File under: shit I didn’t know. To be fair, that file is enormous. According to io9, around the time that McQuarrie was dropping the concept art for Star Wars that us geeks have jacked it to for years, he was designing some Trek concept sheezy too. The concept art is for a Trek movie that never got off the ground, Star Trek: Planet of the Titans. However flawed the scripts may have been, the artwork is fucking gorgeous. And familiar. Very familiar. There’s some super-Star Wars overtones running throughout, but that’s pretty win-win, no?

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Without equivocation, 2010 was the best year of my life. What happened in it exactly? Well, nothing. For someone who spent his twenties in an insanely turbulent mess of depression, virginity, addiction, and social reclusion, I’ll take quiet. 2010 was the culmination of getting my shit together in the past two years. Do you like sports metaphors?

I blew my psychological knee out in 2008. The powers that be sent me to a wonderful place with fifteen-minute checks and people who were kind but would tackle you, should you make a break for it. Consider that reconstructive surgery. Last year was my first season playing on the new knee. Internally, this knee was glorious. Cleaner than it had ever been. But I was still learning to play the game again. To trust the knee. This year? It’s been the second of two quiet years, and I love every fucking minute of it.

At some point this year I noticed that I was genuinely happy to exist. To know how I was the prior seven years is to know how remarkable this was. Like a cough that wasn’t fucking there anymore, it took time to realize. Oh shit! I thought to myself. This is it, this is the fucking real deal. I’m happy to be alive! I stuck it in my mind and walked around with it. Like a toy that I didn’t want anyone else to know I had. Happiness. It was there in my fucking belly.

I’m wildly excited to be a part of the human race, in this particular moment in our development. This isn’t cheeseball bullshit. Well it is, and I mean it.

2010 was awesome.

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New Year’s Eve! This is it for 2010 – last chance to dance! And I encourage you to do just that. Surround yourself with friends and loved ones. Drink. Eat. Play video games. Be merry. Most importantly, cherish your life and look forward to the opportunities provided just be virtue of being able to continue.

For your amusement, I present an (un)official NYE pre-gamin’ playlist.

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Take off your shoes and step into the Cage. We’re coming at you a couple days late this week. Partly because of the holidays, partly because I had a large writing order to fill for another site. In all honesty, I had a debilitating stomach virus Tuesday-Wednesday that had me living in a bathroom and surviving off of saltines. It was most heinous. But we’re back with the final Cage Match before 2011. Thank you for taking this trip with us, you swine.

I wish there was more news to spill into your laps this week, dear readers. But after his outburst in Bucharest, it seems Cage is laying low and keeping his real life activities limited to buying Marvel action figures. Wait…that’s awesome! Let’s go!

Cage Scoops Up Some Marvel Figures in Weston

On Monday, The Weston Mercury reported that Nic took advantage of those sweet after-Christmas sales by picking up some Marvel action figures at Lloyds Toys and Models. Man, that image in my head is so so awesome. I bet they’re not even for his son, aptly named Weston. He probably won’t even let Weston look at them.

Cage was also seen shopping at a couple cell phone stores. But I know what that’s all about. You hit a certain age and you have to balance out action figure purchases with “adult” purchases. For every R2D2 I buy I balance it out with a shower curtain or bird seed. I hear ya, Cage.

The above picture is from when Cage lit the Christmas lights in Bath. I just really like it.

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This is Press Start! The gaming column where I drop five happenings from around the scene in the past week. But! It’s New Year’s Eve. Last day of the year. The Earth, soaring in its majesty is back at the solar starting line. The masses, us in the civilized world, we have intent. To drink, and celebrate, and generally not give a fuck. The goddamn world shuts down between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Everything is reduced to a trickle. The gaming world isn’t any different. It bares the same marks.

Everything’s stopped. It’s boring. Cobbling this list of five things together took effort. But more than that, it took feigning interest. Here’s hoping when we all sober up next week shit gets poppin’ again. Until here’s the last, which didn’t start this way, but in hindsight turned oddly retrospective.

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#1: Black Ops Is Most Pirated Game of 2010.
Black Ops has made more money than is fathomable. It’s crushed the billion dollar mark in record time. So when the BitTorrent site TorrentFreak announced this week that Black Ops was the most pirated game of 2010, I didn’t exactly cry for Activision. I bought a copy, what the fuck else do you want!

Specifics? The PC version of the game has been pirated 4.2 million dollars. Even if you round down, and assume that every copy costs $50, and that only 4 million copies were pirated, that’s 200 million dollars. Good lord! On top of that, the console version is reported at being pirated 930,000. That’s a lot of fucking money being non-spent.

Still though, it’s to be expected. As I said, Call of Duty is fucking huge. Its community is voluminous. They produce geek work, and they’ve logged 600 million hours in 45 days.

Jesus Christ.

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#2: Play WoW With Kinect. Cool?
It seems fitting to have a Kinect shout out in the final column of the year. (And like I said gaming news has been slow.) The latest hack? Why by golly, now you can play World of Warcraft! Using only the powers of your uh, body. You know, that gelatinous thing that wheezes when it walks up the stairs? I typecast. But it isn’t without precedent to back it up. Kinect hacks can be cool – flying robots, molestation simulators, and shit. However, then there’s stuff like this.

Use Kinect to move your Tauren Druid through the Barrens! Totally elite, man.

Kinect though. It isn’t going away. Not even close. It’s selling like fucking gangbusters, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t depress me a much. Since we’re getting retrospective, let me say that the combined effort of motion controls and 3D media is enough to get me building my log cabin. So fucking help me if someday you need to be wearing goggles to play your PS4, which is only controlled through bodily motions.

Fuck. I think I’m getting old. Curmudgeony.

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#3: Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe Continue To Rule.
Forget Jordan and Bird. Fuck Crosby and Ovechkin. The greatest rivalry in the world is between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. The close of 2010 brings a final week of news pertaining to Wiebe and Mitchell. Over in Chicago, Stevey is planning on running a clinic on how to regulate at Donkey Kong. For only 12 bucks, you can learn from a legend. However, not to be outdone, Billy Mitchell was interviewed by Moviefone. They wanted him to reflect on his behavior in King of Kong. Frankly? Don’t listen to it! Let me have my ultra villain. My Vader. My Sauron.

Every medium needs a villain.

Kudos to the two dudes for entertaining us throughout the year. Just when you think their eternal struggle is over, one of them bodyslams the other. We won’t see the end of this shit until someone hits the max record. Which according to Wiebe, is still another 100,000 points away.

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This year was fucking fantastic in the world of Donkey Kong. Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell. The day that Billy Mitchell was inducted into the International Video Game Hall of Fame, he took back the world record in Donkey Kong. How fucking bad ass is that? If Mitchell is the Darth Vader of video games (gorgeous, righteous, will choke a bitch), then that was his Empire Strikes Back. But regular dude Steve Wiebe wasn’t going to take that shit sitting down. No sir. He knuckled down and defeated evil. Back and forth. Good and evil. The eternal struggle.

Well, guess what fanboys. Steve Wiebe is willing to teach you the inner workings of the Donkey Kong. For a price. According to Joystiq, Chicago’s Logan Hardware “has hired Wiebe to not just teach a Donkey Kong class, but also to spend nearly five hours attempting to best his own high score on January 15.” How much does that shit run? Twelve bucks.

That’s it? To learn from a legend? Holy shit, sign me up. This is like Luke teaching you the fucking Force. Sure you’ll never be able to save the galaxy, but maybe you can glean enough to persuade sexy green space babes to take off their pants. And show you their salacious crumb.

If I was anywhere near Chicago, I’d be down like a clown. I know some may scoff at having to pay, but the guy is just a regular dude. I’d happily give him so money, to hang out, learn some bullshit, and watch him tear it up.

Here’s to another year of jostling between Vader and Luke, some records changing hands, and at the very least: more of Billy Mitchell’s mullet.

Views From The Space-Ship, aka Desktop Tuesdays, aka Desktop Thursdays is a (theoretically) weekly column where I show you my worlds. Share your own in the comments section!

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Are you like me? Riddled with mental problems. Socially retarded. Stewing for the past eighteen months or so about the Watchmen movie? Have you wanted to kick Zack Snyder’s ass and roll him down a hill of turds and landmines? Well, now you can do it. In fact, you can do it in your own fucking Rorschach mask. Youtube user guinness0507 is dropping knowledge bombs, letting us all know how to pull it off. It involves shit like “Thermochromic paint pigment and clear screen printing base”, which is way beyond me.

But it’s still fucking rad as hell to see in action.

Hit the jump to watch our boy Guinness break it down.

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

This week’s pick of the comics-litter is S.H.I.E.L.D. #5 by writer Jonathan Hickman and illustrator Dustin Weaver.

If all you care to know is which comic gets the Images & Words accolades, then you can stop reading right now. I offer only my thanks for entertaining my feeble expressions thus far and encourage you to plunk down $3 for this book.

For those of you interested in why this comic gets the nod: S.H.I.E.L.D. #5 affects me. Greatly. In that way that makes met step back and consider both otherworldly possibilities and the unactivated transcendences of inner-space.

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Watching the Thor trailer today prior to The Fighter got my balls tingling a bit more for the flick. Imma level with you: I would arm wrestle my girlfriend for a chance at Chris Hemsworth. And I’d fight dirty. Dropping elbows, spin-kicks. Eye gouges. A true hardcore arm wrestling match.

Well, when I got home, I found out that Hawkeye is totally making a cameo in Thor. Word? According to Slashfilm, “The Wrap says that Jeremy Renner will appear in Thor as Hawkeye. In some ways this isn’t new, because Jeremy Renner himself mentioned last year that he expected Hawkeye to show up in Thor.”

Well then. I don’t really know how Hawkeye fits into the Thor movie, but I’m not sure Marvel gives a fuck. They’ve been shoehorning the various Marvel characters into other titles since what, the original Iron Man? Yo Marvel. We get it. It’s an interconnected universe. Seriously. We’re nodding our head. Because we get it.