Tickets. Oooh Yeah!

11.10.2004

Saturday morning I had the feeling there was something I was supposed to be doing. I had slept late (9:30-ish), and had been talking to Gina on the phone. After I hung up at 9:53, I started to wonder more about whatever it was I was supposed to be doing. I looked at the clock again, and it hit me.

WWE Raw is coming in Dec. Tickets were going on sale this morning. At 10:00. Well, there's no way I can make it to the VBC in 7 minutes, especially seeing as how it's a good 25 minutes away. Hmmmm, I'll try Ticketmaster.

So to Ticketmaster I went. I loaded appropriate pages of ticket information, seating charts, got my credit card ready, and then I waited another 2 minutes before the tickets actually went on sale. Seeing as how this was going to be on TV, I was only going to get a ticket if I could find one near ringside. The last time I went to see wrestling, over 2 years ago, I had gotten a pretty good floor seat to see TNA, so maybe my luck would hold out. The 2 minutes passed and the tickets were suddenly available to the world. I quickly put in my search for "1" and "best available" ticket and waited to see what would pop up. I was shown a floor ticket, 5 rows back from ringside. Sounds good to me, that baby's mine now!

Everything went off without a hitch. This morning I got an email notification that my ticket has been printed and will be mailed soon. I guess it's ended up being worth the extra $12 that Ticketmaster tacks on top of the ticket price. I didn't have to leave home, wait in line, drive 25 minutes. Tipity tap tap and "here's your ticket".

I'm hoping I get a chance to hang out with my favorite lighting designer Uncle Jason when they come to town for Raw. Unfortunately, there's a PPV in Atlanta the night before, and they're taping Smackdown in Nashville the night after, so he's going to be pretty busy and pretty tired. But maybe I can hijack him for a little while!

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Eeeek

11.09.2004

I made a discovery during one of my infrequent cleaning of the couches. I found a mouse in my couch. I dead mouse. A dead, flat mouse.

Evidently the dead flat mouse had found its way to the comfort of the part of the couch where the back and bottom come together. There were even lots of little mouse droppings underneath the cushion, so the mouse had been there a little while before becoming a dead flat mouse.

Thanks to a childhood experience (that oddly enough is centered around a family of dead mice, but I'll leave that for another day), to this day I have a little mouse phobia. So even though I knew the mouse to be dead, and flat, I went and found a pair of tongs to retrieve the mouse from the couch. Even with tongs, I'm pretty sure I was making an "oooh, icky" face while getting the mouse. But I got the mouse without incident, disposed of said mouse, and went about cleaning up the couch with my handy dandy Super Shark hand vac.

Now if only the other mice will stay away this winter since I'm known as the home of dead flat mice.

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Binary Wrestling Bliss, Part II

11.08.2004

I had completed my chores (well, enough of my chores). I had caught up with work. The weekend was here. It was wrestling game playing time.

The latest PS2 wrestling game: Smackdown Vs Raw was nestled within my PS2 ready for some cans of whoop ass to be opened. After playing it the majority of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I think I'm ready to tell the world my review.

It's ok.

This is the game I annually wait for the November update, and every year it gets a little better, except for this year. I guess after 5 years of getting gradually better I shouldn't be surprised that there's finally a little bit of a let down. Each year they add some new features and take away a couple of old features. I eventually don't miss some of the old features and come to enjoy the latest version better than the last, but this year something's lacking.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good wrestling game. Game play wise, it's the same game as last year. Same controls. Same moves. I'm good with that, I like the game play. It's the extra options that seem to be lacking. So what's the differences?

• Story Mode - It's still your basic "choose your own adventure" path, but this year it lacks the "randomness" of the participants. I'm in my 3rd virtual year, and I've already had the same feud with Chris Jericho and Randy Orton 3 times.
• Fewer Titles - Last years Here Comes The Pain let you fight for up to 7 titles. This years there's 4.
• Smackdown or Raw - Last year you could choose which brand to wrestle for, and if you didn't have a title you could switch between shows, which was good in case you got tired of fighting the same characters. This year, you're stuck on the show you initially choose.
• Legends Characters - Once again you can unlock legends. The choices between the 2 games is a little different, but the number seems about the same. The drawback (to me) is that in Smackdown vs Raw, the unlocked legends are only avaialable in exhibition mode. Being a story mode kind of guy, I liked adding the legends to the roster in Here Comes The Pain.
• Rosters - Here Comes the Pain had 55 wrestlers. This was about the best roster I've ever seen in a game. It had the big names form the WCW years like Goldberg and the nWo guys. Hogan. Booker T. It had the great WWE guys like Shawn Michaels, HHH, and the up and comers like Randy Orton and John Cena. Smackdown vs Raw has about 30, losing most of the WCW leftovers.

So, it looks like I'm a little disapointed in the new game. I still like it better than most other wrestling games, it's just not all that I had hoped it would be. Maybe I need to give chick wrestling a chance when it's released this week. game

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Binary Wrestling Bliss

11.04.2004

The latest Smackdown game had a release date of this past Tuesday. As I've learned from overhearing workers at various electronics stores over the years, that release date usually turns out to be the shipping date, and most stores won't have it on shelves for another day or two.

Today I went to my local Wal Mart to get some groceries. Well, all I was really going after was some tea. Ok, the truth is I was going after the game and groceries were just a back-up in case the game wasn't really out yet. I went back to the video game section, and there on the bottom shelf I saw Vince's red and blue, Smackdown vs Raw eyes staring back at me. A quick call to a clerk later and it was on its way home with me. And some tea.

Unfortunately, I've ogt too much going on to play right now. Work is in the way (damnable provider of my way of living!). After work will be taken up by TV/Date night. Then there's work tomorrow. It'll be tomorrow night before I can set free the wrestling gods encased in their plastic!

No, no. I'm ok. I can do it. Just a little longer. Circle Circle Left Right Up Down Up Down.

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Don't Be Playa Hatin'

11.01.2004

Like a lot of people, I found myself looking forward to last weeks release of the latest GTA game, San Andreas. After picking it Wednesday and loading into the PS2, I think I was a little overwhelmed with how big the game map is. It's freakin' huge! I was so overwhelmed I went back for a couple of days and played some football.

Well. Sunday I had some spare time between chores and miscellaneous goofing off, so I decided to load up the game and just wander around. Jer came by to help, and I think we spent hours just driving around (me) and randomly shooting people (Jer). I got familiar enough with the map that it's not so intimidating now, but it's still freakin' huge!

In the previous games, it was always good to complete missions to unlock other parts of the map. There seems to be a shortcut in the new game, but with a caveat. The locked sections of the map are always blocked of by a closed, impassible bridge, but thanks to the new ability of "swimming", you can usually get across. The caveat: Your wanted level jumps up to 4 stars once you cross into forbidden territory. I found this to be a fun challenge, to see how much of the forbidden territory I could drive through before being caught by the police. Sure, there's a game with missions to be played, but I'm doing something I'm not supposed to be doing. After all, isn't that the core concept of the GTA games?

So, now I'm more comfortable being a black guy, driving around jacking cars and pimpin' hoes. Ho's? Hos? Hoes. At least for a couple of days until the next wrestling game comes out.

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