Recently in Entertainment Category

This morning, I took a little detour on my way to work to pick up copies of the new World of Warcraft expansion, "The Burning Crusade."

Thing is, I didn't pre-order it. Not only did I pre-order it, but I also had my sights set on the relatively rare "Collector's Edition," which has all kinds of nifty extra stuff. And not just one copy, but two -- one for me, and one for Amy.

I know what you WoW players are thinking: "Are you nuts?! You didn't pre-order?! And you think you'll get a copy today, on release day?!? Of the Collector's Edition?! TWO COPIES?!?" Yes. People have always told me what can't be done, and I've found that if I want it to be done, "can't be done" is usually not an issue.

I hadn't planned on buying the expansion today. After all, I'm only level 45, and most of the nifty stuff requires you to be level 58. And I hadn't planned to get the Collector's Edition -- the standard was going to be good enough, and I'd get around to buying it eventually. I even ended up winning a copy of the standard edition from the Detroit Free Press. Then I decided it might be neat to have the Collector's Edition, and decided to give it a shot. I'll be honest, I didn't think I'd get it, so I was geeked to have scored a copy from the Free Press.

Anyway, I rolled up to a local Best Buy store about a half hour before it opened ("only a ahlf hour?!?!?" you hard-core geeks are shrieking. Of course, most of you were at the launch parties at places like GameStop at midnight last night. I'm hardcore, but not that hardcore), and one dude was standing outside the door, and apparently had been for quite a while. He looked like the kind of dude you would expect to be the only guy "standing in line" for something like this, if you get my drift. The kind of geek that makes me feel like "The Fonz" by comparison. No one else in sight. Eventually, other cars not belonging to employees showed up. One other guy got "in line" around twenty minutes before opening. About ten minutes to opening or so, as more cars came in, I decided I'd better get in line myself. I ended up being person number three. And good thing, too, because sure enough, a bunch of people lined up behind me - a good twenty or more. Oddly, the guy in front of me and the guy behind me had pre-ordered it, so they were apparently just waiting for the store to open because they wanted to get right on to playing it without any more waiting, but couldn't score a copy via the midnight release. Though I was third in line, I may have been the first person without a reserved copy. Most of the people there seemed to be WoW players from all kinds of walks of life (I may not have been the only lawyer, and I know for a fact I'm not the only lawyer who plays). But one woman a couple people behind me was only there to get it as a surprise for her son's birthday -- apparently she wouldn't let the kid go with his older sister and her boyfriend to the GameStop midnight shindig because it was a "school night." She professed to knowing nothing about the game. Now that's one lucky kid.

Now, here in Michigan lately, it has been relatively mild, like 40s and 50s even, for a while. During the last few days, though, it has been colder and there has been some ice, snow and sleet though nothing like the apocalypse they predicted. Today, of course was the coldest day yet, and there was a nice cold wind. I'm talking 20s with a stiff wind, the one day I ended up deciding to stand around outside in a line for something. At least it was sunny.

The store finally opened, and a bee-line ensued to the table where they had everything set up. I was so cold and focused on the objective that I really got into tunnel-vision mode. Grabbed two copies of the Collector's Edition from the clearly limited supply, and bee-lined to the registers before they could tell me I was doing something wrong, because they started saying something about people with reserved copies. As it turned out, that was apparently just them asking you to tell them whether you had reserved a copy before you took one off the table, so they could cross you off the list, but they also said that, no, the ones on the table were not reserved but up for grabs. Again, though, there was no pausing on my part. I figured once I had paid, I was home free. Which, as it turns out, was the case. I was in and out of the store in less than five minutes, and then it was time for the bee-line to work.

Once I got home, and once Amy got home, we cracked open our boxes, started installing, and decided to check out the other stuff in the collector's box. There was a behind-the-scenes DVD that was nifty. The game itself doesn't seem different yet because, unlike a lot of our friends, we hadn't maxed out on the previous version of the game. Our maxed-out friends were ready to install the game so they could leave behind the previous maximum of level 60 for the new cap of level 70.

All in all, a good geeky time was had by, well, us at least. It was almost like another Christmas.

The folks at Blame Society Productions have released episode 4 of their very funny Chad Vader series, which you may recall from my previous posts here and here:

Well, I finally broke down and started playing World of Warcraft. The game is really quite cool, and, as you may have heard, very addictive. As though I need another thing to occupy my free time.

For those who aren't familiar, WoW (as it's called by regulars) is an MMORPG, or "Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game," set in the same game universe as the Warcraft series that started over ten years ago. I remember playing Warcraft II in the computer labs in college for some seriously hardcore LAN games against friends. This game, however, takes the whole experience light-years beyond that. One of the cool things about the game is that it always changes, and there's always something new to do, whether you play for hours at a time or maybe only an hour here or there. You can form groups and complete quests, explore, battle other players, or just hang around and chat. It's quite cool. And apparently lots of other people think so, as the game has over seven million active players.

So if you're already a WoW player, perhaps I'll see you around.

Amy and I ventured out to Detroit for the annual Comerica TasteFest (See an article about TasteFest in the Detroit Free Press).

TasteFest is a great opportunity to get out and try new food from a whole bunch of area restaurants. And if you're into food and cooking like me, that's just plain fun. Plus they have several stages with various musical acts performing throughout the whole thing.

Afterwards, we headed over to the Detroit Institute of Arts, widely considered to be one of the best art museums anywhere, to take in a special exhibit and just generally enhance our cultural awareness, which is always good for a nerdy type like myself.

The Hertiage Foundation apparently felt the burning need to hold an entire panel discussion so that Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff could inform us that Homeland Security is not like the TV show "24."

Well, gee, Mr. Secretary, thanks for that newsflash. Of course, if real life was like 24, the entire federal government would, for no really good reason, have relocated to Los Angeles, where, again for no really good reason, the world's terrorists would focus all of their efforts. And then the Department of Homeland Security would, yet again for no good reason, alternate randomly between entrusting the entire nation's defense to one ultraviolent dude with a man purse and issuing arrest warrants for the dude for no good reason because it mistakenly believed that the dude was doing things wrong or illegally. Even though this guy is always proven right in the end, the Department will repeatedly jump to the wrong conclusion without trusting him.

Oh, and Dave Barry would mock the Department's efforts on his blog.

Wonder no longer. Fellow TopFive List contributor, Reid Kerr, has this "Sliding Scale of Celebrity Coolness" to help us all figure it out. The scale assigns point values to celebrity conduct, such as couch-jumping and Scientology-touting, to name just a few:

• Give birth in Namibia: -1 pt
• Give birth in Narnia: +2 pts

  * * *

• Be in a Ron Howard movie: +2 pts
• Be in a Clint Howard movie: -2 pts

  * * *

• Publicly state your Scientologist beliefs: -2 pt
• Jump up and down on Oprah's couch: -3 pts
• Pretend to conceive a child to squelch gay rumors: -4 pts

Well, you get the idea. It's certainly more entertaining that watching "Entertainment Tonight."

Watching 24 is much more fun when Dave Barry is live-blogging it.

The best show nobody's watching is Arrested Development, which has been on Fox for three seasons. This show is simply brilliant. It can be quite off-the-wall, but the humor is really quite intelligent. Well, it seems that tonight is the last night it will air on Fox. There's talk of ABC or Showtime picking it up, though. This show is so good, I would actually pay to subscribe to Showtime (I only have HBO now) just for that show.

I'm not sure how I feel about living in a world where "American Idol" is popular as hell, but this show doesn't make it.

My friend Steve's band, The Fluoride Program, is getting ready to crank up their first-ever tour. They rock. If you live near one of these places, go. Tell them Geoff Brown sent you. That ought to freak them out a bit:

2/09 :: Cheers Lounge, South Bend, IN
2/10 :: Skully's, Columbus, OH
2/11 :: Rhino's, Bloomington, IN
2/12 :: Phyllis' Musical Inn, Chicago, IL
2/13 :: Shadow Lounge, Pittsburgh, PA
2/14 :: DC 9, Washington, DC
2/15 :: Kenny's Castaways, New York, NY
2/16 :: Abbey Lounge, Somerville, MA
2/17 :: Chestnut Room, Philadelphia, PA
2/18 :: Pat's in the Flats, Cleveland, OH

2/23 :: The Temple Club, Lansing, MI
2/24 :: The Elbow Room, Ypsilanti, MI
2/25 :: Lager House, Detroit, MI

Well, I saw Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on opening day this past Thursday. I have to say that this is probably the best movie of the series. The special effects, particularly in the opening scene, were just outstanding. The dialogue, as it has been in all the movies, was a little hokey at times, but it was a good story, and an overall entertaining film.

Lately, the man behind the saga, George Lucas, has been saying that this will be the last film in the series, though there will be two television series coming up in the next couple of years. I find this somewhat depressing, because as a kid, I remember Lucas saying that he intended the saga to be nine movies, with the three that came out in my childhood being the middle three. The first three episodes, he explained, would set up the story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, and how the Empire came about, and the last three would pick up where Return of the Jedi left off. Now, of course, Lucas says that there were never going to be nine movies, but I clearly remember otherwise.

Of course, Lucas changes his story all the time -- a few years ago, he said he would only release DVD versions of all the movies after all six had been released, so he could do one big super box set. I think we all know what became of that plan. So maybe he'll backpedal (or rebackpedal, as the case may be) on this topic, too. But if not, I'm glad that he has taken the series this far, and I'll just have to content myself with the books and tv shows.