Catching up with Starcatt

You may remember my World of Warcraft Night Elf Hunter, Starcatt from back in 2006. Ever the role-player, I always envisioned Starcatt as Neq's long-lost sister. Their parting happened when Neq became a Druid. Starcatt was dissapointed by the departure of her sister and was going to follow Neq, but after much soul searching, eventually went the way of the Hunters. Anyway, I dropped Starcatt after she dinged 60 at the end of 2006. A couple months ago, I picked up Starcatt again after getting Twiddley to 70 and discovering that I had a real affinity toward Hunters. So, I quickly leveled Starcatt to 70 and began grinding rep. She first became exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive (my first time doing this with any of my characters) and got her exalted title. Next up was exalted with the Scryers. Then yesterday, she hit exalted with the Netherwing and got her beautiful onyx Netherwing Drake. Currently, Starcatt is close to exalted with the Shat'ari Skyguard and is continuing to do daily quests all over the place. With her most faithful friend, the trusty pure white cat Sam (sound familiar?), Starcatt is currently my favorite WoW character. She's even in a guild, which doesn't usually float with me. Check out her Armory entry here. All hail the mighty Starcatt of the Shattered Sun!

Missing Metropolis Footage Discovered

Metropolis, the 1927 silent SF film by Fritz Lang, will soon become more complete as a result of missing footage that has been found in Argentina. This is a landmark science fiction film. Fans have known about this footage and had thought it missing forever. A good way to see this for yourself is to watch the Metropolis DVD from Kino. We have it at WLBPL if you want to check it out. Once the missing footage is returned to the movie, it will not be totally complete, but more restored than ever before. I'm really looking forward to this!

The Offspring - Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace

I'm really enjoying The Offspring's new album Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace. Particularly nice are the first single "Hammerhead" and the last song on the album "Rise and Fall," which is my favorite song of the Summer of 2008 so far.

Diablo III: The Return to Tristram

And so, yesterday, June 28, 2008, 8 years to the day since the release of Diablo II, Blizzard Entertainment officially announced the long-awaited Diablo III. I'm particularly overjoyed, because, as you will remember, not only am I a big Blizzard fan, but the Diablo series is one of my favorites. Diablo 2 was my PC game of choice from 2000 to 2004. Check out the official Diablo III site and be sure to download the 20-minute-long gameplay video. It's amazing. Blizzard revealed that Diablo III has actually been in development for four years and the game already looks incredibly polished and fun. It's nice to see that Blizzard is taking the same "don't mess with success" approach to Diablo III that they are taking to Starcraft 2. Prediction: Diablo III will be the game to tear me away from World of Warcraft, but it will be a number of years before that happens.

Exile in Guyville - 15th Anniversary

One of my favorite albums of all time is Exile in Guyville, made by one of my favorite musicians, Liz Phair. Almost to the day of release, Guyville is now 15 years old. Hard to believe. It's back in print as of today, in a new two-disc edition. The second disc is a DVD that includes an 80-minute long "Guyville Revisited" documentary with interviews with people involved in the making of the album and others giving their favorite memories of the album. Here's mine: December 1998. I was living in Clarion, Pa. and was halfway through studying for my MLS at Clarion University. Everyone had ditched the campus between semesters...except for me. I stuck it out by myself, weathered a particularly fierce western Pa. winter, shelved books in the university library for something to do and was just generally lonely. I listened to Liz's Exile in Guyville in its entirety just about every day during that month. I was miserable but her album made it somehow better. The picture at the left is from 2003 when I met Liz at an in-store at Vintage Vinyl here in New Jersey. Click on it for a closer look.

George Carlin R.I.P.

George Carlin is dead. Damn. This guy was my hero. He affected the way that I think about everyday stuff like voting and grammar. I'll never forget his voices. As a teenager in the 1970's, I would listen to his comedy albums like Class Clown endlessly. I had his routines memorized. Hal Sleet the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman. He's also responsible for one of my favorite quotes of all time: "Don't believe anything the Bush administration tells you. In fact, play it safe: don't believe anything anybody tells you." I'll miss George Carlin.

Pussycat WoW

"That fish vendor must be around here somewhere!"

(Photo Courtesy of Stacina's Creative Commons License)