Sunday, July 8, 2007

All Hail the Kings in Yellow!

The Kings in Yellow are finally back in town! I first saw them back in '03 when they started out at Freedom City University. Normally I'm not into the whole alternative scene but there's something about their music – it's like it creates a freaking dreamscape in your head, you know? Half the time I don't have a clue what they're singing about -- hell, no one does, since they refuse to post their lyrics to the web or publish them in liner notes -- but the other half ... well, demons., slayers, epic sword fights, tales of magic beyond imaginging, what's not to like?

Anyway, they've been touring up and down the Eastern Seaboard because of their new album, The Unblinking Eye, and they'll be back in Freedom City for one night on Saturday, July 21. They'll be playing an outdoor concert on the Quad at FCU.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

You Can Be My Weather Girl Anytime...

The one good thing to come out of June's heatwave has got to be Jennifer Locksley over at WCZA Channel 7 News. She's is definitely the new hotness; I mean, she's got me watching the freaking news again! On TV! When it's actually being broadcast!

It was a total masterstroke for the management to hire a former Miss Freedom contestant. I hear she's actually going to school at Freedom City U for her bachelors in meteorology. Makes me want to re-enroll this semester -- I mean, I only have 20 more credits to go to get my bachelors in Media Studies, and I love studying her media ... it's like fate or something.

The Storm of the Decade

Holy crap.

That's all I can say. Holy frakking crap!

Ok, that's not all I can say. "I told you so" also comes to mind. I mean, the Loser League heads to the outer edge of the solar system, leaving Earth -- and Freedom City -- all but defenseless and what to you know, one of their archenemies decides to launch an all-out assault on the frakking city!

Weather machines, massive floods, thunderstrikes that make Thor look like an amateur, cats and dogs, living together, I mean we were about 30 minutes from mass hysteria!

Though I've got to admit, it was pretty damn cool. Dr. Stratos sets up weather machines all over the city, used them to supercharge his own powers, then blasted ol'Blackstone.
They say one tower is destroyed, the electrical systems are toast, and they've got a whole armada of prison boats out there moving inmates to other prisons.

But hey, the whole world didn't got instantly to hell, despite the utter lack of effort by "Earth's Greatest Heroes". One of my HIT friends said he saw Dragoon show up at the Promenade and take out the weather machine there and rumor has it his friends took out two more of the things at the Federal Building downtown and the Golden Calf over on Southside.

Then the band went out to Penitentiary, and according to the Pinstriped Blogger, they beat the crap out of Mirror Man and Brickbrack. Of course, they let a bunch of villains get away too, including Crime Leaguer Devil Ray and those two losers Rant and Rave, but they did pretty good for a bunch of fourth-stringers.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

VideoTech Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass

I'm sick of it. I rent a DVD from VideoTech for the first time in what, 10 years? 'Cause you know, they said that they'd "Defeated Late Fees For All Time!" But that's bogus, because I returned the DVD like two weeks late, and they tell me they weren't charging me a late fee ... they were just selling me the damn DVD! And while the chicks in Gingersnaps III were hot and all, it just wasn't worth $25.99.

To I'm done with VideoTech; they can kiss my business good-bye. I'm going back to Tivo. Once I figure out how to convince it I'm not a transsexual cross-dresser who likes cooking shows. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but ummm, it's just not my scene.

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Politics as Unusual

The political debates have everyone excited about politics, spending hours engaging in intellectual, well-reasoned debates at their local coffee shops.

Ok, that's not true. In reality, I saw some Greens doing a puppet show protest outside the CBN Studios during the last Republican debate, which included caricatures of Ronald Reagan battling each other for control of his own crumbling crown. And that was just the debate. The puppet show had W performing unnatural acts on a demon. Or maybe a Haliburton executive ... it was hard to tell.

What's amazing is that people in this city really do seem to be interested in politics -- according to the Freedom Ledger, voter turnout in 2006 was at 54.8%, which is just amazing when you think about it. And hell, that wasn't even a presidential election year; in 2004 it was 81.3%!. Voter breakdown was 45% Democrat, 41% Republican, 8% Moonbat (err, Libertarian) and 1% Green.

Why was turn out so high? I don't know -- maybe it's just the spirit of Lantern Jack, the mystic watchman (and sharp colonial dresser!) who's been haunting the city since Revolutionary times. Or maybe it's just that everyone wants to make sure they get their cut of the next federal bailout when supers level downtown again. Or maybe, you know, people just care.

Nah, couldn't be that.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Poll: The Far Star Debacle

So a while back I started a poll asking "Is the Freedom League inviting doom upon us all by investigating the Far Star?" and it looks like a overwhelming majority of my readership agrees that the disaster is nigh, with 5 voting yes, and 1 voting know (and you just know that 1 was the Prince of Cutlery).

Good to know I'm the the only one who things that the Freedom League's egos hit orbit about the same time their space station did.

Monday, July 2, 2007

Downshafted?

Looks like there have been a bunch of locked door mysteries in Downtown over the past week. The Freedom Ledger's reporting four burglaries at Freedom City shops -- one electronics place, two jewelry shops (including the venerable Haas Brothers Jewelers, you know, the one with the two guys with diamond studs in their eye brows?), and a pawn shop -- in which all the merchandise was stolen but the doors of the shops were never unlocked and the alarms were never tripped.

Police say they don't have any suspects, but that's because their frakking idiots. Of course there's a suspect. His name is Downtime, and this fits his MO perfectly: freeze time, spend a few hours perfectly picking the lock, freeze time again to avoid the alarms, steal everything in sight, then leave. Mark my words, we'll see a bunch of more of these in the coming days. And why will we see this? Because the only hero who could stop him -- Mr. Johnny Rocket -- is off with the Loser League fighting dangerous space rocks at the edge of the solar system, once again leaving us wide open for all manner of criminals.

But wait ... maybe we'll get really lucky and their hyperintelligent space station will come down and save us.

We're sending you ... BACK to the FUTURE!

Looks like someone's decided to take advantage of the last few days worth of freakishly stormy weather, and it's probably not Dr. Emmitt Brown (though there was that one guy with crazy white hair). I saw a crew of FCU researchers is assembling some sort of weather monitoring device over in the Promenade park last night in Hanover while I was heading over to the Hanover Institute of Technology for my weekly Warhammer 40k game.

At least, I'm guessing it was FCU; none of the guys at HIT know anything about it, but the way they were grumbling it sounded like FCU beat them to the bunch on some meteorological geek out they were planning. There were some police there, overseeing the whole thing, so I'm guessing it's in the clear, you never know -- maybe a bunch of shape-shifting Grue have set down in the park to setup space beacons so that they can do pin-point laser barrages of the city.

Oh, and I so kicked ass last night in Warhammer; my Ork army can not be defeated!

Sunday, July 1, 2007

The Unfab Four

Since they've apparently decided to go elemental on Freedom City again, I figured I'd better give a quick refresher on the Factor Four, one of the dumbest super-villain teams known to mankind, who'd be completely laughable if it weren't for the genius of their leader, Professor Fathom.

So who are they? Well, exactly who they were isn't really known, but who they are now is. You've got Granite, who's as big as a mountain and about as dumb. There's Sylph, a woman who assumes a gasous wraith form and appears to only be good for suffocating her opponents. Apparently, she was quite the hottie before achieving her superpowers, but frankly I don't want to date any woman I can see through. Pyre is the fire elemental of the group (you knew there had to be one, right?) who can shoot burning rays from his hands, fly at something like Mach 3 and is stupid enough to try and drive a car while still in flame form, with the results you'd expect.

This anti-brain trust is led by Professor Fathom, who apparently gave them their powers and who has led them on a nationwide (and on one memorable occasion in London, worldwide) crime spree. Based on what they've tried to steal, and the fact that no one's ever seen them transform to or from non-elemental forms, I'm guessing they're permanently stuck in their Fire & Ice knockoff forms.

They've done some amazing things -- animating the Statue of Liberty to attack New York, causing a magma eruption in Los Angeles (who'd have thought a lame Hollywood movie could actually happen?) and even stealing a chunk of the Titanic from some salvagers. But however brilliant's plans, inevitably one of the rest of the Factor does something boneheaded (like say, attacking a superhero in broad daylight in the Wharf District), gets caught by the authorities and gets thrown into jail until Fathom can break them out again.