#I absolutely hated our entry as well I wanted it to get 0 points

[windfighter]

I guess one thing I learned this year is do NOT check the eurovision-tag on tumblr

I mean yeah it's nice getting an explanation for the deeper meaning of some of the songs but after seeing 20 posts saying my country deserve to be colonized because other countries voted for us it's definitely lost its appeal

[repentantsky]

5 Companies That Have Too Much Hype Around Them

Look, we all love our favorite games with a passion, and to an extent that’s fine, but when that passion becomes obsession and that obsession becomes forgetting our own moral compass for the sake of entertainment, it does feel like it’s gone too far. It’s one thing to love what a company releases, it’s completely another to ignore every problem they’ve ever had. Not all of the companies on this list have done horribly un-ethical things, but they’ve at least been anti-consumer, and the fact that people don’t question that enough has led to them sometimes, making horrible mistakes. I am RepentantSky, I love making lists that trash on things that are popular, and these are 5 companies, that have too much hype around them.

5. Nintendo

Already I can hear people getting angry, and in a way I get it. Nintendo is for many people the place where they either begin to play games, or the place they go to keep on playing them when everything else let’s them down, and of course, they put an end to the flipping video game crash of 1983, and no one else will ever be able to claim that from them. That’s all wonderful, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical of them. I’ve talked about a number of things they’ve done wrong before, so let me quickly run down the list of some of their anti-consumer practices. They, charge too much for remasters and ports, they don’t drop prices in games, they used to charge for fixing Joy-Cons and now completely deny it’s a problem for legal reasons, despite everyone pretty much having experienced drift, they haven’t been good at getting stock for their items in at least 20 years, and oh yeah, they sell all the content for a remake for $115 on the 3DS, the system and the fans that helped them get by while the Wii U was massively underperforming, all while handing owners of the, at the time, unproven Switch, free content. Nintendo has a tendency to still think like a toy company, and they even used that idea to present the Nintendo Entertainment System as a toy instead of a console when they first game to the West with it, but they aren’t a toy company, their a gaming company that also sells toys, just like everyone else. I get they’ve done amazing things, I own over 150 physical handheld games from them, and a ton of digital games besides, but when they start charging twice what they are worth for SD cards, while releasing games that absolutely won’t fit on the limited space of the Switch, and they simply don’t care when costumers complain, it’s time to at least question their motives.  

4. Bethesda

Boy I used to really rip on this company back when I posted lists on Facebook, but I haven’t done it in a while, so let’s do it again. Bethesda has absolutely spent at least the last 10 years lying to people, Todd Howard, has become famous for it, but I think I might have been the only person who wasn’t shocked when Fallout 76 was the disaster that it was. There were so many things wrong with that game, that I don’t even have time to go over every little thing, but lying, you know the thing that will get another company on this list very soon, was a big thing they did with the game. They promised at one point that they weren’t ever going to charge for items in the game that gave in-game benefits, and they did, allowing ammo and other items to be bought with real money for a time, they promised new, specialized servers if you paid for a yearly service that was way too expensive, and that wasn’t true because people found proof of things missing from what would have been a freshly made, private server, and there’s no excuse for that, games in early access do that correctly, and they aren’t, at least supposedly, even finished yet. I wish I could say that’s all they’ve done, but they also bullied an indie developer over their game Prey, a game they may have bullied the original developer for so they could get cheaper, but we’ll never know because they refused to comment on that when asked, they also refused to update their outdated game engine for years, which caused something they spent over a decade fixing, games releasing with glitches, some of them game breaking. Yet somehow, they have such a fan base that those who love their games will claim the glitches are just part of the charm. That kind of fierce loyalty led to Fallout 76, and even though we make jokes about it even now, the horse DLC from way back in the day, was an indication of everything they’ve done, including trying to charge for mods made for free, meant to be consumed for free, twice. Bethesda is a bad company and they do not care. 

3. Activision/Blizzard

You know one of the worst things Nintendo does that I didn’t really mention directly in the first entry, is limit the amount of time a product is available, instead of just letting it be there for consumption as long as it’s selling (that was what the toy company reference was about if it wasn’t clear). However, Activision/Blizzard are the Kings of doing this, as they not only limited things while they were in control of Destiny 2 to the point where you pretty much had to use real money to get everything, and never mind everything else they did to it, because we’d be here all day going through it all, but they also don’t support games as a service titles long enough for dedicated fans. Crash Team Racing Nitro fueled, is a prime example of this. People weren’t done with that game, and when fans thought for even a split second that an update was going to come to fix an issue, their hype (mine to) was so explosive, it was almost like we were getting a new game, but then nothing happened, because they didn’t care. A lot of companies that do yearly release titles as a service have this problem and nothing exemplified that more for Activision, than Skylanders, a series originally made off the back of Spyro, who didn’t even wait for a year to release new games, as technically between October 21st and November 20th of the year the first game came out, they released three of them, and I’m not even kidding. Two of them, were mobile games! You might have thought I was going to go after Call of Duty, for this, but that horse has been beaten to ground, somehow, more than Skylanders was. They also, for whatever reason, released each expansion on different generations console generations, at different months throughout Fall, like somehow the season of Fall, they needed a release every month, if not two, and so off they went. I didn’t even get into Blizzard, but all I need to say is “Blitzchung” and all the memories will likely come flooding back. There’s also the fact that in two separate years, after gaining massive profits, they dropped hundreds of employees, and hired more than they’d let go, but I guess that doesn’t really matter to some of you, because when they did it this year, with so little warning, most employees found out via the news articles about it, but we all made such a little stink this time around, it didn’t create any media buzz, so I guess that doesn’t matter, you’d all rather play flipping World of Warcraft, like better MMO’s don’t exist. 

2. CD Projekt Red

I know this one comes off a little more fresh in the mind, and they technically only lied about one game, but man, what a series of lies it was. Also, let’s be honest, one major game, does not a great developer always make. CDPR’s previous two Witcher games did exactly what the author of the books thought they would, and that was almost nothing in terms of making a serious impact, and the reason is, they are kind of bad. They aren’t the worst games out there, but there is a good reason why The Witcher 1 and 2 haven’t been ported and/or remastered, despite how important they are to the story of Witcher 3, and that’s because they both suck. Cyperpunk 2077, was in a lot of ways, them just going back to being the developer they were before, the BIG ONE happened. They lied about nearly everything in regards to the game, including how the main platforms where consumers were going to buy it, were actually running well. I made those references to Witcher 1 and  2 for a reason, although if I’m being honest, they actually look better than Cyberpunk did on day 0, and that’s completely unacceptable. The budget for CDPR was basically nothing for Witcher 1 and 2 combined to what Cyberpunk got, but they were so focused on the PC versions because PC ran the game better, somehow (like maybe because they didn’t try with consoles) and they missed glitches that were so bad, the game felt like it was still in beta, if not alpha upon release. The fact that they’ve only released eleven games in twenty-three years, and only two of them didn’t have The Witcher on them, should have told us all we need to know, and yet the game, even after returns, which was another massive screw-job that led to Cyberpunk being removed from the PlayStation store, still sold Sixteen million units, all because of hype, and because apparently, some people don’t care if they’re lied to. Do you want to know what the other game they released is besides a Witcher title? It was flipping Saints Row 2, a fun game, but also one that’s too goofy for it’s own good, and yet suddenly makes Cyberpunk’s release, make sense, because it was all a massive joke, and a parody of good, well running, open world games. CDPR needs to seriously do something, anything different, and never release a game in this poor of a state ever again.

1. Ubisoft

I put Ubisoft at number one for a damn good reason, and that reason is, that everyone seems to hate the company, but loves their games, and I don’t know why. They haven’t been the overall worst company on this list, although they are pretty bad, but the major problem they have, and have had for at least a decade is that none of their games have any identity, they are literally all the same game, with different coats of paint. Sure, an occasional gem sneaks through like Assassin’s Creed IV, but all of the rest of their games have the same visual style (although ACII does seem to be the base for which they create their art let’s be honest), the shooting mechanics they have in all the games that have guns, all feel exactly the same, which is something even Call of Duty manages to avoid most years (guess I took a shot at them anyways) and yet somehow, someway, I keep seeing people getting excited for their releases, and it doesn’t make any sense. Sure, they throw a celebrity actor in from time to time, and the artistic style they use does look pretty cool, but everything is always the same with them, every single time, no matter what it is, and they still keep making money. It doesn’t really make sense either, because a lot of developers do make games that are very similar feeling, see the Life is Strange team or much as well all loved them, Telltale Games, but at least those titles told extremely interesting stories, and developed their mechanics at least a little, which is something most companies do just on principal, but not Ubisoft. They throw out a few Tom Clancy games every time they talk about what their releasing, the Trials and AC games are still mostly a yearly experience, and I’ll say it again, their entire list of releases since at least 2013, the year the previous generation kicked off, have pretty much all been the same. It would be nice if they made more games like Child of Light, but despite the fact that their games will likely never be as popular as Call of Duty, they keep churning out same-y shooters hoping that one day, maybe just one day, they’ll create their own CoD, and it’s just not gonna happen. The saddest part of all is that when they announce something different, something fans have wanted for years, we get The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, which was literally delayed because fans said they wouldn’t buy it unless some actual effort was put into making it, why is this company so popular that it can keep doing this, someone please explain it to me. 

And that’s my list, can you think of any other companies that are too hyped? Let me know in the notes below, hit me up with a follow if you like my content, and give me a reblog, I’d really appreciate it. Have a wonderful life!  

[lyrishadow]

Fictober 20: Did I ask?

Prompt 20 Did I ask? Fandom: Mass Effect Title:  That’s Politics Chief Pairing: Malcolm Shepard/ Ashley Williams Rating: T 

“Did I ask?” Udina was staring at the three of them with a fierce case of politician, not that it made sense to call it that but all Malcolm could see was this small man who liked to have headaches. Right now, of course, they were part of it.

“No but we are here anyhow.” Malcolm replied, “ Look, Saren is a threat to everything and everyone." “You!” Udina turned sharply, his face turning another shade of red as he pointed his finger at Shapard "What were you thinking?" "What?" Usually, Malcolm had an answer for everyone, being raised on ships with navy parents he had some sense of when to push authority, and he enjoyed doing it. Udina was something different, though given the theme of the day he had started looking for ways to annoy the guy.. "You risked your entry into the spectres…" Udina inhaled for a tirade " A dead spectre, a broken beacon and some kind of war…" "That was Saren." Anderson stepped in not for the first time on Shepard’s behalf. "Fine, Anderson come with me. You.." he obviously couldn’t force himself to say the man’s name "and the rest can meet us at  the citadel tower" "I hate politicians."  Ashley, the newest member of the team for the Normandy was casually leaning on the railing. Malcolm could only agree and hope they could get in edgeways with the council, although it did not look promising. "Let’s go." They headed to the tower directly, even ignoring the view. Malcolm shrugged off the feeling people were staring at them.

"Stall them. Give me more time." " Stall the council Garrus, don’t be ridiculous. Your investigation is over.," Malcolm processed that feeling of dread he had every time he saw a Turian. He didn't hate them but he didn’t trust them either. It always felt strange seeing the different species around. "Commander, my name is Garrus Vakarian"  Garrus was his type of person Malcolm thought, gutsy and determined, willing to talk to the weird humans. "Anything you learn that can help us?" "No, all his dealings  are top secret…" Garrus was irritated, Malcolm guessed by his tone, he couldn’t read Turians at all, and he was definitely not sure it mattered much. "Commander, I think the council is waiting for us," Alenko said quietly, reminding them why they were there, as he always did. | "Good luck Commander, maybe the council will listen to you." Garrus said as they left him.

They faced the council and Saren, though how the rogue spectre had an invite was anyone’s guess. It seemed he was on the inside with the Council and nothing short of a miracle would break that. Malcolm felt angry at the situation and the awareness he could fo very little about it. When Captain Anderson presented the vision from the beacon, the response was as he had feared - that a non-quantifiable vision was not going to help the situation.

Saren 1 … truth 0 he thought grimly as they walked away. If only the council had seen Eden Prime. Had seen the dead burned and witnessed that ship. Seen the Geth rip through Jenkins shields. Instead, he was in trouble because the beacon exploded. He shook his head amazed since he hardly caused that; they also seemed to be blaming him for the death of Nihlus as if he had anything to do with that either. “Why can’t they see the truth?” Ashley asked angrily. Malcolm knew she was running through the list of her squad’s names. He had been there on Torfan, and he knew he recalled every one of the lost. What most think he did, what had to be done, was finish the job they started with.  

They took the elevator down to the presidium with a plan to hunt for Garrus and find out what he knew. Malcolm turned to Ashley as they headed towards the Wards. “How are you doing?” “It is unfair, how they treated you…” Ashley fumed “How they decided things in advance without listening.” “I guess that is the politics of it Chief, It is not what I would have wanted.” “Sir, is it too much to ask that we get listened to on equal footing?” “That.” Malcolm paused, how to answer when he had no answer “I don’t know.” “That’s politics Chief,” Kaidan responded ever calm in the face of a challenge, something Malcolm was grateful for on many fronts - he had not even winced at Jenkins’s death but had set about being a good soldier. “However, Ashley, how are you doing? I know Eden Prime was a mess.” Malcolm shook his head “Don’t make me send you to Chakwas for a psych evaluation.” “Sir, I am okay, I... it’s not easy having my whole unit die, but I understand it wasn’t my fault, and that those Geth and Saren are to blame.”She looked down “It was almost too much when the beacon exploded and knocked you out. We didn’t know if you would be okay.” “I’m fine, more or less.” Malcolm still recalled the vision absolutely clearly. “Just pissed that Saren is getting away from this.” “Well, let’s stop him.” Kaidan added to the conversation “Let’s make sure we have evidence.” “Alright. Time to find Garrus and that guy Harken is our first port of contact.”  

[crystalelemental]

Ranking the Legendary Heroes - Water

Ah, the cursed season.  The season of additional movement, impossible to tank powerhouses, and unparalleled support.  God I fucking hate this season.

Let’s be clear, all of those things count in AI hands.  In your hands, it’s a cute little gimmick, but on defense teams, it’s all just bastardry.  Anyway, 7 Water legends, ranked by combat potential and effectiveness in Arena.

7) Ryoma.  Hey, if you ever wanted to know what a completely useless unit looks like, here you go.  Flying unit, no adjusted BST, only effect from the weapon is DC, B-slot is just Wrath for some reason.  I guess it’s not all bad.  Guidance is still good, and he has that as a C-skill, so like...that’s something to fodder him for.  At least his refine will be good?

6) Eirika.  Listen, I love Eirika, but oh my god with this.  Her weapon has some interesting effects, but only if she’s near more enemies than allies.  So away from team support again, great.  Sped up cooldown charge and extra defense is nice, but overall insufficient to manage her Book 2 cav BST.  Lunar Brace with Luna is hilarious as a gimmick, but that’s all it is, a gimmick.  Yes, you negate all their defense, and hit for her raw attack stat in damage, OHKOing pretty much everything in the game.  Was it worth it to run a unit so thoroughly outclassed?  No.  It was not.  Great speed and the ability to just deal absolute damage is cute, but she lacks any defensive presence, running Galeforce makes Lunar Brace worthless and takes away her entire niche, and Eliwood still exists in the common pool.  Sorry Eirika.  I love you, but there’s a reason you’re not finished as a merge project yet.

5) Fjorm.  Believe it or not, I think Fjorm has usefulness, even now.  It’s not...good usefulness, but it counts.  Ice Mirror is just a shitty Negating Fang, but it does work against ranged foes, which means it works against some of the other Water legends.  Sure, she’s going to deal 0 damage to Chrom and Leif’s second attack will blow her face off.  Sure, across seasons, Alm and Celica will annihilate her, and I doubt she can handle Julia either.  But she’s trying okay? 

4) Leif.  Okay, and like the flick of a switch, we have gone from utter disappointment to absolute horror.  Everything past this point should be considered one of the best units in the game without question, and a reason why Water season is outright intolerable.  Let’s start with our good pal Leif.  Leif is #4, technically the exact halfway point, not because he has any particular flaws, but because he’s not as disgusting as everyone else.  Leif is stupid good.  Brave Bow effect, and a signature special that gives him a second action, but restricts his movement to one.  Yeah, that’ll definitely stop him blowing my asshole out, thanks game.  Leif is stupid versatile, too.  Death Blow 4 with a Lull for max damage?  Push skill or Fury 4 with Escape Route to hit and run really effectively?  Close Counter/Vantage for dual phase bullshit?  Leif is stupid good.  Which makes it all the more horrifying he’s only number goddamn four.

3) Dimitri.  The most recent newcomer, and already making his awful, awful mark on the meta.  I don’t like Dimitri, his toolkit is ridiculous.  Speed-based damage reduction built into the weapon, on top of +5 to all stats, all for the low low price of being above 25% HP, the easiest HP threshold to maintain.  And that’s just the weapon.  Atrocity gives him omni-Smoke and Seal effect, for -5 to unit and all units in 2 spaces after combat.  Oh, and also it does Pulse Smoke.  Oh, and also, he gets true damage based on 25% of his attack stat, which cannot be reduced in any way.  Because balance!  Oh, and we threw in Odd Tempest, which is an infantry and flying skill that gives them an extra movement every odd-numbered turn.  Because why not!  Seriously, why only eliminate the use of armor units in the game when you can also render cavalry completely ineffective?  Just slap this shit on a melee dancer and bam, what the fuck is Duo Sigurd?  Dimitri is obscenity incarnate, a living monolith to everything wrong with powercreep in this game.  The only respite we have is that he can’t run Null Follow-Up, so a unit like L!Edelgard can, and will, body him.  Celica and a fast Julia also handle him well thanks to his low Res, but your options are limited even with cross-seasonal comparison.  Dimitri’s just disgusting and I hate his legendary form so much.  And again, this is only #3.

2) Chrom.  Listen.  Fuck this guy.  No one pisses me off quite like Chrom.  I think it’s the armor effectiveness.  If he didn’t have that, we could talk.  But no, he got armor effectiveness on top of getting like -9 attack and defense on foes all the time.  He’s excellently min-maxed, but has a superboon in speed that actually makes fast Chrom a thing, because god wasn’t dead enough, we had to dig up the corpse and shit on it.  I’ve been Chrom beat L!Edelgard, a unit with color advantage and massive defense.  I’ve seen Chrom beat a +10 Cecilia with her weapon refine.  Double Triangle disadvantage, and he not only survived her Close Foil boosted retaliation, but annihilated her outright.  What actually stops something like this?  When your biggest, toughest green units are bodied because of armor effectiveness, and double weapon triangle disadvantage isn’t enough to OHKO him or stop him from killing you, what works?  What actually stop him?  Well, nothing.  Nothing stops him.  Not even necessarily getting to him first, because Close Counter.  Now even your melee units who got to him first somehow get bopped.  Not that this is all her runs.  Attack/Speed Push 4 for the speedy builds works great.  Mirror Impact shuts down faster mages who could’ve been a threat.  And for all of this, we haven’t even touched on the strongest aspect of Chrom.  To Change Fate.  His signature assist skill, which not only acts as a Reposition that gives him a second action (but inflicts Isolation, which is totally relevant because he can’t just move again and have that status wear off or anything), but gives him Attack +6 afterwards.  As alluded to with Lucina, movement assists that score for Arena are the most devastating thing in the world, and Chrom is proof positive of that.  Oh, but as an added fuck you?  It’s 500SP.  That’s right!  Chrom can score 185BST without even needing a 300SP C-skill!  So if you were looking forward to the day L!Chrom is score crept, keep dreaming, because he’s going to be here forever.  And yet somehow, despite all of this, he’s only #2.  What unspeakable horror could possibly outrank this garbage?

1) Azura.  Take a look at the last three entries.  Now go check the best legendary units across every other season.  Azura is better than all of them combined.  Because she is all of them combined.

Azura is not a fighter.  Not that she can’t kill when needed, but she’s not meant to.  No, she’s support.  A dancer, specifically.  But hey, we’ve had tons of dancers, what’s the big deal?  Sure, she gives infantry and flying units an extra space of movement, and takes any buff in one stat and applies them to every other stat after dancing so not even Panic can stop it.  What’s the big deal?  Well, it’s that every single top threat in every single season is enabled by Azura.  Any level of power they have on their own is jacked up exponentially by her presence.  What was just L!Alm or L!Celica needing to be avoided now becomes a round of The Most Dangerous Game, as Azura can, at any time, send them hurtling toward your team with an easy +6 to all stats, and if they get the drop on you you’re dead already.  L!Chrom used To Change Fate, but didn’t quite reach your allies?  That’s okay, she danced him, now he has three more movement, and now he can, and will, kill something.  Leif got his special off, but at least his attacks are over and he only killed two of my units.  Oh, right, Wings of Mercy, now he’s killed a third, haha fuck me.  Oh hai Legendary Dimitri.

Every top meta threat, in every game mode, is made worse with Azura present.  She is, to this day, the single greatest instance of powercreep in the entire game.  Nothing has even come close.  Surtr was more immediately obnoxious at the time, but a few good red counters get added and you make Null Follow-Up more common, and he’s suddenly not so bad.  L!Azura, though?  We introduced Lulls to counter her visible buffing bullshit, and she’s still supreme.  We included Isolation effects, and she’s still chosen over other dancers due to the power of her effects.  Even now, as new, powerful dancers like Peony and Triandra are added, they have to face competition from Azura.  Peony escapes this by being essential to scoring for AR, but Triandra?  What luck is she going to have?  Why run a less impressive dance to mitigate lift loss when you do lose matches, when you can just bring Azura for a higher win-rate that loses you nothing?  Even as they’re actively trying to bring in other dancers with unique effects and abilities, it doesn’t even come close to the level of devastation L!Azura inflicted on this game.

“But she only scores 170BST, she can’t be that reliable!”  Actually...that’ll do you just fine.  Especially with two matched blessing legendary units.  Especially with Dimitri or Chrom, who score like 185BST.  That’s plenty to even maintain T21, all you need are two higher scoring allies with that blessing and you’re easily hitting 756+ matches to maintain.  Score creep may some day phase her out of the meta, but I can promise you, it won’t be soon enough, nor severe enough.  All but the top-most matches will still spam her.  We will never be free from Original Sin.  Azura isn’t just the best Water legendary unit.  She is the best unit in the entire game.  She’s so dominant that having a forced blessing doesn’t even stop her being run, to this day, on most AR-D teams.  A mode she’s not even optimized for, she still runs.  That alone should tell you how ridiculous she is.  And with each new threat?  With each skill buff to infantry and flying units?  She only gets stronger and stronger.

[bad-beats]

Bad Beets Ch. 1 (11/04-11/10)

Do you find enjoyment in other people’s gambling misery? Do you live by the phrase “Life is too short to bet the under?” Would you rather place a sports bet that seemingly has no chance of winning right after tip-off, or would you rather lose a heartbreaker on a meaningless Furman breakaway dunk that covers the +13 in the closing seconds? 

Welcome to Chapter 1 of the Bad Beets Blog. I am your degenerate gambling host, Jonah, and I am happy you have decided to take this rollercoaster journey with me. I hope you find enjoyment in my gambling misery, as you will soon realize that I am the unluckiest gambler in the world (*Please note I had action on all of these games, and yes, my bank account was harmed in the making of this blog).

11/4/19

League: Turkish Super Lig

Bet: Ankaragucu PK (+105)

Units: 0.8 to win 0.85

I can tell you from firsthand experience that betting on an 11am Turkish soccer game generally doesn’t end well. Ankaragucu went down 0-1 early, but my guy I. Parlak found the back of the net to equalize in the 68th minute. That was the score up until stoppage time. My bet was looking fine, but I wasn’t expecting a win by any means. I was hoping to escape with a push (because as they say in the world of gambling degenerates, “A push is a win”). It was my bet against the clock, and then this happened…

P. Djilobodji (is it legal to have that many j’s in a name?) scores a 90+3 minute heartbreaker. That is a beet that committed arson. Bad Beet #1 of the week came at the hands of Gaziantep.

11/4/19

League: NBA

Bet: 76’ers vs Suns Over 224 (-110) as part of a 3x2 round robin

Units: 3.7 to win 8.6

This was a classic bad beat. The Suns and 76’ers both have high powered offenses, and they were well on pace to hit the over after scoring a combined 116 points in the first half. My round robin was looking great - the other legs of Wizards ML and Blazers vs. Warriors 1H over 106.5 had both hit and I was in good shape for a great Monday payday. However, the Suns and 76’ers had other plans for me.

This Beet committed a double-homicide (my hopes and dreams). I still made a profit on this bet. Just take the 8.6U winnings that I had basically in the bag, drop the 8, and that’s how much I took home. Bad Beet #2 (I am going to feel like The Count from Sesame Street once this blog is over).

11/5/19

League: NBA

Bet: Bulls ML (+260)

Units: 0.7 to win 1.7

I have lived in Chicago my entire life, so naturally, I blindly bet on my teams regardless of their actual skill. Gambling with your heart never ends well, especially on this specific Tuesday when Lebron and Lakers came to town. The Bulls were up a cool 17 points at halftime and really had me believing that they could pull off this miracle. Hopes were high after the Bulls took a 13-point lead into the 4th quarter. And then the Bulls did exactly what the Bulls do - blow 4th quarter leads.

The Lakers went on a 16-0 run to start the 4th quarter and it was all but over from then on (The Bulls, however, did hit a miracle 3 with 15 seconds left to cover the +7). You know what they say, “Good teams win, but great teams cover.” Those 1.7 units would’ve been a nice addition to the bank account, but Bad Beet #3 got in the way. 

This is a bad beet. Thanks to our friends over at https://userbeets.com/signs-that-your-beets-have-gone-bad/ for providing us with some wonderful tips on when it might be time to “toss that beet as far as you can.” 

11/6/19

League: UEFA Champions League

Bet: Man City vs Atalanta 1H over 1.5 (-123) (Bonus: live bet at halftime over 2.5 (-176))

Units: 2 to win 1.65 (and the live bet was 4.4 to win 2.5)

This was the kind of game that screamed ‘Goal Fest’ from the beginning. Raheem Sterling slotted the ball into the back of the net in the 7th minute of the game, and I thought the 1H over 1.5 was going to be the easiest bet of all time. Throughout the next 30 minutes, both teams had some chances to score that they couldn’t capitalize on. Then controversy struck! Man City got pulled down inside the box (or so I thought) and were awarded a penalty kick, which is ever over bettor’s wet dream. However, V.A.R decided to be a cock-block and determined that the Man City player was fouled just outside of the box. Great, just my luck. The following free kick looked like it was headed for the upper left corner of the goal, but an Atalanta defenseman stuck his arm out and handled the ball. Back to V.A.R and just like that, Man City was awarded a penalty kick (ball don’t lie). Gabriel Jesus stepped up to the spot with swagger, and I knew my bet was going to cash. 

He struck the ball with the strength of an 83 year-old grandmother and put the ball wide of the left post. Fuck. That 1.65 unit win turned into a 2 unit loss real quick.

Naturally, as a gambling degenerate, I had to chase my losses (word to the wise - Do Not Chase Losses). I loved the pace of play and the scoring opportunities from the first half, so I live bet the game over 2.5 (and naturally threw 4.4 units on it to cover my losses from the first half). Four minutes into the second half, Mario Pasilic netted the equalizer for Atlanta, and once again I was sitting pretty. There was no doubt in my mind that at least 1, if not 3 more goals would be scored in the remaining 41 minutes plus stoppage time.

Many moments later the final whistle blew and that was that. The teams combined for 18 shots, and only 2 found the back of the net. What a horrible and cruel world we live in. Bad Beet #4 slaughtered 15 innocent ducks (and my checking account).

11/6/19

League: UEFA Champions League

Bet: Dinamo Zagreb ML (+117)

Units: 0.75 to win 0.9

As I was getting annihilated by Atalanta and Man City, Dinamo Zagreb simultaneously decided that they didn’t want my future children to be able to afford college. This game gives me PTSD, so I will just post the results of the game and you can laugh at my misery.

How you let up not 1, but 2 (!!) stoppage-time goals to blow a 3-1 lead along with my +117 ML bet is beyond me, but Bad Beet #5 of the week kidnapped my sanity and will give me nightmares for months. 

11/7/19

League: UEFA Europa League

Bet: Under 2.5 (+117), Under 2.5 (-122), and Under 2.5 (-143)

Units: 0.75 to win 0.85, 1.05 to win 0.85, and 2.15 to win 1.5

Classic cases of “Life is too short to bet the under.” Stoppage time is where unders go to die. I present to you Bad Beets #6, #7, and #8.

Thursday afternoon signals the middle of a gambling week, so naturally, this is the halfway point in the blog. I would recommend you get up to stretch, grab a snack, and take your dog for a walk, because we are just getting started. 8 Bad Beets before Thursday night is cynical. 

11/7/19

League: NFL

Bet: Keenan Allen over 68.5 Receiving Yards

Units: 2 to win 1.5

If you don’t bet player props often, I would recommend you start. It’s like fantasy football on crack. They are an absolute thrill. Speaking of thrills, that Chargers vs. Raiders Thursday night football game was full of them for every party involved; the outright winner, spread, and full game total were all still in the balance heading into the last drive of the game. Phil Rivers and his Bolts got the ball back with 1 minute left, down by 2, after Josh Jacobs rumbled into the endzone from 18-yards out to give the Raiders a 2-point lead. Phil Rivers has seemingly lead his team down the field for more game-winning drives than he has children. At this point in the game, Keenan Allen had 8 catches for 68 yards. Keenan is one of the most dynamic receivers in the league along with being one of Phil’s favorite targets. I needed ONE SINGULAR YARD from Keenan on the last drive of the game.

FUCKKKKKKKKKK! Three targets on the final drive, 0 catches and 0 yards. I hate everything. Bad Beet #9. 

11/7/19

League: NCAAF

Bet: UCF vs. Tulsa Over 68 (-120)

Units: 1.5 to win 1.25

There’s a lot to unpack in this one. The two teams combined for 45 first-half points. Needing just 3 TD’s and 1 FG in the 2nd half seemed like a cakewalk to me. The offenses in the 2nd half just weren’t as crisp as they were during the first 30 minutes of the game. I knew this game was destined to be a nail-biter heading into the 4th quarter. With 5 minutes left, I needed a field goal for a push and a touchdown for the win. Here are the last few drives of the game…

Trailing Tulsa by 3, UCF turned the ball over on downs and gave the ball back to Tulsa with just a few minutes to play. UCF stuffed the Golden Hurricanes on 4th down to get the ball back and keep the Over 68 hopes alive...or so I thought. ILLEGAL SUBSTITUTION PENALTY GIVES TULSA AN AUTOMATIC FIRST DOWN AND INTO VICTORY FORMATION THEY WENT! FUCK ME IN THE BEARD! Bad Beet #10. I am running out of ways to describe these horrible losses and it’s only Thursday.

11/10/19

League: Swedish Allsvenskan and English Premier League

Bet: Under 2.25 (-108) and Under 2.5 (+102)

Units: 1.2 to win 1.1 and 0.75 to win 0.75

“Life is too short to bet the under” Part 2! Bad Beets #11 and #12.

11/9/19

League: NCAAF

Bet: TCU vs. Baylor Over 48 (-110) as part of a 3x2 round robin

Units: 5 to win 11.5

This is a bit of a different entry, as for the first time in seemingly my entire life, I was on the right side of a Hero Win. The Over 48 in the TCU vs. Baylor game was basically dead from the opening kick. The game was 9-6 Horned Frogs with just a few minutes left in the game. Overtime in college football is every over bettor’s best friend (and every under bettor’s worst nightmare). The Bears kicker drilled a 51-yard field goal with 30 seconds left to send the game to overtime.

This is probably the best comeback hero win I have ever had. If I had been on the other side of this bet, I would have jumped off of a bridge. Luckily, Hero Win #1 saved me.

11/10/19

League: NFL

Bet: Panthers vs. Packers 1H Over 24 (-110)

Units: 1.4 to win 1.25

I would make a far bigger deal about this upcoming bad beet if it was a loss instead of the push that it was, but man this was an all-time push. Check out the final drive of the half for the Packers, leading 14-10. 

This drive had it all. A touchdown that was reversed by replay. Matt LaFleur whipping out his big boy balls, only for Jamaal Williams to get stuffed on 4th and Goal. And of course, a legendary push for 1H Under 24 bettors. 

11/10/19

League: NFL

Bet: Devonta Freeman over 40.5 Rush Yards (+105) and Lamar Jackson over 65.5 Rush Yards (-130)

Units: 1.2 to win 1.25 and 2 to win 1.55

Remember what I said about player props two paragraphs ago? I would like to now state that I hate player props. Devonta Freeman had 30 rush yards in the 1st half and then got injured, and Lamar broke a sweet, video game-like TD run in the 3rd quarter against the Bengals, and didn’t run the ball a single time after that (along with getting pulled in the 4th quarter because the Ravens were up by a billion). Take a look…

Bad Beets #13 and #14 come at the hands of two weak things: Devonta Freeman’s bones and the Bengals’ secondary. 

11/10/19

League: NBA and NCAAB

Bet: Hawks +8.5 (-110) and Fighting Illini 1H ML (184)

Units: 1 to win 0.9 and 0.5 to win 0.9

Every degenerate knows that Sunday night basketball games are known as “bailout specials.” After 12 Bad Beets throughout the week, I was in desperate need of a few bailout wins. However, as the self-proclaimed “unluckiest gambler in the world,” I should’ve guessed that more Bad Beets were on the way. My fingers are getting tired from typing due abundance of horrible beats I had this week, so I’ll just leave the screenshots here to show you my Sunday night demise…

The Hawks not covering was a sick joke, and of course I would lose Illinois 1H moneyline on a buzzer-beater three-pointer. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Bad Beets #15 and #16. 

For those of you who stuck with me throughout this post, thank you. I hope you found the enjoyment that your gambling careers can’t be anywhere near as bad as mine. Here are some final tallies from the week:

Bad Beet Count: 16 (with 1 Horrible Push and 1 Hero Win)

Unit Swing: 28.85 to win 30.8 (Basically a 50+ Unit swing due to Bad Beets)

Hopefully, next week’s blog is far shorter than this as I would love to not go through the gut-wrenching destruction of a backdoor cover. Unfortunately, there will likely be many more where these came from. Thanks again for taking the time to read through this! Please leave comments, suggestions, and tell me some of your Bad Beets so that I don’t feel alone on Bad Beet Island. See you next week! 

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 26 - TOR - The Eichel Standard

6-4 Regulation Win

Let’s have a moment of honesty. I’ll start. I expected this to be a signed sealed and delivered loss (I think many of us did). I had a rip-roaring time watching that epic Buffalo Bills game on Thanksgiving to the point where I was near dreading a home and home series with the team I hate more than any other in the world (I think many of us did). The Buffalo Sabres, losers of 11 out of 13, up against a hated Leafs squad fresh off the firing and roasting of their former coach rattling off three straight wins, is the setup for a massively painful loss… or a very cathartic win... and a playoff spot at the moment *Heavily suggestive nudging*. We’ll come back to that. One more moment of honesty: I have begun to feel dirty roasting the Leafs fans who file into Key Bank Center in droves as of late. The reality that has been attested to me a dozen times is these are mostly folks who haven’t and may never see a Leafs game in Toronto. They’ve been priced out. Instead of feeling offended that so many thrifty season ticket holders in the lower bowl sell their tickets to Leafs fans… we should really pity these Leafs fans and give them good treatment. They are priced out by an organization that has sucked ass for half a century and not even granted them the dignity of watching it live. Just a thought. I digress. What is the greatest game against the Leafs in Sabres history? Greatest Game Against for this divisional rival actually has scanter options than you might think. There is no Leafs-Sabres game in the top fifteen of the Buffalo News’ top 50 games in franchise history. These teams are rarely good at the same time and the one time they were gave us the only playoff series between the two in the 1999 Eastern Conference Final, a series won by the Sabres I may add. The Greatest Game Against the Leafs in franchise history comes in that series: Game 5. The 4-2 win sealed the second trip to the Stanley Cup Final in franchise history. Like many big moments the team got in the late 1990s it was backstopped by Dominik Hasek being the best goaltender in the world but nonetheless the Sabres won a trip to the biggest series for the organization since the mid-70s so whose complaining? That series allows us to carry the historical playoff edge against the Leafs into a playoff series I now feel is as inevitable as Thanos. I guess we’ll see about that. Last night was a boost, no doubt about that.

Buffalo did what they’ve been good at lately: getting a neat little hot start and getting our hopes up before absolutely roasting our turkey. There are nights where Jack Eichel has a game. There are nights when Linus Ullmark has a game. Last Night they both had a game. William Nylander outmaneuvered Johan Larsson and Marco Scandella back on the other end and suddenly found himself on a breakaway. Linus Ullmark said: ain’t no problem. He scooped it up to thunderous applause. I wasn’t at this game so I’m not going to comment on the Leafs jerseys to Sabres jerseys ratio but from the sound of it both fanbases had the power of applause. Auston Matthews disappeared throughout this game; but the guy who was mature enough for the C did not. This game could be framed as the battle of the Captains. John Tavares broke the scoreless tie late in the first period with a quick shot from Ilya Mikheyev. I think Linus Ullmark was screened by both Leafs and Sabres players on that one. Sometimes it seems as though this club either doesn’t know how to defend the net or defends it so hard the goalie can’t do his job. Either way it was 1-0 after one period. Tavares struck again early in the second period. Eichel and Spezza had both gone to the box creating a 4-on-4 and some space for creative players on the Leafs. This 2-0 goal I feel comfortable blaming on Ullmark. Tavares leads a 2-on-3 and the puck ends up way behind the net. Ullmark splayed out on his belly way too early and JT got his own rebound and tapped it in. I suppose it also would have helped if the Sabres defenders were a little tougher on Tavares but hey, they held Auston Matthews off the score sheet so I’m not complaining, well at least not after the Buffalo Sabres arrived in this game shortly before six minutes into the second period.

Brandon Montour kept the puck in the offensive zone on a failed Leafs zone exit and passed it to Johan Larsson. Larsson goes in and doesn’t see his shot, so he drop passes it to one of the best trailers in the league in my humble opinion: Jeff Skinner. Yes, Skinner on a line centered by Johan Larsson is some interesting strategy from Ralph Krueger and you probably have seen the roasts of the strange deployment. Me, well I’m going to save those roasts for the losses. Skinner ripped off an Eichel-esque wrist shot that Michael Hutchinson never responded to. Just right in. Funny part of this story as we go onto the flowering of the Sabres offense here: man-of-the-people new Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe asked the players what they thought of the difficult backup position they got up there and they wanted Hutchinson called up. Hutch must feel like he got the raw end of that deal, eh? Spoiler Alert: he let six goals in. After the Skinner goal both teams botched a powerplay and as the Leafs’ one expired Jack Eichel came out of the box to pick up a juicy stray puck that had wandered into the neutral zone. Him, Marcus Johannson and Conor Sheary go off to the races on a 3-on-1. Jack Eichel does a Jack Eichel Special and this game is tied. If you watch this team regularly you probably know what a Jack Eichel Special is: quick release wrist shot from the point, preferably on the rush. That’s yummier than Thanksgiving stuffing! The feast had just begun! Marco Scandella shot from the point and Casey Mittelstadt bats at it to create a redirect of the year candidate for the 3-2 lead. Now if you want to find some similarities between these two teams its not hard. One might be that both have enough skill guys to draw defenders out of their coverages. That’s what happened when another Leafs powerplay was ending and Jack Eichel had the puck. He has the puck behind the Leafs net along with 3(?) blue & white defenders… yeah, you know who that left open: Victor Olofsson. Goalofsson is no longer in an exclusive relationship with the powerplay, now he’s taking shots in all situations and he puts the Sabres up 4-2 to put a nice little bow on the first forty minutes of this game.

Almost seven minutes into the final frame Dmytro Timashov get a shot off through the woods and the Leafs are back within one. You can’t sit back in this league, the Sabres have learned that the hard way. But with the Leafs you can’t only not sit back, you need to bury them alive. You have to beat them so bad they’re thinking of their next opponent to beat these guys. The third period was a kind of touch-and-go experience as the Leafs closed in and the Sabres extended their lead. I was in a movie for this game and when I was looking at the scorers afterwards I saw Jimmy Vesey unassisted and thought to myself: three unassisted breakaway goals in the three games? What are the chances? I come to find out it wasn’t a breakaway, but it was one of those embarrassing goals you watch happen and think: “Yeah, that’s going to be showed in a Leafs video session.” They gave up the puck right in the slot and Jimmy Vesey takes it and hardly has to do the cotton eyed joe to get through the defenders right up to Hutchinson. When Vesey got there he put a goal that actually merits the name “Greasy Vesey”: five hole from point blank. Oh, this was the moment this game became cathartic. Not only is Jack Eichel roasting the Leafs, now its his BU drinking buddy tapping in five-hole stingers. Kasperi Kapanen closed the Leafs to within one again mere minutes later on another goal Ullmark probably wants back. And so it would be a one goal game for the last eight minutes until Jack Eichel got the puck in the defensive zone with a Leafs empty net and launched an ICBM all the way down ice into the open cage for the final score line of 6-4. That’s right, the Sabres didn’t just beat the Leafs, they did it in regulation like a bunch of Gs. If we could have a game like that every night a lot fewer fans would be calling Buffalo’s turkey roasted at this phase of the season.

The NHL gave three stars honors to Eichel, Vesey and Tavares but I’m going to change one of those. Jack Eichel was not only good on the score sheet; he literally had a perfect game in zone entries and breakouts. Those are the stats of a leader. If that behavior infects his teammates we won’t be talking about another lost season much longer. If we see players on this team at least showing Eichel’s drive to win each night then what could happen? The answer is beautiful things with the Eichel Standard. Star number two ought to be Linus Ullmark who has secretly been behind some of the Sabres recent almost success and tonight: actual success. Ullmark has a .913 save percentage, which is very much on the good side, having started five of the last seven games. Think about the last seven games, how many of them do you think the goalie came out looking that good? The tide might be turning on this tandem. The time is shortly before noon on Saturday I’m going to post this. A lot can change in the next 24 hours in this league, not to mention the outcome of a second game between these two teams tonight in Toronto; but as of right now the Buffalo Sabres sit in a playoff spot at third place in the division. Say what you will about this club wasting a fantastic October, or losing in spectacular fashion against lesser teams, or even the seeming inability of the GM to rotate out some defensive depth so his Coach can stop rotating good defenseman out of the lineup; this team is not out of it. Not yet. I did Thanksgiving Playoffs last postgame remembering that most of the teams in the playoffs on American Thanksgiving are in the dance come the end of the season. The playoff picture in the east right now is tight AF. No, frustrated we might be game to game this season has all the makings of not being over. Stop writing the epitaph while the body is warm. Being a Sabres fan sucks but you got to give it the space to not suck sometimes.

After the Leafs tonight we have the DEVILS who are just as bad as the last time we checked. After that the Sabres fly out on a Western Canada road trip I’m not too afraid of. I’m not telling you they’re going to create separation in the standings, we’ve watched this team enough to know opportunity is often squandered, but I doubt we’re as doom and gloom about this team when we see the Leafs again in three Tuesdays. Just an idea, I’ll probably be wrong, right? Tampa is also waiting to come alive like a loaded coil sitting outside the playoff picture so I should be more hesitant to get excited, eh? Like, share and comment on this blog to hop on board to remind me when I’m wrong. Happy Holidays, it seems as though we can be happy this holiday season just off Bills energy. Call me a fool but I’ve got some serious Sabres energy going on right now too. Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. The Tim Hortons Rivalry. Let’s make that a thing. Nobody outside Southern Ontario or Western New York knows wtf the QEW is so let’s not name the rivalry after a fucking highway. This is a sleeping giant of a rivalry that we are naming after a fucking road. Think about it. The more you think about “Tim Hortons Rivalry” the more it makes sense.

[smmickeyd]

Forge is one of my favorite words

Well it’s been a while. I thought it would be a good idea to get some time on here before I start the job Monday. A LOT has happened in the last two weeks and even more since my last larger entry, both in an external event sense and in an internal mind/emotion sense. So it’s gonna be interesting to see what surfaces here. Let’s get into it.

So work on Monday. Woop woop! Super excited to start. Feels like everything is moving very fast now which is such a change from this summer. 4 months of moving like molasses and then 1 of just light speed. Didn’t quite get everything done I wanted to get done before I left. Motorcycle is inoperable at T&Js house. I didn’t visit Miami last weekend. Although, that may have been a double bullet dodge and it was actually an amazing weekend like I was anticipating so I’m glad I didn’t go. But still bummed I missed some friends before moving. I didn’t send the thank you cards to all the Maverick people I wanted to, two in particular. Suppose I still could but we’ll see.

Not too bad though. I was able to get all sorts of time in with friends. It cost some very late packing which has made some of my logistical choices questionable but absolutely worth it. I’ve never had people actively reaching out wanting to spend time with me like that before. I didn’t let anyone down I don’t think. Besides moving but beneath the jokes I know they understand. And my last day was just absolutely perfect. I couldn’t have wished for a better one.

I think I held it together pretty well, but I know I was a little banged up when I rolled into Maverick 4 months ago. Taking stock: Em had basically been a gaping hole in my self worth for months (my own fault for that), but then left without saying goodbye or even a hint of caring that she wouldn’t see me again. I had just graduated and had NOWHERE to go with what I wanted to do. Meanwhile Em is about to start medical school, a bunch of other friends of mine as well. Being a pretty big comparer that definitely wasn’t fun. I’m living at my brother’s and sister-in-law’s place. Better than the parents but not by much. I feel about 0 independence. I have no job, no money, and no place to call my home. Expecting social life to be a disaster. Dating? Give me a break. Mix that with Em never making any moves. Initiated holding my hand one time, so I feel about as hot and sexy as a dead fish. I had been working for years, doing well in school, having a job since 14, developing moral and spiritual beliefs. Forging myself and creating mold for who I want to be. For what? It all seemed to be for naught. Days initially set with aimlessness and procrastination. Endlessly revising a resume and cover letter when really I was just scared to submit it. Applying to the jobs I wanted with what I had and not getting accepted was such a nightmare.

Enter: Maverick CrossFit. In fact, Enter: Maverick Bootcamp. A reason to get out of the house, get blood moving, meet some people. I had some thoughts when I was planning the move to Melbourne. I told myself not to get too close to anyone and probably not even try to find a romantic connection (didn’t really have hope there anyway) because I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be there long. Boy was I wrong in the best way possible, which just shows how wack out of myself I had become up to this point. My whole life I’ve lived with the “be happy it happened, not sad it’s over” mentality. And now I’m not gonna try to make things happen just because I might not be around forever. Who the heck was that? That is not making the most of what I have. That is not enjoying the moments I’m given. That’s not me.

I got to bootcamp and started to remember what it was like to work hard physically, something I hadn’t had in 4 years. And have a coach and a team, also lacking. I really like having a coach/mentor, it’s really what I felt was missing from my undergrad experience. It came at the perfect time. I wasn’t licking my wounds from a failed attempt at a relationship anymore, it was mainly settled in the back of my mind. I had taken just the very first step to walking out of the mental holes I’d been digging all semester. And body image has always been tricky. I’ve liked how I look, especially after I learned how to dress, but I’ve never felt “hot” or “desirable”. Never been that person that gets pushed up against the wall or onto the bed because they just HAVE to have me. Always the pusher never the pushee. I’ve been cute, adorable, handsome, etc. but hot never seems to be on the table from the ones I’m into.

If I had started two weeks earlier I would have been working out because I didn’t like myself, or wanted to look good solely for others. It wouldn’t have lasted and I would have burned out. Instead it came at the most opportune time, and I’m just remembering now my senior year high school quote, “at our lowest point we are open to the greatest change.” 4 years later I was living that quote which is ironic since the real one I wanted was similar but all the more true

“In the vacuum created by the loss of what’s most precious, opportunity abounds, influence maximizes, and desire becomes destiny.”

I was searching for a lifeline and I finally found one. The opportunity abounded, and it’s influence was certainly maximized by delipidated state. It light a hunger in me. A desire the likes of which was the physical manifestation of everything I want to do. Forge myself. I’ve thrown my heart into those I found in need even if they don’t back to develop a strong, resilient, and capable heart. I’ve sought out difficult academic problems and degrees to construct a formidable mind, always my top priority. And going from Bootcamp into CrossFit opened blasted open the door for me to forge my body. I didn’t know I could, didn’t know it was possible for me. I didn’t even know that’s what was missing from my self improvement based minset. I began to see my body as a conduit, the method by which I direct my thoughts and energies to the world.

I began working out because I love myself, not because I hate myself. I began because I want to have a hot body for me and my partner to enjoy, not to make previous people jealous. I found a purer way to think, to not focus on those who say I can’t. I don’t want to prove them wrong. I focus on those who support me and say I can. I want to prove them right.

I will prove them right.

I work so that the energy, love, and support that has been invested in me is returned in kind. It’s more difficult to do it this way, but I don’t want to descend to the pain cave. Sure the pain cave gives results, but I imagine ascending to a higher plateau. One where I’ve left conquered and left behind the struggle apd the previous one to take on new, mightier battles. Why would I want to keep having the same fight over and over? Greatness is not built that way. Impossibility is a mindset.

I’ve learned to have better role models, and not just follow the ones given to me. So seek them out and find out what they’ve done. If I’m not even dreaming as big as them, I’ll never get where I want to be. I’ve thought this before about building my mind and seeing academic progress is good, but there’s just something unshakable about real progress in your physical capabilities.

A 20 lbs PR on clean and jerk on my last day?

12 hours with J, incomparable to others in so many ways, on my last day?

Night drive to let my mind wander, process it all, on my last day?

2019 has been a real rough time: that may just have been the best day of the year.

At the end of The Office, Andy is talking to the camera after leaving Dunder Mifflin and says he wishes there was someone who would tell you you’re living the good old days while you’re still in them. That’s exactly how I felt in my final weeks, that one line allowed me to drink in every little bit until I pulled away at 10:14pm and set out.

I’m ready. Ready for my career, ready to find a box in HSV and keep getting fitter; ready for all the rest that’s coming my way I don’t even know about. I had no idea I needed these 5 months.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep5: Happy Valentines Season the Writing Team Remembered YugixTea Exists

Alrighty, I’m mostly back together from nearly a week of the plague and now my buffer is basically demolished. Man. Youknow, every time I make a buffer this happens. Maybe I was just asking to get sick? That every time I finish a healthyish buffer my immune system just tanks in response?

Anyway, that’s fine because it’s been like a week now that I’ve been sort of wanting to talk about the massive amount of birds in this episode. Yeah, birds. I mean there’s no reason for me to try and hide the spoilers, I’m assuming 99% of y’all have seen this show. There were a LOT of birds.

Last we left off, Yugi decided to run headfirst into a trap door.

And then on the other side he was somehow amazed this was a trap?

Because there wasn’t either a mace or an ax handy to go through the wall like Tristan And Duke, instead Yugi has to end up in a Photoshop Filter.

Shoutouts to the overlay aurora borealis on top of this whole mess. This whole aesthetic here is just so nostalgic and I didn't even watch this show as a kid.

Man the 00′s were a great time. Speaking of great time.

We’ve had like 0 Joey for like 4 episodes and it’s been kind of incredible since this show leans pretty heavily on Joey. Like I have barely touched that mustard color in Photoshop, instead it’s been a lot of Tea, and I’ll be honest, about time. I have been saying for like 3 seasons now that this girl never has anything to do but be a ghost bus and a sort-of-not-really-gf to I guess Mokuba and sometimes Yugi but now she’s...still not doing a whole lot. I’ll be honest her new big thing is mostly running away from things, but at least now she now does Olympian feats while still doing nothing.

But all that’s gotta change because, much like Joey in S1, Tea’s gonna throw some cards with only like 2 games under her belt. 

So like, I was experiencing Witcher 1 the other day, and I don’t recommend it since Witcher 1 is not nearly as good as it’s sequels, but there’s this hilarious line where Witcher is gonna learn a dice minigame, and he asks his friend “how can I become a dice expert?” and his friend goes “Well that takes experience! Play 4 games.” and it’s like lol what? 4? That was all it need for ANYONE to be an expert, huh?

This is like that. Yugioh is a weird universe where Yugi is King of Games but he’s only been in one tourney and he’s only played this game professionally in a professional no-one-is-setting-anyone-on-fire setting like maybe 4 times.

Like everyone plays this game but the bar for entry is surprisingly low? All Yugi had to do was beat one guy by playing him once, really--just beat Pegasus and boom, King of Games. No wonder Seto was so freakin pissed.

Anyways, so the fact that Tea hasn’t really played is just like everyone else on this show.

(read more)

Anyways, after she ran 4 miles and climbed a bridge and all that, she decides, youknow what? Right here in this barren orc-filled desert is probably a safe place for a dream sequence.

And she dreams of the very last person I expected her to dream about.

So...I have questions about this dream sequence, ones that I will touch on later, but clearly Tea is getting some inception quality prophetic card knowledge from Yugi through a dream...however...Yugi isn’t actually doing anything right now. Right now Yugi is running through Tron so like...how is this happening?

Like is this just Tea actually knowing how cards work under layers and layer of subconscious? Because under layers and layers of Tea’s subconscious is actually SlightlyMoreOrLessEvil!Marik, who, as we discovered through last season’s plot twist is actually very, very bad at cards. Bakura might be still under there too, but he’s sort of everywhere just minding his own business so I doubt he’d bother coming out for Tea. Bakura’s still canonically dead/hanging out in Yugi’s Brain Labyrinth Game Room playing Gameboy Advance until Season 5.

I mean, it would be neat if Yugi actually could do this but like...he’s not actually here or at all aware that this is happening. Yes he has Ishizu’s necklace right now but will not use it this episode. This is just happening for no reason.

Which leads right into the second thing which is our most vague couple is finally going to get it’s own episode since like the beginning of season 2 and it’s literally all a dream.

Flashbacks to Yugi and Tea actually hanging out and talking one on one were all we really needed to stop calling this ship vague but eh this BARELY counts as it’s all one sided. This is just Tea doing all of this relationship herself. Which is pretty true to form as Yugi is a mess and can barely do relationships with himself at this point, let alone add a girl into the mix.

I feel like at this point a Broadway play about one single Yugioh card is waaaaaaay more likely than YugixTea ever like ever getting together (cuz like FOR REALS most Broadway is bad. Like legit not great). In fact, this make believe date they went on together is so far from reality--as it is not only a dream, but a dream in VR, and that even in the dream itself Yugi reminds her “PS, WE NEVER WENT ON THIS DATE, PS” and Tea’s like “that seemed open ended” and Yugi was like “NOPE.”

So this play is so terrible that it asks for audience participation and it turned her into a cosplayer.

So little aside, when I got my Netflix account the first thing I rented was Ironman, and then the second thing I rented, mostly out of morbid curiosity, was Cats.

Regrets. I like watching some pretty bad movies and plays but Cats is sort of like...if everyone dressed like personified leg warmers and made us pretend the leg warmers turned them into cats for some reason, and that the legwarmers were all in a polyamorous relationship with everyone else and got way too horny when they danced. And then they all died at the end/went to space/got reincarnated. But, I guess we have to give Cats some credit for basically launching furry technology forward like 50 years.

I am SUPER looking forward to the Cats movie. Probably will skip it in theaters but Netflix? Yes, please!

Anyway, Pharaoh was also here chaperoning these two like he always does although Tea has no idea what he looks like.

I just realized that, so far, every date we’ve seen with YugixTea, Yugi wasn’t even there. Like how does he keep managing to do this? The kid is managing this relationship like a champ being the supportive boyfriend or whatever and he’s not even there. Like damn.

A penguin.

so many penguins

Anyways, the animation team drew I want to say like 600 penguins for this episode. I just want to acknowledge their sacrifice for our behalf, so we could have this filler episode and watch an actual relationship blossom between Yugi and Tea but only in a dream sequence.

Because I notice art stuff like this, they did copy paste these penguins in a clever way so it wasn’t drawing 60000 penguins, but damn that’s still a lot of penguins.

My bro, the namesake of this blog, freakin loves penguins. So this entire episode he kept looking over at me and being like “right?! RIGHT!?” and it was like “wow, Bro they really made this show just for you huh?” and he was like “RIGHT?!?!”

So the thing about Crump is that he likes collecting numbers about people, which the show makes out to be strange but I have a bunch of accountant friends, and I once had one tell me that God was an accountant, and then he gave me some complicated explanation that I absolutely muted out of my memory. I once had a friend who had a fascinating spreadsheet on everywhere she lived and the friends she had, just to see if she could accurately display the percentage chance of who was dating, who was getting married, and the exact percentage of which of those broke up and the length of all of their relationships. And she was an art major.

I never saw those spreadsheets of love numbers, I only know they exist, and I have no idea where I stood on them. Sometimes I think about it. Is she still tracking me? I sure hope so.

Dude that one penguin on the right just

This show throws out the number 219 pieces of pizza like that was a bad thing?

I guarantee you, that eating 14 slices of pizza a year is a depressingly low statistic (assuming you don’t eat pizza when you’re 1 yo) That is only about 1.5 large pizzas a YEAR. That is nothing.

Course bear in mind I’m a Californian and I eat like...about 2-3 slices every time fast food pizza is offered me. And if I’m alone, well dammit I’ll eat.......more than that, we’ll just say. In fact, I just Marie Kondo’d my closet and found my college cookbook which was mostly me trying to replicate the CPK Thai chicken pizza as well as the CPK Pear Gorgonzola pizza (and may the CPK Pear Gorgonzola Pizza Rest in Peace, you perfect pizza. I have not returned to CPK once it left the menu. Bro hates this pizza but he is wrong.)

Like it sounds way nasty but I’m Californian so we don’t believe in food purity here. Put whatever the hell you freakin want on your dumb ass pizza. No food is sacred, no food will be left untouched, we’re all human beings, and everything you like is all going to be turned into pizza and tacos anyway. That is the way.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve only had 219 pieces of just Pear Gorgonzola Pizza (since it was a pricier pizza). Maybe Crump was just referring to the one type of zah?

Anyway, I got very distracted by pizza just now.

Tea heard Crumps offer to duel her in exchange for her body and she was like “I don’t really actually want to do that.” and just bounced.

I mean at least she tried to bounce. As it is, I’m glad Tea is like the only one here who at least has figured out that Cards are Dangerous.

And then an iceberg formed under her feet.

Meanwhile, Yugi has been sent to this room with four doors. Each door has a number of stars between one and four. Please remember he has Ishizu’s future necklace somewhere on his person and it could probably help him out but nah.

and then out of no where Yugi pulls this out of his pocket.

Another place where, because they localized the show to a ton of different countries, they decided to make a fake currency so people wouldn’t be thrown off by a Japanese coin and it only made the lore more confusing. He could have just used a Yen and I’m pretty sure us American kids would have been fine but localization problems amiright?

But yeah, there’s just this super random Millennium Penny that Yugi just has. To have. The redheaded stepchild 8th Millennium item no one remembers. Just like how no one remembers Bakura.

Now that I think of it, he did pull some pennies out of his pocket back in S1 with the labyrinth riddle. So maybe that’s just a skill the millennium puzzle can do--making weird ass pennies?

This is my brother’s aesthetic, this right here. This Big Penguin in a 3 piece suit and it’s got some anime for some reason strapped in the most goofy way on it stubby little wing.

This is Steve-o’s Mood down to a T.

Anyways, funnily enough, Tea and Yugi do actually get to communicate with each other this episode, but she isn’t aware that she’s doing it, much like how he wasn’t aware that he was in a dream she just had.

And so, Yugi feels newly inspired and very desperate and just throws himself directly at the door.

Yugi never did this back when Tea was abducted last season. Which...was yesterday. All that happened literally yesterday in the timeline of this show. Literally yesterday in the timeline of the show Seto Kaiba had to save Tea because Yugi got himself tied to an anchor and was too busy trying to kill himself to save Joey Wheeler (which didn’t even work and Serenity had to save Joey Wheeler instead it was a whole very confusing thing.) Like Yugi has got to stop needlessly sacrificing himself it only works a fraction of the time.

Anyway, Crump (Crumb? I don’t remember his name anymore) gives us a little backstory on why he chose to be a bird. We never got a backstory with like...Gansley. I think Yugi didn’t really waaaant to know why he was a sexy fish. And Gansley honestly didn’t want to tell him. And personally, I’m OK with not knowing.

What is it with TV shows and saying that every freakin weird tick their characters have is down to childhood trauma? Usually from parents? Like it’s such a tired trope nowadays. And honestly, from a psychological standpoint, TV shows constantly blaming parents for any character being an asshole is sort of unfair because sometimes you just have a kid who’s an asshole and it’s no one’s fault (except for the kid himself). But mostly, Yugioh tends to get creative with their backstories and this one is just “I dunno, I was lonely” which is a whole lot like the Mai backstory, but she didn’t turn into an evil bastard who wants to be a penguin, did she?

Hell, she got engaged.

Anyways, Seto’s S1 outfit makes a rare appearance. I miss that green jumpsuit with the pop collar. We got it twice this season. Heh, and bro told me this arc was bad.

And so because Crump was just straight up real bad at business and didn’t know how to find more angel investors, he’s just gonna do a murder.

Can we talk a little bit about this? So Gozoboro Kaiba was an asshole who made a ton of weapons--and that whole time, Crump was working with him so that one day he could go up to Kaiba Sr and be like “lets put that nuclear deal on hold--what if instead we just sold...penguins?”

Like that was Crump’s whole life plan. He blames Seto for it not working out but this guy worked for a supervillain for I’m assuming was like 30 years to build this theme park that I’m pretty sure would have never been made anyway?

And then Seto turned right around and made a theme park with a bunch of dragons in it?

Like why didn’t Crump just go to a freakin Zoo and be like “Lets make a penguin only zoo?” Like why didn’t he start with people who actually worked with animals?

Why did Crump go straight to working with the evil guns n stuff company to build a children’s theme park?

Anyway, he’s a penguin now, so it’s not like Crump is really all there and altogether. Like I’m assuming that maybe Kaiba Sr got a penguin theme park commission in his inbox once a month and just threw it in the trash being all “there goes that Crump again” and just ignored it or something. Like every Halloween work party Crump would have been a penguin, right? Like EVERY Halloween for 30 years? And like when Kaiba Sr got his boys did Crump come up to him and give him a Penguin lecture about how to be a perfect parent? Like how much of a nightmare was Crump to work with and how many times did the Kaibas try to kill him before Seto finally did is what I’m asking.

Also, still taking Dayquil, thanks for asking, I apparently still have some rants.

But that’s all for now.

PS I’ll have you know I almost made the title of this episode “fowl play” and decided that was too much of a low hanging pun. But I’m still like...I’m still feeling like putting it up there. That be the mix of meds and congestion.

[zippdementia]

The Main Resident Evil Games, Ranked

I’ve been playing Resident Evil games since Resident Evil 2 first terrified me as a 14 year old. I have fond memories of having to have my friend play through the sewer sections in that game, the ones involving giant spiders... and I also have fond memories of eventually overcoming those fears to achieve the coveted A Rank on the game and unlocking Hunk and Tofu (God, I had way more time back then). Since those early days, I’ve played through every main game in the series and have mostly kept up with the lore of the side games. It remains one of my favorite go-to franchises for its atmosphere and fun mix of horror and action, not to mention its over-the-top story, which always feels a little bit like Capcom browsed Reddit for its favorite fan fiction than turned it into an official game.

That said, this list looks at only the nine main games in the series (that’s Resident Evil 0 through 7, plus Code Veronica) as those are the only ones I’ve played, outside of obsessing for a month or two on Umbrella Chronicles... oh, and a brief, extremely un-fun run through Outbreak.

Because I started the series so long ago, I have a love in my heart for the old school fixed camera games and those that give us a healthy dose of survival horror over action, but I’ve tried to be as objective as possible in creating this list, keeping in mind that of course such things can never stray too far from the subjective. Also, as an added bonus, I’ve included a “scariness” ranking for each game separate from the main ranking. This, of course, is COMPLETELY subjective.

And with that, let’s do *assumes dark growly voice* RESIDENT EVIL: RANKING.

#9: Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil 6 is a mess of ideas and intentions. From the beginning, its development was hampered by too many cooks in the kitchen as various directors and producers continually changed their mind as to what the game should be. Eventually they settled on making it everything by breaking up the game into three extremely different short games, one that relies heavily on horror aspects, one on action aspects, and one on shooting aspects (including heavy use of a widely panned cover system). Unfortunately, these three approaches are intrinsically opposed to each other in terms of genre, gameplay, and aesthetic. Instead of pleasing all fans, this approach guaranteed that no matter who you are, you are going to like exactly one third of Resident Evil 6 and hate two thirds of it. It also highlighted for fans that Capcom no longer knew what its series wanted to be. The asinine story which arguably jumped the shark as far back as Code Veronica now captured that shark, put a saddle on it, and rode it around an arena while Chris Redfield did steroids. In short: the story was so nonsensical, it seemed to leave nowhere else for the series to go (a problem they just sort’ve ignored in Resident Evil 7). Resident Evil 6 has some fun elements to it, and it fixed many of the problems people had with bad companion AI and clunky run and gun mechanics, but it wasn’t enough to make the experience a good one.

Scary rank #9: In addition to being a poor game, Resident Evil 6 almost completely moves away from the game’s horror routes. Leon’s campaign has some nice tip of the hats to the old series, but the game never becomes scary. The fact that you run around with a partner for the entire thing and that those partners quip ridiculous lines like “it’s really powerful, especially against living things” means you’ll be cringing in embarrassment more than fear from this title.

#8: Resident Evil 0

Released in 2002, Resident Evil 0 feels like the final evolution of the old school style and systems of Resident Evil’s fixed camera games. The controls are smoother, the use of weapons easier, you can drop items directly on the floor and the game will keep them there for later retrieval, and there is the buddy system which represents a very early attempt at cooperative AI. Unfortunately, despite all of these improvements to the mechanics, the experience itself feels too well worn by this point to be very exciting. You can tell that the developers themselves were growing tired of the formula as they start to move away from zombies to other monsters... like, er, frogs. Yes, unfortunately the replacements aren’t very interesting: frogs, baboons, a giant bat, and an operatic villain feel like weak additions to the series and make it seem like the developers were out of ideas. The story fills in some of the backstory of the mansion incident but ultimately doesn’t push us forward towards anything new (which is what fans really wanted and wouldn’t get until RE4). Aside from an incredible opening sequence on a train and the criminally underused character of Billy, Resident Evil 0 is a very polished but very bland experience.

Scary Rank #6: The scariest thing about Resident Evil 0 is managing two characters. Trying to gather enough supplies for one person in Raccoon City is a trick in itself. Having to keep both members of your team well equipped, well healed, and ready to deal with the plethora of enemies they will face can be harrowing. It’s the rare occasion where having two does not feel better than having one. And then there’s the leechmen. I don’t know if it’s because they are sturdy or seem to pop up whenever you least expect it, or maybe it’s that music that plays when they attack, but the leechmen will freak me out and leave me with the jitters every time they show up. None of the other enemies are very frightening, though, and anytime I get too scared I just think back to that cinema scene of Markus singing opera to his leeches... and burst out laughing.

#7: Resident Evil Code Veronica

After the events of Resident Evil: Nemesis, no one was sure where Capcom could take the story next. Raccoon City had been destroyed, Umbrella Corps had fallen, and all of our heroes had been given somewhat happy endings. Enter Code Veronica, which blew open the possibilities again by reintroducing Albert Wesker. By now, Wesker is so well associated with Resident Evil as to be a cliche, but it was a huge surprise in 2000 when he was revived, green lizard eyes and all, to take on Chris Redfield once again. Suddenly people were talking about Resident Evil again and where it might go in the future. This success, however, is less impressive now that that future has arrived and there are better games to play in the series. Code Veronica always favored innovation over polish and it has not aged well as a result. Most notably, the game seems to demand more speed and fighting ability of its player than previous entries, pitting Claire and Chris against such fast moving villains as the Matrix-inspired Wesker and his pack of lightning quick hunter beasts. Combats tend to be fought in tighter quarters, sometimes to extremely frustrating effect, such as the infamous “Steve” battle (also, I hate Steve), or the Tyrant fight in the back of an airplane. Players who have not properly kept up their inventory with powerful weapons and healing items can find themselves stuck in these places, struggling with the clunky controls to try and dodge extremely damaging attacks. The atmosphere and story make Code Veronica worth the experience... but only barely.

Scary Rank #4: A lot of Code Veronica’s scares are due to the feeling that you can’t handle what the game is throwing at you. This is, as described above, a mixture of awful controls and enemies that are far too fast and resilient for most players to be able to take on with that control scheme. Still, it does make the experience harrowing. More legitimate scares come from the creepy gothic atmosphere and the bizarre nature of the Ashford twins. Alex is... ridiculous. But his sister Alexia brings to bear all the things we all hate about creepy little girls and then throws in some incest and patricide to boot. Alexia is a genuinely disturbing addition to the Resident Evil roster.

#6: Resident Evil 7

Resident Evil 7 had the Herculean task of redeeming Resident Evil as a series after the missteps of Resident Evil 6. And, for the most part, it succeeded at this. Choosing to return to the series’ horror routes, RE7 draws upon the influences of other games in the genre, most notably Alien Isolation and Outlast, to craft an experience that feels modernized and on par, atmospherically, with some of the best Resident Evil titles. There are moments that are absolutely terrifying and the game doesn’t stop feeling tense until very near the end. Gamers like myself who grew up with RE1 and RE2 love this return to form and find that the first-person perspective retains the feel of the old fixed camera without being as restrictive, creating a horror experience where you are constantly wondering what’s behind you (but at least have the ability to turn around and check). Even fans who are newer to the series seemed to collectively breath a sigh of relief when they played the game. Reading forums and Reddit threads reveals that most gamers find the game to be fresh and smart, and are happy that it lacked the emphasis on lore and the over the top mustache-twirling villains that dominated previous titles. Objectively, though, there are flaws that I think will not be looked on favorably the more it ages. The blocking system, for instance, feels shoehorned in as a quick fix to disguise the fact that you can’t dodge or easily slow an approaching enemy down. Then, too, the game tries to be an action game near the end and utterly fails at it, only highlighting its unsatisfying shooting mechanics. The Molded are scary but overall a let down as enemies, with little variety between their forms, and the boss fights are the worst in the entire series, being clumsy and frustrating and a weird tonal break from the rest of the game. So for as much as it gets right, Resident Evil 7 is hopefully a stepping stone to something better.

Scary Rank #3: For the most part, RE7 does stop being scary after the first couple of hours, but holy shit those first couple of hours. There is more terror crammed into the initial exploration of the Baker house than in the entirety of most of the other games in the series. I was actually glad when the scares let up a bit to give me a breather, but it never quite reaches the same “heart attack” level again. That doesn’t mean there aren’t moments of terror sprinkled throughout: the wrecked ship has wonderful atmosphere, and despite having terrible boss fights, the battle against Margueritte is a stand out experience, making you constantly spin around to see if that creepy woman is crawling around behind you. More often than not, just as you turn, she’ll drop on you from above. Seriously, I don’t know how people play this on VR.

#5: Resident Evil 5

As the game that introduced functional multiplayer into the series, Resident Evil 5 remains popular to this day. As I type this, there are probably at least a dozen people live-streaming the game on twitch for the billionth time, and people are still tuning in to watch. Resident Evil 5′s lasting power comes from an absolutely incredible campaign that takes players through a wealth of diverse environments. Its combat situations are well crafted and each one feels a little different from the last, demanding different things of its players in each new area. Whether it’s fighting your way out of a crowd or solving puzzles while keeping back hordes of enemies, Resident Evil 5 keeps throwing new things at the player to ensure they don’t get bored. Its boss fights are similarly diverse and well paced (with a couple exceptions... that stupid jeep fight key among them). Graphically, it still looks good and mechanically some people think (myself included) that it actually plays a little smoother than its successor, Resident Evil 6 (some people say it looks better, too). The game’s main failings come from the fact that it is about 100% less fun to play as a single player experience and from the fact that the game let go of pretty much any horror elements, opting instead for pure action. The result is a game that is one of the most fun to play in the entire series even while it is also the furthest removed from the roots of the series and probably feels the least like a Resident Evil game.

Scary Rank #8: Resident Evil 5 traded in dark nights for African sunshine and switched out zombies for... tribal warriors? No matter what RE5 does, it just seems to be less scary then when it was done before. The Lickers make a triumphant return... but aren’t as scary as they were in Resident Evil 2. The El Gigante fight in the jeep is frustrating and feels like a weird arcade game. Only the fight against Jill and Wesker manages to be tense and even there tension is somewhat broken by Wesker’s drawling accent and ridiculous dialog. Resident Evil 5 is an action game first and foremost, which does little to sell it in the scariness department.

#4: Resident Evil 1 (REmake)

Resident Evil 1 (even before being remade in all its graphical and mechanical glory on the Nintendo Gamecube in 2002) had all of the right elements to create a lasting franchise. It featured incredible sound design and cinematic camera angles, designed not only to keep you guessing what was around the corner but to emulate camera shots used in actual horror movies. For the time it was released, it was mind blowing, unlike anything else on the market in terms of both ambition and quality. More than anything, it was its precise timing that was so impressive. For a horror experience to be good, the timing has to be perfect. That’s easier to do in a film, where the director has control over what the audience experiences and when they experience it. But in an interactive game it’s very difficult. There has to be just enough breathing room to get the player comfortable. Musical cues have to be spot on. That jump scare has to happen at exactly the right moment to have its full impact. And for all of this to work the director has to be able to anticipate what the player will do and where they will go and when they will do it. Resident Evil understood these barriers and crushed them with a key understanding of how gamers play. REmake only improved on this with added enemies (like the infamous Crimson Heads and Lisa Trevor) and new jump scares. The result? Very few of the Resident Evil games since REmake have felt quite so well made. Some took bigger risks, and some are more memorable, but the one that started it all established a formula so good that everything else the series does has been informed by it. Wesker, the Tyrant, creepy mansions... they are all here and as good as ever they will get.

Scary Rank #1: Resident Evil 1 never stops being tense. You never seem to have enough ammo, never enough healing items. You always wonder if this time through the hallway will be the time something jumps out at you. The remake makes this worse with the inclusion of Crimson Heads, which make zombies rise from the dead faster and more resilient (and with a heck of a scary growl), but even the original kept the mansion scary by throwing in those damnable Hunters just when you thought you’d cleared the place out. Speaking of the Remake, can anyone say Lisa Trevor? Dear lord, she alone gives this the number one spot on the list. It may never make your heart pound as hard as Resident Evil 7 does in its most intense moments, but Resident Evil 1 keeps the pressure on for longer and it truly is a sigh of relief when you get picked up by Brad’s helicopter at the end of the game. The first is still the best when it comes to putting your heart in your throat.

#3: Resident Evil Nemesis

Resident Evil Nemesis is a roller-coaster from start to finish, packed with so much action that it is hard to remember that it is possibly the shortest game in the main series. Nemesis doesn’t waste space, transforming Raccoon City into a constantly changing arena. Running around the ruins of Raccoon City as the zombie invasion hits full swing, you witness the city fall further and further into destruction as the streets gradually fill up with harder and harder enemies. No area feels safe in Nemesis, as even spots you’ve cleared previously can repopulate with new enemies. I say “can” because Nemesis keeps players on their toes with a randomly generating enemy system that changes where and when certain enemies appear, meaning you can’t get too comfortable in Raccoon City, even on subsequent playthroughs. And any time you do finally get some breathing room, the quiet is interrupted by a deep voice growling out “STARS...” Originally intended to be only a side story, Nemesis earns its rightful place among the main series mostly due to its titular villain, who is the most impressive of all of Resident Evil’s monsters. Years before Papa Baker would chase you through the halls of his bayou home, the nearly unstoppable Nemesis was already terrifying players by breaking all the old rules of where an enemy would go, chasing players around huge portions of the game’s map, breaking through doors and walls to continue the chase and even equipping a rocket launcher to target players at a distance. There are other innovations that shouldn’t go unnoticed here, either, such as a last-second dodge feature that encourages players to be more aggressive and get up close with enemies. There’s also the “choose your own adventure” timed choices that pop up in intense moments, like when the Nemesis is bearing down on you and you have to choose to jump out of a window or try and blow him up. Sometimes one option is better than another, and sometimes the option changes the story, leading to high replayability. And if you ever get tired of the main game, there is the unlocked Mercenaries mode. That’s right, it wasn’t Resident Evil 4 that started that. Like so many things, Nemesis did it first. All of these quirks and innovations, alongside the incredible non-stop pace, make Nemesis still a blast to play today and one heck of a send off to Raccoon City.

Scary Rank #2: Because the action moves so fast in Nemesis, you will never get a chance to calm down. Not to mention Nemesis himself is a walking jump scare. If Resident Evil 7 proves that being chased makes for some of the scariest moments in a video game, then Nemesis makes you feel chased for the entire game. The only thing that keeps it from being as scary as Resident Evil 1 is that it is over sooner.

#2: Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil 4 represented a revolution in the series, ushering it from its old-school fixed camera routes into a more modern over the shoulder style of play. I struggled with this change throughout my entire first playthrough, upset with the fact that it abandoned the old formulas. Gone were zombies, gone were most of the scares, gone were most aspects of survival horror. But then I also found myself dreaming of it, saying “heheh, what are you buying?” until my girlfriend asked me to stop, and starting over and playing it over from the beginning as soon as I had beaten it. Despite the change in direction, it was a game I didn’t want to end, and I’ve gone on to purchase it on nearly every system its been released on. I’m not alone in this: Resident Evil 4 is one of the most successful games in the franchise and indeed one of the most influential video games of all time. It didn’t only redefine what Resident Evil was for an entire new generation of gamers, it also redefined how people thought of third person shooters, opening the doors for everything from Gears of War to Uncharted. If you load it up today, you’ll find it takes an hour or so to get used to the older controls, but the game was so well designed that once you do you’ll see how everything in the game caters to those controls, creating an enticing run, stop, aim, shoot cycle that is addictive and never stretches beyond its limitations. Of the over the shoulder Resident Evil games, Resident Evil 4 feels the most complete, not requiring a co-op experience to make it good nor relying on years of lore to understand and care about its story and characters. Resident Evil 5 may have been fun, but it never got quite this good again.

Scary Rank #7: Resident Evil 4 is often tense, because of the nature of its gameplay, which forces you to stand still while shakily aiming at oncoming enemies. It never really gets scary, though. Enemies are too slow and your bullets too numerous, your spin kicks too awesome, to make you truly feel vulnerable. It does get props for a certain boss that chases you relentlessly through a certain caged area... oh, and for the Regeneradors. The Regeneradors, with their constant snuffling sound and their twitchy gait, are among the scariest enemies ever in Resident Evil. But a few minutes of pure terror isn’t enough to ignore the heavy focus on action and the fact that Leon carries enough firepower to wage his own war.

#1: Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 1 may have started the franchise but it was Resident Evil 2 which jumpstarted the fan base. Resident Evil 2 had a lot to prove, mainly that this series could survive (pun intended) more than a single outing, that it could expand its scope, grow its cast of characters, and build on its setting. And boy did it deliver. If Resident Evil 1 broke ground when it came out, then Resident Evil 2 dug deeper. One mansion became a city. The two selectable characters did more than have different items and slightly change the order of events. Now, you had to play both characters one after the other to experience the full story. As if that wasn’t enough, the game changed depending on which character you played first, and in order to see everything the game had to offer, you had to play four times. Granted, two of those times would feel awfully similar, but the A&B scenarios changed just enough about the story and scenarios to make it well worth every second. The scares of the first game remained mostly intact but now a healthy dose of video game action was thrown in and boss fights became more numerous and dynamic, creating what remain the series’ best and most diverse boss fights. Simply put, Resident Evil 2 is a masterpiece of realized ambition that hasn't been matched by any other game in the series. It’s one failing now is that it is old, both graphically and in terms of controls. There’s a reason that fans have been clamoring for a remake of this for so long! But I’m glad Capcom waited so long to do it. Resident Evil 2 needs more than a new coat of paint. It is a carefully constructed experience and care is going to be required to give it a second life on par with the original experience. Here's hoping 2019 delivers on that.

Scary Rank #5:  One of the best things about Resident Evil 2 is that you aren’t playing special forces this time around. Claire Redfield is a simple citizen and Leon Kennedy a rookie cop. They feel, from the opening cutscenes, completely out of their element which added a wonderful connection between them and the player. Unlike the first game, you don’t start off in a safe situation that grows worse the longer you explore. No, you start off in a goddamned car wreck, surrounded by zombies and not nearly enough bullets to fight them. From the beginning, Resident Evil 2 highlights that you need to run to survive. Then it introduces Lickers, which add a whole new element to jump scares and you think that the game may be too frightening to keep playing. But also around this time it introduces you to grenade launchers and shotguns and lots of ammo for both of them. This makes the Resident Evil 2 scares manageable because the reaction to anything that moves in that game is to scream and then douse it with either buckshot or acid rounds.

[getseriouser]

20 THOUGHTS: COX GETS OFF (HOW COULD WE NOT?)

A second week now into the season and what have we learnt, what can we frank from our Round One observations and what did we go too early on 

Well, the Bombers had a better second half but geez the week on the track did nothing between games, the Dogs are definitely finding a new gear in 2019 and yep, the rules have done very little.

But it’s still too early for final judgements, last year, the Suns started 2-0 and were third after two rounds, the Pies were 0-2 and third last.

That said, after Round Three last year Port were unbeaten and top, so don’t expect to be naming premiers next week either…

 1.       Let’s start with the girls. Over 53,000 in Adelaide to a yes, one-sided Grand Final, but the blokes have those too, um, 2007, or 2015, take your pick. But yes, great celebration, great spectacle, big fan of the AFLW going up and up – but the naysayers going with the “oh, only reason the crowd was so big was because of free entry”. Firstly, Adelaide played in Sydney on Friday night and has more paid-up members than that ground has seats, pretty sure even if it did come out of their hip pocket there would have been plenty of paying guests if need be, and secondly, what a shonky argument, it’s like saying road users only drive on the West Gate Freeway because its not a toll road. Please be serious..

2.       Don’t let yourself get sucked into pro-Steve Hocking nonsense, “oh the new rules have been epic!” No. Scoring is down from 90 to 80 on average per team to Round 2 compared to last year and scoring shots are down 9%. So we’re getting less offense and his rules do nothing to stop congestion other than after a goal’s kicked and the ball is back in the middle, which is happening less. Tell you something for free – those conversations of crisis we had two months into last season, they’ll come back soon enough. But here’s the thing – the game’s fine, leave it. Anyway.

3.       Dogs-Hawks was interesting, credit to the Dogs, had allllllll of the ball in the second term but didn’t put the Hawks away, kept them in it. Was 23-4 the Bullies’ way for inside 50s in that quarter but they only put on two goals to one.

4.       But yes, from a poos and wees perspective, they did go two down on the bench, have two horrendous frees in the last one of which gave Schache and absolute freebie and the Dogs snuck home. If you’re Hawthorn you’re stiff but if you’re Footscray this should have been in the bag prior to a crazy last term comeback.

5.       And we’ll say this again - Libba is a top 10 midfielder in the game who’ll never be seen as one. Not classy or flashy, but gee blokes like him find themselves in winning sides more often than not. A buy.

6.       Swans again, not enough soldiers through the guts, Kennedy 36 touches, Parker 26, yes Jake Lloyd got 34 but otherwise what, Harry Cunningham, Oli Florent, really? With no midfield that team will struggle to score all year. A lean year for a bounce back soon enough we think.

7.       Brissy beat a very rusty West Coast (proven with how they performed this week) and then a dodgy North, hold fire, they’re not the three-peat Lions reincarnated, but good signs.

8.       Yep – the Langford Guelfi thing is a bizarre as you’ll see. Now the Dons did play better in the second half, playing like that they’ll be much better, but there’s six quarters of utter filth in their 2019 already they can’t just ignore. Any non-competiveness this Friday night at all and its call in the tarp and shotgun on their season.

9.       Dees got ahead of themselves? Two really ugly weeks where they thought it might just happen? Need to do the work fellas. Christian Petracca should be either Jordan De Goey or Clayton Oliver by now.

10.   Tigs, Rance wasn’t the difference, goes to show how important a raging Martin and Cotchin are. Dion Prestia looks a million bucks when Dusty polls 3 votes, but if he is held like Pig Greenwood did to him last Thursday, do we know for absolute sure Prestia was even at the ground?

11.   Oh the Pies paid a heap for Dayne Beams… not really, had they not traded for him, and taken their own picks to the draft, due to the complex draft points system they would have gotten their Academy kid Quaynor and Father-Son Kelly anyway, so from a draft haul perspective the selections would have been the same either way, just the picks used were different. All in all its just one first rounder next year, now that’s value.

12.   Two rounds in, yes the Crows are loving that they have the Blues first rounder, so right now the Crows have pick 4., but they swapped picks, so the Blues have theirs and that’s pick 8. This is only a mess for Carlton if Adelaide ends up being any good, work to do still.

13.   I know it was Freo, and I know it was a Sunday timeslot, and I know they’ve had lean years, but barely 10,000 to the home opener for Gold Coast last weekend. Gee, I just can’t see this ever becoming a 20,000+ a game club. Then again, to be fair, weekend before, Giants got 15,000 to their home game against Essendon, so work to do on both fronts.

14.   James Hird to return to Essendon, now Robbo, whats upstairs in your ‘alone time financial institution’ doesn’t need to make to print, he has barely reappeared in public let alone the idea sacking a 0-2 premiership coach to bring back the formerly suspended unproven coach. Please.

15.   Eddie McGuire copping overs for his coin toss comment last weekend. Had nothing to do with her just an unfortunate mistake – but for balance, upon reflection, geez he got unders for his Goodes/King Kong comment a few years ago, go find that audio for a listen, it has not aged well at all Edward.

16.   How does Michael Christian have a report saying Dylan Grimes had concussion symptoms and on Tribunal night the Richmond doc says no medial report he did stated any such thing? That can only go well…

17.   Melbourne will run through a banner this week covered in mean tweets as an act of defiance and resilience to online bullying and the like. Hate to say it, whilst the topic and angle is right, it’s a problem I’m glad the Dees want to combat, but giving air to the content is just what fuels those looking for a reaction – if anything this gives the ‘trolls’ what they want, as opposed to sending a message back, “hey kids, keep it up, you might make a Demons banner!”

18.   Couple non-AFL for a moment, um Ange Postecoglou – soft. Talks in the press this week as to why he ‘had to resign’ from Soccerroos coach in an “I had no option, it was their actions, they leaved me with no choice”. It’s only a view but for mine Peter FitzSimmons really quite harmless comments on Channel Nine got under Ange’s skin and then what, he chose to walk because he might get sacked if he didn’t qualify for the World Cup, which is totally normal behavior from the FFA if so, but at the time he was still amidst qualification and we ended up qualifying. Righto Ange, sorry, you’ve lost me.

19.   And here’s one you won’t like – Ben Simmons is badly overrated. Yes, very talented, one of if not our best basketballers ever, but if you’re a guard in the NBA, I don’t care how magical your passing is and your ability to drive to the post and score in the paint almost at will, if you cannot score 3s you’re not elite. Don’t care if your teammates are amazing from downtown though, that just masks your massive deficiency. It’s like a test batsman who can’t play a cut shot or a tennis player who simply cannot volley, don’t care if you’re an amazing cover drive or down-the-line forehand, if there’s a key part of the game you just can’t do, not even ok at but totally inept – you’re just a pile of mashed potatoes to me, sorry.

20.   And let’s finish with the girls again because Erin Phillips won the AFLW MVP again, and is possibly our best footballer in the country. But if she isn’t, it would probably be Sam Kerr. Going well our girls at the moment, going very well.

[survivorstarshollow]

It is time for the Rites of Passage! 

Luis: Who??? 

Colleen: WHOO?? 

Jacob: Whooooo? 

Julia: Bye girl 

Madison: The first of many fallen queens, who you gotta be so busy the fuck? 

Dom: The second fallen queen. I love you so much, I hope all is well. You really were gonna be my ride or die this game. I was so sad when you had to walk, but I respect it 10000000% 

Shoib: You made my gay ass so uncomfortable. Down with the king. 

Andie: I wanted to work with you so bad but you were so inactive! Sad! 

Chrissa: The third fallen queen. I know you would fall on your sword for me any day of the week. I am thankful for your years of friendship <3

Matt: Another fallen legend. You played so hard and I respect that so much. You just got caught in the crosshairs because of it. I wish we could have worked together for longer. 

Frances: Girl your elimination had me shook and kind of lit a fire under my ass! You were one of the kindest people I've met in games and I really hope we can chat after all this! I knew you were all up aligned with people, but you were always so good to me. I was so sad to see you go! 

Owen: Whew, another game where you were a threat to win? I believe it. I've known you for so long and you never cease to amaze me with your gameplay. I think it came to the point in the game where it was me or you, so sadly it had to be you. 

Jake: You're probably so mad at me for not using my idol on you and etc. but at the same time, we didn't talk that much. If you had come to me earlier in the day I feel like the chances were better that I used it. I would have loved to work with you in this game, but it kinda seemed like you had your group and I had mine :/ 

Autumn: Girl.... do I have some tea.... I hope I make it to the FTC to tell you how robbed you were. Love you <3

LUIS: hi king i really wanted to try to work w u bc u seemed cool but u were just a round 1 victim since you didn’t know anyone in the game. Hope ur living ur best life!!

COLLEEN: idk u

JACOB: hi inactive king u probs wont read this but ty for going inactive and saving me butt

JULIA: LOL u probably are never gonna read this but i missed u in the game and our little scam to survive that one round was fun

MADISON: i lav u & ur a lil slut shaming snake!!

DOM: bye bye king im sad u quit and we didnt get 2 play 2gether again

SHOIB: ur a king i guess,,,

ANDIE: whew a king. We started off on the same page and tbh i think u just have too much of a life for orgs which honestly wig @ that. Hope ur living ur best life

CHRISSA: chrissa queen we literally messaged each other 0 times in this game so i guess we just weren’t meant to work together this time rip

MATT: LOL we deadass never talked but from what other people said you seemed pretty chill so im sure thats the case ~ idk i mean we never talked so there isn’t much to say rip a king

FRANCES: FRANCES!!!!!!! WHAT THE HECK I MISS U SO MUCH!!!! Idk like u were the one person i met in this game that i absolutely loved and i really liked working w u. Even though u said u wouldn’t use your idol on me ur still my fave person in this game & ur eviction vote off thing made me really really sad. Things probably would have gone v different if u were still here ;( u were super robbed but i hope that ur move to LA went well if it happened and that ur living ur best life

OWEN: > : ( ur a mean snake but u got done dirty and im sorry for that. You were playing a really good game but after seeing how quickly u turned on miss frances i was scared and what happened happened. Ur still a king tho and ik u think im a fat rat but i would be a fat dumb goat-rat if i just sat and let u continue to control the game

JAKE: UM http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/022/686/download.jpg Idk i told u i had a trick up my sleeve and i definitely lied and did u dirty but it was honestly kind of fun NNNN ik u hate me in this game but u gotta admit its kinda funny LOL

AUTUMN: im sad that we never truly connected on a game level, but i was fortunate that we were able to have our moments where we saw eye to eye and had some real talks starting early on in the game. I think you’re a force to be reckoned with in every game that you play and i’m glad that i finally got the chance to play with you ~

Luis- I’m really sorry that we didn’t talk, it would have been nice to get to know you. 

Colleen- We never got to play together I don’t think but I’m sorry you left so soon!

Jacob- I’m sorry that you left so soon! :( 

Julia- You were ROBBED I know we never really work together in games but I absolutely adore you and I wish you would have been around longer <3

Madison- GIRL, I absolutely adore you I’m sorry that you left so soon.  You are such a nice person and an ICON and you shouldn’t have left so soon, I love watching you play because you always play so differently and I wish you would have stuck around in this game! 

Dom- I WAS SO SAD WHEN YOU LEFT.  You’re such a nice person and have such a good heart, I’ve known you longer than most people in this community and I absolutely love you and this was going to be our game that we didn’t turn on one another!!  We weren’t together for long but you were the one person I could tell anything game related to and outside of the game you are one of the few people I can vent about things to (HAHAHAH LSDJFLDJSF) without having to worry and I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, one day we will play together again and work together as closely as we did in this game! <3 

Shoib- king snake, i don’t know if I’m happy or sad that we were never on the same tribe HAHA.  You are awesome and I’m sorry you left so fast! 

Andie- I LOVED working with you this season!  You are such a nice person and you have such an amazing heart and I’m glad that we got to catch up with one another, I hope you are doing well Andie! <3  I wish you wouldn’t have gone so soon! 

Chrissa- You are such a sweetheart and you were so robbed this season!  I had a lot of fun playing with you and I wish we would have worked together while you were still in! 

Matt- We never talked much but you seemed nice!  It was nice playing with you!

Frances- SLDJFLDSJF I’m sorry that we didn’t talk until right before you left, you are an icon and I think that it is awesome that you are following your dreams and I hope that I hear how things go with the show you wrote!  <3 

Owen- This was the HARDEST vote by far but it was the smartest for my own personal game if I wanted to make it as far as I am now!  I’m sorry in advance for the one really mean confessional I made about you when I WAS LAST PICK WHEN THE TRIBES WERE PICKED when I thought you would pick me first sljflsdjf!!  I had so much fun playing with you and I felt like I could tell you anything without it going anywhere.  I’m SO sorry for turning on you, I do wonder still if it was the right decision but we all know that you would win if you made it this far!  I love you and I’m sorry and aren’t you proud of me for not breaking our snap streak? I’ve done pretty good for 30 ish days!!  It’s been a fun ride and I love you so much you have such a sweet soul <3 <3

Jake- I’m really sorry!  The alliance that you, Owen, Autumn and I were in meant a lot to me but it was better for my game to change it up and work with other people because the three of you were forces to be reckoned with!!  It was nice getting to know you! 

Autumn- GIRL, voting you out was so hard.  We haven’t been as connected in this game as we have been in others but I love you and you are so nice and so easy to talk to!  I can’t wait to hear about NYC when you get there! <3

Luis - rip we never got the chance to talk i don’t think so i don’t really know you

Colleen - I remember messaging you and I don’t think you ever replied so I’m not sure what was up but glad we got to play! 

Jacob - You were on the other tribe so we didn’t get to really talk:(

Julia - julia, again on another tribe but i remember you not even being invested in the game because you said it on a house call for another game lolllll

Madison - ily and I’m so sad we didn’t get to play together too much. I remember you were kinda out of the loop hehe 

Dom - Dom uggg rip I enjoyed playing this game with you a lot and I was so sad to see you go. I hope everything is going better now and hope to see you in other games:) 

Shoib - shoib lollll i remember like the first day you went idol searching and it got put in the tribe. You started off like all out but you were super inactive in the game i feel like. I was looking forward to working together in this game but in that aspect we both kinda flopped haha 

Andie - We also didn’t really play together at all rip i just remember you not being around too much. Idk if you were busy but hope to see you in other games! 

Chrissa - poor Chrissa robbed, ily and wish we had been able to work together more in this game. You are always fun to play with and have such a sweet soul!

Matt - Matt you were such a great player tbh and one of the most invested people in the game. You were strategic and even pretty good at the challenges. We clicked really well and I know I kinda lost your trust at one point in the game but I still am glad we met and worked together for a bit.

Frances - Frances okay woo so I had played a mini with you once before and saw how great of a player you were. You were very social with others in the game! I know the night you left it was very chaotic and honestly i didn’t even know what was happening...but i know you kinda had like some deals with different people? Idkk lolll but it was super nice playing another game with you and you were def one of the people i was closest with 

Owen - comp legend, lolll i know we didn’t really work together either but you were always so kind even if we were going after each other

Jake - rip so i did you dirty too I’m sorry but again super awesome to see you in a separate game because we always have a blast together. Same thing as I said to autumn: we talked as if we weren’t targeting each other, which was still fun lolll. Anyway I really hope to see you in a separate game and go crazy

Autumn- okay so we chose to kinda go out separate ways in this game lolll but I was super happy to see you on the cast reveal! We would be going after each other but we still talked as if none of that was happening hahahah. Love you so much sorry for doing you dirty

[robertkstone]

Crowning a Singular Champion: Behind the Scenes at 2018 Motor Trend Car of the Year

The 2018 Motor Trend Car of the Year program started out as so many of them have for the past seven years: with me stopping off to grab three bottles of good whiskey—to be consumed in the evenings once our cast and crew were safely ensconced at our hotel, naturally. As James Joyce wrote in Ulysses, “The bards must drink and junket.” To put it in the parlance of our times, we had 46 cars to test and evaluate in two weeks of intense Mojave Desert heat and wind. Do you know how much bickering that could entail? A good stiff drink or two is essential for inspired debate.

Before the editors arrived to judge the field subjectively, our hard-bitten advance team of testing director Kim Reynolds, road test editor Chris Walton, and associate road test editor Erick Ayapana spent a week at the Hyundai Kia Proving Grounds. These guys ran our field through endless 0–60 dashes, 60–0 halts, quarter-mile blasts, dizzying figure eights, and anything else that could place a quantifiable number to the relative performance of our field. To say this trio (along with number cruncher Alan Lau) looked spent is an understatement. Now it was the judges’ turn to take the wheel. Kim and Chris joined the panel to be sure the empirical data was fairly included in our deliberations.

After a small delay due to air travel, the 11 judges were assembled at the vast blackness of the proving grounds’ vehicle dynamics area, better known as the VDA. At this point we do our walkarounds based on comprehensive notes explaining why each particular new car is at Car of the Year, what’s new if it’s a refresh, and what it competes against. Unlike what comes later on (the fighting!), our walkarounds are lighthearted and, frankly, fun. You can usually find international bureau chief Angus MacKenzie huddled up with our legendary guest judges Tom Gale and Chris Theodore guffawing about some mangled attempt at an A-pillar, me talking over everyone else, and editor-in-chief Ed Loh screaming at us to stay on target because we’re running out of daylight.

Walkarounds are a little bit of shoptalk, a little bit of design critique, and whole lot of tire kicking. This year’s greatest moment occurred when features editor Christian Seabaugh decided to remove the hood from one of the Smart Fortwo EDs. The hood, which I think would be better referred to as a “quote hood,” is not hinged or even permanently attached to the Smart. It’s cabled to it, like a leash on a surfboard. I guess if it flies off in a crash, you won’t have to walk far to find it. I mention this because it took us about five minutes to figure out how to reattach the “hood.” The best part was that it baffled Chris Theodore, the former head of engineering for both Chrysler and Ford. There we were, standing around, trying to figure out a way to get it reconnected. Hot tip: do not remove.

With walkarounds complete and our collective brains stuffed chock-full of new knowledge, it was time to make the 35-mile schlepp to our hotel in the high-desert hamlet of Tehachapi. Christian and I volunteered to take the Tesla Model 3—even though that meant getting up 30 minutes before everyone else the next day so we could hook it up to the Supercharger in Mojave. Like all Teslas, the newest one is loaded with Easter eggs. Click down four times on the cruise control lever, and you enter Rainbow Road, which shows a moving rainbow on the instrument cluster and plays the audio from the “More Cowbell” skit from Saturday Night Live. There are a few other options to play around with, as well. There’s Mars Rover mode, which turns the nav screen into the Martian surface and the directional arrow into what I guess is Tesla’s Mars rover. Because, you know, Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. There’s also an egg that changes the central screen to a doodle pad. I’m not going to tell you what NSFW things Christian and I drew on the Tesla’s screen, but we laughed for 20 minutes straight.

Heading to the Supercharger in the morning, we happened to pass a massive gas station under construction on Tehachapi’s main drag. Driving past it in the Model 3 left me with an incongruous feeling. Who’s out of touch? Tesla or the coming-soon petrol palace? Heading down Highway 58 and seeing what must be thousands and thousands of electricity-generating windmills, you get the feeling that Tesla knows something others don’t. That said, after more than an hour of charging, the Model 3’s battery still wasn’t full, and we were forced to call in the cavalry (visual assets czar and COTY whisperer Brian Vance) because we couldn’t be late to the morning briefing. It seemed to us that the baby Tesla doesn’t supercharge nearly as quickly as the Model S and X.

After some procedural words from the fine folks at Hyundai Kia and a warning from executive editor Mark Rechtin to keep the notes regarding our 46 cars short and pithy (we tend to overwrite), it was time to begin the monumental task of hacking our massive field of contenders down to a more reasonable, manageable group of finalists. Motor Trend’s Car of the Year is the hardest two weeks of work within the auto industry. I’m going to put in a plug for our process. Unlike our main competitor, which quits when it gets to the point we reach after two initial days (they hand out some sort of participation trophy/everyone’s-a-winner award), after we’ve identified the top candidates, we keep on going before declaring an actual Car of the Year. It sure ain’t easy. But the reward for our due diligence, at least on the first day, was tacos.

As is often the case, there’s a contest within a contest, a race within a race. At Car of the Year, the secret competition is who can eat the most of Wantacos’ delicious creations. First thing that needs to be said is that Ed cheats every year. See, real tacos have two soft corn tortilla shells (if you’re not from California, I’m sorry to break this news to you). But every year, Ed asks for his tacos with only one shell. Blasphemous gringo? Absolutely, but he’s also into being thin. Weirdo. Whatever his motivation, the result is just straight-up cheating. Who actually wins isn’t a matter for public record, but the industry as a whole might be shocked to learn that the photo and video crew routinely out-eats the editors. That’s because while the editors are driving in air-conditioned splendor, the visual assets crew is running around in the desert scrub, seeking out the just-right vantage point to shoot their art while hot-footing it past some of nature’s nastier creatures. Tacos ingested, we head back out for more of the same. The first day concludes with all 11 judges having driven somewhere between 20 and 25 cars. The photographers are cashed out. Useless zombies, we eat some pizza and pass out. The whiskey stays sealed.

Morning brings the highlight of the entire event: Tom’s design showcase. We could charge money for this. We should. Tom is the former head of design for Chrysler during a golden era and the person behind the first-generation Dodge Viper. What more do you need to know? Every year Tom lines up all the contenders in a specific nonrepeating order then analyzes them one by one, explaining what it is we’re actually looking at. Tom—and to a large, though secondary, degree, Chris Theodore—hits us with all the industry speak we can handle. Gesture, grain and gloss, surfacing, horizon lines—they don’t talk down to us, but those two are way over all our heads. Anyhow, Tom is very careful not to tell us what to think but rather to explain how a design works. Why we like what we like or dislike what we dislike. “Whoever designed this should be arrested,” barked Tom as we walked up to the new Honda Odyssey. In Tom’s defense, he’s right.

After a day spent sprinting to track-test the rest of the field, it’s 4 p.m. and time to start cutting down the field. All 11 judges pack into a room, guzzle enough La Croix and Gatorade to fill a hot tub, and start eliminating the cars we don’t think have a snowball’s chance in the Mojave of being Car of the Year. This isn’t a pretty process even when we’re in agreement. When the Smart ED was dismissed for having only a 58-mile range, technical director Frank Markus said, “Thank God. Could you imagine spending 300 miles in one? That should be against the Geneva Convention!” It got cruel from there. “This is as far from the ultimate driving machine as they’ve gone,” said Chris Theodore about the BMW 5 Series. After Detroit editor Alisa Priddle explained how much she enjoyed the “More Cowbell” in the Model 3, Angus weighed in with his feelings: “I hate f—ing cowbell.” When we got to the Lincoln Continental, a person who shall remain anonymous began defending the car. “There’s a lot of money to be made from this level of tastelessness.” At one point, things got so heated that Mark sardonically blurted out, “Let’s just piss off every automaker, shall we?”

However, one large theme emerged after the “discussion.” The Korean car industry is on the ascent. Two Kias made the final cut—the surprisingly good Rio and the impressive Stinger, making up 25 percent of the finalists—and the Hyundai Elantra GT Sport was our bubble car, meaning it almost came along for the final two days. “Good value, good warranty? No! Good cars,” Chris Walton said of the Korean entries. Angus said if he were Japan, he’d be worried. The room agreed.

Speaking of Japan, we took an unusual step with the Honda Civic Type R, electing to not only bring it along as a finalist but also to separate it out from its lesser brethren, specifically the Si. See, the Civic itself was actually new two years ago and was a finalist in our 2016 competition. We dig that car. In fact, the Civic went on to win one of our Big Tests, straight-up beating every other car in its class. We view the Civic Si as a variant of the Civic we already know and love and therefore not Car of the Year material. The Civic Type R? An entirely different animal.

I’ve rarely witnessed so many people so impressed by a performance car. Angus crowed it’s the most impressive car from Honda since the original NSX. I kept asking the question, “What if the new NSX was this good? Hell, half this good?” Using the excuse/insider knowledge that the Type R is actually designed and built by a crew in the U.K., as opposed to Ohio, we took the unusual, probably unprecedented step of bringing the Type R along as a stand-alone finalist.

Anyhow, we had our Elite Eight.

That night we finally broke into the liquor and even a couple of cigars.  If Tom’s design showcase is the part of Car of the Year evaluations we could profit from, then knocking back a couple while talking shop about the car industry is the part that would cost us. Tales and truths are told. Boardroom dramas revealed. Due to the possibility of personal defamation lawsuits, perhaps the less said here, the better.

The Finalists

The next morning began our standard finalist drive loops. Because we had gotten our high-speed thrills out of our system at the proving grounds, for the most part the loops were uneventful. (I got pulled over by a friendly Tehachapi officer for something or another but was let go with a warning.)

The talk at lunch was mostly about how good all the finalists are and how the argument the next day should be a knock-down, drag-out type of affair. I developed some sort of flu and headed back to my room as soon as the loops were done. Everyone else went off on a photo shoot and then dinner.

A pounding on my door woke me up at around 9:30 p.m. It was Ed and Frank. They wanted the whiskey. I handed over three bottles. Two of them came back the next day.

We had four loops left the following morning, then lunch, and then the main event. Of the eight finalists we brought along, seven were deemed competent enough to take home the Golden Calipers. After shining on the test track, the Lexus LC 500h had failed to impress us out in the real world. We probably should have brought along the V-8, but the thinking was that because Toyota has built its rep as the leader in hybrid tech, bringing along the gas/electric LC 500h was the smart play. Turned out we brought the right car, but only because it made our decision-making process easier. With such stiff competition you’d think that the deliberations would be testy. For the most part, though, they weren’t, with several cars being billed as “great car, just not Car of the Year.”

If there was a single car I think most judges would have stolen, it was the Porsche Panamera Turbo. Yes, sure, of course, it starts at $147,950, but have you driven it? Forget about straight-line speed (0–60 in 3.0 seconds, quarter mile in 11.4 seconds at 121.2 mph), on the winding track the 550-horsepower, 4,662-pound big-dog Turbo cornered so hard that the windshield wiper fluid sloshed out of its container and across the windshield. It happened to me! That said, the “little” 4,498-pound twin-turbo V-6 4S Panamera was pretty sweet in its own right.

Although either Porsche constitutes a legitimate finalist, the decision was made to bring the 4S—not the Turbo—along. I gotta tell you, I was against this. However, most people felt the Turbo constituted “too much.” I’m not s from PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3 http://ift.tt/2BjR3IP via IFTTT

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ASIA TOUR PART 4: Mongolia Of all the countries we visited on the tour, I was most curious about Mongolia. I didn’t know anyone who was from there, or had even been there, so I had no firsthand information going into the experience. All I knew was to prepare for extreme cold and extreme pollution. So, leaving Korea, I bundled up into my warmest jacket, hat, scarf, ski gloves, and air filtering mask. When we arrived at the airport in Ulaanbaatar, we were greeted not so kindly by the guys at customs as we tried to get into an expedited line for the sake of Patrick’s injury (this was possibly just due to language limitations), and then we waited an extremely long time for our bags. And yes, when we stepped out of the airport, it was FREEZING cold and the air smelled strongly of smoke. By the time we started off toward the hotel, it was already dark out so we didn’t get to see too much of the city driving in. So it was a little intense at the beginning, but once we checked in and met up with Erika from the Embassy who would be our host for the week, everything brightened up. Erika was so sweet and helpful, explaining to us the plan for the week. They had organized our visit to coincide with the 30th anniversary of US-Mongolia relations, and it would culminate in a big concert featuring us and the cultural pride of Mongolia, the Morin-Khuur ensemble. More on this astounding group a little later. The first day was a day off, and though Andrew powered through with some sightseeing outside the city, the rest of us stayed behind to relax. We hadn’t had a full day off in Korea, and had gone to 4 cities in 6 days, so we were exhausted! Ivan and I ventured out on a walk to get lunch, about a half-mile walk away. He was a good sport and agreed to let me drag him to a vegan restaurant, where we were rewarded for our efforts with delicious, warming soups and stews. By the time we got back to the hotel, my extremities were going numb even with all the outerwear, tights under my jeans, and double socks! Even in the sunniest part of the day, the temperature hovered around 0 degrees Fahrenheit, got down to -20 at night. Our first program day started with a big press conference with media. We felt bad when they asked us questions about our experience in Mongolia, or what had surprised us about the country, because we really hadn’t seen or done much by that point! We had to just keep saying that we were excited about the upcoming events, which we really were! That afternoon we performed a concert for about 700 children at the Children’s Palace. It’s an amazing place—kind of an extracurricular one-stop shop, where kids can do all sorts of activities after school. Many of the children were brought in from the ger districts around the periphery of the city. Ger is the Mongolian term for what we know as a yurt, and many people live in them, not just out in the more remote areas but right in the city. Apparently they are very warm and cozy during the winter. The audience of children was extremely spirited, but they were also very attentive. They had great questions, especially one little kid in the front row whose hand shot up every time we asked for questions. The next morning was our first rehearsal for the collaboration with the Morin Khuur Ensemble. MKE is an orchestra made up of 12 Morin Khuur (“horsehead fiddle”) players, two horsehead bass players, two western cello players, a pianist, and about 10-15 wind, brass and percussion players. The Morin Khuur is an astoundingly beautiful instrument, and every single person in the ensemble is a virtuoso (we didn’t ask but I imagine its extremely competitive to win a spot in the group). It has two strings, tuned to B-flat and F, a scroll carved like a horse’s head, and is placed in the lap and bowed underhanded like a Chinese erhu. The strings are made of tiny silk fibers, and the sound is dark, mournful, and expressive. The intonation and precision of the group on par with, say, the violin sections in top orchestras in the US. As part of the concert, their concertmaster was to play a mini-concerto with the orchestra, and they performed it for us in the rehearsal as a special treat. I’m not exaggerating when I say we just stared, jaws agape, while they played. It was such sweeping, beautifully music, played with absolute mastery. Altogether we collaborated with them on four pieces: the American and Mongolian national anthems; a piece of theirs, and a piece of ours (Solid Ground.). The piece of theirs is a musical depiction of two white horses of Chinggis Kahn, and it is fast and furious. We were nervous about what we played fitting in with what they were already doing, but it came together very smoothly. The rehearsal was over within 30 minutes, mostly because the group and conductor are so good and everything sounded polished right away. That evening, we played for a Game of Thrones themed happy hour event at Ulaanbaatar’s only jazz club, which was hilarious. They even had an iron throne set up in the entry so people could take pictures. Before we performed, we got to hear a throat singing performance, which blew me away. I have no idea how they can control the pitch of the overtones, but it’s astounding. After that a contortionist gave a performance. She was standing on one hand, atop a precarious-looking thin silver pipe she had placed on the floor minutes before. It was terrifying. Apparently a huge amount of all the contortionists in companies like Cirque du Soleil originally come from Mongolia. Who knew? Later on, Erika told us that those opening acts were scheduled mostly for our benefit, so we could see these traditional Mongolian things when we had so much to pack into a short visit. That’s how caring and thoughtful everyone who planned our visit was! The following day consisted of another rehearsal with MKE, another media interview and one more outreach at a public library, and the day after that came the big concert. It took place at the stunning, grand state opera house and ballet theatre. One of the things that had made scheduling the event so complicated was that we had to share the space with a production of “Swan Lake” that was being put up the same weekend. When we went to drop off our cellos before the soundcheck we had to be careful not to run into the ballerinas. We knew the US Ambassador to Mongolia was going to be there, but we didn’t know that it would be a totally full house or that the former president of the country would be there! We had a meet and greet with both of them just before the concert, and they were so nice and appreciative that we were there. Some of the concert organizers expressed concern our casual concert attire, given how formal and important this event was, and also given that the MKE members were absolutely decked out in gorgeous white robes and fancy turreted hats, but we stayed on brand, mostly out of necessity (our suitcases were overflowing as it was) but a little out of principle as well: we try not to alter our dress too much based on venue. It keeps things consistent! Plus, there was no way we could begin to compete with those amazing white outfits. The concert went seamlessly, and afterwards we took lots of pictures with the ensemble and audience members. We were so proud of Erika, who handled the many cooks in the kitchen putting this event together with such elegance and grace, and didn’t let the stress get to her. After the concert was over, at the request of Ambassador Galt, we agreed to go perform a few songs at a big reception she was throwing, also for the 30th Anniversary. Some of the several hundred guests had been at the concert, but some hadn’t, and she wanted everyone to hear us. She did a great job of getting everyone’s attention for us to begin playing, but once one person started talking to their neighbor during our performance, the room became an echo chamber and suddenly there was a huge din. We weren’t amplified, so we didn’t have a chance of being heard, but we shredded a couple of songs for fun anyway. We made a quick exit after that so we could grab dinner at a Veranda, which we visited three times in 6 days, and get some sleep before our 5:15am departure the next day. Our week in Mongolia was probably the biggest surprise of the tour—I am a person who hates being cold more than almost anything, and can now admit that I was nervous about being uncomfortable and therefore cranky the whole time. But the minute we began engaging with its kind, welcoming, and strong people all those apprehensions fell away. Certainly the close engagement with the MKE and the beautiful instrument they play is something I’ll never forget, and indeed hope to experience again someday. Maybe…in the summer.