Mongo Nation

Our bets are on… HUSH!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Batman is known for his vast army of memorable super-villains, second maybe only to Spider-Man or the X-Men in terms of recognizable faces. Consequently, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to find one that will work for Batman 3.

However, having seen the first two movies that came out under the watchful eye of Christopher Nolan, I think that we can all agree that, while many of Batman’s famous adversaries certainly are colorful, very few are actually appropriate for the film’s darkly realistic style and tone. Clearly, there will be no Penguin and/or Mr. Freeze in this film.

Nope.

Obviously, this poses a major problem to the filmmakers, especially when trying to follow up Heath Ledger’s amazing performance as The Joker. Which of his many villains could conceivably exist in real life, and have the potential to deeply impact Batman as a character, rather than simply providing a minor roadblock in his nightly crime fighting routine? We’ve gone over the roster 100 times and the one name that keeps coming up is Hush.

Now I know that many of you are thinking that there are maybe a dozen or so Batman Villains that are better known than Hush, and I’m not debating that fact in the slightest. But when you look closely at a lot of these characters, you’ll see that most of them are either ridiculous (like the aforementioned Penguin) or have little potential for emotional conflict with the Batman. Catwoman is one that a lot of people are talking about, but she wouldn’t really work for a number of reasons. For starters, she’s merely a cat burglar. There is nothing about her character or motivation that could make for a truly compelling story, especially when you consider that she has virtually nothing in common with Two Face, who is likely to make a re-appearance in the third movie. Read the rest of this entry →

“Because Orphans Don’t Have Parents”

By Dolemite’s Ghost

A number of crazy PSAs have popped up today on our interwebs that feature a valiant organization hell bent on combating our nation’s problem with smack addicted orphans. That organization is known as “FSITO”, which stands for “Fight Smack In The Orphanage”.

Using a regiment of tough love, advanced kung-fu therapy, food deprivation and mild waterboarding, FSITO has been converting Smack addicted orphans into “Smack Warriors”, and useful members of society, since 1974.

This is the first of those PSAs, starring a smooth talking social worker who goes by the name of “Cream Corn”:

According to their official press release, FSITO has three major goals:

•    #1: ESTABLISH A GRASSROTS MOVEMENT that will supply counseling, support, nurturing, love, methadone, and understanding to our nation’s Smacked up kids.

•    #2: CREATE SMACK AWARENESS and provide Smack-related materials, including t-shirts, bumper stickers, key chains and temporary tattoos.

•    #3: STOP THE VICIOUS CYCLE of addiction by saving Smack-addicted orphans from pushers while, in turn, saving the pushers from organized crime, saving organized crime from the drug cartels, and ultimately, saving the drug cartels from big government health care reform.

Check out part two of FSITO’s series of hard-hitting ant-smack PSAs:

If you’d like to learn more about FSITO and how you can help get orphans off of Smack, please visit Fightsmackintheorphanage.org

And if you are curious where all this strange, modern-vintage PSA stuff is coming from, my guess is that it has something to do with the awesome, soon-to-be-released blaxploitation kung-fu action/comedy film starring Michael Jai White, Tommy Davidson and Cedric Yarbrough… “Black Dynamite”. Have a look and see if you agree:

Black Dynamite Red Band Trailer

Exciting new technology in the field of advanced drunkology

By Larry “Stretchnuts” Johnson

If you’re like me, the main problem that you face over the holiday weekend isn’t the traffic, or the overcrowded campsites, or the hungry, pissed-off bears… It’s the drinking.

You just can’t get drunk fast enough! The beer sweats out of you as fast as you can drink it, and the liquor is all lukewarm and gross. Also, there’s nothing to mix it with because you didn’t have room for soda in the cooler on account of all the aforementioned beer you packed. Lucky for us, Jagermeister has the solution!

The new Jagermeister 6 Bottle Shot Cooler is a cooler specifically designed to produce ice cold shots of Jag on the go. Perfect for camping, or even at the home or office! Four bottles can be stored in the chiller, while two more affix to a tap. A tap! In a cooler! It even has a little compartment inside that holds 50 shot cups. Yeah, 50 should about do it.

If you can’t get rip-roaring drunk off of 50 shots of ice cold and delicious Jagermeister, than maybe you should see a doctor or something, because you probably have an extra liver and there are starving boozehounds in third world countries that don’t even have one. So stop being so greedy and remember to drink responsibly!

Looking on the bright side of a recession that shows no signs of slowing

By Pete Pelmo

Normally, being broke is the worst thing that can happen to you. But the world is a funny place, and sometimes things can come in and out of fashion with little regard for history or tradition, like Hammer Pants or wearing a sweatband on your head when you’re not even playing tennis.

Being broke is now one such thing. In a bizarre twist that many economists are calling the “Hoodriche Factor”, being broke is now considered more awesome than not being broke as a result of several factors. Mathematically speaking, the formula looks something like this:

Being Broke > Having Loads of Cash

How can this be possible? In order to help you understand, we’ve outlined ten reasons that support the formula:

Recession fashion is in style

Some homeless-looking dudes picking up on hot model babes. It’s that easy!

Hipsters will pay a much as eighty American dollars at Urban Outfitters for the shitty, worn-out flannels in your closet. You can literally purchase a $300 outfit in the height of hipster fashion at any Goodwill store in any suburb in America (the ones in major cities are usually picked clean) for like twelve crispies. If you can pull off this look without beating your own self up for looking like an asshole, while also pretending to enjoy Fleet Foxes and Pabst Blue Ribbon, you’ll be up to your neck in hipster chick vag in no time.

Which brings me to reason number two:

Chicks don’t expect you to spend a whole bunch of money on them before they put out

Earth Girls Are Easy

Used to be that in order to get your pee-pee wet, you had to take a chick out to dinner or to a club or some such bullcrap and spend all this money on her. You might even have to do this more than once! It’s retarded. You both know that you’re not hanging out because you think the chick is real interesting or whatever. You’ve got plenty of other perfectly good friends you could party with if you wanted to not get laid at the end of the night. So essentially your date is trying to see how much free stuff she can get from you before she ends up on her back. But no longer! Now that everyone’s broke, “Recession Sex” articles have been appearing in big, bold letters on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Vogue, Elle, Modern Period, The Nationalist and O Magazine. As a result, thousands of slump busters across the nation are totally down for one-night stands! What are the social implications of the suggestive powers of women’s social media and their conditioned response to obey conflicting stimuli under the pressure of pop cultural conformity? Who gives a f**k, Poindexter? Some of us are trying to have a good time over here, man.

Douchebags all of the sudden seem as intolerable to everyone else as they always have to you

Make me unsee it!

You’ve always found people who spend shitloads of money on dumb crap like Louis Vuitton handbags, True Religion jeans and bottle service at clubs to be repulsive and desperate for attention. Now everyone else hates them too, for rubbing their wealth (or their impressive credit lines, anyway) in everyone’s broke-ass faces. Now, for once in your life, you’re not part of the silent minority! Next time you point out some douche for acting like a bag of dicks and showing off or whatever, everyone will be all like “Yeah, right on! F**k that guy!” instead of telling you to relax and accusing you of being jealous like what always used to happen. Read the rest of this entry →

A huge leap forward for the genre

By Jeremy Azevedo

For people that have been playing Guitar Hero games for several years now, there is undoubtedly a feeling of “Tony Hawk Syndrome” creeping in by now. How many times can you experience a variation on the same theme without eventually growing tired of the entire concept?

Lucky for us, Neversoft was playing close attention to the way people actually play music games, and the resulting tweaks make Guitar Hero 5 the most enjoyable rhythm action game on the market. Nearly every complaint I’ve personally had with the series has been addressed here. For starters, the entire set list is available from the start. No unlocking or cheat codes are necessary for those who play the game solely at parties and have little to no interest in playing alone. Additionally, the currency system has been done away with, instead replaced with a challenge system that offers players more incentive to play through the career mode alone or with friends. This way, new characters, outfits, etc. can be earned instead of bought. Now you can watch Courtney Love dig up Kurt Cobain’s corpse and desecrate it by making him rap to “Feel Good Inc.” without having to slog through the single player mode for hours first!

Actually, to be fair, the single player mode isn’t much of a “slog” at all anymore. The career mode has been massively overhauled to allow you to switch instruments and/or difficulty, jump other players in and out and tackle the aforementioned challenges at your leisure. It’s an awesome way to get you to experience many of the songs in ways that you normally wouldn’t, i.e. switching to vocals or bass guitar when you normally wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so. Some of the challenges even require a full band, again adding to the incentive to play the career mode with friends. Perhaps best of all, the streamlined new menu system shows you little entries for each song that outline why each individual song is an important piece of rock history or at least has the potential to one day become one. It’s a great way to familiarize oneself with some of the more far-out songs, and it’s a wonder why this feature wasn’t always present!

The multiplayer mode is equally improved from its predecessors in nearly every way. First of all, you can’t really fail out of songs, which was a major problem when playing with n00bs in previous editions of the game. In Party Play mode, for instance, you can jump in and out of the song, changed instruments or difficulty, go to the fridge for another beer or do pretty much whatever you want without disrupting the other players in any way. The game doesn’t even pause for them. It’s awesome. The ability to play whatever instrument you want, whenever and however you want makes GH5 so much easier to approach, while still remaining competitive for experienced players. If you’ve ever been stuck playing bass while some hot shot hogs the guitar parts, you’ll be happy to know that those days are over. You can even have two drummers, or two singers if you want. You’re really only limited by the amount of plastic instruments that you have and, if you are at a party, the amount of songs that girls know the words to. (The girls always want to sing for some reason, but only ever know like five of the songs.)

For those of you that enjoyed the GHStudio mod in World Tour, you’ll be happy to know that the entire process has been streamlined from top to bottom, with a completely different and way more effective user interface that will make song creation significantly easier, and hopefully encourage more original material to appear on the download service as a result. Another thing worth noting for World Tour veterans is that you can upload about 35 or so songs from that game into GH5 for a tiny re-licensing fee of 280 MS Points, or about $3 in genuine American dollars. All of your previously downloaded songs carry over for free, save for a couple of Jimi Hendrix tracks if I’m not mistaken. This really ups the amount of songs that you have to play with and eliminates the need to swap discs, which has been an annoying hold out for the series up until now. Rock Band has very little to brag about in terms of features at this point, unless you really enjoy spending a shit-ton more money on DLC, something I’m not particularly fond of m’self. Read the rest of this entry →