn crime!) reports that the long-range laser guidance system past all tests. Duke is a little too impressed with his new toy, and then Amber accidentally bursts in again. I think Duke is really sick of this chick and any chance of her joining up is over now. Again, she's mortified and Quick Kick is all like "Can someone put a damn bell on her?" and it's time to take her back to sorority row.

Then Cobra attacks (that Snake Island must be, like, down the street) and Lady Jaye, who has been acting weird, seemingly gets killed. I say seemingly because, as everyone in the world has surmised by now, Lady Jaye is really the Baroness in disguise!

Yes, the Baroness changed places with Lady Jaye back at the fire, got the security code to the Skystrikers, called for the Cobra attack as a diversion, and stole the guidance system.

Duke, however, is blaming this whole thing on Amber, since she was (as far as he knows), the only non-Joe personnel in the building all night. Quick Kick's got to bring her in on suspicion of being a Cobra spy. He accepts it and walks off, leaving Scarlett to wonder if Quick Kick even cares. Duke cuts her off and says Quick Kick cares, "he simply just isn't the type to show his feelings." Well, not unless they can be expressed with a terrible impression and an old movie quote. Seriously, Duke, I know your toy was stolen, but the whole speech is right on the verge of saying "Scarlett, men are talking!"

Where's Amber? Well, she's taken a raft to Snake Island, scuba-ed in through a tunnel, and is crawling through a vent when she's captured by the Crimson Guard. She's certain G.I. Joe must think she's a Cobra spy, so she's gone to destroy Snake Island by herself. Seriously. And did I mention that this is all taking place on the same night?

Anyway, Amber's the one the Baroness reveals herself to, and Amber is thrown in a cell with the real Lady Jaye and Gung Ho. How will they escape? Well, luckily Quick Kick's ability to chop through iron chains has transferred over to Amber in some kind of totally made-up girlfriend osmosis.

Quick Kick shows up on the island, too, completely without troops or any kind of back-up, does an idiot A-Team impression, and is almost immediately captured.

Well, this is Cobra Commander's big plan: to use his laser to carve his face on the moon. Yes, Cobra Commander's entire plan was to just get all Chairface Chippendale because he was a little bored and didn't have Zartan to amuse him properly. Destro is unbelievably irritated with the Commander. "You spent millions on this?!--this cosmic graffiti?!" I think Destro feels like a parent returning from vacation only to find that, while he was gone, his son Idiot W. Bush thought it would be "hilarimous" to tag the neighbor's garage and then piss on it, even though he's in his twenties and should know better, especially when he's hiding out from military service. And then you wonder why you didn't hit the kid more often, since nothing gets through to this little asshole, who is an underachiever even despite his inferiority complex...

...it just gets to be too much, doesn't it, Destro?

Amber and the Joes escape and head for the control room, where Quick Kick is being held, and Amber's all thrilled, but then Quick Kick ruins it by being all smarmy and saying "Since there were no good movies on, I decided to rescue you." Oh, die in a fire, Quick Kick.

Well, you know the drill. Snake Island is lost, the Cobra leaders escape, Destro's all like "You're a fool!" and Cobra Commander's all like "Everyone's against me!" without thinking about how idiotic his plan was in the first place.

Quick Kick tries to follow, but gets shot down by Destro. He ends up saving himself and Amber from Destro and snakes by getting all Indiana Jones with the laser whip. He condescendingly tells Amber that this is what she'll have to deal with if she's a Joe, but it seems to me that she's holding her own just fine, even saving his life at least three times by pushing him out of the way of laser fire when he's too busy hot dogging to make sure he doesn't get killed. I mean, she breaks into Joe HQ and takes on Snake Island by herself and he doubts her courage? Wow, fuck you, Quick Kick. How insecure are you?

Back at headquarters, Duke actually apologizes to Amber for thinking she was the Cobra spy, and Amber is responsible enough to tell him his suspicions weren't out of bounds, since she did everything wrong. Duke tells her she's welcome to join the team, but she turns him down, saying she's going to finish school first. Still, she's got a space if she wants it.

And at the end, Amber pulls out a movie quote and Quick Kick doesn't recognize it. Seriously? I mean, even if you haven't seen Now, Voyager and are one of those poser movie buffs, you still have to have heard the line "Don't ask for the moon, we have the stars."

Since guys hate being corrected on their quirks, I'm assuming he dumped Amber as soon as possible. But he's obviously got control issues, anyway.

Did I mention this episode was written by Marv Wolfman? You can do better, dude. You did. A lot better.

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