loonyblog.

A story in this week’s issue of Vanity Fair has a confession from W. Mark Felt, the former number-two man at the F.B.I, who says he was the person known as Deep Throat. Deep Throat of course was the mysterious person who leaked vital information to journalists Woodward and Bernstein, which in turn started the uproar over the Watergate scandal. Woodward has reportedly said that he will keep to what he’s said for decades — that he won’t reveal the person’s name until after said person’s death. As Felt is still alive, that means we have no confirmation of this, but it certainly sounds plausible.

Felt had been identified as a possible candidate in the past, but recent speculation pointed towards either Pat Buchanan or Fred Fielding. Plus of course my own crackpot theory, which had Ben Stein as the ringmaster. In any event, it sounds like the great mystery of 20th century politics may solved at long last, and that’s amazing, even if it didn’t turn out to be Ben Stein.

Today is my birthday. I’m not big on birthday celebrations, but I sure do like the presents that come along with it. From Heather I got three very cool books and a trio of gift cards to the iTunes Music Store (I’ve already spent most of one getting a Coldplay album and a half…w00p).

From the rest of the family I received a PSP, so at long last I am no longer the only guy in the office without one. I got the three games that are out now that interest me: Wipeout Pure (a handheld version of my favorite racing game of all time…what’s not to love?), Lumines (techno Tetris!) and Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade (handheld BG:DA — the story’s weak, but it’s fun). I’m traveling tomorrow, so I’ll be getting lots of use out of it this week. I also got Thrustmaster’s T510 Dolby Digital 5.1 headphones, which are really, really cool. Since I don’t have speakers on my game PC (and don’t want them, as they take up too much space), these are perfect for me. They simulate a full surround sound system without any of the hassle of setting one up.

It’s been a good birthday. Last night the family went to one of my favorite restaurants in the city (Gotham Bar & Grill), which was lots of fun. Next weekend is birthday round two, as I’m getting together with a bunch of friends for a walk from Union Square in Manhattan over the bridge and into Brooklyn up to Park Slope, where we’ll land at a bar and get good and drunk. It should be a good time (assuming anyone shows up…I’m still not entirely convinced anyone besides Heather and I will).

On this week’s Ebert & Roper, it was suggested that perhaps George Lucas should have brought someone in to work on the dialogue in Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith…possibly even someone like David Mamet. In the interest of amusing myself, I present the first of several scenes from Episode III, translated into Mametese.

Read on, although be warned it contains harsh, Mametesque language.

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My army begins! This afternoon I painted my first two space marines:

It’s a bit out of focus (my digital camera’s great, but doesn’t do extreme closeups very well), but you can get the gist of it…I painted two Ultramarines according to spec. They’re a little sloppy, but that’s to be expected from my first try, especially considering that I haven’t picked up a brush in many, many years (unless it was to apply said brush to my teeth).

Most importantly, I had a great deal of fun painting these little guys. It was a quiet, relaxing way to spend an afternoon…almost peaceful (and yes I’m aware of the irony in that statement, considering that I’m building models of weapons of unimaginable horror). I’m going to experiment with the other Ultramarines that came with the starter paint set (I’m going to see if I can do battle damage and texturing…I figure I have nothing to lose), but then I’m going to move on to Battle for Macragge, and I can do so knowing that I have a willing (or at least, willing for now, anyway) person to play against — Heather has volunteered. It remains to be seen if she’ll like it at all, but if nothing else, I’m going to have fun putting the whole thing together.

So last night I did indeed play around with creating a new character, and here he is: The Gray Bishop, a science blaster:

I’m not crazy about the name, but it was the best I could come up with. I really wanted to call him The Chessmaster, but it was taken (as was The Chess Master, and I really didn’t want to get into l33t sp3@k). I’ve only played with him up to level three so far, but already, he’s a lot more fun than The Homunculus was. Aside from the fact that he has cooler powers (power blasts rock), he’s just more fun to play as. Being a three foot tall superhero just isn’t as much fun to play as it is to look at. And there’s also the added cool factor from this character because he looks an awful lot like Tom Cruise in Collateral.

It’s also worth mentioning that I created my new character on a different server. This time I’m on Freedom, which seems to be the most popular one, at least among Shacknews players. It’s much more populated than the server I had been playing on before (I think it was Triumph) which is certainly a good thing, as I’m trying to get the whole playing well with others thing that all these massively multiplayer games are supposed to be good at.

I’ve been playing City of Heroes for a few days now, and so far it’s been an enjoyable, if somewhat underwhelming experience. As I mentioned the other day, my character is The Homunculus, a name and description I picked well before I ever actually played the game. I’m starting to regret that decision. Oh don’t get me wrong, the concept of a hand-to-hand fighter with a huge chest, forehead and shoulders but who’s only three feet tall still makes me chuckle to no end (admittedly, I have a strange sense of humor), but the game is capable of generating a wide variety of heroes, and it’s really fun to just play around with the character generator. Take a look at Zinn the Amish Avenger (”his people can’t fight back…but he will!“) or the Crimson Druid (battle cry: “for stonehenge!“). And those I whipped up on the spot just now. It’s that much fun to play with the character generator. But aside from the aesthetic dullness of my choice of character, there’s the larger issue of the fact that he just doesn’t have any really cool powers. Basically all he does is punch and slash with his wimpy, Wolverine-light claws. He does those things quite well (I’m at level 8 now, so he’d better!) but I’m getting kinda bored doing the same attacks over and over again. Particularly when they’re such comparatively lame ones.

So I think tonight I’m going to create a new character, one that can do something a little more exciting. Maybe I’ll make a female character this time…something like, I don’t know…the Flaming Queen (”she’ll burn your balls off!”).

…on second thought, I think I’ll come up with something a little more down to earth. Maybe I’ll recreate a Marvel character so I can help with that lawsuit.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve joined in the Carnival of Gamers, put together by the buttonmasher over at buttonmashing.com (because where else would you expect to find a button masher? Would you come here if you were expecting anything but a loony boi?). Carnivals, in the blogosphere, are groups of posts from various blogs on similar subjects, and this particular one (obviously, from the name) deals with games. I chose to submit my post regarding the I am 8-bit show, and there are lots of other posts up there from various other blogs you should probably be reading on a regular basis. Go check it out and see for yourself.

My friend John (WHO OMG IS GETTING MARRIED) sent over this link to the Flying Dog Brewery, makers of various intoxicants that feature the art of Ralph Steadman. Their latest concoction is called the Gonzo Imperial Porter, a way of honoring the memory of the great gonzo now that he’s left this world. But of course it wouldn’t be appropriate to slap a label on a beer and call it a tribute to Thompson, so they’ve gone one step further. Here’s the explanation from the web site:

$1 from each case sold and $10 from each of the signed Steadman bottles will go towards building the Gonzo Memorial Fist in Aspen. The 150 foot stone column complete with a giant red fist at its summit will tower above Hunter’s Owl Farm Estate for all eternity.

Now that’s a tribute. The only way I can think of to improve on that would be to change it from a fist to a hand giving god and all of humanity the finger. Of course, the actual Gonzo logo was always the fist, so that’s why they’re going with that…but I still think Thompson would have preferred the finger.

I played through Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War recently, and thought it was a lot of fun (if extremely short on the single player content). Playing Dawn of War (and also the fact that I’m working on a wargame) got me curious about the table top Warhammer 40k universe, which I know absolutely nothing about. I have a vague recollection of Space Hulk coming out around the same time as Doom, but that’s pretty much it. So when I first encountered a Games Workshop store in the Village (and then later in the Sony Metreon building) I was taken aback. I mean, how big is this hobby? Apparently they have literally hundreds of these stores around the world (50 in the US and three in Manhattan alone), and they’re a publicly traded company, so apparently they’re doing something right. But that’s all beside the point. It’s the game I’m curious about, not the company.

Read on for my take on the whole thing after spending some time in a Games Workshop store this afternoon.

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Last week, while I was off working like a madman (and getting exposed to every germ in L.A. apparently, as I’m still sick) Smallville ran over by a half hour during its season finale. As I don’t have a DVR that’s capable of recording two shows at once, this resulted in me missing not one, but two episodes of Alias. I had pretty much accepted that and was planning on just picking up with this week’s season finale, when it suddenly occurred to me that this crazy Internet could probably help me obtain those episodes.

So I did some hunting around (with the help of some friends), and sure enough, I was able to find BitTorrents for the two episodes I missed. I downloaded them, and while they’re not the “HD” quality they claim to be (sorry l33t h@x0rz, but unless it’s 1920×1080 or 1280×720 it’s not HD), they are pretty decent quality movies in XviD format.

Now, while my TiVo does support a lot of different formats for various things, it’s limited to still pictures and music files. It can’t play back DivX files or anything like that, so I needed to burn these to DVD first. So I fired up iDVD, dropped the first episode into a project, burned it to a DVD-RW (since I don’t really need to keep this after I’ve watched it), and then repeated the same process for the second one. And what do you know, it worked perfectly. In the old days (pre-iLife ‘05), burning these would have taken an eternity, and required me to split the movies up into smaller chunks just so I could get it all to work. But happily that’s all in the past, thanks to the latest versions of iMovie and iDVD.

The discs play in my DVD player/TiVo just fine (as anything burned with iDVD does), and while they’re not quite as high quality as they would be had I TiVoed it, they are about the same quality as a TiVo on its high quality setting (I always use “best” unless I’m burning something to DVD). And as an added plus, someone has been kind enough to delete the commercials from these in advance.

So the question is raised: did I steal these? I would have taped them had my TiVo not needed to record Smallville instead, so is this any different? Is it any different if I had asked someone to record it for me and borrowed a tape/DVD of the show? I would have fast forwarded through the commercials even if they hadn’t been edited out, so does that make it wrong? I don’t have answers to any of these questions. I really don’t. I don’t even have an opinion on the matter. Had I been able to buy those episodes on-demand in HD for a very small price, I might have done that, but it’s tough to say. I might pay $5 for the pair, but no more than that, since I’ll only watch them once. But regardless of the ethical questions it raises, it was nice to finally have all this new-fangled technology of mine actually work the way it’s supposed to, without crazy workarounds and hacks like I’m so used to being forced to use.