PIERRE BERNARD ON STARGATE SG-1... AGAIN!
Lately, I have been wondering whatever happened to
Late Night with Conan O'Brien graphic designer
Pierre Bernard. While I'm aware that he still has his day job, producing graphics (fake commemorative state quarters and such) for the show, he hasn't actually appeared in a "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage" comedy bit since
complaining about the expanding waistline of "medium"-sized Fruit of the Loom underwear half a year ago.
About a week ago, I actually had a dream where Conan was talking about Pierre, and he said that he went off somewhere or other.
Tonight, my dream sort of came true. Instead of a "desk bit", the lead-off comedy bit on tonight's
Late Night with Conan O'Brien was another video of Pierre Bernard going to Vancouver to once again appear on
Stargate SG-1. As you may recall, the association between Pierre Bernard and
Stargate SG-1 began two years ago, when Pierre ranted on
Conan about
Stargate SG-1 bringing back from the dead the character of Daniel Jackson, played by actor Michael Shanks. When Daniel Jackson was dead, the show had much more action and special effects, but, since he came back, Pierre thought the show was still okay, but each time the character was on screen, he brought too much of the talking and getting to know the aliens nonsense. The producers of
Stargate SG-1 were so flattered by the mention of their show that they invited Pierre to come and
visit the set, and he filmed a cameo appearance as a communications officer named "O'Brien" (get it?). Then, last summer, Pierre parlayed his fame within the
Stargate SG-1 fandom into an a
ppearance at the Gateworld convention. (
This page has most of the relevant video clips of what I just mentioned.)
I didn't tape this comedy trip video montage (though I'm sure it will be available somewhere on the Internet soon), so I can't give a transcript, but here's more or less what happened (as much as I can remember):
- Before Pierre appears on the show, he's the guest on some Vancouver radio show, where he complains about the live-action Saved By the Bell appearing on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block (oh yeah, Pierre, people have been complaining about that on anime boards, believe you me). Of course, we can't actually watch Cartoon Network/Adult Swim up here in Canada, so the hosts obviously had no idea what he was talking about, though that's half the joke. (He also name drops Cowboy Bebop getting replaced by Case Closed.) Then the hosts tried to stump Pierre with Stargate SG-1 questions, but they couldn't (though it took him a few seconds to remember that someone sent a handkerchief/Kleenex box through a warp).
- Pierre also appears on some television entertainment programme, except they spell his name wrong, I think something like "Pirree".
- You see Pierre sitting in the make-up chair having zombie make-up applied, since he's appearing as a zombie in the 200th episode of Stargate SG-1.
- Then Pierre's with some kind of woman acting coach, and he practices his zombie walk. The woman encourages him, but star Beau Bridges says (somewhat jokingly) that Pierre doesn't have what it takes to succeed in acting.
- They shoot the scene, and I think Pierre misses a cue or something. Then they show one of the characters starts shooting from a platform towards two big military metal doors, which zombies, including Pierre wearing his "O'Brien" uniform, are breaking down.
That's about as much as I remember.
The 200
th episode will be called, imaginitively enough,
"200", and they don't seem to have an airdate for it yet.
I wonder if this plug on
Conan will get more viewers for
Stargate SG-1? I only started watching the show myself because of the Conan connection.
HEY, PIERRE BERNARD, IF YOU EVER READ THIS, HERE'S AN ANIME RECOMMENDATION FOR YOU!
It's an anime called
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu), and it's the most wickedly hilarious, and intelligent, anime comedy I've seen in years, with lots of dry humour and no slow spots. At first it seems like it's just going to be another dumb harem comedy about a geeky high school student surrounded by beautiful girls, but there's a lot more complexity to the characters than it seems at first, and there are a lot of mysteries, especially regarding the very enigmatic Haruhi Suzumiya herself, a girl with odd interests and a capricious personality who always must have her way... or dire consequences will occur. And the show jumps back and forth in time, for a
Pulp Fiction-like storytelling effect.
And there's plenty of "fan service", but fan service in moderation is fine, and it doesn't detract from the story. Also, while there's nothing explicitly
yuri (lesbian) on the show, I do kind of enjoy the somewhat perverse pleasure Haruhi seems to get from humiliating poor Mikuru.
I already gave links to where you can watch the show on YouTube.com
here and
here, but here are the next three episodes.
Episode 3: Haruhi uses blackmail to get a computer for the SOS club, and Yuki reveals her secret to Kyon.
Part 1Part 2Part 3
Episode 4: A flash-foward episodeL Haruhi decides that the club compete in some kind of baseball tournament against much better teams (the SOS club had to get an 11-year old girl just to fill up the required numbers of players), and we can see why Haruhi must not be allowed to get upset or angry.
Part 1Part 2Part 3
Episode 5: Continues from the point where episode 3 left off, where Yuki explains an incident that happened 3 years ago and tells him that it may have something to do with Haruhi. Then the SOS club splits up into groups to look for aliens, time-travellers, and ESPers (psychics), and Kyon pairs up with Mikuru, who tells him her secret when they're alone together. Meanwhile, Haruhi finds a strange exchange student named Itsuki who has a few secrets of their own. Basically, the people finding Haruhi and coming together is no coincidence.
A great episode from a character exhibition standpoint.
Part 1Part 2Part 3Also, this show isn't based on any manga; it's based on a series of novels by someone called Nagaru Tanigawa. Damn, these books really need to be translated into English!
HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO! WEAR NO PANTS!
Today is
Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that ostensibly celebrates the underdog victory of poorly equipped forces led by Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza against better-armed and more numerous French invaders, dispatched by Emperor Napoleon the third, in 1962 (though Zaragoza only won the battle but lost the war: Napoleon III dispatched 30000 more troops, defeated the Mexicans, and Archduke Maximillian of Austria, a relative of Napoleon III, got installed as emperor of Mexico in 1864). Even though the holiday is Mexican in origin, it's more widely celebrated in the United States as kind of a cultural appropriation day, a chance to eat
tacos and burritos and listen to Shakira and
drink Corona beer and whatnot.
Not having ever lived in any areas of North America with large Hispanic populations, I honestly didn't know anything about Cinco de Mayo myself until I saw it on the classic first season
King of the Hill episode,
"King of the Ant Hill", the one that broke the realism rule and had Bobby's mind being controlled by the queen ant. (Well, I suppose you can claim that Bobby was really only play-acting.)
But it's not just Cinco de Mayo today. It, being the first Friday in May this year, is also
No Pants Day, a day to free yourself from the tyranny of trousers.
From Misty Harris of CanWest News Service via the Regina Leader-Post:
"If you ever feel like something's holding you back but aren't sure what it is, consider this: It could be your pants.
Around the world today, the young and the young at heart are protesting the tyranny of trousers with No Pants Day. In this country alone, hundreds of underwear-clad Canadians are expected to participate in such events as pants-free pub crawls, wine tastings and barbecues intended to recognize the "freedom associated with not wearing pants."
Now in its sixth year, No Pants Day is just one of a growing number of mock holidays commemorating the unlikely joys of walking around in tighty whities.
"It's a way to throw up your hands at the moorings of society in an acceptable way that's just unacceptable enough," says Karl-Thomas Musselman, a 21-year-old student at the University of Texas.
Although college kids have been taking off their pants for decades, it's only been in the past few years that slacks-doffing has gotten the holiday treatment.
By most accounts, the idea was born in the mid-'80s when a small group of students at the U of T chose to celebrate the end of the semester in their underwear. The tradition continued for roughly 15 years, with the first Friday in May marked by a mass removal of pants.
Then in 2000, the public spectacle was declared an official student holiday by the Knighthood of Buh, a campus organization dedicated to breaking social norms. Celebrations have since spread across the U.S., Sweden, Australia, Finland, the United Kingdom and even Iraq.
In Canada, pants-free festivities are known to have been held in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario."
Personally, I think it's a cop out, since you can't go "commando" and you have to wear underwear. If you can't let your manhood
1 flap freely and proudly in the wind, what's the point?
You know somewhere where No Pants Day will never catch on? Free Country U.S.A. from
Homestar Runner? And why not? Because, as Strong Bad recently found out when
he crashed the "Entrapment All Up On the Moon" prom to "poof" away everyone's pants, he's the only one in Free Country U.S.A. who even wears any!
It's a mass pantsing, see?1 For those of you in Rio Linda, I mean "penis".
BURGER KING'S TEXAS DOUBLE WHOPPER: STEVE, DON'T EAT IT?
(Don't worry, I don't think I will.)
Burger King has a new
commercial for the Texas Double Whopper entitled
"Manthem", with imagery designed solely to titilate men in a very Man Show kind of way, with cheerleaders, karate, flexing, (male) underwear burning, dumptruck pulling, nouvelle cuisine tiny portion size-dissing, and minivan tossing, among other things, set to the tune of
Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman".
In the hopes of attracting ten million Google hits over the next week or so, I've transcribed the
Texas Double Whopper "Manthem" commercial lyrics:
I am man, hear me roar,
In numbers too big to ignore,
And I'm way too hungry to settle for chick food!
'Cause my stomach's starting to growl,
And I'm going on the prowl,
For a Texas Double Whopper!
"Man that's good!"
Oh, yes, I'm a guy!
I'll admit I've been fed quiche!
Wave tofu bye-bye!
Now it's for Whopper beef I reach.
I will eat this meat
(Eat this meat)
'Till my innie turns into an outie!
I am starved!
I am incorrigible!
And I'm eating scarf (?) a burger beef bacon jalapeno good thing down!
(Yeah!)
I am hungry!
(I am hungry)
I am incorrigible!
I AM MAN!
The Texas Double Whopper: Eat like a man!
Now, healthy eater, thy name is
not "Steve Brandon". I make no apologies for loving Big Macs, and I'm not about to cave in to the Morgan Spurlock/Jamie Oliver nanny state "Nutrition Gestapo" brigades. But I do have my limits, and a burger that appears to be roughly the diameter of an old 45 rpm single record (about 17.5 cm) and at least 10 cm high is well past that.
Loathe as I am to actually give a crap about the calories in fast food, I went to the
Chowbaby Fast Food calorie counter page, which gives nutrition information for pretty much everything on the menu at most major American fast food franchises (not Canadian, so Harvey's isn't mentioned).
Their
page for Burger King doesn't have the Texas Double Whopper mentioned, perhaps because it's too new and only a temporary item, but a normal Double Whopper with cheese, which presumably is roughly nutrionally comparable, has a whopping 1070 calories, with 630 of those calories being fat. The medium fries would add another 360 calories (160 of those being fat), and a medium Coke has 230 more calories, so that's 1660 calories total, and 790 grams of fat. And that's if you don't supersize the drink and fries! If you do, you get 550 calories (220 fat) with the fries, and 330 calories with the Coke, for a 1950 calorie meal total, meaning you get about the average recommended total DAILY calorie intake (2000 calories) with that one meal.
I don't have any delusions that the Big Mac is health food, but, according to
the McDonald's page of the same site, a Big Mac has just 600 calories total (300 being fat). So a Big Mac has less calories total than just the fat calories in the Double Whopper. You get slightly more calories with the medium fries at McDonald's, 400 calories, but slightly less with the Coke, 210 calories. So my normal meal at McDonald's is 1210 calories, not great from a nutritional standpoint, but it's diet food compared to the Double Whopper meal (with the caveat being that serving sizes might differ slightly at Canadian McDonald's restaurants).
My normal meal at
Wendy's is even better, with the Spicy Chicken burger giving me "just" 430 calories (120 fat), 390 calories (150 fat) from the fries, and 140 calories from the medium Coke (guess the serving size is smaller than the medium Cokes at McDonald's and Burger King), for a meal of 960 calories.
My usual
KFC meal is a little hard to calculate, as I don't think the Spicy Big Crunch, which we have in Canada, is the exact same sandwich as the Triple Crunch Zinger sandwich, since we used to have a sandwich called "Zinger" in Canada, and the Zinger was actually marinated with spices, while the Spicy Big Crunch is just the normal Big Crunch with a spicy sauce. But, assuming that they're roughly nutritionally comparable, I'd get 680 calories (370 fat) from the sandwich, and 180 calories from the medium Pepsi. They don't give the calories from the fries on that page, so I'll just add an arbitrary 380 calories, about the average for medium fries from what I've seen, and that meal comes to a total of 1240 calories.
So, it's a funny commercial, especially the way it hijacks a feminist anthem, but, given the sobering calorie count compared, even, to the fast food I usually eat, I just don't ever see myself being willing to try it (says the hypocrite who's probably eaten meals with a similar calorie count at Red Lobster on at least two or three occasions... at least those meals that involve large platters of fried shrimp). Maybe once, just to say I tried it, but I'd probably need to eat lettuce and drink only... bleh... diet cola for a week after, just to balance things out.
And, yes, I know that both Hardee's and Carl's Jr. have burgers that are supposed to be bigger than even the Texas Double Whopper. But I don't think they have those two franchises in Canada, or, if they do, they certainly don't have them anywhere in the Ottawa area, so the fact that those burgers exist is a moot point to me. Burger King is part of the normal compliment of fast food franchises along Merivale here in Nepean (actually, it's on Clyde, the extension that continues the main drag of Merivale after Merivale Road itself "doglegs" east).
Of course, notice that, in the commercial, they don't actually ever eat the thing. This is mainly because food prepared for the camera in commercial shoots usually isn't edible (often, it's not even actually cooked, just painted), and also because a half-eaten hamburger isn't exactly aeshetically-pleasing. Maybe it means that the burger is more of a politically-incorrect and nutritionally-incorrect fashion accessory meant to make a statement about the holder rather than something to be consumed.
So, buy that Texas Double Whopper and hold it proudly to affirm your manlyness, but, if you don't want to get diabetes or keel over from a heart attack before you're 35, I suggest maintaining your svelte physique by eating something relatively nutritious... like a Big Mac.
GEORGE LUCAS GIVES STAR WARS FANS WHAT THEY WERE ASKING FOR (AND SOMETHING NEW TO COMPLAIN ABOUT)...
It's official: the original Star Wars trilogy will be finally released on DVD in their original forms!"In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie, as well as the original theatrical edition of the film. That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.
See the title crawl to Star Wars before it was known as Episode IV; see the pioneering, if dated, motion control model work on the attack on the Death Star; groove to Lapti Nek or the Ewok Celebration song like you did when you were a kid; and yes, see Han Solo shoot first.
This release will only be available for a limited time: from September 12th to December 31st. International release will follow on or about the same day. Each original theatrical version will feature Dolby 2.0 Surround sound, close-captioning, and subtitles in English, French and Spanish for their U.S. release. International sound and subtitling vary by territory."
On one hand, George Lucas has finally caved for those of us who wanted the films on DVD the way they were before the 1997 Special Editions (and the minor changes to those made for DVD in 2004), so I don't have to look for the LaserDiscs to get them in better quality than the old VHS tapes we have, but, on the other hand, I have to admit that I'm a little pissed that, to get them, I have to re-buy the 2004 DVD versions, which I already have when I got the boxset the first time around. Nothing against the 2004 versions, but I don't want to buy again what I already have. And I think everyone I know who gives a fuck about
Star Wars has that DVD set already too, so I can't even give it away.
I'm hoping that George Lucas will cave again, and put the original versions of the films in one single set for those of us who have the 2004 versions already. I don't care if it's completely "bare bones".
STUPID COMMERCIALS...
There's this one sports utility vehicle commercial, and I'm not 100% sure what the ad is for, but I think it's for the
Nissan Pathfinder, that goes, more or less, like "What if we went on a trip where we only took left turns? Who would we meet? Where would we end up?"
Wouldn't the answer almost always be "Around the block"? "Exactly back where you started"? "In only a couple of minutes"?
Just imagine, you can see the people on the other side of your block. If they're home and standing in their front yards. Or just see their lawns and parked cars and driveways and mailboxes and... uhh... garden gnomes. And you'll probably see a bunch of telephone poles and a couple of stop signs along the way too. Precisely the sort of rugged outdoor adventure excitement you were planning on having when you shelled out the forty-two grand for your vehicle (and well-worth the exorbitant cost of the gasoline you need to keep that thing running; not that I'm one of those
"smug cloud" people who has a thing against SUV's, but, right now, I'm glad I don't drive one).
I think someone needs to think over their random vacation plans a little more than they have.
...is the name of a recurring feature on some
X-Entertainment-ish comedy/retro=pop-culture/random stuff site/blog called
The Sneeze, in which some guy named
Steve, who runs the site, tries all sorts of disgusting foods that are on the fringes of "edible".
So far there have been nine
"Steve, Don't Eat It!" articles, including
Natto (which I know, from watching
Urusei Yatsura, is actually
fermented Japanese soybean paste), canned
silkworm pupae from Korea (hey, he mentions the book
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which I loved as a little kid), home-made
"prison wine" (fruit juice fermented in a sweatsock), his wife's
breast milk (also making chocolate breast milk with Hershey syrup), and a fifteen-year old box of
Urkel-O's cereal, the cereal endorsed by Steve Urkel (Jaleel White) from
Family Matters (I was going to say that "
Matt Caracappa already did it!", but he only ate a two-decade old box of
Kellogg's C-3P0's cereal, though he does mention Urkel-O's in passing).
So this page got me to thinking, "Is this all food that no human beings not already appearing on
Fear Factor should ever eat, or is it just food that Steve shouldn't eat, the way that the Trix Rabbit would probably die if he actually ever managed to eat Trix cereal, since 'Silly Rabbit, Trix is for kids!'? And, does the anti-eating prohibition apply to everyone named Steve, or just this specific Steve? Hey, my name's Steve! That other Steve has thrown down the gauntlet! I should rip him off!"
But which alleged food item should I try? I settled on
Purina Beggin' Strips dog treats, for the extremely complex and difficult to fathom reason that it's the only one of the things he tried that we have in our house.
Here's
what the other Steve thought of Beggin' Strips.
"GodDAMN these are foul. Don't try this at home. I'm not sure it's safe, and I am sure your tongue may kill itself.
While they were a little too artificially colored red to pass for real bacon, I was pleased to see they were not all the same shape. Similar to slices of real bacon, they each have their own curvy and shriveled identity. (Just like my aunts and uncles.)
And somehow these Beggin' Strips also managed to smell just like bacon. Oopsie. Typo. I meant to say "the smoky puke of a thousand maniacs."
To put it simply, this is the devil's bacon. Even a healthy dose of bread, mayo, lettuce and tomato couldn't come close to masking the evil. The bitter nastiness literally got worse with every chew, and I was overcome by the urge to go in the backyard and eat grass until it was all out of me."
(Hmm... my dog, Luke, also eats grass for purging purposes.)
On Saturday, I sat down with the Ricoh Caplio digital camera to record the experience. I recorded two short video clips of me biting and chewing moderate-sized bites of the Beggin' Strip. Unfortunately, while the .AVI clips work on my own computer, there's something about the encoding that screws up the videos when I try and upload them to either YouTube or Photobucket, and you only see the final second or so of each clip. And I don't have any tools to convert them to MPEG or MOV files.
But you can still see
a picture of me on the couch eating a Beggin' Strip, the best
self-pic I've taken of myself eating something since the infamous photo I took of
me eating a McDonald's french fry in the Elgin Street McDonald's in downtown Ottawa on
Canada Day.
(By the way, the beach towel with Sakura and Tomoyo from
Cardcaptor Sakura has nothing to do with the rest of the photo, it just happens to be on my basement wall.)
I wish I had a funny "eating the Beggin' Strip" anecdote to write, but I didn't find the taste nearly as obnoxious as the other Steve did. It just tasted like bland meat, sort of like that one last sliced ham cold cut that's been sitting in the nearly empty plastic envelope in the refrigerator for a week beyond the expiration date but which you decide to eat anyway as, like the wizard of the bridge in that one animated
Sesame Street bit who declares that anything round must be eaten or thrown away says, it's awfully wasteful to throw food away. It doesn't taste good, but I've honestly tasted worse things. ("Steak Tartare" my ass... more like "raw hamburger meat"!)
It's the taste equivalent of my reaction watching Uwe Boll's
Alone in the Dark: after all the negative hype, it didn't live up (or down) to its craptacular reputation.
Maybe I just tried the wrong flavour of Beggin' Strip. (The packet says "Original Bacon Flavor".)
There's some other good stuff at that The Sneeze site, with my favourite items being
an interview with Mythbusters' Adam Savage and
an interview with Mr. Lindon Leader, the
graphic artist who designed the modern Federal Express logo, with the subliminal arrow between the "E" and the "X" in "FedEx".
OOZINATOR: I CAN'T SAY THAT I DIDN'T SEE THIS ONE COMING...
...but, for some undiscernable reason, Hasbro seems to have pulled the absolutely not disturbing, questionable, or suggestive in any way online ad for the Super Soaker Oozinator water pistol, the one with the older boy pumping his big gun and shooting spurts of a sticky, white liquid, which Hasbro calls "Bio-Ooze", across the chests of mysteriously apreciative younger boys who seem to enjoy being on the receiving end a wee bit too much.
I hope Hasbro didn't blow their wad of advertising money shooting this ad for their toy alien-device-
cum-gun, because I can tell when a company spends a lot of money on an ad, and this ad had several big money shots. But, while the ad has been yanked for now, it does remain to be seen whether the ad has been given the shaft completely, or whether it's just being polished to pop-up again during the action-filled summer months.
Fortunately, someone (actually several people) has
saved the ad on YouTube.com for posterity.
Also, check out the
customer reviews at Amazon.com. The primary market for this toy is kids, so you'd think they'd be the ones writing the customer reviews, but I
see men have written most of the reviews.
"My buddy John 'skeet' Skeeter recomended this to me. At first I was a bit skeptical. I mean really, I'm 22 years old and a bit too old for toys. Well I sure was wrong! This is probably the best toy I've ever, EVER played with. I wish I had one of these when I was a young strapping lad. Most kids my age back then had never even CONCEIVED of getting oozed! (Especially by a young skinny white boy like me). I could just see it now, pretending like my oozer was stuck, pumping and pumping away, then calling one of my friends over to see if it was clogged and SKLERT! white ooze all OVER his face. Oh the fun! My girlfriend didnt like it though. I was playing with it and she wanted to try. So I held it and let her PUMP PUMP away. She started to get a bit flighty, saying that I better NOT ooze in her face! I coyly said I wouldnt, but my naughty side got the better of me! When the oozer was FULL of pressure i released a HUGE gloppy ooze mess right in her EYE! OHHHH man that was SO much fun...........we haven't spoken since :("
I wish they had had the Super Soaker Oozinator when I was a kid, as I'm sure that it would have been a seminal experience of my childhood playing with that toy. The perfect toy to inspire the confidence of someone just beginning to come of age.
EDIT: Some of the
Oozinator YTMND's, several of which feature Michael Jackson, are just too "wrong" to link to directly. I like
this one best.
PATLABOR AND A "PLAY DATE" WITH AN OLD FEMALE FRIEND...
After a couple of months, I've pretty much given up hope that a certain popular anime news and review site would post my review of the
Patlabor: The New Files set, so I've posted
my Patlabor: The New Files review over in my Rotten Tomatoes journal.
Also, the past couple of days, I've had a "play date" with an old female acquaintance of mine...
Yep, I've rented
Tomb Raider Legend, which is my first proper
Tomb Raider experience since playing most of the way through
Tomb Raider Chronicles on the original Playstation over five years ago. (Seeing as how I didn't even get a PS2 until last Christmas, I never got around to playing the first PS2 incarnation,
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, and the only
Tomb Raider game I've played in the interim was the scaled down, 2D Game Boy Advance one (which I don't even think Eidos did).
So far, I've been mostly satisfied with the game. I don't particularly care when game developers try and re-invent the wheel with a popular franchise because some fanboys complain that each installment in a series is too similar to the last one. I like being able to play these games right out the box, with the ideal sequel being pretty much the exact same game with new levels and playability refinements and new features. I have minor control problems in that I hit R1 and R2 expecting Lara Croft to take very small, careful steps like in the old games, only to have her fire her gun instead, but the game still controls well. And I'd feared that they'd make it too much of a shoot-em-up, but the sequences where you have to shoot at people or creatures seems to be more or less on par with the old games. You still get the aggrevating puzzles, usually featuring some ridiculously elaborate tomb defence system, and I'm happy about that. The levels themselves look reasonably good, far from the best graphics I've ever seen on the PS2, but a lot better than the old Playstation
Tomb Raider games. And they kept Lara's butler as being an old man, instead of a clone of Chirs Barrie from the movie (not that I have anything against Chris Barrie, I just think of him too much as being Arnold Rimmer from
Red Dwarf.
LAZY SUNDAY... I MEAN, LAZY SATURDAY...
Ever wonder what my basement looks like? Probably not, but I'll show you anyway.
Yep,
this is my basement, or at least the TV area. (
EDIT: The full-size basement photo. I don't know why Photobucket shrank it.
END OF EDIT.)
I can't go over all the details individually, but some of the many things you can see are my Laserdisc player, the Sega Dreamcast, the Sega Genesis and Sega CD (on the shelf below the Dreamcast and Sony Playstation 2), my row of DVD boxsets, a McGill University flag in a Dunkin Donuts cup, an
Akira poster, the Ghibli films
Whisper of the Heart and
My Neighbor Totoro on the table, a bunch of newspapers, red shag carpeting, and wood panelling.
The newspaper on the side of the TV unit is a makeshift glare shield for when I'm playing videogames.
