Happy High Five Day!

As you probably know, today is a sacred holiday for college kids all over the country. There's no better time than a perfect spring day to grin and cackle foolishly, pass around hits, and share in a time-honored tradition. We enjoy this celebration ever April as a way to gather in friendship, meditate with new perspectives, and show our appreciation for the community. Today is National High Five Day.

Check out this website for a brief history of the high five and other excellent resources and videos. Be a pal, offer someone a high five today.


Also, read this, but not while drinking anything or near people being serious.

The End of the World, now in High Definition

A few weeks back, Jezebel and I went to Boston to celebrate St. Patty's Day and visit with a few friends. One of them had recently bought himself a 60-inch, high definition television. After many hours of drinking (the bar ran through 22 kegs of Guiness, for starters), we headed back to his house for the obligatory late-night drunken foodfest. Mmmmm, hot pretzels.

Now obviously we had to check out the TV, and we ended up watching Finding Nemo before I stupidly asked if he had high-def cable. It just so happened that he had saved a Discovery Channel documentary that was done in high-def so as to show off the monster TV's capabilities. What was the documentary you ask?

Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie.

I've seen video of the nuclear tests before, but I've never watched them in widescreen high-definition, narrated by William Shatner and set to an original score by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.* We sat there in utter, horrified silence as bomb after bomb was detonated, in striking 60-inch clarity and nad-shaking 500-watt surround sound.

After watching that documentary I was filled with a sense of awestruck horror. It's unbelievable (and yet believable) that these scientists were sitting around in swimsuits and sunglasses, watching the end of the world unfold in front of them as if it was another day at the office. Now to be fair, the scientists were hardly ignorant of the implications of their work, but they had no idea what was going to happen when they set one of these monstrosities off. Some of them actually thought they were going to ignite the oxygen in the atmosphere and literally turn the earth into a giant fireball.

A few days ago, a blogger named Joshua Ellis published the report of a project on his site whereby he collected small donations from readers that would be used to fund a trip to the Trinity test site in near Los Alamos. The site is only opened to the public twice a year for 3 hours at a time. He writes a very detailed account of his trip to Los Alamos and provides a number of pictures of the test site. It's an amazing read, and I encourage everyone to head on over and give it a look.

*The Moscow Symphony Orchestra no less. Is that irony?

Press X for gun, Y for canoli

Last week I decided it was time to try a new xbox game since let's face it, that's a far better use of my time than something like homework or fixing the leaking kitchen faucet. So I headed out to the video store and got The Godfather, the latest game to get Senator Clinton's panties in a bunch.*

Then it was time to go to the mattresses. It turns out, that job is MUCH harder than they make it seem in the movie. Granted, the safehouses in the movie didn't give the soldiers any chance to "save game." Come to think of it, it would be awfully convenient if there was a "save game" for real life, but that's a whole other issue I'll save for some future post.

The game is a sandbox style game (think GTA), with a map that seems fairly true to 1920's New York. The graphics themselves are very impressive; there are 22 different "execution styles" and there's even a good thunk sound when you mow someone down with a car. EA must have spent a LOT of money to make this game since it features the voices of Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, and James Caan (though Caan sounds very different from how he did in the movie, but then the movie was made 35 years ago).

Overall I thought the game was excellent, and pretty much follows the storyline of the movie: planting the horse's head, executing the four families, etc., while getting the added bonus of causing extracurricular mayhem on the streets of New York.

On the Nintendo Scale, this game rates somewhere around Mike Tyson's Punch Out.

Folk Metal's Nintendo Scale, for the uninitiated:

1 - Paperboy
2 - Kung Fu
3 - Double Dragon
4 - Mike Tyson's Punch Out
5 - Super Mario Brothers 3

*Assuming Senator Clinton wears panties.

"The Greatest Hero in American History"

"It may be on a lousy channel, but the Simpsons are on TV!"
-Homer Simpson

Now The Simpsons are going to the movies!