We made shirts for the premiere of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World! We’re nerds so we like dressing up for things. We decided to do homemade band shirts for all the bands from the comic, and did them with fabric paint so they would have that real indie band vibe to them.

I went with The Boys!! and Crash! because I love how it completely disregards grammar rules (and AutoCorrect is giving me hell right now). It doesn’t come across very well in the picture, but you can see little extra brush marks on the bottoms and side of the letters from where I had too much paint. I think it makes it look pretty rad.

Christina made the Gideon shirt because she has a crush on him or something. I don’t know. I think it looks great regardless. The white letters have a bold black paint outline around them, which really makes the shirt itself look like it’s from the comic.

Christina’s sister made one for The Clash at Demonhead. I love how the word “Clash” came out and how she worked in the skull from Todd Ingram’s shirt in there.

Christina’s friend Eryn made the shirt for Sex Bob-Omb. There’s official Sex Bob-Omb t-shirts for sale now, so I like how she made it very different from the ones you can buy from Hot Topic or wherever.

Dressing up for things is like some kind of geek calling. It’s hard to resist! If we’re in a situation that calls for it, we can’t help but want to show off our enthusiasm for the event. We go to Anime Boston every year, and in ‘09 we went as Dawn and Ethan (then still called Gold) from Pokémon. We got a lot of good feedback, and a ton of people wanted pictures of us.

Last year we didn’t really have the time or money to put together a cosplay, but we made hoodies based on our favorite Bleach captains. Christina did Squad 6, Byakuya Kuchiki’s squad, and I did Squad 10, Toushirou Hitsugaya’s squad. Christina even wore barettes and a scarf like Byakuya does.

Do any of you cosplay? Or are you more of an admirer than a participator?

Have you ever noticed that people treat refrigerators with the same kind of sanctity that they do a bedroom? It’s like, if you go over to someone’s house for the first time, you don’t just go in their bedroom without asking. It’s the same thing with a fridge. Why is that?

When I was in high school, my three best friends were Aaron, Antonio and Bryan. We spent equal amounts of time at each house (except Antonio’s because his house smelled weird), and we never had any qualms about just going into each other’s fridges or cabinets to grab a snack or a drink. I think Bryan was the one that first spoke the phrase, which should honestly be on a scroll or something, “An acquaintance will ask before getting something from the fridge. A real friend will know it’s cool to just take it.”

A couple of months ago my friend Todd came over, and it was only the second time he’d been to our place. The first thing he did when he walked in? Go right to the fridge and grab a soda. I didn’t think “Man that’s rude.” I thought “Man, I’m glad he’s comfortable enough to do that.”

Why is it that the fridge is so off-limits? I can see not wanting people to go in your bedroom, because your underwear is in there and stuff, but a fridge is just food and drinks. And batteries if you’re one of those old people that thinks that makes them last longer. As long as you’re not taking the last of something, it’s all replaceable. If I’m inviting you into my home, that means I like you enough to share my beer or salsa or whatever.

I’ve spent many years (seven and a half… oh man this is the first time I’ve done the math, how depressing) working in grocery stores, and although I haven’t done any customer service for a while I did it long enough to know that you can tell a lot about people by the food they buy. When I was single and living on my own, a trip to the grocery store usually consisted of pizza rolls, Hot Pockets, ice cream, sausage, rice, and Pringles. I would never go to the checkstand of a hot girl cashier, because while I wanted her to know I was single, I didn’t want her to know I was SINGLE.

(This was long before I started working at Whole Foods and learned that hey, some food is garbage and if you eat like that you’re going to die weighing 900 pounds.)

I’d see it all the time. People would come through my line in workout clothes and buy fruits and Clif bars. Groups of teenage girls would buy ice cream and candy. Guys in sports jerseys bought steaks and burgers.

Is that why some people are so protective of people going through their fridge? Are they embarrassed by the half-eaten cake with nary a head of lettuce in sight? Do they not want people to see how much beer they buy at one time? Maybe they’re afraid someone is going to steal all their beer.

If I ever invite any of you over, you are more than welcome to peruse my fridge. If there’s any leftover pizza in there, though, that’s mine. Hands off.

Megafan, who is one of the first readers I ever got, is a super awesome kid. I’ve been saying this for a while. His latest post on the forums, however, has provided him a meteoric rise to superstardom, resulting in this blog post. Yeah!

The above picture is just super awesome. I think the best part is making “Game Fuel” the favorite food, considering I’ve never even mentioned how much I love it, it’s just the alt text of my picture on the “About” page.

The next picture is even better. I’m posting it after the jump for suspense and maximim hilarious effect!

This is so freaking awesome. Me vs. my arch nemesis!

Megafan, thanks for being so rad and for hanging around so long. I tell Christina all the time that the best thing about doing this blog was the handful of people I’ve met through it, and this is just proof of that. Thanks!

I don’t really know how to start an article about how awesome Scott Pilgrim is so I’ll start it by saying that I don’t really know how to start an article about how awesome Scott Pilgrim is.

Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, the sixth and final volume of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series was released on Tuesday. I’ve read it a couple of times now, and really, it was a great ending to what is honestly one of the best things to happen to comics in the past decade.

For those of you who don’t know (all five of you) Scott Pilgrim is a graphic novel series written and drawn by Bryan Lee O’Malley about a guy named Scott Pilgrim who falls in love with a girl named Ramona Flowers. In order to be with Ramona, though, Scott first has to fight, and defeat, her Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends. Hilarity and video game references ensue.

The Scott Pilgrim saga (we can call it a saga, right?) is just… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s geeky, it’s trendy, it’s down to earth, and it’s mind blowing. It really has something for just about everybody. I haven’t met anyone who’s read the books and NOT loved them. Even people who I figured would be kinda “meh” about them have loved them.

It says a lot about author Bryan Lee O’Malley. His art style is deceptively detailed, the simple character designs playing host to a surprising amount of emotional depth. Even better than his art is his writing, where he manages to take these people that these fantastic things are happening to and make them just like people we all know in real life.

We all know I’m a huge nerd so it’s obvious why I love Scott Pilgrim so much. The books are essentially pages and pages of fan service. Each fight with an evil ex-boyfriend is basically a boss fight from a video game. Scott levels up. He gets extra lives. Defeated enemies leave coins behind.

I was looking forward to Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour with equal parts excitement and dread. I was excited because I have been waiting FOREVER to see how it all ends, but I was really bummed out because after I finished reading, that was it. No more Scott, no more Ramona, no more Kim, Stephen Stills, Young Neil, Knives, Wallace, or Stacey. The story was over.

LUCKILY I found out that since the final volume wasn’t written when they started work on the movie that the movie and the books have two different endings. I think this is awesome because I get to experience the end of the story twice, and neither time do I know what’s going to happen.

More people are becoming aware of Scott Pilgrim due to the heavy marketing for the movie, and I think that’s pretty awesome. Usually when they take something I like and turn it into a movie I think it’s going to turn out dumb, but everything I see from the movie (called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) just gets me more and more pumped. I wasn’t sure about casting Michael Cera as Scott at first, because A) he doesn’t look like Scott and B) Michael Cera really only knows how to play Michael Cera, but from what I’ve seen he pulls it off well.

With Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) directing, you know it’s going to be awesome. The trailers are showing us that he’s really taken the comic and put it on the screen. Every outlandish thing that happens in the panels are happening in the movie, from the pee meter to the extra lives to Lucas Lee whipping Scott into a distant building like Mario throwing Bowser by his tail.

I’m stoked about people getting excited about the movie because that means they’re going to read the books. We have a whole bookcase full of manga and graphic novels and there’s a lot of books on that shelf that mean a lot to me. I have my mint condition Dragon Ball Daizenshuu guide. I have my Akira Toriyama art book. I have my PVP volume 7 signed by Scott Kurtz. Even with all those things, seeing all six Scott Pilgrim volumes lined up really makes it all feel complete.

And then, to top it all off, we get a VIDEO GAME. It’s a 2D classic sidescrolling beat ‘em up with art based on the comic and music by chiptune rock band Anamanaguchi. So we have a video game based on a movie which is based on a comic which is influenced by video games.

I will have every achievement in that game. Mark my words.

Today, Bryan Lee O’Malley showed off on his Twitter pictures from Comic Con, and we’re getting Scott Pilgrim action figures and plushes in August to coincide with the movie.

Seriously, all of this is so mind-blowingly awesome I almost can’t handle it.

When I picked up Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life from that tiny, dank hole-in-the-wall comic shop in Cambridge, I had no idea that I was going to love it so much. I had no idea it would get as popular as it is now. I’m not one of those losers who gets mad when something they like gets popular. It’s a wonderful story and the way I see it, the more people who experience it the better.

This is our bathroom sink. It looks like a face. It kinda weirds me out whenever I pee.

I want to write about Dragon Quest IX, because Dragon Quest IX is awesome.

I’ve never been super into the Dragon Quest series. I’ve always appreciated it from afar, mostly because Akira Toriyama is my favorite artist and I’ve always loved his character and monster designs. I was always more of a Final Fantasy guy, because I got into Final Fantasy first.

I found a GameCrazy that had Dragon Quest VII used and I planned on buying it until they handed me the game in a sleeve and told me that they threw away all their game cases to save room. When Dragon Quest VIII came out for the PS2, I bought it, played it and loved it, but I never finished it because it was LOOOOOOONG. I was younger and a bit more impatient then, anyway.

Now that Dragon Quest IX is out, I am so into it it’s not even funny. I usually hate portable RPGs, Pokémon and Final Fantasy III DS aside, but I honestly can’t put the game down. To give you an idea of how hooked on it I am, it’s actually made me stop playing World of Warcraft. Yeah.

Plotwise, it’s your typical Dragon Quest fare. You have a goal pretty much from the outset of the game, and by going to a town, solving its problem, and moving to the town to solve THEIR problem, you get yourself closer to whatever’s threatening the world (I’m only about 20 hours in with a lot of exploring so I don’t even know who’s threatening the world at this point). The battles are traditional and turn-based, and the skill system is nothing to write home about.

And therein lies Dragon Quest IX’s appeal: in an age where games are trying to be so sophisticated, so heavy and so complex, Dragon Quest is familiar. It’s a love letter to the days when an RPG was about stats, not mastering a battle system that requires you to learn about 20 new words made up just for the game and manage another five point systems. If you’ve played a JRPG before, you’ll have no problem getting into DQIX.

People will moan about how the Dragon Quest series refuses to evolve, but the people who are complaining aren’t really the people that the series is made for. If you want an RPG series that reinvents the wheel with every installment, play Final Fantasy. If you want traditional, time-honored gameplay mechanics, play Dragon Quest. As I grow increasingly detached from the Final Fantasy series, I find myself inching closer to the Slime-filled side of the fence.

Like I said before, Akira Toriyama is my favorite artist, so I love the character creation system. It’s very easy to use the tools given to you to create some of his famous characters (It’s really easy to make about half the cast of Dragon Ball) but I really enjoyed creating a party that was unique. I’m always much more engaged in a game when I can design the characters myself (which is part of why I enjoy MMOs) and it’s definitely made my copy of DQIX feel like it’s my own specific adventure.

There are a variety of classes to choose from as well, from RPG staples like warrior, mage and priest to things like minstrel, martial artist and superstar. Each character can switch jobs whenever they like, so you can build up characters with a variety of skills.

Piggybacking on top of that is the fact that you can see all armor on your character. Whatever you equip is actually what your character will be wearing on the world map and in battle. This is cool, because as you level you’ll be coming across better and nicer looking armor, but at the beginning of the game you look like Ye Olde Gap exploded all over you.

My party: Zeth the hero, Quan the martial artist, Starsha the priest and Kyte the mage. Forgive the bad quality, you can’t expect much taking pictures of a DS screen with a cell phone.

One big addition to DQIX is the multiplayer. It’s kind of weird to be playing a turn-based RPG in a multiplayer setting, but it’s actually pretty fun. Christina and I would hook up and go hunting for Metal Slimes, monsters that give a huge amount of experience points when you defeat them. The great part about multiplayer is that the players don’t need to stay together, so we could split up to cover more ground, then when one of us found one, we’d regroup and reap the rewards.

The Dragon Quest series has never caught on in America the same way it has in Japan (where each new installment has to be released on a weekend to keep people from calling out of school or work), so it’s nice to see Nintendo putting so much effort into advertising it. Unlike in Japan where Square Enix is publishing it, it’s published by Nintendo here in the States. I’ve seen two different TV commercials starring Seth Green, and both of them were funny. The Nintendo Channel on the Wii also has a series of videos, including two “Iwata Asks” segments with series creator Yuuji Horii and two full episodes of Nintendo Week dedicated to discussing the game.

It’s a really solid game that does everything right. I played my copy for about an hour before Christina decided she wanted it too (she’d never played a Dragon Quest since the first one on the NES) so it’s definitely got appeal to series newcomers. I really have a hard time putting it down, so if you’re on the fence, definitely pick it up.

I got my first request from a company to write about their game. Does that make me a professional? I’ve made about three dollars in advertising revenue since I started this blog. That’s cool, right?

Anyway, DreamForge Games asked me to write about their Facebook game Jade Monkey. I haven’t really played a lot of Facebook games before, mostly because I get kinda tired of seeing everyone spam my news feed with their high scores of asking for ingredients or lumber or whatever, but since this was a request from an actual company I decided to give it a try.

Anyway, if  you like Bejeweled, you like Jade Monkey. It’s a classic match-three puzzle game where you slide jewels around to make matches and set up combos. This time, though, it’s got a cool Mayan theme to it which kinda reminds me of Zuma. The sound effects actually help add to the tension of the game, which I think sets it apart from Bejeweled and the like.

(It also constantly reminds me of the Shrine of the Silver Monkey from Legends of the Hidden Temple, the old Nickelodeon show.)

Probably the coolest feature about Jade Monkey is the powerup system. You can earn points to unlock things like score multipliers, a hint system, and other things to help you climb up the leaderboard. Since it’s a Facebook game, though, you can gift powerups to your friends as well, so you can help get a newbie hooked with the promise of higher scores and radder times.

I’ve actually found myself going back to Jade Monkey whenever I have a few minutes to waste, because I love the “pick up and play” accessibility of puzzle games. It’s really easy to play a couple rounds while you’re, say, waiting for your fiancée to get ready to go out. Not that that ever happens to me or anything, though.

Anyway, Jade Monkey? Pretty rad. You don’t need to buy a console or anything. If you have a Facebook account, you have all you need. Give it a shot!

So the other night Christina and I went to go see Toy Story 3 (bring a tissue, folks) and I was thinking about all the toys I loved as a kid. My favorites were my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures, which I collected since they first hit the market through the better part of my elementary school life.

Whenever I’d move and consolidate my posessions, my Ninja Turtles always came with me. When I lived with my roommates and was planning my move to Boston, though, I knew they couldn’t make the trip. I barely had enough money to ship my necessary stuff across the country, and as much as I hated the idea, I left them behind. My roommate’s parents, who owned the house we rented, said to just leave whatever I wasn’t taking with me in the garage and they’d take it to the dump.

I remember looking back at the garage as I left the house for the last time, and a part of my childhood died that day.

But literally the next day after seeing Toy Story 3, I got a text from my old roommate’s wife (who was also my roommate, the story is complicated when I haven’t bothered to give everyone’s name) saying “Hey Joe, we found some old boxes of your Ninja Turtle toys in the garage of the old house. You want them?”

Hah. Do I want them. OF COURSE I DO!

So now my Ninja Turtle figures, which I thought were long lost to the abyss, are on their way home. I couldn’t be more excited.

Isn’t the timing on that weird?

There’s a lot going on in the news right now that’s pretty terrible, most notably the oil spill in the gulf. It’s a horrible, unmitigated disaster with consequences that will linger over the environment for years to come. No one is playing down how big a deal this is. When I look around the internet, though, it seems a lot of people feel it’s necessary to complain that other things are being covered in the news that aren’t quite as big a deal as this.

I’m referring to things like the World Cup, the LeBron James media circus, things like that. You can argue for days over “How are those news when such horrible things are happening in the world right now?” Well, to you, they aren’t news. However, they’re still important, just in other ways.

I know people who only watch news on TV. They are constantly taking in information, trying to always be informed of the latest happenings in politics and general goings-on the world over. That’s fine. Knowing what is happening in our world is important. It’s still important to have other things going on in your life, though.

I can watch coverage of the BP oil spill for 24/7, know every little detail about the cleanup effort, the horrible things they’re doing to endangered species, and what consequences the company will be facing. Once I know everything, what can I do? Nothing, really. I can be upset and that’s about it.

That’s why it’s important to cover inconsequential things like what team LeBron James is going to and things like that. It gives us something else to focus on. In a world where there is an unending waterfall of bad news at any given moment, sometimes it feels good to escape into a world when the burning question is “How the hell is anyone going to be able to beat the Miami Heat next season?”

You guys know this, you’re all gamers. Games are another way to be able to take a breather and not have to worry about all the bad stuff for a while. We all go to school and have jobs and personal lives. We all need an escape from reality sometimes, and as long as we are able to moderate ourselves, it’s healthy. It’s important to be informed, for sure, but not to the extent to where you lose yourself in it.

I want a monkey tail.

I’m completely serious.

Christina has begged me not to write this, because she thinks it’s going to make people think I’m weird, but whatever. You know what I think is weird? NOT wanting a monkey tail.

And it’s not just because I’m a Dragon Ball fan, either. When you really think about it, having a monkey tail only serves to make your life easier. Let me paint a picture for you: “Oh no, my arms are full of these bags of groceries, how will I ever open the front door?” BAM. Monkey tail saves the day. Logic 1, Christina 0.

There was an episode of Batman Beyond (remember that show?) that focused on people who were splicing their DNA with animals, which I guess was supposed to be the futuristic version of getting a tattoo to piss off your parents. There was a girl with cat eyes, I think, and a guy with bull horns. There was nobody with a monkey tail, though, which leads me to believe that I am more awesome than the entire writing staff of a cartoon that has been cancelled for almost ten years.

If they ever make this a medical procedure for the public I will be lining up like I’m waiting for a Star Wars movie. I will have spent the night before cutting a hole in the backs of all my boxers.

I would use it for SO many things. I would use it for things that would be easier to do with my hands just for the sake of doing them with my new monkey tail. I could even talk on the phone while I play video games without having to do that awkward thing where you hold the phone between your ear and your shoulder that makes your neck feel like it’s going to snap off.

You’re at a party where there’s no place to sit down, and you want a plate of food but then you can’t hold your drink. Impossible dilemma? I THINK NOT. Monkey tail saves the day again.