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The characters don’t actually look this good, but this game is super fun with multiple people.
There was a point this weekend where I thought I was gonna clean to prepare for David and Kendra’s visit this weekend. Then I ended up playing Monaco with David and Min, Borderlands 2 with Yin and Lee, and Dead Space 3 with Dave, not to mention all the Poker Night and Bioshock Infinite I played on my own. Oh well…I’ll get a chance to clean later this week, right?
Movies
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – The release of the new color hardcover version of volume 3 made me want to watch the movie for a third (fourth?) time. This was also the first time Min had seen it after reading the comic. I think it went over a lot better.
TV
The Amazing Race – Watched the season 22 finale that took place in WASHINGTON, D.C.! So cool! I wish that Team Youtube hadn’t been eliminated, but I thought the season was a lot of fun to watch.
Parks and Recreation – Pretty solid finale. Everyone’s got a great cliffhanger for the next season and it was plenty funny. I know many of you read this blog and don’t watch this show. Skip season 1 and start watching this because it’s the best comedy on tv.
The Americans – I’ll admit that not sleeping through part of the episode makes it a little more interesting. Only one episode left to catch up and watch and I’m genuinely excited to see how it ends.
Music
Chance the Rapper’s got a sweet mixtape you can pick up for free at his site. Here’s a solid track from the tape.
Books
Unless you count reading the hardcover Scott Pilgrim (I don’t), then no.
Video Games
Borderlands 2 – Not sure if this would be half as fun without three buddies, but it’s fun to just chill and shoot up baddies, so I’m cool with it.
Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask – Been doing daily puzzles during off time. So addictive! I need to finish the previous games…
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine – The “prestige” pickpocket levels have a great narrative twist and are hard enough to make things interesting. I still love having like five hacker things following me around.
Rayman: Legends – Just as good as Origins and almost better with Murfy. Gotta remember to do more daily challenges, but otherwise awesome.
Bioshock Infinite – The debut Dan Plays episode of Infinite posted today and it was recorded in March. It’s been that long since I last played, but I got a solid session in and…I like Elizabeth. A lot. Great addition. Columbia feels equally silly, but the story has a lot more intrigue to it for me than Bioshock vanilla did.
Dead Space 3 – Man, take any game and put co-op in it and I bet it turns out a ton better. Playing this with David for my channel has been a real riot. I can’t wait to get more time in, but I’m most likely gonna have to wait until David gets back to Iowa. Bummer!
I don’t know about being the most beloved, but it was very nice.
Took an overnight train to Boston to catch a game in Fenway and that was pretty awesome. Check another ballpark off my list!
Not this week.
The Amazing Race – Almost done with the finale. I was pretty bummed to see Joey and Meghan go, but it’s still been a pretty fun season.
Parks and Recreation – I really enjoyed the putt putt episode. Amy Poehler does a good frustrated even if it all seemed a little incidental and a little overdone. It was pleasant.
FZ: Side F (and Side Z, with a slight helping of E). Decent remix albums of Fez music. Here’s Side Z.
Friday Night Lights Companion: Love, Loss, and Football in Dillon, Texas – Finished out these essays and I rather enjoyed them. Uneven in quality, sometimes, it was still a pretty great little observation of a great show.
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – Got some time during the train rides to get a little further in the game. I’m at the weird phantom vampire city now and I have no idea where this game is headed.
Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask – Bonus puzzles have been stacking up, so I pushed through a few just to pass some time before my train got back to Baltimore because my allergies were killing me.
Poker Night 2 – Still haven’t finished that last unlock. So close! Also have to make it to a million in winnings.
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine – What a neat little narrative. I’m interested in seeing how the epilogue plays out since it looks like competitive multiplayer.
My mom’s dog is so cool! I miss hanging out with her.
After a long, tough week in Florida and a long, busy week in MD I’m looking forward to a little downtime…
Iron Man 3 – A new director means a brand new feel for the movie. Stark isn’t in the suit that much and it just all feels…different, but that’s not bad! I really loved the movie. Good times.
The Americans – Caught another episode of this with Katie. Fell asleep partway through, but it’s not the show’s fault. Still loads of fun and addictive to watch.
How about some classic salsa? Take it, Celia
A Friday Night Lights Companion: Love, Loss, and Football in Dillon, Texas – The essays vary in quality, but it makes me want to rewatch the show so much!
Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine – This game is bananas. Getting three people together and watching the chaos…so fun! Reminds me of Bonanza Bros.
Tomb Raider – Finished the game. I won’t spoil too much since I know some of my readers watch the LPs I do, but maybe next week or in a deeper post.
Nothing says “I’m in Florida” like Zephyrhills water. It’s not the best stuff, but I miss it some days.
Not a lot of stuff going on this week because I went home to see my family.
Oz the Great and Powerful – Not my favorite movie, but it was passable. It was fun to see Zach Braff again, but the movie was decidedly low stakes and, I think, hamstrung by having to set up The Wizard of Oz
Oddly enough…nope. Mostly watched baseball.
I’ve already posted Vampire Weekend’s “Diane Young”, haven’t I? I don’t care. I love this song. Can’t wait for the new album.
One Hundred Years of Solitude – One of my favorite lines from the last bit of the book: “…they were all identical, sons of the same bitch”. Marquez’ epic novel was incredibly entertaining, beautiful, and amazing. Quite possibly the best book, pound for pound, that I’ve ever read. Just gorgeous, detailed, irrelevant, and damn near perfect. I don’t love what happened to all the Buendias, but it was amazing to read about.
A Friday Night Lights Companion: Love, Loss, and Football in Dillon, Texas – If you’ve never seen Friday Night Lights then you might not understand why someone would read a book of essays talking about how awesome the show it. It’s a good show.
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – Just a puzzle or two as I met up with Flora. I need to sit down and crank through this game.
Poker Night 2 – Far better than Poker Night in structure, dialogue, and design, but it’s a bummer that you can’t change the poker AI difficultly or the frequency of comments. On the plus side, no more luck-based achievements. Take that straight flush or four of a kind achievements!
I couldn’t really think of a new, appropriate photo for today so here’s a picture of dogs in my family
Nothing really big going on this week. Played a lot of Tomb Raider and edited a bunch of episodes to prep for some dry times ahead.
Not quite this week. Hopefully this one, but I’ll also be fairly busy.
Parks and Recreation – The most reliable Parks and Rec laughs for me nowadays come from the way everyone (Leslie included) mistreats Jerry. Top notch pair of episodes this week, guys.
The Mindy Project – The Santa Fe episode was pretty good. Not amazing, but I laughed.
Community – So tired of the Chang stuff. Don’t really care…The episode itself was passable. I chuckled a few times.
The Amazing Race – Man, I was so worried about Joey and Meghan getting eliminated in Switzerland. So glad that didn’t happen. S3 is shaping up to be fairly interesting too, so I dig that.
The Americans – So far they’re doing a pretty good job of ramping everything up, but I think the FBI stuff feels a little thinner without a partner.
FZ: Side F – Disasterpeace’s collaboration remix album has some interesting tracks and interesting interpretations going on. Neat album for sure.
<a href="http://disasterpeace.com/album/fz-side-f">FZ: Side F by Various Artists</a>
Not this week either.
DmC Devil May Cry – I’m really suspicious of Vergil. I think he’s a bad guy. Poor Kat. Still enjoying the game and I’m digging all the new weapons too.
Tomb Raider – I feel like I’m getting reasonably close to the endgame. There’s a lot more gun battle sections and that’s kind of boring, but at least the plot’s also moving along nicely. Still haven’t run into the Oni again, but the way they’re all hyping it up we’re gonna have a fun confrontation.
If you’re thinking this movie looks to be overstuffed…it most definitely is. (Photo by Han Cinema)
I actually had a really busy week considering how little media I consumed Mon-Wed. So much baseball too…
The Thieves – I enjoyed The Thieves, but it had a fundamental issue of elevating every single subplot to maximum import. It was just a little too overcrowded and it wanted to have its cake and eat it too. Still a pretty fun movie. I’m also a big fan of how Korean movies just blend in multiple languages seamlessly. There was Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English all represented in the movie.
The Amazing Race – Burned through the rest of S3 and, damn, Flo was edited to be really shrill. I’m still glad that she won over Terri and Ian, but Ken and Gerard would have been super fun.
New Girl – Gotta say that they’re doing everything they can to really make Nick and Jess awkward. It’s funny, but tough to watch sometimes. Their characterization of Winston and Schmidt is a little inconsistent though…
Archer – The Sea Tunt episodes lacked some of the oomph of the space station ones from last year, but it was still a fairly hilarious hour of television. The wait for new Archer always feels so long!
Community – The puppets all sounded muffled, but I enjoyed that episode a little more than the dance one. Well…except for the Brie Larson part. I love that girl. She was adorable in the episode.
I don’t have anything really new, so how about my favorite song by The Clash?
Nope. Sorry!
Poker Night at the Inventory – Those Four of a Kind and Straight Flush achievements are, well, luck-based. So frustrating! Pumped for the sequel!
Digital: A Love Story – A quick little quasi-visual novel. It’s best quality is how well it emulates the old BBS internet and net behavior in general.
don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story – More conventional as a visual novel. Mostly interesting for how accurately it captures high school drama, high school social media behavior, and as a parable about privacy and sharing in the modern world.
Tomb Raider – The shooty bits are coming a bit more frequently. Good thing I’m so great at them, right? …Right?
DmC Devil May Cry – Spending time away from character action games makes them tough to play. I forgot how much I enjoyed that game. Gonna have to go back to it. It’s also great since I don’t film it and I don’t have to worry about casting at the same time or editing.
PS:
There’s such a thing as being too into a player, I think…
Broke the seal on baseball season this week by attending my first game. Marlins at Nats. Of course Miami lost, but it’s the experience that makes it all feel right.
Looper – Best line: “I don’t want to talk about time travel shit. Because if we talk about it, then we’re gonna be here all day, drawing diagrams with straws.” What a brilliantly done movie. Just such a tightly constructed plot. Lots of fun. I really dug it.
Rust and Bone – A little less dramatic than I thought it would be. Probably a result of one plot element too many. We didn’t need Ali’s son along with Stéphanie’s struggles from losing her legs. The prosthetics also put a fairly tight bow on the whole “no legs” situation.
The Americans – I felt like the show was asking us to take too far a leap to mourn Amador so soon into the season. The dude was neat/funny, but he didn’t really have time to capture our hearts, not to mention he was kind of crude. I dunno. Still enjoying the show.
The Amazing Race – The second Botswana episode was great. Speeding tickets, car accidents, etc. Lots of excitement. Bummer to lose Pam and Winnie though. Also fun to see S3 progress alright. Having the Harvard lawyers lose because they didn’t properly read the fine print…well that’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Caught up on an old episode of Alt.Latino where they mentioned a fantastic album by the Giles Peterson’s Havana Cultura Band plus people like Danay Suarez and Silvito El Libre. Good times and good music. Seriously. Listen to it.
So busy with work and baseball that I did not manage any reading. Whoops.
Harmoknight – Completed the main campaign. Gotta say that I don’t really dig the boss battles, but that’s kind of minor. Otherwise the game is pretty fun. Worth $15? Maybe just barely.
Tomb Raider – The supernatural element that always mars these video game narratives (can you say zombies or blue guys in Uncharted games?!) have shown up, but I thankfully haven’t had to fight them yet. The shotgun feels pretty nice though.
Everyone loves to mock it, but it’s home.
It’s that time of year again, everyone. Baseball season has begun anew!
Ruby Sparks – Way darker than I expected it to be, but, then again, I always expected it to be skewering the manic pixie dream girl trope. Well acted and quick. I dug it more than 500 Days
30 Clubs in 30 Days – Watched the Orioles breakdown with Katie. Pretty fun. I think the team will exceed expectations this year too.
The Amazing Race – Oh man did I mainline episodes of this show. Finished watching S2 this week and loved Danny and Oswald and hated Wil and Tara like everyone else. Also saw the Botswana episode of the current season and rather enjoyed it as well.
Happy Endings – They came back hitting the wordplay jokes (seemingly) harder than ever. Good, if not quite as strong episodes.
Archer – The Vatican City episode was ridiculously good, guys. Pam getting stuck by the heroin needle was pretty funny. They’re just making everyone field agents now, huh? I doubt we’ll ever see Cheryl in the field, but with all of this going on now, who knows?
The Daily Show – I really dug the strong indictment of the President on veteran issues. It’s not common for Stewart to be so hard on Obama, so it’s good to see it happen every once in a while.
New Girl – I’m not sure that the Nick Kroll stuff (or any of the family stuff, really) worked, but it was a decent episode.
This isn’t the first time I’ve put a Disasterpiece track on here. Enjoy it!
<a href="http://disasterpeace.com/track/the-outlaw">The Outlaw by Disasterpeace</a>
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Still making progress on this guy and still loving it. Truly epic. I’m at the part where the fruit company is there and I’m wondering what’s gonna come of that.
Mass Effect 3 – Got through all the required missions and did the Javik one as well because having him come along makes the game infinitely better.
Bioshock Infinite – Has a lot of the same issues as Bioshock. Really pretty and I’m interested in seeing where it goes, but I’m not impressed yet.
Dead Space 3 – Co-op time with David. Man do I love playing co-op games with him. It’s so much better than randos and we’re able to get some fantastic jokes in.
It really should be a snow day today, but circumstances conspire against me… (Photo by Hobbes vs Boyle)
It’s cold and snowy and I hate it, but this should (hopefully) be winter’s last hurrah before spring and baseball season.
Silver Linings Playbook – You know? I actually enjoyed this movie a lot more on second viewing. The acting is all quite good. Definitely one you should see if you have yet to catch it.
The Americans – Mole spotting and infidelity ahoy these past two episodes. Still rather intriguing. Definitely not the best show on tv, but definitely fun and worth watching.
Archer – Haven’t managed to watch the most recent episode yet, but the tower one and the coyote one were both superb. Just super funny stuff.
Girls – This year’s finale was messy and kind of rushed feeling. I like that they’re all back where they were (under different circumstances) from last year, but I also didn’t love how much it felt like a happy ending when, based on what we know about these people, it really shouldn’t be.
The Amazing Race – The Vietnam leg was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. That pro-Socialism song is something I want in my music library, seriously. The Botswana leg was cool too. I have no idea why anyone would opt to do a task where you have to make fire with sticks. Too. Hard.
Happy Endings – Watched the kickball episode to prep Katie for kickball last week. Still super funny. Yippie Ki Yay Mother Failure!
Community – Really not enjoying the new show. :sigh:. This is like the eighth time that Jeff and Pierce have a moment. Also the show is way sappier this year.
New Girl – Do not like the Jess and Nick storyline at all. I was really hoping that she wouldn’t date any of her roommates. It’d be better if they weren’t stretching it out so much too. Oh well…
Glee – Slowly pushing through my backlog. Boring ballads between Jake and Marley are boring. Really…At least the show has a few good numbers tucked in there.
PHOX – Fairly typical indie rock stuff, but that’s not all that bad.
One Hundred Years of Solitude – There are these details in this book that are so random, but so perfect in conveying the magical tone of this work. It’s just absolutely brilliant and I love it. Feels like an epic tale.
Mass Effect 2 – Cruised through my corrected Paragon playthrough to prepare for ME3 and the Citadel DLC. That game…still not as good as the others. I don’t know if it’s the way that it tries too hard to be “cool” and “mature” or something, but it gets on my nerves.
Spelunky – Played some multiplayer with Min. Good times. Look forward to the episode next week.
New Super Mario Bros. U – Min and I pushed through another world. Things are getting complicated, but we’re making our way to Bowser without playing too poorly.
Professional Baseball Spirits 2013 – The new edition is here! Can’t wait to get all the translation stuff in order and get my Carp season underway
Mass Effect 3 – Got to where you can save and exit, but really excited to get this paragon game in. I do wish my paragon Shepard was female because Hale is so much better than anything else, but I’ll make do.
The goofiest secret handshake ever (Photo courtesy: machu picchu)
I did it, guys. I finally went and watched my netflix movie. It was…decidedly less awesome than I thought it would be.
Sound of My Voice – It’s not that Sound of My Voice is a bad movie. That’s not it at all…it’s more that I was expecting something a little creepier and a little headier than what I got in this. At least it was quick.
The Amazing Race – It’s a rare thing to see a leg run as poorly as John and Jessica just did. First team ever to be eliminated while holding an express pass. Just…wow. So funny.
Archer – The coyote episode was great. “Coyote” is also Spanish for coyote. I found the next episode with the hotel a little less funny mostly because the Pam sex with a sandwich joke went on a touch too long.
Community – Still not doing it for me. Not really digging the new direction.
Parks and Recreation – Man do I love how cheekily Parks is able to mock real life politics. It’s not exactly subtle, but it’s still awesome.
Justified – Kind of an off season this year, no? Definitely digging the return of Limehouse.
Glee – Finally watched the episode where they stole Jonathan Coulton’s arrangement of “Baby Got Back”. Not only did they steal it: they sucked at it too. Was way more into the “Tell Him” number, although I would have preferred it with less aggressive choreography.
The Americans – Not sure if beating the hell out of your handler is ok. What was up with the creeper hitchhiking C plot?
Lotta music this week.
First off: Hiatus Kaiyote “Nakamarra”
Who doesn’t love a little blue-eyed soul? These guys seem cool, but I haven’t listened to the rest of their album.
Mashing up Chrono Trigger and Jay-Z is a great idea. 2 Mello’s effort does not disappoint:
aivi & surrashu’s piano mixed with video game music is delightful:
You may remember Eirik Suhrke from his work on Spelunky. His Ridiculous Fishing soundtrack pulls from the same influences, but has a slightly different feel. Good stuff
One Hundred Years of Solitude – I still feel like I’m missing something fundamental about this book with the whole translation thing, but I’m really enjoying this. It’s a beautiful piece of literature.
SimCity – My time with it was shorter this week, but just long enough to be swamped with criminals from David’s friends towns.
Mass Effect 2 – Trying to bring my paragon up to ME3 so that I can play the new DLC with him too. I’m recruiting the second wave of guys and doing loyalty missions now.
Spelunky – I got to the City of Gold last week when I wasn’t recording. This week I’m gonna do it on camera.
