so for any of you that watched the first presidential debate last night, you may or may not have noticed Barack Obama reference John McCain’s musical talents at a certain point. in case you missed it, this is what Obama was referring to:

as a bonus, here’s someone that took that short parody and made it full-fledged – set to the tune of the Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann:

I’d actually seen clips of Maynard Keenan in CAD before, but never saw this one. Some of the lyrics and the rhythm of his vocals would end up becoming Sober. Thank god he found the other guys in Tool a few years later.

Team Fortress 2 is a class-based FPS that was bundled as part of The Orange Box (360, PC, PS3) last fall. The Orange Box also included Half-Life 2 Episode 2 as well as Portal. I rented OB for the 360 at the time, tried out Half-Life 2 and completed Portal. I was so captivated by Portal (who wasn’t?) that when it came time to try out Team Fortress 2 I gave up on it rather quickly.

TF2 was released separately for the PC earlier this year through Steam. It’s easy to see why this didn’t get a dedicated physical release for any of the platforms – it’s multiplayer only – and as anyone who bought Shadowrun can tell you, it’s probably not worth $50 by itself.

I’d heard a lot about this game and how good it was, but just kinda shook my head. There are so many other shooters out there and the only one I’ve ever really felt comfortable with was Halo. When I started reading about the updates they’d been doing to the game throughout the year (added achievements, unlockable weapons for certain classes), I kept looking at it on Steam occasionally with that longing look (especially when I got a better graphics card).

I finally bought it a week or so ago ($20 on Steam) and have been addicted to it ever since. The games are intense, frustrating at times, but most of all FUN. It reminds me a lot of the fun I had when I first started playing Shadowrun. I’m not a PC gamer. Though I play Halo 2 and Shadowrun occasionally on my PC, I’m more comfortable with the 360 controller playing 360 games. I’ve just never acclimated myself to keyboard/mouse controls. Yeah yeah – I know. Keyboard and mouse are the ONLY way to play PC shooters, accuracy, yada yada. Thankfully, I found that you can play TF2 with a 360 controller, and since the nature of the weapons in TF2 really don’t require that much accuracy (unless you’re a sniper), I started having a blast once I got my 360 controller working.

The game itself. The graphics are sorta cartoony but once you look a little deeper, everything was designed to give you a distinct look at the other players in the game and know what they’re capable of. The Heavy is a fat bastard with a big gun, the Spy is a lanky creep that likes to disguise himself as the opposing team, the Pyro wears a fireproof suit, etc etc. I’d have to say this is what I like most about the game, being able to change my class on the fly and react on the fly to given situations. It just does this so much better than Shadowrun. You can’t pick up weapons – you are restricted to the weapons that your class can use. Demoman uses grenades, Soldier uses rockets, Pyro uses a flamethrower, Heavy uses a Minigun, etc.

Because of the different classes, the emphasis on teamwork is so much more evident than Halo where you can rush out and dominate if you’re just that good. You do that in TF2, you’ll die over and over again and people will laugh at you. This can also be frustrating – because if you have a team full of snipers and medics and no one’s talking, you will lose over and over again. Team Fortress 2 is all about objectives. There is no deathmatch, so it eliminates a LOT of useless bragging hero types that usually permeate all FPS games.

There’s not much more I can say about this game. If you like first person shooters and are looking for something a little different, try Team Fortress 2 now. Once you play a few games, you’ll be hooked just like me. What a great game.

Here are some assholes with nice cars doing terrible things to them, again.

That would be a pink camouflage Bugatti Veyron.

Porsche.

That’s right, it’s a Rolls with dubs.

Ok so the Sharpie Lambo on the left isn’t so bad. The supercar on the right is made of wood, and doesn’t look so bad. But the people who own these are still assholes because I don’t own the cars.

source

I won’t spoil this by describing it, all I have to say is that I swear I’ve heard this happen before on Xbox Live over the headset (this kid is playing a Wii, not a 360).

I thought it would be only fair, before I potentially rip this album into shreds, that I share with you what Metallica means to me and why I’m even bothering with this after St. Anger was such a turd.

I came to the Metallica party late. I was 11 years old when the black album came out, so I make no claims to be OG but anyone my age who does is probably full of shit. I knew a guy who had an …And Justice For All t-shirt before that and wondered who the hell Metallica were. Admittedly, my music knowledge up to that point consisted of whatever was fed to me on the radio, the classic (late 60s and 70s) rock that my parents listened to and occasionally some cool stuff my older sister was listening to. The heaviest thing I’d been introduced to up to that point was Guns N’ Roses, and while I still love that band, they’ve always been hard rock. Metallica was my first real introduction to metal.

Metallica’s black album (self-titled, if you wanna get technical) was also the mainstream’s first real introduction to metal. Up to that point, the mainstream had been subjected to bullshit like Poison, Warrant, Motley Crue, etc. They took their heavy sound and made it more accessible, made smaller songs and wrote catchy hooks. And they blew up. They were Anti-Hairmetal.

And honestly, the only real good songs on that album were the ones released as singles. After Metallica’s explosion in the early 90s, a lot of people went back and listened to Metallica’s “classics” that came before and had a jerk party. In retrospect, while I still enjoy stuff like Sanitarium, One and Fade to Black - I don’t really think their first four albums are as great as everyone makes them out to be. So they did speed metal. So what? Does speed and intensity make something great? For me, Metallica’s best moments were focused intricate melodies, which is why I think the black album was such a milestone. Everyone else who came to the party late, but like to spout the same fanboy bullshit about “nothing compares to Master of Puppets”, are full of shit and you know it. You heard the black album first.

That being said, I’m not a Metallica fan. Between Nirvana and Metallica, those bands opened the door for things I would listen to later in my life and come to think of Metallica the way I do Black Sabbath. Sure, they opened some doors, they changed the face of rock music for their time, and they are legends. But do I found myself listening to Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album very much? No. Every metal act today owes a lot to Metallica, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. And that’s the extent of it. Most of Metallica’s catalogue is not timeless.

Metallica would go on to reboot themselves in the mid-90s with Load and Reload, combining their heavy catchy metal with a bit of country and southern rock and a little bit of alternative sprinkled in. And while a lot of the OG phonies were made sick by Metallica’s new direction, quite a lot more people were introduced to Metallica and metal in general. And to be honest, I still like a few songs from those days and even a few from Garage Inc (Turn The Page – best Bob Seger cover ever). Metallica made a lot of money in the 90s.

But it would be a combination of age, punishing the very fans that helped bring them to the space they were, rehab and general big-headedness that would be their undoing at the beginning of the new century. First, Metallica sues Napster (which for those with no point of reference, Napster was at one time a service just like LimeWire or Kazaa) and cracks down on people SHARING their music. Then the rehab thing. While I don’t think someone being treated for an addiction is necessarily a bad thing, recording a record during or after said rehab was just not a good idea for James Hetfield.

St. Anger. I still have not listened to this album all the way through. In fact, the most I’ve heard of this album were the 3 or 4 songs that got (briefly) played on modern rock radio at the time. They intended to throw all of the shit they did with Load and Reload out and get back to speed metal, but do it the Metallica way and come up with something new. And they did. But the album was recorded poorly. James Hetfield’s vocals sound like karaoke (like they were recorded on a 4-track) and whatever the hell Lars did to his drumkit its an understatement to say that his drums were annoying trashcan-like percussion. The guitars and bass are muddy in the mix, and overall the record just sounds awful. Recordings in a garage sound good for an unknown band, but for a band of this caliber to make something that sounds like shit is an eyebrow-raiser.

So now they have a new album out called Death Magnetic. I’d been hearing a lot about it – that they were finally returning to speed metal, they were correcting the mistakes they made with St. Anger, etc. But I was highly skeptical. I love to make fun of these guys.

But as I said, it’s only fair that I give them one last chance as their music in the early 90s would invite me to a whole new world of music.

The good news first: It doesn’t suck. It doesn’t sound like St. Anger. They’ve returned to writing epic songs again (god I fucking hate the internet – “epic” needs to be banned NOW) and they’ve mostly returned to their speed metal roots. The musicianship is top-notch. Lars Ulrich stopped using the trashcan lid for his snare. It’s pure headbanging fury with that trademark Hetfield growl. Metallica fans will be VERY pleased with this album, and a lot of metal fans will be too. I think I almost may like the single, The Day That Never Comes. The album almost sounds like a cross between their 80s sound and their 90s sound.

The bad news: They’re trying to recapture the sound that they became famous for, and frankly, there are other bands doing this better. Dragonforce, for instance. I’ve never liked them, but I can say I respect the fact that they can accomplish quite a lot of wankery at a blistering pace that not many other bands can. Metallica just sounds like they are having a hard time keeping up with the pace. There are a lot of good musical ideas (with an equal amount of wanky solos), but it all kind of blends together with same-sounding riffs that has me questioning if they’ve ripped off some of their own riffs. I mean, Hetfield clearly rips off some of his old lyrics from time to time, but I’m not going to go back and listen to the first four albums and determine whether or not they’ve stolen some of their own riffage. On top of that, a lot of the songs sound the same musically and I had a hard time figuring out when a song ended and a new one began. And although not quite as bad as the vocal recording/production on St. Anger, Hetfield’s vocals still sound a bit karaoke-ish. Put some mild reverb on his voice for Christ’s sake!

Conclusion: Fanboys will love this, and they should – it’s what they’ve been asking and waiting for and it’s miles beyond St. Anger. Honestly though, this band needs to give it up, or do something completely different. And different doesn’t mean resurrecting a sound that they pioneered during a certain area. I mean, break new musical ground. Like they did with the black album and Load. Maybe they’re not even capable of it anymore? Maybe they shot their wad with Load (lol, had to)? All I’m saying is that for Metallica to be worthwhile to me and a lot of other people again, they either need to just quit and save some face, or do something revolutionary. Or better yet, just make some really GREAT music.

While it doesn’t suck, you will not find anything you haven’t heard before on Death Magnetic. I will not force myself to give something a chance. If it doesn’t grab me on the first few listens, it just wasn’t meant to be. Anyone else who reads this should consider the same mentality for all music as it will save you a lot of time. Simply “not sucking” is just not good enough anymore.

Some members of Glassjaw, Thursday and Converge (and possibly The Number Twelve Looks Like You) have a project coming out September 9th called United Nations. Only problem is, most of the people involved in the project are still under contract with their primary band’s label so they’re not openly identifying themselves. Hence the Reagan masks.

Then there’s the album cover. A clear copyright infringement (The Beatles), so they’re only selling 1,000 copies of the disc online. Their upcoming 7” Never Mind The Bombings, Here’s Your Six Figures also has an alteration to a Sex Pistols album cover.

Gotta love these guys. The album itself is great, hardcore and punk but pretty violent and sometimes melodic. They remind me a lot of Dillinger. The songs are pretty short, though the last song is longer and features a sax. There are a couple of vocalists and most of the guitar work is awesome - minimal, varied, complex and heavy.

Unfortunately, I can’t host a sample here or I would. You can check them out at unitedfuckingnations.com (or stream the album from their myspace page). Album of the year contender.

the puscifer (maynard keenan and danny lohner) take on Pet by A Perfect Circle.

a small collection of mildly amusing gifs.

and sorry in advance for this one…

• Vidmaster Challenge: Lightswitch (0 points) – Get to the rank of Lieutenant in any playlist in the new EXP progression system.
• Vidmaster Challenge: 7 on 7 (0 points) – Enter into any ranked or social playlist with 7 EXP on the 7th of the month.
• Vidmaster Challenge: Annual (0 points) – After 9/25/08, complete Halo on 4-player Legendary LIVE co-op, with Iron, and everyone in Ghosts.
• Double Double (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get two Double Kills during any ranked or social match.
• Poor Yorick (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get 3 Oddball melee kills during any ranked or social match.
• Came…From…Behind (50 points) – On a Legendary map, get 3 assassinations during any ranked or social match.
• Defend This (50 points) – On a Legendary map, get a flag melee kill during any ranked or social match.
• Flag Dropped (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get 2 flag carrier kills during any ranked or social match.
• Road Rage (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get 5 Warthog chaingun kills during any ranked or social match.
• Look Both Ways (50 points) – On a Legendary map, get a Splatter Spree during any ranked or social match.

Though most hardcore players bought this Map Pack a while ago, it’s now reduced to 600 points, and a lot of playlists require Legendary anyway – Bungie and Microsoft are adding new achievements to Halo 3 with the auto-update (patch) that’s coming somewhere around the time of H3’s anniversary (Sept. 25). Bungie has consistently said, that unlike the previous expansions to the Halo games, Legendary will not become free until Microsoft decides it should be free. This has really been hurting those of us that bought it already (and bought Heroic and have Cold Storage) as you have to play in segregated playlists to get your purchase worth.

I’d laugh if you could get all of the Legendary-related achievements in Cold Storage, the free map. Anywho, they’re giving cheapskates a reason to buy it, filthy achievements. Most of them seem easy. They’re also adding more achievements than just those listed (as widely leaked on the net) related to presumably more maps (or campaign missions, as those acceptance videos hinted at a few weeks ago), including Assembly. Luke Smith said since they didn’t know how Microsoft was going to release the next batch of maps (or whatever the big thing Bungie has been hinting at for a while), they were only going to talk about the achievements related to Legendary for now. I’m guessing all will be revealed when Halo 3 Mythic or Auto Update Patch Thingie 1.2 is out.

Bungie showed off Assembly last weekend at PAX, a kind of brother to Gemini and Midship from H2:

Also included in the auto update is a retooling of the Halo 3’s online matchmaking service that gives you individual playlist XP ranks regardless of your trueskill and some backend changes:

• Playlist Ratings are the playlist-level decoupling of Trueskill values (the in-game number next to your name) from Experience (the icon next to your name).
• You will now have a separate military rating (based purely on EXP) in each playlist. When TU2 goes live, everyone will begin at 0 EXP. This means that being a General in a Playlist is based on how many games you’ve won in the Playlist, not based on the Trueskill number next to your name.
• Your Trueskill values have not been reset. If someone checks your Service Record they will still see your Highest Skill.

They’ve also said Moonbase Alpha hasn’t gone anywhere, they’re just not allowed to talk about it yet. Here’s hoping we get that Headlong remake pronto (they said no to Coag/BG remake! thank you).

fucking hate spiders. then some people make a giant robotic one for Liverpool and hang it on the side of a building?

the thing actually moves:

spectacular free street theatre in the UK or not, people should just not build giant robotic spiders. thank you.

The Daily Show lets the GOP explain their choice of Sarah Palin.

pretty cool use of Halo 3 sound effects to create a beat. i was almost expecting trent reznor to break out and start singing hits from Pretty Hate Machine.

Used Photosynth to take this 3D panorama of a Warthog on Avalanche in Halo 3.

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=86e2051c-0638-433c-b532-0be16dd183a7

Photosynthing with Halo 3.

I used Halo 3’s theater and screenshot functions then saved the hi-res pics from bungie.net to my PC.The Photosynth gallery has a synth called “the boxer” so I did “The Spartan”. It’s on the Cold Storage map in Halo 3.

Press control while viewing the synth to see the cloud 3d model.

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=0d4e48b3-530b-4f28-81f7-330a988851fd

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Click here to check out my V8 Vega synth.

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=ab42dd86-bc39-479b-a6b7-324b95261182