loonyblog.

The 2006 Darwin Award nominees are out, and damn…there are some doozies. I always feel guilty about laughing at these, because in order to qualify, the person has to die, thus removing themselves from the gene pool (hence the name). But jeez, some of these are hilarious.

Case in point, the frontrunner (and probable winner, if it hasn’t been crowned yet): the genius who decided it was a good idea to disassemble a rocket powered grenade by driving back and forth over it with his car. Incredibly, that didn’t kill him, so he moved on to pounding it with a sledgehammer. You can probably guess the result.

Other highlights: the dumbass who was covered in a flammable skin-based cream but still couldn’t stop himself from having a smoke, the two morons who thought it would be a good idea to recreate a scene from Star Wars by creating light sabers from fluorescent light tubes and gasoline, the would-be historian who reenacted Ben Franklin’s kite-in-a-lightning-storm experiment with one change: he extended the cord with copper wire, and probably my favorite simply because of the WTF? factor: three idiots who found an unexploded bomb and decided to take it home by rolling it down a hill.

True geniuses, one and all.

How this stuff made it through Microsoft’s approval’s process I’ll never know, but Buggy Saint’s Row: The Musical is hilarious.

Special bonus is that it’s from the makers of my favorite FTP client.

My Chanukah present from Heather this year was (surprise!) the Ultimate Superman Collection, 14 (!) discs of Superman love, containing all the Christopher Reeve movies, Superman Returns, the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons, one of the Superman B&W serials, the live action Adventures of Superpup (!) pilot, documentaries, a reproduction of an issue of Superman: The Man of Steel (a really random one too) and believe it or not, more. There’s a ton of amazing stuff in here, including a mail-away offer to get full-sized reproductions of all the Superman movie posters. I’ve wanted the original “You will believe a man can fly” poster for years and years, so I sent that off pretty much immediately.

But for me, the highlight of this incredible collection (and it really is incredible, dwarfing even the unfortunately-named-but-still-awesome Alien Quadrilogy collection) is the Richard Donner cut of Superman II. Read on for my thoughts on the movie, plus some spoilers (so consider this your warning) and the inevitable Family Guy clip of the cellophane S from the original version.

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It too me a while (I’m a cheap bastard, so I had to wait for my free copy to arrive), but I finally got Guitar Hero II this past week. I spent most of yesterday afternoon finishing up the game on Medium difficulty, and after surviving “Freebird” I can honestly say that I do indeed rock.

GH2 is an improvement in every way over the first one. The graphics are significantly better (as much as it can, of course), the game runs in 16:9 and 480p, the new practice mode is awesome (and I’m sure will be indispensable as I tackle the game on hard), and the track list simply kicks ass.

I’ve read some complaints about the tracks in this game, but I don’t know what they’re smoking. This game has Danzig, Spinal Tap, GnR, the ‘Stones, Megadeth, KISS, Nirvana, The Police, Van Halen, Iggy and the Stooges, Black Sabbath, Primus, Rage Against the Machine, Jane’s Addiction, Rush and so on. I imagine it might be lesss accessible to newbies than the first one, but it’s just so much fun. I can honestly say that I haven’t had a better gameplay experience all year than playing “War Pigs” in Guitar Hero II.

That’s not to say there aren’t some mis-steps. While I would have expected “Them Bones” (Alice in Chains) to be all kinds of fun, it’s kind of a dud, as is “Tattooed Love Boys” (The Pretenders). But then there’s stuff like “Girlfriend (Matthew Sweet) which I totally expected to hate (even though I have always kinda liked the song), but which turned out to be great.

Everyone knows there’s more Guitar Hero coming. Lots more. All I can say is whenever Guitar Hero 3 arrives (I’ll put dollars to donuts that it’s next year for sure), it better have some AC/DC. Hell, give me a version of Guitar Hero that has nothing but AC/DC and Black Sabbath and I’ll be a happy man.

On this Christmas Eve Eve, it’s easy to get into the holiday spirit, so why not sit back, relax, and listen to such classics as “The Carol of the Old Ones” or “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men“? And if you’re not quite in the mood, then well, you can always listen to “Blue Solstice” while you wait for the Old Ones to reawaken. The Mad Arab himself would approve.

Archie Comics, after 60+ years of Dan DeCarlo’s brilliant style, has decided to shake things up and change the look of their characters. I can sort of understand that, but the results are horrifying. Seriously, check this out:

WTF? This is horrible! For the first time in my life, I can actually say the words, “Betty isn’t hot.” And that just doesn’t sit right with me. After all, I am a proud owner of The Greatest Archie Story Ever Told, so clearly I’m willing to go to some unusual lengths to see Betty in various states of undress.

There’s a case (however much I might disagree with it) that can be made that Dan DeCarlo’s style is dated, and that kids today might relate better to a different style. But that style is the anime/manga style that all the kids are into these days. Not this freak show.

I think DeCarlo’s style will never go out of date. One of the things he always tried to do was look at teen magazines to keep hairstyles and clothes are current as possible (this does have the added bonus of each decade of Archie being very much of its time). It’s a good thing he didn’t live to see his style replaced with such a travesty.

Update: Looks like the NY Post had the same reaction as I did. The print version even runs the same image. Wacky. There’s a quote from the publisher saying they, “decided to try something different.”

In my many years in the gaming industry, I’ve had the rare opportunity to meet a lot of great people. I’ve seen fantastic games from the moment of conception, I’ve met some of the heroes of my youth and I’ve gotten to see things that I will never forget. Today I’m going to take a trip down memory lane with Halo, and I’ve dug up some YouTube video from waaay back when to help illustrate it.

Read on for the rather lengthy story, including info on how I may have helped the PC port of Halo 1 get made.

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I finally got around to Netflix-ing “Imprint”, the episode of Showtime’s Masters of Horror series that was never aired in the US. After watching it, it’s quite obvious why Showtime decided not to air it. Director Takashi Miike is known for um…pushing the envelope, but wow, this is just beyond the pale. I did enjoy it, mind you, but a good part of that is simply because I wanted to see just how far he would go with the story. And jeez…he really went far.

This mini-movie contains an extremely graphic torture sequence, an extremely graphic abortion sequence, rape, murder, incest, sexual molestation by a priest (a Buddhist priest, even) and a scene in which a victim of a bullet wound to the head reaches into the back of her skull and pulls out some squishy stuff. Yeah. I’d be lying if I said that all adds up to something I’d really want to watch, but it is mesmerizing in its own way. And kudos to Showtime for even funding it, let alone releasing it on DVD.

The second season of MoH got off to a pretty bad start with “The Damned Thing“, directed by Tobe Hooper, which I thought was just dreadful. There were some other really bad ones, the worst of which was “The V Word“, a painfully awful postmodern vampire story featuring a villain named “Mr. Cheney” (yes, I get the reference, but I couldn’t stop thinking about a vampiric vice president). I’d much rather see Near Dark again than sit through that exercise in tedium. But there have been a couple of decent ones, most notably “Sounds Like“, which I really enjoyed, and is up there with the best episodes from the first season (like “Sick Girl“). It’s on hiatus at the moment, but new episodes return in two weeks with “Valerie on the Stairs“, penned by Clive Barker.

However the rest of the season turns out, they’ll have to work really hard to top “Imprint” for sheer audacity. I shudder to think of what could possibly top this, but I’m sure someone’s already started on it.

Most days it’s really not an issue, but some days my incredibly bad luck manifests itself. Earlier this week I had one of those days. It’s a long one, so read on for the full story, which has an unbelievably lucky happy ending.

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From an interview with David X. Cohen, talking about the new Futurama episodes in development:

…who’s your favorite minor character on the show?

COHEN: Hypnotoad. By the way, we are looking into producing a full 22-minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad for the DVD release. I am serious.

Awesome.

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD.