I am the red menance and I am at your front door!

Seriously, not nearly enough was made of this story, but it was enough at the time to endear the "Power Twins" to me: Viktor & Sergei. Enough so that in NBALive I gave them matching asymetrical tattoos (a black star on thier forearm) and armbands.




Viktor & Sergei, when CSKA Moscow won the championship.
Check out that cup, you can drink booze from it!

Namely, this tidbit:

“The journalist asked me about the dog, and I decided to play a joke on Sergei,” Khryapa says. “I told him the dog was named Monia, as a diminutive of Monika. I looked in the Internet the next day, and everyone was writing about how I named the dog after Sergei. So I called Sergei and asked if he was OK with it. He said it was fine, and the name stuck.”

Okay, so Viktor's dog is named after Sergei, sorta. But then there's this gem...

The two were virtually inseparable in the Russian capital. They would emerge from the locker rooms after games wearing matching gray sweat suits and would often hang out together at the Starlite Diner, a kitschy American burger joint in central Moscow.

MATCHING grey sweatsuits?! Sadly, Monia has yet to become the NBA equilivent of the KGB super-agent assassin in From Russia With Love, and Viktor's still a ways off from being "smooth yet devastating like moonshine vodka."

-d.d.

Is something for nothing Really a dumb thing? Making swans out of Ugly ducklings.

Jamaal Magloire for Blake, Skinner, and Ha.

As to the latter three I'd put good money on Ha being next in line to move into the Lovable Big Stiffs Retirement Village, right after Pavel Podkolzin's paperwork clears admissions. Skinner is a reliable journeyman, like that 1/2" wrench you have: its nice to have around but you'd rather just carry around you adjustable spanner instead. Blake is the latest local victim of adequate-player-has-decent-year-on-worst-team-in-the-L syndrome, in that his departure is strangely mourned by the local peoples. But hey, nobody mourned the loss of Erick Barkley, did they?



Speaking of the Erick Barkley* Era, Jamaal Magloire's going to be second coming of Kelvin Cato for the Blazers. 'Member when Mike Dunleavy won coach of the year during the '99 lockout season? That Blazer team rocked J.R. Rider and personal-fave Damon Stoudamire (Jimmy Jackson or Rasheed at the 3?, can't remember), but more pertinently ran Sabo at the 5 and Brian "History Greatest Monster" Grant at the 4, and deployed Cato & Rasheed Wallace as subs or put Wallace on the floor with Grant & Sabo at the same time. For the record Sabo's 7'3", Cato & Sheed are 6'11" and B.G.'s 6'9" but played bigger than that.

The Blazers freakin' Injury Manifesto last season hurt enough as it was, but the fact they were limited to one, count 'em, ONE power forward (Nate somehow said in training camp that Ruben Patterson and Darius Miles could play some 4, & in a true show of his devotion to the game, kept a straight face while saying it) in Zach. The tandem of Pryz and Theo looked nice on paper but Theo's a lifetime member of the Injurious Avengers.

Comparative History is inherently and categorically bunk, but basically what I'm trying to say is the Blazers have gone from a laughablely undermanned front court of Pryz & Zach supported by Theo to Pryz & Zach supported by Magloire & Aldridge, and despite the nifty new Streamlineresque rules that govern this League of ours, a solid, tall front court is still money in the motherfucking bank, far as I'm concerned.

-d.d.

*Erick Barkley played two seasons at Christ the King HS in New York with Lamar Odom and Speedy Claxton. His favorite band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers, according to his bio.

did somebody say "zombies"?

It occurred to me the other day that, when it comes to storytelling in videogames, the most successful genre seems to be horror. I want to take up this topic again later, but for now I just want to note that the late, lamented Dreamcast featured a library that really couldn't've been more zombie-infested. Seriously. Practically every game that wasn't a racer, sports game, platformer, or fighter was a horror title with at least a spattering of zombies. Check it:

• 3 Resident Evil titles
  
• House of the Dead 2
  
• 2 Alone in the Dark titles
  
• Blue Stinger
  
• Carrier
  
• Illbleed
  
• that Evil Dead game
  
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (more vampire than zombie, admittedly, but a lot of the lower-level vamps are essentially ghouls and at least zombie-esque)
  
• Nightmare Creatures 2 (not just zombies, Rob Zombie!!)
  
• Shadow Man
  
• Typing of the Dead
  
• Zombie Revenge (which, as PA argues, really is a good game that got a ton of misguided reviews).
  

Had I known that the Dreamcast was essentially a Zombie Adapter for my TV, I would've bought one years ago! As it is, I'm trying (hard!) to get caught up. I've been fairly busy reaving souls and, as mentioned, revenging zombies, and I'll get to Resident Evil in a while. For now, I'm still giggling over a moment from the first cutscene in Legacy of Kain.

Now, I love movies that include the title of the movie as a line of dialogue. I can't figure out why any movie wouldn't do this. So I'm starting off in the game, watching the awesome unfold. I'm a betrayed vampire lord, gotcha, resurrected by an Elder God to take revenge upon all remaining vampires, particularly my betrayer. So far, I'm stoked. The Elder God's got this plummy, rich voice, and he's really putting a lot of juice into the dialogue. Good stuff. Then he sez:

"I need you to go forth and reave souls."

I'm on the couch, going nuts. Glee! The Elder God goes on:

"I need you to become my...soul reaver."

I lose it.

This game is freaking awesome. I'm really hoping that, towards the end, somebody looks at the player character and says something like "Raziel, the Soul Reaver, is truly the Legacy of Kain".

-Fat

blogging makes you dumb.

0. Introduction.

From the gawping maw of the nets I am made aware of a couple pieces of imbecility.

1. Bill Simmons is an ignorant rich kid.
Some guy points out that Bill Simmons has crappy taste in music. However, dude fails (utterly) to notice that this crappy taste is merely a symptom of Simmons' more general failing: a total lack of knowledge of anything except mainstream pop culture. I'll talk a little first about the mainstream bias in Simmons, then move outside pop for a moment.

Simmons thinks U2, Pearl Jam and Springsteen are the greatest musicians of the rock era, and Randall Monty beats him up for it. Monty points out, quite correctly, that Simmons, given his age and proximity, had a fabulous opportunity to become acquainted with a pair of the greatest underground bands in twenty years: Mission of Burma and the Pixies. Presumably, Monty believes, as I do, that MoB and the Pixies are both substantially better than either U2 or PJ, and at least as good as the best Springsteen. Alas but that Simmons only knew what was on the radio, and lived--and lives--in ignorance...

But Simmons also believes that Rocky and The (fucking) Shawshank Redemption are genuinely great films. Both were giant hits and made noise around Oscar time, but no serious mind could find them works of great art. The only way Simmons' belief is tenable is if it's ensconced in a stout web of unknowing. I suspect both that Simmons has (a) never seen a genuinely great film and (thus) that (b) he hasn't the faintest notion of what a great film might actually be like.* (So if he did stumble over something great, it's as like as not he'd miss its quality.)

We can add to this lack of education in matters of pop Simmons' basic lack of culture more widely. It is not evident that the man has read a single book not about sports, nor is it evident that the man has a single idea about anything other than television, whether the topic be history, art, political economy, or what have you.** Simply put, the man is a failed jock turned class clown, wholly unreliable for any service other than intitially-convincing, surface-level connections drawn between matters of no import.

2. Internet: Zombies are kewl. Contradiction: Christ, you're an idiot.

And then there's this guy, who somehow manages to spill a couple hundred words on zombies, the most promising of topics, without saying a single interesting or novel thing. While I shall leave any serious interrogation of the topic to site zombie expert D. D. T., I will point out that Chris Martin*** in his worthless little piece begins by promising to:

detail just...why games and movies with zombies have become a cornerstone of Americana.

Great! I'm ready! Lemme have it!

It might be because we just love watching and reading about them.

Oh. They're commonplace because they're popular. Nice analysis, Chris. Way to go, buddy. In other news, apples are tasty because they're pleasing to the palate.

3. Conclusion.

Ugh. The only consolation I can offer is this, an entertaining, even thoughtful piece involving the utility and desirability of the humble zombie as a videogame adversary. I'm going outside to play.

-Fat

* I had a co-worker once who said "I didn't like BladeRunner. I thought it was slow." Okay, well, if you watched the movie, and this is all you have to say, then you're a fucking idiot and I'm not going to talk to you any more.
** He is, for example, as misinformed and ignorant on the topic of race in America as it's possible to be without actually knowing it. That is, everybody alive who's actually more racist than Simmons at least knows that they're a bigot. Simmons is not this self-aware, nor has he been well-educated enough about the world to see this about his writing. How it is that Ralph Wiley (R. I. P.) condescended to engage the man, I shall never know.
*** Isn't "Chris Martin" the singer of Coldplay?

plastic forms of escape part 2: giant robots arise!

Holy hell do I want this.

-Fat

got a pocket full of mpegs (and my homeboys do too)

D. D.'s got a theory about portable music players. The short version points out that the true genius of the iPod, from a marketing standpoint, was that it convinced people that:
a) it was a reasonable thing to do to make the iPod a person's primary music player;
and (thus) that:
b) it was a reasonable thing to do to put a person's entire music collection on that primary music player.

The first makes a ton of sense from Apple's perspective. I mean, the iPod prints money, particularly if you can con folks into collecting all the accessories that it needs to run through your house speakers. The second, a person pretty much has to buy into, if she's bought into the first...

Somewhat predictably, D. D.'s not buying it. His tactic was to score a small, cheap .mp3 player, just big enough to take the edge off of his latenight, backstreet bar-to-home commutes. Later, whatever it is he does for a living kicked him an iPod shuffle, which he later kicked on down to yours truly. After a lengthy struggle to get the little bastard talking to my local linux boxes...I gave up, and took it over to my pal Sam's house, to use his Mac. We gorged ourselves on wrestling: a surprisingly dynamite ECW, followed by the unsurprisingly awesome Samoa Joe dvd. In the interstices of this, I tried to throw some songs onto the shuffle, and finally met with some success!

Since Sam and I have relatively divergent tastes, I was somewhat hard-pressed to find stuff I truly dug on his mammoth hard drive. This is half-lucky, since it's got me actually thinking about what I might like to hear, about how I might like to structure the playlist that makes the machine go. (My first attempt, off of Canada's hard drive, was unbearably predictable: the total familiarity of 99 songs I'm thoroughly familiar with would inevitably have cloyed quickly, and probably made me abandon the device altogether.)

After these last couple days, I have a couple thoughts on how to use the critter.
i) Favorites that always hold up: the typical Neurosis/Voivod/Dylan tunes that I like to hear every day. (See the mix I scored off of Canada's hard drive.)
ii) Alternate playlists: think like a roster of mix tapes I can swap out when it seems appropriate or desirable. Like a Dylan mix, a bands-I-haven't-heard-yet mix, records-I've-forgotten mixes, guilty pleasures mixes, alla that.

It occurs to me to wonder how often D. D. actually changes up the roster of songs on his little machine. Confidential to D. D.: how often do you actually change up the roster of songs on yr little machine? --Or is it just the same 2 PWEI records and a couple Fetus albums?) Oh yeah: how was that Locust remix record? Any good at all?

Both of those thoughts on use are compromised by the savagely limited capacity of the shuffle, however. Most of my favorite bands are best enjoyed at album lengths: that's how their music makes most sense. But with a paltry 512 megs, you're looking at a mix-tape of like 1 longish album. Therefore, idea the following!:
iii) If preparing a mix of type (i), no more than one song per side of a given record can be put on the shuffle.

This makes it a projekt! A little twist on the desert-island-disks format. Originally, I wanted to hold myself to one song per record, but, as always, Bringing it All Back Home refused to comply. In the comments, I'll throw out my first stab at at a type (i) playlist with type (iii) limitations... Projekt!

So watch out world! 'Cause nobody can stop it! Nobody! Ever!

A venerable summer NBA hobby is the inevitable "so-and-so's been working out all summer and dropped 20 pounds or whatever so WATCH OUT!!"

Still, from this photo, it would take me a second to recognize this as Zach Randolph, he of the baby fat and floor-bound game.

Check the definition on his shoulders and arms. I think there's a photographic perspective thing going on that makes his legs and torso look skinnier than they actually are. Not to deny that his torso does look trim. Also, his face and neck look thinner. Despite his baby fat and lack of dunking I've always thought Zach was incredibly quick in and around the post when he has the ball. If he really has lost significant weight and is in the proverbial "best shape of his career," then je t'aime! Encore!! Je t'aime!!!

-d.d.

The Self-Actualization of Team USA Basketball.

Melo, James, Bosh in their ABCD Camp jerseys. I miss the absence of HSers in the draft because I always liked that ABCD Camp high collar on these kids profile pics.
The U.S. Team's 15 finalists for the FIBA World Basketball Championships (in Japan - the mascots a Hello Kitty character!) were announced today. These 15 will go to Japan for a couple of exhibition games, then be trimmed to 12 for actual tourney, which begins August 19th.

The final 15. With some lovenotes from me in italics

Carmelo Anthony
Gilbert Arenas - two names in and two of my favorites already!
Shane Battier
Chris Bosh - At this point, kind of a "if not Amare, then Bosh, kind of thing?
Bruce Bowen
Elton Brand
Kirk Hinrich
Dwight Howard - Someone at Freedarko dubbed Howard the "Oak of Christianity" once. Oddly, this only increased my liking for this kid.
LeBron James
Antawn Jamison
Joe Johnson
Brad Miller
Chris Paul - I think Paul could, no, should make this TeamUSA special, usher in a new era, so forth.
Amaré Stoudemire - The rest of the [NBA] world will be watching… his knee.
Dwyane Wade - Either he's gonna come through like he did for the Heat or he's gonna screw everything up by trying to come through like he did for the Heat.

There are several items of interest (to me) here.

1. It pleases me that Amare, James, Wade & Melo were on the Larry Brown 2004 Disaster Squad in Athens, and are now on this squad, and all have said requisite quotes about setting the world to right. Stoudemire, it should be noted, is not necessarily 100% guaranteed to be a lock for the final team, coming off the microfracture surgery and all. I also recall a story in 2004 about these four players making a "Young Guns" gentlemen's agreement about which one would win an O'Brien first (why we haven't heard about the other three ponying up to Wade yet? I don't know).

2. Some early reports say that Melo, Chris Paul and Joe Johnson have been the most impressive in the workouts / practices so far. A backcourt of Paul and JJ and Melo at the swing positions is certainly sounds potentially devastating, a sweet concoction of inside-outside game and athleticism.

3. I am not a Coach K fan, but the selection of his assistants: Boeheim, MacMillan, D'Antoni, (with none other than the great Rudy T. doing scouting abroad of the other international teams, and to his credit, he's admitted that several of the Euro squads are worrisome) gives me hope. Note that when this coaching staff was selected it was last summer, after the Suns and Sonics had come off miracle years involving high scoring, outside shooting, lots of passing offenses. Observers at the practices say Boeheim is the zone guy, D'Antoni the international guy, and MacMillan is Nate. Also Coach K's saying that he wants to utilize Team USA's "athleticism." This is interesting because to me its seems like a "Larry Brown used to be great, but that 'Right Way' crap he tried to use in Athens is totally counterproductive and pointless in international competition" thing to say. Also…

4. What exactly is the "American style" of basketball? Note that this may be another way of asking "what is the NBA-style of basketball" to a certain degree (at the risk of asking whether, say, Dirk plays "NBA-style" ball or is just a fantastic "non-American" player who somehow fits in despite a lack of "true" NBA talents). Certainly, "American" style would seem to involve athleticism, although clearly the days of the sound and the fury (running and overpowering the opposition out the gym, Vince jumping over Frenchmen, etc.) appears to have past. I'll admit that, right now, I really don't have an answer to this line of thought, but the my intrigue in the Paul-J.Johnson-Melo triad would lead me to suggest the following: that the truly strongest attribute of a Team USA player would be their versatility. Which is funny, because basically it means that Kevin Garnett IS American-style / NBA-style basketball, and that seems ridiculously self-evident once you actually think about it.

5. There are some doubters out there, who have written that all the praise and optimism this summer is no different than the praise and optimism the preceded the Athen's debacle (that team was supposed to set the world to right after the George Karl-led iceberg at the last World Champtionships in Indianapolis).* I can see the parallels of the 2004 and 2006 teams (namely a lack of a dominant center offset by a ton of swingmen), but all I would have to say is A combination of Chris Paul or Arenas at the point and Wade or LeBron at the offguard is a much more solid backcourt than the downright painful (on paper and on court) duo of Iverson and Marbury (shudder!!!).



I also think (the white) Brad Miller will work out better than anyone suspects. My recollection is that his best years were when J. O'Neal then Webber could spread the floor for him to make his little passes and basically do that neat-o Joel Pryzbilla type of stuff ("I set a great screen!"). I think Brand and Jamison should make things gravy for Miller, as well as Amare if he's truly ready to play.

6. Hinrich's alright, but he's recovering from ankle surgery, I think. Prob won't make final 12.

7. Bowen better get cut. This would please me immensely. I'd rather be eliminated in the first round that have to watch this dude play.


-d.d.

*I actually saw the 2002 World Championship team play an exhibition game before the tourney here in Portland against Dirk & the rest of the German team. And trust me, that was not a pretty game. Really, the writing was on the wall. We were slipping. Another sidenote is that Serbia-Mntenegro won that tourney and then completely unraveled at the Olympics two years later. Now I've read today that Nenad Krstic won't play for the Serbian national team. As far as international basketball pedigree goes, the Serbs would seem to the other embarrassed fans along with the U.S. right now.

PLASTIC FORMS OF ESCAPE.

Several years back, peculiar sequencing of circumstance led me to take up Japanese toy collectioning. The original impetus was via Gozilla vinyls and plastics, but those proved somewhat pricey, so the early filling out of the shelves was accomplished through ranks upon ranks of 4.5" G Gundam figures. These were purchased at the local Fred Meyer, where the stock turned over fairly regularly, the said figures were frequently on sale, and you could have the quiet dignity of spending $4.99 on an action figure of a robot that rode a surfboard, wore a football helmet, and alternated between pistols and boxing gloves for choices of weaponry, in the relative privacy of a self-checkout line.



Eventually I tired of the Gundams, and attempted to expand the volume and variety of my mold-injected minions by traipsing to the then actual physical storefront of Dr. Tongues 3D House of Collective Toys on east Burnside about every two weeks and grabbing some item or another. My preferred methodology for selecting plasticine additions was to surf the Dr. Tongues site several days in advance and earmark several items (within a budget, usually, of, say, $20-$30) for closer scrutiny when I got to the store.

The ultimate fruits of this methodology was that one day I stumbled upon the Stikfas Mechana figure. Dr. Tongues raved that it possessed, like, a billion points of articulation, and more impressively, that it had actual jointed fingers and thumbs, so, y'know, it could, like, hold stuff!! No kung fu grip here, kemosabe! AND. It came with a teddy bear!

Reader be warned, the path of stikfa is a slippery slope! Despite ridiculously out-of-scale packaging (compared to actual product) and relatively high price (around $10 per figure), stikfas remain indelibly cool. Stikfas was originally partnered with Hasbro, but Hasbro jilted them, resulting in Stikfas trading large-scale distribution in for a wider selection of figures (as well as me acquiring 3 samurai and 2 dragons in the discount aisle at ToysRUs) . To wit, prior to the parting with Hasbro, the coolest figures, in my mind, were the Mechana, the Samurai, the Kung-Fu Monk, and the Dragon. Solid, reliable figures. But post break-up stikfas rolled out such neato kits as the Spaceman, Cowboy, Hoplite, Punk Rocker, Super Hero & Super Villain, and a Pirate.

Its been a while since I purchased any stikfas, but they just can't stop, can they? Stikfas has to go along and put this thing out there!!!

A stikfa INSIDE a mechanized walker?!?

I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it!


-d.d.

retell the retail: binge of consumption edition

Since I work retail (I'm the Nintendo Guy at my buddy Canada's one-stop-geek-shopping emporium Nerdful Things), it's only natural that on my day off, I go off to hang out in retail environments and spend my money. That worthless bastard Collision wasn't working to-day, so I dragged his sorry ass along.

After a thorough imbibation of coffee, we staggered on down to the mall. He was mainly staggering, I think, because he was still drunk from last night. I don't think he'd slept at all. Collision's deep in his rum phase at the moment. I blame myself for this: I've been making him play this game about pirates with me, since there's too many random encounters for me to deal with by myself, if I'm to maintain my sanity. Me, I was staggering because it was knee-bucklingly bright outside; hurty!

Once at the mall, we hit the Barnes and Noble to read free magazines for a bit. Once these pleasures palled, Collision staked out his usual spot in front of Torrid. There's a bench there he likes to hang out on, eating fries and ogling the plus-sized ladies; "they got real low self esteem", he likes to say. He's a scumbag. I bounced between GameSpot and EB Games, which are the same company but different stores, with different prices, bafflingly enough. It's cool: I like shopping. The Hulk game has gotten pretty cheap at all the places that still have it, but I was on a different mission to-day. Spartan: Total Warrior looks like a competent God of War substitue for a PlayStation2less critter like myself, but I was on a different mission to-day. Okay, that's not true. I was on no mission whatsoever to-day, I just didn't really want to drop thirty bucks on something that's just going to sit on the shelf in its shrinkwrap while I plow through my vast backlog of unfinished games.

No way I could pass up Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, though. Not for fifteen bucks! (The 'nets want thirty for it, usually, according to my last online shopping binge.) Embarrassingly, I dig all the FF GBA ports, and I really dig turn-based strategy games, so it's pretty much a no-brainer. Now I've got something to play after I finish up Advance Wars 2, which should be any year now. (Last night, I unlocked a five-star mission. I tremble in fear at the difficulty this will put me through.) And maybe sometime I can get back to Age of Empires DS, but I dunno.

Collision insisted on bento, like he always does, but I talked him into conveyor-belt sushi (my favorite way of eating) with talk of sake. He's so easily canalized it's not even funny. After that, we hit up the local Goodwill. They've got a Dreamcast sitting there that I like to visit now and again, and their fiction section is frankly a marvel.

Their science fiction area is primarily composed of books written in universes invented for television and movies. Sort of a denatured, professionalized fan-fic. I picked up a Homicide: Life on the Street novel for Collision, since he's a noir-obsessed putz, and got a grab-bag for myself. Between an X-Files novel, a Pokemon book, that Peter David Deep Space 9 book, a weird Cartoon Network book about Gundam Wing, and a couple Star Wars books, I should have plenty to read during the slow hours, once I go back to work.

At this point, the coffee kicked back in, and I felt like stretching my legs a bit more. Collision needed to pass out, and after an all-night drunk, coffee, sushi, and sake, I'm not surprised. I grabbed one of his bikes and flew out to Target, just 'cuz it's far enough away that it feels like doing something just to go there. They had a new-in-box copy of Resident Evil, so I clearly needed to hook that up. (No, I never played it. Shut up.) On the way home, I swung by CompUSA and ransacked their clearance bin to the tune of a collection with Mortal Kombat II on it and a ten-buck copy of Polarium, in case Canada ever gives me back my DS. Not quite sated, I decided to give Freddy's a quick peep.

Their clearance shelf had a further %30 off, so I snaked River City Ransom and Ultimate Muscle: The Path of the Superhero. And now I can rest.

-Fat