Samantha Jackson

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy has started his Groundhog Day partying a day early, so today we bring you a special guest column by Samantha Jackson.]

In a crafted publicity stunt, Canadian game developer Bioware “declared war” against American game developer Blizzard, claiming that the new Bioware MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, would topple Blizzard’s industry-dominating juggernaut, World of Warcraft.

Despite the fact that Blizzard is an over-the-hill runway model living in denial of reports of declining interest, they will not be wrenched from their throne by Bioware (“The Booty Call When Bethesda’s On The Rag”). Nobody from the old school of MMORPG development (Sony/Everquest, Runescape) can offer a comparative experience and nothing new (Sony/DC Universe, Bioware) can match their content volume and formulated player-character development.

In ways, Bioware makes a valiant effort – there are a lot of positive things to say about SWTOR:

• The voice acting is superb and culled from a geek’s wet dream. For example, the male bounty hunter player character is voiced by Steve Blum, voice of anime bounty hunter Spike Spiegel of Cowboy Bebop. The male Jedi Knight is David Hayter, familiar as Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series.
• The game rewards are epic; from early levels, you will travel in a vehicle roughly the size of your first real-life apartment. Your cloak and your dagger are gleaned from legendary sources (and don’t need “legendary” in the title).
• The map and transportation systems are the best I’ve ever seen in a video game. You will never feel that you are tediously wandering and will rarely have to wait for a cool-down if you want to quick-travel home.
• The money system is balanced. In the beginning of the game, you receive money hand over fist. As you advance in level, you are expected to prioritize your spending.
• The storytelling is rife with canon. Often, in games with good stories, the stories stand alone and “hint” at the source material, slowly leaking references like Easter Eggs. Most quests in this game relive pre-existing storylines and solve long-standing riddles.
• Space combat is great fun, highly rewarding and reminiscent of StarFox. You can advance several levels in the game just by performing the daily space missions.
• The characters are well-rounded in their performance abilities and an assortment of companions (pets) allows you to craft a party suited to your gaming style. From the early points in the game, you can customize your weapons and armor. Companions have varied abilities, allowing you to favor a defensive class, a damage class or a healing class.
• The game is beautiful. The worlds are sprawling, unique and filled to capacity with things to see and do. There is very little of the “copy-pasted dirt” that we’ve seen in other MMOs. If you need to kill something, it’s right behind you, and then, you’ll move on to a new town. It never gets boring.

My favorite element is that the quests are extraordinarily well-written:

Immediately after starting a campaign (Republic and Empire alike), I wanted to fight for my causes. Whether I wanted to avenge a highly-likable character, or whether I wanted to hunt down the bastard who wronged me, I felt driven with actual purpose to continue the game. It wasn’t about levels or gear; I wanted the levels and gear for the story.

The drama is more intense than a season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, and it never lets up. I’ve dabbled in all eight classes, and every class makes you feel like revenge, redemption or fortune is just around the corner. Also, though the main stories are compelling, the side-quests are equally interesting. You’ll discover that an officer’s wife is treasonous and decide their fate. You’ll hunt down two Jedis who fled the Academy to realize their love. You’ll interact with a score of wholly believable characters fighting, for good or evil, with great conviction. The player is always made to feel like a critical component in an epic tale.

That said, the game is not without epic flaws:

• There is no high resolution. The best you’ll get is “medium,” a sort of mid-grade Morrowind-esque look. Your armor doesn’t move well and you are frequently impaled on your sword. The world backdrops look great, though.
• Bugs. I’ve never seen bugs like this game has bugs. You can crawl through an entire dungeon, only to discover the boss is “missing.” You can fall through the floor, or be ejected into space. “Dancing” renders you invincible. Quests simply “don’t work,” which is to say your quest objective doesn’t exist, or characters refuse to accept turn-ins. When that quest is your “class quest line,” and a bug prevents you from advancing in the game, it can be very frustrating. And if you start the game and can’t move, you’ll have to “turn off shadows” in the preferences menu.
• No party roles. There is no such thing as a classic class. You can’t be a tank, because tanks can’t “taunt,” and therefore cannot hold the attention of enemies and prevent them from crushing other characters. You can’t be a healer, because no class in the game can heal well enough, fast enough, to keep multiple players alive. You can’t be a damage class, because most “damage classes” wear light armor and you will be punched in the cloth until you die. Everybody is a jack of all trades, and master of none.
• Kill-and-fetch. It is absolutely necessary to complete almost every quest in the game. If you focus solely on your class quests, you will quickly find yourself outmanned. As much as you would like to follow the Sith or Jedi path, you will have to go out and kill (10) (Octopi) or you will be mercilessly smited.
• Your quest-givers are given to whimsy. At level 31, you may not be offered a level 32 quest, but you may be offered a level 40 quest. Also, although the automatic “quest tracker” is nice, there is no indicator as to the level of difficulty. You find out when you get there and the enemy drops a building on you.
• Space Combat. Trying to discern a turret from a generator as it flies by in the distance in sub-par graphics is just impossible.
• Speeches. You could make a sandwich in the time it takes to hear the story of a sidequest. Then, the quest-giver will send you to meet his wife, Olga, who will tell you the recipe to the bread she was baking when you interrupted her work. The dog will bark and she’ll have to start all over again. The entire Advent Children film didn’t have as much dialogue as you’ll hear in your first level of play. But skipping text is like playing Russian Roulette, because NPCs are notorious for spazzing out and shooting you in the face – usually during quest turn-ins.
• Humans and more Humans. There aren’t “race options” as much as there are “costume options.” Humans with red skin, humans with horns, humans with masks.

But my biggest complaint is the Companion mechanic: They are ill-matched, grossly frustrating and the romances are a blasphemy against humanity.

My suspicion that George Lucas is a virgin (as he adopted all three of his children) have been all but confirmed by this video game.

Good game dialogue can be identified by a simple test: If you remove the game elements from conversation, you could imagine people having this conversation in real life. Bioware is hilariously bad at this, but Lucas gives us the impression that his social experiences have been limited to sock puppetry.

Other than to frustrate the audience with what The Undersexed And Maladjusted view as a realistic relationship dynamic, I can’t fathom why the designers paired each character with a hostile and incompatible figure, then assigned said figure the directive to bitch and whine for the entire goddamned game. “I hate this.” “I hate you.” “Can I get some ice cream?” “My feet are tired.” “All my friends at school will make fun of me if I’m friends with a Sith.”

I can’t stand them and there is no escape. Like the 35-year-old child living with his parents (the apparent demographic), they hate them but need them to survive. If you don’t defy your chosen nature, your companions’ performance will suffer (and they will essentially steal money from you and sabotage your creative efforts). The game compels you to be Darth Fauntleroy or Jedi Master Lucifer. Even then, there is limited success. And they won’t shut up.

The first companion of the Sith Warrior is Vette.

Like Yvette, but forget about the “why.”

Lucas, who also thought you would wet yourself with delight over Gungans, thinks you want to fuck Twi’leks.

Not the Zeltron, the pink-skinned giant-breasted humans that sweat ecstasy …

No, not you, you kinky freak.

Lucas knows what you want – You want the flat-chested thing with dicks growing out of its head (link NSFW).

I would say that, since Vette wears a shock collar, you could just shock the shit out of her and rape her to death, but nine years ago, we discovered that attaching electrodes to the body of the person you are penetrating is like sticking your dick in a warming toaster and jumping into the bathtub.

Vette hates everything dark and mean, so pairing her with the Sith Warrior leaves you with a dynamic of Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler on a picnic. It’s fun for an hour, but the novelty wears off quick … especially when Adolf relies on Anne to heal him in battle and she decides she’d rather watch him die.

I was delighted when I obtained my next companion, Malavai Quinn. A cardboard evil General, his personality coincides with the murder and mayhem I want to spread.
I apologize if I’m about to spoil something for you, but I’d want to know before I invested a great deal of time, energy and money into him. You get him at Level 20. At Level 45, you learn his friendship was a ruse and he attempts to kill you.

I was so angry when I discovered this that I stopped playing the game for a week.
I’m reading on the forums that this should be expected, because we are “dark side.” We should expect manipulation and betrayal from our people.

While plausible, this idea makes me feel like I’m not the target audience for this game, because I don’t want to get screwed by the people I train and clothe. I don’t like feeling I’ve been robbed, and telling me it’s a plot mechanic coinciding with the choice I made smells of “you got raped because of the clothes you wore.” It’s an after-the-fact transfer of blame when a bad call was brought to light, not a reasonable explanation.

I don’t expect that you’ll play Jedi, because the servers lean heavily toward the Empire, but the light side is no better. My Smuggler’s companion wants to watch the world burn and would be perfectly matched with my Sith Warrior. He is particularly ill-suited for the Smuggler, who are capable of massive AOE damage, because his first attack is a rope mechanism that jerks the enemy to his location … and out of my blast radius.

Seconds later, when he whines for assistance, it’s tempting to let the fool die.

There are several kinds of players who would enjoy this game:

• Obviously, Star Wars fans. If you enjoyed playing Knights of the Old Republic, you’ll probably enjoy this game.
• If you enjoyed “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, you’ll probably like this game. The writing style is similar.
• If you enjoyed older, more complex MMOs, like the younger incarnation of Everquest, you’ll like the updated, but similar, feel of this game.
• If you enjoy console RPGs, particularly the 120-hour J-pop variety, you will probably enjoy this game.
• Bioware fans looking to exploring MMORPG gaming.
• Lonely people. The game pedestals you as the most amazing person in the world.

There are several kinds of players who will hate this game:

• WoW players. While it was a cheap ploy to antagonize a warlike demographic and pit it against their own cult, that’s not why Warcraft players won’t like this game. Warcraft is streamlined and specialized; this game is clumsy in its class development and vague in its execution.
• Alpha players. This game is going to break on you on an hourly basis, and no amount of power, technology or money will change that.
• Power Raiders. Between the broken dungeons, the lack of dungeon classes and the absence of raiders refusing to play the game for those two reasons, this game may frustrate you.
• Players who prefer achievement over story. In this game, the former is more a consequence of the latter.
• Powerlevelers and Twinks. Due to the organic style of development, rushing your character will leave you a weak shell with a senseless junkpile of uncoordinated abilities.

Overall, it’s a good game. It’s a new and different contribution to a genre polluted with countless imitations. It’s a fun story experience and worth a test. It’s ground-breaking in the MMORPG environment, but not ground-breaking for a Bioware game, meaning that familiar Bioware mechanics have merely been translated to a new format. If Bioware would patch the game-breaking bugs, the game would be much more enjoyable. I enjoy playing it; it’s not my favorite MMORPG, but it’s far from my least favorite.

I give it a 7/10.

It would be a 9/10 if they repaired the bugs and amended the companions.

By Brian Shea

[Editor's Note: With apologies to Ned Bitters, today we bring you a special guest column by Brian Shea.]

Just a few hours after R.E.M. broke up last week, I saw the most important question of the day posted on a friend’s Facebook wall: “Who is more overrated: R.E.M. or U2?”

Before we analyze the answer, let’s take a good look at the question. The author asked who is more “overrated,” meaning that we intend to examine something completely colored by personal perception. There is no right or wrong answer, except for the fact that the right answer is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, U2.

Like I said, this relies completely on a personal feeling. You cannot measure music objectively no matter how much you try. Except when you try and determine which of these two bands is better.

As an R.E.M. fan, I completely acknowledge the band’s shortcomings. Michael Stipe, between the times he is obfuscating the meaning of his lyrics or texting photos of his junk, continues to write the same three or four songs over and over again. And no one can ever forgive them for half the songs on “Around the Sun.”

Those things still come nowhere close to the pact with the devil that U2 made somewhere back in the early 1990s. Sure, “Bad Day” is just the early draft of “It’s the End of the World,” which was re-tooled when R.E.M. needed to fill out a greatest hits album, but at least the men from Georgia don’t need to drink of the blood of a virginal goat once a week to fulfill their pact with Satan.

I’m not saying that the four members of U2 have to do that. I think it’s restricted to just Bono and the Edge because the other two guys – who I think have legally changed their names to “The Other Guys in U2 … Really” – are tied up in a basement somewhere in order to keep this pact secret.

(Sidebar: Shouldn’t we restrict taking guys in their 50s who use nicknames seriously to professional wrestling and porn stars? Just a thought.)

Anyways, the answer to the question truly boiled down to one very simple distinction for me. One band has a memorable catalog pocked by a few big misses in an attempt to explore different musical interests.

The other had a really cool stage for their last tour.

As I discussed the question at hand with some people online, I had to keep returning to that fact. Sure, U2 sold out a shitload of concerts last year and has a huge international profile, but when I talked to people who went to see their concert in Baltimore last year, that seemed to be the constant refrain.

“The stage was amazing.”

You can talk all you want about the necessity to build a big stage for a stadium show, but no one forced U2 to play stadiums. You can say the demand is there for that kind of crowd, but does the demand come from the spectacle or the music? You can say that the money earned on the tour “proves” that U2 is a better band, but declaring musical ability based on concert success is a slippery slope.

So basically you have two bands, one of which has released nine new albums since 1991; the other which has released six. One has remained close to its grass roots along the way, choosing to tour when it makes sense; the other has never met a corporate tie-in it doesn’t love. Both of them have maintained the ability to produce a chart-topping album, particularly in Europe.

Deciding which one is overrated really comes down to – as I said in the beginning – personal preference. And if you prefer a bunch of guys who drove album sales through an iPod commercial over a bunch of buys whose only real corporate tie-in came from a Chris Elliot television show, I don’t know what to say except I hope you know that virginal goats die for your choice every week.

Brian Shea used to write for HoboTrashcan, but like Gladys Knight, he left us Pips behind to write for his own site, Regular Guy Column.

By Brian Shea

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy is busy putting the lime in the coconut and drinking them both up, so this week we bring you a special guest column by former HoboTrashcan writer Brian Shea.]

Like many of you, I can’t believe the financial situation we find ourselves in right now. The decision-makers have totally screwed this up, and it will take generations to undo this completely capricious decision.

I am talking, of course, of the decision to split Netflix into separate plans for those who use the streaming service and those who like to get DVDs in the mail.

If you live under a rock or don’t equate how you get your digital media with the most basic of human rights, you might have missed the news. Each plan now costs $7.99 per month. Previously, you could get streaming and a basic DVD plan for $9.99. Those outraged point out that customers interested in both the streaming and DVD plans will see a price hike of 60 percent. SIXTY PERCENT!!!!

Or, in layman’s terms, about six bucks.

I did not know that six dollars a month – roughly 1.50 a week, somewhere around 20 cents a day – defined the line between responsible pricing for space-age media delivery and thoughtless corporate skull fucking.

Without a doubt, the reaction from some Netflix customers (I saw one post on their blog that only 10 people would retain the service after this outrage) falls into the category which comedian Louis CK defined as “Everything’s great, nobody’s happy.”

In case you haven’t noticed, Netflix allows you to sit in front of your television and use a wireless controller to send signals to a box (in my case, a Wii), which sends signals to a computer, which contacts another computer, which sends a digital file of what you want to see to your television so you can watch it. And you can pause it to take a leak or get a beer whenever you want.

Netflix also lets you get a DVD in the mail, watch it, ship it back (without having to pay postage) and then get a new DVD in a day or two based on the list you input into a computer one night when you had a few beers and took your pants off and you have no idea how all these sexually-themed indie movies ended up on your list.

And people are pissed that it costs $16 to get each of these services? Sixteen dollars to see as many movies and TV shows as you want either on your computer or your gaming system or your Roku box, as well as on DVDs you get in the mail? This is an outrage how?
I don’t think Netflix has a completely perfect service. They really need to beef up the offerings on the streaming package (I don’t need DVDs in the mail so have always opted for this deal). I can understand that a lot of political and business reasons explain why I can’t get the most recent movies or certain TV shows (like the current ABC Wednesday night comedy block).

But that doesn’t mean I stomp my feet and hold my breath and start online petitions and scream that I am being “forced” to cancel my subscription when, in truth, we have lots of choices out there. We don’t have to use “Netfux” as some genius dubbed the company. Go use Blockbuster or Hulu Plus or whoever if you’re pissed off. The rest of us don’t really care. You have every right to dislike this decision, but treating it as an abhorrent violation of your human rights just makes you look like a tool.

The reality is that we’re not defined by how we get our media now matter how much the loudest screamers want us to believe that. The Netflix streaming option fits exactly what my wife, daughter and I want so we supplement things with trips to a local Redbox for the newer movies we really, really want to see on DVD.

That’s what happened the other night when my wife spent the afternoon re-watching Downton Abbey on Netflix and I rented The Social Network for a buck to entertain us in the evening. I managed to pull it off without screaming and yelling about how Netflix was “forcing” me to swipe my credit card at the Redbox.

I’m sorry to break this to you, kiddies, but no one is screwing you. You can still get an assload of movies (and TV shows) in multiple formats for less than two tickets to the movies. I don’t think companies can just raise rates without any reaction from customers, but if you stop and think, really think, about what you can get for $16, you might not be searching for which symbols to insert after the letter ‘f’ to show how you are winning the outrage contest that all Internet commenter are eternally competing in.

Brian Shea used to write for HoboTrashcan, but like Gladys Knight, he left us Pips behind to write for his own site, Regular Guy Column.

Nicole Alexandria

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy is searching for the meaning of life, so today we bring you another special guest column by confessed hipster Nicole Alexandria.]

The first line of my internet dating profile says: “I’m kind of a cunt.”

As I’ve learned over the years, dating is more or less the most ridiculous thing ever, and it seemed appropriate to start off just as absurd. I go on to state how periodically I sit at work and research how difficult it would be to steal a boat and run an illegal riverboat gambling operation. I’d name the boat the “Mint Julep” and have burlesque shows once a month. And how I spend a lot of time thinking how it sucks that now that I’m old enough to afford it, I’m too old to go to space camp. And how I’m usually pretty good at out drinking people.

I get at least 10 messages a day.

Dating is so much more defined in your late twenties then it ever was in the 10+ or so years I’ve been dating. There are two distinct types of daters the older you get: those who are ready to settle down, and those who are not. Dating has far less to do with you and who you are then it does with preconceived notions of what the other person wants. Who you are as a person really has no bearing on anything unless it matches the other person’s agenda.

Those who are ready to settle have a very distinct list of criteria. Whether it be an adequate career, lack of baggage, huge wallets or child bearing hips, much more then I can ever remember you will be judge based on a specific set of questions on the very first date. What kind of job you have and what music you like seem to be the most predominate basis of how people judge you are. To be a contrarian, instead of copying and pasting my iTunes playlist, I listed about 50 books in mine because I’d rather be judged on liking Rushdie’s Satanic Verses over periodically enjoying a Black Eyed Peas song while jogging.

Playing into this theory, often when I am on a first date and it becomes apparent that I am being critiqued on my answered to cookie cutter questions, I start asking a list of my own. Typically I start with what type of liquor do you like. I’ve discovered that much like how you can judge people irrationally on their like of Dave Matthews Band, you can do the same with alcohol preferences. Usually I don’t get along with vodka drinkers as I find their love of flavoring to be amateurish, which is an indication of their character as a whole. Those who can bear a stomach full of whiskey or gin is more my cup of tea. Tequila drinkers are obviously crazy and need to be avoided at all costs. Is there any real merit to my hypothesis? Absolutely not. It’s completely stupid and childish. But so is labeling me on my love of indie movies, or that my favorite color is green, or my super liberal day job of social worker.

The other type of dater isn’t ready to settle down. Which is fine and perfectly dandy. Except at this age they are seasoned enough to know to hide that fact from you. It kills me every time. You go out and talk for hours. You both have a great time. The chemistry is seemingly great. And you never hear from them again …

Time for the giant loophole!

At any age, if you are deemed attractive enough, you could basically have nothing in common with someone and the other person will disregard everything they thought they wanted for the love of tits (or ass if it’s their preference). You can do crazy things like say you’re kind of a cunt and still average about 10 messages a day on a stupid dating website.

(I wouldn’t ever write anywhere that I was attractive because in all honesty I think I’m somewhere in the middle, but if you want to appraise for yourself, check the archives of this site’s Just Friends section. I’m there twice.)

The same great lists of criteria people have will be disregarded as magically those judgmental people think they can change you. One of my more less than pleasant dates in recent history was with a starch republican with whom I spent two hours arguing over politics after he voiced his concerns with dating a liberal. It started with me more or less defending my day job as a social worker, which more times than not depends on that pesky thing where people pay their taxes. Although I attempted to change the subject several times, he continued until I conceded out of boredom in his attack of my ideals as it was very clear we had nothing in common. He misunderstood my surrender, and was surprised that I never returned his calls or text messages.

Moreover, those who aren’t ready to settle will still be not ready to settle. But if you use my past three relationships as a guide, if deemed attractive/awesome enough they’ll stick around for several months just until things are about to get serious and then flee. A weird side effect of this is they also try to keep you as a friend. In a mind boggling way it’s flattering. It’s like being deemed worthy and important enough to be kept around by a wild stallion, but it’s just not ultimately in the capacity you want.

So in conclusion, dating is the suck. It doesn’t get better with age. All you can hope for is maybe finding the right one someday to take you away from all this mess.

But when you break it all down, I’m not terribly surprised I’m still single.

After all, I am kind of a cunt.

Nicole Alexandria

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy if off again acting "like a boss," so today we bring you another special guest column by confessed hipster Nicole Alexandria.]

I have always been fascinated with people watching even from an early age.

I was the kid in grade school who at recess would sit alone reading a book in the corner secretly watching people, seeing how they act towards each other. It wasn’t because I was the awkward ugly kid as much as I never really could stand the way people interact. Once a month one of the most popular girls in school would see me sitting there alone and ask me if I wanted to hang out with her. I would always turn her down, because I couldn’t understand why she was always flocked with girls who worshiped her.

Reality television for all its ridiculous, disheartening or even soul crushing merits, allows you to socially analyze individuals, families or other groups on a grand scale that you might not otherwise come near in a natural setting. I would even go as far as stating reality television is the closest society will ever get to a human form of a zoo. You take a sect of human, place it in a cage that somewhat resembles its normal habitat and put it on display as people watch and observe hoping to see a grand fight for survival or scandalous mating ritual.

If you turn on your television you can pretty much find any sub-sect of American culture represented. On any particular day of the week you can see what it’s like to be married as midgets. Or married to a rap star. Or be a spoiled rich brat who never had to work a day in their life. You can watch as people fight, cry, whine, sleep together or completely fail at life without having a guilty conscious. You can watch drug addicts strive to recover. Or hoarders. Or cops arrest criminals. For a while you could even see people go through extreme surgeries to be more commercially attractive. You can even watch as a seemingly normal marriage with far too many children crumbles before your very eyes on national television. Welcome to the human zoo. Enjoy. Sometimes if you’re lucky, the more odd ones will even do sideshow tricks.

I would argue the greatest example of this one television right now is Sister Wives on TLC. In an unprecedented look of a real polygamist family, you see social and familial structures that haven’t been explored previously due to the legal implications of outing themselves. Actively married to three women already, the male protagonist courts and marries a much younger and skinnier bubbly woman WHILE continuing to sleep with the aging, much more plump and seemingly more rigid previous wives. It’s almost revolutionary. But wait! It gets better. Skinny Wife Number Four moves into a house rent free and is partially supported by Major Bread Winner Wife Number Two and not a single cat fight is hinted at on the horizon. It’s genius. Does welfare know about this? How is this even illegal?

Despite being a ridiculous premise, the family somehow works. They seem totally normal and, even dare I say it, loving. The wives actively support each other. One takes care of the others children while at work and another does food shopping. The children (which could easily populate their own football team) grow up together in a loving environment as opposed to the bitter separation of several broken homes. They all seem relatively well-adjusted, which is uncommon in the reality TV world. The male patriarch, who seemingly always has a smile on his face (at least on camera) – arguably because when one wife has a headache there are three other options to choose from – seems like a loving and doting father who cares for each of this children immensely. Each is fed, clothed, clean and happy. It almost forces you to say, “Well shit, who am I to judge?”

It’s also surprising, to anyone not from a small area in Utah, how common polygamous marriages actually are. It’s easy for an American to look at countries where polygamy is common place as different or inferior, but this is on mainland soil. These are Americans. Just like you. Who if you saw on the street would seem like normal and rational people. All of the woman who entered the marriage were also from polygamous families themselves. Each grew up with the idea that multiple wives were an asset and not a creepy loophole for their husband to sleep around. The third wife even went as far as saying in one episode that she wouldn’t want to be married to a man alone. That statement must make anyone interested in psychology salivate.

I wouldn’t enter a polygamous marriage myself, but then again, I’d never spray my skin orange and sleep with as many women as I could on national television either. But as long as I’m not off doing more important things, I’ll watch.

Why not. Welcome to the monkey house.

Nicole Alexandria

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy is out doing uncool things, so today we bring you a special guest column by confessed hipster Nicole Alexandria.]

I know we just met, but there really isn’t any diplomatic way to skirt around the issue so I’ll be blunt. I am what people commonly refer to as a … hipster.

I am so sorry. I assure you it wasn’t a decision I made consciously. I didn’t wake up one day and say, “God damn I look good in giant glasses without a prescription. I think I’ll toast my aesthetically pleasing genius with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer!”

My realization didn’t come with a look in any mirror as to what mistakenly horrible fashion choices I made. (Although I have to say in an effort to maintain full disclosure, I look pretty damn good in a good pair of skinny jeans and I rock a pair of Samba Classics while riding my vintage Schwinn to the local coffee shop with the best of them). No, my epiphany was far, far worse. I recognized an abnormally high level of pretension within myself. Not only was I pretentious, but that it was specifically targeted towards the mainstream world and how it distorts all that is great into an over-commercialized watered down version of itself.

To be fair though, mainstream culture really isn’t giving me much to work with. It astounds me that a little boy who can’t sing also has one of the highest grossing movies of the year in which he doesn’t act either. Apparently you can become rich and famous for having cool bangs. And if you see two poor crazy women fighting on the street most logical people would call the cops, but if you said women have money and hair extensions you can make a television show out of it and call it “Real.”

Prior to this jolt in my self awareness, I had just assumed that I was intolerant due to my long lineage of being born and raised in the great city of Philadelphia. Anyone who has watched sports in the last few decades would agree that Philadelphia takes the concept of “hating” to a near professional level. It’s just who we are. We take your town’s amateur heckling, and we vomit all over you adolescent daughter with it. (To be fair, that fan was from Jersey. There is nothing good about you or what you do, New Jersey.)

I can pinpoint the entire basis of my inner hipster on one thing and one thing alone. I don’t have cable. I can’t afford it. I stream just about everything on the Internet, and when you have to put in an effort to search and pirate you become far more selective in what you watch and don’t. The remote control makes settling for whatever crap cable station tries to pass for entertainment far too easy. A simple click of a button in a weird way earns the less then mediocre quality and warrants it passable. Every week when you post those great lines from the latest episode of the Jersey Shore on your Facebook walls, I just assume the Apocalypse is near. The few episodes I’ve seen appear to be a loophole in it being politically correct to point and laugh at mentally challenged people who have a rare skin deformity that make then orange. Too many carrots maybe?

Does this mean that you can actually stream radio stations that play music that isn’t Nickleback? And there are books written by people not recommended by Oprah? Just how deep does the rabbit hole go?

One day you wake up reading a book called Confessions of an English Opium Eater because modern stories of heroine addictions are so cliche and find yourself saying you miss the old music of a band people that’s just starting to be able to feed themselves off the money they make playing music. Or worse, you only like the original versions of great songs, which seemingly always in a six degrees of Kevin Bacon way can be traced to the old great Blues artist on Cadillac Records like Billy Holiday or Howlin Wolf. How’s that for pretentious?

I would welcome cable back into my life completely if it became affordable in the future, however I have to tell you, once the withdraw subsides, it’s really very nice to not be sold everything I buy through commercial advertising. I’m not brainwashed into seeing a movie with glittery effects like dramatic montages, or snippets of humor, or explosions and boobs. Which leaves more money for beer.

And I don’t care what you say, PBR is delicious.

By Brian Shea

[Editor's Note: Brandi DeLancey is out making a difference in the world, so this week we bring you a special guest column by former HoboTrashcan writer Brian Shea.]

I settled in front of the computer on a Saturday morning. My daughter wanted nothing to do with me, and my wife had left for work. I tried to get a few things done, but kept going back to Twitter and Facebook.

This is typical. I have the attention span of a 10-year-old and a Sheen-like need for attention and validation. Since I have been married 15 years and have a 10-year-old in the house, I need to get those things on the Internet.

So between trying to figure out what music to upload the Amazon Cloud thing and wavering on whether I should actually write something useful, I had an interesting back-and-forth on Twitter about the moods of 10-year-old girls with a guy who is part of a group currently saving television comedy through Twitter.

Bill Lawrence (@vdoozer), the creator of Spin City, Scrubs and Cougar Town (which even he admits is a terrible title for a great show) has a daughter the same age as I do, and he regularly engages his fans in conversation, 140 characters at a time. Apparently, he had as much free time on his hands that morning as I did, so we commiserated.

But he also uses the platform to joke about the regularity of the sex he has with his wife, actress Christa Miller (@ChristaBMiller), trades friendly barbs with Community creator Dan Harmon (@DanHarmon) and promotes an upcoming show featuring former Scrubs star John C. McGinley (@RealJohnnymcG).

I joke when I say that Lawrence – who I have a huge man crush on for full disclosure – is saving television comedy through Twitter, but the efforts of show runners like him, Harmon and Mike Schur of Parks and Recreation (@kentremedous) indicate that shows can reach their fiercely loyal and obsessive audiences through Twitter in a way like never before.

Most fans of The Office have probably read about Steve Carell’s departure from the show online or in a magazine or newspaper. But only the people who follow Schur and Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling, of course) who plays Kelly on the show and serves as one of the main writers, got a glimpse into Michael Scott stories which never managed to get past the writer’s room.

Since the fans who follow these sort of conversations are likely the ones to make sure they watch each week, DVR the show in case they get distracted and buy the DVDs to hear the commentary tracks from the stars and creators, I don’t think I overstate the importance of Twitter for those in the comedy game.

The hard-core fans generally have a pretty solid understanding of what it takes to make a successful comedy. We bristle at the longevity of According to Jim and Two and a Half Men because we appreciate the creative genius it takes to pull off the meta humor of Community and the in-season revamp which allowed Cougar Town to avoid a disastrous end.

This group also connects to like-minded people through services such as Twitter. When Lawrence and Miller jab each other through Twitter or Kaling tells us about her favorite Michael Scott moments, we might pass them on to friends who may give the show a try or develop a greater connection because they got a chance to peek behind the curtain.

But we’re also easily distracted. We have a lot of channels and know how to find something on Netflix or OnDemand when networks mess with the regular schedule or we just can’t wait for the next new episode. Some rush to declare something has “jumped the shark” before it has aired even 40 episodes. This group has a very high percentage of people who think that they can do better than the people currently writing, acting and directing.

So when the people in those positions try and connect with the online hordes as equals, it can go a long way. Sure, you have the rare asshole who just wants to puff their chest and toss around insults, but most fans really appreciate this outreach and develop an even stronger affinity for the shows which value this interaction. Lawrence has jumped on this trend by trying to tap into the 9,000,000 people who follow the Scrubs page on Facebook in an effort to generate more interest in Cougar Town even though his show has received a renewal for next season.

That could mean more viewers or better DVD sales or an increased buzz about a series. Since comedies have to continually fight moronic reality shows for space on prime-time schedules, this could mean the difference between survival and cancellation. What’s more genuine – a letter writing campaign to save a show organized by a magazine or fans having questions answered directly by creators and actors online?

Of course, we all may just be wasting time together. I’m okay if it’s nothing more than that because when I read about the insanity of some people in Hollywood, it’s nice knowing that at least some of them like to spend their Saturday mornings goofing off and annoying their kids.

Brian Shea used to write for HoboTrashcan, but like Gladys Knight, he left us Pips behind to write for his own site, Regular Guy Column.

By Brian Shea

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy isn't here this week, but then again, can you ever really prove that anyone is actually anywhere? When you get right down to it, your perception of other people is nothing more than light bouncing off of them which is then interpreted by your brain. For all you know, Joel Murphy and HoboTrashcan itself are simply figments of your imagination, parts of a world created entirely for you in your mind where you are the only real person alive and everyone else is just make believe.

So really, when you think about it, Joel not turning in a column this week is kind of your fault. So while you ponder the mysteries of this world and blame yourself for a lack of Murphy's Law today, please enjoy this special guest blog post by former HoboTrashcan columnist Brian Shea.]

When wrestling makes the news, it is often for the wrong reasons. Sure, those of us who have competed or stay connected to the sport will never stop hearing the joke about tights vs. required uniform from The Breakfast Club. But there have been controversies about the safety of cutting weight and whether certain moves, shall we say, cross the line of sport.

This whole situation cropped up again recently when Iowa high school sophomore Joel Northrup defaulted to Cassy Herkelman in the first round of the state wrestling tournament. Herkelman was one of two girls to qualify for states in Iowa, the first time this had happened in state history.

So she also became the first girl to win a state match because Northrup, the son of a pastor, thought it was not “appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner” because of the “violence” inherent in wrestling. After the easy win, she lost two matches, one by a relatively close decision, and was eliminated.

I want to approach this from two different angles. Before I give my opinion, the historic nature of this is important.

Joel Northrup is some some poor schlub who had to make a choice. He finished third in the state as a freshman last year for Linn-Mar High School, the alma mater of defending NCAA champion Matt McDonough of the University of Iowa and former Hawkeye national champ Jay Borschel.

The school has had two state placewinners every year since 2002. Northrup, who is home-schooled, but competes for the school, went 35-4 prior to states. He ended up losing in the consolation rounds because defending 103-pound state champ Ty Willers was upset and beat Northrup 3-2 in overtime. He’s a pretty darn good wrestler, which makes his decision to pass up a state championship pretty interesting.

But that’s where I draw the line – at interesting. The news drew attention for good reason, but I think people congratulating Northrup for sticking to his beliefs are missing the boat here. If his family is truly instilling him with faith and respect, he would have wrestled Cassy.

She qualified for the state tournament. She deserves to be treated like any other competitor. She won matches in order to reach this pinnacle. She did not practice every day and work all season to be turned into a cause by someone else.

If life were perfect, states would have unlimited funds to run fully developed gender-neutral wrestling tournament. That’s not the reality though. Cassy Herkelman is a wrestler in the state of Iowa, not a girl wrestler. She didn’t make this about her, but Joel Northrup and his family decided to make it about him.

The sport of wrestling is not sexual or violent unless you want to look at things that way. Shame on the Northrup family for looking past the wonderful lessons that the sport has taught me and many others over the years. They may think they are doing the right thing, but they’re really only looking out for themselves.

Brian Shea used to write for HoboTrashcan, but like Gladys Knight, he left us Pips behind to write for his own site, Regular Guy Column.

Chris Kirkman

[Editor's Note - Aaron R. Davis has the week off, so today we bring you a special guest column by our good friend Chris Kirkman. Kirkman used to write the spectacular Lost: Down the Hatch recaps on this site and now he runs his own website called Dice Hate Me, a blog about his lifelong love of boardgames and the bitter hatred of the dastardly dice usually found within.]

I will happily admit that I’m pretty easy to shop for around the holidays. Any amusing trinket will usually bring me extraordinary glee, especially if it is shiny or has pretty pictures on it. However, when it comes to gifting me games or game-related paraphernalia, the gifter may often find themselves in dangerous territory since, well, I have a lot of stuff. Thus, consider my utter shock and surprise glee when my in-laws presented me with a gaming gift that was both new and incredibly thoughtful – The Games Bible. As I thumbed through the pages after the gift wrap had all been torn asunder, I also began to realize that this little gift deserved yet another adjective – awesome.

The Games Bible, by Leigh Anderson, is a hefty little tome chocked full of all kinds of gaming goodness. The book is broken down into 18 chapters that share the full rules of a diverse set of games that often require nothing more than a pen and paper, a deck of cards, a couple of dice and/or some coins/pawns/matchsticks. The chapters are divided into interesting sets such as Games of General Cleverness, Brainy Games for Two, Indoor Frolics and the intriguing and educational Victorian Parlor Games.

Many games in The Games Bible will be instantly familiar; there is an entire chapter titled A Card-Game Refresher and full rules for other classics such as badminton, croquet and Nine Men’s Morris. However, for every common game like Liar’s Dice, there are even more strange and wonderful entries such as Yoga Ball Jousting, Pussy Wants a Corner and Charles Ate a Goat Testicle in Nigeria (I’m not lying, check out page 22!).

Here, for your sampling pleasure, are excerpts of a handful of games that I found fascinating and noteworthy:

Coup d’Etat

This little mindwar can be found in the Brainy Games for Two category. All you need to play is a standard deck of cards and a handful of nickels and dimes – or simply two different denominations of coins.

Starting setup

The gist of the game is thus: the two players are rulers of rival factions/kingdoms/governments. Each wants to find the other faction’s leader and assassinate him, or use influence to turn the people against their ruler in a coup. At the start of each game, the players secretly arrange their “country” by laying out specific cards, face down, in a six by three-card grid in front of them. These cards will be the King (the leader), as well as his court, an Ace, which can be used as an assassin and number cards two through eight, which represent the populace. Players then place five coins, heads up, on the top of cards in the row closest to them. These are the players’ spies, and they are used to move along the grid, uncovering cards and granting each player a glimpse into the structure of their opponents’ countries. Spies can be flipped at any time (turn the coin to tails) to indicate that the card underneath is now a supporter of a coup, adding a certain number of influence points to the effort.

Players can win by activating the assassin – the Ace – and successfully snuffing the enemy leader, or by creating enough coup supporters to total 25 or greater influence points in the enemy country.

1,000 Blank White Cards

This completely wide open nonsense game was played by me and my friends long before I even knew there was an official game with a semblance of structure. In 1,000 Blank White Cards, players take a stack of blank cards, choose a title and/or description, draw a picture and then tell how many points are added or deducted from a player’s score when the card takes effect. Depending on how silly and/or creative the group is, some cards may state rules that change the game, or give instructions to do something that has no effect on the game whatsoever, but will be fun to watch another player make a fool of themselves.

Each player then takes the cards that they have created and begin playing the game. Each turn, players can play cards directly on another player, to the middle of the table (affecting everyone), or on themselves. At any time, a player can pass and draw another card, usually creating something that will cripple the points leader or force them to regret being the leader. And … that’s it. The rest is madness, mayhem and, quite often, a masterpiece of silly theatrics.

Hot Cockles

This racy little “game” is from the Victorian Parlor Games section, and makes you realize just how sexually repressed a group of people can be who thought that a woman showing off her ankles was akin to appearing nude in Playboy. In Hot Cockles, a gentleman kneels in front of a lady and places his face in her lap while the rest of the party guests walk by and slap his hand. He must now deduce, one by one, which guest was the slapper. Oh, those wacky Victorians.

Ministry of Silence

I would love to tell you about Ministry of Silence, but System won’t allow it. The details and objectives of this exercise are for top-level clearance, only. The following details are cleared for Level 1 participants:

• There are 14 to 16 participants in this exercise.
• Some of you are not what you seem.
• All of you have obtained certain clues that can be used to achieve the objective of this exercise. Unfortunately, it is illegal for most of you to talk to one another.
• We are watching.

I have only had the chance to read about half the book, and experience far fewer of the games, but I am more than eager to try out almost all of them. As a self-proclaimed components junkie, I must admit that I love cracking open a new board game and watching all the goodies come spilling out; The Games Bible really has none of that since every game is distilled to its basic bits. That’s totally fine by me, though, as I can use some of my favorite components to play most of the games.

Although The Games Bible contains quite a few interesting challenges for two players and a small group, I feel the book’s strength lies in providing some fascinating large group activities. Many a time have I been at or hosted a gathering with 10 or more guests, each of varying levels of game geekiness. Trying to find a game that can accommodate so many people with such a wide variety of gaming tastes can be daunting. The Games Bible can give frustrated hosts a plethora of possibilities so that you all don’t have to sit around and play Mafia for the hundredth time (and if you do, it’s in here, too – on page 132!)

Some gifts seem nice at the time, but they end up collecting dust on a shelf. I can honestly say that The Games Bible will gather no dust, its cover soon beaten and worn as any well-used and well-loved book’s should.

You can find The Games Bible here. You can find more of Chris Kirkman’s game reviews at Dice Hate Me. Or, you can revisit his old Down the Hatch recaps by visiting the archives.

By Brian Shea

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy is out buying copious amounts of eggnog, so today we bring you a special guest blog post by former HoboTrashcan columnist Brian Shea.]

In recent years, we have learned more about how television ratings work than we probably ever needed to know. We have been told that whatever precedes a show (i.e the lead in) has a significant effect on how a show does. We had this beat over our heads during the Conan O’Brien-Jay Leno fiasco.

So if this is indeed true, if we as Americans are so lazy that we will watch something simply because we were watching the thing before it, how the hell do five million people get the idea to overcome this laziness when Modern Family ends on Wednesday nights and Cougar Town begins?

I don’t really know how my man crush on Cougar Town creator Bill Lawrence developed. I always loved Scrubs and really enjoyed his commentary on some of the early season DVDs. Then, as Scrubs headed toward its conclusion … and its second conclusion … Lawrence decided to sit down with influential TV bloggers and just open up about the process which determines what shows get on TV and how they stay there.

He had a refreshing and honest outlook on the weirdness that is television entertainment. When a guy says part of the impetus to keeping his show alive is to employ the crew he has become friends with, you can’t help but like that guy.

I also found out that we are the same age and, if not for some very short-sighted thinking by the admissions officer at the College of William and Mary who waitlisted me instead of admitting me, we would have become best friends in college, and I would be his right-hand man today. It was destiny if not for that one decision back in 1986.

So when Scrubs wrapped up and the awfully-titled (admitted by even Lawrence) Cougar Town debuted, I got excited. I could not wait for Lawrence’s new creation. In reality, I should have waited because the show got off to a rocky start. But after a half-dozen episodes or so, something very good happened.

The premise of Courteney Cox’s character Jules being a cougar who bedded young men went out the window for a goofy, inside-joke driven ensemble comedy about Jules and her friends. The power of this development is why I can’t believe those five million people turn off the television each week.

This takes me back to the way my crush on Lawrence developed. In the commentary tracks of the first few seasons of Scrubs, he had a chance to look back at the things they had done and why they stuck with some gags and got away from others. You could tell he didn’t just do the commentary track for the heck of it. He really wanted to let the viewer know about the show.

So I know that in the first season or so of Scrubs, they had a ton of sound effects. You heard a whip when people turned their head quickly. Cartoon running sounds indicated the need for a quick escape. The exaggerated smack of a hand accompanied high-fives from The Todd.

At some point, Lawrence realized he didn’t need the first two of those. The thing with Todd needed to stay, but they looked at whether the writing and acting was goofy enough and determined the sound effects were simply overkill. They slowly evolved the show as they went along from week to week.

In this day and age when some shows only get one or two weeks to show their stuff, the ability of people like Bill Lawrence to pull this off cannot be understated. Sometimes, you have to give a team of writers and actors a while to get a feel for how the show works. They’re making freaking TV shows based on web sites. Can we have a little patience in development?

Since Lawrence had the credibility to keep Cougar Town on the air, his team had a chance to make the transition from what they pitched into what made people laugh. I worried about the original premise, but now look forward to 9:30 on Wednesday nights almost as much as 9 p.m. You should too.

You’re missing a group of people greeting each other like a hibachi chef when someone enters the room just because it sounds funny. You’re missing a group of guys bonding over a game called Penny Can. You don’t get a chance to enjoy Christa Miller’s eye rolls and snarky jokes that made her such a great addition to the Scrubs cast.

Cougar Town gets seven million viewers now, which is nothing to sneeze at. But Modern Family gets 12 million and The Middle, another show I think people don’t rate highly enough, gets nine million. So, for the love of God, keep the TV on after Modern Family. You don’t know what you are missing.

Brian Shea used to write for HoboTrashcan, but like Gladys Knight, he left us Pips behind to write for his own site, Regular Guy Column.