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So not too long ago, my roommate, his girlfriend, and I were hanging out an we were kind of bored.  So we decided to bust out a board game he had gotten from his Aunt for Christmas, and yet to have the self-loathing to open.
Fact or Crap - Beat Da Bomb, the Explosive Interactive DVD Game featuring Howie Mandel

I can barely put into words how dumb this game is, but I’ll try.

So literally all that is in this normal board game size box is a DVD in a cardboard slip case, a humorously small and uncomfortable heating pad (minus the heat) type thing that says “Hot Seat” on it, and about 40 “tokens” which look identical to poker chips.  The instructions for the game are printed on the inside of the box, and spoken to you by Howie Mandel via the included DVD.

So here’s the game (according to the rules they provide).  You can play individually or in teams, and each turn Howie Mandel sarcastically makes some sort of quip about your score and questions whether or not you’re ready for the sheer intensity of the coming round.  You then see a statement of some sort (A banana is a type of fruit) and you have to quickly answer whether or not that is fact or crap.  If you get it right, you are then asked another one.  If you get 4 right in a row, you successfully “Beat da bomb” (the word “da” in place of “the” is used with reckless abandon).  You then get tokens for however many questions you answered correctly (what the bonus is for “beating da bomb” remains to be seen).  You are then made fun of by Howie, just to simulate what it would be like to play the game with your alcoholic dad.
But here’s the catch.  The other team (or individual) is supposed to read the statements to you, while you sit in a chair topped with the cheap pad labeled “hot seat” which faces away from the television.  And the other thing is, the person reading the statement to you has about 6 seconds to read the question to you and enter in your answer correctly, or “da bomb” explodes.  What is to prevent the other person from reading slowly or entering in the wrong answer?  Nothing.  Needless to say, this was the first rule we abandoned, logically having the person who’s turn it was hold the DVD remote.

Every once in a while there’s a special round in which you answer four right away before entering.  I don’t remember how it works but we decided to have those rounds be the “you just won 4 tokens” rounds.

The ultimate goal?  To get 15 tokens.  That is literally it.  There is nothing else to the game but having Howie Mandel relentlessly make fun of your score or your poor fact or crap performance between each turn.  It’s almost as if he’s mocking you for having purchased the game in the first place.

And the price for this?  33.95, when on sale.  I have to imagine that each game costs maybe $2.00 to manufacture, and they probably gave Howie Mandel a couple thousand bucks to put on a jump suit and say stupid lines for half a day, so with that kind of a mark up, they need to sell about 100 to break even (though maybe they gave Howie a lot more, who knows).

So if you’re a mid fifties person who needs to get a birthday present for a nephew or niece, and you think that Howie Mandel is a real hoot, and you’re blown away that you can play an actual game on the DVD, then this is the game for you.  Otherwise, it will make you hate America.

Well first off allow me to introduce myself.  I’m Exoder and I come from the planet of Metaluna.  *adjusts glasses*

I consider myself a connoisseur of many things.  Cheese, music, movies (bad ones, horror films and usually both being my specialty), and the best of all: Beer.  Seeing as I gave up alcohol for lent, it seems appropriate for my first post to be about the delicious and wonderful beverage that my all too sober life desperately misses.

There seems to be two camps that all beer drinkers put themselves into - hopheads and stoutheads (though that term and concept is up for debate).  While I don’t agree with putting yourself into a box (being a moderate liberal as well), I do still feel the need to declare, as it were.  I am a stouthead, though I do love hoppy beers as well (Ruination from Stone being one of my absolute favorites).

So with that in mind, I have to tell you all about a stout I discovered recently that is quickly becoming one of my favorite beers - Anderson Valley’s Oatmeal Stout.

This is easily one of the most drinkable beers I’ve ever tasted, as there is nothing harsh at all in the taste.  Extremely smooth taste, with all kinds of coffee overtones, and one of the more refreshing finishes you’ll ever have in a stout.

Anderson Valley is based out of Boonville, California, so for you west coasters, you have no excuse.  If you spot a six pack of this or even just a bottle, get it!  You won’t regret it.  And pour a little on the ground or carpet of the bar (they’ve had worse on that floor) in honor of your brother who can’t enjoy one for another few weeks.  Cheers!

So the 2008 Academy Awards are in a few hours and I’m all a-tingle with anticipation.  After several disappointing years of movies like Crash and Gladiator winning the big prize, last February the academy found a pair and sent the most violent, disturbing movie of the year home with the little gold man.  This year should prove interesting, as the front-runners are two movies shot in the same desolate, God-forsaken Texas town and featuring the two most insane performers/performances since DeNiro ate copious amounts of ice cream and steak and nearly died for his art in Raging Bull.  If pre-Oscar awards shows are any indication, No Country For Old Men will be victorious, and it’s quite a competition when that little stomach-turner seems like the safe choice.  There Will Be Blood indeed.  And probably a few tears… 

I dedicate this trailer to Happy Simpleton, whose love of Rambo knows no limit:

Looks pretty funny.

We don’t see a ton of first-run movies in the pcg household anymore. So I frequently struggle with the idea of reviewing older movies that I happen to have just seen. On the one hand, I don’t want to get all excited about what is already common knowledge — “Dude, did you know DARTH VADER IS LUKE’S FATHER!!!1″ On the other, we watch a number of off-the-beaten-path movies that maybe not everyone has seen, or even heard of. With that in mind, we’ve recently seen a couple of Elijah Wood independent flicks from 2005 that were quite good. Both are nice and moody, with soundtracks and scenery to complement excellent scripts and actors.

Green Street Hooligans (2005) chronicles the life of a Harvard dropout as he escapes to London and into the dark, conflicted world of soccer gangs. While there are a few missteps in the acting (most notably at the outset of Wood’s interaction with his sister (Claire Forlani)), a number of gritty supporting performances (led by Charlie Hunnam) and a good script more than make up for it. The soccer is merely a backdrop for the incredible character transformation and rich storytelling that take place in urban England. It’s a very good watch.

Another thing we try to do is watch the trailers before a movie, particularly if it’s a lesser-known or independent film. That way, if we like the movie, we might have a few other similar movies to try out as well. This is how we came across Everything is Illuminated (2005), the story of a Jewish man’s quest to uncover the meaning of a mysterious photograph of his grandfather and an unknown maiden. The story winds through the Ukraine, starting in the city of Odessa, through abandoned and dilapidated Soviet outposts, out to the gorgeous countryside where the photo was taken. Surprisingly humorous, rife with subtleties and subversive Cold War pokes and beautifully shot, Everything is Illuminated is another very good watch.

Stay tuned, as next time I’ll review the new Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies.

MAGIC || MADNESS
It sometimes bothers me that sci-fi aliens are almost always depicted as humanoid with slight variations in shape and color, or perhaps with lots of sharp teeth.  One of the things I enjoyed about Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris is the idea that we might encounter an alien and not even recognize it as sentient life.

I hadn’t thought about it before, but there’s a similar deal going on with magic in fantasy books - magical protagonist characters learn neat stuff at magic school and have fun adventures, and the only real downside to being magic is that if they’re good enough at it someone else might come after them because they’re jealous or consider them a threat. This issue bothered Justine Larbalestier and she applied her mad author skills to the problem. I just finished reading the first two books in her trilogy - Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons - in which magical characters are presented with two options: use magic and die young (most likely in your teens or 20s) or don’t use it and go insane. This makes for some interesting plot development.  I enjoyed the first two books and need to go find the third one now.

MAGIC == MADNESS

I spent last weekend losing a little sanity to getting a particular Rails app running on my Macbook. One of the reasons I switched to OSX from my dual-boot Linux/XP system was that “things just work.” While that’s largely been true, I did not find it to be the case for a Rails app that needs RMagick to process images. Given the percentage of Rails developers that use OSX and that RMagick seems to be the standard way of dealing with images in Rails apps not to mention all the fantastic Mac eye candy, I would have expected installation to look something like this:

macrails:~ fanboy$ gem install rmagick
Holy crap, you’ve got a Mac!!! I know *exactly* what to do for you, your apps will look fabulous!!!!!!
Successfully installed rmagick-1.15.11

Instead, I got to spend time running down a series of rabbit holes that all involved installing prebuilt versions of what I needed along with a bunch of dependencies.  I suppose that’s not too different than the RPM package management that I’ve come to know and love on Linux distributions, but if that sort of thing is necessary to get a development environment working on an OSX system I’d prefer that it was based on a standard packaging system that Apple baked into the OS.  Oh well.  I eventually got things working with Locomotive and an RMagick bundle, although it took a bit to figure out how to install/update gems in the bundle’s ruby installation.

With apologies to The Knack.

Ooh my little pretty ones, pretty ones.
When you gonna check out my chacojones?
Ooh you make my motor run, my motor run.
Seven-liter supercharged chacojones.
Never gonna stop, give it up.
Such a crazy pair. Always have ‘em out, like the feel
of the open air.
Cha cha cha cha cha woo. Cha cha cha chacojones…

Come a little closer huh, ah will ya huh.
Close enough to look at my chacojones.
Keeping it a mystery gets to me
Noone knows the strength of my chacojones.
Never gonna stop, give it up.
Such a crazy pair. Always have ‘em out, like the feel
of the open air.
Cha cha cha cha cha woo. Cha cha cha chacojones…

Why are you avoiding me, avoiding me?
Is it just a fear of my chacojones?
Is it just fantasy, fantasy?
Or can we play a game with my chacojones?
Never gonna stop, give it up.
Such a crazy pair. Always have ‘em out, like the feel
of the open air.
Cha cha cha cha cha woo. Cha cha cha chacojones…

What’s with the new trend of theater hosts stopping the previews to brag about whatever new doodad of technology they are using to show the movie I’m trying to watch?!?

I was excited to visit a new theater tonight because I wouldn’t have to go through that again, but there it was. So and so comes out acting all smarmy and brags about all the hoo-hah they’ve been working on. wtf? If your new shit is so good I would be able to tell if you would shut your pie-hole and show the freakin’ movie already … if it is not good enough to notice, I don’t want to hear you bragging about it and you should really be ashamed of yourself.

Honestly … next time I’m bringing a sloppy tomato with me.

I am very excited for Ratatouille, particularly after reading a very interesting article by the writer/director. This film looks very promising. Go Pixar.

I want to be excited for Evan Almighty given that I liked Bruce’s version and I think Carell can pull it off like Carey. I have a feeling that it won’t be spectacular, however, and the reviews that I have read so far seem to agree.

I am not excited for Live Free or Die Hard. I will watch it out of respect for the first of the series, but it looks to be jam packed with ludicrous stunts and action that are well beyond plausible.

What are you excited for?