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Street Fighter Vs Tekken:

While I'm glad to see Nina in this, Kazuya wasn't the right choice, they should have picked Paul or Heihache.

I'm angry with Blizzard, but:

It seems that it's YouTube Friday 'round he'uh, so I present Lilou vs. Hong 10:

"A short history of Activision Blizzard or how B.Net 2.0 came to be."

Damn.

Hmm:

I sorta noticed it. Sorta.

In a nerdier life, I could have been Daigo Umehara.

"Selective ‘N-Word’ Outrage: William Morris Agency Dumps Mel Gibson" says Michelle Malkin's guest blogger Doug Powers:

Let me get this straight — the William Morris Agency has reportedly dropped Mel Gibson as a client because he used the “N-word” in an unhinged privately recorded rant, but William Morris continues to represent the likes of P. Diddy, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, 50 Cent, and many more, who broadcast the same awful word to millions — daily, unabashedly and continually?

Get that? Eminem uses the "N-word" daily, unabashedly and continually.

Well, actually, he doesn't. Arguably, neither do Kanye West or Mary J. Blige. But whatever.

"Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to Forums" makes me think Blizzard itself is jumping the shark:

Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature - http://www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players -- however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

This change has been greeted with what may be fairly described as near universal disapproval. It is undeniable that trolls run rampant on the World of Warcraft forums, but this seems to be a ham handed attempt to fix what forum moderation did not.

My perspective on this may be a little unique. As one of probably a few people with a unique name on this planet (I seriously think the combination of my first and last name is mine and mine alone), I find this especially troubling. While my identify here is not a secret, it is somewhat obfuscated. Removing that anonymity may be great for Blizzard on their forums, but offering me the choice of not posting or uniquely identifying myself is no choice at all. Meanwhile, all the John Smiths on the planet will snicker and continue to troll.

This may be an awesome time to setup a non-Blizzard forum for players to migrate to . . .

"It's a total Eclipse at the box office."

Some A lot of people have no taste.

MSNBC reports that "‘Toy Story 3,’ Sandler are hot, Tom Cruise is not":

Cruise's thriller "Knight and Day" fizzled at No. 3 with $20.5 million. It was the worst result for a Cruise action flick in 20 years and a sign that audiences still have not forgiven him for erratic behavior a few years back, which included his couch-jumping incident on Oprah Winfrey's show.

"He's one of the biggest stars of all time, but no question, this has impacted him," said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. "It's not like it's irrevocable or unchangeable. Look at all the stars who have been jailed or caught in compromising sexual situations and then came back. Many stars do recover. It just may take a lot of time for him."

Reviews were fair for "Knight and Day," which features Cruise as a charming spy who finds romance with a civilian (Cameron Diaz) on a globe-trotting adventure. Yet distributor 20th Century Fox could not pull in a big audience despite a heavy marketing push that included sneak-peak screenings a week earlier and a Wednesday debut designed to build fan buzz for opening weekend.

Since Wednesday, "Knight and Day" has taken in $27.8 million. It added $12.6 million in 12 overseas markets, but the movie has a long road ahead to recoup a production budget of around $107 million.

I just don't get this sentiment. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Cruise is a creep. So what? Isn't whether the movie good or not the point of going to the theater? Are we supposed to vet a star's views on Scientology or psychiatry or his love life before we pay for our tickets?

"Annie comic ends, but redhead’s fate uncertain."

Hopefully Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Beetle Bailey, and all those tired comics will follow suit.

"22 Fictional Characters Whose Names You Don’t Know."

I'm not too sure what the term really means. Yeah, it's lazy, but here's how Wikipedia defines it:

Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made specifically (and perhaps exclusively) for an audience of urban black people; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation." Blaxploitation films were the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music. These films starred primarily black actors. Variety magazine credited Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song with the invention of the blaxploitation genre. Others argue that the Hollywood-financed film Shaft is closer to being blaxploitation, and thus is more likely to have begun the genre

"These films starred primarily black actors" seems obvious as well not telling us much. There's definitely a genre here, a style that deserves a name, but I'm thinking "blaxploitation" is the wrong one.

There is definitely a perception that these films demeaned or at least exploited black folks. Having gone halfway through the genre, I'm not sure that's true. Black Samson may have been a mediocre movie, but the character is actually fairly positive, the nudity and drug-use free Trouble Man to a lesser degree. That's not to say that The Mack or Willie Dynamite didn't outright glorify pimping, or that Superfly didn't glorify criminality.

In all, I think the term "blaxploitation" doesn't show the diversity of representations you get in these movies. It's a horrible blanket term. It's also vague, was it black people or black audiences being exploited? Generally, I'd be more willing to agree with the latter.

People who know me in real life believe that I don't think anything is funny.

They're right about that.

Examples include:

• Dane Cook
• Adam Sandler
• Chris Rock
• Mike Myers
• Will Ferrell (outside of Celebrity Jeopardy)

However, Dave Chappelle and Aziz Ansari make me laugh. If you're not already up on Chappelle, up yours. If you're not up on Aziz, I'll clue you in:

and a bit NSFW:

The New York Times has a bit more background on him up today.

I could totally see "Sawyer" as Hawkeye.

Pam Grier is awesome.

Despite my initial reservations that LOST would end up on some The Prisoner style lameness, I allowed myself to be convinced that I should watch the show.

Let me say first that I thought the first season (and a half) was brilliant. But as soon as they started diving into the woo-woo of "the hatch" the show took a dive I'm not sure it ever really recovered from. My main complaint being that the so-called 'mysteries' or 'mythology' of the show is a bunch of random crap they made up that the creators of the show probably didn't even decide what it was really about.

I've seen lots of people comparing the secrets behind the "mysteries" of LOST to The Force from Star Wars, and how coming up with midichlorians was a bad explanation that should never have been. It's a B.S comparison. The Force was an explanation in and of itself. There's no need to go beyond Yoda's explanation in The Empire Strikes Back. The Force wasn't the source of conflict, it wasn't even really important to the story, it was just a gimmick to give certain characters cool super powers.

A reasonable viewer can accept that.

Some LOST 'mysteries" do have analogies to the Force. I really didn't feel the need to know what the Island "was", like the Force it was just a source of magic, I can be satisfied with just having the Island as a source of ultimately unexplained magic.

I heard one letter read on The Geekbox that said that it's not about the "mythology" or the "time travel", it's about "the characters". If that's true, why have time travel or mythology at all? If you keep focusing on that crap for seasons at a time you're just distracting from the characters and making the show weaker. It's a bad premise to have the window dressing take center stage for incredibly long periods of time. Really, it's not even window dressing, because you spent two seasons focusing on how much trouble pregnancy brings on this island and then didn't go anywhere with it.

And that sensation of going nowhere doesn't stop with the 'mythology' of the show either, it's a lot of plot points they brought up and abandoned. It's not my curiosity that makes make want to know why these people are interested in kidnapping the children who come to the island, it's a plot point they brought up to reel me in, then just left us all hanging. Over and over again this show does this to you.

And speaking of bad writing, what the hell is the point of introducing what everybody is going to end up fighting over in episode 15 of 17 in the final season? Isn't that like trying to find your prom date a week before the dance, but after you've rented your limo and tux? Why does the main villain of the series kill 90% of the people he comes across, and inexplicably spare the other 10%, sometimes to kill them later? And let's not get into Walt and how they focused on his special powers . . . even after they wrote him off the show.

One day I'm going to write a show where any idea I can come up with that just sounds intriguing gets put in, but I'm not going to bother coming up with even the most pedestrian of explanations for the vast majority of it. It turns out you can write a story that's all effect and no cause - and people will swallow it with a glib "you don't get any all of the answers to this stuff he made up in real life." I'd toss in a borderline sappy fanboi oriented circle-jerk finale and the DVDs will sell like hotcakes.

Funny.