I can’t even begin to look at this 2006 bit, below, from MADtv‘s twelfth season, too often. “I Want You To Watch Me Play Madden” features former cast member Jordan Peele, above, as a guy whose notion of foreplay is getting his girl (castmate Nicole Randall Johnson) to join him in a menage á mille on Xbox Live.
There may be nothing more pitiful than a guy who mounts his self-absorbtion cloaked in cheezy seduction, and, in the clip, “Jordan” epitomizes that dude. (Best gags: Hittin’ controller combos (“L-R-L-R-UP-DOWN…maybe SELECT-STARRRT..”) as his lady’s toes curl, and his triumphant, “HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT SEX IIIIIIS!!!…WHOA!!!” on the bridge.)
In his time with the show—Peele left MADtv the next year—he demonstrated a sly hand for creating funny skits in the form of faux R&B music videos. “Madden,” however, so perversely twists one form of pop culture into the servitude—and lampooning—of both, it may be his masterpiece. Touchdown.
My friend MaryKay sent me this riotous clip, above. Apparently, it uses Maya, Poser, or some other animation software to visualize a likely scenario for Tiger Woods’s November 27 car crash—the one that has opened up, not only the right front end of his car but, a window into his clearly troubled marriage.
The bit, produced by 1-Apple news of Taiwan and narrated in traditional Chinese, is mixed with photo stills and police press conference footage, but that’s merely styrofoam peanut padding for the good stuff.
In the videogame-looking sequence, Tiger’s wife, Elin, becomes enraged and strikes Tiger in the face, above, upon learning of his relationship with his alleged mistress, Rachel Uchitel, pictured in the thought balloon inset. The golfer escapes their home and the conflict in his car, but his wife then takes off after him, above, clutching one of his prized golf clubs, striking at the car. Woods, distracted by her pursuit, then runs into a hydrant and a tree.
Well, hell has a sequel. On November 17th, in Left For Dead 2 (Xbox 360/PC), Valve revisits the world where an unnamed pandemic is turning human corpses into fast-moving, flesh-eating gargoyles. However, this time, one of the four playable “survivors” is a Black woman, above. Hell better step the hell back.
It’s on panopticist, an intriguing blog run by Vanity Fair contributing editor Andrew Hearst. As well as being a man of letters, Hearst is the son of chess royalty. His dad, Eliot, grew up in New York City, and
was one of the top players in the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s, eventually earning the title of Life Senior Master. Both he and Fischer spent time at the Marshall Chess Club, which is still located on West 10th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, as it was back then.
Hearst the Younger admits he’d always fantasized about going to Iceland and introducing himself to Fischer, who lived there during the last years of his life.
Fischer is buried in Selfoss, a small town about 40 miles from Reyjavik. I have an Internet pal in Reykjavik named Halldor, and he passed along these photos of Bobby’s grave. They were taken by an American friend of his named Judith Gans, a singer and Icelandic music expert.
Videogames are getting more and more life-like. In this Japanese TV ad, below, for the upcoming Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, out here September 29th for the Playstation 3, gamers get a look at one character’s stunning new moves.
The first of Gay Tony‘s, certainly, several trailers, each deepening the sordid narrative of the game’s fictional Liberty City, dropped yesterday. Titled, “You’ll Always Be the King of This Town,” it’s a whirlwind of beautifully chaotic scandal.
Movie zombies unnerve me. Whether the lumbering ghouls of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Michael Jackson’s Thriller, or the track-stars-in-our-former-lives of 28 Days Later, carnivorous cadavers, foaming blood, coming from every direction are the stuff of which very bad dreams are made.
The November 18 release of Valve Corporation’s Left 4 Dead, above, then, pledges sleepless nights of sweat-drenched dread. The game pits four human survivors against armies of the rotting undead, says Valve, battling them in single player, co-op, and multiplayer game modes.
Set in the immediate aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, L4D offers four expansive “movie campaigns” that challenge you and your fellow survivors to battle thousands of swarming zombies as you travel across the rooftops of an abandoned metropolis, through rural ghost towns and pitch-black forests.
Mere words. Take a look at this clip from the game and hold on to your head. In the sequence, you and your three human co-partners—driven either by actual players or the machine’s AI—attempt to storm a kitchen in an overrun, infected house. This draws the zombies in for a meal—you—right as you draw your shotgun. Lemme at ’em. On PC / Xbox 360.
I don’t play Guitar Hero, the massive hit video game (yet). But I can still tell that McFarlane Toys’ Guitar Hero Rockers—2-inch figurines of characters from the game packed deux to a box—are completely ill. If the actual pieces in February 2009 end up looking as good as these final painted sculpts, I’m grabbing all four: Spike-haired Johnny Napalm, bad-to-the-basics Axel Steel, KISS-whore Lars Ümlaut, and, my personal favorite, above, rockabilly renegade Eddie Knox. Total ‘tude, dude.
Gay Tony‘s hitman, Luis Lopez, lights up the night
