Nightwing

Yeah. I only tried it a few times, and I only just started to get it. How many presses did you complete?

Hmmm... (I'm gonna pull a Fox News and put the conclusion I want the audience to come to in the form of a question.) Could McCain's fixation on Obama be because he has nothing to offer but the same old shit? I'd say it's more about how he's truly on the defensive against Obama than anything else. Obama has the public's ear, and McCain has to tell them why they shouldn't listen to him before he can start his own pitch. Obama, on the other hand, can just keep moving along like it's a one-man race. Heck, I can't even find McCain's name in his little word-puzzle. All the attention is focused on Obama himself. More interestingly, his blog also uses a lot more positive words. He's only talking about himself and using positive messages to move through. Look at McCain's and you see the mix of negative and positive, obviously with more negative since it's more about Obama than himself. I think that's the bigger advantage here; avoiding the "negativity" backlash will work in his favor if McCain has to resort to Swift-Boat stuff.

I agree with VX's sentiment about how alien things feel. I haven't played a Madden game regularly in a few years, but this system feels like a massive departure from the old. I absolutely loathe the new play-picking screen, which is made up for by the great audible system. On the 40-Yard Dash: I had the same problems you guys did, initially. Then I read the directions slowly and carefully to figure out what the hell I was doing wrong, and I figured it out. For me, I was alternating the sticks down and up unconsciously, which was causing me to stumble since you are only supposed to flick them down. After I figured out that was the problem, I was getting 4.2s and 4.15s. I had a similar problem of "Playing without reading" on the Benchpress game as well, though I maxed out at 15 after figuring it out. That game is just way too complicated for its own good.

I like and dislike the poster. I love the presentation (And I did notice the Vicky Vale reference ), but it feels way too "Jokerish" for me. If they do the Riddler, I'd hope he'd be less schizophrenic and more measured. But the concept of the Riddler trying to find out who Batman is isn't a bad idea at all. Perhaps the reverse of the comics; A "too-clever-for-his-own-good" private detective takes up the case and uses crimes so he can analyze him and piece together who he might be.

Indeed. I think my favorite part and visual in the movie comes when they are moving Dent and see the flaming road block. The subtle lead-in by the music (I believe on the soundtrack it is the track "I am the Batman") just starts the dread, and when they finally pass the flames and find out that it's a fire engine, it just gives me goosebumps. Lack of visual imagery my ass; that shot alone says so much about the hell that Gotham is going into and I just love it. A small moment, but it continues to stick with me.

Ha! Can someone get some "WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?" banners with Christian Bale and Robert Downey Junior?

But I thought he didn't know how to use a computer! The intern writing his speeches was totally on this 40-man raid when all this war stuff happened, so he had to cut a few corners on the research side of things.

The Georgian President is saying right now that his country will never surrender and he's demanding to know how Russia can explain how they had 1,000 tanks rolling into their country in hours when they said it wasn't planned. I get a real Haile Selassie feeling from him. It's showing just how toothless the UN is right now with the SC Veto.

Oh Czech, that pales in comparison to letting Michigan Central Station fall into ruin. And while the treatment of Tiger Stadium is certainly bad, the fact that this mayor attempted to sell the land the Detroit Zoo sits on is even worse. That Zoo was the first ever to try and recreate animal habitats rather than just putting them in cages and is one of the best zoos in the nation.

I don't think so, and here's why: My opinion on the biggest possible development? This entire episode turned my view of the series on its head. Wow.

Holy crap, go watch the newest episode up on Adult Swim. The best episode of the series. A TON of developments, revealations, and plot threads to be explored later. If you like history, you'll love some of the cameos. If you don't, I recommend looking at the Wiki Page for this episode (CAUTION SPOILERS!). I seriously can't believe they put so much work into it. I'm really impressed.

Update: The State Attorney General has charged Kilpatrick with two counts of felony assault in the sheriff incident. From the look of things, that case is cut and dry enough to get finished soon. THANKFULLY the charter of Detroit has a clause saying Mayor convicted of a felony is immediately booted out of office (As opposed to the long processes both the Council and the Governor are trying to go through), so it looks like he'll be out of office much sooner than expected, in part to his own hubris.

If you want contrarian, read Salon.com's review. I won't even link it, but hers was the worst, easily. The bitch didn't even get Wall-E. I have no clue how she still has a job.

No, though most of his records are, which is what I was talking about. I'm not convinced he surpassed Johnny Unitas, among others. Again, he's certainly a legend, but I think he's a Top 5 at best, Top 10 at worst. Definitely not the Greatest ever.

Eh, the Downtown is coming along nicely. But this is certainly Detroit's darkest hour; the Auto Companies are falling apart and have gotten little to no government help. The City Council is being investigated by the FBI for contractor problems just like Kilpatrick, and he is the most ridiculous figure in politics today. Elliot Spitzer resigned almost immediately for less. This guy doesn't know when to quit. It's amazing that the west side of Michigan is barely managing to offset everything that is happening in Detroit. Hopefully cutting away the cancer here will help move Detroit towards improvement. The old racebaiting is starting to backfire, and the State is seriously considering takeovers in areas like Education and such in the area. Gutting everything might be what needs to happen.

The record-books give him the "career" ones, which were mostly due to his longevity than his skill. He holds no season or game records (Season ones are dominated by Brady, Manning, and a few for Marino), and he also holds Most Interceptions. It's like Emmit Smith: He holds all the career stuff, but mostly because he stayed around longer than guys like Sanders and Sayers. He's hardly the "Greatest Ever Running Back".

While it's gotten little national coverage, the saga of Kwame Kilpatrick has been pissing off the entire state of Michigan for a little while right now. While the entire saga can be recounted in these pages here, the basics are as follow. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick fired two police officers for investigating the mayor's actions at his own mansion regarding an "alleged" stripper party where his wife walked in and assaulted one of the strippers. This occurred in late 2002. Apparently during this time they had also stumbled across a possible affair between he and his Chief of Staff. Rather than settle out of court for hundreds of thousands of dollars like the City Council tried to do, Kilpatrick calls their bluff and tells them to go to trial. At this trial, he completely denies the affair and firing them for improper reasons. He loses, and the verdict awards $5.6 million to the plaintiffs. Kwame vows to fight on, and even comments that "it isn't his money"; the City of Detroit has to play it because he was an acting official or some such bullshit. In a meeting between the lawyers, the attorney of the former cops reveals that he obtained text messages from the company that gave the City of Detroit their blackberries (I believe via subpoena, but don't quote me on that), and gives proof-positive that he committed perjury when he said he did not have an affair (among things such as obstruction of justice, blatant favoritism towards certain contractors, and more). Kilpatrick's attorneys immediately settle for $8.4 million. In return, there is a secret settlement which hands over the copies of the text messages to the mayor's attorney. This settlement is approved by the City Council (obviously without knowledge of the secret settlement). *As a quick aside, a slander suit involving Kilpatrick, his Chief of Staff Christine Beatty, and Chief of Police Ella Bully-Cummings is settled by the City Council for $25,000. What happened was Beatty got pulled over by some cops for speeding. She immediately said "DO YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM?!" and the three would later accuse them of setting up the speed trap to harass her. Thankfully, Kwame didn't have any say in this one. ** A second aside: The alleged party is still alleged, mostly because the stripper in question died in Spring 2003. How? She was shot around twenty times in her car via drive-by. The Detroit Police Department concluded officially that they were after her boyfriend, who got away after the vehicle which fired on her went around for a second pass on her. The investigator who was originally working on the case was reassigned and locked out of information after he concluded that it could have been a hit on her, and that the bullets used (.40 Glock) were the same round used by the Detroit Police Department). The son of the woman is still gathering evidence, and multiple people have come forward to confirm there was a party, though it still has no definitive "proof". The Detroit Free Press (A top-rated paper, for those of you who don't know) delves into the settlement and (I believe through freedom of information) manage to obtain the text messages that the cops' attorney had gotten. They break it in January. Kilpatrick apologizes, though he refuses to say for what and accuses the media of hounding his family. The City Council asks him to resign in a 7-1 vote, which he refuses to do, commenting he "won't quit on Detroit". In his "State of the City Address", he ends with a race-baiting comment about he's never been called a "Nigger" so many times in his life. For those of you who don't know, Detroit is a very racially-polarized city and has been in constant conflict between the black city and white suburbs ever since the "Great White Flight". It calmed down quite a bit with Mayor Dennis Archer, but Kilpatrick has played on it to keep himself in office. At this point, multiple people ask him to step down, including State Attorney General Mike Cox. Recently, with accusations of favoritism towards a contractor (Who he went to school with, is close friends, and whose brother is married to his sister), he was at his sisters house when the County Sheriff's Department came to serve a subpoena on the man, believing he was there. Before the officers can be shown away, Kilpatrick apparently came out, yelled at them and shoved a Deputy back into another while shouting racially hateful things (I believe one of them was "A black man shouldn't be riding in a car with a guy named 'White'." was one). The Governor has started her own process to force him to resign. There's even more going on, including an investigation into a charity run by his wife, in which she is the only employee and is receiving thousands of dollars, as well mass nepotism in appointments and pay-raises in the city government. Now, after the Sheriff-pushing incident (Which the State Attorney General is looking into to see if he should press charges or not) and two trips without giving the judge any warning has brought us to this.

I don't mind him, either. I would definitely put him above "Ultra-Powerful Transexual Guy" in Bleach right now. At the very least, And, for the most part filler is regulated to single episodes in Naruto, and aren't too bad. There is only one arc ("Tea Country Race") which you might want to avoid (Episodes 102-106). The biggest problem is that after 135, you literally have 85 episodes of 1-5 episode arcs, the best of which are decent, the worst of which are mind-numbingly bad. There is a modified 135 out there done by some fans which is recut to lead into Shipuudden ala the manga which you will want to find. As a warning, Shipuudden slows down things a bit to make sure that "Filler Hell" is avoided for the most part, and their one filler arc is going to end at about 13 episodes. It's definitely a big improvement over first half filler, though it could a little work. But it definitely gives me hope for later filler arcs to be a bit more developed and interesting. Edit: Also check out the first movie, which is actually good. Skip the next two, though.

By concentrating on villains who aren't completely one-dimensional? The first two movies were great and didn't need Venom at all. Spider-Man survived over twenty years without Venom; trying to force him in to placate fanboys was stupid, especially since most of his appeal comes from being an anti-hero rather than a Spider-Man villain. The symbiote, for the most part, worked fine in the story. But they should have kept the villains to Harry and Sandman.

Well, it looks like Filppula signs for 5 years, $15 million. A great deal for the Wings, especially if he develops into a solid second-line scorer in that time. An interesting note: It looks like Lilja is heading out. With a few teams looking for veteran defensemen, he might net a decent prospect in the long-run. Hopefully they clear out Samuelsson, too, and give guys like Kopecky (Who was developing well last year until he got injured) and Helm (Who was the energy guy on the team during the playoffs) more time. I'd also like to see if Leino can make it onto the team his first year over.

I love the fact that they left it on the Canal and picked it up the next day. That's great.

I wouldn't write off PSH out-of-hand. A lot of people questioned Heath Ledger for similar reasons, but we've seen how that choice worked out. If he has the acting chops, I don't see why he couldn't be. Of course, I'll dismiss Hugh Jackman out-of-hand because I don't think Warner Brothers would cast a villain in a Batman movie with a guy who is associated with one of Marvel's most popular characters ever. I actually counted the "Tony Soprano" thing against him, as it's an iconic role (or close enough to one) and might be too distracting to get around. But acting-wise, I don't see why he couldn't do it. He looks enough like the Penguin to do the character, but removes all the freakish parts about him (Most notably, he's not nearly as short as traditional Penguin is). Gandolfini knows how to play reserved and cool very well, and I don't see him just playing Tony Soprano over again. I don't see why he's at all a horrible choice.

I don't see a problem with Catwoman, since her character has been portrayed and retconned in such a wide variety of ways that you could make her into just about anything you want. She could be anything from the sophisticated jewel thief to some hooker who snapped and started murdering pimps and johns. On the other hand, really, what the hell is the appeal of the Riddler? I'm always perplexed when people talk about how Jim Carrey ruined him in Batman Forever; um, what the fuck was there to ruin? In the past few years they've tried to salvage his character a bit by making him some kind of super-genius, but he's still got a stupid name, a stupid costume, and a really stupid gimmick. In the immortal words of Seanbaby on his Superfriends page: "His superpower is tattling. Here's a guy who's just as tough as a regular guy, but easier to catch. Wow. Look out, world." I'm the other way around. The Riddler actually translates well as into a more modern setting; he's the perfect hacker-style character. And his appeal? Watch the Batman: the Animated Series. He has some great episodes and is actually a serious and challenging villain. If you stay away from the wacky Frank Gorshin model, he can be an interesting character. On the other hand, the problem you run into with Catwoman is her relationship with Batman. I don't think it can be done in the same tone as the rest of the series, which has prided itself on a pseudo-realism. It just feels too comicbook-ish.

Hall certainly was playing a character similar to Ryder (Outspoken T.V. Host), and has the reason (Traumatic Experience at the hands of the Joker). But I think he's bad as a villain, especially in a team-up. The Creeper is more of a loner than anything. Perhaps Hall, having had such a horrifying experience with the Joker, develops a severe cause of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He can't sleep, starts to become distant and stops appearing on T.V... and at night he goes out (since he can't sleep) and takes out his incredible anger on anyone he finds in a back alley (Mostly homeless people). With a freakish, uncontrollable grin, of course. After that, he becomes more and more distant, afraid of what he's becoming, and it almost becomes a second personality. It's definitely a great set-up, but I don't think it works for anything but a minor character. He wouldn't play a big part, but maybe he gets captured midway in the film after we see one or two of his "Creeper Moments", and suddenly reveal him to be Hall. Hall breaks down, talks about everything that is wrong with him and has happened since the Joker got him, and begs Batman to take him away to a place where he can't hurt people. It shows how deep the wounds the Joker inflicted on the city really were, and that they might never fully heal.

It plays even better when you look at the reaction the Joker got.