Austin Audience

There’s so much WoW news these days, I can hardly stand it. First and most shocking: Blizzard and Legendary Pictures are making a movie set in the World of Warcraft universe. I can’t decide what I hope this movie will be–would it be cooler to see the backstory, the legends behind the whole game series (which are so complex I still don’t fully understand them) played out onscreen? Or would it be awesomer to see a new set of heroes adventuring in the version of the world I’m familiar with, the modern one? I think I’m leaning toward the latter, although since I never really played any of the pre-WoW games, my opinion might be a little different than a lot of WoW fans.

Next bit of brilliant: the new race for this summer’s WoW expansion pack, “The Burning Crusade,” is the demonic Draenei. Sweeeet. The NY Times has the full story here (you have to be a member to see the article, but it’s free). The gameplay trailer from E3 doesn’t let you see a whole bunch of the Draenei’s world, which was disappointing considering the number of visuals available of the dazzling Blood Elf homeland. But the characters themselves look pretty cool/creepy, what with the glowing eyes and tentacles sprouting from strange places.

I can’t spend too much time geeking out about WoW, because there’s also the Nintendo Wii to geek out over. But before I do that, WTF is with the new name? Are they trying to turn off gamers? “Revolution” was such a better name. But I digress. Also debuting at E3 was a demo of the new Zelda title, “The Twilight Princess,” which looks to be immensely compatible with the Wii’s two-handed, motion-sensitive mishmash of a controller. How awesome would it be to actually swordfight instead of pushing buttons to swing? I love ideas that get gamers off the couch, which so far has been done successfully only with DDR. I also like that Nintendo isn’t going the elitist route like Sony, whose PlayStation 3 will cost about $500 and be incredibly hard to obtain for the first five months of its release (until the company starts selling more in March 2007). Yes, PS3 looks to be astonishingly beautiful onscreen, but as a mid- to low-level gamer, my priorities lie elsewhere. The relatively low purchase price expected of the Wii combined with the sheer badassedness of the new Zelda game might just convince me to buy a console for the first time in my life. As for the third competitor in the console wars, Microsoft seems to be coasting. Since the Xbox 360 is old news, the best they can do to divert attention from Sony and Nintendo is endlessly flaunt the new Halo game. Am I the only person completely unexcited by Halo 3?

Oh yeah, and Britney Spears is pregnant again. Yawn.

Technorati tag: E3, World of Warcraft, Nintendo, Console Games

The abomination that is the remastered 1997 version of the Star Wars trilogy has finally been defeated. The public has spoken, and George Lucas has finally caved in to the true fans’ demands to bring back the original trilogy. The new (old) versions to be released on DVD will reverse stupid edits like changing the Han Solo killing Greedo scene to make Han look like a nice guy. He’s not supposed to be warm and fuzzy. He’s a criminal.

Technorati tag: Star Wars

Now they’re even infesting everyone’s favorite oh-so-reliable free online tome of all knowledge–Wikipedia.

Apparently there are accusations coming from the right that Wikipedia is secretly a liberal bastion, despite the fact that it claims to be written from a “neutral point of view” (NPOV). Mark Glaser has a bit of a vendetta against the collaborative encyclopedia, so it seems: they’re not letting him edit certain pages that he views as “massively non-NPOV.”

I’m taking a survey of certain potentially controversial pages, and I’m going to decide for myself to what extent the hippies have infected our beloved Wikipedia. See for yourself.

Keith Olbermann
Fox News Channel
Bill Clinton
U.S. Presidential elections in 2000

Finally.

Scientology has a brand new member–according to Tom’s spokesman, Katie popped out the kid at last, a daughter the couple has named Suri, which (debatably) is Hebrew for “princess.”

I can’t believe I fell into the TomKat breath-holding, baby-waiting camp. Pathetic of me, really. Except for the fact that he’s totally f-ing bonkers, which makes the morbid fascination a lil’ more understandable..

In other amazingly incredible mind-blowing news, ABC has announced that beginning May 1, the network will start putting entire episodes of some of its most popular shows online–for free. Whaa? Desperate Housewives, Lost, Alias and Commander in Chief available on-demand–for free? The only catch is that the eps won’t be posted until the morning after they air, which is logical, but wow. If ABC/Disney follows through on its plan to eventually put all its shows online, competition just might drive everyone else to do the same. It could mean the end of VCRs forever (for those of us too broke for TiVo).

Technorati tag: Celebrities, Television

OK, so WHAT is the deal here? Why on earth hasn’t this poor child given birth yet? Hasn’t she been pregnant for, like, years? Here she looks like she’s about to give birth to a beach ball (a conspiracy theory much hyped by Trent over at Pink is the New Blog). I’m not a scandal-maven, though… I’m inclined to believe TomKat is real, at least in some sense of the word, rather than just a beard to save Tom’s career (because why the hell would Katie have gone along with something like that, with nothing in it for her). But unless she gets that Xenu-spawn out soon, it’s lookin’ like she’s gonna explode.

Sorry, that was a terrible pun.

Check me out, I’m moblogging! I went to the HUGE immigration protest downtown today… I hadn’t planned on going, so I didn’t have a camera with me. Fortunately I had my cameraphone. I sent the images to Kodak Mobile–all too easy–and then uploaded them to Flickr. I don’t think they’re all that bad. What do you think?

The protest was such a rush. A couple of times I found myself chanting in Spanish even though I had no idea what I was saying. I just got caught up in the whole “no human is illegal” thing. There was a rather large cluster of people gathered around the front steps of the capitol, in front of which someone spoke very quickly and fervently in Spanish. I only understood one phrase–when the speaker broke into English just long enough to say “son of a bitch.” There was much cheering.

Technorati tag: Moblogging, Immigration

Ooooh, this is really a tough one. As pointed out by the always helpful Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine, Jill Abramson, a NY Times editor, writes an opinion piece about how we should stop making a big deal out of the first woman (insert job title here). According to both Jeff and Jill (sounds like a fairy tale couple), pointing it out every time a woman moves into a profession/holds a title for the first time implies that we should be surprised a woman is able to do such a thing, which is (they say) insulting. I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with that. Commemorating such advancements, when it is a significant step, like Katie Couric becoming the first woman to anchor a network newscast solo, is worthwile and, to most people, doesn’t signify a sense of shock that women are advancing, but a sense of celebration that they are. I don’t think women’s equality has advanced so far that we are safe to make the world gender-neutral. Forgetting that women are still, STILL, taking their first steps into some of the world’s most powerful positions–and have yet to take steps into others–is like pretending everything is fine and dandy and we’re all on an equal playing field. We’re not. Not just yet.

Technorati tag: Gender, Media

I love it. And what a waste of plastic…

Harvey Mansfield (author of “Manliness”) on The Colbert Report:

Stephen asks what the role of women is in today’s society–should they be breadwinners? Mansfield says, “No. They should go out and earn about a third of the family income, and come home and do about two thirds of the housework.”

Are you f***ing kidding me?

I can’t believe there are still people like that in this world! I thought we had moved on. Worse, this man’s opinions are viewed as legitimate, mainstream non-insane theory. This is ludicrous.

Technorati tag: Colbert, Gender, Feminism

It’s been a while since I posted… I missed my blog!

I’m really just popping in to showcase my Flickr photo essay on Heart House, a free afterschool program in East Austin for low-income families. I’m the volunteer coordinator for a UT group, and we go there on a semi-regular basis to help out however we can. These pictures were taken during one of my group’s volunteer days. Here it is:

Heart House photo essay.