loonyblog.

Last night was an interesting one for me. It was my birthday (I’m 30…yes, yes, I’m an old man), and Heather made a nice dinner for us. Afterwards, I was sitting down at the computer, surfing around and trying to find an air conditioner (to replace the one I dropped out our window last year). I was looking around at J&R, Best Buy, PC Richards, Sears and so on, when I started to hear an argument going on outside. As a jaded New Yorker, I learned long ago to tune that sort of thing out…it’s just part of the background noise of my life.

Anyway, I was continuing my search, when I heard four popping sounds. Specifically, it went like this: Pop! Pop! Pop-Pop!

Now, I’ve played a lot of video games, and I’ve seen a lot of movies, and I’ve watched an awful lot of documentaries…I know the difference between a fake (read: movie) gunshot and a real gunshot. This was definitely the latter.

If there was any doubt in my mind, when I looked out the window (which I was literally sitting right next to), I saw a guy stick a gun (clearly a pistol from my vantage point) down his pants and walk down sixth avenue.

There wasn’t any screaming, so I assume this guy didn’t actually shoot at a person, but rather into the air to scare whoever he was arguing with. I also figured he was arguing with the guy in the car that drove off in the opposite direction. All this excitement was followed a few seconds later by a Time Warner Cable van running through a red light…I think that guy was freaked out a little.

Never one to get overly emotional, I proceeded to walk into the bedroom to tell Heather that I had found the air conditioner I was looking for. Oh, and also that I heard someone firing a gun, then saw him put it in his pants, and I guess I should probably call the police. This is how I react to stuff like this, as I’ve learned over the years. It’s just the way I am.

In any event, I proceeded to call 911 and give a calm and collected statement on what I saw. I heard a siren not too long after that, so hopefully someone else saw this guy and they caught him.

You might think that this would freak me out about my neighborhood, but Park Slope isn’t what I would call a dicey place to live. As a homeowner I will admit to being a little disturbed, but not by a whole lot. I can’t help but think this was a rare incident, not a sign of things to come.

But it definitely was a little weird. Hopefully this is the last time I have to call 911 on my birthday. Unless it’s for alcohol poisoning, in which case I say party on.

From a story about a London performance of the Lord of the Rings musical that went horribly wrong:

LONDON, England (AP) — A London performance of the “Lord of the Rings” musical ended abruptly with actors dressed as Hobbits, elves and dwarfs rushing to help a screaming cast member whose leg was trapped in set machinery.

I’m picturing little guys in Hobbit costumes running around in circles while Gandalf attempts to lift it by using his staff as a lever, and Sauron cackling with glee from the side of the stage.

It probably wasn’t that entertaining. But it may have been better than the intended show.

From the geniuses at ThinkGeek comes WiiHelm, the helmet that lets you mount your Wiimote on your noggin:

Yeah, it’s real. Can you imagine how much your neck would hurt after ten minutes of that? Oy. Mine just hurts thinking about it.

As has become something of a tradition (last year’s cancelation due to bad weather notwithstanding), around the time of my birthday, I like to drag people on a walk through the city. This year, since I’m turning (gulp) 30, I decided the walk would be extra specially long. And long it was.
I decided to start at The Dakota, one of my favorite city landmarks, and take a little stroll through Manhattan as we made our way downtown, over the bridge, and ultimately into Park Slope and home. Joining me on this bit of madness was Heather (who was there the whole time), plus my friends Mike, Jordan and Jeff, who accompanied us for various parts of the Manhattan leg of the walk (Jeff was there at the beginning, Jordan joined us in Times Square, and Mike hopped on board at Madison Square Garden).

It was a very long walk (something in the area of 13 miles), but a great deal of fun. We did the whole shebang in about four and a half hours from start to finish, including various pit stops and time we spent waiting for the new arrivals. So really it was just under four hours. Not bad at all.

To document the insanity, here’s a big ol’ photo gallery (showing most of my favorite parts of the city), and for some real craziness, check out this Google map of our route. Looking at the satelite view is particularly impressive. We really walked a long, long way.

But it went by a little too fast for my taste. Next year we’ll have to make it longer.

I just finished watching the Lost season finale…it’s good stuff. I know a lot of people gave up on it, but I remain a fan of the show. I decided a long time ago that the writers clearly have absolutely no idea where this show is going, and it’s never going to make any sense, so it’s best to just sit back and enjoy the crazy crap going on. Once I stopped trying to make sense of all the random clues, inconsistencies and downright oddities, I found it much more entertaining.

One thing has stood out for me all season, and I just can’t get past it…what’s the deal with this guy?

Yeah, I know that’s Richard Alpert, played by Nestor “Bat Manuel” Carbonell, but that’s not what I mean. What’s the deal with that character? I don’t care how, if at all, he fits into the “plot” of the series, I just want to know how, when all this other crap is going on, does he always manage to have such fabulous eyelashes? And what’s with the double eyeliner? Literally every time they’ve ever shown this guy, he’s had crazy eyeliner. It’s not subtle. It’s downright blatant. Even when show

“But surely,” you say, “lots of characters have tons of makeup. Filming in HD just makes it more blatant.” This is true. But he’s the only one with eyeliner. And that includes the women! Are they trying to tell us something about the others? Is there some mysterious element to the series that involves the Revlon corporation? On a show that seems to take pride in being enigmatic, this is the only mystery I care about. And, like most of the wacky things on the show, I seriously doubt I’ll ever know the answer. He’ll just be that dude who wears eyeliner at the end of the series, when the camera pulls back and we see they’re just characters in a drunken writer’s screenplay. You just know that’s how it’s going to end…it’s the only way it’ll ever make any sense.

Some preliminary tracks from Guitar Hero III have been revealed:

• Paint It Black (by The Rolling Stones)
• Cherub Rock (by Smashing Pumpkins)
• Sabotage (by Beastie Boys)
• The Metal (by Tenacious D)
• My Name is Jonas (by Weezer)
• Knights of Cydonia (by Muse)
• Rock And Roll All Nite (as made famous by Kiss)
• School’s Out (as made famous by Alice Cooper)
• Slow Ride (as made famous by Fog Hat)
• Cult of Personality (by Living Colour)
• Barracuda (as made famous by Heart)

More KISS, Paint it Black and Cult of Personality? And FOGHAT!?! Sweeeeeeet. Also, the confirmation that there will be wireless guitars for all platforms (including, apparently 360), almost makes up for the fact that the 80’s Edition is PS2-only (I sold my PS2 Guitar Hero stuff when I moved to 360).

And of course, there’s still a lot of tracks that haven’t been announced yet. For no particular reason, I give you five songs I think totally need to be on there:

• Welcome to the Jungle (Guns n’ Roses)
• My Sharona (The Kinks)
• Hells Bells (AC/DC)
• Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
• Falling to Pieces (Faith No More)

And that’s just off the top of my head. There are so many possibilities. I can’t wait for GH3. If for no other reason than I think I’m as far into the hard difficulty setting as I’m gonna get…I’m about halfway, and damn does it get hard.

To the surprise of not a whole lot of people, Blizzard today unveiled StarCraft II. Well let me just say…w00p. StarCraft isn’t my favorite Blizzard title (that will always be Warcraft II), but I do love it, and this sequel has been a really, really, really long time coming. To their credit, the original game still sells so well that there was really no rush…it was in the top ten NPD list just a couple of weeks ago, and that’s just here in the US…in South Korea (where the sequel was naturally unveiled) StarCraft is practically the national sport.

While there are gameplay and cinematic trailers out there, we really know next to nothing about the actual gameplay of StarCraft II yet. Will it change things at all, or will it just be an enhanced remake? It sounds like there will only be three races, although Blizzard has said they have plans to differentiate them even more from one another. We also have no idea when the game is going to ship, although I’d wager it’s a spring or summer ‘08 title. I have no basis for that…it’s just a hunch.

Blizzard didn’t actually have to reveal anything at all today. All they needed to do was quietly whisper the words “starcraft two” into a microphone and the crowd would have gone insane. In any event, it’s just great to see a non-MMO from Blizzard. Everyone knows they’re working on a follow-up to WoW, which depresses people like me (at least, I assume there are people like me out there) who love Blizzard’s games but just don’t play MMOs.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the pre-rendered trailer, courtesy of Blizzard’s acclaimed internal cinematic. These guys consistently create the some of the best CGI anywhere (in or out of the gaming industry). Only Blur and Square can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

[MEDIA=1]

’nuff said.

Sometimes Futurama is just too accurate for its own good…this story about how a Canadian MP wants to add Bigfoot to the endangered animals list (no, seriously) reminded me of this:

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My first reaction was that it simply must be a joke. I checked Snopes (an Internet institution that is always my first stop when dealing with insane news like this) and it turned up nothing. So I kept poking around the web to see what else I could find.

The MP in question is Mike Lake, who really is a member of parliament in the great north. He certainly doesn’t look like a crackpot…here he is meeting with his constituents. So I kept poking around, and found this story at Cryptomundo.com, a (pro) Cryptozoology blog. The site in question contacted Mike Lake’s people for confirmation, and received this reply:

Regarding the press release, yes it is legitimate and was issued by our office. The press release is the only statement that Mr. Lake will be making. He is not responding to any media requests in the hope that this issue will go away. Mr. Lake does not believe in Bigfoot!

So there you go. Sorry nutjobs, you’ll have to keep looking for Bigfoot without the help of this particular MP, who probably saw his future in politics flash before his eyes minutes after issuing that press release.

My sister Stef now works for MySpace, so I promised I’d do something with my page. Previously, I created that account purely so I could look at photos of the random women my friend Dan dates, but a promise is a promise, so I updated my MySpace page. Using some clever CSS tricks from Mike Industries, I was able to make it slightly less horrible looking, but it’s still not exactly what I would call attractive.

As a service, MySpace seems to encourage the kind of god awful design work that I haven’t seen since those early days of GeoCities…when everyone competed to see who could have the most autoplaying audio, animated GIFs, and terrible, terrible tiling background images. Yuck.

So anyway, that means I have a real MySpace page now (and so does Heather, actually). If you’ve got one too, let’s see how hideous yours is.