Dear friends,
I’m that guy.
Yes, I’m that guy who, upon finally getting back to his beloved Xbox 360 with his brand-spanking-new copy of Halo 3, put the disc in the machine and…the Xbox 360 died.
Halo 3 impatience
Well, I’ve got to get through one more work day before I can play Halo 3. My friend Tom wisely recommended I take tomorrow off, rather than today, because I’ll no doubt be up pretty late tonight.
I wasn’t crazy enough to buy my copy last night at midnight, so I’ll pick it up after work today. I had preordered the Legendary Edition, but after hearing reports of scratches on the discs I think I may trade down to the regular edition.
I’ll post my thoughts on the game on these pages in a few days, of course. Until then, be sure to scroll down and check out my various Halo 3 articles from ToyFare.
Toy spinoff blog
I’ve decided to create a spinoff blog that will focus solely on toys. As such, I’ve registered poeghostal.com (Poe Ghostal is my Web pseudonym). I plan to try and design the site myself, so probably won’t start running until sometime in November, since I have to focus on Halloween Month here all October.
I wanted to title the new blog Poe’s Points of Articulation, but unfortunately it’s already taken. Another option is Poe Ghostal’s Pit, which was the name of an old website I had, but I’d prefer something toy-related.
So I’m asking for suggestions. Post any titles you can think of for the new blog. Alliteration with “P” is encouraged, as is use of the possessive “Poe Ghostal’s” or “Poe’s”. Edgar Allan Poe references are also welcome.
Once I’ve got enough suggestions, I’ll take my five favorites and post a poll for everyone to vote on. The person who suggested the winning choice will get a grab-bag of random goodies from my magic attic, spanning nearly thirty years of toy collecting.
My Halo 3 article(s) posted online
ToyFare is doing a “Halo Week” on their website, primarily by posting my article from the magazine piecemeal.
- Bungie Jump (interview with Bungie, makers of Halo 3)
- Re-Spawn (interview with Todd McFarlane, who’s making the toy line)
- Just for Clix (article on Halo Actionclix)
- Gear of War (Halo-themed Xbox accessories)
- Collecting Spree (everything else)
- Big Screen Chief (update on the status of the Halo movie)
Something wicked this way comes…hopefully.
This time last year, I was knee-deep in writing reviews of movies like Spaced Invaders and Deepstar Six, to say nothing of my ill-fated attempt at writing a zombie story (well, not that ill-fated; I did finally finish it about two months ago).
I’m behind this year–having not written anything at all yet–but I’ve got some good ideas, and I should be able to get going this week. In the meantime, in an effort to make sure I can fill every single last day of October, I’m going to take suggestions. A topic you’d like me to discuss, a movie you’d like to see reviewed, perhaps even an idea for a (really) short story–reply below or shoot me an email, and I’ll do my best to grant your wishes.
foosball is the devil
I joined my first-ever fantasy football league a month ago, teaming up with my dad. Our team, the Hellboys, had the eleventh pick in a snake draft (so we also had the fourteenth pick). Somehow we ended up with both Carson Palmer and Chad Johnson, the quarterback and wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, respectively.
I’m a late bloomer in terms of football fandom (heck, sports fandom in general), but I read over all the stats in the magazines my dad gave me and kept him from making any unwise moves during the draft. Last week, in the first week of the season, we didn’t do all that well; our reserves did far better than the guys we activated.
This week, though–we had Carson Palmer and Chad Johnson. In a league where the average weekly highest score by any team is around 90-100, we ended up with 146 points thanks to Palmer’s six touchdowns (two of them caught by Johnson) in the Bengals’ 51-45 loss to the Browns. We outscored our opponent by more than 2x their own score. It was, to use the technical term, a drubbing.
Obviously this was a major fluke–it’s unlikely we’ll see another shootout like that this season from any teams, much less the Bengals again. But it felt pretty good for the second matchup of my fantasy football league career.
So it was an interesting Sunday…good for the Pats, good for my fantasy team, not so good for the Red Sox, who also just lost to the Blue Jays while the Yankees beat up on the Orioles, meaning the Sox’s lead in the AL East will soon be 3 1/2 games. If you’re not gritting your teeth and checking your pulse, it’s not the Red Sox.
Meanwhile, did you see what the Pats did to the Chargers? LaDainian Tomlinson currently has the lowest yards-per-carry (1.9) of any quarterback with more than twenty carries. That won’t last, but the people who patted themselves on the back for getting the #1 pick in their fantasy league draft have to be bit annoyed at losing 1/16 of that payoff (in the regular season, anyway).
One last thing…I think the “LT sucks” chant by the fans at Gillette was in poor taste. Frankly, so is “Yankees suck.” It’s not biting or amusing, it’s just mean and smacks of sore winners/losers.
Chanting “Roger” is funny, especially when he’s in trouble. If the Gillette crowd had chanted something like “MVP” after LDT got stopped for a 1-yard loss–now that would have been funny.
Phew.
Thank you, Josh Beckett. Thank you.
DG and I seem to have both caught a cold at the game Friday night. She blames the Yankees. It stinks to be sick on such a glorious day like today.
Late to the party as usual, we’ve started watching Heroes and Burn Notice. Both are pretty cool. I’ve managed to turn away from CSI Miami, at least for now. Once you’ve seen twenty or thirty episodes, they all start to seem the same. Of course, Psych still has a special place in my heart.
I’ve been replaying Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Xbox, since it was added to the backwards-compatible list for the 360. It’s definitely one of my favorite games of all time. While doing some surfing today, I came across this nice retrospective on the game from last year. It does a good job of describing what keeps my playing this game so long after it came out.
My bad.
It’s all my fault.
I’ll take the blame. Heap your scorn upon me. I deserve it.
For it was I who, after having sat in the humid heat for more than three hours of what was apparently the second-longest nine-inning major league game of all time, decided I just had, had to get up out of my seat and go to the bathroom.
I did this just as Hideki Okajima came out of the dugout.
So there. It was all me. Even one of my friends at the game later told me that as soon as I’d gotten up, she’d worried that I’d jinxed things.
There I was, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I would finally watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees in person. But no. The whole thing felt eerily like watching a pre-2004 Red Sox game.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, because we had fantastic seats courtesy of my parents, who won them in a contest. And despite the loss, it was a battle to the end. Sloppy at times, too–how many points did we score in that game thanks to Jason Giambi’s butterfingers?
It would have been much more fun had there not been two young, surly Yankees fans sitting behind us, keeping up a running commentary of the game. There seemed to be an abundance of NY fans in the grandstands, actually. At one point, when Mariano Rivera got a good strike in the ninth inning, one of the two behind us kept clapping continuously until I turned around and glared at him. I kind of expected him to either clap louder or tell me to screw off; instead, he just stopped. I guess I acquired an air of authority somewhere. It’s worth mentioning that the second the game was over, they cheered and then bolted out of their seats and out of the stadium. Apparently they had no interest in celebrating while surrounded by disappointed, peeved Red Sox fans.
Peeved because of me.
Go Sox!
My friend Andy and I are going to the Red Sox-Yankees game tonight with our respective fiancees. I’ll try to bring a real camera and take some actual pictures (rather than forcing you to squint at my cell phone photos).
So the hammer has come down on Videogate and in the end, I do think the whole thing was overblown–and also mystifying on the part of Belichick & Co. What sucks the most is how this has cost the Patriots most of that grudging respect they’d earned from the media and non-NE fans. Turns out there are a lot of Patriots haters. Now I know what it feels like to be a Yankees fan (no offense, Kate!).
“…will appear and destroy us.”
Because I had to.
