Bloglander

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"It's going to be the bestest thing ever!!!!!!" wailed the collective Internet the day it was announced that legendary be-leathered and be-helmeted electronic music duo Daft Punk would be writing the score for the new Tron movie. Already up to their necks in nostalgic kitsch, these nerds took to their Facebooks and their MySpaces and their Hotmail email addresses* to loudly proclaim that this was the culmination of all music, despite not having listened to a single note. In short, it took the traditional route to Internet popularity:

Get hyped. Build anticipation. Get leaked. Everyone on the internet feels they've been personally wronged. Try to fix it (optional) .**

OK, Internet, let's get something straight right here: You're not really the best barometer for what actual living human beings will like. This has been proven time and time again when things go to Comic-Con, get huge buzz, then fizzle out because nerds are the ones who are stealing things off the Internet.

Tone it down a little, mmmkay? Stop qvetching that you didn't get exactly what you thought you deserved. The Tron soundtrack is emphatically NOT the ninth Daft Punk album — it's a freaking film score. That being said, it's still a damn good film score, especially if you do like electronic music. So can't we just enjoy it for what it is, rather than bitch and moan about what it's not?

• Acoustic Live!, Adam Lambert — Lucky! If you don't remember who Adam Lambert is, well, I envy you. Lambert is the American Idol loser from the eighth season (my guess is because he didn't bother to sing any songs by Liza, despite being her doppleganger). Now he's releasing his second album, allowing everyone to know just exactly how much American Idol needs its Auto-Tune engineers.
• Strip Me, Natasha Bedingfield — As you may well know, it's easy to make fun of Natasha Bedingfield because she got her big break by being the song that introduced everyone to the cranial-meningitis-inducing TV show The Hills. But it's also easy to make fun of her because the title track, "Strip Me," sounds like she's angling for a spot on a depressing bizarro-Chronicles of Narnia soundtrack. So take your pick.
• 4x4=12, Deadmau5 — In the latest entry in a relatively new fad of un-Googleable music (///Y/, from M.I.A.; The The (a Matt Johnson band); !!! (pronounced "chk chk chk"); and, of course, ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ), Deadmau5 is one of the few acts (like M.I.A.) that it won't really be an inconvenience for. This is the album for everyone who was pissed off by the TRON soundtrack.
• Happy Christmas, Jessica Simpson — Don't you think the fact that Jessica Simpson had a PBS Christmas special should finally lay to rest the idea that public broadcasting is controlled by the elites?Also, on the subject of singing "Mary Did You Know," Ms. Simpson had this to say: "I always think about how amazing it would be to have a child that would actually … save the world. And, I believe that Mary did not understand that until an angel spoke to her, and that's what this song is about." Which is such a unique interpretation, because this is what I remember from my Bibling days: "Verily, and Mary didst journey to the apothecary, and procure herself a test of pregnancy. With woe and dread didst she wait upon the chamberpot — but lo was her heart filled with miraculous joy when, instead of the cross of blue or the line of pink, a golden 'M' didst appear. And thus she didst know she wouldst bear the Messiah."***

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OMG, you guys. This is going to sound of crazy, so bear with me: Hollywood, in a quest for money and an inherent unwillingness to do anything that might be considered even the slightest bit original or risky, lied to us. They told us one thing, then did another.

Four was supposed to be the number of Shreks we were ever going to have to deal with. That was the maximum, the ceiling, the limit. I have several sources to this effect. And then what do they go and do? What do I see on the very same shelves as the Shrek: Forever After DVD?

Freaking Shrek spin-off. Oh sure, they can call it Donkey's Christmas Shrektacular and claim it's about Donkey, but there are two^† problems with that: 1) Donkey wouldn't exist without Shrek, and Γ) "Shrek" is in the freaking title. Add that to Scared Shrekless, the Halloween special that aired on NBC (which has a history of airing horrible 3-D animated shows, like Father of the Pride), and it's safe to say that the horrible green ogre will never die. At least, not until Mike Meyers does.

So go out and buy Shrek Forever After, if you must. Just don't go blaming me when they release the seventh installment, Shrek 3-D, starring a footloose Cary Elwes.---

• Inception — Since I (correctly) assume everyone has already seen this movie, I'm just going to ask: Why is it that in the first two levels of the dream, weightlessness in the level above causes weightlessness in the level below, while the third level has no such restrictions?
• Restrepo — Oh, boy. More war movies. Check out our take here.
• Barry Munday — I can enjoy a good dark comedy: Seth Rogen: Mall Cop (or whatever it was called) is a good example of this done well, as is Cyrus. Barry Munday, however, is about a man who's attacked in a movie theater before waking up in a hospital sans testicles. When a woman he doesn't remember sleeping with slaps him with a paternity lawsuit, I stopped reading the synopsis and started crying softly to myself.

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Uh oh. Lock your nerds and keep them in the basement (like they weren't there already), World of Warcraft is releasing yet another vector for sucking away the precious life force of geeks, dweebs and Gleeks^†† everywhere. An expansion for the popular (that word seems inadequate, but whatever) massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Cataclysm unlocks a whole mess of new stuff for nerds to salivate into their neckbeards over.

I cannot won't lie in this case: I don't know most of the words that people use in reviews for the various WoW games. Apparently there was an invasion of something by someone, lots of weird things going on, and now there's extra content for you to enjoy. Hooray?

You level your characters up to level 85 now, there are a number of changes to Azeroth, new player-vs-player content, and (excitingly, apparently), the aility to fly mounts in Azeroth. So if you're looking forward to all this (or, really, have any idea what the hell I'm talking about), you should probably run^††† to your nearest gaming store and pick up the expansion. Just, please, wear pants when you leave the house.

• TRON: Evolution — There's no endorsement so ringing as "a competent video game that makes acceptable use of the TRON license." This is actually a prequel to TRON: Legacy, which is to say it's a sequel to TRON. Which is to say, they could do whatever the hell they wanted to and nobody could question them. This is basically Prince of Persia with a glowy, blow-upy Frisbee.
• Bejeweled 3 (PC) — What, exactly, justifies three versions of Bejeweled? They're making even fewer changes than the Madden team, for cryin' out loud.
• Blimp: The Flying Adventures (PS3, PSP) — Ugh, I can't even bother to click on the link for that game.