[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Just when you thought that the Island couldn’t get any more dangerous, it turns out that there was a god damn hydrogen bomb on it. Don’t worry though, it’s called Jughead, which makes it really cool and non-intimidating. The whole “there’s a fucking hydrogen bomb on the Island” storyline is interesting for two reasons. First off, there’s a hydrogen bomb on the Island. And secondly, the US Army has somehow found the Island.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I always thought that the Island was pretty hard to find. It bends time and space around it, and you need an absolutely gorgeous physicist or his mother to find it. And yet, here was ole’ Uncle Sam and the Empire rolling up onto the Island ready to test a nuclear device. Seems about right, right? They find an absolutely luscious Island filled with splendor and merriment, and they want to detonate a nuclear bomb on it. Wipe it all out in the name of the Cold War!

It seems too convenient that the US Army just stumbled upon an ancient Island filled with Smoke Monsters and Ancient Statues of Gods Whose Names I Always Forget. I mean, it’s LOST, everything has to have some significance, right? Or is the US Army only significant because of what would happen later? So it raises the question, who in the US government knew about this Island? If anyone? Or did they just come across it, an unplotted Island, and decide it was the perfect place to detonate a bomb?

Maybe the US government, fresh off of losing Steve Rogers to the seas, and scared of the imminent threat of nuclear war of Godzilla, was hoping to create their own super-animal-thing by irradiating one of the wild life on the Island. Who are you going to take in a fight, an enormous lizard, or an enormous polar bear? Or boar for that matter. Everyone thinks that Godzilla is bad-ass, but I think the dude hasn’t thrown down with the rest foes. A moth? And get the fuck out of here with Robo-Godzilla. The guy had like four points of articulation, that’s no way to build a death device.

And then there’s the actual presence of the nuclear bomb. Depending on what geek you’re arguing with, Jughead is either the means via Jack for the group to reset reality and prevent Oceanic 815 from ever crashing, or it is the culprit behind the Incident that brought them down in the first place. I prefer the latter, since it fits in with them being the source behind their own misery, but I think Jack will end up being correct.

Either way, the hydrogen bomb is important as fuck to the overall arch of the story, and it is pretty bad ass. People forget amidst the Dueling Deities, and Ben and Widemore being totally at each other’s throats, that it was the US Army, with the dumb hydrogen bomb, that probably caused the mess in the first place. At least of Jack, and Kate, And the Iraqi Guy With Shitty Hair. All in the name of Super-Cow, so they could rumble with Godzilla.

First and foremost, allow me to apologize for the tardiness of this post. Although the OL statistics-tracker tells me that most of you read the Friday Brew Review during your Saturday morning (hangover), I usually aim to get this son of a bitch posted by 9PM. I guess my thought process is that people will say, “Hey, what did Pepsibones use to kill brain cells this week?” before going out and choosing a consciousness-stunner of their own. So if a late post has left you clueless as to what to drink (or not drink), and you now find yourself sniffing Elmer’s Glue, using said glue to style your hair and fooling around with your uncle’s synthesizer, I apologize.

Ok, it’s late so let’s just get to this. Tonight I procured a six-pack of the Abita Brewing Company’s Purple Haze. The prospect of a “raspberry wheat brew” ticked my fancy; although I consider myself more of a dark beer/lager fellow, I have recently embarked on a quest to find a lighter beer to satisfy my palette. Inspecting the backside of a bottle, I was informed that the beer “is a crisp, American style wheat beer with a fresh raspberry puree added after filtration.” With such a description added to the obvious Hendrix connotations, I felt good to go.

Pouring the potion into a beer glass, I noticed that the stream of goodness (does that sound filthy?) was of a purple hue. Shit, the label wasn’t lying about the “subtle purple coloration and haze.” The hints of violet are present, but they are far from overpowering; Purple Haze’s light texture makes it translucent, looking more like water than cough syrup. But it’s all good — I don’t need my beer to look like Barney the Dinosaur’s peepee.

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[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

It was the four-toed statue that saved my relationship with LOST. For a while, LOST and I had been fighting. It was the same fight I get into with all my significant others. “I’m bored!”, I screamed. “You’re always bored!”, it screamed back. “We don’t do anything!” I yelled. “We do tons of stuff!”, LOST responded. “Yeah, like WHAT! Tell me one thing we do.” LOST stared at me. There was a silence that filled the seconds and bloated them into minutes. “We uh”, LOST responded sheepishly. “We uh, we debate faith versus reason! And we hang out in the Hatch, and stuff…”

“You don’t open up to me, either. I don’t know anything about you! Why won’t you let me in, tell me your secrets,” I commented resentfully to LOST. But LOST just stood there, having nothing to say to me.

And we split.

I really thought I was done with LOST, halfway through the second season. To this point, I haven’t written much about Season Two, because well…I don’t remember much of it. I quit on the show. There were all sorts of ludicrous hiatuses, and the plot was just dragging, and dragging. So I said fuck this, and I stopped watching.

Months passed, and I sort of missed the show. This was before I had a DVR, so I had fallen behind and I didn’t have any means to really catch-up, even if I wanted to. And I told myself that I didn’t. But I had an unacknowledged interest in the show, it loomed in the back of my brain. Deep down inside, I wanted to know what the fuck was going on. I still wanted to know what the fucking Island was, I wanted to know what was up with Smokey, and Desmond. But the grind of watching week after week as the show went nowhere had worn me down.

I was done! No, seriously! That’s what I thought, until I found out about the foot.

It’s odd that I can remember the very day that I decided I was going to give LOST a second chance. It was July 4, 2006. I was over my friend Dave’s house for a pool party, to celebrate the lovely birth of our Empire. And by celebrating America’s Independence, it wasn’t like we were at a parade, or even like, rattling off favorite Amendments. We were being American. I was completely drunk off of some ungodly concoction called Pirate Punch, stuffed with shredded and processed former-meat, and spinning idly in a pool.

My friend Jesse was still watching the show, a much more faithful viewer than myself. And because I was curious deep down inside, I asked him what had been going on. I recall spinning round and round in a floaty tube, as he told me all about the electromagnetic pulse, and the Others kidnapping Jack and Kate and Ana Lucia getting shot in the dumb gut. And I thought it was all cool, because I really wanted to like the show. But then he told me about the giant statue or a four-toed foot, and I was all like

Whaaaa, dude, what the fuck? Huh! Four-toes! EXCLAMATION POINTS

I couldn’t help but think that it was the coolest thing in the world. Tell me more, I had to know all about it! Where was the rest of the body? Are you sure it only had four toes? Holy crap. I don’t know if I found it that amazing, or if it was the clear rum, peach schnapps and fruit punch sloshing around in my gut, partying with what was probably fourteen hot dogs, a cavalcade of tortilla chips, and a loose hamburger.

The plot by LOST worked. I was intrigued again. I had to know what was going on with the show. The new wrinkle in the Island was yes, another mystery I wouldn’t find out the answer to anytime soon, but it was also another layer of intrigue to the already incomprehensible going-ons of the Island. It was a ploy, and it worked, and I guess I don’t really feel bad about it.

I smashed in the digital video discs for Season Two when they came out, and I worked my ass up to this part I had heard about regarding feet and ugly sandals, and epic oddity. People dog on spoilers, but it may have been spoilers that got me back into the show.

And when I saw the sandal, I thought, oh snap! A familiar refrain when you’re watching LOST:

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more weird, LOST has again blown my damn mind

All of the Season 4 and Season 5 epic nature would have been something I missed if it weren’t for that dumb foot, that new layer of mystery, and a drunken day in a pool.

Final Fantasy XIII is making the rounds in the San Francisco area in the form of a swank ass tour bus this week. As if it isn’t bad enough that I’m buried in snow and gray skies here on the Left Coast, people in the land of Terminator Governing and medicinal marijuana are getting the chance to play an English demo of FFXIII. I’m god damn jealous.

The whole thing seems like a wet dream of mine come to life. Except in my dream, Snow and Lightning are like, GET IN, GET IN. So I hop into the bus, and then Snow is like “Oh hey, check out this couch” and Lightning is like “I uh, have to go update my Facebook status” and as I watch her walk off into some other compartment, Snow slowly and sensually takes off his ballin’ bandana and jacket and asks me to rub salve on his enormous pecs.

It’s sort of like that. But only you get to play Final Fantasy XIII in English two months early. Just a little cocktease, but better than nothing.

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

LOST started off pretty fucking creepy. I mean, before it plummeted into mundanity for the majority of the first season, they kicked the shit off with thunder. The initial crash is still one of my favorite scenes ever. Watching people walk around, completely rocked, the perpetually firing engine in the distance? C’mon, that shit is fantastic. The running around, the screaming, stupid Shannon sitting there useless as always, Jin firing off Korean you can’t translate, but probably something like “Beautiful Slave, despite the crash I require food, I shot dudes for your Dad, now I hunger!” And then there is the most iconic moment for me, which is when the dude gets sucked into said engine. Priceless.

But that creepy vibe swept through the entire two parts of the Pilot. From the initial scene, to Smokey eating the crap out of the pilot Seth Norris, to the creepy distress call that the gang pick up from the Battered Piece of Human Bark We’ve Come to Call Rousseau, the entire Pilot gave you a case of the skincrawlies! The fucking skinscrawlies!

Nothing was creepier to me than the crackling broadcast that the Cool Kids came across when they finally get the plane’s transceiver working. As Sayid turned that radio on expecting milk, cookies and a rescue party, the dude realizes that there’s another transmission being broadcast from somewhere on the Island. The intrigue! And, in case you didn’t know, it’s common knowledge that there are few things creepier than crackling recordings in foreign languages. There’s something about the foreign nature of the tongue, combined with the poor quality of the transmission that casts a foreboding feeling.

It wasn’t like I expected the receiver to actually get them help. I mean, even the daftest of douchebags had to realize they weren’t going to be saved any time soon. But I guess I just wasn’t expecting it to work at all. So when the transmission began broadcasting, I did what any asshole did. I leaned in a little closer towards the TV screen, as if that would give me the ability to hear the transmission better, and translate it.

Note: I don’t speak any French.

Thankfully for the people of the Island, and for the viewers at home, Little Ms. Hot Stuff Shannon can speak French. Of course they have to cajole her into speaking it. She’s all, no, no, I couldn’t, I can’t! And then the next thing you know she’s a fucking advertisement for the success of Rosetta Stone or some shit. Inbetween crying for no good or acceptable reason, Shannon begins to let the rest of the people around her just how fucked and doomed they are. At least it’s coming from an attractive person. If Hurley was vomit-burping up the translation stinking of Hot Pockets, I personally would have taken it a lot worse.

I’m alone now. Uhm … On the island alone. Please, someone come. The others, they’re … they’re dead. I-it killed them. I-it killed them all.

Not bad, Shannon. Not bad at all, considering it was coming through shitty reception in the middle of nowhere. I find your faux-humility to be egotistical! And preening! Fuck you!

In what could only happen in a television show, Sayid finishes doing some rough math in his head at exactly the same moment that the translated bit of gloom is beginning to register with everyone. Judging from the frequency of how often it replays and this and that and blah blah blah…FOR REASONS, he can figure this out: Hey guys! Guess the fuck what! Think all that garbled French translated into English sounds shitty? Well, it’s been running for sixteen years!

In response to this, Charlie says what everyone at home is thinking:

Guys…where are we?

Dude Charlie, guess what. It’s been six years, and absolutely no one fucking knows. None of us. Maybe you’re on a crashed Battlestar Galactica. Maybe you’re on Atlantis. We have no idea.

The distress call is clutch, because it lets everyone know that they’re not just a bunch of unlucky assholes caught on a bad flight. They’re stuck on some Island with a monster, and there are other people out there. Being murdered for reasons unknown. All of a sudden the trees in the distance look just a bit more haunting. Who the fuck knows what or who is out there.

There appears to be some serious shit going on, and your biggest problem is that you’re a Whore On The Run From The Law or you can’t find your shitty acoustic guitar. There’s a mad French woman ready to ventilate your body with bullets.

As well, it also lets them know that they can expect help to come sometime between never and you’re fucked. If this sneaky french women was marooned here sixteen years ago and the message is on repeat, then you guys are going to be there for a while too. It’s time to start partitioning out your heroin, Charlie. You’re going to have to go on to some sort of Jenny Craig diet for addicts, where you only spend so many points a day.

You fucks are LOST.

[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]

As a fan of the comic book medium, it goes without saying that I have an appreciation for Alan Moore. Yes, these days Moore is recognized just as much for being a snake-worshipping lunatic as he is for being (one of) the most innovative comics writers of all time. And that’s depressing, but certainly a result of his own actions; maybe if the guy actually came out of his Northampton hideaway every now then we wouldn’t just write him off as a nutjob.

But the most important fact to remember is that when he wants to, Alan Moore  can write with the best of `em  Yeah, I’m a Watchmen zealot (file it under Best Fictional Work…Of All-Time) but I also really enjoy his work on Swamp Thing. Moore manages to take a goofy-ass plant-man and turn him into a truly horrifying creature, a green embodiment of the macabre that lives in a bog, contemplates existence, and fucks shit up from time to time.

I have no doubt in my mind that it is my admiration for Alan Moore and his  mad sensibilities that have led me to choose the Neonomicon Hornbook as this week’s pick of the litter. Some background: Neonomicon is planned as a sequel to his 2003 series The Courtyard. Apparently, both of these series are rooted in the mythos of HP Lovecraft, thereby generating instant fan-interest. To be honest, I’ve never read any Lovecraft or The Courtyard but I figured that I’d try to jump into Moore’s newest work anyways.

Luckily, the Neonomicon Hornbook seems to be a great spot to hop aboard; the comic is a preview of the upcoming series, consisting of the first nine finished pages of the series and an excerpt from Moore’s script. With a two-dollar price tag, the issue is a bargain, offering enough finished product to tantalize the reader and supplementing this with a hefty chunk of the author’s script. As per usual, even a single panel of Moore’s directions to the artist reads as an insane, yet superbly detailed, set of instructions. Mayhaps it’s the aspiring writer in me, but I’d suggest that Moore’s writing alone justifies the two-hundred cent investment.

As far as an actual plot is concerned, the Neonomicon Hornbook doesn’t give reveal much at all. What the reader can take away from this first-look is that Lamper and Brears, two federal agents (one a saucy white woman and the other a strong black male), are investigating some sort of copycat serial killer. They feel compelled to interview the original serial killer, former federal agent Aldo Sax — now incarcerated, Sax has a swastika carved into his forehead and only speaks in gibberish.

This seems like the standard crime story/mystery fare, nothing not covered years ago in The Silence of the Lambs. Except, it’s Alan Moore so you know something fucked up is going on. Oh, and I neglected to mention — the first page is a splash of some ethereal, potentially amniotic fluid with the captions;

It’s the end, and the beginning.

He’s beneath the waters now, but soon, in only a few months, he will come forth.

And until then he sleeps.

And dreams.

Kooky.

From what I can tell, artist Jacen Burrows is going to do a fine job. I’m not sure his art will be pulling in Eisners or anything, but is solid through and through. I guess I’d chalk him up as being yet another one of those “standard, reliable Avatar Press artists.” Certainly not a bad thing to be.

It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s relatively satisfying. And it won’t leave you with a painful cold sore. Snag the Neonomicon Hornbook.

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

It seems like a million years ago, but there was a time on LOST when Sayid spent the entire episode torturing the living shit out of Sawyer. And we’re not talking noogies, guys. We’re talking all sorts of weird shit that ultimately ended up with him stabbing Sawyer and being like, whoops, I just hit a fucking artery or something. Yeah dude, you did. And unless that greasy hair of yours can gift you magical powers of flight, you’re going to have to sit here and feel like a dick about it. Or, do what you did, and go and try and map the entire Island.

Either way, we know you’re sulking with understandable guilt. Dick.

It seemed like a weird way for the writers to go with Sayid. It was still early in the show, but they seemed to build him up initially under the irony that he was a veteran of the first Iraq war, who fought for the other side. Totally clever thing to do, right? Absolutely! I can just hear the writers pitching it to each other:

And uh, and uh! There’s a guy who bangs his own sister! Yeah! Awesome! And how about, how about there’s this guy who fought in the Iraq War except…except…it’s the first Iraq war! AND, AND, he fought FOR IRAQ.

But I won’t lie, I dug the little twist. What can I say? I’m a sucker for little twists.

But wait, then why is he torturing Sawyer?

If the whole twist is that Sayid is unique because he brings a human face to the other side of a war, why is he ganking Sawyer? That doesn’t make any sense to me. This is before Sayid was all special and destined and shit, mind you. Perhaps I shouldn’t even be wondering all of this junk, but it seems a curious character direction. They go through the sake of introducing Sayid as this nuanced guy who is supposed to provoke the viewer into questioning their idea of the other sides of war, and then they just have that guy fly off the hinge and torture some dude? Over an inhaler?

GUYS? HOW MANY EPISODES UNTIL THE SEASON FINALE? YEAH! WHERE WE BLOW UP THE HATCH? NO…NO, OF COURSE WE’RE NOT GOING TO SHOW WHAT’S IN THERE! DUH! SEVENTEEN EPISODES? HOLY SHIT! UH…HAVE THE TORTURER GUY TORTURE SOMEONE.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe I’m missing something. I miss a lot of things. Sayid goes from being an interesting character to being a violent caricature of an Iraqi. Brilliant.

But Ian, there was a girl’s life on the line!

Yeah, maybe…I guess.

And then there’s Sawyer. The dude uses the inhaler he doesn’t have as a means to get a kiss from Kate. This is after he lets Sayid torture him for a bit. Why! Why the fuck is all of this going on? I can’t really figure out why any of this is going on in the episode. Part of me wants to be like, well, they were just showing how quickly society crumbles when they’re on an Island for some assort. You know, Lord of the Flies. I mean, they’ve been hanging out eating mangoes for like five days and now they’re torturing people over inhalers. How quickly we fall apart without rules and structure. Are you yawning? Yeah, me too.

And that’s while Jack is hanging out and letting Sawyer get the crap tortured out of him. And we all know why. He wants in with That Chick With The Square Jaw. He’s all, yeah, torture the crap out of him Sayid! GO FOR HIS PENIS. THE PENIS. Or at least he should have. If anyone wants to torture me, go for the penis. I’ll spill on all sorts of embarrassing things.

The entire episode is really odd. We have a dude torturing someone, demolishing his interesting character. We have a spoon-fed 24-esque plot of by any means necessary, we have Jack just going along it with because he wants some pussy, and we have some guy going through torture because he’s uh, tortured in the past or something.

And the best part? No one talks about it now! It’s like, a whoopsie-daisy or something. Water under the bridge! If someone tortured me and then stabbed me in a fucking artery, I wouldn’t be playing bridge with them a couple months later. No way, we would not be taking trips to Taco Bell late-night anytime soon. And I’d definitely be like, guys, stay away from that guy, if you take the last Dharma chocolate chip cookie, he’s going to fucking stab you.

But no one says anything!

Must be the hair.

Pepsibones and I are into truly weird shit. Like, odd shit that makes us feel like we’re taking the mind-altering substances we either cannot procure, or are too sissy to take. So when my friend Patrick passed along a new project he and his friend Bryan are working on, taking old VHS tapes from their library and editing them and making them generally more uncomfortable and amazing than they already are, I was like, fucking awesome. There’s a great one involving the New Kids On the Block, and a dope pizza guy with a mullet.

And then there’s the one I’m posting here.

It’s a mash-up of a Gucci Mane mixtape and the 90s German sci-i film “Bodo.” So if you’re in the market for hip-hop, or odd german sci-fi flicks on VHS, you’re in luck. It features beats, and some chick smoking and almost making out with a pre-pubescent. Why aren’t you already watching?

I showed it to my friend Brandon, who commented:

this has got to be one of the more fucked up things i’ve ever seen, which gives it that much more love

that roboto is a fucking pervert too, so i like him the best

that monkey just made me shit my pants

Well said, Brandon.

It’s weird shit, and strangely hypnotic. There’s something really creepy and odd about VHS in general, isn’t there? I mean, nothing seems dirtier and more erotic than old-school porn on a fuzzy VHS.   Check out the rest right here.

Have you seen that advertisement for Uncharted 2 where the guy is like, hey my girlfriend keeps mistaking this game for an action movie! The best way to describe Bayonetta is that it is absolutely not that sort of game. It is a post-modern, hyper-violent, super-fuck. Any loved one who stumbls across you playing Bayonetta probably think you’re watching some hallucinogenic pornography. And that’s why   Bayonetta is one of the best games I’ve played in years.

It’s apologetically insane.

I began sweating Bayonetta when I heard the premise: It’s Devil May Cry starring a gorgeous woman with glasses and a British accent. And along the way it began to be the most-hyped nerdboner explosion in the fanboy community I’ve ever seen. Emphasis on nerdboner. Because the game ejaculates sexuality, and doesn’t give a fuck if you like it or not. Cutscenes in the game find amazing ways to feature Bayonetta sucking on lollipops, flashing her ass, or zooming in on her crotch. I’ve never seen a game where the camera’s most prominent position is stuck onto a character’s leather-covered ass.

And can we talk for a moment about how Bayonetta’s crotch has got to smell with all that flipping and shooting and killing while wearing a leather bodysuit? I don’t care, I’d still hit it.

The entire game is an exercise in hyper-conscious absurdism. Bayonetta is over the top, but more importantly, Bayonetta knows that its over the top. To the point where Bayonetta drops high-fives to other games by its creator, Hideki Kamiya, from Resident Evil to Devil May Cry to Viewtiful Joe. Classic phrases from those games like “Flock off, feather face!” and “Whadya buyin?” are strewn about so the game doesn’t just jerk off your genitals but also your nerd organs too. The game smashes down the fourth wall while rubbing itself.

The storyline doesn’t matter, or at least I hope it doesn’t, because I don’t remember a lick of it. And I don’t think you’re supposed to, since the game seems quite conscious of why all the fanboys and fangirls with engorged junk-pieces are playing it: for the gameplay and absurd sexuality.

For example:

There’s a moment towards the end of the game when Bayonetta, some weird intrepid reporter named Luka, and I think what is Bayonetta’s past eight year-old self complete with librarian fuck-me glasses are riding in a helicopter towards some sort of epic confrontation. As Bayonetta vomits on and on about whatever sort of epic story is going on, Luka begins to stare at Bayonetta’s cleavage. Bayonetta’s recently rain soaked, and as she speaks, her huge, backbreaking tits are glistening. A perfectly formed droplet stops right where her nipple would be, and when Bayonetta says something like “Are you fucking listening, Luka?!”, the nipple-droplet falls off and both the player and Luka realize they didn’t give a shit about the storyline.

‘Cause it doesn’t matter, and the game knows it.

But let’s face it, all that absurdity and sexuality is fucking useless without tight gameplay. And after playing the demo back in the early winter, I was concerned this game was just going to be a Devil May Cry-clone with stunning cleavage. I kept the dark secret to myself, hoping I was fucking wrong. Thankfully, I was.

There’s no denying the game’s connection to Devil May Cry. But the game is Devil May Cry done to the zillionth degree. Fuck Devil May Cry 4, consider this the next-generation installment. Kamiya, who left Capcom to form Platinum Games carries over a lot of what made Devil May Cry awesome: the kinetic action, the ridiculous air-juggling, and retools it a bit. Snagging some shiz from his other franchise, Viewtiful Joe, Bayonetta gives you bullet-time. In Viewtiful Joe it was called Slow Viewtiful. But now you’re going to call it Witch Time. Apparently witches are in the Matrix, or at least hang out with Barry Allen.

The first couple of chapters you just fuck around and learn the combat system. You’re taught how to climax, and let’s face it, every boy should be taught how to make a chick climax. At the end of every boss battle, you have to mash two buttons together, which apparently is how you make someone climax, by mashing buttons, and then Bayonetta strips and eats things with her hair. Yeah, I have no god damn idea. Again, welcome to Bayonetta.

As the game progresses, the scope of the battles get larger and crazier, and so does the difficulty. It starts off manageable, and gets more and more difficult until the final battle had me ready to wing a controller off the wall again like I was thirteen and playing my friend Joe in X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Who the fuck just crouches and fierce punches?! SON OF A BITCH.

Unlike Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe which were both severe pains in the fucking ass, this game rocks a continuous auto-save option. So when you die, you don’t get thrown back to the beginning of the level. Instead, you’re just tea-bagged by the game at the end of the entire Chapter. That’s when you’re awarded a statue, from Stone to Platinum. And let me tell you, all those deaths you rocked? They’re shitting on you in the form of a stone statue. As if to say, you passed, but you fucking suck.

The true epicness of the game is nailed in the final battle. Turn away if you’re spoilerphobic. For it is in that fight, when you get to climax on the face of God and throw her into the sun. The game’s battles go from running along streets, to sword fights on missiles zooming through the air, to fighting the one responsible for all creation. Obviously, God is a massive stone chick with wings and enormous stone boobs. She’s insanely huge, can barely be contained on screen, and is complete with the thirty-five forms that final bosses have in every Japanese game ever.

After finishing her off, you of course, have to climax! all over her. And then? Then you throw her into the sun. Problem solved.

Bayonetta isn’t for everyone. It’s odd, it’s super-erotic, probably a bit heretical, and it isn’t the easiest game. It is a niche game, but for those within the niche, it is the greatest thing ever. You know, those who are fans of cleavage, self-aware action sequences, enormous boss battles, and chicks with glasses. If you’ve ever played Devil May Cry, or jerked off to latex porn, or done both at the same time, you’ve just found your new favorite game.

Like me.

Holy fucking shit, He has returned. After restoring my faith during the summer, the messiah that is Pepsi Throwback is once again gracing mere mortals with His presence.

For those of you who have been living under a rock (or, more appropriately, not watching the NFL Playoffs and the accompanying ads), Pepsi has made the no-brainer decision to release another limited edition batch of the Throwback. The beverage harkens back to the glory years of America, when you’d ask Michael Jackson what soda pop to drink. Oh yeah,  and back then Pepsi was made with sugar instead of the high fructose corn syrup they use on us future-dwellers. Sure, high fructose corn syrup might be cheaper to make but it isn’t nearly as tasty. So Uncle Sam can take his corn-subsidies and shove `em!

What’s that? You’re going to take a better-tasting beverage and toss it inside a sick-ass retro-can? Count me in.

I guess my only complaint is I now have no clue what to do with the can of Pepsi Throwback I saved from the original batch. Do I hold onto it indefinitely, waiting until I’m on my deathbed to crack it open? Or should I just pound it now and replace it with one of the new, better-designed cans of Throwback? Time will tell.

Go to the store now. Stock up. After the apocalypse hits, Pepsi Throwback is going to replace gold (with Mountain Dew Throwback functioning as silver).

In the post-apocalyptic market, this will buy enough gasoline to get my dune buggy to the burnt remains of Las Vegas and back again.