Insane Wallride

Check out this insane bike wallride. I wonder what happens at the bottom.

Cobra Commander Unmasked

The action figure packaging for the movie version of Cobra Commander has been revealed, and it isn’t pretty.

I wasted countless hours after school devouring the likes of Transformers, Thundercats and G.I. Joe, but I’m hardly beholden to their memory. It’s perfectly understandable when some things have to be cut or altered for the sake of a different medium. I just can’t comprehend why anyone would decide to develop a property and discard one of the most compelling images from it.

Both of Cobra Commander’s masks were elegant and iconic, adding a tantalizing mystery to a character whose origins were shrouded in mystery (G.I. Joe: The Movie and the comic series excepted). Why anyone would trade in the character’s original fascist cult leader attire for this generic, overcomplicated get-up is beyond my understanding.

Is it just me, or is the cartoon version of G.I. Joe looking more subtle and less ridiculous than the movie adaptation?

Did You Know?

American Idol Results Show (Top 10)

Ryan Seacrest introduces the Thursday show (thanx Obama), saying that more than 36 million votes were cast last night.  That’s a new “top 10 week” record.  At least 30 of those votes were mine.

Ryan let’s us know that we’re going to have 3 live performances of the show this week: Ruben Studdard is back on the Idol stage, Smokey Robinson will be doing a duet w/ Joss Stone, & Stevie Wonder will be doing a medley of his hits.

It was an action packed show w/ a predictable ending. Here’s my observations.

1. The group performance have sunk to an all time low. Not only was it once again lip synced, but now it seems like it was also pre-recorded!!! They can’t even lip sync live this year? Is this a preview of how the ‘09 tour is going to be?

2. Finally a good Ford commercial. Pocketful of Sunshine.

3. Man Ruben was sweating. I realize those lights are hot and he’s big but still….

4. Time for eliminations. Matt Girard is struck with “The Curse of performaning 1st” & is in the bottom 3. After screwing with Kris and Lil, Michael Sarver joins him center stage. Big shocker there, not.

5. Joss Stone (who?) & Smokey perform a duet that seemed to never end. It just kept on going & going & going. BTW, Sayra would not stop talking about how much she loved her dress.

6. Yes. A commercial for Angels & Demons!!  Rewind the DVR!!

7. It’s now down to Megan & Scott. I must have texted “vote” 20x for Scott, so he better be safe … shit!! Who the hell voted for Megan? Seacrest has to escort Scott to center stage. 30 seconds later Seacrest escorts Scott back because he is also safe.

8. Stevie Wonder perform his medley. Every year people on Idol literally gush over him and now I can see why. It was very strange though when he yelled “I love you Barack Obama” during the middle of his last song.

9. Back to the results. Sarver is gone. Now he needs to sing for his life and follow up Stevie. “Holy Crap”. I love how Simon tried to put the elimination on Paula. “Paula, yes or no”. She goes “Oh no … don’t put this on me”.  Finally Simon mans up and sends Sarver home offically.

10. It’s all good because Seacrest reminds us that we’ll see him (lip sync) on the tour this summer.

The show was closed, during Hell’s Kitchen time, with a montage of Michael’s journey.  Ryan didn’t tell us what next week’s theme is, but internet rumor is that it’s iTunes top 100. Basically it’s “sing whatever you want from the past 6 months”. Sounds like fun.

OnLive – The Last Gaming Console You’ll Ever Buy?

Imagine never upgrading your gaming hardware again.

If you’re a console gamer playing on your HDTV, that means avoiding shelling out $500 to play next generation titles. If you’re a PC gamer, it means opting out of the endless cycle of new CPUs, motherboards, and graphics cards.

It also means you can play your favorite game on just about any platform—even laptops or netbooks. This even includes games famous for being resource hogs, like the Crysis series.

Just announced at this year’s GDC, OnLive is a new gaming service, slated to launch towards the end of 2009. The core idea of OnLive is to make all modern games playable on any system. The actual heavy lifting of rendering, AI, and other gameplay is handled by big iron servers, which are loaded with multiple CPUs and high-end graphics chips (GPUs).

The player has a simple, lightweight client running on a PC or Mac or, alternatively, may opt for what OnLive is calling a “MicroConsole” to play on a big screen TV. No large, power-hungry console needed, no high-end GPU or CPU required on the PC.

“This is the last major console cycle,” it’s creator said said. “If not this one, then definitely the next one.”

And if you think publishers will never buy in to the model, think again: Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ, Epic Games, Eidos, Atari Interactive and Codemasters are already on-board.

Expect OnLive to launch this Winter with monthly subscriptions available in “a variety of different pricing packages and tiers.

I’m going to take a wait and see approach to OnLive. I’m very skeptical that these games are going to play without any lag. Timing is very important in video games and even the smallest bit of lag will totally ruin the experience.

The truth about Twitter

Here’s a  great little cautionary tale / wake-up call for people who don’t quite grasp that EVERYTHING they post on the internet is 100% public.

If you aren’t familiar with this story yet, let me set it up for you:

1. Woman gets job with Cisco.

2. Woman posts less than enthused opinion about the Cisco job on Twitter (actually naming Cisco as her new employer).

3. Cisco employee on Twitter spots the post and promptly responds.

4. Woman blocks her Twitter updates (hides them from public view)… but it’s too late. The damage is done, and she probably spends most of the day wondering if Cisco will now rethink its job offer.

Check this out:

And the response by a Cisco employee:

But the question is… What did she expect? That a comment posted on a public stream in the fastest growing social media “channel” on the planet, one currently used by 2,000,000 people and feeding into other services like Facebook and MySpace would go unnoticed?

Just because your boss, coworker, spouse or neighbor doesn’t know about Twitter, doesn’t read blogs and refuses to join FaceBook doesn’t mean your comments on the web won’t get back to him/her.

THINK about what you are are about to post to the web (especially blogs, social networking sites and Twitter). Before you click “send,” “publish” or “update,” assume that everyone you know will read your comment.

Use your brains. The internet is a very public place. More so even than the water cooler. Exercise the same common sense and decorum you would in “real life” social situations.

Here’s a cute video that has some fun with the whole Twitter thing.

Join My ESPN Streak Group

I’ve really only checked ESPN Fantasy games for Fantasy Football, but I’m definitely hooked on this Streak thing. Every day you have 10-15 different games/match ups you can pick from. Here are a few examples from today’s possible picks:

• Which Driver will have a BETTER FINAL POSITION? #99 Carl Edwards or ##24 Jeff Gordon
• WBC – Who will WIN this match up? United States or Japan?
• NCB – Who will WIN this match up? #4 Xavier vs. #12 Wisconsin?

There are different sports/games/matches every single day and it’s a great way to kill time. If you ever get lucky enough and reach a streak of 27 correct picks in a row YOU WIN $1 MILLION DOLLARS. There have been a few people who have reached 26 but they each lost on their 27th pick. Currently the highest streak is 18.

Right now “The Streak 2009” group only has 1 member: me. I currently have a streak of 1.

Click here to join the group!

American Idol Results Show (Top11)

Ryan Seacrest introduces the show, saying that more than 31 million votes were cast last night & that the voting results might shock you. And did they? Well, not really.

This is country week on American Idol. If you are a C&W fan, tonight’s show might be pretty exciting. Randy Travis and Carrie Underwood will perform a duet and Brad Paisley will sing.

Once again, here are some of my observations from tonight’s show.

1. It seems like every week these group performances are more and more obviously lip-synced. Putting Scott behind the piano took away the best part … watching him try to do the choreography. Oh well, maybe next week.

2. Another lame Ford commercial.  Although I really do want a Fusion.

3. Did anyone buy that story Sarver was spinning about his daughter. ”Why don’t you want to be with me anymore?” Really??

4. Lil recounts her distress as the loss of the only other minorities this season. All the Idols go out to a red-checker tableclothed Italian restaurant to toast their fallen friends, and everybody cries.

5. Allison Iraheta and Michael Sarver are asked to stand. Ryan asks Paula which of the two should go home and she picks Allison. And she’s right!  Sarver breathes a sigh of relief and realizes that he is going to be on the summer tour. But wait … Michael please stand because you are also in the bottom 3. AWESOME!!  This is why I love Idol !!!

6. Brad Paisley stops by to sing some deep country. Boring.

7. What’s with that pimple on Matt Giraud’s forehead? It’s so disturbing.

8. Carrie Underwood is back on the Idol stage doing a duet with Randy Travis. She’s looking hot in red but I can’t figure out what is on her head. What happened to her long hair? She sang great. She really is in a class all of her own.

9. It was really strange that they didn’t cut to commercial right after Carrie’s performance. Instead they panned immediately to Allison and Sarver, who were obviously not clapping for Carrie.

10. More results … Adam is safe! A gay goes on tour! Yippee! And all of my bottom three picks are dead wrong.

11. We realize that Randy doesn’t even know Alexis’ name. In a few minutes it won’t even matter.

12. Shocking! Alexis is going home! But the judges say they will save her if she does a good job on a reprise of “Jolene.”  2 minutes later she’s sent home packing. Props, by the way, to dialidol, for getting this one correct.

13. Pres. Obama, with a speech Tuesday, is peeving Idol fans by pushing the show back again to Wednesday and Thursday. The theme: Motown week, another genre that continues to suffer at the hands of TV karaoke. Can’t wait! And that’s a wrap.

AIG bonuses – Paying People More to Fix Their Own Mess

With every job I’ve ever had, I earned a bonus for good performance. If somebody had a bad month & didn’t hit their numbers, then they didn’t get a payout.  It’s that simple.

These clowns at AIG lost $40.5 billion last year & now they are expecting to be paid millions in bonus money from the bailout (aka taxpayer money)

After doing a little research, I’ve learned that these bonuses aren’t performance incentives, but rather what’s referred to as retention pay.

It has been one of the great rationales for showering money on chief executives and bankers regardless of how well they are doing their jobs. It started in the 1990s when companies supposedly had to pay retention bonuses because executives had so many other job opportunities.

The government-appointed chief of AIG has defended the  multimillion-dollar bonus payments for the people who run the small division that brought down the company. If the government doesn’t let them have their money, they will walk away, Mr. Liddy says, and nobody else will know how to clean up their mess.

They expect the taxpayers to pay them more to clean up their own mess!!!

I’ve already written both of my senators requesting that they get involved in blocking these payouts. That bonus money is really taxpayer money: absent a bailout, no AIG would even exist to pay bonuses.

One interesting idea I heard was to impose a 90% tax on executive bonuses paid by any companies getting more than $5 billion in federal bailout funds. The American people are very upset about what they’ve heard about these bonuses and I’d hope that it’ll overwhelmingly pass through Congress.

Another WWE Wrestler Found Dead – Test

A few weeks ago on the Giant Bombcast, they were listing some of the wrestlers that would probably be appearing in the upcoming Legends game. About half of the names that they mentioned were already dead.

Now we can add another name to that list.  Test (Andrew Martin) was found dead in his Tampa home this week.

Tampa police discovered prescription drugs, including painkillers and steroids, at the Harbour Place apartment of the former WWE wrestler.

It’s interesting to note that WWE didn’t flash a graphic in memory of Test before last night’s RAW like they usually do when a former employee passes away. WWE must be getting paranoid about the bad publicity from all of their past wrestler’s deaths.