Shenanigans....Chicanery

NDEddieMac’s War on Fat: Oh yeah, this sucks

So the last year of transitioning  from dumb student to alleged adult with a full time job has been great for many reasons. However, one of them is that it made me even more of a lazy fuck than I already was. Lord knows there was quite a base for that too. Thing is, after working, when my options were to work out or sit down and watch sports/play video games, the latter always won. However, that needed to come to an end. I am, and have been for a long time, hilariously overweight. It’s a pretty simple explanation, I ‘m not very active, but I really like to eat and drink. Not a great combo. More after the jump since tl;dr and I’m sure most don’t care.

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XBOX 360 E3 Press Conference: The Bulletpointening

Oh E3, you are so much fun. Microsoft is leading off E3 this year. I wonder how they decide order between the big 3? Anyway, this seemed to work last year, and it’s more fun for me to write, so I’m going to just type this sucker stream of consciousness style as I watch it. I’ll probably at least mention everything in the press conference but since I have it recorded, I’ll probably fast forward through things I don’t care about (read anything with Kinect in the title pretty much). Sadly I’m guessing that a looooot of time will be spent on Kinect. Not saying I blame them, but meh. To not clog the dashboards of 95% of the people that dont care, follow along after the jump won’t you?

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Eddie Mac’s Jeopardy! Adventure

1st off, thanks for all the well wishes kids, you all are awesome, awesome people that I’d love to meet in person and high five. For those of you just joining this shindig, I flew to Orlando last night for a 9 AM audition for Jeopardy! I got invited based on my performance on the online test a few months ago. Since this will definitely be in the tl;dr category, follow along if you’d like after the jump to hear about my intro to Jeopardy.

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Mass Effect 2: Best game ever?

I’m about…well a year behind on this game, but I finally finished Mass Effect 2 today. The campaign ended up taking just under 30 hours for me, and I tried to complete as many of the side quests they had as I could.  I’m not gonna do one of my reviews, mainly because it’s been out for so damn long. But this is one of the best damn games I’ve ever played. Due to the nerd quotient of this post, I’ll jump it so as to not take up most people’s dashboards that won’t care, but please continue on.

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Just for the record, and because I’m so original: My LeBron thoughts

I think it’s bush league what he did. I don’t blame LeBron for going to Miami. You get the chance to play with two of your good buddies, you get an insane amount of money with the least amount of taxes possible, and all in an insanely fun city. I don’t think that means it was the best basketball decision. I think Chicago was a better bet by far. You have a top 3 PG in Rose, add in Boozer to an already solid lineup, and you have a good team already that becomes great. I think Cleveland, you know, the team that had the best record in the league 2 years running, would also be a better play. Sure, those 3 guys together in Miami is insane. But you now have to fill the rest of your roster with what, $2-6 Million depending on the Beasley deal/rookie contracts, and then exceptions, minimums, and luxury tax fodder? We all know the salary cap in the NBA is not the end all be all, but it’s also not the cellophane wrap of baseball.

All of that aside though, LeBron has turned himself into one of the biggest sports villains out there. The worst thing is, most people don’t even realize that he made over $2 Million for charity tonight. Why not announce your pick and do an exclusive interview on ESPN and pull off the same thing? Why rub your home through the mud on national TV? You say that you gave it your all for Cleveland over the last 7 years. The problem is, players have been afraid to sign on to the Cavs for the last 2 because they had no clue what you were going to do, because you and your “entourage” of no-experience, yes-men, relatives and buddies that were given run of the barn by a franchise terrified of angering you never had the bright idea of telling you to commit so they could actually build a team. At any point in these playoffs did you really see anyone on Cleveland try to step up on their own? Of course not, it’s Bron’s team. When you always defer, it happens all the time.

But even with all of that, No one could really blame the kid. Sure, the last few years he could have assuaged the fears of Gilbert and Cleveland fans everywhere, but there was no obligation. But to drag the decision out the way he did? To agree to this televised circle jerk? To not even have the common decency to give Gilbert a call before this whole damn thing went on air like a man? The entire thing is utterly stupefying. Sure, it’s almost become passe to make fun of ESPN these days. I mean, it’s not like they make themselves a tough target with stuff like this. But they deserve a decent amount of the blame for the way this has been handled. At what point are you a news delivering organization, and at what point are you just a stage? It’s fine to be the latter, so long as you don’t pass yourself off as the best option as the former. Again, it needs to be noted, tonight’s thing had a major philanthropic component for the Boys and Girls Club of America, and I applaud James for that. The problem is there were so many better ways to do everything in this timeline. I mean hell, he’s made Kobe Bryant look like someone worth rooting for in all of this. That’s an amazing feet in and of itself.

To close this rambling nonsense, contrast all of this with Kevin Durant. Yesterday KD signed a max, 5 year extension with the Oklahoma City Thunder. There wasn’t this crazy lead up, hell, he announced it on his Twitter account. What’s even better, after people all over twitter and the NBA Blogosphere (the best covered sport on the interwebs on the whole mind you) praised how he handled things, here’s his response: “I really don’t deserve this praise for handling my deal the way I did…plenty of guys did it the way I did…” The kid is a hard worker, likeable, selfless, hell, he’s spending his offseason right now in Orlando on the bench helping to coach and getting to know the Orlando Summer League team. Only 8 teams are in Orlando right now, this is like pre-Spring Training right now. The contrast between the two is impossible to deny.

The other thing that keeps being so frustrating about LeBron is he keeps saying how humbling this all is. None of this has anything to do with humility, clearly. He can talk about all the stuff he did for Cleveland, and he did a lot: he reinvigorated a useless franchise and put them on the map as a contender. But at the same time, success is measured in team terms, not personal accolades. At the end of the day, you got swept in one NBA Finals, and your closing performance was a terrible showing against Boston where anyone who saw it would say you literally quit on them in game 5. If you wanna leave Cleveland, feel free. But don’t burn down their house and tell them they should thank you….especially on national TV in a contrived made for ESPN event.

Sony E3 Press Conference: My Thoughts

I liked the way the Nintendo breakdown went compared to the Microsoft one, so I’m going with some more BULLET POINT MADNESS, stream of consciousness for this one. Before we get to it, I’m expecting a whole lot of Playstation Move talk, much like we got with the Kinect focus during the Microsoft presser yesterday. Sony also seems to be making a big push with 3D (helps when you have 3D TVs coming out to sell as well) so I’m guess we will get a lot of that. I’m pretty on record as being anti the new 3D trend, but maybe Sony will change my mind a little bit. Also, I’m not a handheld gamer, so I will probably gloss over PSP announcements. If you are looking for those, sorry kids. Also worth noting, I do not have G4 in HD, so I may not get all of the graphic greatness of some of the videos. Come on down the nerdy rabbit hole with me after the jump.

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