The Avengers Film Series- Ranked and Reviewed- Part One

As part of my ongoing (and inexplicable) efforts to isolate and bewilder the fine honey community, I'm going to rank The Avengers series and then review them. Normally, you would think that this would include 3 or 4 films. But The Avengers was a bold move trying to bring cross-film continuity into cinema. By that, I mean in order to understand plot elements in Captain America, you had to have seen Thor. It was a huge gamble because if any one of the five films that set up The Avengers was a dud or if the film proper was awful, the whole exercise would have been futile and would have been a spectacular way to burn a billion dollars. I'm not actually being poetic there. I looked up the budgets for the six films and it ended up equaling precisely 1 billion dollars ($140 mil for Iron Man, $150 mil for Incredible Hulk, $200 mil for Iron Man 2, $150 mil for Thor, $140 mil for Captain America, and $220 mil for The Avengers). Obviously, this gambit wound up being a wild success as The Avengers alone grossed $1.51 billion worldwide which means that, ultimately, the other films could have been released for free and they still would have made a 51% return on investment. But I digress, this blog isn't going to talk about the economic qualities of the Avengers Initiative, but rather the cinematic qualities of each film.

As you know, I tend to be a bit long-winded when I blog. So I'm going to try and keep this installment under 2,000 words. In the first part, I'm going to rank the films from 6 to 1 (with 6 being the blandest and 1 being the best). In the second part, I'll provide my viewing recommendations so you can experience the Avengers with minimal time requirement.

"Should we do something?"
"No, just stand here and look cool for the commercials!"

6. The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk was Marvel's follow-up to the universal success of Iron Man. Full disclosure: I never actually saw much of The Incredible Hulk. I can honestly say I've only seen the last 20 minutes on FX on night when I was bored. The story is well-known by the society's collective consciousness (due in part to it being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde if Mr. Hyde took steroids) and the film just never looked that intriguing. Unfortunately for the Hulk, most of America, Marvel's casting studio, and even Marvel's movie gurus agreed with me. Not only was Hulk the least financially successful of the Avengers prequels, it was also the least significant to the overarching story. All that happens is that Bruce Banner becomes the Hulk because they're trying to recreate the Captain America Super Soldier Serum. And somehow Bruce Banner transforms from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo between films. If they can successfully change actors between films and no one will comment on it, you know you have a dull story. The last piece of evidence to support this being entirely forgettable is the Hulk sequel has been put on hold until after the Avengers sequel. So everyone else will get a second (or third) solo outing before they'll even consider making a follow-up to The Incredible Hulk. Yawn.

Pitch Perfect Review OR Hunter Blogs About Something Substantially

Hey everyone! it's been a while since I got in the groove of actually posting things of substance on the English Muffin Power Hour and I fear my blogging skills may have gone to rust. English Muffin scholars will point out that February is, indeed, my least favorite month of all time and for good reason. If you want those good reasons, you should definitely read my blog on the subject. I use the word "expatiate", it was a good time, a simpler time before graduate programs wanted me to write 12 pages on cross-cultural protein deficiencies as a cause of cannibalism.

Recently, I have been exposed to what the fine honey population called "the best film ever" and the dude population would call "a chick flick". I call it "the child of Mighty Ducks and Dodgeball raised by Glee" and what legitimate film critics call "Pitch Perfect". So I figure, why not review it?

The punchline is that it's rated PG but it sounds like an R rating. PUNS!

Did I like the movie at all? Nope! Review over! Let's go back to talking about swords and explosions!

Did Tony Stark invent the Arc Reactor by quitting early? No sir!

Fine, I'll go more in depth because Iron Man demands it. Pitch Perfect chronicles the journeys of Controlling Blonde Chick as she tries to rebuild her a capella squad from the ashes of an embarrassing performance in the national championship. Except its really about Brunette Hipster Chick as she tries to fulfill her dream of becoming a DJ or possibly a singer through the absurd route of joining a group dedicated to singing. Because how can you be a singer if you spend all your time singing?! They are joined by an omni-racial cast of one dimensional sidekicks such as the Fat Chick (called Fat Amy because SUBTLETY ), the Skank who only talks about how much sex she has and wears outfits that are more low cut than the protagonists, the quiet Asian who has no clear motivation to join an a capella group and the urban punk who they've arbitrarily declared to be a lesbian. Somehow this ragged band of misfits must pull together to win the big championship.

Sound familiar? It's because they stole the entire plot of The Mighty Ducks and changed the word "hockey" to "a cappella dance off" and the word "boys" to "college-aged teen girls". We have the coach who is haunted by a terrible mistake solely costing his team a championship in Emilio Estevez's character. You have the plucky underdog secondary protagonist who is taken under the coach's wing and becomes the star of the team in Charlie Conway. You have the fat kid who's not really good at sports but has to do it anyways in Goldberg. And you have the transformation of this ragged band of misfits learning to use their uniqueness to work together and form a team that is greater than the sum of its parts in a timeless kids' sports movie.

But it doesn't just rip off  The Mighty Ducks because it also has a decidedly irreverent, adult humor to it complete with sex jokes and gross out humor a long with a pair of sardonic announcers. That's right, Pitch Perfect also rips off Dodgeball, right down to having one of the characters being suspected of being a lesbian. At least in Dodgeball, it's due to the female protagonists surprisingly strong throwing arm and it's played very subtly throughout the film, until the ending when the running joke gets an appropriate punchline. Dodgeball also features a plucky band of misfits working together to become a team, but they're much more over the top and dysfunctional than The Mighty Ducks. Plus, you have a larger than life bad guy in Ben Stiller. It's a parody of movies like The Mighty Ducks and it works brilliantly.

"At Globos Gym, we're better than you and we know it!"

Now I've talked for over 500 words and I haven't really gotten to the core problem with Pitch Perfect. In my defense, I've been talking about other, better films instead that you should definitely see. The main problem Pitch Perfect has is identity. It tries to parrot two very successful sports film that are ultimately antithetical to each other. As a result, Pitch Perfect tries to make fun of itself while being serious and it just comes off as tepid and cliche.

The Ezio Trilogy Part 1: This is much, much longer than I expected

All right, I had a chance to sink my teeth into Assassin's Creed 3 for a few hours last night and again this morning. In a nutshell, I love it. I have a few nitpicks, but honestly it is nothing compared to the simple joys of  dueling Brown Bess's with bayonets drawn. But now is not the time for me to gush over Assassin's Creed III, that part comes later.

"Spoiling details of Assassin's Creed III will be very painful... for you." ~Bane

Where were we again? Ah yes, the Ezio Trilogy!

Assassin's Creed II (2009)

Two years after the adventures of Altair, we once again returned to Future Desmond, casually loafing around the secret lair he's been imprisoned in. But mere moments into his introspective moaning, sassy blonde initially cold love interest, or "Lucy", bursts through the door and tells Desmond he'll actually have to do something this game. One quick trip to the Animus later (and a fairly clever sequence where we see Ezio be born), and Desmond actually breaks out into a light jog. A few fight tutorials later, he's absconded to the Good Guys hideout. You know its the Godd Guys hideout because the British computer guy is snarky instead of sinister (side note: all British men have to choose between being snarky, sinister, suave, or Scottish. It's the 4 S's of the British Isle). Also, the female lab assistant is allowed to have short hair and wear jeans and a t-shirt. Besides that, they're basically doing the exact same thing the bad guys were doing to you: making you relive the memories of your ancestors to help them achieve their goals. Fortunately, their goals in this game are to turn Future Desmond into a likable and competent character. To do that, they plan to use the creepy Bleeding Effect from the first game to bleed in memories from Ezio Auditore da Firenzie: Italian Renaissance Playboy and all-around hardcore dude. You begin Ezio's story at a pretty smart starting point: when he is a carefree teenager from Italian nobility and also apparently moonlighted as Flynn from Tangled.

Seriously, this can't be a coincidence. Flynn's hair is just slightly browner and they're both excellent thieves & climbers. And that flower that gave Rapunzel's hair magic powers? That could be a Piece of Eden and that would make the witch a Templar. Is Tangled just an alternate timeline for Assassin's Creed II?
Excuse me, I have to go write that fanfic.

Assassin's Creedence Clearwater: A Retrospective of my Favorite Non-Halo, Non-Mass Effect Series

As fans of the Hunger Games know, I am the master of promising and postponing. So we're holding off on the Walking Dead review until I play Episode 5 and going right in with an overview of Assassin's Creed. Why? Because Assassin's Creed 3 (the fifth game in the series, just roll with it) comes out today and I won't get to play it until at least 7 PM because I had to be an idiot and volunteer at a blood drive.This is what service to others gets you: less time to pretend killing Redcoats. Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite series largely because it combines historical settings with many sword fights and also crazy alternate history intrigue. Now I'm going to try and deviate from my normal writing style, because otherwise this retrospective will be 8,000 words and come out in January. I figure I'll talk a little about the plot for each game, what I liked what I didn't like, and then conclude with a ranking of each game in the series. Today, I will do Assassin's Creed 1 and tomorrow, I will review what is known as the "Ezio Trilogy" or "Where the Numbering went FUBAR". Without further ado, let us begin the look back at the Assassin's Creed series:

Assassin's Creed (2007)

If being an assassin doesn't work out, Altair should try the NBA. He's got mad hops, yo.

Fall of 2007 will be remembered as the greatest season for video games of the 360/Wii/PS3 generation. It saw the release of no less than a half dozen phenomenally good games: BioShock (one of the few "artsy" games that is also fun), The Orange Box (specifically Portal), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (perhaps the most revolutionary FPS of the generation), Halo 3 (which was just fun), Mass Effect (you know, I think I've said enough about this series), and Assassin's Creed. In the game, you play as Altair, a member of the Order of Assassins during the Third Crusade. You are tasked with killing both Crusaders and Saracens who are profiting and prolonging the carnage, because if they did it accurately, you would be in a group of Muslim extremists murdering Christian soldiers and that would be just great for sales. But wait! You are also Desmond Miles from the far off year of 2012, henceforth known as Future Desmond.

"Literally no one likes me" ~Future Desmond

All Glory to Doug Martin!

The last few times we've been out here, I've threatened to talk about The Walking Dead Game and also politics. But I'm here to renege on those promises and get my fantasy football league caught back up. For you see, I have fallen prey to heresy and have left the pure path of weekly updates. Pursuing the idol of political satire, I have forsaken the bonds of overanalyzing minor trends in sports. And I would be lost, were it not for the light of Doug Martin. For tonight, the Muscle Hamster did tread upon the Vikings defense as the elephant upon the soft earth and rack up over 200 yards of total offense and 2 touchdowns. Such was his magnanimity as to grant me this boon two full days before any other game, allowing the Heretical Pimpmast Doug to stew in the inevitability of the upcoming battle.

He crushes footballs as mere mortals crush grapes: to make alcohol and/or jam.

Before I continue, let me give some context for my adoration of Doug Martin. Astute readers may recall that Doug Martin was one of "the picks I'm proudest of" way back in August. I had believed that this dude could be 2010 Arian Foster (great RB with little history to come out of the midrounds). I made drafting him early a priority. Up until tonight, he's been very solid, but unspectacular. All in all, it had seemed like I drafted him so early as to negate his value. But then tonight happened and he was all "Since reorganizing on the BYE week, I have scored 12, 17, and now 34 points". All aboard the Muscle Hamster express! So since I have about 4 weeks of games to get caught up on, I'm going to forgo the traditional system of nominees in an effort to get contemporary.

Iron Dirigible Week 1 & Week 2 Double Pack

For reasons of wanting to do something special for my 150th Blog Post (btw, mission accomplished! I got so many compliments on the Hunger Games article from people I didn't even know read my blog), I did not get around to discussing Week 1 of Iron Dirigible in a timely fashion. I know, many of you are crestfallen, and by many, I mean "the seven other people in the league plus the handful of my friends who are equally football crazy". So I'm going to do the awards for Week 1, Week 2 and the Week 3 previews all in one swoop. If I don't do it today, it's not going to happen in a timely fashion either. Quick glance at my schedule for the enxt 36 hours: office hours, class, class, errands, Borderlands 2, sleep, tutoring, Borderlands 2, lunch, Borderlands 2, Office Hours, Senate, then friends over for football (editor's note: this schedule has now been thrown completely out of whack, just roll with it). Since time is of the essence, let's dive right in to the Pimps of the Week and the Gimps of the Week for Week 1!

Borderlands 2 forces me to make the hardest choice of my life: big guns, many guns, or guns & also swords.
I am paralyzed by indecision.
P.S. Is it sexist that the lady has the least number number of guns & swords and thus least appealing to me?
P.P.S. Is it a Freudian thing that all the guys in the pictures have swords and guns and the lady has a round glowy ball of death?
P.P.P.S OH GOD! WE'RE AT INCEPTION LEVEL OF OVERTHINKING! ONE LEVEL MORE AND WE'RE TRAPPED FOREVER!
P.P.P.P.S BWAAAAM! BWAAAAAAAM! BWAAAAAAM!!!!

The Hunger Games: A 150th Post Extravaganza

That's right! I'm delaying talking about Fantasy Football to finally talk about the Hunger Games! I have no idea how I'm going to broach the subject, but I'll do this the EMPH way: with very little forethought and a great deal of digressions with the illusion of order!

I'm partial to this logo. It's simple, classy and has meaning to the story.

What I Think of the Series as a Whole

I'll start this off with a bold statement: I think The Hunger Games is significantly better than Harry Potter. For starters, Katniss never uses a time machine to solve all her problems and then never mention it again. Secondly, The Hunger Games brilliantly use Latin and classical history and Harry Potter has all the subtlety of a freight train with Latin. Seriously, the main evil family is led by Lucius Malfoy (translated: Satan McBadguy, because Lucius is one step away from Lucifer) and his eldest son, Draco Malfoy (translated: Satan McBadguy Jr., because Draco means dragon and dragons historically are the very incarnation of the Devil). I will talk more about Latin later, because this is really one of the highlights of the book. But back on point, I think The Hunger Games is substantially more relatable than Harry Potter and its story is much more focused and relies less on deus ex machina to resolve the plot. For starters, Katniss's unhappy starting place is a lot more believable and a lot more sad than Harry's. Her family lives in poverty and was pushed to the brink of starvation due to the untimely death of her father in a mining accident, which forces her to assume more responsibility than a teen girl should. Harry's sad place is an evil wizard killed his parents before he ever met them and now he must live with his comically abusive aunt and uncle where they force him to live under the staircase instead of one of the extra rooms they have, because they are jerks and Child Services doesn't exist in this universe and literally no one has ever asked Harry about his well-being. Then one day, Hagrid shows up and tells Harry that he's a wizard and also he's the wizard of destiny and also his parents left him a fortune in wizard gold but lacked the foresight to convert any of their money into wealth their son could use OR consider leaving him in the care of someone who wasn't estranged from the family. Whereas Katniss has to overcome her obstacles by playing things smart and surviving, at least until thefirst half of Mockingjay, Harry overcomes his obstacles through things he had no control over. Boy, it sure is fortunate that it turns out that Harry's very touch kills Voldemort and that Voldemort forgot about this. One good avada cadavra spell from Quirrell and it's a 1 volume story. It's also a good thing that Dumbledore's phoenix can apparently find its way into long hidden and forgotten chambers so that Harry can literally pull a magic sword from a hat. I could do this all day, but I won't.

Iron Dirigible Draft 2012

You know what this blog needs? MORE SPORTS TALK! But not just any sports talk, I need something that is both abstract in concept and requires an immensely deep understanding of a particular sport. This leaves only one logical option: FANTASY FOOTBALL!!

P.S. It's more fun if you imagine me saying "Fantasy Football" in the Denzel Crocker "Fairy Godparents" voice.
P.P.S. This blog has started out with me discussing sports trivia and a tacit admission of watching Nickelodeon as late as high school. I am seriously not making good decision re: the Fine Honeys.

This blog post is spiraling out of control and heading to a very dark place. I'd better engage in some course correction stat. Save me, Peeta Mellark!

 "This bread is like our district: soft and white."~Peeta Mellark
What?! You were supposed to help me, Peeta. Noooooooo!

Okay, so quoting Peeta isn't helping me at this precise moment. I'm just going to back away slowly now. Hunger Games, you'll get your day. Soon. You're the blog update that the English Muffin Power hour deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll postpone it, because you can take it. Because you're not a hero. You're a silent protector. A watchful guardian. A dark knight.

Anyways, earlier this month, I held the 6th annual Iron Dirigible Draft at my apartment, because I was straight power tripping. Additionally, it was the largest attended draft in our brief history. We had 6 of the league's 8 members gathered in one place at one time. And when you consider that Sam never shows up for the draft, it's pretty good to only be missing one guy. Let me say, nothing compares with drafting with your friends in person, all together. My personal highlight of the night was when Pimpmaster Doug took Brandon Lloyd the pick before me, I shouted "Are you a wizard?!" because that was the second pick of mine he stole from under my nose out of a possible three times that night.

Anyways, on topic, the point is I'd thought I'd do a quick recap of the draft. I figure I'd do rounds 1-4 individually, rounds 5-12 by pairs, and rounds 13-16 as one big group because drafts become increasingly desperate and therefore less controversial. Also, it makes a nice bit of symmetry in that I will do exactly 9 recaps and that appeases my neurotic side. Plus there will be nine recaps to counter the nine Black Riders of Mordor, so that's nice.

"Did he just make a Lord of the Rings reference right after inadvertantly dissing The Hunger Games AND quoting The Dark Knight?"
"Yeah, I think he did. Player does not have his head in the game today."

N.B. This draft took place on August 9th, because it was the last day everyone was going to be in town. So a number of picks look really silly in hindsight.

For Want of a Brain: A Review of the Novel "Feed" by Mira Grant

Astute readers will recall I've been promising to review the Hunger Games trilogy as well as the feature film since April. But Feed has zombies in it and I've been reading it at the beach this past week (by "reading" I mean "alternating between it and three other books"). Also, Hunger Games has about a million images to choose from and Feed has very few, which means I can write this review and then watch to sun set over the Gulf of Mexico without having to worry about whether or not I've done service to Gale's immaculate biceps. Also, Feed has zombies in it. End of debate.

Now if Katniss shot zombies with her bow, then it'd be a different story. Specifically, she'd be a female Daryll from The Walking Dead. Imagine if she traveled back in time to the zombie apocalypse and met Daryll and they bonded over their love of archery and rural Appalachia. Then they had kids who would be super good at archery and would shoot all the walkers and... Excuse me, I have to go write this fanfic.

Feed takes place 25 years after the Great Zombie Outbreak of 2014 (although most of the story takes place in 2040, which is 26 years later, but there are more important things to discuss than conversational mathematics). The conceit (and double entendre) of Feed is that bloggers played a vital role is spreading word of the zombie apocalypse and were hailed as the real heroes of the zombie war (get it, like an RSS Feed and how zombies have an insatiable hunger for the flesh of the living). Three 22 year old bloggers are assigned to cover the presidential campaign of Senator John Ryman, but little do they know they are about to uncover a conspiracy that will shake the world as they know it.

Is that good? Have I done enough of the PR Spiel to actually talk about the book now? I hope that familiarized all my unfamiliar readers with the premise of the book. I know for a fact that I blew up at least two of my friends' phones with about 15 consecutive tweets about this book. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I only read 150 of the 400 pages and then consulted Wikipedia for the ending. I really wanted to get through the book before I wrote about it, but there was just so much to say. As the old saying goes, one does not have to eat the whole egg to know its rotten (and covered in zombie virus).

It's the Apocalypse, what could go wrong?

In a sentence, the problem with Feed is that it gets zombies, politics, and blogging wrong and that nothing that happens makes any sense and that the characters are all one dimensional & boring and that the whole world building exercise falls to pieces as soon as you think about it and that the entire universe the book is set in is more like Left Wing California Wish Fulfillment Apocalypse than anything based in reality. So you see, nothing too serious. The tragedy is that this is a super interesting time period that seldom gets talked about. Society isn't being destroyed but it's also not able to overpower the Undead Menace. If properly developed, this book could have like a Cold War style to it (albeit with more explosions and less diplomatic intrigue),

One of the problems inherent with any post-apocalyptic story is the ease with which you can punish people you personally find offensive. The best post-apocalyptic stories (such as The Road Warrior and A Boy and his Dog or Fallout 3 if you want me to cite video games) avoid this completely and generally paint the bad guys in broad strokes (usually to the tune of them being well intentioned people driven mad by power or by lack of power [e.g. the impotent underground people in A Boy and his Dog]) and that makes the hero more awesome because he/she doesn't succumb to that corruption. In bad post-apocalyptic films (think The Left Behind series), people are specifically targeted because of their beliefs. In Feed, the victims are picked because Mira Grant doesn't like them and it's done in a super obvious, illogical fashion.

The Zombies have more Brains than the Author

I'll start with the first example to book hits us with. Our three heroes are recording footage of zombies in the overrun town of Santa Cruz, California, getting footage of Shaun (get it? GET IT?! IS IT NOT AN OBVIOUS ENOUGH REFERENCE TO THE HIT ZOMBIE MOVIE "SHAUN OF THE DEAD"?) bothering zombies to upload to YouTube so their blog will get more hits. Because, obviously, after a global nightmare in which billions perished, people want to see adventurous types needlessly risking life and limb. There is no way this has already been done before in the 25 years zombies have been around. Santa Cruz was one of the first cities to fall to the zombies because it is densely populated and is a college town and is also in California, where gun ownership is marginalized and treated with suspicion (so, yeah, this makes perfect sense actually. Good job!). Well, in the course of pissing off zombies, a group of zombies is alerted and gets all up in our heroes' collective grills. In an escape that makes for a thrilling first ten minutes of a TV Pilot, the heroes barely escape the hordes of the undead and drive away to safety in Berkley, California. Which is also a densely populated college town. And has no natural barriers between it and Santa Cruz. So how is it safe again? Also, I wonder which branch of the University of California Mira Grant went to and which branch was her least favorite. I honestly have no way of inferring this knowledge from such a subtle and well thought out universe.

The Bottom Five Things in Mass Effect 3

Well, it's been a ridiculously long time coming, but I'm finally going to talk about the worst five things in Mass Effect 3, and none of them are going to be the ending (which is terrible in every way a thing can be terrible and has caused irreparable damage to my immortal soul). Officially, I'm saying I was waiting for Pimpmaster Doug and Sam of Dr Pepper to finish Mass Effect 3 so I wouldn't spoil them. Without further ado, let's discuss The Bottom Five Things in Mass Effect 3.

5. The Checkpoint Guards on the Normandy

They're so annoying, no one actually has a screen capture of them.

The most common complaint in Mass Effect 1 was the elevator system. Rather than include loading screens, the development team decided to mask loading times by using very, very slow elevator rides. While this was justifiable (although still loathed) on a giant place like the Citadel, it's not possible when going from one level of your ship to the other. In fact, it was extra painful because this super slow elevator was what stood between the boring squadmates (Liara & Kaidan) and the awesome squadmates (Wrex, Garrus, Ashley, and Tali). So every time you wanted to chill with the cool people, you had to suffer for it. Now, you may wonder why I'm bringing up five year old memories of torment at the hands of a loading system. The answer is that I would gladly bring back all the elevators if it meant never having to listen to those stupid friggin' checkpoint guards ever again.

Once again, these two are the byproducts of a need to hide a loading screen. For whatever reason, Mass Effect 3 can't load the War Room AND the rest of the 2nd floor at the same time. So you need to stop off at a scanner to confirm that the most famous man/woman in the galaxy, whose name is synonymous with the SSV Normandy, is a member of the crew. In an effort to alleviate the boredom of waiting through a lengthy scan, the good folks at BioWare decided to have two lovable guards banter with each other. And by "lovable guards" I mean "stupid nimrods" and by "banter"  I mean "vapidly discuss things you already knew/would never think of because it is so stupid". To BioWare's credit, they tried giving them personalities. It's just their personalities were "Stupid One" and "Pretentious Stupid One". Here are a sample of some things you have to overhear every single time you want to go get some missions or talk to someone or maybe check on your Galaxy at War score.

SO: "Once we beat the Reapers, we should get some payback from all the races that didn't help us."

PSO: "Yeah, that's great. Let's follow up a war with another war."

-In this scene, it appears that SO has forgotten that we're facing an unstoppable armada from beyond the galaxy which has ended all life more times than can be remembered. But hey, don't let that stop you from assuming we'll win easily with enough military capital to overpower any adversary.

SO: "I can't believe the Asari won't help us."

PSO: "If it was Thessia [Asari Homeworld] that was invaded, you can bet we would be holding back around Earth."

-In this scene, PSO forgets that the Alliance's fleets were possibly crippled saving the Destiny Ascension at the end of Mass Effect 1. Also, she seems to be forgetting that these machines are invading everyone they can at this current moment. I guess the Asari and PSO think that the Reapers will kill all advanced life... except themselves.

SO: "We should bomb the Reapers"

PSO: "But the Reapers don't have any planets. If you bomb them, you're bombing yourself."

-There is literally so much wrong with this dialogue, that I will lose my mind if I specify all 17 ways it's wrong. Suffice to say, most planets invaded by the Reapers get pretty chewed up anyways, as is normally the case with world's assaulted by intergalactic genocide. Also, I'm pretty sure there's a level of bombing short of "Planetary Destruction" or "Ecological Collapse". Also, I'm pretty sure we don't have bombs capable of destroying a Reaper. Also, nothing you said or have ever said, made any sense. Also, I'm pretty sure I hate all of you and I just wanted to talk to Wrex. WHY AM I ALWAYS PUNISHED FOR TALKING TO WREX?!


4. The Galaxy at War system

"We are a force greater than any you could imagine. We have destroyed countless civilizations from the dawn of time. Your struggle is in vain, Shepard, for we... wait, you have over 4,000 Military Points! OH SNAP! *explosions*"

When I talked about the things I liked about Mass Effect 3, I mentioned how much I loved Search & Rescue. It was great to finally see a tangible contribution for all your hard work over the course of three games. The problem is the Galaxy at War system ruins it and makes all your hard work irrelevant if you're willing to play multiplayer or buy iOS games.

The Top Five Things in Mass Effect 3

First, let me begin with a sincere apology to all the fine honeys who read this blog and don't play Mass Effect. You ladies have really missed out. I'll tell you what, I'll make it up to you by talking about the Hunger Games next and how that girl you hated in high school is exactly like Clove. But for now, we're going to talk more about interstellar politics, spaceships, aliens, guns, and explosions. Hurray!

Like I alluded to yesterday, the best way for me to handle Mass Effect 3 is to break it up into composite parts. I know it can be hard to tell, but I really like this game. If you're the type of person who puts stock into numbers, I'd give it 4.75 English Muffins out of 5. Someone burned a bit of the last muffin, but you can scrape off the black stuff and still enjoy its nooks and crannies. I feel the real measure of a game is talking about the things you liked and the things you didn't like. It gives a clearer picture of what people would like about the game than just a raw score and rambling.

5. Squadmate Closure OR They Should Call It Terminus Graffiti

Going into Mass Effect 3, I thought it would be easy to release a revised "Top Whatever Squadmates". The wheat would be separated from the chaff and it would confirm my every complaint about the poorly written characters. But I wasn't permitted to be that lazy. With the exception of Jacob Taylor (more on that later), every other squadmate had significant and meaningful closure to their story. More than that, it also improved my opinion of every non-Jacob character. Best of all, their involvement in the story never felt cliche or forced, but rather an organic growth from the story.

Jack became an effective & caring teacher for biotic teenagers, rather than a selfish nihilist. As a non-Jacob, she saw growth as a character. Is this what you'd call a "character arc"? It feels good!

No one did anything that felt out of character or that looked like three separate kinds of impossible. Not everyone survived, but not everyone died either. It honestly kept you guessing. The ones who did die died in an awesome way, which is how characters we care about should die. No one wants to see Darth Vader die from a complication in his breathing machine. They want to see him die from a complication in his breathing machine, caused by Force Lightning after he threw the Emperor off the Death Star!

The real genius of this set-up is the squadmates' stories are interwoven into side quests and other areas of otherwise non-essential importance. Each person is in a believable scenario, and it's just as believable that Shepard would run into them there. The side quest would still make sense if the former teammate wasn't there, but the end result wouldn't be as good. It rewards your hard work for keeping people alive (except Jacob). Honestly, I could do a whole separate update on just how great each and every one of these moments was (and I just might). For now, it's enough to say that these quests which were pretty boring in prior Mass Effect games provided an absolute roller coaster of emotions. I'm going to close this entry out with the best moment from the Former Squadmate Quests: The Conclusion to Grunt's Investigation of the Rachni.


4.The Search & Rescue system

In a vacuum, the Search & Rescue system is merely adequate.  But this review is not in a vacuum, it's in the context of all other Mass Effect games (even the terrible iOS game). The absolute worst non-Kaidan, non-Jacob part of every Mass Effect game has been gathering resources. In Mass Effect, it revolved around methodically clicking on every planet and/or asteroid and hoping the game asked you to press A a second time. If you were real fortunate, you'd have to go down to the surface on the Mako and navigate the seemingly randomly generated terrain to get to spare resources. God help you if it's not immediately clear if you should go up the side of the hill in your ATV.

I'm 73% sure I can go the rest of the way up!

 In Mass Effect 2, they decided the solution would be to force you to meticulously scan every square inch of every planet from space, hunting for four different kinds of resource in the hundreds of thousands of... um... whatever the standard unit for video games is. I don't have to say anything about this, the sheer slowness of the scanning and silliness of the concept has been a running joke on the internet for two years now.


In Mass Effect 3, instead of hunting for resources, Shepard now uses the Normandy's stealth engines to perform interstellar search and rescue for vital war assets (think way ward capital ships, stranded spec ops teams, etc.) in Reaper-space. This is balanced against the fact that scanning for resources draws the attention of the Reapers, who will destroy you if they catch you. This gives the entire affair a feeling of tension prior resource gathering mini-games lack. This does have the unintended consequence of making you outrun the Reapers often, which undermines them as a threat. But even though it's not perfect, the fact that resource gathering is no longer the worst part of Mass Effect is a minor miracle.

Reaping Day & Reaper Day

Ranking all 16 Squad Members from Mass Effect really took a lot out of me(the whole shooting match was 9,000 words long and covered 25 pages in MS Word!), but it's rapidly becoming one of the most popular pages on the EMPH. So after a brief recess (read: desperately finishing Mass Effect 2), I've picked up the blogging torch and have decided to keep the Mass Effect fortnight rolling... by taking things casual and talking a bit about what I've been up to this week.

What I've Been Reading (well, technically Listening To if you want to be pedantic)

There's Hunger! There are Games! It lives up to what the title promises.

 As a grad student/tutor, I have a spend a lot of time each week commuting to class, with about a 15 minute ride to the parking lot and a 15 minute hike from the parking lot to the actual classroom. And since I'm a grad student in Economics, that means I find all of today's music strange and terrifying.  I decided to switch things up by trying audiobooks courtesy of Linebaugh's eBook system (which has a small library, a long wait list, and a frustrating interface) and Amazon's Audible.com (which has a free 30 day trial and two free audiobooks, and if you try to quit it, they'll offer your three months at $8 a month). Astute readers may figure out that I already listened to the abridged version of World War Z back in January. Last week, I got another credit and decided to see what all the fuss about the Hunger Games is about.

Now, I have a lot I want to talk about today and don't want to end up with another 4,000 word update, so I'll save a more detailed review for later. In short, I really liked The Hunger Games. I thought the main character was interesting, I thought the names were brilliant (so brilliant that it will require an entire separate article to discuss), and that the pacing was very strong. Furthermore, I understand precisely how the author is manipulating me with each new development, but it's done well and it never distracts you from what's going on. I still had an emotional reaction (read: I actually felt the emotion she was going for) when the sweet innocent character might as well have been wearing a t-shirt that says "I will die a slow and painful death". Also, I found out that there's a federal law which stipulates that any book with a female protagonist must have two and precisely two love interests for her to pick between. But those are just nitpicks. I honestly liked The Hunger Games better than Harry Potter, because Suzanne Collins doesn't make up the ending as she goes along ("Magic cannot be used to bring back the dead, Harry. Except Buckbeak. We'll totally use the Time Twister to save Buckbeak." ~Albus Dumbledore)

What I'm Watching

Contrary to The Hunger Games, we're 7 seasons into this and we've yet to meet your mother. Still good.

 If you aren't watching How I Met Your Mother, you must either be in a place without enough electricity to power a television or a grad student who has work and class every week night. If you're the latter, watch the episodes online! If you're the latter, how are you reading this anyways?! HIMYM is tied with 30 Rock for my favorite comedy on TV right now. But unlike most comedy shows, HIMYM never designates one character to be the butt of every joke (like J.D. in Scrubs). There's not one character who's always right (like Elliot in the later seasons of Scrubs) and there's not one character who always ends up on top (like the Janitor in Scrubs). Basically, I'm saying this show is much better than Scrubs. The characters are outlandish enough to be entertaining but grounded enough that you can still relate to them. The most exaggerated character, Neil Patrick Harris's Barney Stinson, has significant abandonment issues and is struggling to be a better person in recent seasons (which also make for some of the most powerful episodes). But most of the time he is trying to sleep with as many women as possible and concocting elaborate schemes to do so. That said, Barney is totally going after a woman who is all wrong for him. DON'T DO IT BARNEY! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME THROUGH THE BLOGOSPHERE! ROBIN IS THE WOMAN FOR YOU!!!!

Man, that's probably the closest I'll ever experience being on Team "Love Interest's Name".

What I'm Playing

Yeah, bet you never would have guessed that.

So I could talk about Mass Effect 2, but I'm worried we'll have Mass Effect overdose. I've already had one dream this week where I was navigating a starship away from the Reaper Invasion. In a nutshell, I got my final "canon" import ready for Mass Effect 3. I've completed all the quests, saved all the people I wanted to save, blown up all the robot space stations I wanted to blow up, gathered all the guns I want to shoot, and introduced this strange emotion we call "love" to all the attractive alien women I wanted to (Captain Kirk style, awwwwww yeah). Bring it on, Mass Effect 3!

The Top 16 Mass Effect Squad Members Part IV: The Best Around

In many ways, this has been the hardest update to write. The differences between the quality of these last five characters is so minute that I've actually changed the overall ranking twice since the last post. Also, I've noticed that the posts have been getting longer and longer as time has gone on, making this the most difficult to write in terms of sheer volume as well. We know that only five remain and that they're the best around, but only one can say that nothing ever keeps them down.

5. Ashley Williams (Mass Effect)

Wait a second...That's Victoria from How I Met Your Mother. Apparently, her actress is Ashley Williams.

No, that's Ashley "Ash" Williams from Evil Dead

There we go! Who knew there were this many famous Ashley Williamses?

Apparently famous name aside, Ashley Williams is one of the best thought out characters in the Mass Effect universe. There's always more to this character than meets the eye. She has a minor role in Mass Effect 2 and is poised for a bigger role in next week's Mass Effect 3, but I'll be focusing mostly on her time in Mass Effect 1, since that's where we got to know her. When you first see her, she's on the run after a bunch of robots launched a surprise attack on Eden Prime, an agrarian colony whose primary exports are rainbows, smiles, and the laughter of small children. You help her out because her armor is pink and this a video game, ipso facto she is completely helpless. However, she turns out to be the most-effective non-Shepard member of your team on Eden Prime (although this is because the alternatives are Kaidan the Awful and Richard L. Jenkins, who dies 3 minutes into the game and was so irrelevant that I didn't rank him. He'd still be above Kaidan though!). Ashley isn't so much an everyman as she is a strong conduit to the everyman of the 22nd century. Back in 2007, I didn't have any strong opinions on the involvement of Turians at Shianxi because what are those things? (Short answer: Turians = Space Romans, Shianxi = Only Human Colony to ever surrender to aliens, specifically the Space Romans). However, Ashley lets you understand the anxieties of humanity integrating into a galactic community without shading your opinion one way or the other. By the end of Mass Effect 1, Ashley respects the contributions of her alien teammates. And isn't that the foundation of tolerance and trust?

Ashley is a woman of tradition. In many ways, her views are old-fashioned, but understandable and easy to relate to. She comes from a family where generation after generation has served in the Alliance military (which is impressive considering that the Alliance is just 40 years old by the time of Mass Effect 3). Unfortunately, she has the ignominy of being the granddaughter of the only human to surrender to aliens. But rather than perpetually complaining about it like certain Kaidans who won't be named, she uses that as motivation to try harder. She's also a poetry enthusiast and enjoys the works of Alfred Lord Tennyson, who was all about sucking it up and winning one for the team. Since she's the only soldier on the team, that makes her a warrior poet, which means that she must also fight like a true Scotsman (according to Braveheart, at least). Lastly, she's the only character who openly admits to being Christian and is not a villain, and that could be in any game, not just Mass Effect (Shortest Top Five Ever: the Top Five Christian Protagonists in Video Games. Off the top of my head: Ashley, Liam Neeson in Fallout 3,  Cole Phelps from L.A. Noire,is Batman a Christian? I think he celebrates Christmas, and ummmm... a fifth guy). She's the most familiar thing to the player in an entire galaxy of strange aliens, cultures, and emotionless "wounded soul" guys.

But I digress. The best moments for Ashley comes when she realizes that the Reapers are actually a race of sentient warships who predate time itself and whose power is beyond the scope of human comprehension. I'm going to paraphrase here, but she says that "my rifle may as well be a pea shooter if I'm up against a warship" but won't give up the fight. That is the ultimate sassback in the line of duty. "I'm hopelessly outgunned and certain to die, but WHATEVA! I DO WHAT I WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNT!!!!"

Apparently, Spectre's get free makeovers

Finally, I like where her character is going. She had virtually no role in Mass Effect 2 other than to show up at the end of Act I and be super mad that you didn't call her. You can try to explain that you were clinically dead most of that time and she was at work when you tried to call, but she'll still be mad at you. You can say she's being over-emotional and that'll just make her even madder. So I guess that makes her probably the most realistically written female in any game ever (Note to all fine honeys: there was no "You're right, I'm sorry" response. I tried my best to find it though!). However, by Mass Effect 3, we find out that Ashley has become a Spectre (sort of like a Space Government Sponsored Badass, charged with cracking skulls that armies can't effectively reach). This is the best kind of writing because it explains the stuff that didn't make any sense in previous games while retaining plausibility. Ashley was at the end of Act I because the Alliance was grooming her to be awesome and awesome people understand dramatic timing. Her files were classified and she was impossible to reach because, in Shepard's absence, she was the most qualified human secret agent type.

Most importantly, Ashley's survival means that Kaidan dies. Ignoring the previous 800 words, this act alone makes her worthy of a top five spot. In fact, let's watch that glorious moment together!



YES YES YES! NOTHING IS LEFT OF KAIDAN BUT MEMORIES! ANGSTY, ANGSTY MEMORIES!

The Top 16 Mass Effect Squad Members Part III: Then Things Got Awesome

Yesterday, we had a major milestone in Mass Effect squad members: they started to get good. Now, this is where my job gets tricky as it's no longer a matter of whether or not the character is awesome, but how awesome are they.

8. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya/vas Neema/vas Normandy

"Look me in the visor and say that!"

Tali Three Names in Two Games is the first of the squad members to feature heavily in both games. In Mass Effect 1, she's this shy, super curious alien gypsy (or "Quarian") who happened to be in the right place at the right time or, arguably, the wrong place in the wrong time. But I'm confident she was in a place to get an incriminating voice file of the bad guy in Mass Effect 1 at a time when Commander Shepard and his crew were busting skulls in her neighborhood, thus thwarting the bad guy's inevitable cover up attempt. Throughout the course of the Mass Effect 1 adventure, Tali spends her time in engineering being awed by how awesome the SSV Normandy's Tantalus Warp Core is. Most impressively, she never made a single "tantalizing" pun. Later on, you find out she's on a rite of passage with her people to find something, as the ancient Quarians would say, "totes legit". Then you give her a data disk with all the Geth's homework assignments on it, thus enabling the Quarians to cheat like crazy.

In Mass Effect 1, Tali is mostly there to give you a culture lesson on the Quarians and add depth to the universe. As a character, she's not particularly exciting or interesting. Luckily, Tali returned with a vengeance in Mass Effect 2. For starters, she's in charge of a Quarian Spec Ops team that you run into on your first mission. Unfortunately, Quarian Spec Ops is about as useful as the French Army in World War II. If memory serves, by the time she joins up with your squad, there is one survivor in her unit, and even his survival is contingent upon your ability to blow up 30 foot tall robots with lasers for eyes. But I'll get into the details of Tali's military career a bit later. As a result, Tali is pretty much at home only with Shepard and is incredibly protective of him. Rather than being relentlessly curious, Tali develops a backbone and is capable of making her own decisions. Her loyalty mission is extremely close to Mass Effect 1 in spirit and is a very moving story. The only downside is there's not really a strong dilemma to go along with it, but that's a minor blemish.

"Ow! My spine! It totally got crushed!"

But now I'd like to talk some about her military career, short and inglorious. It isn't really Tali's fault, it's more a product of her having heavy expectations from her superiors and little respect from her subordinates. For once, I will bore you with minutia, so fine honeys, do your thing. We know Tali's father is a very important figure in Quarian culture and she did well on her pilgrimage. We know from Tali's loyalty mission that her father was extremely ambitious. So from the start, Tali's assigned a mission that probably won't work out under the best circumstances. Tali's father really wants her to be like him and lead the Quarians on a grand campaign of ass-kicking. The thing is Tali was a member of an ass-kicking, name-taking crew, but she was never a primary ass-kicker or name-taker. She was an engineer and was good at breaking robots' programming. But because of family pride, she winds up over-promoted. Her soldiers know this and don't really respect her. She's just a teen girl with a famous father to them. As a result, they ignore her orders in the first mission of the game and they get their spines crushed. Her soldiers seem to be more loyal after that, from what little we see, but their mission is just too much.

The Top 16 Mass Effect Squad Members Part II: The Mediocre Three

Yesterday, I went over the bottom of the Mass Effect space barrel. Today, things continue to improve. These characters aren't great, but they certainly don't have the myriad of flaws that yesterday's bunch had.

11. Kasumi Goto (Mass Effect 2)

Tragically, Kasumi Goto was born without a forehead.

 Kasumi Goto is different than all the other characters I'll discuss. She's the only one to be made available after the game was released, coming out via downloadable content (DLC) a few months after Mass Effect 2 came out. That means people had to pay $7 if they wanted this character. As a result, BioWare tried their damnedest to make this DLC bundle worthwhile. And they succeeded at making the bundle a great value for $7. The shame is none of it has to do with Kasumi. Specifically, her loyalty mission is both fantastic and unique. It requires you to infiltrate the party of a interstellar arms dealer, James Bond-style. Schmooze up the host and impress some people with your tuxedo wearing prowess (or dress wearing prowess, if you're a Lady Shepard) all while scouting out the party and sabotaging their defenses. And the practical reward for the mission is a fantastic new submachine gun that is the most accurate and deadly of all the SMGs in the game. The thing is Kasumi herself is entirely forgettable and not needed for this mission at all.

As a character, Kasumi strives for that Joss Whedon style best seen in the short-lived but oft-cited cult TV show, Firefly. She'll make sarcastic quips and never take things as seriously as she should. Honestly, you'd think I would love this. But it really just undermines the tone of the much darker Mass Effect 2. It's not that characters can't be funny or make wise-cracks, there's just nothing else to her character and that won't cut it in a game of this caliber.

Maybe her motive was to wear leather pants?

From a broader standpoint, she has no reason to work with Shepard and Shepard has no reason to work with her. Kasumi is a master thief, so that means she's good at sneaking around and taking things. But Shepard is on a mission to fight a bunch of enigmatic aliens and their cybernetic monsters. I don't think the Collectors really have anything you could steal from them. Certainly nothing that requires a specialist. And what does Kasumi get out of it? Is it money? Revenge? Boredom? To appeal to RPG fans who adore Japanese culture and would typically not try out a Western RPG like Mass Effect, thus broadening the game's market to an untapped demographic? Is it fashion? I honestly don't remember. It's a bad sign if I can't remember why a character would sign up for a suicide mission.

The Top 16 Mass Effect Squad Members Part I: The Bottom Five

Like all good space operas, Mass Effect is just as much about the people as it is about alien worlds, cosmic mysteries, and shooting cosmic mysteries on alien worlds.

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

While the crew of the SSV Normandy (for the uninitiated, that's the name of your spaceship) is filled with lovable characters (all right, it's mostly just Seth Green as the lovable pilot and a non-licensed knock off of Scotty that are truly lovable, but that's beside the point), it's really the squad that matters most to the story. Being a video game, almost all of the exciting things and moments of drama occur when you're fighting on foot. Concordantly, most of your time will be spent on these missions. So its important for the squad members you fight with to be unique, memorable and interesting. While almost every squad member in Mass Effect 1 & 2 succeeds at the former, there's some struggling with the latter. Obviously, there will be spoilers ahead. If you were planning on trying out the best games of 2007 and 2010 but never found time to do it, stop reading now. Without further ado, let's dive into the first part of a comprehensive ranking of the best, the worst, and the most mediocre of what Mass Effect can offer.

16. Jacob Taylor (Mass Effect 2)

Remember when I said most of the squad members were unique and memorable? Well, Jacob Taylor is the reason why it couldn't be all the squad members. He is so bland, so devoid of passion and intrigue that when I initially discussed this article with the Bean, we honestly forgot he was in the game at all. The thing is every other character has strong principles and motives and display superb talent before they join your squad. But that's not the case with Jacob. Jacob winds up contradicting his own viewpoints a lot. He joined up with Cerberus (a radical pro-human group) because they get results. So he's an action first, damn the consequences kinda guy, right? But then he decides that he's super hesitant about following the orders of their leader. So he's a man of honor then? No, because before the game, he was a thug on the Alliance payroll who took missions the Alliance couldn't officially sanction. As for his abilities, he's probably the least qualified person on the Normandy in that he is neither a telekinetic crusader, spec ops veteran, or vigilante who simultaneously fought three companies of interstellar mercenaries to a stalemate all by himself, but he was the main character of the terrible iPhone game Mass Effect Galaxies. So I guess that was his main qualification. In a nutshell, Jacob can't decide if he's a rebel or a conformist, has no real interesting back story and is not particularly clever or smart. I guess he's supposed to be an everyman, but some convictions wouldn't hurt.

Review: World War Z

Finally, a book that combines my love of military drama with zombies.

A few years back, I heard that Mel Brooks' son, Max Brooks, had written a comedy book called The Zombie Survival Guide. As a fan of both comedy and zombies, I was intrigued by the possibility of a zomedy. It would require delicate balance to keep the melancholy of the zombie apocalypse from ruining all the jokes. While the zomedy would reach perfection in Zombieland, it shambled out of the box with The Zombie Survival Guide. The book couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a parody and a joke or if it wanted to provide legitimate zombie fighting advice and tell horror stories of zombie attacks of the past. The comedy bits were very bland and predictable, but his horror stories were incredible. Zombie attacks of the past had a ton of very interesting alternative takes on history. My favorite will always be in the Lost Colony of Roanoake, which was overrun by zombies. However, the book's inconsistent tone kept it from being a favorite of mine. When I heard that Brooks was returning to the zombie genre to tell a serious story, I was excited.

No one wants to see Will Smith fix utilities for two hours.

World War Z is presented as a series of interviews conducted by a UN Investigator to record the causes, events, and aftermath of the zombie epidemic. Right from the start, Brooks earns major credits by being one of the very few zombie authors to have humanity come back from the zombie apocalypse. For obvious reasons, most writers (and especially video games) prefer to stick you in the middle of the zombie apocalypse where all the action and destroyed cities are, preferring to leave the whole rebuilding of mankind to your imagination. More importantly, Brooks has a very realistic feel for how the zombie epidemic could spread across the world so quickly, how various countries would react to the zombie apocalypse, and how humanity could fight back against the zombies. 90 percent of the time, his thoughts are brilliant and combine a strong understanding of global politics with practical zombie fighting. For example, the zombie plague starts in China, a country with a very large, very dense population where the government controls the press and firearms are restricted.

The book is broken into 8 chapters, consisting of multiple interviews from people of importance from around the world. Sometimes they are leaders, intelligence officers, doctors or soldiers, but just as often, they are regular people thrust into uniquely brutal situations. The sheer number of names can be overwhelming, but they aren't particularly important. One of my favorite things is the amount of stories which intersect without the other people knowing about it. So you hear about an event you know the intimate details of in passing from the story of another character. It does wonders to add cohesiveness to the universe.

There's only one problem with World War Z and it's that Max Brooks' political opinions constantly seep into the book. Some things are inherent to the genre. For example, if the CIA was super good at containing zombie outbreaks, then we wouldn't get very far in our zombie apocalypse and there wouldn't be too much drama.. However, it's the times when he's not taking potshots that are the worst. At every opportunity, conservative values, people and places are vilified and liberal values, people and places are sanctified. For example, the military can't recruit the manpower to fight the undead hordes because people were war weary from Iraq. The northern states fare much better than the southern states because they have winters that freeze the zombies over (ignoring that the South has a shotgun per capita of nearly 1.17). The lifelong capitalist embraces the benefits of Keynesian economics (although this one is more forgivable, since rationing is more essential in a zombie apocalypse). The Sun Belt refugees don't pack warmly enough for the Canadian winter and are generally idiots when it comes to keeping warm. Because no one camps in the South and the winters are never cold. The most egregious line that stands out in my mind was "My father never hit my mother. He was a progressive." Because only people with traditional values beat their wives, right? A liberal would never be capable of violence!

METS: My Entire Team Sucks

There is one other thing that bothers me in the book, but it's fairly minor. In an otherwise fantastic chapter, a pilot who crashed deep in zombie country is talking over the radio to a woman by the call sign Mets Fan. As it turns out SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER the woman is either a guardian angel or maybe the pilot's subconscious SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER and that the name may have been influenced because the pilot's mother was from the Bronx. The problem is the Yankees play in the Bronx, the Mets play in Queens. How could an error like that get through publishing?! To the uninitiated fly honeys reading this who may not understand why it's a big deal to mix up the Yankees and Mets, it would be like mixing up Edward and Jacob in Twilight (if Edward had won more World Series than other franchise and was universally hated by all other people and Jacob was the laughing stock of the land who desperately tried to keep up with Edward but couldn't even keep Jose Reyes from signing a long term deal with the Miami Marlins! SUCK IT JACOB! I mean, METS!). Simply put, people in the Yankees neighborhood aren't going to be Mets fans and would be insulted to be lumped together. It's a mistake that becomes obvious with the slightest amount of research and would be so easy to correct in future editions of the book.

World War Z is a fantastic read, even for people who aren't obsessed about the zombie apocalypse like I am. While there are a handful of errors and political biases, it's never enough to break up the story's wonderful pacing.  The story provides a unique global perspective on the zombie apocalypse as well as the rare glimpse of the world after the zombie threat is contained. I strongly recommend reading the book and give it Four and a Half English Muffins out of Five.

Note to self: design English Muffin ratings. Maybe the half muffin will be like, half eaten or something. I don't know. It'd look cool though, right?

Playoffs?! Don't talk about playoffs!

Internet Law dictates this video be included

In a daring attempt at relevancy, I'm going to try and write about the playoff matchups this week before the game. Labor economics and Linear Algebra be damned!

More Dr Pepper vs Team Gray- Psyche! More Dr Pepper has a bye week because when you set the single season record for points scored and wins, you deserve a spot in the second round. This is mostly here because I still can't believe More Dr Pepper (at 9-2) lost to Team Gray (at 2-9). If this were any kind of just system, we'd skip the playoffs and have the media vote on who they would like to see play for a championship and then get a computer's insight on the matter. Wait, there was a typo in that last sentence. I meant to write "completely insane and greed-driven" rather than "just".

All joking aside, I do feel compelled to write a small retrospective on each team's season. More Dr Pepper had a very zen (zen means lazy, right?) approach to the draft. Sam touched nothing and let the players fall where they would. He let the fantasy flow through him rather than fight the fantasy. As a result, at one point, Sam had the #1 scoring fantasy quarterback and 3 of the top 4 fantasy running backs. But that doesn't do him justice. On the free agent pool, he picked up the #2 tight end and the #3 wide receiver. There are two trains of thought as to what could trigger this Juggernaut of a team. One is that Sam is part Miyagi and could get maximum results with minimal effort. The other is that the rest of the league highlighted the good players by taking nothing but terrible ones in the draft. However, over the last three weeks, Sam lost two of his three top running backs (Matt Forte and Fred Jackson) for the rest of the season, effectively. Sure, there's a chance that Forte could return, but it'll be at least two weeks and he still will have the spectacularly incompetent Caleb Hanie in the backfield.

Look at the little kitty!

Team Gray's season was a terrifying black hole of failure. I tried to analyze it, but I became filled with an immeasurable sadness whenever I looked at it. It was as if I saw a box filled with the cutest kittens in the world and then had to see them all violently commit suicide.

Week 3 Update: Suck it, Sam!

I said "Easy Rider"! Though both have Peter Fonda.

This week has been brutal. There's that... baseball incident involving Atlanta teams and my copy of Gears 3 is getting delayed until Monday, probably. Throw in an afternoon of Tae Kwon Do (it turns out I am great at punching and jumping, but I suck at kicking, although my youth soccer coach will insist this was always the case), a haircut, and a load of chicken wings later, and I want to kick back and watch Easy Rider. After all, Iron Dirigible doesn't kick off until Sunday. But I'm not going to let that happen. Why? Spite.

The English Muffin Power Hour has never had double digit updates in the span of a single month. There are many reasons for this, such as me being easily distracted and the average EMPH update requiring me to spend my down time not playing Gears of War, not macking on the fine honeys, not tricking the Bean and not performing any combination of the three. One day, I will trick the Bean into letting me play Gears of War with a fine honey. I will have met my soul mate then. But I digress. The point is there are seasons where I don't update ten times, much less months. So I made a wager with Sam that I could update the EMPH ten times this month. If I didn't, then Sam would continue to mock my infrequent update schedule. If I did update ten times, then I'd win... um... I'd win... comedy? Let's just say I'd win comedy. I probably should have demanded some sort of stakes to this wager. I think I've been tricked.

In any case, if I don't write this update, then Sam gets an optimal outcome: more than the average dose of Hunterian Humor and bragging rights. But I'm not going to let that happen. You may beat me by 40 points in fantasy football, Sam, but you'll never take my freedom! My freedom to blog at whatever pace I feel like! CHAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGEEEE!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

This is triumphant screaming.

Week 1 Update: And They're Off!

Gimp of the Week

That should be pronounce "Vimmen".

They say save the best for last so we’ll start this week with the Gimps of the Week. First, we have a very unusual dishonorable mention: every single Houston Texan. You may say “But Hunter, didn’t the Texans crush the Colts, seen them driven away, and heard the lamentations of their women?” and I’ll respond “Conan the Barbarian, starring the Terminator and Darth Vader, was a great movie.” I’d also add that despite the complete humiliation of the colts, the highest scoring player in that game was, in fact, a Colt (Reggie “Bruce” Wayne with 16 points). Somehow, the Texans managed to win by a huge margin without having a single player score higher than 15 points. That’s like making the Dean’s List with nothing but B+’s. It shouldn’t be physically possible, but it happened!

Another dishonorable mention goes to Frank Gore. Despite not being eaten by a shark yet, he still managed to underwhelm in Week 1 by scoring just six points against the Seattle Seahawks (whose defensive line consists of coffee baristas and computer technicians). Also, I don’t think I’ve made fun of Bean enough recently.

Like the Greek Pantheon, but twice as petty!

But the Gimp of the Week honors actually belong to a higher philosophy of Fantasy Football. Analysts say that you should never draft a kicker before the 16^th round and a defense before the 14^th round (and there are only 16 rounds). The train of thought is there’s fundamentally no real difference between kickers. The top scoring kicker was only 39 points higher than the 20^th best scoring kicker (which is slightly more than 2 points a game). Inevitably, people in every league do that. But the Gods of Fantasy Football said “No More!” this year and decided to punish the people who took the top defense and kicker.

The top defense taken this year was the Pittsburgh Steelers (who averaged over 10 points a game last season). The Baron spent an 8^th round pick on them, twirling his mustache all the while and wearing a picklehaube, saying that the Steelers would be essential for the invasion of East Katzen. But the Pittsburgh defense managed to be worse than nothing in their opener against the Baltimore Ravens (and it hurts me to write this next part). The Steelers were more like the Tin-Foilers given how Ray Rice tore them apart. They “contributed” -3 points to the Baron’s team. But that’s still not enough to win top dishonors.

How can you be worse than a negative? By being an absolute zero. Nate Kaeding, the kicker of the San Diego Chargers, was taken in the 12^th round of the Iron Dirigible draft by Team Gray. Normally, Kaeding punishes owners by being average and somehow being projected to be the number 1 kicker the next year. Last year, he was taken in the 11^th round (also by Team Gray) and finished as the 13^th best kicker. So how does Kaeding upstage the Steelers Defense? He tears his ACL and gets injured for the entire season before he kicks a single field goal. Kaeding amounted to absolutely nothing this week and will be nothing for the entire season. It is the only time in Iron Dirigible history I can say a draft pick was a complete and utter waste from which nothing good could possibly come. And if making the single worst draft decision in the history of Iron Dirigible football isn’t Gimp of the Week honors, I don’t know what is.