Saying goodbye...

The title says it all, I've finally reached that point in my life that it's time to put away childish things, and start focusing on being an adult. I'm in the process of selling off video games, not because I need the money, but because I realize that I'm getting older, I don't play them and someone else could be enjoying them instead of having them just sitting in a box buried in my basement. I dug out a box filled with old Ps2, N64 and Dreamcast games, all of them at one point in time were fun to me, now I look at them and all I can think of how much space they are taking up. To say a part of me died would be an understatement, a large chunk of me is gone, I no longer enjoy pro wrestling, video games just aren't that fun anymore, and I'm beginning to think that everything I've done up to this point in my life was a complete waste of time. I used to love computers, web design and drawing in general, hell, I've got a degree in multimedia and graphic design because of it. I'm starting to think that was a waste of time. All it got me is a job I'm unhappy at, but one that I'm too afraid to leave because of the economy. I'm hoping that slowly getting rid of stuff will help me find what is really important in life and maybe I can use the money I'm getting from this stuff to take a vacation and form new memories...

My review of WWE Wrestlefest: iPhone version

Note: I basically copied my review from the Kingdom of Foom forum so if you've already read it there, it's the same thing. 

Hey guys,
I've decided to take some time out of my semi-busy life to actually contribute back to the community that has given me so much entertainment, or something. Today I picked up WWE Wrestlefest for the iPhone for $2.99. (Just a heads up, if you own an iPad and an iPhone, the game isn't cross transferable, they are 2 separate apps!) 

Graphics: The graphics in this game are pretty amazing for an iOS game, it really has an arcade feel to it, the characters look like their real life counterparts, done in a comic book style. The crowd even looks pretty cool which was a nice touch.

Sound: Although every person comes out to the exact same song, they did a nice job with the sound effects.Justin Roberts announces each character before the match begins and the kicks and punches sound pretty good for something I'm playing on my phone, music doesn't even sound this good on it. So that's saying something.

Gameplay: Granted I've only gotten to play this for a short period of time (About 2 hours) the controls are decent for what it is, if you've played Street Fighter 4 on the iPhone, controls are very similar, you have a joystick on the left side of the screen, and 2 buttons (one for punch, one for kick) on the right.) It took me a little bit to get used to the controls, my first match Undertaker whooped me like a government mule, poor Macho Man will never be the same. After I took time and looked at the in game manual, I had a better idea of what was going on and actually won a match. From what I can tell, special moves just kind of happen at random, I managed to hit an RKO with Randy Orton as well as his swinging backbreaker. I've seen Undertaker use the tombstone piledriver and the Last Ride as well. As far as gameplay modes are concerned: Exhibition, Road to Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble, Saturday Night's Main Event Tournament, Tag Team and Gauntlet Match fill out the options, meaning that there is a lot to choose from, which isn't a bad deal even though all of them play pretty much the same,  throw in multiplayer (which sadly I can't seem to get to work, nobody in my vicinity has this game) and the $2.99 price tag isn't so bad.  

Playable Characters: Jake "The Snake" Roberts, John Cena, Rey Mysterio, The Rock, Randy Orton, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, and the Undertaker fill in the main roster. I would've liked to have had LOD or at least Demolition make it in, I suppose though this is WWE Wrestlefest, not the WWF I remember as a kid, and besides, does WWE even have a legit tag team anymore? Air Boom? Epico and Primo? Anyone? 

Arenas: Your choices consist of Smackdown, Raw, Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble, Saturday Night's Main Event, and if you want to pay extra money, the "Old" Survivor Series arena. Honestly they all look exactly alike, just the ring aprons are different. 


Complaints: My only real gripe with this game is that I have to pay extra money to unlock the following people: Big Boss Man, CM Punk, Shawn Michaels, Sheamus, Triple H, and the Survivor Series ring. Now granted, it's 99 cents, but why not make it an unlockable you can earn by completing the different modes?  I know that DLC has become a common place but it seems like every game is doing this now. I suppose it worked in the 80's, it might as well work now. 

Overall thoughts: For 4 dollars (I caved in and bought the DLC) I'm not too upset with this game, I've definitely spent money on a lot worse (DLC for Heavy Rain comes to mind...) and for an iOS game as I mentioned before, it's pretty well done. So if you enjoy arcade style wrestling, I'd recommend picking this one up.

National Chocolate Cake Day

Happy National Chocolate Cake Day! Wait, you didn't know that it was a holiday? Well, to be honest, neither did I, until about 15 minutes ago. I figured since it's a trending topic on twitter at the moment, and since I'm waiting for a load of laundry to finish, I'd tell you, my reader(s), of the story of the chocolate inferno cake, or as my friend and at the time room mate called it, the diabetes cake.

Imagine this piece of cake, but 5 times  bigger, yeah, this thing was a  BEAST!

It was actually around this time last year that we encountered the beastly cake. I had recently just gone over to my parents house after work as I do every Sunday, mainly out of habit, and because they feed me. My dad had brought home cake samples from his work, one of which, was the chocolate inferno cake. This thing was huge, I mean, think of your average size cake, and stick 5 cakes on top of that, all chocolate. I took one look at that thing and knew there would be some sort of repercussions for even trying to eat something like that, but figured, it's food. So the cake and I made the long trek (all 6 blocks!)  back to my house where my roommate and I decided to test our mettle versus the chocolate giant. Just looking at this thing would cause any weaker man to tremble in fear, we were ready, with plates and forks in hand, we cut into the monster, we joked around that just by looking at this cake we'd lose a foot to diabetes, then the first bite came. I've never tasted anything so sweet, it was like eating a pound of sugar mixed in chocolate mixed in a bag of cocoa mixed with salt. I thought I was going to go into a coma, my friend didn't do much better, the cake was kicking our asses into the first bite. I got about halfway through my one piece and gave up. The cake had defeated me. I drank nearly a half gallon of milk just to get the piece I had down.  Travis made it through half the cake throughout the week, he was determined to defeat the monstrous pastry, but alas, neither of us could muster the will to finish the entire thing, the cake...had won.The day that thing went into the trash was a sad day, I'm pretty sure I heard "Taps" play off in the distance... The fact either of us survived that ordeal is amazing, especially the after effect of that thing, my poor bathroom has never been the same. So it is with a heavy heart that we remember the diabetes cake, as it serves as a reminder, too much of a good thing is never a good thing, and don't feed your roommates chocolate cake after midnight.

Semper Fudge.

Death, bucket lists, and does life really begin at 30?

Recently I attended a funeral for a family member I barely knew. During the service I listened to the pastor talk about him, telling stories of how he liked to fish, he was a generous person, and loved spending time with his kids and family. This got me to thinking, if I were to die tomorrow, what would people say about me? Let's see...

Jeff, he liked pro wrestling, and video games. He looked down at the ground a lot, wasn't very social, hated his job and spent most of his nights watching television with his 3 cats. Man, that guy loved his cats...

Newton and Figaro, you tell me you don't love these guys...

Newton and Gizmo, or as my girlfriend and I refer to them as, Newt Newt and the Momo cat. 

Needless to say, if I were to die tomorrow, I'd die knowing there was a TON of stuff I'd still like to do. At one point in time my list consisted of things that one would expect when you were younger, buying a house, buying my first car, etc. Well, been there done that: This is my top 30. Feel free to leave me comments about your lists, or what you think I should change/ add, or just comment for the sake of commenting. I'm so lonely...


1: Do 100 pushups without stopping, or becoming super winded. Right now I can get through about 20 before I feel like I'm going to pass out. I blame my lack of motivation and McDonalds for that. Damn you Big Mac!!!

2. Host or co-host a webcast: I've always thought it'd be cool to webcast playing a video game, or do a live wrestling commentary during a show (similar to live tweeting, but actually being on camera so people could see my real-time reactions).  Edit: I got to co-host Mash Tactics with King_Foom on 2 seperate occasions, and on 2/24/12 did my first test broadcast...that nobody watched...

3. Make at least 5 items from the Star Wars Cookbook: Simple enough, I'm actually surprised I haven't done this yet. I may need to have people over for this.

4. Get an article published on PWTorch or Wrestlezone: I've actually had an email published on Wrestlezone about Brian Knobbs shilling for 1-800-Ask Gary and had a comment published in an article about Bragging Rights when it was in Minneapolis, so I think that counts? Plus I had one of the writers tell me my email was one of the best ones he'd ever read, I'll let you guess who that was.

5.Visit Disney Land and World: self explanatory, another one I should have done a long time ago.

6.Donate Blood.

7.Get Married: Someday? Update: I got engaged over Christmas, I will be getting married in March! ^_^

8: Have kids: Do my cats count?

9. Go to a video game convention: Don't care if its PAX, E3...I'm not picky!

10. Go see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

11.Visit more than 10 of the 50 states. So far I've got MN (does it count if I live here?), WI, FL, AZ,UT,SD,TN, and WA out of the way. Although TN was just seeing the airport so I don't know if that counts.

12. Fly first class: I want to know if it's like the Fresh Prince tells me, will I get to drink OJ out of a champagne glass?

13. Buy a new car: By new I mean, new for that year, preferably something with power windows and locks. Oh, and a working dashboard would be epic! (My current car as much as I love it, has none of those things.)

14. Do a walk/run for cancer research or a fun run: Update: I'm doing Warrior Dash on June 29th. Leveling up my life 1 step at a time! ^_^

15. Take a community education class: Could be anything, it's always been more of trying to convince my job I need those nights off that has obstructed this goal, I'm thinking of taking guitar lessons, or karate, or I could learn auto repair...the choices...

16. Ride a mechanical bull: I don't think the mechanical penis at Sexworld counts, although I've never ridden it, nor do I plan to.

17. Visit Canada again: I'd like to see Calgary and Toronto. I've only been to Ear Falls,Ontario. Amazing place.

18. Visit the Philippines: Obvious reason, not going into this one.

19. Go to a wine tasting and visit a vineyard: I blame the movie Sideways for this, but it looks like it could be a lot of fun, and who doesn't like getting wasted on fermented fruit?

20. Visit Las Vegas: I could knock off like 5 things on that trip. This needs to happen. No "Hangover" type Vegas trip though, I'd like to remember what happens.

21. Meet someone famous: I've met guys from the MN Wild, MN Twins, and local newscasters, which I guess would count, but nobody people not from here would know.

22. Plant a tree: Just not in my yard, I've got 5 as it is, another one would not be needed.

23. Visit  famous landmarks: Mount Rushmore ,Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Space Needle  Rocky Mountains, CN Tower, Route 66

24. Swim in the ocean

25. Go on a road trip: I'm surprised I didn't do this in college, but then I did go to a tech school. Sigh...

26. Go Snowboarding

27. Learn how to ride a motorcycle and get my motorcycle license

28. Win something: Don't care what, I have terrible luck when it comes to these things.

29.  Grow a grizzly Adams style beard (Sorry, this one will probably never happen, my facial hair just won't grow!!!) Substitute, not shave for 6 months?

30. Meet KISS, sadly, my girlfriend has done this and I haven't. I'd even be happy meeting Peter Criss, and even Peter Criss doesn't want to meet Peter Criss.

That's it for now, hopefully I'll get back into writing more now that the holidays are over with. Until next time kids...

My love/hate relationship with professional wrestling

As my DVR and girlfriend will tell you, I watch a ton of pro wrestling. Whether it's Monday Night Raw, TNA Impact, Ring of Honor, Friday Night Smackdown or the AWF's Saturday Night Slam (it's a local indy show that's on after ROH here.)  Each show brings something different, but as of late I begin to wonder why I watch at all. So without further ado, here's my love/hate of each show I watch

Note:I'm skipping Saturday Night Slam because:

1. It's only a half hour show

2.Unless you live in MN, you've probably never seen/heard of it, and if you do live here, you probably wouldn't watch it since it's filmed out of high school gyms, I actually enjoy it and am slowly learning who the talent is, I say slowly because I'm usually half asleep by the time I get around to watching it.

3. I'm friends with one of the wrestlers (Udo) so I have a vested interest that I might get to see my friend on television, doesn't happen often, but when it does, I mark out hardcore. 

TNA Impact: 

Things I like about TNA:
1.James Storm's hats. -Cowboy hats are cool, especially neon colored ones. I like bright colors, plus without them Charles Cress (one of my personal heroes and an amazing writer to boot http://www.themidnightsnack.net/ and http://pwtorch.com/  he writes another sports column as well but I forget what it is at the time of this blog)  would have to make fun of the other 999 things wrong with TNA

2. Austin Aries: A Double is awesome sauce. I only wish I could pull off that cool of a mustache. Plus he is amazing to watch wrestle in the ring along with the rest of the X Division, I can't wait for Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley to come back. MCMG we need you!

3.Winter: She's super hot. That's about it. Not a great reason but I'm grasping at straws here.

Things I hate:
1. Storylines that make no sense: Gail Kim was upset at the treatment she received in WWE, being treated as a sex object and having to participate in degrading matches, but finds it to be perfectly okay in TNA? Wrestling Matters? Not in this company, bring on Thanksgiving Thong Thunder and turkey suits for the win! 

2. The random face/heel turns with no explanation: Examples: Ken Anderson, Samoa Joe, and Eric Young. Especially Eric, he goes from the bad ass leader of World Elite to  being Little Mac  from Mike Tyson's Punch Out sans pink sweatsuit, watch the Thanksgiving episode of him training with Rudy Charles, it'll click I promise.

3. The announce team:
Do Taz and Mike Tenay just go out and get trashed before they start doing commentary now? Taz usually goes off track during the Knockouts matches, mainly because he's too busy making comments about how girl X is a hot tomatah or letting the pigeons loose, other times I think he's on the phone with Joey Numbers during commentary, honestly the only thing worse is the decline of Mike Tenay. What the hell happened to the professor? Did the Skipper eat him? All he does is bitches about how he hates whoever is the heel this week, but agrees with them the following week? (example:Karen Jarrett) This show has more twists than a M.Night Shyamalan movie, it has more turns than a game of Monopoly with Grandma, where'd you get the pink 50's Grandma? (Dane Cook reference FTW). I can't really blame them though, I can't follow what's going on either.  

Monday Night Raw:

Things I enjoy:

1.CM Punk - Punk is entertaining, he's gonna be an awesome commentator if he doesn't get the brain damage that Booker T seems to have inherited while on commentary, I'm guessing one too many spinaroonis did him in. 

2. John Cena slowly moving into a more heelish persona. It's going to happen, there's only so much someone get booed before they just say screw it and run with it. Word Life. 

3.Awesome Truth: Well, I did like this for a small period of time. Then the week before and Survivor Series happened and they were made to look like chumps. Really? The Miz is getting jobbed out to the Rock? Really? I blame Little Jimmy and Pretty Ricky( anyone remember that R-Truth bit where he was searching for Pretty Ricky? I do.) 

Things I hate:
1. Lack of Jim Ross: Raw NEEDS Jim Ross. Ideally I'd want Ross and William Regal as an announce team. It'll probably never happen but I can dream can't I? The 3 man broadcasts just irritate me to no end, they seem to spend more time arguing about who got more retweets on twitter than they do the actual show.

2.The constant talk about Twitter: Okay, we get it, follow you on twitter, you didn't brag about people being on Myspace, why the hell do I care what so and so tweets? If I cared, I'd follow them. I watch to see pro wrestling and get my male soap opera on, not to hear about what Daniel Bryan tweeted about lunch. 

3.Too many title changes/ non title matches:

I'm too lazy to actually look this up, but I'm sure the WWE title has been on more guys than a hooker on prom night. (cue crickets) I can't take a champion seriously if he loses the belt after 2 weeks, or in the case of our non title matches, loses to the challenger, if your gonna go that route, at least make the matches mean something, like if the challenger wins, they get a match at the next PPV. (similar to ROH's Proving Grounds idea). Make me care about who holds the belt, Cody Rhodes makes me care, why can't the rest of you? 

Friday Night Smackdown:
Things I like:

1.Cody Rhodes. I don't even need to explain this, he's just awesome, much like his dad, a personal favorite of mine growing up. Golddust vs. Cody Rhodes for WM28! #rhodesorriot

2.The show actually has a decent amount of wrestling! Raw feels like a giant promo sometimes, the last Raw I actually enjoyed was the one after CM Punk came back after Money in the Bank, that and the muppets one. But come on, muppets, not quite a mop, not quite a puppet, to be completely honest I have no idea where I'm going with this...

Things I dislike:

1.Honestly I'm really enjoying Smackdown as of late but the Aksana bits are just a waste of my time. Considering none of the other Divas get any freakin' time as it is, why are they wasting time on Teddy "I got this suit at Pimps R' Us! Holla Holla playa!" Long' and Ivan Drago's hot sister? 

2. Raw Rewinds: I usually end up watching Smackdown on my DVR so I fast forward through these but why do I care what happened on Raw while watching Smackdown, I watched Raw, I know what happened, I don't need to be reminded of the crappy 20 minute Rock promo I had to sit through on Monday night. I get it, Boots to Asses, you love twitter and have a sick obsession with breakfast cereal. Moving on...

Ring of Honor:
1.Decent amount of wrestling - Again, a wrestling show with wrestling? Novel concept put to good work.

2. They actually follow up on storylines! I'll be the first to admit, I've only recently started watching ROH (I'd seen a few matches on youtube before it got moved to Sinclair broadcasting) but coming in from knowing next to nothing about a lot of the people, I actually know who's face and who is heel and why people dislike each other. The other thing I liked was during the first episode they explained the code of honor, people who have never seen the show wouldn't know what it was, again, novel concept, explaining things to new fans so we can catch up. I love it. 

3. The broadcast team actually talks about the match! No fighting between Kevin Kelly and Nigel McGuiness (I miss Desmond Wolfe) they just call the match and talk a little bit about previous encounters between the participants. I loved listening to the commentary during the Kyle O Reilly/ Davey Richards match, I learned more about their backstory and that drew me further into the match (not that the match itself wasn't freakin' amazing!) 

Things I dislike:

1.The only real knock I have against ROH is the over-advertising of their website. I get it, I can buy DVDs and check out iPPVs there. You told me 5 minutes ago. 

2. The show is only an hour long. I guess this could be viewed as a good thing as it means they get right to the point, but I wouldn't be opposed to a 2 hour show.

So that's about it for now, depending on if anyone actually reads these I may start writing more. Maybe I should just stick to drawing. ^_^ 

A simpler time...

Remember when all you had to do when you wanted to play a video game was just plug the cartridge into the console and you were ready to rock and or roll? I'm referring to the Atari 2600 of course, the last console I had that didn't require a degree in computer science to operate. Some of you are probably arguing, well, Nintendo didn't require you to do anything else. Bull-honkey! You had to pray to whatever diety you believed in and hoped that the cartridge would work, I remember spending 2 and a half hours once trying to get Castlevania to work, I'm not kidding, I blew and blew until I couldn't blow anymore and the thing finally worked after that amount of time. Things have only gotten more complex since then. We eventually moved away from carts to discs. Discs gave us better graphics, sound, and CGI, but it also gave us loading times and scratches. I was usually pretty good about taking care of my games, but I've had a few that were unplayable after I left them sitting on my desk for too long.

As technology evolved, we are at a point today where your game console does everything but cooks you breakfast, (unless you own a George Foreman PS3) but we have to sit through long load times and installs, anyone who recently bought Resistance 3 knows what I'm talking about... my whole issue with it though mainly involves PC gaming. PC gaming has always at least in my point of view, sucked. I recently downloaded Portal for my laptop, keep in mind, my laptop is less than 2 years old, and can run blu ray movies, but I can't play Portal on it! For a game that came out so long ago, you'd think my laptop could handle it, nope. Video card can't render 3D. I try to play the game and get as far as the loading screen and the game crashes. WTF?! This of course was something I found out after my 6 hour download time (I'm on the equivalant of DSL because I'm cheap and would rather pay off my house than have quality internet, although I'm beginning to re-think that.) So my choices are buying a new PC again that can handle the game, or shelling out the 20 bucks for a copy of Orange Box that has that and Half Life included in it, (which ironically I already own and have installed on my 10 year old desktop running XP...at least it's not windows 98... so to make a long story short, I'm going to go break out Super Punch Out on my Super Nintendo.

Together We Break These Gears of War

So in about 1 week's time, Gears of War 3 is going to be released for the Xbox 360. The Gears series is
one that holds a special place inside of me (and not because I can make fun of the song Chains of Love by Erasure)  because as each one came out, my life had changed for the better. The first game, and quite honestly, the only reason I think I have a 360, was introduced to me at a friend's house in 2006. It was my first visit to his new apartment, it wasn't very big, but most 1 bedroom places aren't, the key thing that caught my eye was the huge 60 inch tv he had in his living room and a game called Gears of War.

I remember seeing commercials for this game and thinking it looked cool, but we had a Nintendo Wii so I was kinda stuck. An hour later and I had been convinced, I needed to buy a xbox and get this game. About a week later on payday, I went to our local Circuit City (Remember those?) and bought a console, that game, and Beatiful Katamari (my girlfriend wanted it and I technically bought the console for both of us). The game didn't look anywhere near as good as it did at my friend's house on my worn down 25 inch CRT screen, the color on it was going, but I didn't care, I was Marcus Fenix, I was 86ing locusts left and right, I had engulfed myself into the culture of the game. November 2008 rolls around, we had moved a few months earlier into a new town, a new apartment, I bought a 50 inch flat screen tv around this time, and was ready for GOW2.

It literally was one of the few times I've actually pre-ordered a game for myself (I pre-ordered Animal Crossing for my girlfriend among a few others), I woke up extra early so I could get to Target when it opened, picked up my limited edition copy of the game and got home and popped it in. My friend at the time was really into playing online so I didn't really get into the story quite as much this go round, we were trying to do Co-Op storymode and because of achievements, he'd know if I'd skipped ahead without him and vice-versa. Couple this with our jobs making us work opposite schedules of each other and it became more of a hassle more than anything else. I still had a lot of fun with it, but with work and Christmas, it kinda got put on the backburner while I dealt with other stuff. Eventually we beat the game, and by that time, he'd had enough, he had finished all the achievements for the game by this time, and really had no interest in playing anymore, I did another solo runthrough of campaign on my own and had moved onto a new game (I think I started playing Condemned around this time?)

My girlfriend cross stitched the Crimson Omen for me, if that's not love I don't know what is

 Now we come our present time, like before we have moved since then, I currently own a house
now, I really don't play a whole lot of video games like I used to, I've kind of lost interest in it. I
recently started playing Borderlands out of neccessity, I needed something to help me unwind after work
that didn't involve our house other than being in it. So will I pick up Gears 3? Chances are very high,
will it be launch day, more than likely not. I'll be waiting for a while, might finish up some of the
games I never beat (Borderlands, Castlevania, the Darkness, list goes on...)  In the mean time, I'll
always have the first 2 and the fond memories they both bring.

-Cheap Plug Time!

Go check out the following people's blogs/sites, they are all awesome and if you enjoy reading my randomness, you'll surely like these folk, and if you don't like me, well, check them out anyhow

Dragons Are Delicious - My friend Travis writes this, for that reason alone, you should go check it out, not even for the fact he writes about debatable topics, just  the fact it's well written.

Kingdom Of Foom - Awesome forum,webcasts, and just a great community in general. casts are Tue-Wed @ 4PM CST and Fri and Sat @ 8PM CST. (Link is on the main page) Watch them, you'll enjoy them or your money back!* (money back guarantee is not guaranteed)

The Midnight Snack - Charles Cress who writes Alphabet Soup for PWTorch writes this, this guy is what I apsire to be, a writer for a pro wrestling website/ comedic genius! I love the "My Brother Drew This" blogs. Good times. He can also be found on Twitter @CharlesCress, follow him or Cody Rhodes won't get tv time then it'll be #rhodesorriot

JonnyDWeekly - My friend Jon from high school writes about his films and other randomness, the tree story is one I can relate to.

Rose and the City - My friend Rose from work writes about all kinds of stuff, more recently, couponing, I don't get it but she's interesting, and that's gotta count for something.


If I forgot anyone, let me know and I'll mention you next time!