My Random 2012 Rewind

Time once again, for some of my most random thoughts – from the
"funtastic to the fantastic", here are 12 things we all lived through in 2012, through the eyes of those of us in the corner.

Gangnam of Thieves – Korean rapper Psy's Gangnam Style has now officially become THE most watched video of all time. The one-hit wonder has spawned a number of spin-offs and spoofs that have taken YouTube by storm. The once controversial artist has been widely accepted by his countrymen, MTV and the White House alike. A previous 'political thug' in his homeland of South Korea, Psy does now have a legit place in history. We will likely hear no more from this admittedly infectious little jam and that's just fine by me.

Boo Boo Knows Best – During this presidential election year, the  MOST watched television programming during the election of this country's, perhaps even the world's most important position of power was not the RNC or the Democratic conventions, it wasn't even the debates. It was coverage of America's newest sweetheart, pudgy princess of purgatory, Honey Boo Boo. Maybe the apocalypse did occur... 


"We will not fade quietly into the night–!" – So yet another 'end-of-days' has come and gone. Those crafty Mayans had a calendar that abruptly ended on December 21, 2012 which left many pondering the end of the world as we know it. As we all know, not very much happened, though there was a massive spike in tourism to Peru to see the Mayan ruins. The Mayans were of course, known for building a massive civilization and empire but honestly, they didn't even see the Spaniards coming. 


Rhymes with Snit – From out of the languishing ranks of lost souls from the Grand Old Party came a silver-tongued super-villian hell bent on sewing seeds of mistrust, deceit and lies throughout our fragile economy and deceiving nearly half of our countrymen that he was all that and a bag of chips on a shoulder. MItt Romney's laughable campaign of vapid emptiness took the country by storm until even Mitt's own kin folk woke up, hours before the election and said "WTF?" Swing and a miss, Mitt.

Free Eye Glasses with Every Paycheck! – ... aaaand speaking of poor judgement, the lofty referee lockout at the beginning of this year's NFL season saw a phalanx of scab referees hit the field–and football fans everywhere hit the bar, hit the bottle and hit the floor in utter disbelief as scores of horrifically bad calls bellowed when bad whistles blew for four weeks that utterly decimated the NFL with some to the most atrocious calling since Dewey vs Truman.

"And there came a day..." – I'm still reeling from the onscreen awesomeness that was Marvel's The Avengers, a near-perfect super-hero mash-up that smashed box office records, our perception of hero movies and puny Gods alike. With a $1.5 billion box office performance, the Avengers is just heating up. Expect more hero adventures in Thor and Iron man in 2013. As my favorite book growing up, the Avengers were, how do you say? The bomb diggity–! There, I said it and there's no taking it back.


Darth Vader gets Goofy – In one the most mesmerizing business buyouts of ALL TIME, Disney purchases the Star Wars intellectual property and rights to the franchise from an increasingly perplexing George Lucas for a mere $4.05 billion. While I am ELATED at the prospect of more SW movies, didn't George make like, $4 billion in merchandising alone? "Join me and together we can rule the empire...!" Done, done and done.


Standing Room Only – In one of 2013's most bizarre mass media events, Hollywood bad boy and conservative whack-a-doodle, Clint Eastwood has a conversation in front of the entire non-Honey-Boo-Boo-watching country with an invisible Barack Obama. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Dirty Harry goes off on an empty chair in front of... well all of us. I don't think the RNC has been this embarrassed since Sarah Pailin went all "hockey Mom" with her "drill-baby-drill!" bit.

The Accessible Red Planet – In September, a VERY under-reported event and the next step in man's exploration of space unfolded as the Martian Rover, Curiosity, landed safely on the Red Planet. It's two-year mission is to take it's 19+ cameras and feed back images and even live video of our small blushing sister planet. Curiosity will open up new discussions about the nature of Mars. Get your ray-guns ready...

Massacres on Main Street – the mass murders in a movie theater in Aurora Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown Connecticut show us how out-of-control our gun culture has become. I don't care where you stand on the gun control issue, if this country had it's sh*t together with properly enforced gun laws, 20 kindergarten kids and scores of othewr innocents would still be alive today. Period. Good thing Automatic Rifles are selling out in record numbers across the US. Nope, don't see how that could POSSIBLY make things worse. Not one bit. 

Brain Food – AMC's family-friendly series chronicals a group of survivors as they make their way through a zombie apocalypse. Complete with enough gore and bloodletting to rival a pork processing plant, The Walking Dead, based on the phenomenally well written monthly comic from Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore is the show that everyone is somehow just now discovering. The first half of the astonishingly well written season three is done and the story picks up again February 2013. If you haven't watched it yet – well good God what are you waiting for? It is waayyy beyond a guilty little pleasure–its an American icon.

Greatest Love of All – We said goodbye to a host of VIP-level personalities in 2012, but none will impact me more than the untimely death of R and B/Pop dive Whitney Houston. no one defined the 1980's pop scene like Whitney. Her demise and slow sinking into the mire of heavy drug use does nothing in my eyes to diminish her fantastic contributions to music. RIP girl, you're the Greatest!

Happy New Year – to all of you who have been sent to the corner–thanks for reading! 2013 is coming hard and fast and the new year will have a new format and new stuff for me to get int trouble over. See you then!

Reviewer Misses The Target On Badass Game

Better then Ever! Gearbox's Borderlands 2 brings us back to the brutally fun world of Pandora

MY GAMERLIFE POST #1: Gearbox's BORDERLANDS 2, is bigger, stronger and faster—hell, it is downright badass! But if you're not careful, you'll miss the point–just like the Wall Street Journal did. Join me for my first ever in-the-trenches video game review.

First, I gotta say, this post is long, long overdue. I am a full-time Dad, Ad-man (I channel my inner Don Draper often, as a force for good) and a fan of all things that engage my love of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. I co-host a sci-fi/super-hero movie blog. In as much, I am also a hopelessly addicted gamer as well as a life-long advocate of gaming as an integral hobby and immersive visual experience. 

Managing your own gaming life

The beautiful (and often overlooked) reality of gaming in the 21st century is that it's unique to each of us. We all choose the world we wish to engage in. You into Zombies, we got an endless horde of undead (titles). Like Star Wars? The force will be with you… always, with a staggering array of Lucas-inspired properties to choose from. And if stomping mushrooms as an italian carpenter with bright red overalls is your thing, well; weirdo out-of-touch lemming, meet Mario Bros. 

Available in all shapes and sizes!

While I do understand there is a whole sub-section of our culture that does not participate with any gaming whatsoever (and if that's you, kudos to you for still reading at this point) but I know that for the Gen-X crowd and younger, we have grown up gaming. The graphics, the sounds, the button mashing–ooh, my heart's racing even as I write this!–and the sense of virtual accomplishment. And whether you're a problem solver, a FPS hound, a sports nut or RTS fanatic you likely take your gaming experience quite seriously. 

So you can imagine the horror of my discontent when I learned the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had an entertainment writer trash one of my all-time favorite franchises. 

Oh, it is so on!

Lock And Load!

First, I gotta' say this is an EXTREMELY biased post but then again, that's why we all blog, right? So, Borderlands 2, I love it, my friends love it, you should run out and love it too! It's violent fun and challenging. Colorful graphics, dark humor, unexpected plot twists and more than 100 million in-game weapons* to blast all the aliens, monsters and robots who try and stand in your way to achieve greater intergalactic glory. 

Ready for Glory!

The game is built, from the ground up, to offer an immersive, steadily escalating set of challenges that offer loads of homicidal ballistic fun! But the game's sheer programming genius is in it's co-op gaming features. Drop-in, drop-out co-op gaming, co-op game leveling and automatic game difficulty increase and decrease due to the number of players in game (1-4). If you play this game alone, it's good, but together, in co-op, it's a franking experience! Having two or three people firing different elemental weapons at the same adversary–burning and being doused in acid simultaneously–is only one of the many great features that make this game pure gaming gold. 

So, to Mr. Adam Najberg of the Wall Street Journal's Arts and Entertainment staff, while I share your love (and implied) passion for gaming, you really missed the boat, missed the target and missed the whole point on Borderlands2. It's not Call of Duty: Black Ops. Your endless comparisons to those rage-fueled bouts Ritalin-induced foul-mouthed 13-year olds is a sad mis-informed correlation this fan cannot abide by.

I actually hate the multi-player experience of CoD:Black Ops as it unfairly pairs you with school-skipping preteens who spend 4-6 hours a day mastering this rancid multi-player "experience". You couldn't possibly be comparing the campaigns because they are as dissimilar as you can get and still be in the FPS genre.

I Can't Believe He Said That!

Some of Adam's review: "There’s an extremely limited four-player cooperative mode, and if you have an Xbox Live Gold account, you can team up that way, but this isn’t the type of deeply engrossing FPS game the headset-wearing COD crowds gather to play months and months after release. In comparison, I read on several sites that COD: Black Ops 2 will feature up to six teams, for a total of 18 simultaneous players, in multiplayer mode."

WTF!? Why are you talking about Call of Duty in this review? Come on dude, don't be THAT guy! If you love CoD and just don't like games where people work WITH each other versus slaughtering each other, than just say so.

This quote also sounds like he is having some sort of elitist 'I shouldn't have to pay for this' gripe with X-BOX LIVE. While I can share you discontent, sir, again a game review is NOT the place for this. Stay focused, dude. 

I've Got Your ClapTrap Right Here!

"Does this photo make me look too fat?"

I gotta' give a shout out to my main bot, Claptrap. As the game's  primary (but certainly not ONLY) comic-relief character, this foul-mouthed, narcissistic bot with an attitude is by far one of gaming's most entertaining characters ever. Too many to mention, the dialogue that spews from his audio box is some of the most well-written comic-relief I've ever heard.

One of many infamous wise-cracks, your playable character is salvaged from the wreck of a horrible train wreck at the hands the game's vilian, Handsome Jack. Claptrap says (to you) at the start of the game: "Excellent my minion–your ability to walk short-distances without falling down will be Jack's downfall!"

Probably something else Mr. Najberg completely glossed over in his clearly hasty review of Borderlands 2 (sigh). 

So, Arth Vader, How Do You Really Feel?

So, Mr. Njaberg, I have a proposition, dear sir. Try this game again, only this time, detox off of any previous title you have played (and obviously prefer) and focus your game-play review on the new and different one offered by Borderlands 2. The game has gotten high marks across the board (4.25 stars out of 5 from Gamer magazine, 9.5 star out of 10 from Game Informer magazine). Maybe you would have a similar good time with it, if you found a friend or two to play it with and stop comparing it to what appears to be the only other inferior, cookie-cutter FPS titles.

Of course, if you keep making game review blunders like this one, you may be wondering why your buddies are all playing great games that only you hate. 

With that gauntlet thrown down, I give Borderland 2 nine (9) mashed buttons out of ten!

* According to Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford; "Together the guns, grenade variants and shield variants total almost 100 million loot varieties (stat variations)." 

A Force To Be Reckoned With

The recent release of Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-Ray reminds us of a sense of shock & awe "… from a long time ago…"

I recently purchased the mega-disc set of The Complete Star Wars Saga on Blu-Ray, prompting my girlfriend to ask me; "How many times can you actually re-watch the same movies?" Good question. Let's count, shall we? Kids, grab your abacus!

The answer “forces” me to recall the years of my youth. I was nine when Star Wars first hit the big screen and my life had been altered in ways I can only barely articulate. Though, indulge me dear friends, this was true enlightenment.

Though Jaws (1975), is officially credited to be the first-ever summer blockbuster, Star Wars epitomized this phenomenon. A blockbuster, for those who may not know, is a movie where the lines of moviegoers waiting to get in went out the theater door, down the sidewalk and – you guessed it – around the block, thereby "busting" the block. Remember, this phrase was coined at a time when movie theaters held either single or double screens. A 'megaplex' in downtown Boston was once known to have the unheard of number of four movie screens (gasp!). Back then, Hollywood saw the summer as a dead movie season. After all, who in their right mind would go the movies when you could go swimming, go to the beach or go on a trip? Movies releases were typically slated for late fall or early winter – prime movie release season at the time.

I vividly remember local (and national) TV newscasts interviewing scores of people waiting in lines – often for days – to experience George Lucas's other-world space opera. Sadly, I would see the movie just three times in the original year of release, but that, as they say, was just the beginning.
In 1978, Star Wars ran for six (6) consecutive months, only to be re-released months later in most major markets. The movie was a runaway hit and I couldn’t get enough. I went every weekend for an average of 2-3 continuous showings over the course of the summers of '78 & '79, I estimate I saw this movie roughly 55 – 60 times (keep in mind matinee admission was $1 for kids my age). I just couldn't get enough; the poor story pacing, the campy overacted script, mistake-ridden post-production – none of that mattered. What mattered was how many details my friends and I could discover by seeing it again and again. And Again.

And Again.

"Don't be a Vader-Hater, Son. Now, "Hand" over the remote...!

Then, in 1980, the Empire Strikes Back came to a theater near me. OMG—another one! The ride wasn’t over — it had only just begun! Now older, and on the high of watching Star Wars more than 60 times coursing through my veins, I proceeded to see Empire a whopping 14 times in 1980 alone. Another dozen or so times (thanks again to rereleases!) before 1983 when Return of the Jedi made my head explode with it’s jaw-dropping awesomeness. Was Darth Vader really Luke Skywalker's father? Would Leia & her homeboys be able to save Han from Jabba The Hut in time? Would the rebellion score another major victory against the Empire? As I entered my first year of High School, there were legions of die-hard fans there to share my fascination with.

All told I have viewed each of the six movies somewhere between 30 & 60 times apiece and I’m sure I am well over 200 all-time since VCR's, Cable TV (the original trilogy is run every Christmas, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day on TNT) and DVD's have made these movies available anytime, day or night. Which brings me, finally, to the Blu-Ray release.

You’ll need a decent digital screen, the larger the better, and (of course!) a Blu-Ray player. I recommend a popcorn machine, a healthy supply of vitamin water and remember to shut off your cell phone. 

You’ll be blown away as you fall in love all over again with a story that has captivated two generations of fans. The image clarity is almost unspeakable. The sound is spellbinding and yet, the real gold is the extras. I most likely own every series release since the Gold VHS edition came out. This one "… grinds [the others] up and blasts them into space!" If you have yet to purchase a Blu-Ray player, I understand, but if you love movies like I love movies (just check out my Movie Blog, The Boxed Office) a Blu-Ray player is for you! The added image and sound quality is terrific and the behind the scenes commentary and hands-on documentaries along with the review of the special effects process(es) are too delicious for words – and the SW:TCS Blu-Ray delivers in spades!

To respect those who have NOT purchased this release yet (whoever THOSE left brain, no imagination clones are), I will not divulge any details so you must see the movies for yourself. No Blu-Ray? Visit a friend who has one, do whatever it takes. Yes, they are THAT good!

"Watch or watch not... there is no try."

So to answer the original question; “more than 200 times – and counting!” You can never get enough of a movie series that so epitomizes fantasy, imagination, good overcoming evil and more fantastic science, gadgets and special effects than you can wave a light saber at. Grab your blaster and your wallet; $80 for all six movies in re-mastered digital high definition with surround sound and more than 40 hours of extras – it’s pure heaven, even here in the outer rim territories.

I advise everyone to run, don't walk, and get re-acquainted with the most imaginative and captivating cinematic story-telling experience of the 20th century. (If you need a gentle reminder click here for a comical recap of Star Wars.)

To remind younger readers, Han DID shoot first, don't believe the re-master.

Greedo would never have missed at point-bank range.

"Remember, the force will be with you… always."