Cool Dog is lethal with the Worthy-Divac combo

There are few games that have seen the commercial success of NBA Jam. In its prime, there was an NBA Jam machine in just about every arcade in America. Shaquille O’Neal was one of many NBA players who traveled with his personal machine, but us mere mortals were forced to beg our parents for quarters to play.

In a technological breakthrough of Gutenbergian proportions, NBA Jam’s arcade success enabled the game to be marketed for almost every console ever made. This allowed kids across the globe to challenge their friends for a friendly, or not so friendly, game of Jam. And thank God for that. Why would I want to struggle to play basketball in the blistering heat, when I could break backboards in air conditioning? Answer that, scientists.

Since NBA Jam is a hyper-competitive game, the best team has been debated incessantly. Try playing as the Bulls, and you’ll get verbally abused for picking an unfair squad. While arguing over which team is best fine and dandy, I have a different goal in mind. I intend to assemble an unstoppable team of NBA Jam superstars, the likes of which has never been seen. For once and for all, I intend to decide who has the know how and elbow grease to declare themselves an official member of the Unofficial NBA Jam All-Star Team. While the game only has two players per squad (three if you’re playing Tournament Edition) picking a roster from point guard to center is a lot more fun for me. My most humble apologies to President Clinton and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air himself, Will Smith, who did not make the cut. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re anything like me, you’ve always been fascinated by skateboarding, but don’t have nearly enough coordination and patience to perform the most basic of tricks. Lucky for guys like us, skateboarding video games exist. I’ve been known to get gnarly on the sticks since Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and have to say that the genre has reached its pinnacle with Skate 3, EA’s newest addition to the Skate franchise. When the Tony Hawk franchise got WAY too over the top with its physics engine, I thought skateboarding video games were dead. Have a gander at some gameplay from Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, one of the later titles in the series.

Wow, is that horrible. I understand how video games work, that you need to suspend your disbelief to get the most out of it, but I can only do that to a certain extent. They made the game so easy that it wasn’t fun anymore. A backflip became expected, and as such, mundane. Tricks were just button mashing into a manuel into more button mashing. Skill and technique were thrown out the window, and the guys who had grown up on the game would take it no longer. And finally, after years of waiting for a realistic skateboarding game, EA brought out Skate to the market to wrest the genre away from Activision’s Tony Hawk series. The move worked, and now the guys at Tony Hawk are headed back to the drawing board, expected to come out with the series’ next game later this year.

Enter Skate 3. The most recent installment of the series stays true to the values that inspired the game in the first place. Real skateboarding, realistic physics, and beautiful environments. Read the rest of this entry »

Alright, hoss, here’s the situation. It’s summertime. It’s hot, really hot. And you’re thirsty, really thirsty. Not to mention that you’re broke, really broke. You’re in some suburban town, riddled with 7-11s, and you have no idea what to do. All you know is that you have a hankering for golf-related beverages. Well, my friend, the boys at AriZona beverage Co. have seen your plight, and taken pity upon you. Enter the AriZona Arnold Palmer Half & Half. A sweet and tangy combination of lemonade and AriZona’s famous iced tea, of which every sip is like making out with Marisa Miller.

This is what you should be drinking.

Not to mention that they’re sold just about everywhere ice cold, of course, in 23 oz tall-boy cans for a mere 99 cents. Is that something you might be interested in? Read the rest of this entry »

Few actors have had the commercial success of Will Ferrell. Old School approached 75 million dollars in the box office, Elf and Wedding Crashers were on level as some nation’s GDPs by grossing 173 million, and 209 million, respectively. While Talledga Nights, Blades of Glory, and Step Brothers were all able to top the 100 million mark. Now that the cast of Saturday Night Live is Andy Samberg and some other losers, I feel it’s appropriate to take a trip down memory lane of the last great SNL movie star. Read the rest of this entry »

Exhibit A

The physical characteristics of the ginger (not to be confused with the redhead) are unappealing. Their curly, frayed red hair sits above a face beset with disgusting freckles and blemishes, and that’s on top of ghostly white skin which is almost translucent. It really is disgusting. But their failures do not end at the physical level. See, I have a theory when it comes to those of a redder perspective. That, when put on a relative scale, a ginger will always be the negative outlier of said scale. This does not mean that every ginger is the worst in their practice, but that a single ginger will be. For example, the worst lawyer is a ginger, the worst doctor is a ginger, and the worst police officer is a ginger, but not every ginger is the worst.

Allow me to explain. Let’s examine the field of professional stand up comedy. Obviously, to be a stand up comedian, one has to be somewhat funny. But within that field, there are variations between how funny someone is, even if those variations are subjective. Despite the subjectivity, I feel that we can all agree that the least funny person in the professional stand up comedian community is Carrot Top. Not coincidentally, Carrot Top is a ginger. However, Louis C.K. is also a ginger, and he happens to be very, very funny. Carrot Top is not the worst because he’s a ginger, he’s the worst because he’s not funny. The fact that he’s the worst and a ginger, is exactly my point. Join me as I examine this phenomenon in the world of sports, won’t you? Read the rest of this entry »