Sorry to turn OL into a gossip rag for a minute but this is too good. Magnolia Pictures threw its holiday party last night at the IFC Center in NYC and it appears that one of the center’s employees is not a fan of indie-horror filmmaker Ti West. It’s reported that an employee exchanged words with West, allegedly calling him an “egotistical prick.” He then proceeded to pour his beer on West, which is something you just don’t do to anyone. West punched the employee in his smart face, breaking his nose.

This information comes from Devin at BadassDigest, who read a tweet this morning that led him on a hunt to find out what happened. Not that many details have surfaced yet but West was apparently stunned at his own strength. The blood-covered employee was taken to a nearby hospital.

Maybe the sucker is one of the many people who think West is overrated and that his movies have miserable pacing. I’m not one of those turkeys. West’s House of the Devil was one of my favorites of 2009 and a terrific homage to classic, slow-burning terror like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. His 2007 thriller Trigger Man has a third act that will keep your ass clenched until the credits roll. The Innkeepers, West’s latest, comes out sometime next year and at 30-years-old it’s scary to think how bright this kid’s future is. Oh, he also sports the GREATEST IMDB profile picture in history.

Hopefully that glass-jawed employee doesn’t press charges and they can settle like this men; over a beer and a handshake. On a related note, tune into OL tomorrow evening for my review of The Fighter!

This shit is out of control. Welcome to the fucking future. Word Lens is an app for an iPhone which translates languages in real time. Somehow, the world just got a little bit smaller. And more awesome. How fucking ridiculous is this? Goddamn, I love the time period I live in.

Hit the jump for a video of it in action.

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Sneaker Freaker carried a preview of the Preview of the Star Wars x Adidas 2011 line. Some of it is dope, some of it is gaudy, but the important thing is this: it’s all fucking Star Wars. Freaker breaks down what we’re looking at here:

The collection is broken into two parts – the ‘Select Pack’ that is closely modeled on characters from the original film franchise, and the ‘Direct Pack’ which fuses the Star Wars universe with sports and pop culture. Highlights include a AT-AT Pilot El Dorado with a jumbo tongue similar to the Jeremy Scott Mickeys; a vividly detailed Skyline with the urban skyline replaced by an illustration of the Imperial planet Coruscant; and a deathly dark ZX-8000 with crackling energy beams on the midsole representing Emporor Palpatine. There’s also a nod to the Imperial Guard, a rasta Boba Fett mash up, plus some Ewing inspired Storm Trooper ballers.

Hit the jump for a gallery of the line.

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It’s hard for someone addicted to latex, fetish porn, and the darker corners of our culture to be amazed. But this just about did it. Not the sort of piss play I’m used to seeing. No sir. You see, Sega has piss controlled urinal games in Japan. There really isn’t anything else to say. You aim your “piss” to do well. Hit the bullseye and shit.

Watching it, all I could muster was “This is absolutely insane.”

Hit the jump for the piss play in action. [No shots of dong. For better or worse.]

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Oh if it ain’t Press Start! This shit is being cobbled together on the fly. I’ve spent far too much time playing Cataclysm this week, and far too little writing a thesis I need to. So now with my asshole facing the sawing bladeknife of doom, there is a bit of a frantic pace to my existence. Press Start!, the gaming column where I tell you five things that caught my eye this week. Nothing really tickled my ass this week. There’s hundreds of gaming news articles, but shit I’m interested in? Eh.

Disagree? Good. Hit the comments box with what excited you.

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#1: Blizzard Confirms Existence Of Their Next MMO.
Cataclysm dropped last week, and I’ve only logged something like six hours into it. If you knew anything about my past WoW playing days, you’d know this is somewhat remarkable. For some strange reason, I’ve managed to not neglect my girlfriend, Saturday evenings with friends, or homework. This can only mean one thing: there’s something afoot. While I dig Cataclysm, it’s not relentlessly pounding my prostrate to a fluid-covered state of glee like prior expansion packs.

So!, I was pretty stoked when Blizzard’s Frank Pearce confirmed the existence of their next MMO. The confirmation comes from a leaked Blizzard release schedule which bore the ominous title ‘Titan.’ Last week at the VGAs, WoW producer Frank Pearce confirmed that ‘Titan was the real deal Holyfield. Sadly? Shit is far, far out. Like, 2014 or some shit.

By then I’ll have a kid, gray hairs, a peg-leg, and four teeth. Dentists are for losers, and the fluoridation in the water is mind control! I only brush my teeth with my own urine. The thought police. They lurk. Beware.

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#2: Uncharted 3 Debut Makes My Balls Hurt.
Uncharted 3 was revealed last week at the Spike VGAs. Did you watch that shit? It was horrible. I didn’t spend much time watching it, just flipping to it between periods of the local frozen ice and blade-skates team. Sadly they weren’t doing much better, so I was a pile of bitterness and vitriol. As an aside, Olivia Munn sucks. She’s a tourist into the gaming industry, making geeks horny and wank to her awful “literature” and Maxim photo shoots.

I actually think she’s hot as fuck, but she’s fraudulent, man. Fraudulent.

Anyways! The entire thing was salvaged by the Uncharted 3 reveal. Unfathomable awesomeness pouring out of my television. If you don’t like Uncharted, I weep for you. It’s not the most intellectually stimulating game. But if you want to rock out pretentious, go back to fingering Limbo’s artistic merit. Sometimes I just want amazing action sequences and fucking filthy graphics.

It was a good week for gaming reveals all around. Mass Effect 3 also got a reveal trailer at the VGAs. And god damn, if I don’t like me some Mass Effect. Later on in the week, Capcom revealed the cinematic trailer for Marvel Vs Capcom 3. It promptly blew my pants clean off my body. They were evaporated. I was like that guy in the commercials for the cassette tapes or whatever. You know, he’s sitting in a chair holding on for dear life because the awesomeness of the sound fidelity or some shit is unbearable.

That was me.

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#3: Super Mario Brothers Go Grand Theft Auto.
How do you feel about machinima? I usually don’t give a shit about it. I didn’t like Red vs Blue. Sorry! However this one was brought to my attention, and it’s fantastic. To the point where I actually watched the whole thing as opposed to lazily listening to it play while I refreshed the same nineteen websites in separate tabs. It’s Super Mario Brothers done up in the Grand Theft Auto world, and it’s fantastic. Powered by the GTAIV engine, it’s Luigi and Mario gone straight out fucking thuggin’.

It’s my geek work of outrageous talent of the week.

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Progress is a tricky concept to grasp and an even trickier one to execute. On the one hand, there is something to be said of tradition. Of the fact that there are those who have stood the test of time, proving their worth while the novelty of what’s considered in vogue crumbles into ephemeral ash.

It’s foolish to disregard the ones who help to set the sun.

However, we must also avoid becoming dogmatic adherents to yesteryear’s traditions. In dodging such an existential bullet, we remain receptive to new ideas. To the notion that the terrain explored by pioneers and voyagers may be worth investigating. There is an acknowledgment that all is not known and an exhilaration in trying to unearth what this may be.

In an ideal world, the Titans would help usher in the Olympians.

This dream is realized with Infinium. And that is why it is damn near perfect.

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I’m having a decent amount of fun in Cataclysm. It’s fun. But in the back of my mind I really fantasize about the next MMO from Blizzard. You know, one without Nintendo 64 graphics. My own graphics whoreness sort of bums me out, but I’m just keeping it real. So when Blizzard confirmed “Titan” as their next MMO, my balls sort of tingled.

You’ll recognize Titan is that mysterious game that appeared on a leaked Blizzard release schedule from a bit back. You know, the one that ended up with the Blizzard China CEO or whatever getting canned. If that wasn’t confirmation enough of the accuracy of the list, than these comments from WoW producer Frank Pearce should.

Joystiq:

In an interview with Destructoid, World of Warcraft producer Frank Pearce finally confirmed “Titan” as at least a codename for Blizzard’s new MMO projectd. “The media is not supposed to know anything about [Titan],” Pearce said with a smile. “It’s our next-gen MMO, and we’ve only started talking about it in a limited fashion because we wanna leverage the fact that we’re working on something like that for the purpose of recruiting, getting some of the best talent in the industry on that project.” Does “we made WoW” not work well enough for recruiting developers?

Do your balls tighten at the thought of a next-gen Blizzard MMO? God my constrict. Here’s hoping it’s in some sort of futuristic setting. I ain’t never played one of them Starcraft titles, but I’d be willing to love it.

Thoughts? Hit the comments box. You sluts.

Good lord, and then there was spooge. Naughty Dog released a direct feed of the Uncharted 3 gameplay that they aired on the Jimmy Fallon show this week. It’s a double win. You get ridiculously sexy gameplay footage, and!, there’s no annoying ass Jimmy Failon.

Hit the jump for the video. Stroke your loins. Merry Christmas.

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Capcom dropped the cinematic trailer for MvC3 today, and good lord is it splooge. Through the means of some nefarious vial, they’re tying the two worlds together, and I wonder just what the fuck it means. Is it silly? Of course it but. But the trailer is an assload of Marvel and Capcom villains thrashing each other. If you can’t get down to Sir Arthur and the Hulk rocking out side by side, you’re fucking invalid man. Neg value.

Hit the jump for the trailer.

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[Enlarge.]

Bad Astronomy posted a link to a recently posted picture over at the Hubble website. This gorgeous red ring is a celestial bauble, and the remnants of a particularly righteous supernova.

Hubble:

The delicate shell, photographed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, appears to float serenely in the depths of space, but this apparent calm hides an inner turmoil. The gaseous envelope formed as the expanding blast wave and ejected material from a supernova tore through the nearby interstellar medium.

[cont]

Astronomers have concluded that the explosion was an example of an especially energetic and bright variety of supernova. Known as Type Ia, such supernova events are thought to result when a white dwarf star in a binary system robs its partner of material, taking on more mass than it is able to handle, so that it eventually explodes.

See kids. Don’t be greedy douches, or you’re going to explode in a wonderful, gorgeous red-ring of death. Let your brother have his toys this Christmas season! If you want to know more about how such a glorious celestial form comes to be, check out Phil Plait’s explanation over on Bad Astronomy. It is the mind warp.