5/20/2008 - The Quintuple Quad

Alright, I think I'm nearly finished with the single-player story mode of Grand Theft Auto IV, so I hope I'm going to be getting my life back soon. And that means returning to watching endless amounts of YouTube videos and blogging about them! I may be repeating myself, but it's getting a lot harder to find good videos now. A lot of times I rely on what's the most popular videos of the day and there just seems to be a dearth of good material out there that appeals to me. Apparently there are a lot of perverts out there that watch "hentai" videos on YouTube enough to make them appear on the most popular video page. I'm pretty sure a lot of these videos are just RickRolls too (this practice HAS to stop, by the way).

What's the most disturbing trend on YouTube these days is the rash of deleted/suspended accounts of a lot of game reviewers, including the Angry Video Game Nerd! I don't know what is happening, but it's like a sort of Armageddon taking place with YouTube. I've heard that hackers may be involved, or it could be some kind of mass "copyright infringement" purge YouTube is implementing right now. I hope it's all some kind of mix-up, but if these kind of things continue, I don't know whether or not I can maintain this blog. My short-term goal is to have at least 365 posts so there is a year's worth of blog posts. It's all very disheartening to say the least.

Well, after getting that all out of the way, it's time for today's video. Actually, I saw this quite a while back and I'm just now commenting on it. It's another one of those videos that can get you addicted to YouTube because of all the related videos that go with it. I mean, if you watch one video of a guy eating a 20-patty burger, you have to see the other videos of people eating competitively or just for fun. Even though Holden Harmes might not match up with the likes of Kobayashi (of Nathan's hot dog eating fame), what he does here is still very impressive. It's not just eating FIVE Burger King Quad Stackers that is amazing, it's keeping the burger all together and downing it in under 15 minutes that really makes this video worth watching:



Remember that there are 20 slices of cheese in this burger and as many pieces of bacon as well. And do you know what's even more amazing? Even though the video description says that this is the last of the Quad Stacker challenges, Holden actual returns for the Sextuplet Quad Stacker (that's 24 pieces of meat, 24 pieces of cheese) in a later video. I didn't feature this particular video because it's split up into two parts and there was some editing involved. It's just not as impressive as this unedited gorge-fest.

4/28/2008 - Tourettes Guy and Head and Shoulders

You know, I got really sad when I heard about the passing of one of my favorite YouTube personalities, the Tourettes Guy. I mean, he's not a friend or family member or anything close, but he brought great laughter to my day last year during some difficult times. And it seemed like all he ever wanted was some peace in his life. Well, I hope he's found it in his afterlife. In honor of his memory, I want to play a clip of his which I can totally relate to... just in the past 15 minutes, actually, when I took a shower and got Head and Shoulders in my eye. He summarizes my reaction better than I can (beware the vulgar profanity):

4/27/2008 - Cell Phone Watch

I like to be on the cutting edge with my technology purchases. My iPod Touch is probably my favorite "gadget" at the moment, and with the new firmware coming out in June, it's going to totally rock. Yes, it may be one step down from the iPhone, but I really don't want to be stuck with an AT&T contract. It would eliminate the hassle of having a phone and iPod in your pockets, and I'm sure many people would prefer to get an iPhone just for that purpose. But what about having to carry around an iPhone and a watch as well? What if you could put everything in one device? Believe it or not, we've pretty much arrived to that point with this cell phone watch:



Yes, that's the theme of the James Bond movie Casino Royale playing in the background, just to highlight the fact that this is something 007 would have in his arsenal... maybe. I just don't see James Bond tinkering with a small stylus when he's out on a dangerous mission. And I don't think he would have gigantic hairy forearms as this watch demonstrator does.

4/26/2008 - monkey smells finger

So we are supposed to be 95% similar to chimpanzees according to our DNA. So after watching this video, I'm not sure who is copying who:

4/22/2008 - 300 - PG Version

So this is my 300th post and it's actually just about a year ago that I started this blog. Back then I thought it would be easy to find great videos out there to blog about everyday, and there are a lot of really good videos to find and talk about. I could pick any of the "Featured" videos on the front page of YouTube and probably appreciate it in some way. However, I'm really looking for the gems and those videos that appeal to me in some personal way. If you can't tell already, most of my longer blog entries have focused on videogame videos because, frankly, that's what is dominating my free time right now. Hey, I have to immerse myself in that world, otherwise I'll be out of touch with the crowd at the Iron Man of Gaming competition this June!

Anyway, I thought the perfect way to celebrate this 300th post is to feature some video on the movie 300. I watched that movie recently on my PS3 in Blu-Ray form, and it's probably the best demonstration of what the high-definition player has to offer. You can see each and every one of the arrows in that final scene! I gotta say that it's a true MANLY movie... more so than probably another other movie in recent times. Thank goodness, because I've had it up to here with all these metrosexual leading men! 300 may be kind of extreme, though, especially with its stylized violence. It's definitely a rated-R movie, which is a shame because it could have been edited for a wider audience. Here's a hilarious example of how that would have been done:

4/21/2008 - Legend of Zelda Movie trailer

When I saw this trailer, I said "Wow!", they were making a Legend of Zelda movie and they kept it secret for this long?



I expected a Zelda movie would happen sooner or later. After all, if they can make movies out of Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Doom, Hitman, Bloodrayne, House of the Dead, Street Fighter, DOA, and Super Mario Bros., then why not a movie of one of the most popular game franchises of all time? Especially since the Legend of Zelda's storyline could easily be made into a screenplay... particularly that of the Ocarina of Time.

But then I was wondering who are these no-name actors? I guess it would be a good move... you don't want big-name actors distracting from the audience's perception of the characters they know intimately from the game series. It's a lesson you'd think George Lucas would have learned from the success of the original Star Wars trilogy. Sadly, he cast well-known actors for the prequels and it was not for the better, in my opinion.

I was this close to being excited for an actual upcoming Zelda movie until I realized the date this trailer was released: April 1st. Yes, this was all an elaborate April Fool's joke... one that I actually fell for! And who could blame me? It must have cost a fortune to do this trailer! Ever since the famous Sheng Long April Fool's joke in EGM, game magazines and websites have tried to one-up (pardon the pun) each other in creating the most elaborate hoax. I have to say that this year's prize belongs to IGN.

4/20/2008 - Lord of the Rings - Voiceover

The Lord of the Rings movies were great on so many different levels. I had never read the books or was even familiar with the story at all before the movies came out. And when people used to say that the books just could not be filmed into a movie, I would have probably agreed. However, they could not have foreseen the fortitude of director Peter Jackson and the technical capabilities of today's special effects wizards. Everything and everyone worked so well together that I doubt that we will ever see such an amazing saga brought to the big screen again in our lifetimes. Case in point: Peter Jackson's follow-up to the Lord of the Rings: King Kong. Technical achievements aside, that movie was so long and overwrought that I literally checked my watch every 15 minutes in the theater. What was amazing to me was that it was no longer than the final installment of the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and yet that movie just flew by compared to King Kong. It's just a testament as to how well paced and well crafted that movie was and it's definitely my favorite of the trilogy. However, after watching this YouTube video, I will never see one of the ending scenes in the same way again:

4/19/2008 - Brawl Misheard Lyrics (2 Videos)

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm of the opinion that videogame music should never have lyrics. Every time I listen to music in a videogame and then I start hearing vocal lyrics, I cringe. I am just so used to the sweet 8-bit looping tunes of the NES days, that I am put off by some of the modern CD-quality music of today. I mean, when videogame music is supposed to loop endlessly, who wants to hear the same words repeated over and over?

I just got the soundtrack to Super Smash Bros. Brawl (over 300 songs!) and there are quite a few songs in there that have lyrics. You know what I did with them? Yup, I put them off my playlist rotation. Even the main theme is ruined not just by repetitiveness, but by it's lyrics. The kicker is that they're in Latin! Seriously, whose bright idea was that? In any case, it has led to a lot of "misheard lyrics" videos on YouTube similar to the Numa Numa ones.

Here's a cool one that actually tries to cover the subject matter with a lot of gaming terms... if you don't know them, then you're a noob:



And of course there's the great TomBobBlender of Mario Paint music fame who did his own interpretation (after I requested it):



Thanks, Tom... and excellent work as always!

4/16/2008 - How to cheat on any test

Alright, I don't encourage that you use this video to cheat on your tests... as a big nerd back in grade school, I was often the one whose tests were copied from. Did I mind? Not really... I knew that eventually the cheaters would eventually have to perform on their own and fail miserably. Copying from another student wasn't exactly a display of creativity... however this method of cheating is:



Boy, if you're smart enough to come up with that way of cheating, why even need to?

4/15/2008 - Mythbusters Elephant vs Mouse

By the name alone, the Mythbusters are all about busting myths... but there are those times that myths are actually confirmed (or deemed plausible). One of the plausible myths that astounded me was the myth of elephants being afraid of mice. You see this myth presented all the time in the old cartoons. I'm pretty sure I saw this in a Tom & Jerry episode myself. Never did I imagine that it would be scientifically proven true by the Mythbusters!



I guess it wouldn't be of much use to test if women are really afraid of mice too.

4/14/2008 - ads vs. reality

You know those advertisements for fast food joints like Wendy's or McDonald's and how good they make the burgers and other foods look? So what is your reaction when you actually get the food and it looks nothing like what was on TV? Well, you really can't expect minimum wage workers to do the same work as the food artists they have in the advertising department. You might think we have it bad over here, but it's even worse overseas:



Now that I think about it, Carl's Jr.'s commercials are probably the only ones that come closest to telling it like it is: with messy, drippy burgers prominently displayed in their ads. Oh boy, now I'm getting hungry... don't bother me, I'm gonna eat.

4/13/2008 - Ames Room

If you've watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I'm sure you've wondered how they were able to get the actors who played the Hobbits to look small compared to the other actors playing humans and elves. A lot of it was CGI, for sure... made all the more remarkable in that they had to shoot single scenes separately and then combine footage later with everything synced seamlessly. Other times, though, there was no CGI involved and the Hobbit actors would actually be on their knees with the other standing actors. This was obscured on film of course, but it was a very cheap yet effective way of portraying the size differences. And yet, another method of performing the illusion of live halflings was using an actual optical illusion. No CGI was involved, but rather a technique called forced-perspective was used. The actors were framed in a way where the backgrounds led you to believe they were in near proximity to each other even though in actuality the Hobbits were much farther in the background from the "full-sized" characters. Perhaps the best example of this optical illusion is the Ames Room, and for the best explanation of this phenomenon, read the Wikipedia article. But to see really see what this illusion is about, you can watch this video:

4/12/2008 - neti pot

Normally, I'm a fan of all infomercials. They usually showcase some cool gadget or invention in such a cheesy way that may not necessarily influence you to buy the product, but it will at least leave a lasting impression. This may not be an infomercial... it's actually more of a demonstration video, but it certainly leaves an impression. And NOT in a good way. It's a video that demonstrates how to use a "neti pot", something that is supposed to irrigate your nasal cavity. Why is this product necessary? I'm still scratching my head on that one. What's more disturbing is watching it in action. If you think it's disgusting to see someone picking their nose, try watching this and not wincing:



They try to make the video seem serene and soothing with the soft focus and the background guitar music, but that only makes it more unsettling. I guess if I made a video of someone cleaning out their nose, I'd try to distract from its gross nature as well. I mean, why didn't they go all the way and demonstrate an enema? I think that would at least be more entertaining.

4/10/2008 - Halo 3 Full-Size Plasma Weapons from ThinkGeek

Here's a plug for another website... ThinkGeek.com has the coolest stuff. If you're a geek, you probably know about it already. There's just about anything you could ever want to fulfill your geek heart's desire. There are gag gifts like titanium sporks a wi-fi detecting t-shirt, useful tools like a network cable tester and a plastic clamshell opener. And then there are the geek toys. Of course you have the requisite lightsaber replicas, but why stick with just one franchise? I'm not a big Halo fan, but if I were, I'd really want to live out the game in only one way: to own the actual weapons. And that's where ThinkGeek comes in:

4/9/2008 - When two Falcon Punches collide.

Each 2-D fighting game has a signature special move. For Street Fighter II, that would have to be the Shoryuken: Ryu and Ken's rising uppercut that is named after the battlecry they scream while doing it. It was such a great offensive move back on the original SF2 that everybody scrambled to learn it. In fact when other special moves are based on the same joystick movement, you can describe how to do the move by just saying its name. For example, Fei Long's flame kick is done with a backwards Shoryuken with the kick button. For the longest time, it was believed that Sagat's scar was caused by Ryu's Shoryuken.

With Mortal Kombat, the signature move is probably Scorpion's spear: it's so recognizable because when it hits, Scorpion bellows out "Get over here!" or "Come here!" in such a primal way that it probably inspired the entire dialog of 300. The signature move of Killer Instinct is a tough call, but I would have to say it is Glacius' teleporting uppercut. It's kind of a ripoff of the Shoryuken, but it looks so cool when Glacius melts into the ground and then smacks you with the move.

For Super Smash Bros., it's an easy call: The Falcon Punch. Captain Falcon is such a flamboyant character that he stands out from the rest of the pack. He has a cool taunt ("Show your moves!") and announces his special moves ("Falcon kick!", "Falcon punch!"). The punch, though, is a powerful move that takes a long time to charge and leaves you vulnerable if you don't connect. So if you do connect, it's a really satisfying feeling. But what happens when you have Captain Falcon versus another Captain Falcon, and they perform the Falcon Punch at each other exactly the same time? This footage was recovered from the wreckage:

4/8/2008 - New Killcams for Call of Duty

I'm not sure if I've given my thoughts on the new Call of Duty game I bought for my Playstation 3, so here it goes. I've always considered Goldeneye to be the cream of the crop when it comes to first-person-shooters because it was the first one in the genre that I really got into. Most of the games after that included bizarre weapons that makes the game unrealistic or went back in time to a World War II setting with no modern weaponry. So when the subtitle for the latest CoD game became "Modern Warfare", I took notice.

Simply put, CoD 4: Modern Warfare is the most realistic first-person-shooter ever. The settings look like they were ripped from the evening newscasts and if the game is any representation of what real war is like today, you better hope they don't reinstate the draft. This game really shows what a next-generation game should look like in terms of its ultra-high resolution graphics. In fact, if you have this game, you better get a high-definition TV, because the targets are so small, they can be down to half an inch wide or less on my 42" widescreen.

As everybody says, the single-player campaign is very short but challenging nonetheless. The real meat of the game is in the online mode where it really is warfare. The RPG-like leveling-up system is well thought out and rewards you for playing the game a lot. The higher your rank, the more guns and "perks" you can choose from. Perks are the most innovative feature of the game in that they really allow you to customize your character and dictate how you play the game.

What's clear about Call of Duty 4 is that it is all about killing and being killed. There are few modes in the online mode that offer anything more than deathmatches. I really wish there was a true "capture the flag" mode, but the closest thing is the "Domination" mode. There are no vehicles by land, sea, or air (unless you count air support). You only have guns and explosives and you're on foot. Nothing illustrates the emphasis on killing more than the "Kill-cam". When you are killed in the online mode, you'll see from the perspective of the enemy exactly how they killed you. There's nothing more humiliating than seeing yourself killed by someone in their "Final Stand" mode (if you have the game, you know what I'm talking about). Recently, they updated the game with a patch that improves the Kill-cam views for some of the more explosive weapons in the game... and they are a hoot to watch:

4/7/2008 - Windmill/Wind Turbine Explosion

Did you ever wonder what happens to windmills when a storm happens with hurricane force winds? Apparently there is a braking mechanism that limits the turbine speed so that it will never go too fast to cause damage. But what happens when the braking mechanism fails and there is a great wind storm? A really cool video:

4/6/2008 - Brawl: Through the Fire and Flames

So I played through most of the Subspace Emissary portion of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and if there's one word to describe it, I would have to say it is "epic". Sure, the story may be a bit nonsensical, and having no dialog hurts it, but having all the Smash Bros. characters band together for one adventure is something that must be experienced for sure. The one grating aspect of the whole thing was the overuse of the Brawl theme song that is supposed to be some kind of Latin operatic. It would be fine, I guess, if the music was great and catchy, but it really is not in my opinion. And when I'm playing a fighting game, opera is the last thing on my mind. The Subspace Emissary campaign would have been far better served with say, Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames" as this video demonstrates:



Now that's more like it... and kudos to the editor of this video which is one of the most impressive syncing jobs I've seen for a music video.

4/5/2008 - Super Polystation II in Kazakhstan

Ashens may be the king of pirated software and hardware demonstrations, but this guy comes close. "Dziekuje" claims to be from Kazakhstan and he's showing off the Super Polystation II in this video:



It almost seems natural that a Borat-like character would be the one to review this turkey. Just look at the games... they're obvious rip-offs of games like Mega Man and Double Dragon with the faces of the main characters replaced with Mario! It's actually pretty hilarious when you see it in action. The thing is, we here in the U.S. are so used to seeing the official sprites that we can't imagine how people in third-world countries would view these games when watching them for the very first time. In fact, perhaps having the main character be someone without a beard or mustache would be sacrilege for them!

4/3/2008 - Super Clean Glass Prank

I pride myself on my neatness... you know, everything in its place and so forth. Organization and cleanliness requires effort and I actually disdain cursive writing, for example, because it can be sloppy due to laziness of the writer. I didn't think that anything could be TOO clean. Well, I was wrong:

4/2/2008 - iPod with NES controller

As much as I respect the geeks out there who produce these creative mods of tech products, sometimes I think they're nuts. I mean, it's great being able to show off all these skills, but isn't there a more practical way they can contribute to society? Take this mod, for example. It's the coolest thing, alright: an iPod with Linux installed just so it can play a modified version of Doom. But that's not the extent of the mod. They took a regular old NES controller and added an iPod docking port to it so it can control your character in Doom!



As impressed as I am with this, I can't help but think that it's not going to win the Nobel Prize for engineering.

4/1/2008 - You've been Rickrolled

I wouldn't be doing my job as the YouTube Addict if I didn't inform you about the whole "Rickroll" phenomenon, and today being April Fools, there's no better time. Have you ever been enticed by a link to a YouTube video by an interesting or even titillating title or description, and all you got was a video of a cheesy 80's music video? Well, you've been "Rickrolled", my friend. The music video is actually of Rick Astley's "Never gonna give you up" and it certainly hasn't aged well.

I don't know who started the trend, but it has suddenly exploded as an internet meme. It has all culminated to this day, when all of the technology websites out there collectively pull their April Fools pranks out of their bag and unsurprisingly most are using the Rickroll in some way. YouTube itself got into the act earlier this week by stating that the Rickroll phenomenon has eaten up so much of their bandwidth that they were going to pull all of Astley's music video. Well what did they decide to do this morning? They linked all of their featured videos on the front page to the music video. Yes, they set everybody up to take the fall. It was probably one of the better April Fools pranks I've seen to date.

So what is all the hubbub about? What does it really mean to be Rickrolled? Well, here's the video:



Oops, did I just fool you? You weren't Rickrolled... you were bitchslapped! :)