BobbyBesar

That's definitely one of the things that I really appreciate about the writing. All the characters that are introduced have the implication of being fully realized characters, even if we only see a small slice of that on screen. The implied relationships between them are one part of that. (In that way, it reminds me of - one of the best shows on TV - Gilmore Girls). Even little bits like the dancing kid in the high school, or the "Mom" tattoo contribute to this. While these hints are a part of the weird tone, they're also a source of making them feel like real people. Real people are often contradictory and do things that don't really make sense. It's not exactly depth, but it's akin to it. There doesn't have to be a full explanation. Just by hinting at these things you can make the world feel alive. For my part, I assumed that Audrey has the same kind of relationship with Laura that she does with Donna: they're friendly, if not necessarily friends. They have the weight of entire lives lived in the same small town, so they've spent time together almost by default. They're clearly family friends: Leland is Horne's attorney, but more than that, as educated professionals in a relatively small logging town, they certainly run in the same circles (along with Dr. Heyward). The girls have secrets, because everybody in the town has secrets with everybody else, and from everybody else, especially at that age.

For some reason, whenever I hear the squarespace ad roll "you all in one solution...", my brain always auto completes it with "...for natural male enhancement". I think it's a combination of Rogaine and boner-pills, as I can't identify a single product reference. Some marketer would probably be very pleased to hear this. This isn't specific to you guys, I do that with that ad on every podcast I listen to.

That's actually interesting as an illustration of how completely somebody can internalize white privilege, seemingly without being aware of the concept.

Complaining that Miyazaki movies all feel very same-y is such a strange criticism to me. Their same-ness is part of the appeal. I admit that I haven't had a chance to see The Wind Rises yet. But it's fairly clear that a large portion of Miyazaki's work is built around his alternate history where WWII never happened. So, The Wind Rises is interesting (particularly assuming it's his last film) because he's finally directly addressing the matter instead of dancing around it, and the film seems to be making a kind of peace with the idea. It's a perfect narrative arc, something that one would assume is at least partially deliberate.

Yeah, noted. The question about PSP emulators was meant as an academic one. The PSP is cheap enough and easy enough to jailbreak that I can't see there being much demand for an emulator for it.

I've heard tell that VC3 was rather better than VC2 (which I played, but never finished), but unfortunately, it was never translated. This seems as good a time as any to mention that the VC3 Translation Project actually completed and released a real thing. You'll need a copy of the Japanese game, as well as a modded PSP (is there a good PSP emulator that could be used instead? I have no idea). Anybody try it? I should find my PSP and give it a spin. I also just downloaded it, in case this release means Sega decides to crack down on the translation.

Honestly, if you're into min-maxing your playthrough, this game isn't going to provide all that much challenge. It's very, very exploitable (no spoilers, it's pretty trivial to look up elsewhere), and I doubt they implemented any balance changes. The best way to play it is naively: do what the game narrative says, role-play various characters so they get to hang out with their bros (and lady-bros), level up the people who you think are cool, etc. Much like Jagged Alliance, the little bits of characterization that drip into you via the in-mission interactions are what make the game shine. I haven't played it in years, but as I recall there will be times when the tank makes sense. IIRC, it rolls over anti-personnel mines without taking damage, it can reveal people hiding in tall grass by running over them, etc. Plus, some of the tank's later weapons are kind of cool.

I want to start working on a clicker game right now, so that I can work on it alone for like 20 years, and then release it and people will be all "Hey, look at this crazy nostalgia thing, remember when we played games that were just clicking things? This one guy has been working on this one for 20 years!" It'd be some crazy thing where literally everything in the word could be clicked on and there were like thousands of custom bits of content for the different progression trees. Too bad I'd actually have to work on it for 20 years though.

... ... ... you don't deserve your avatar. Seriously though, while there was a fair amount of filler, there were many good episodes and a couple of all time classics on the Comedy Central run (The Late Philip J. Fry being the most agreed upon there I think). In any case, the nadir is the lowest point, not the low point from which it never recovered, so better episodes after That's Lobstertainment don't really matter. That being said, my personal pick is probably Bender's Game. There are several jokes in That's Lobstertainment that I quite enjoy, whereas I don't think there's a single line or plot element in Bender's Game that stuck with me. There's some kind of D&D joke, I think? That was the one with Mom and the Dark Matter, maybe? I can't even remember.

As much as Nintendo has a variously weird or non-existent online-multiplayer presence, they've been running Mario Kart MP online for a while now with no real complaints as far as I'm aware, so it seems they have a pretty good handle on the infrastructure required. Smash is much more twitch-y, of course. But they aren't totally new at it.

No, because both finales were great. Consensus would probably land on a Zoidberg episode. Probably That's Lobstertainment or Stench and Stenchibility. Either that or Bender's Game, which was pretty uninspired.

Is that intended to be a depressing tale of obsession? It sure reads that way.

IIRC, The point of the "strong sender" comment is that's why Cooper _wasn't_ there when Sarah was creating the police sketch. Cooper gave himself something else to do to avoid being in the same room specifically to avoid influencing her representation of the face. The fact that it matches his own description can therefore be seen as independent corroboration. I'm not sure if I'm missing the a joke here, or if you're reading something totally differently? As I recall, Andy claims it's 30 while Harry claims it's 10 minutes, the point is that something that's 10 minutes away can take 30 minutes if you go the wrong way, which Andy inevitably would.

Speaking of Andy, kind of but not really... One of my favorite bits from Will Forte's SNL run was Tim Calhoun, terrible political candidate. After watching Twin Peaks, I realize that his mannerisms are pretty much just Andy's. Coincidence? Possibly. However, it should be noted that the Twin Peaks hospital is: Calhoun Memorial Hospital. *record scratch* Whaaaat!? Boom goes the DYNAMITE! Myth BUSTED! ETC!

So, more or less apropos of nothing, the AV Club is doing "Sesame Street" week this week, which includes a link to this little gem: Of course, Twin Peaks parodies abound, but this one is charming, and doesn't contain any actual spoilers. "That not darn fine answer..."

There's Rusty's Real Deal Baseball, which is free, but has IAP, but one of the mechanics is that you can haggle in game to reduce the real money cost. It's weird. Crimson shroud was my least favorite of the Guild01 titles. How much are the "art style" games these days? Digidrive is among my favorite games ever.

Yeah, that's a good point that I hadn't thought of in those specific terms. Not only might they feel the need to hide their true feelings, even ambiguously positive responses could also be learned deflections, which is why its so important to acknowledge people's reports of how they themselves actually feel even if it clashes with your external assumptions.

One wonders if he's even slightly aware of how the situations differ. As an exercise, I'm going to try to point out the fallacies. A well lit mall with (presumably) some kind of security is a totally different context than walking down the street. Every woman he interacts with is in customer service, and therefore obligated to interact with him (social contract of "on the street" vs. "in my store" is very different). Since each woman is working, showing any discomfort towards his actions may potentially endanger her job. He has no way of knowing how uncomfortable any of them actually feel, only what was communicated to him, under the constraints noted above. Rather than randomly calling out to them, he first engaged them in conversation, therefore initiating an entirely different social interaction from cat-calling. Several times, he suggests a tenuous argument about editing, but doesn't actually address that. If that was his point, he should have demonstrated how his positive or neutral social interactions could be edited to appear to be negative ones. Also, not sure if I'm reading right, but to me, the clerk at the jewelry counter looked very uncomfortable, and was throwing the "oh god, I hope he leaves soon" body language like crazy. Did I miss anything obvious? Oh, also, DudesGreetingDudes is fantastic. Well played.

Fun Fact: In the DVD commentary on one of the Futurama episodes (A Big Ball of Garbage), one of the producers (David X. Cohen probably) notes that Futurama takes place in the "real" future, whereas the Simpsons takes place in its own fictional universe. So, because the Futurama universe is our universe, The Simpsons exists as a TV show within the Futurama universe, demonstrated via them finding Simpsons merchandise on the titular garbage ball. I assume that division has long since been shattered by various comic crossovers, etc.

Majora's Mask is the hipster best Zelda game. (i.e. "You probably haven't heard of it.") At least a re-release will change that and it can be judged on its merits instead of having some weird mystique. (See also: Radiant Silvergun, Sin & Punishment)

I feel like there's a couple of different topics being conflated here. An HD video remaster from film is just taking advantage of the portable format's ability to store more information, but that information already exists in the original film. With a situation like the the kinescopes, there's a situation where you're trying to artificially improve the image quality by, basically, removing information (reducing film grain) or artificially introducing new information (sharpening lines, etc). This kind of process is always going to be an aesthetic call on the part of the restorer. I think the former is a lot more acceptable than the latter, because from a archival perspective, removing information isn't doing any good at all. (The former case probably has some measure of cleanup for the film transfer, but I assume the scope is pretty different).

That one dude in the Criterion cover looks a lot like Roger Moore. Way more than the actual guy looked like Roger Moore, judging from the other cover. So, I guess my point is, if I bought the Criterion one, I'd be super pissed that James Bond wasn't in it. Worst movie ever, one star.

A little while ago I heard somebody advance an argument about Dr. Who that I think is relevant (I forget the source). Basically, he said that complaining that Daleks, as presented (big stupid trash cans) aren't actually scary is kind of missing the point. You have to just buy into the fact that the Dalek represents the idea of something scary. A dragon in a stage play obviously isn't a real dragon. It's a representation of a dragon, you accept the artifice due to budget / scope limitations and move on. The problem is that in the modern era, where effects and CG can make things that are actually scary, this gets lost a little bit. Especially with modern Dr. Who where you mix actual scary looking things (CG monsters) with these theatrical representations. Japanese Bunraku theater has a convention where the stagehands dress all in black and so you pretend they don't exist. Ignoring them is actually a sort of acquired skill, but eventually, they just melt away and all you see are the puppets. It's kind of neat.

I'm not clear on how much killer stuff they reveal in the European pilot as I haven't seen it? Do they just advance the reveal of BOB's sketch?

On interesting side note: when filming Star Trek, they knew they were targeting SD television screens, with all the relevant limitations. So they would cut corners on things that wouldn't be visible at TV resolution. For instance, star fields outside the windows were often literally black curtains with dots painted on them. But in the HD transfers, you get enough detail, to see some of these artifacts. I guess that might bother some people, although I think it's more cool than distracting. I don't think anything is lost because the whole thing is self-evidently artificially theatrical to begin with so seeing the set dressing is like complaining about unrealistic backgrounds in a stage play. The point is to give you IDEA of where they are, not to be a perfect representation.