Asymptomatic

In the recent 941/942 double-issue of Entertainment Weekly, they've listed 32 things (page 110) that they hate about Entertainment these days. They've not gone far enough. I've revised their list to make more sense. Observe:

1. EW: "Paris Hilton on CNN"
Me: "Paris Hilton"

You may be able to tell how this is going to go...

2. EW: "The overuse of that damn KT Tunstall song 'Suddenly I see'"
Me: The overuse of any song that might otherwise be a catchy pop tune that one could easily put into their MP3 rotation. Additionally, the changing of words to "good" (read: recognizable) songs to be used as advertising jingles. Also, the word "damn" as an adjective. (Editor dude, it's a verb.)

3. EW: "TV shows that end at 10:02pm. Our DVRs don't know to wait up."
Me: TV networks that haven't figured out how to cater to DVR users. Tivo for patenting the process and TV Networks for scaring other DVR makers into not providing the handy time-shifting features that would record those extra two minutes. (Hey, mine does it. EW, does your equipment suck?)

Oh yes, there are 32 of these...

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Mom got Berta and me tickets to see Pippin at the Forrest Theater over the weekend, which we did. The production was excellent.

The story is about a guy, Pippin, who is the son of Charlemagne, and his struggle to discover his purpose in life. Throughout the show, he finds new things that he feels he is destined to be, but it turns out that none of them are.

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It's been a weird week, and hopefully I'll be able to tell you more about it soon, but for now, I'll just tell you how it was capped off.

On Saturday afternoon, Mom watched the kids while Berta and I went to the musical Wicked, based on the book by Gregory Maguire. And in perfect contrast to the showing of Chicago we saw, Wicked was wicked.

In case you aren't familiar with the idea: Wicked is a story about the Wicked Witch of the West from Oz. You're familiar with the story from the movie, The Wizard of Oz, right? Well, if you haven't read or seen Wicked, then you have no idea what really happened.

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I have been mulling over how to re-introduce everyone to Perplex City, a game about which I blogged briefly before. I stumbled upon a "quickstart guide" which has more specific information than even I was going to provide.

Essentially, Perplex City is a sort of puzzle game where you collect puzzle cards (no, not virtual cards but actual hold-in-your-hand cards) and solve the puzzles contained thereon. Each puzzle is generally self-contained, but several require you to visit some web site of another to get the information required to solve the puzzle.

When you have solved the puzzle, you scratch off the silver area at the top of the card, revealing a 12-digit code. Entering this code into the Perplex City web site, you can attempt to answer the puzzle. If correct, you will be awarded points. You gain a set number of points for a single card, and if you solve all of the puzzles in a group of four cards (every group of four cards is assigned a different name, like "maze", "circles", or "ivy") then you get additional points for solving the whole group. Red cards are the easiest to solve, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and silver.

The silver cards seem very difficult and offer the most points. The rarity of the card is directly related to its color, so red cards are quite common in the random pack assortments, whereas silver cards are quite scarce.

On top of all of that, there is a grand prize for finding an artifact called "The Receda Cube" of $200,000.

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Ah... Summer entertainment. It's usually hard to come by, but not today.

Last night, Sci Fi aired a new eposide of Battlestar Galactica, and today, Harry Potter book 6 is for sale. And don't forget that tonight the season finale of Teen Titans is on, too.

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