Hey. Sorry I haven't posted...yet. You know what I mean. We here at Geek Labs had a busy day. I'm planning on posting tomorrow, so I'm just going to post twice. So sorry for no article. I'll make it up to you.

Sincerly
Kurt

Flick Picks 16: Prom Night (2008)

Prom Night. A Movie to sleep through...

 Hello again, Streakers! Boog here, with the 16th Flick Pick: 2008's Slasher kinda remake Prom Night. I say kinda remake because there was a 1980 slasher film by the same name, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, in the tail end of scream queen heyday brought on by John Carpenter's Halloween, and Leslie Nielsen, of all people, as the killer. However, plotwise, I Know What You Did Last Summer, the borefest of a slasher starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, is closer to being a true remake of the 1980 film than this. Not that that helps this film any. Most of the plot elements remain intact, the only changes are the number of teens in the main cast, and the killer's motivation. SPOILERS! Although, if you watch the first ten minutes of this film, most of it's already spoiled for you anyway. Counting the credits, this film comes in at just under 90 minutes, although to get to the beginning of the movie, we have to sit through 3 minutes of opening credits, just to go through a laughable opening sequence, setting up the plot of Donna, played by Brittany Snow, who you might have seen in the 2007 musical Hairspray, or heard while playing Kingdom Hearts 2, where she voices Namine, as she comes home from the movies to find her father and younger brother covered in ketchup, which greatly distresses her. I guess she was really looking forward to an after movie hot dog or something. Then she hides under the bed just in time to see her mother get liberal amount of ketchup applied to her stomach and chest, and the crazy ketchup man leaves the room. Did I mention the blood in this sequence is terrible? She gets out from under the bed, only to have ketchup man find her, and apparently begin her application process, only to have it turn out to be a flashback, Donna reliving the murder of her family some three years prior. The killer was caught and put away "for good", just so we know he's coming back. But none of that apparently matters, as we Donna being incredibly well adjusted while living with her Aunt and Uncle, played by Jessalyn Gilsig, or the crazy ex-wife from Glee, and Linden Ashby, who will forever only be known to me as the actor who played Johnny Cage in 1995's Mortal Kombat. None of the five other teens are all that memorable to me, but, for the sake of completeness, one of the girls is Jessica Stroup, who I believe at this time is still? in the current incarnation of 90210. One of the guys is Collins Pennie, whom I only know from watching 2009's movie reboot of 80s TV show Fame.

This is about as animated as some of them get, too.

Now, with all that out of the way, we start seeing the cliches and idiots come out of the woodwork. You see, PROM is coming up, so all anxiety about watching her family die takes a backseat to being with a boy! Three couples, Donna and her boyfriend Bobby included, are going all out, renting a limo, getting a ginormus, and very awesome, hotel room, the works. This is of course overshadowed by the fact that they mention in conversation that the prom itself, went $10K OVER budget. I don't know about you, but my high was relatively large for a small town. It had a larger graduating class than this fictional one does, by about 100 kids, and I don't think we spent five grand on the senior prom. It only gets more implausible from her folks. They get to the prom, and when you see it, you wonder where the ten grand went. They start partying, and we see the killer for the first time, as a completely ridiculous level of coincidence happens, letting the killer know what hotel room Donna will be staying in. As the teens get their groove on,  Ketchup Man heads upstairs, and kills a housekeeper by applying some jelly to her stomach. The now named Jelly Man then pockets her Master keycard. Things get more ridiculous as only now do the police find out he's escaped, as it apparently took the MAXIMUM SECURITY facility he was locked THREE DAYS to notice he was missing, and report it to the local authorities. This makes even less sense with explanatory scenario the audience gets shown, which involves him slitting the throat of another inmate, and climbing into the ceiling through a loose grate. Of course, now is where the film falls apart, if it hasn't for you yet already. Now, the main police detective, played by Idris Elba, who was 28 Weeks Later, RocknRolla, and the yet to be released Thor, explains the killer's motive. He's a stalker. He, as a teacher, fell into psycho love with Donna. Her family put out a restraining order on him, and in response, he committed the opening flashback. Despite the very real threat, there's "no evidence" he'll come back to try again, and so the only things the police do are precautionary measures in case he does come back. Oh, and when the hotel manager is given a picture of Jelly Man, who he only checked in maybe an hour before hand, he doesn't recognize him.

Not really hard to miss, what with the obvious killer face...

So then we get treated to the cliched bit of teens from the group getting offed by Jelly Man, one by one. One of them even gets the long, drawn out cat and mouse type death, while an award she would have won gets announced elsewhere. Oh, and the worst hotel manager ever gets a room service man killed by sending him up to find the missing housekeeper, despite being tipped off by the police presence that something might be wrong. The death of the third teen friend is the first one in this film that has somewhat realistic looking blood in it, but it is also very darkly shot, making a lot of the tension disappear simply by making it hard to see. Jelly Man starts getting real annoying here, pulling out superpowers from the cliche slasher villain playbook. He can teleport, or at least use semi-super speed, as he gets around far too quickly. He can move as silently as ninja at those speeds, too. He can kill damn near anyone he wants to silently as well, as no less than five deaths, counting the opening flashback, happen without raising any kind of alarm or suspicion. and considering that three of those deaths are throat slits, that's just too damn hard to believe.

Also a bit like a steel jalapeno pepper.

They try so hard to make him this iconic evil, giving him a specific look(brown blazer, dress shirt, ball cap, slacks, and new patent leather loafers, that squeak, a lot), giving him an admittedly wicked looking knife, albeit one that looks a bit like a larger cousin to those wildlife picture knives all boys get from an uncle or other father figure when they turn 13(mine was a buck). But I will say this. Jelly Man is by far the best actor in this piece. He comes as genuinely creepy, the script giving him plenty of chances to ham up the the sleaze and danger of the character, and he does it well. The pacing of the film is almost exact, averaging a death every six and a half minutes. The problem there is that half of those deaths are in the first and last ten minutes, so most of the middle of the film is padded with jump scares(10), and fake outs(5), meaning, at end count, there are moments trying to be scary then actual deaths and tension.

She just realized what kind of film she's in.

So, in closing, 2008's Prom Night to me encapsulates everything wrong with post-Scream slasher genre. The cast is either unlikeable, idiotic, or too bland to give a crap about. The villains motives are too shallow and undeveloped, and a few of the deaths don't even fit into the killer's motive until the editor wakes up and realized the plot has written him into a corner. This film isn't terrible, but it sure as hell isn't good either. Avoid it if you can, unless you can find a group that wants to watch it and tear it to shreds. On a side note, the sets were quite good, and the film opens with a rather good cover of The Zombies' "Time of the Season", played by Ben Taylor. But those aren't enough to save the film. If you get invited to Prom Night, do yourself a favor and just stay home.

Ginger's Soapbox Issues #1: Chick-fil-A

This week, April 25th to 28th, do your friends, neighbors, and community a favor: Don't buy anything from Chick-fil-A*. If fact, you might not want to go there ever again. Why? Because every meal, sandwich, and nugget purchased from this chain directly supports organizations working against marriage equality, such as Alliance Defense Fund and Family Research Council. What is marriage equality? This is the idea that everyone, no matter what their sexual orientation or lifestyle choices, has the right to marry the person they love. Why is it important? It's important because everyone deserves the right to love and be loved in return. It's important because no one should be made to feel ashamed of who they care about. Why should you care? Because the people being denied this right are people you know: you may work with them, you may go to school with them, you may live by them. They might just be people you pass on the street, but you know them. And you should care about the people you know.

*Fact: Chick-fil-A's charitable division has provided more than $1.1 million to anti-LGBT organizations. Please don't add to that number.

Games You Should Know About... Even More Cheapass Games

Wow, I'm surprised that my previous post got over 260 views in one day (on Geek Streak).  I guess you guys must really like getting free games.  Since they were in such high demand, I'll give you the other two games that Cheapass Games put out.  While the previous two games were sort of original (though Strange Adventures in Infinite Space was somewhat inspired by Star Control), these next two are clones of old games with a few twists.

For instance, Plasmaworm, which was the first game Digital Eel created, is just a newer interpretation of the classic game Snake -- you know, the game where you lead this snake around a playing field, trying to eat little dots on the screen that would make your snake longer.  That part hasn't changed, but they did add other things to the mix, such as walls and zones that either increase or decrease your speed.  Your "snake" looks more like some strange organism that you could only see with a microscope and the "food" are little symbols that may look familiar to some (I did see the logo for Kill Doctor Lucky, among others).  You can even create your own custom levels and challenge yourself or your friends (just remember the name you gave the level when you saved it, as that is the password you need to enter in the main menu).  It may not seem like much, at first, but exploring the new features does add some replay value to it.

The extra features on Plasmaworm really does give this game

a longer shelf life than its predecessor.

The next game, Big Box of Blox, is Digital Eel's take on the Genesis game Columns.  While the "match three or more" mechanic isn't exactly the same (you can't match three diagonally in this game, but you can eliminate other matching blocks that are connected to the matching set), the game works, for the most part, identically to Sega's puzzle "classic."  The thing that sets this game apart from the original is the different game modes.  Each game mode has its own theme and extra rules.  For instance, there's one game mode that looks like a Lovecraftian nightmare, complete with squamous blocks.  In this mode, there's question blocks (no, not like in Super Mario Bros.) that, when matched up, turn into slot machine wheels which cause some certain effect, such as eliminating all blocks in a certain row, column, or diagonal, depending on the results.  Other modes slowly raise the bottom of the playing field, making it progressively harder, or have "imprisoned" blocks which have to be matched up twice: once with other prison blocks, and again with the kind of block that was locked in there (they're not all the same blocks behind those bars).  If you like Columns or other cascading puzzle games, such as Tetris, you may enjoy Big Box of Blox.



Well, that's all the computer games that Cheapass Games published.  If you want to download these games, use the link here for Plasmaworm (only available for PC -- sorry, Mac users) and here for Big Box of Blox.

Enjoy the free games and I'll see you next week.

Ginger, on A Boy And His Blob

If you don't already know about this game you're missing out. A Boy And His Blob is a platform-puzzle game developed by WayForward Technologies and published by Majesco Games in 2009. There is an older version somewhere, but I'll be talking about the Wii version (released on October 13th, 2009).

First off, the art of this game is delightful. I've never seen a more adorable side kick than Blob. Even the bad-guy shadow creatures are cute in a way - most of them look far from menacing (except for the bosses).  The stages themselves are very well done to; To me, they kinda of look like a sophisticated Mario-style world. I happen to like the nighttime ones the best myself.

Guys, guys - I just want to pass by here.

Now as far as the premise, I don't know if playing the original game would explain anything better, but you get a little epic opening movie that shows Blob crash landing on Boy's world after leaving a jelly bean shaped planet, then Boy and Blob kicking butt and taking names, and finally a glimpse of the top bad dude you ultimately have to fight (?). ( I'm not sure if you have to fight him in the end or not since I haven't finished the game yet...) When the game actually starts you find Boy asleep in his pretty rocking tree house where he gets awakened by Blob's crash landing. Boy (you at this point) will get up and be directed on where to go find Blob and buddy up. Once you guys are together, you'll be zapped back to the tree house and the game will really start. You get different sets of jelly beans to feed Blob on each stage and each jelly bean has different effects - one will turn Blob into a ladder, another will turn him (it?) into a trampoline, another will turn him hole and so on. On the lower levels you'll get three different types of jellybeans, but you'll have more and more as you get further in the game. On each level you will use every type you're given at least once - especially in the boss battles. Though it is pretty straight forward (get form point A to point B), you do have to get creative sometimes to figure out how to get somewhere and the difficulty constantly changes so you're never bored.

Yeah! Squish those baddies flat!

As an added bonus there are two types of stages: the story stages and the challenge stages. The story stages have three hidden chests for you to find that turn into artifacts in your home after you finish the stage (not really sure what they're for yet or if they have a purpose) and the challenge stages help you hon your skills, sort of. The challenge stages are in fact a challenge, and take a little more finesse to get though. I let my husband play those since I don't have the patience for it, but I love the story stages.

All in all, I love this game. It's challenging enough for adults to play but easy enough not to be to difficult for children either. The stages are well thought out and planned. The story is sweet and says a lot about friendships and team work (a good lesson of adults and children alike). It's not overly violent like some many other games out there today (there is some bad guy squishing and bursting, but it had to be done). I's not sure about the replay value on this game yet, but I think it has some potential. Also, I think I might need a Blob plushie. Anyone know where to get one? :)

Tables

This is a geek blog. So after looking at the article title you may ask "What's geeky about tables?" Click on the link below.

Table of Gaming +3

One of the pictures says plans to come soon. So far my searches have turned up nothing. If anyone finds anything let me know. Even if it's a site where they are for sale. This table has everything room for 7 (including DM), a discrete message system in case the DM needs to tell you something without letting everyone know (or vice versa), foot space, and area for your dice. Each player gets a walled off section without cutting into the maps area. Also notice it has room for character sheets or books in between each players area. Oh yeah and it has a built in sound system.

I wish I could post the pictures from the new gallery, but they are protected.

So in order to make it up to you here are some videos of cool tables.



Not specifically geeky, but I'm excited because that is one useful table. Now if only extra chairs unfolded from it.

On the other hand...this is probably the least useful table you'll ever have, but your friends will love it.



So thanks to all of you on the internet who take something like a table and make it awesome. I'm always amazed by the amount of ingenuity I find on the internet.

Flick Picks 15: Epic (Failure) Movie

 Hello again Streakers! Boog here, with the second part of my reviews for this wonderful Friday. Unfortunately, this, 'film' is nothing less than an utter failure from beginning to end. Comedy is supposedly very hard to write well, and spoof comedy even harder, because it requires a least some first hand knowledge on the spoof subject for the audience to make the jokes work, and to make them work well, they have to be written strongly enough to take advantage of the comedy setting. For Good, and some Great examples of spoof comedy films, I direct you to Google the Naked Gun movies, the Hot Shots films, and some of the National Lampoon films made before 1995, like Loaded Weapon Part 1. Hell, even the Zucker classic Airplane! These spoof films work because, inherently, the base components of the films they're spoofing haven't changed, they're just being presented in a funny way through clever writing and the occasional sight gag.
Epic Movie, on the other hand, is just down right awful. So awful, I can't even get the trailer from imdb.com to link here. First of all, from a comedy standpoint, none of the jokes are focused, or drive the story forward, so it fails there, and from a spoof standpoint, well, most of the jokes are sex jokes, with little to no variation from that. There is no real connection to the films being made fun of, other than the writers going 'hey, we should do a bit on that Johnny Depp Wonka movie here! That would be AWESOME!', and frankly, it never is. SPOILERS!, and if you want to find out just how awful, read through the jump....

CDreams #1: Rock Sugar- Reimaginator

Yes, we combined Led Zepplin and Supertramp. So?

Hello, Streakers! Boog here, with an apology for no review last week. Crap happens, but I really had no excuse for not doing one, so, sorry. That said, I'm hopefully making up for it this week with TWO reviews, one Flick Pick, and this, the first CDream, on an album called Reimaginator, from a band called Rock Sugar. This band, and this album, is quite possibly the single most original thing I've heard in quite some time, and considering that there isn't a single original note or word in the entire album, that's saying something. You see, Rock Sugar is a cover band. But not just any cover band. a MASH-UP cover band. As to what they mash-up, and the format I will use for this and subsequent CDreams reviews, keep reading. Oh, and SPOILERS! if you haven't heard them yet.

Games You Should Know About... More Cheapass Games

Last week, I showed you guys a Cheapass Game about time travel.  Unfortunately, the game is almost impossible to find.  So, I figure I do all of you a solid and direct you to some Cheapass Games for the computer that you and download and play for free.  You see, Cheapass Games decided to distribute video games from a developer called Digital Eel in the early 2000s.  Under the Cheapass Games label, Digital Eel made four games for PC and Mac.  After a few years, they were made available as freeware.  Today, I'll tell you about two of them.

The first game, Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, is a game of space exploration, alien diplomacy, and starship battle.  You play a down on your luck space pilot.  An unscrupulous crime boss gives you a starship with minimal armaments, a crew, and a few years to explore a region of space that is forbidden to humans.  You travel between star systems, collecting artifacts and creatures of alien origin and bring them back to your benefactor.  During your search, you'll encounter alien races, mercenaries, saboteurs, dangerous black holes, destructive supernovas, and time consuming nebulae.  You only have a few years to acquire what you can and return to the crime boss to get paid.  Travel between systems can take hundreds of days, so you need to plan your course and upgrade your ship.

The game can take 8-20 minutes to play and the map of space changes with each game, so it's a good for a quick game when you need to kill time.  There is a sequel, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, which has a little more content, but also costs $25, so I just stick with the original.



If you're more in the mood for fast paced shooting, then check out Dr. Blob's Organism.  As a scientist, you have to combat one-celled organisms that try to spread and escape from their petri dish.  The controls are simple, as you have to turn the petri dish to shoot the spreading cytoplasm and destroy the nucleus of these malignant cells.  This game does give your fingers a workout as you're rapidly shooting slime to keep it from touching the sides of the dish, but there are power-ups, such as two-way or three-way shot, that help you out.  It's pretty straightforward, but good for some finger burning action.



Again, both of these games are free to download for PC and Mac, so click on the link here for Strange Adventures in Infinite Space or here for Dr. Blob's Organism, and enjoy some quick, fun, and free gaming.

Go ahead, play them.  Next week, I'll bring you some more Cheapass computer games.

RIP Sarah Jane Smith

The delightful Miss Sarah Jane Smith

Despite this weekend's premier of a new Doctor Who season, today was a sad day for longtime WhoFans. [Reported by BBC News] Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen, after losing a battle with cancer, has died at age 63. Miss Sladen played a fan-favorite companion to The Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, appearing throughout the 1973-1976 seasons of Doctor Who and had recently starred in her own spinoff series, "The Sarah Jane Adventures."

Much to my disappointment, I haven't seen either of these. I do however know Sarah Jane Smith from Sladen's appearance in the modern incarnation of Doctor Who alongside former star David Tennant. In that brief appearance, Sarah Jane showed herself to be capable and strong and more than a little fierce. She was the companion you could cheer for - the companion who could save herself. Sarah Jane had a way of making you feel proud of her and in awe of her all at once. I can't imagine how wonderful the woman behind the actress must have been, and I would have loved to meet her.

Here's to you Elisabeth Sladen. Thank you for bringing us Sarah Jane.

Alchememe : Who needs sleep? Pt. 3

Hey, Alchemilla here with an outlier edition of Who needs sleep?

I'm not going to talk much about this video. You may have watched it as a child. If so, (or if not) may I present to you the most disturbing thing on the internet for kids.

Soccer Dog

So I still have nothing for you, because my friends took me out for a belated birthday, so here's a video of Ginger's dog (yes, the racist one) finding a new favorite toy.

See you later.

Traveling

Only you can prevent Gummy bear
melty-genocide

So after a long road trip this week my wife and I are back. The picture on the right is why it's important not to leave Gummy bears in the car once you get to you destination. (Sorry Carl. They were good.)

So here's a place. For all your time travel needs, Anacronus.

And here's what happened when Van Halen time jumped into John Lennon's house.

That's right todays theme is traveling. Sorry todays post is so small I'll make it up to you soon, when I'm less tired.

Time Travel Board Games (Part 2)

Greetings, people of the future.  I have come from the past (about a week ago) to review another time travel board game.  If you recall, I reviewed Chrononauts a week... I mean, two weeks ago.  Today, I take a look at an old product from Cheapass Games that deals with the struggle of getting the credit for inventing time travel.

If you don't know who Cheapass Games are, it is a company that was started by James Ernst in 1995 after quitting his freelance job at Wizards of the Coast.  He had an idea to create cheap boardgames by only packaging the necessary materials unique to each game.  His reasoning was that most tabletop gamers already have plenty of dice, tokens, fake money, and player pawn pieces from the games they already own.  It was kind of a meat-and-potatoes company that became big in the late '90s and into the early 2000s.  They made many award winning games -- some you may be familiar with.  Some of their creations were even picked up by other companies and turned into full blown, high quality board games, such as Kill Doctor Lucky.  Many of them, however, have become obscure and hard to find.  This is the story of such a game.

That game is U.S. Patent No. 1, a time travel adventure where the players race and battle each other through time to stake their claim in time travel technology.  You see, each player takes the role of an inventor who created a time machine.  In order to be hailed as the inventor of time travel, they must go to the patent office.  But there's a funny thing about patenting time travel: Unless you're the very first person in line at the patent office when it opens on day one, someone else is going to beat you to it.  Therefore, you must travel through time, doing research, upgrading your time machine, and making a bit of money with your uncanny "knowledge from the future" and have a fully functional time machine when your number is called at the patent office, all the way back in 1790.  Be the first one to do so and you win.

Of course, it takes more than just going back to 1790 and just saying, "Okay, I'm here.  Gimme a patent."  In order to have a fully operational time machine, you have to have a complete array of functional upgrades installed onto it.  There are four categories of upgrades you need to get.  In the chassis category, you pick a vehicle -- it could be an airplane, a bicycle, a "horseless carriage," or the bargain basement canoe option -- that allows you move faster through the timestream (sorry, no DeLorean DMC-12 here).  Weapons are used for putting the hurt on your fellow time travelers by disabling, or destroying, one of their upgrades.  Shields help prevent other time travelers from doing the same to you.  Finally, power generators allow you to keep your other upgrades working -- no power, no functioning upgrades.

This game, like other Cheapass Games, isn't the best looking,

but it delivers on the fun for a reasonable price.

 I played this for the first time (even though I've had the game for a decade) with fellow Streakers Kspaz and Ginger last week -- or is that a week from now?  Either way, it was real easy to teach them the game and we got a couple of playthroughs out of the night (Kspaz won, both times).  I asked what they thought of the game and they had no complaints.  We had a fun time sabotaging each others' machines and trying to permanently etch our names into a mutable history.

If you're interested in playing this game, I have only two words for you: good luck.  This game has been out of print for years and is really hard to find.  Your best bet may be to try and track a copy down on ebay (I did see one up for auction, recently, but it'll be gone by the time you get there).  I know, it's pretty crappy of me to entice people to a game that is practically unavailable.  But, hey, this is about time travel board games.  Why don't you just go back to 2001 and pick up a copy?  I mean, if we can avert disasters and rewrite history to suit our needs, then snagging some old board game should be a cakewalk, in comparison (oh, wait, we can't do those things, yet).

And so ends my look into board games for the time traveler.  Sadly, there really aren't that many games out there that explore this famous science fiction trope.  Sure, there's a couple of old rpgs out there, such as TimeMaster and, of course, Doctor Who.  There was also a series of Choose Your Own Adventure style books, called Time Machine, which are hard to find, as well.  It really is a shame, since time travel really is a fascinating concept that would work well with gaming.  Perhaps someone from the future will come to our time and introduce new games that allow us to break through the fourth dimension.

But we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

(Images courtesy of BoardGameGeek.com)

Call to Arms

Be all that you can be. Be credit to team in our Army

If your a person who hates first person shooters or doesn't think they aren't good enough come to us. If you've had a bad experience with other players, teams or servers, come to us. We're Tribe Gamers and we're raising an Army in Team Fortress 2.

We'll soon be getting a dedicated server for TF2. And we've started a group on steam. Look for Tribe Gamers or anyone with the tag [tr!be]. 

You can find me online as [tr!be]Kspaz13 so you can drop me a line if needed, or you can leave a message here.
We'll be letting every body know more as things materialize.

But in the meantime Give me your sleep deprived, your bored, your nerdy masses yearning to play free, and I will play, and practice with you till we have an elite fighting force.

It may not be as poetic as the New Colossus engraved in Lady Liberty, but I think you get my point. See you soon.

Alchememe : Who needs sleep? Pt. 2

Hey, guys. Alchemilla here. Today, we're moving on to bigger (well, taller) things!

Splendorman!

Slender Man by Pirate-Cashoo on DA

Okay, no. Today we're going to talk about his big brother, Slenderman, and the best places to find him.

Who is the Slenderman?

Welp, the story goes that some dude made him up on the Something Awful forums for one of their creepy threads. He captured the imagination of the group, and it spiraled from there.

Interestingly, his creation ties into part of his mythos (if that makes any sense). He's made more powerful by people believing in him, and his powers are mutable depending on the general hive mind of those who know about him.

Slendy is reputed to be a humanoid figure in what appears to be a suit (black or red tie, your choice!). He is unusually or impossibly tall and thin, and his arms often reach down below his knees, lending to his unsettling appearance. Sometimes he is depicted as having elegantly curling tentacles, or, my favorite, appendages that appear as tree branches at first glance. He's got no face, or, in my pet explanation, his face is so horrible that our brains can't process it, and we only see a blank pale shape of a face instead.

He hangs out in wooded areas, blending in with the trees, or on children's playgrounds, watching the kiddies. The legend started that he was mostly interested in children, wanting to scare and torment them before he killed and maybe ate them. Now his victims tend to be the kind of people who go in for this kind of stuff, but sometimes the idea that Slendy stalks them as kids and then lets them ripen still crops up from time to time.

I mentioned in my last article that creatures that stalk and watch and wait were the most scary to me, and Slendy is the very definition of this kind of creature. He likes to play with his food.

Anyway, now comes the time where I tell you where you can find him for yourself.

First, the blogs. This isn't a complete list, just some that I've read and found enjoyable.

1. Just Another Fool (http://jafool.wordpress.com/)
       This is one of the first, to my knowledge, of the interactive Slendy vlogs. It's complete at this time, so keep that in mind. It's well written and the images contained within are sometimes startlingly creepy.

2. Brighter Than a Spoon (http://nihilartikelling.blogspot.com/)
       I don't think this a very well known blog, but I stumbled on it on the Unfiction forums, and I really enjoy the writing. He expands on the myth in a way I find awesome, and it's still being written. Highly recommended!

3. The Tutorial (http://getuphigh.blogspot.com/)
       A snarky blog about the reality of being chased by a Slenderman. I like the way this kid writes. The only issue is that he often talks about other blogs and vlogs as if they all are happening in the same 'verse, which can be a smidge confusing if you haven't read them, which can be confusing, but is also pretty cool. This blog is still going as far as I know, although there hasn't been an update in a while. Still worth a read.

Next, the vlogs.

1. Marble Hornets (http://www.youtube.com/user/MarbleHornets) (http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/)
       Okay, full disclosure: I'm too much of a pansy to watch much of this one. I've seen the first couple of videos, and they're scary stuff. Remember how I mentioned the whole windows at night issue I have? Yeah, they go ahead and play on that in the first episode. Aaaaahhh! Yeah. So. It's scary. But, I would be remiss to exclude it- it was the first and many consider it to be the best. I'll let you know if I can bring myself to watch it someday. It's still going, now in season 2. I linked the wiki, too, so you can take a look at the timeline, which may help you to enjoy season 1 and get caught up.

2. EverymanHYBRID (http://www.youtube.com/everymanHYBRID) (http://everymanhybrid.wikia.com)
       It is absolutely imperative that you go to the wiki on this one. This is a great series with decent acting and really likable characters, but it will be confusing and make no sense unless you hit up the wiki. There are twitter feeds, blogs, another YouTube account, and lots and lots of side stuff that are all important to the story. It may seem like a rabbit warren, but it's totally worth getting into. Again, the timeline is an important tool. It's still going on, and the impression of the community is that there is going to be something big happening in April, so catch up now so you can get in on the action as it happens!

3. TribeTwelve (http://www.youtube.com/tribetwelve)
       No need for a wiki on this one. Don't let the first couple of videos put you off. There is a bit of a meh factor to them, but if you can get past them and onto what he's doing recently, it's totally worth it. Noah (rather, the actor that plays him) is a master at special effects, and his creepy videos from the Observer are total paranoia fuel. Don't get into this one expecting a HYBRIDs like experience- it's self contained on the one YouTube account. This one is easy to follow and the easiest of the three to catch up on, so give it a look!

Those vlogs are the big 3, so I'll stop there. I'm sure you can find more if you look for them, but there you go for now.

I hope you enjoyed my little foray into nightmare fuel. I'll have to talk about happy things next week or I'll never get rid of these under eye bags!

Quick Look: Portal 2 comic and Link Dump

Just a quick update to get through the weekend.

Portal 2: Lab Rat comics

I found this the other day, and needed to show it off here. A comic that expands the Portal universe. I'm interested to see how this will tie in with the game when I get a chance to play it. But have a read and see what you think.

And here are some cool things to kill some time if you need to.

Buzz, I think you've had a bit too much. Seriously this is great. I never would have thought up that costume, but I'd be surprised if many people didn't get it.

Barkeeper (3.5e Class) I found what I'm playing as next game

I found a friend of mine from the Army, and he has a websit called Gray Creations. He does art, and you can see a great picture of Wurzburg's Festung (Fortress) on the main page. You should look into his stuff if you need any artwork, or are looking for art to put on your walls.

How to Drive Drunk, this video is not what you'd think it is based on the title. This is a service that will come to the bar you're at and drive you and your vehicle home. They come on a little collapsible moped that they put in your trunk. But the real reason you should watch this video, the drunk German that Lawrence picks up. This man is an excellent spokesperson for the service.

Tartan Days

Happy Tartan Days everyone.

In St. Charles, Missouri (which is nearby me) this weekend is Tartan Days, a celebration of everything Scottish, Irish, and to a lesser extend Welsh. You can read about it here.

I bring this up for two reasons. One I got to see Caber Tossing today.
You can see a perfect toss in the video. Keep in mind you're not going for distance in this sport. You're going for how the pole lands in relation to the way your facing when you throw it. Maximum points if it's points straight along the way you were facing when you threw it.

I think this should be an Olympic sport. But I think all strange and awesome ethnic games should be Olympic events.

The other point I found out today, is which clan my mom's side belongs to my maternal grandmother's Celtic side comes from the McWilliams, and my maternal grandfather's Celtic side comes from the McCabe family. Both of these families where part of the Clan MacLeod. My father's side is Duncan. So yet another tie to the Highlander franchise. So if you'll excuse me I need to go learn how to wield a Claymore, or a Katana. And maybe win the prize.

Flick Picks 14: Gulity Pleasure Episode 2

I'm sorry, but this is quite possibly the coolest film logo ever.

Hello, Streakers! Boog here, with another Flick Pick, and, as it's a seventh, it's time for another Guilty Pleasure Episode. This time, I'll start with a question, what, and who, do you think of in terms of movies when the term 'Guilty Pleasure' comes up? Is it a certain genre(shoestring budget horror), or perhaps a certain actor or director you always head for, hiding your head in the video store so no one finds out you actually like most movies Keanu Reeves is in? Wait, did I say that out loud? Crap... Well, yes, Keanu is a go-to actor for me when I want to watch something I know will be funny and entertaining(usually accidentally, but still). Directors are great indicators too. John Carpenter before 1995, for example. Or Wes Craven. In recent years, there has been another name that joined the ranks of good Guilty Pleasure directors: David R. Ellis. Ellis started as a stuntman, and then went behind the camera as and AD(assistant director) and 2nd Unit Director for years, before finally becoming a director himself. His work before this flick includes Final Destination 2 and Cellular. After this, he made Asylum and The Final Destination, as well as three other films coming out this year that all look to be cheesy, bloody, and entertaining. So, David R. Ellis is a name I look for in for fun, bloody films that I don't have to take seriously to enjoy. The star of this Flick Pick is another, Samuel L. Jackson. Now, he's done serious stuff before(and done it well), but usually when you see his name in the credits, you think of one of three roles: Mace Windu(Star Wars), where he was so pompously over the top I actually liked seeing him die, Jules Winnfield(Pulp Fiction), where he was so over the top that you wondered if he lived on Planet Earth, even if he was awesome, and that doctor he played in Deep Blue Sea. The point being, you see that name, you expect an over the top performance, in a cheesy setting, and he'll either be awesome, or be an ass and die, or just die. Here, he doesn't die. He just gets pissed. At Snakes. Yes, my second Guilty Pleasure Episode is going to be on Snakes On A Plane. Sometimes, I love this job. And a massive, two-fanged dose of SPOILERS for which there is no anti-venom.

What is it Good For?

Sincerely, the computer literate population.

We recently got a new phone book at my house. As did my parents' house and most of my friends. Everyone keeps asking me one of two questions.

1)Do you need one? We've got to many.
2)What am I going to use this for?

So what can we use these for? I've thought about it and here's my exhaustive list.

a) Find the number to an electrician, tech support, your internet provider. Really, when else are you going to need this but when you can't use the internet? I get the feeling the people who make the phone book either haven't used the internet yet, or are printing these in case the internet ever goes out of style. Either that or they just don't want your Grandparents to be without a telephone directory.

Looks like it was a hot number.

b) Start a fire. We have a fire pit in our yard, and I have a feeling one of our old phone books is going to end up as kindling. I assume the light paper of the phone book will work great. We also save the crappy free paper for this. Anyone know if the print on either of these is dangerous to inhale when burnt? I assume so long as your not right on top of it, your okay, but I'd like to know for sure.

c) Create a cheap step ladder for your child (or wife if she's short). Have a kid who can't reach something cereal related in the morning? Have a wife who can't reach the top of the closet? I have a solution for you, and all I'll need is your credit card number. Wait where are you going? *sigh* Or you could use the phone book for that.

d) Keep your favorite short younger cousin/niece/nephew/sibling from growing taller then you, or your kids for that matter. Go to an Army surplus store and buy a Kevlar helmet, and then tape or nail or screw the phone books on top. Yeah, I'm scrapping the bottom of the barrel here. I hated this joke when I was a teenager, I guess as you get older you recycle all the old jokes.

UPDATE:
e) A doorstop as suggested by B@tgirl.

If anyone has any more suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Games You Should Know About... XBOX Live Indie Games 2: Electric Boogaloo

If you read this blog, every Wednesday, on a regular basis (and that's a big if), you might recall that I was supposed to do a follow up for my look at time travel board games.  Well, I did write the article, but there's one small hitch: I had to do it in the future -- next week, to be precise.  Don't ask me why, it's extremely convoluted.  Just know that I couldn't go back (or forward?) to change it.  Everyone without a time machine will just have to wait another week.  (Okay, the truth is that I tried to get my friends to play this game with me, but everyone was too busy with their own things.  It kept getting postponed -- lame.  Since I can't, in good conscience, review a game that I've never played, I didn't write it.)

Instead, we're gonna dive back into that morass of XBOX Live indie games.  As you may know, many XBOX Live indie games are nothing short of garbage.  There's a ton of them that look like some badly drawn flash game from 2001 (would you pay money to play any kind of flash game?  No!).  Then there's those special titles that have about as much gameplay as a block of wood.  Hell, most indie games have both of those problems.

That's where I come in.  I'm here to show you some great indie games you can find.  Best of all, they're cheap as hell.  How cheap?  Well, I've got three games for you to peruse, each of them only costs $1, so "I don't have an XBOX 360" is the only excuse I want to hear for not picking these up.

First off, there's Zombie Estate, which was released last year.  With all the dual-stick shooters available for the indie games service, this one stands out with its retro graphics and gameplay.  The sprites for the characters and zombies is very '80s arcade and the game has the feel of classic games such as Robotron 2084 and Smash TV (deja vu).  You're constantly evading hordes of undead: zombies, skeletons, ghosts... all while blasting your enemies back to the grave and collecting cash, ammo, and health pickups.  Between each wave, you go to the store to buy new weapons to obliterate more zombies.  There's plenty of four-player action, wacky characters to choose from, and scores of corpses to shoot.  For only a buck, you can subject yourself to some 8-bit Zombie Armageddon.



Next up is Retrofit: Overload, another indie game that came out a year ago.  This one clones the legendary arcade game Galaga, but unlike some of the lazy arcade rip-offs, actually adds some exciting features without compromising the classic gameplay (Galaga is one of my favorite arcade games).  This game features power-ups (such as shields and extra firepower), frenetic alien blasting action, and colorful graphics and sound.  There really isn't much else to say about this game other than you really should be playing it.



Speaking of reinventing old school video games, the recently released Retrocade: Datastream Y2K600 is an interesting twist on the old school game Frogger.  You patrol your computer network, traveling between rows of data streams, avoiding flowing blocks of data, to clear out corrupted segments. There's some story about the government and rebel hackers attacking each others' computer systems, but that's not really necessary to play the game.  While the game is very simplistic, both in gameplay and graphics, it's extremely challenging and fun.  I was really surprised by all the different game modes which add to the replay value.  There's even a mode that replicates the original highway hopping, log jumping game.  It's hard to describe how simple, yet fun this game really is.  Download the demo if you want to know what the big deal is, then throw down a dollar and pick it up.



There are plenty more great XBOX Live indie games out there.  You just need to do some digging through all the cheesy avatar games and massage controller apps (eww!).  When you're tired of playing all the AAA titles that cost $60, come down to the cheap side of gaming and you may find a game you should know about...

Next week, I'll get back to part two of Time Travel Board Games... maybe.

Ginger, on Easter Festivities

Spring is (finally) here and Easter is right around the corner. For most people that means quality family time, visiting relatives, and "helping" younger siblings and cousins during an Easter egg hunt. But what if you're not going anywhere and no one is coming to see you? What if your family, in-laws, or other relatives aren't really the festive type? What if you don't know any children (or people with children) well enough to egg hunt with without being creepy? Well, let me tell you - you can make any day (or holiday) fun and fancy free if you think inside the foil wrapper.

If you're like me, you loved the Easter egg hunt when you were little. I mean come on - running around looking for neon colored mini presents filled with chocolate? Whats not to love? Anyways, who says you can't do the same thing as an adult? Yes, we're probably a little more leery about stuffing pounds of chocolate into our mouths now than we were when we were five, but why not fill those eggs with things you appreciate now? Stuff those plastic eggs with coupons for a foot rub from your special someone, or a romantic bubble bath for two. Or maybe a date night out were you get to pick the dinner spot. Already get enough of that special someone? How about a coupon for 30 minutes of 'me time'. Celebrating with friends? Number slips of paper inside each egg and have coordinating prizes - Amazon gift card, a bottle of wine, something silly like a woopie cushion. The possibilities are endless.

What was best part of waking up on Easter Sunday? For me, it was knowing my mom would wake us up to make a pancake breakfast together (making more of a mess than anythings else), discuss the game plan for the day while we ate, and then be presented with a beautiful basket left at the front door by the Easter Bunny - all before 9am. So what will I be doing this year? Me and my husband will have a lovely pancake breakfast, probably with mimosas and chocolate covered strawberries, and possibly some thoughtful gifts. Depending on how good he is between now and then. But hey, if it's just the two of you for the morning, you can be as daring (edible body paint anyone?) or as low key (cereal and the Sunday paper?) as you want to be. Make a new tradition just for the two of you - your special someone will appreciate the effort and look forward to that special something every year.

Still looking for ways to spice up your Easter? Your local zoo is almost guaranteed to be open and is probably planning some event to make your visit more exciting. Have a historic area near by? Even if the shops and restaurants are closed you can still enjoy a nice stroll - you might even pay more attention to the history if you aren't distracted by the lunch possibilities and shopping. Speaking of lunch - do you live near a park? Why not take a picnic lunch and enjoy the outdoors. (Guys: be romantic and bring a book of poetry to read aloud to your sweetie. We girls eat that Jane Austin shit up.)

That's all I have or now, but hopefully this helps a little bit for you not-quite-singles and couples-without-family out there. I know family holidays can be hard, but it's only one day. You'll get though it, but at least make an effort to make the most of it - you'll be happier at the end of the day.

Alchememe : Who needs sleep? Pt. 1

Yeah, seriously. Who needs to sleep? 

Hey, everybody! Alchemilla here. Today, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite varieties of nightmare fuel!

First, a little background about me.

1. I'm a scaredy cat. I have a major phobia of public bathrooms for no logical reason. At night, windows in my house MUST be covered to avoid me accidentally catching a creepy face peeking in the windows. (I live on the 2nd floor, btw.) I can't watch any kind of stop-motion animation without getting the heebie-jeebies. I have a myriad of neurosis and paranoia regarding creepy stuff.

2. I am a massive horror fan. I apologetically love Stephen King and Clive Barker. Silent Hill ranks up there on one of my 3 favorite games of all time. I'm drawn in by scary stories, even though I know they mess me up in the dark of the night. It's not that I like to be scared- jump scares annoy the crap out of me because they're cheap, and I have to look away when anything gross or hard to watch happens on TV. I think I'm interested in the human drama that goes along with eldritch horrors, but I don't know if that's all of it.

Anyway, all this comes is just in explanation as to why I am so drawn to creepypasta.

This is me. This is soon to be you.

Are you unfamiliar with creepypasta? Maybe you remember Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark from your childhood? They're just like that. Sometimes they're stupid. Sometimes they're incredibly disturbing. Sometimes they're sad. But they're all intended to freak you out when you're sitting in your room after you should be in bed, and are instead reading them.

Part of what I think is cool about these stories is that they're usually short, and some of them are brilliantly written to give you a scare. Plus, most are written by anonymous people from the internet, so basically people like you! 

Interested? Well, you can ruin your sleep schedule here. -> creepypasta.com

A few of my favorites (You should read the stories first!):

1. In the Mirror (http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/In_the_Mirror)
       I'll start with one that I don't find scary at all. In fact, for some reason, this is just so sweet to me.

2. The Portraits (http://www.creepypasta.com/the-portraits/)
       I think that a monster/threat that simply watches and waits is way more frightening than one that is more animalistic and attacks right away. I also like a twist ending that doesn't explain. It's elegant.

3. Candle Cove (http://www.creepypasta.com/candle-cove/)
       This one is interestingly written, in a message board style, and the increasing uneasiness has one heck of a wham ending. Before you ask, no, I have not watched any of the videos that have been based on this particular creepy story. I enjoy sleeping a little too much for that. Look them up on YouTube if you like seeing 4am so much.

You can go ahead and archive binge on the others on some of the other text stories over at creepypasta.com, but keep in mind that there might be typos and such- it's user generated content. But, I think that is what makes it so interesting.

Next week, I'll be talking about another creation of the internet that keeps me up nights.

See you then!

Who's that Voice Actor?

Mick Foley as Mankind

While our group was watching through Avatar I started to wonder who did all the voice acting. Because sometimes I like to see what actors and actresses have done in other movies. But really what started it was seeing the name Mick Foley in the credits of one episode.

For those who don't know who Mick Foley is I found this blurb from this man's blog, and it's a better intro then anything I had come up with thus far...

Professional wrestling superstar turned bestselling author Mick Foley- widely known as WWE legend Mankind, a tortured soul in ratty clothes whose finishing move involved putting on a sock puppet and sticking his hand down his opponents mouth until they couldn't breath.

Flick Picks 13: Orphan

This poster is the scariest thing about this film.

Hello there, Streakers! Boog here, first with an apology. My keyboard has been acting funny for days now, and last week I figured out why: it was dying. Having been quietly laid to rest, I am now chugging along with a newer, faster, stronger keyboard than ever before. Nonetheless, I should have been better with my time this week, and posted on time. For that, I am sorry. Now, fellow streakers I bring you the thirteenth Flick Pick, 2009's small scale thriller Orphan. I should note, for our readers, that the trailer linked here, and the movie itself, does seem to demonize adoptive children, so for those sensitive about that subject, you might not want to read this. SPOILERS, guys, SPOILERS. As for the film itself, well 13 is now my unlucky number. This film is well shot, well edited, had some good music... and the most cliche-ridden, formulaic plot I have seen in a thriller like this. Seriously, a monkey trained to write bad plots could probably top the one seen here. First off, we get a blur filter sequence involving a hospital, and a miscarriage, where we meet the main characters, Kate and John, played by Vera Farmiga and Peter Saarsgard. Farmiga can also be seen in 2006's The Departed, and Saarsgard in another horrible thriller, Skeleton Key. We learn that they are a married couple, who have two children, and the miscarriage was the expected third. Also, a disturbingly unnecessary shot involving a LOT of blood. This, it turns out, is a nightmare experienced by Kate, who is experiencing anxiety about the prospect of adopting a child. They don't ever establish how long ago the miscarriage was, so this makes both parents seem a little heartless and stupid. They try to establish that this couple loves each other very much, by having them try to have spontaneous sex while their children are home. This isn't as stupid as it sounds, as I'll explain.

Hey, I think the girl we adopted is evil!!!!

You see, of Kate and John's two surviving children, the youngest, their daughter Max, thanks to a birth defect, is almost completely deaf. I will note here that the child who played Max, Aryana Engineer, did what the script and plot gave her, which was mostly to be innocently adorable. This is the only film she has been in to date, and she actually has the same hearing deficit her character here does. The oldest child, their son Danny, played by Jimmy Bennett, is stupid. I mean, really stupid. The plot gives him nothing to do except be a douchebag, and when it does give him a moment to be a hero, the plot tries to kill him. Twice. So not much going on with him. Bennett may be memorable to those who have memorized J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek reboot, as he played Kirk as a child. However, here he just doesn't do anything, and kinda comes off as a tacked on character. Well, having established the family unit, and the basic plot of the adoption, we jump almost headfirst into the orphanage, run by Sister Abigail, here played by CCH Pounder, one of the more talented female TV and film character actors of her generation. Here, she gets about ten minutes, playing a one dimensional vague exposition font before the plot predictably and impossibly beats her and throws her dead body in a ditch. But I'm getting ahead of myself. When they get to the orphanage, they are throwing a party, a kind of meet and greet where prospective parents can see all the children, and how they interact in a group setting, without having to interview each child individually. John inexplicably goes away from the party, alone, and finds a girl alone singing to herself while she paints. The movie glosses over the apparently voyeuristic tendencies of John however, as we are introduced to the villain of this piece, 9 year old Esther, played Isabelle Fuhrman. This is her second film, the other being a 2007 Dakota Fanning vehicle called Hounddog. Here she is exactly what that movie calls for.

But...I play the piano. See? Not Evil. I swear.

Unfortunately, what the movie calls for a one-dimensionally evil girl, whose only reason for not being immediately caught and locked away, is that all of the bad things that happen around her, have vague circumstances. So, of course, she goes undetected as a psychopath for years. After the adoption, is where the film, for me anyway, becomes a retread/ripoff of a much better movie, The Good Son, starring Maculay Culkin and Elijah Wood. Now, don't get me wrong, The Good Son, being a thriller set and shot in the early 90s, is extremely cheesy, and cliched. The difference lies in the villain. The Good Son has Henry Evans, played by Culkin, who throughout most of the film, is disturbing, creepy, and chilling, mainly due to the fact that Culkin doesn't have a very large emotional range. It works to the film's advantage however, by having Henry as a cold, emotionless thing, something that comes off as less than human, and therefore sinister and predatory. Orphan, by contrast, has Esther, who you can tell from the time she sets foot into the house is EBIL.... and she never grows beyond that. You know right away she's evil, so none of the evil things she does are a surprise, and that's about it. She does get 2 genuinely creepy moments, but both are ruined by the plot's absurd need to force Esther to repeatedly use similar vocal tones and actions, so that by the time the film is over you can predict her every word and line.

She plays the piano? Not evil! Crazy wife....

As we get our Good Son retread, one child gets hurt, a pigeon dies, CCH Pounder dies, Danny's murder is attempted, twice, and Peter Saarsgard gets knifed repeatedly, dying in the climax of the film. This is where I will now go into the technical aspects of the film, as most of them were great, unfortunately. The film's director, Jaume Collet-Serra, does well, other than plot. The film is shot beautifully, but that's hampered a little bit by the 9 jump scares and 6 fake outs that the film wants to shove at you. One thing I noticed about how the film was shot, to give you an example: once Esther is introduced, every scene that she appears in, or is relevant to, in shot that she appears either in between the parents, or close enough in perspective to the camera to be replacing Vera Farmiga's character in the shot. This of course gives the plot away if you're paying attention, but it says a lot of Collet-Serra's style and dedication that he shot all the scenes that way. Visually, therefore, the film is great, as the scenes are shot well, and convey what they are supposed to as far as story.

Dad, I'm deaf, and even I can tell you that she's evil.

Musically, The film only decent, as we get far too many music cues denoting evil and jump scares about to happen, and the film given to Esther to occasionally sing to be creepy, isn't. The dialogue, for the most part, isn't much better, 60% of it is Super Melodramatic Ham, now 45% more cheese and sap! The other 40% is Vague Plot Points, combined with Overly Critical Character Dismissal, and sprinkled with some Twist Ending That Wasn't Nearly a Big Enough Payoff. That they probably bought of M.Night, he was between terrible films that year, he had some extra. And by twist, I do mean probably the only original thing in the movie. But it's also the thing I have the biggest issue with. You see, they reveal during the climax that Esther is not a 9 year old girl, as she has been this whole film. Instead she is a 33 year old with a glandular disorder that causes proportional dwarfism. That by itself isn't bad, it's the fact that the movie uses this fact to make the entire focus of the movie that Esther, who looks to be 9 years old(and was played by a then 11 year old actress, she's 14 now), wants to have sex with John, her adoptive father. In fact, she tries to when John gets drunk, and when he refuses(but not before sadly confessing how 'lost he feels' thanks to the plot deciding that this seduction should appear to work a little bit), That's when she goes off the deep end and kills him. And her seemingly random need for physical affection is just that: random, as this is just sprung on us, and is never given an explanation.

Yep, okay, fine, I'm evil. Happy now?

So yeah, in closing, avoid this movie, as other than the admittedly well done visuals and visual style, this film has nothing to offer anyone. As someone who has watched this twice now, once in a stupor unable to believe that I wasn't watching The Good Son, I can assure you that this film is bad, and please, this time, leave the Orphan alone.

Intellivision was Designed by Aliens!

Fresno, CA -- The Intellivision game console was one of the big electronic products of the early 1980s in a market that was dominated by the Atari 2600, one of the most beloved video game systems of all time.  The fact that Intellivision had superior graphics and sound in comparison to the Atari made it a strong competitor in electronic home entertainment.  Mattel Electronics gave the Intellivision a strong start in its first year with 175,000 units sold and 35 games in its library.  But an inside source says the video game system was not the invention of human ingenuity.

York Entertainment

First off I wanted to say, welcome to Chris Mullen (our newest geek who reads.)

I'd like to share with a company of unfathomable power. York Entertainment: A name in films you probably haven't heard of but look at the movies this company is responsible for the 2002 hit Anklebiters



Or the 2003 sleeper El Chupacabra.


Or the 2004 critically acclaimed Scarecrow Gone Wild.

Yeah April Fools, I can't sell this joke, these movies are too bad. But, this company seems to have a knack for cornering the market on crappy scary movies, with a weird premise. And making a crap-ton of movies. But I can tell you this these movies are great for riffing, and while you probably wouldn't want to watch them more then once, they're a lot of fun with the right friends and the right senses of humor. Be warned Boog might review these properly later.

UPDATE: Also my first article for Bundesliga Fanatic went up, you can view it here.