Time Line:

Sony releases the PS3 Slim.

I say to myself, that’s hot as hell. But Ian, you’re broke and unemployed, you can’t afford it.

Gamestop announces you can get 150$ towards a PS3 Slim if you trade in your old PS3. I begin to waver.

Not Sony shows this FFXII Themes PS3 Slim.

My conviction continually wavers. It’s fucking hot. I generally don’t enjoy Game-Themed consoles. I may, it’s not my Final Fantasy XIII-player. It’s a general console. I know it’s irrational, OCD type shit. And I know I’ll hold strong…despite this. Probably. But if I was ever going to buy a themed console. It’d probably be this. Jesus.

Ah, god bless the shitty motion controls gimmick. I thought it was going to die. I thought that maybe, somehow, people weren’t going to dig it. But now everyone is into it.

And then, somehow, I thought that maybe shitty motion controls remakes would be relegated to the Wii. Stupid Resident Evil 4 with motion controls. The Metroid Prime games re-released with motion controls. I mean, what’s worse than the stupid gimmick that is motion controls? Making some cheap cash off of rehashes with the gimmick smashed into it.

Well guess what, PS3 fans! Apparently you’re going to get to re-buy Resident Evil 5 and Littlebigplanet so you can shake your little wrist to make them uh, do stuff:

Via Kotaku:

Well, we now know what that “Resident Evil 5: Director’s Cut” stuff was all about. It’s a re-release of RE5, built to take advantage of Sony’s upcoming motion controller.

The game will be out in Spring 2010, and it’s far from the only existing PS3 title to take advantage of the new peripheral. During SCEJ’s TGS press conference, Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida revealed that the controller will also work with existing games like LittleBigPlanet, EyePet, Flower, Pain, High Velocity Bowling “and more”.

Sick! More phallus-shaking action! Christ, between jacking off compulsively and now wasting money on shitty motion-based rehashes, I’ll have the wrist of a god! Which is uh, good for nothing.

Old Man Logan‘s conclusion is the stuff that legend shall be built upon. I’m planning on writing up a big deconstruction and essay about the storyline for Friday, but I had to type something. Like, I had to. Sitting in my mancave reading this comic to myself, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. Huge, filthy laughs of disbelief and amazement. The conclusion redefines the term Berserker Rage. Seriously. You have no god damn idea.

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Jesus sweet Christ, I turn my back on MMA news for like one day and I miss Rampage Jackson retiring? Over a fucking role in the A-Team movie? Dana White was understandably pissed when Rampage had to delay his fight when Rashad Evans over some shitty movie. So Dana talked some shit. And Rampage? Oh yeah, he quit.

Via Cagewriter:

…so I’m done fighting. I’ve been getting negative reviews from the dumb ass fans that don’t pay my bills or put my kids though college. So I’m hanging it up. I’m gonna miss all my loyal fans but hopefully they’ll follow me to my new career & I will gain more loyal fans along the way. & all you hater fans out there can kiss my big black hairy [expletive]! & anybody that don’t like what I just said can come try to kick my [expletive]!

What the shit? Rampage isn’t my favorite fighter – that would go to Black Neo, aka Anderson Silva. But he’s the funniest dude going in the octagon, and every time they get a microphone near him you’re about to witness comedic gold. Not to mention I’d be sweating his fight with Rashad Evans for the past seventy-nine months. Now the dude is hanging it up so he can act? Whatever Rampage is sniffing, the goods are potent, and I probably want some.

This blows.

Hopefully this is just a tough-dude throwing a sissy-fit. Because I’ve seen your future, and I don’t think you’re going to make it rich playing the titular role in The Scorpion King IV: Black Scorpion Voodoo. Please baby, come back.

Hey, let’s churn some obvious bullshit and pass it off as news!

Via Kotaku:

[Uncharted 2] doesn’t conclude the story at all. The expectation with Uncharted 2 is that it can be an ongoing franchise as long as people want more of it.

Wait, really? This news blows my mind for two reasons:

1) I thought middle installments of stories always conclude the tale.

2) I always thought they didn’t make sequels to successful franchises because they didn’t want to milk it to death.

Seriously, this is staggering news. As a non-snarky aside, I can’t wait for Uncharted 2. The original game is still my favorite PS3-exclusive. It doesn’t pioneer anything, but it executes on so many levels with bonerfying proficiency. Hilarious typical wise-ass lead, beautiful visuals, addictive and challenging gameplay, the quinessential shotgun of fury. Every game should have a shotgun of fury. It’s scientifically established the shotgun is the coolest gun in any video game. Ever.

But seriously Naughty Dog, this is good news. But could you take a break and give me a PS3 Jak and Daxter? I’ll sell my nana to you. And my dad.

Up in the Air is a movie comin’ out soon by Jason Reitman starring George Clooney. I hadn’t heard about it until it blew-up at the Toronto Film Festival. And since then I’ve been watching the trailer ad nauseam. People have been jerking it off calling it Clooney’s most charismatic role yet, that it’s some sort of zeitgeist for our times. Whatever. I’m stoked.

On a personal level, I’m obsessed with the idea of movement in our lives. The notion that we must continue moving, striving, accelerating. When Clooney hits the line in the trailer, “The slower we move, the faster we die” I was beyond sold. I’m perpetually fearful of the idea of stagnation. The idea that at some point we stop living and turn our eyes to the sky, resign from really dreaming, and die.

I’m a sucker for modern existential crisis movies. Fight Club, American Beauty. This movie seems to have the potential to riff on the same ideas. Who knows. Maybe it’ll suck. But thematically, it’s hitting all the right notes to keep me looking forward to its eventual release.

I haven’t played much ODST yet, but I figured I’d vomit up some impressions for those curious. Let me first begin by saying what you’ve already read everywhere else: as a single-player campaign, this isn’t worth sixty bucks. Maybe with all the online nonsense that I’m really not even going to touch, but if you’re looking for some single-player lovin’, seek elsewhere.

What’s awesome? The narrative. It’s only taken Bungie four Halo games, but they’ve finally made something compelling. The storytelling is much better than the previous games, and I already care more about these ODST scrubs than I do about the Ender’s Game rip-off known as Master Douche.

Blah? The graphics. C’mon Bungie. You look like you’re running last-gen stuff here. I’m not a graphics whore by any means, but you’re getting shredded by countless 360 games.

It’s a good game. Addictive even. I’m only taking a break to do some nightly reading and writing, or else I’d still be in there. It’s probably for the best though, since I’ve been told it’s only about five-hours or deliciousness. It’s a good, engrossing narrative so far, wrapped around the same tried-and-true gameplay. You may love it, but it’s refried beans to me at this point.

I’ll write something else up when I complete the game, which again, is about as long as one of my farts. (Which are probably longer than should be humanly possible, but extremely short in the grand scheme of even a mortal’s life.)

The people at some website called Mania.com have just put out the second installment of an interview with Alan Moore, acclaimed writer of every fucking comic book taken seriously. So far, it is a really interesting read – checking out the perspectives of a man who has done more to alter the course of the comic book medium while simultaneously lambasting its industry.

While I’m not going to regurgitate the entire article, I am going to present one of my favorite excerpts. In this bit, Moore discusses the perversion that is comic book fandom’s loyalty to static, well-worn properties over the creators striving to do something unique and  challenge the limits of imagination.

I remember somebody in one of the fanzines over here saying, “Well, why don’t we just not buy any Marvel comics until they give Jack Kirby what he deserves.” I thought, “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll do that.” And, that was when I stopped buying Marvel comics. I think in the next issue of the fanzine, someone said, “Uh, yeah, but fans are never going to do that, are they?” And, as it turns out, he was right. But, they could’ve done it, if they’d really cared–not if they’d cared for the Hulk, but for the person who created the Hulk; not if they cared for Spider-Man, but if they’d cared for Steve Ditko. They could’ve protested, just once–even if that was only by not buying comics that were substandard or had got ugly practices with how their creators were handled. The whole of the industry, from top to bottom, does have a certain amount of responsibility for its decline.

This is the voice of a man who knows what is truly good for comics. People read Warren Ellis’ Do Anything  and discard it as half-baked philosophy. These same folks  write off The Dark Knight Strikes Again  as Frank Miller’s failed attempt to recapture greatness (anyone who’s read Eisner/Miller understands that FM was deliberately refuting his past work). And I’m sure that Alan Moore’s most recent comments will be shrugged off, explained away as the “semi-coherent musing of a fucked up snake-deity worshipping old man.”

Actually, that explanation isn’t wrong. But neither is Alan Moore.

Sitting at the gym today almost paralyzed with fear that I wouldn’t be able to voice my nagging, unintelligent opinion. Sitting bored on the elliptical watching the deluge of sloppy bullshit that passes for news and entertainment. And then I saw Oprah was on, and she saw fit to wipe out both my fears and boredom. You see, Oprah was doing a fucking 1960’s episode in honor of Mad Men or some shit. She had both Mr. And Mrs. Draper on the show. She had some bullshit 1960’s barbershop boyband on all singing and being wonderful. The entire set was retro.

And I’m just sitting there wondering, what the fuck? I mean, it sounds counter-intuitive to me for a powerful black woman to be plugging the 1960’s, when both African Americans and women had it pretty rough back then. Sure, when she interviewed January Jones (Betty Draper), Jones spent four seconds like, poorly articulating the lack of rights for women. But besides that, the entire thing was a nostalgic orgasm. It wasn’t some critique, it was just like CHECK OUT HOW IDYLLIC SHIT WAS, ARE YOU PUMPED HOUSE WIVES!?

I find it doubly ironic, since Mad Men spends (from what I’ve seen, which is a season and some change) a significant amount of time exploding the myth that the 1960’s was some happy, Camelot-esque period. The whole thing screamed “Missing the Point!”, dedicating an entire episode to the sappy, syrupy illusion of the 1960’s in honor of Mad Men, a show which spends its entire time deconstructing that myth, spending time to highlight the inequalities of both women and African Americans.

Oh Oprah! You’re the bee’s knees.

It’s Monday. Late Monday, to be precise. Just got done with a long day of tutoring and staring at college chicks. Shit, don’t tell my girlfriend. Anyways, everything is utterly boring on the internet today. Nothing I feel like really churning over, and over, and over again. There’s fifteen sites that can all tell you the same thing. So instead, I’m going to try and interact with you guys on an idea I got for a weekly column:

Monday Morning Commute.

Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me the arts that you’re indulging in, to stave off suicide. Check out my list after the jump:

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