loonyblog.

I was searching for a song by Moby that got stuck in my head during my recent travels (damn you, W Hotel and your pre-loaded in-room iPod!) on the iTunes Music Store, when I saw a listing for Moby D**k (Abridged Fiction). Somehow, the title of this abridged version of Herman Melville’s novel was censored. Oddly enough, the unabridged version, was not. What’s really insane though is this review, which I really hope is a joke:

I’ve read Moby Dick, and while I think there are many legitimate criticisms of the work (I like the book, but Mellville was paid by the word, and let’s face it, it shows), I can’t say that overuse of the D word is one of them. I really can’t believe this is serious. What little remaining respect I have for the American people rests on this fact, so let’s all just assume it’s fake and move on with our lives.

You know, I really hate indulging in a bit of schadenfreude (ye gods, I spelled that correctly on the first try…something’s very wrong with me), but I couldn’t help grinning in smug satisfaction at the news posted on Mark Evanier’s blog that Radio Shack is closing between 400 and 700 of their stores. I’ve posted here once before about my dealings with Radio Shack’s bitter employees, who seem to be suffering from extreme Comic Book Guy syndrome, but that was just one experience. In all my years of shopping at Radio Shack, I never — not once — met an employee who would qualify as useful.

Read on for another tale of Radio Shack hell, and why I really won’t shed any tears for these closed stores.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the continually inventive PSP homebrew scene, it’s possible to play IF on Sony’s handheld. Here’s the kicker though: to play it, you need to run an emulator within an emulator, a bit of trickery that may make your head explode if you try thinking about it for too long.

Specifically it works by running INFGMB through the RIN GameBoy/GBC emulator. I haven’t tried it yet (I’m writing this from a hotel room in San Francisco), but since INFGMB is a standard Inform interpreter, there’s no reason why my own IF Quake wouldn’t run just as well. You gotta love the emulation scene.

For fun the other day, I want digging through the PVP archives for a week of strips where, yes, I was actually a character. PVP, for those who don’t know, is a daily strip (or at least, it is now, anyway…back then it was every other day or so) about the goings on at a fictional gaming magazine. These days, it’s quite funny. I read it every day (or wait until the weekend to get caught back up, but I still read it all). Back then…not so much with the funny. Scott Kurtz has always been a really great cartoonist, but in those early days, the humor was a bit obscure, and fell into the mildly amusing category. But now, it’s great. Years of practice turned Scott Kurtz into a dynamo, and he has a real knack for multi-day storylines that are genuinely funny.

But I digress. Anyway, back then he did a bunch of strips comprising a storyline entitled “Return to the Planet of the Quakes.” In order to understand this, you need to know the context…there was a time (albeit a brief time), when I was an editor at Blue’s News, known only as loonyboi (names were so…analog back then).

Blue is portrayed as a giant ape (with his trademark goatee), and I’m loonychimp (the spelling of which changes over the course of the strip…I’m not sure if this was intentional or not). The strips refer to an incident regarding a site that almost became a Blue’s News affiliate, like my site loonygames was back in its day. Like I said, it’s all pretty obscure. Back then PVP was hosted on MPOG.com, so clearly its audience was a bit more targeted than today (the print version is published by Image). But hey, at least I get to say I was a character in what’s now a really great comic strip.

This headline is one of the most obscure references I’ve ever made on the site. If you actually, somehow manage to get it, more power to you. But the chances of that happening are really, really slim. If you give up, here you go. For what it’s worth, it’s a great book if you’re into that sort of thing.

It’s that time of year again…it’s Oscar season! My annual prediction ballot (not filled in yet — it’s too early) is up, for those who want one. Grab it here in HTMl format, or here as a PDF. As we do every year, this doesn’t have all the categories, but it does have more than just the actor/picture/screenplay awards. Last year I lost my annual bet with my father, but it was a good loss…I managed to win every major category. He beat me on the piddly crap. This year, revenge will be mine.

Then again, maybe not. My father’s seen all the major contenders. Me? All I’ve seen is Crash. Which Robert Ebert thinks will win best picture, and it is probably the best movie I’ve seen this year, but it’s too early to predict that just yet. I’ve been so busy these past few weeks that today is the first day I’ve had a chance to even look at the nominees. Still, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. A distinct lack of decent roles for women means those categories come down to just one or two possibilities, and many of the other categories should be easy once some more of the guild awards come out.

Ah, but who cares. It’s Oscar season, and I can’t wait for the big night. Jon Stewart’s hosting, and this will be the first year I get to watch the circus live in HD. I look forward to seeing who’s HD-worthy and who most certainly is not.

A study reported on over at the Washington Post claims — and I’m not making this up — that ugly teenagers are more likely to commit crime than their more attractive peers. I heard this story in the shower (yes, we have a shower radio) and actually laughed out loud. That doesn’t happen often. Here’s a quote:

These economists found that the long-term consequences of being young and ugly were small but consistent. Cute guys were uniformly less likely than averages would indicate to have committed seven crimes including burglary and selling drugs, while the unhandsome were consistently more likely to have broken the law.

Very attractive high school girls were less likely to commit six of the seven crimes, while those rated unattractive were more likely to have done six of seven, controlling for personal and family characteristics known to be associated with criminal behavior.

I love that there’s a scientific basis for the attractiveness of teenagers. They asked the interviewers to rate people on a five point scale from “very attractive” to “very unattractive.” I think a more effective scale would be from “Betty” to “Basil Wolverton.”

And of course, if you aren’t miserable enough in high school, just remember: if you can’t get a date, you’re probably going to rob a bank some day.

According to the Superman Homepage (the best place online for superfreaks like me), Warner Bros. is going to be releasing high-end apparel with iconography from Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Here’s a quote about what will surely be tearing up runways:

The items, highly embellished with Swarovski rhinestones and rhinestuds, are contemporary fashion, yet have the classic look of the comics, according to both companies. The line features pieces for both men and women, as well as tween boys and girls. A highlight of the collection is a tank with the S-Shield logo, inspired by the upcoming film Superman Returns.

I’m sorry, rhinestones? Rhinestones?? You can’t be serious. I’m all for classy clothing with the “S” shield (if they ever make a tux, I’d like to be buried in it), but freaking rhinestones? Ugh.

We lost another great sci-fi actor this month…Andreas Katsulas, who brought so much to the role of G’Kar on Babylon 5, passed away at the age of 59 from lung cancer. You can read tributes to him on Star Trek.com (he was a Trek regular as well), the Official Bill Mumy Page and Peter David.net, as well as JMSNews, where there’s a very solemn post from J. Michael Straczynski.

Howard Cruse, the underground cartoonist, creator of Stuck Rubber Baby/Barefootz/Wendel, my friend, one time interview subject, one time teacher, and one time student, has added a blog to his web site. As with his site in general, it should be a worthwhile visit.

(Full disclosure: Howard’s website is hosted here at loonyboi.com, although I benefit in now way from any visits to that site…I post this in the same way I post any worthwhile links).

This might be old, but a coworker showed me this real-life reenactment of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! today. It’s hilarious, but part of what makes it so funny is simply imagining how much time and effort went into this flawless recreation of the game. My mind boggles.