Yup, watched the train wreck again. Viewers are witnessing the demolition of a man crush. Here is a recap of this show and every other episode that is sure to come. Corey Haim is a child actor who cannot comprehend the child. He is not an actor. How can you be an actor when you’ve done nothing but a reality show in what, 15+ years? The show is just him trying to revisit his childhood and continually blaming Feldman for his lack of success. His obsession with Feldman is just bizarre. The full page ad Haim took out in Variety was totally a publicity stunt, aimed at begging people to give him work. How could he possibly believe that it was an apology? Why mention work? In case you missed it, the ad said: “This is not a stunt. I’m back. I’m ready to work. I’m ready to make amends”.

Dumb-butt! For one, that’s the most self-centered supposed apology I have ever seen. Secondly, why the hell does his has-been behind think that the industry has been waiting with baited-breath for his reappearance. My life has continued on nicely with the disappearance of the Lost Boy. I’ve never had a conversation with anyone in which we discussed how much we missed Corey Haim. It’s just sad, sad, sad.

I know I made some people mad while talking about Michael Jackson in my last post. Anybody who watched the Martin Bashir special in which he proclaimed, “There is nothing more loving than sharing a bed with a young child”, should realize what kind of guy MJ really is. My almost five year old still climbs in my bed on a regular basis but I am not dumb enough to say anything like that. There are a million things that are more loving than sleeping in a bed with a child THAT IS NOT YOURS! Michael’s words condemned him. A jury doesn’t have to. What magical world do you people live in where guilty people go to jail? Grow up. Michael Jackson doesn’t do inappropriate things with children any more than R. Kelly pees on people. We’ll just leave it at that.

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written by Jennifer Leftwich \\ tags: actor, apology, child, Corey, Coreys, Episode, Feldman, Haim, Martin Bashir, Michael, Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Season, show, stunt

If you haven’t seen the new Guitar Hero drums, check out the video below. What really impresses me is the fact that the drums are velocity sensitive. The new GH drums also make Rock Band’s look like child’s play. The way things are looking, the next installation of Guitar Hero may be just enough to get me away from Rock Band.

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: check, child, Demo, Drum, fact, Guitar, haven, Hero, Hero IV, installation, look, play, Rock Band, velocity, video, way

Link To Part 1!

[Editor's note: in the second part of our two part interview with Ragnhild Mogren, teacher at Stockholm university, we discuss why the message games send out are important to our culture, and touch on racism and gender issues with Resident Evil 5 and Grand Theft Auto IV as backdrops]

The medium is the message

The famous quote from late media analyst Marshall McLuhan is being uttered when the argument that the trailer is clearly playing off of horror concepts come up. The trailer is obviously, for a lack of a better term, cool. It is professionally edited and effective at provoking a horror sensation throughout the film. But why do we so seldom in the videogame culture stop to think about why a certain aspect of something is cool? It’s just cool and that’s good enough, it seems. Games are being excused because they are “just games.”

The way the message is being transported is the interesting thing, not the message itself, according to McLuhan’s theories. We live in the “global village”, and the technology has to be viewed as an artifact, a cultural artifact.

- Both when we choose a message and when we send out this message, can we ever assume that this message is going to be received as we intended it to. But, we can assume that we somewhat share the same understanding of cultural codes within said culture. “I am formed by the culture and I am forming the culture”.

We will never be able to mediate a message without it having a cultural significance or connection, and in turn we interpret that from our own cultural baggage. No matter how “fair” you depict a fighting scene between a white and a black person, we will always apply constellations that he is black.

The gaming culture has been a small subgenre in the past, and because of that, according to Mogren, such issues that dealt with gender or ethnicity never “needed” to be lifted to a higher cultural standpoint, because they were, in fact, “just games”. The notion that we don’t need to explain anything or take responsibility because we’re all in the same boat and understand each other is now getting erased. Times have changed, and now every grandmother is aware that her grandchild is playing this computer game called World of Warcraft. Games are forming the culture we all are participating in on a daily basis in this century.

Continue reading »

written by Jesper Sellerberg \\ tags: child, Content, culture, fact, game, Gender, Grand, Marshall, message, part, process, Racism, Ragnhild Mogren, socialization, society, Stockholm, Theft, Trailer