Category: Games and Sports

What if the Pope converted to Islam? Suppose Bin Laden accepted Christ? What if Cub fans moved to the Southside? Now how about this, Dale Earnhardt Jr. joins Hendrick Motorsports and becomes Jeff Gordon’s teammate! This hasn’t been announced officially yet, if true, but if so I cannot wait to see the quakes of Jr. fan reaction. They have never, ever, taken a liking to Jeff Gordon, and now he’s to be teammate of their idol. Oh sports, you are so rich with drama! I think the 2008 season is going to be something to behold!

I guess these days everyone has to have their own game. I mean back in the day, then supergroup, Journey had their own arcade game. Now Destiny’s Child is featured in a new mobile phone game. In the game to player is auditioning for a spot in the group as a backup singer. I can’t wait to see how this works out in a cell phone form factor. It says that the player has to hit buttons to the beat, but will the player actually get to sing into the phone too? That would be cool, otherwise it doesn’t really add anything new to the table. There have been Nintendo DS games that make use of its built in mike, so why not? And let’s not forget those Karaoke revolution games!

I usually watch NASCAR races after church on Sundays, but today I returned home to find that the TiVo had decided that I might like Ninja Warrior and was recording that. I am in fact a big fan of Ninja Warrior on G4 (aka Sasuke in Japan), but on this occassion it was actually recording the Women of Ninja Warrior (Kunoichi in Japan) which is a female only version of the competition. Since the kids were showing great interest in the show as well, I decided to postpone my race watching in favor of Kunoichi.

It was a lot of fun watching the mostly kawaii competitors overcome or spectacularly fail to overcome the often sadistic obstacles of each stage. In the end it was the cute blonde acrobat/dancer Ayako Miyake who conquered all stages and became the first woman to win Kunoichi! Then I discovered that the Pocono 500 had been delayed due to rain, so I hadn’t missed anything, double bonus!^_^

Ran across this bumping about on YouTube. I’m not sure what it is yet, but it is cute and I’m all down for cute! Kawaii!!!!!

Okay, just checked. IDOLM@STER is essentially a Japanese JPop Idol simulator game recently released for the Japanese Xbox 360. This looks like one of those quirkly little games that has little chance of a US release…T_T

Hmmm, things are definitely looking up for the Toyota teams at last. Michael Waltrip qualified for Dover! After missing 12 races, I hope this means that things are starting to turn around for him and his teams. Toyota is definitely showing more power under the hood at last, so maybe they’re finished embarrassing themselves. There’s even speculation that Gibbs may move to Toyota after his Chevy contract expires at the end of this season.

I’m awake, I think…But I just watched Brian Vickers in the number 83 Red Bull Toyota lead about 60 laps of the Coca Cola 600! Can I be dreaming? A fast, powerful Toyota running with the big boys of NASCAR? The announcers alluded to some developments in the engine department, so maybe, just maybe, Toyota has finally arrived and is ready to play. Dale Jarrett’s Toyota was already out of the race with a blown engine, so one hopes Vickers won’t meet that same fate. In any case, as someone who habitually roots for the underdog, yaaaaay Toyota!

Of course, Jimmy Johnson just passed Vickers for the lead, still I’m pretty happy to see some improvement from Toyota. Now if Michael Waltrip can start getting back into races….but maybe I’m asking for too much now. LOL

Update: Vickers would go on to place 5th after losing his power steering and a nasty brush up with the wall. Good show! Jeremy Mayfield’s Toyota was also having a good day until the engine blew very late in the race. Ultimately Casey Mears went on to score his first Nextel Cup win on an economy run.

The biggest race weekend of the year is once again upon me and all I can think right now is, please don’t suck Indy 500! I never worry about NASCAR’s Coca Cola 600 being in danger of major suckitude because I think that NASCAR in general is more self aware of its existence as entertainment. The show is everything, and they make sure it’s easy for you to come on in, take your shoes off, and put your feet up on the table. The Indy 500 is another matter in this respect. For one thing, it took me 10 minutes just to find out when the the race coverage began and who was covering it looking first on Yahoo’s Indy 500 page and then on the official Indy 500 site. It shouldn’t be that hard to find this kind of information. But more to the point, the coverage of the race itself over the past few years has not been nearly as entertaining as the NASCAR coverage.

I think maybe the Indy 500 takes itself a little too seriously. Yes, it is the grand daddy of big races and deserves major props for that. But it is still entertainment and should be presented in an entertaining fashion. I’m sure that if I go to the race myself I’ll easily find that sort of carnival atmosphere I would expect surrounding a big race. The coverage of the race should project this fun as much as possible for the viewers at home. At least that’s what I think. I guess all I’m really asking for is a little more color to the coverage. Open wheel racing, like Soccer, is a major religion in the rest of the world. But like Soccer, here in the US, coverage of open wheel racing in the IRL, CART, and F1 has been less than spectacular. Here’s hoping things will turn around with this year’s Indy 500. At least they’ve got Milka Duno!:D

Michael Waltrip has had a terrible year both on and off the track. His team seems to be in total disarray and he’s missed a lot of races. I knew that disorganization within a racing team could make it hard to compete for wins, but as I watched more races and the performance of the other Toyota teams on the track, it became clear that whatever else is wrong, the Toyota teams are sadly lacking in engine power. Two exceptions to this being Dave Blaney and David Reutimann, who have somehow managed to get into the races and do okay. They must be fantastic drivers, imagine giving them some real power under the hood!

But Toyota is a great automotive company right? With great engineers and experience, right? Well yeah, but not the kind of engineering needed to do well in Nextel Cup. In his column, “Oh, what a feeling?“, Bob Margolis lays much of the blame at the feet of Toyota Racing Division. I would have thought that the Craftsman Truck series would have prepped Toyota somewhat for the Cup, but if it is true that coming from open wheel racing, they look down on NASCAR, then maybe their hearts just aren’t in it. It’s funny though, because it’s true that they probably could have stayed out of NASCAR and continued to sell a lot of Camrys. But to pull out of the testosterone soaked world that is NASCAR in utter defeat now could actually cost them some sales. Afterall, even the most liberal man probably wouldn’t want to buy a car made by a bunch of pussies who got their asses handed to them week after week in front of millions of viewers. That’d be hard to live down, so they’d better get their asses in gear!

Found this linked on Digg, search warrant reveals that Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui did not have any video games in his possession. That kind of blows some big holes in accusations being raised by the likes of Jack Thompson and Dr. Phil, that violent video games had a part in this and other shooting sprees. While video games can be and are stereotyped as, a solitary pursuit, they can be, and often are, very social. Perhaps if this young man had been involved in the gaming community, he would have found some of the support he so clearly needed.

After the Columbine shootings, there was a rush to judge the parents of the shooters and vilify violent video games. Despite the similarities, I think the Virginia Tech tragedy has one fundamental difference. The evidence coming out, clearly reveals a person who was mentally ill is any sense one would define mental illness. I don’t think the parents, or anyone else, can be blamed for Cho’s condition. However, I can blame the media for exploiting and over sensationalizing this tragedy. Was it really necessary to show the video that Cho left? Are all of the pictures of him plastered all over the TV and Internet really helping? This is really sending the wrong message. There are still a lot of mentally ill people out there, who are going to be getting the wrong idea about what’s happened. Cho has not found any salvation in what he did, so for the media to essentially make him the patron saint of troubled youth in their pursuit of ratings is just plain wrong. They are not helping the victims, and may well be laying the ground work for future copycats. How can they criticize Al Jazeera and then do something like this?

I really didn’t get too much into the Nextel Cup race at Texas this past Saturday. I was happy that Jeff Burton was able to get the win because he’s one of the nice guys who’s been so close to victory over the last few weeks. So he and his team were really due for some good fortune.

The most interesting part of the race was the battle between Juan Pablo Montoya and Tony Stewart, which left Stewart spinning into a collision with Jimmy Johnson. When I saw that, I was sure we’d be hearing about an off track fight later. No problem, Juan could take Tony. It’s gonna be fun to see how things shape up next week. But no one should be surprised. There are no free gifts in NASCAR, it’s not a race if you’re not trying to win.

The Cup race at Bristol is always something I look forward to, but today is doubly special because NASCAR is debuting the Car of Tomorrow at Bristol today. The CoT is the redesigned racer that NASCAR claims will be less expensive for teams to run, safer for the drivers, and improve competition. Well, not that I don’t believe them, but talk is cheap, let’s race! Aerodynamics don’t usually play much of a role in racing on a short track like Bristol, it should be a good test of the general handling of the car. And knowing Bristol, the body shops will be getting to know these cars quite a bit better after the contact sport that is Bristol is finished today. I wonder if there’s a redesigned Dent Hammer of Tomorrow too!

For the last several days, since the Final Fantasy XI March Update, I’ve been having connection issues with the game. I’ve been getting R0’s while in Dangruf Wadi. Since I’m soloing there and don’t want to lose a lot of XP by getting killed, I’ve had to logout when these connection losses start happening. A lot of players have been having these issues and so far Square Enix has not been willing to own up to them, preferring to blame the ISPs. But clearly, the timing of this problem points to something that SE did in the update. I still love FFXI, but that isn’t of much use, if I cannot play the game. Perhaps it’s time to give World of Warcraft another try and maybe recycle that 40GB hard drive in my PS2. I could reclaim a lot of hard drive space in my PC and 360 too.

Argggh! No chocobo lovin tonight, it’s time for the Final Fantasy XI March update which is going to take 3 or 4 hours tonight because of network congestion. I guess my chocobo is going to have to wait…sigh…