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it will be added to the list!
 DOT
: To Google's
"like, totally radical, man!" salute to the 1980's hit, Pac-Man,
on the arcade game's 30th anniversary. If you logged onto
their main page in late May you may have noticed that the Google logo
was hidden within a rendition of the classic arcade game, Pac-Man. If
you waited long enough, the title comes to life! Though hey; Pac-man
isn't moving. Then you use the arrow keys on your keyboard as a lark, and
discover: it's interactive! Cooooooool...and with all the classic game sounds no less.
Get past level two and you even get to see the classic level 2 cinematic
of a larger pac man chasing the ghosts away. What a fitting salute to a
game superstar!
  Slash : To
ABC's Funniest Home Videos,
for taking a great idea and turning it into a farce of the worse variety. The
great idea: make a two-part show, saluting the 20 best videos in the
show's past 20 years. Brilliant! Few younger viewers remember some of
the "classic" videos from the early 90's, so why not salute them? Bring on the baseball catcher that lost
his pants while jumping to catch a ball (the first 100 grand winner
BTW), the baby panda that sneezed so hard he made his mother panda jump
a mile, and hey, by
all means: bring back the first episodes, with all the hilarious voice
over work! Well, forget all that, because this faux list of "top 20
best" included...a kid blowing candles off his birthday cake? Does
this faux "funniest video ever" even count as "funny"...?
Number one "funniest video" was a practical joke that was so staged, you
would swear it was filmed by a Broadway veteran. Supposedly; a pair of
boys were "surprised" by dad, minutes after watching Texas Chainsaw
Massacre on TV. So supposedly dad conveniently had a Texas chainsaw
massacre costume available, just minutes after they saw the movie? Wow,
how conveniently...humorless. Words cannot describe how many classic
funny video moments were stubbed by this "top 20" list. What a waste of
a good idea.
DOT
: To iTunes, for
knowing when to cool it with the iPad craze. Okay; so iPad launched the
first weekend of April, and suddenly the "app" store on iTunes was
completely iPad-centric. Every app page was filled with exclusive iPad
games, iPad utilities, and so on. It was enough to have me throw my iPOD
across the room thinking it was obsolete. Fortunately, no; as early as
Monday the iTunes store was back to normal, offering me my iPOD apps as
always, with no need to shuffle through all the iPad software, looking
for compatible iPod software. Does this make any sense? Well, that's the
point. It could have gotten very confusing, yet Apple had made iTunes
sane again, for all us iPod users without the ca$h for one of those
nifty iPads. Thanks for not forgetting us iPod users, Apple. It's very
appreciated.
Slash : To
the (extremely!) odd way that Microsoft is "praising" Windows 7.
The ads are all similar in theme: someone dreamed of a Windows that
would someday do this or that, and now Windows 7 is here, and by the
way: "Windows 7 was my idea," or so they all say. Here's the first
problem: their "ideas" for Windows 7 were available as far back as
Windows 95! One guy is impressed that Windows 7 allows multiple windows
on screen at once. Dude?!? That was the whole point of Windows, as far
back as Windows 3.1! That is why they call it Windows
and not "WINDOW." Get it? Another ad praises Windows 7 for allowing the
user to allow for an external monitor on their laptop. Gosh, maybe I'm
just the most lucky Windows user alive, though I remember doing this on
my Windows Me laptop back in 2001. Oh, and the French girl who wants us
to bow because her idea was better than all of us stinking Americans?
Give it a rest, girl! What's next; praising Windows 7 for allowing us
all to play this amazing new game called TETRIS? Enough!
DOT
: To Flashforward, for
pleasing its fans, even if there are fewer fans than hoped for. To wit
---and keeping away as many spoilers as possible--- the episode that
aired Thursday, April 22nd was a "fan"-tastic episode (sorry; I couldn't
resist the pun), where one of the most pivotal moments of the series,
allegedly, had a character killed. Well, no sooner can you say "no fate
but what we make" then the character is saved. Even better, to appease
the "how could this be so" techno-geeks; the villain of the episode
explains that the future is NOT SET YET, and in fact; he saw many
glimpses into the future and all of them were different. The bad news:
all the branches of time that involved this character's survival were
bad ones, leading to (yeah you probably guess this right?) the end of
the world. However, I have to give an additional, mini-
 "dot" to
the series' writers, for making the "end of the world" 2016, and not the
clichéd "2012" we keep hearing about lately. In short: great episode.
Too bad too few people saw it at all (so few, in fact, the series might
not get renewed for next season).
Slash
: To the incredibly, unbelievably, and infuriatingly
annoying idiot (and I do not use the term IDIOT lightly here), who keeps
on posting SPAM on any number of popular online GAME forums, about --no,
I am not kidding here--- SHOES. Yes, you read that right. Some goofus is
constantly spamming the most popular game sites because his web site
offers various shoes at discount prices. Remember the early years of
Flash video, where some ad that had nothing to do with what you
were reading about would pop on the screen, right in front of
what you were reading? Well, imagine that annoyance, times a hundred. No
sooner do you read a review about, say, Bioshock 2, then you want to see
what gamers think of it. Unfortunately, you can't! Some idiot is talking
about shoes; again...and again...and again...and again...and...wait for
it...again.There's a Nike Sale! There's an Adidas Sale! There's a sock
sale! There's a sale of so many shoes you want to stop reading about
games and go buy a shoe right now...except, not. Seriously; what is this
shoe salesman thinking? Enough, dude!
DOT
: To the makers of
Prince of Persia, who decided to not simply re-issue The Sands
of Time alongside the upcoming movie: they decided to re-imagine
the game instead. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands will be
a sequel of sorts, for both the game and the movie. In short: it is what
happens in the seven years after The Sands of Time, and just
before its sequel, The Warrior Within. That sounds a lot better
than a simple re-release of the original classic game...which, if you
were interested, is available over at
Good Old Games for a paltry $9.99. If you never played it, by all
means buy it. If any game would lead to a decent film series, this is
it. Not that it will. It just might. You know. Maybe.
Slash : To
a recent Lost episode, and that annoying "Countdown until V returns"
timer! Talk about bad timing (pun not intended): this countdown timer
was chosen on an episode involving the lovable Korean couple Jin and
Sun. The problem? THe majority of their dialog is in subtitles...and
that infernal V countdown clock made the subtitles even harder to read.
In fact; the final "conversation" between Jack and a suddenly mute Sun
was impossible to "read," thanks to Sun's memo pad notes being
completely blocked by the V countdown clock. If we promise to set our
DVRs for V, ABC, will you keep the countdowns away?
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