A Few Words On Bob Druwing

Bob Druwing's glorious Tim and Eric debut.

I have no idea why I find Bob Druwing so fascinating. Before the third season of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, I had never seen his face before in my entire life. Not even once. Now he is a new obsession. Of all the bizarre Z-list regulars Tim and Eric love to parade out, salt-n-pepper haired Mr. Druwing stands out to me.

I don't know. He seems like a perfectly normal human being as opposed to a bizarre, ugly failure, which might be why he stands out in the Tim and Eric universe; compared to David Liebe Hart the failed puppeteer, James Quall the failed comedian, or Ron Austar the failed... uhh, something (children's performer?), Bob Druwing just seems like a nice, trim, middle-aged man. With a funny mustache.

...well, OK, maybe he's kind of a failure. If his website is any indication, he's something of a Jack-Of-All-Trades: screen actor, voice-over actor, musician, cartoonist, you name it. And considering that the most prominent roles he's received have been bit parts on Tim and Eric, I guess we can safely say that he hasn't quite succeeded in any of these fields. Adding a bit to his "pathetic" tally is his bizarrely transfixing performance of a song he presumably wrote, "I Wanna Be In Love," posted in Tim and Eric's "DannyMothers" Youtube account to promote their first season DVD. (So I guess he's a failed rock 'n roller?)



But calling Mr. Druwing pathetic would not be doing him justice. And it would be pretty mean, too! From the looks of his video resume (yes, I searched for Bob Druwing on youtube), he seems to be a pretty competent actor. He also finally got a prominent role in Tim and Eric's season 3 finale, credited as "Lindsey Porch" and singing the hilariously creepy (and oddly Jens Lekman-esque) "I Can Wait," which has to be one of my favorite Tim and Eric songs ever. (Sing along with me now: "No, they can't call it raaaape / if she concedes her body to meeee!")

Where else can you get your Druwing fix? Well, he's also in the new Tim and Eric Ben Folds video, popping in-and-out of the drum kit. And, according to his website, he just wrapped up filming for Tim and Eric's fourth season. So thankfully, we will be seeing more of Mr. Druwing.

And yet, I still don't know why I love Bob Druwing so. Why not Ron Stark? Or that lady that play's Casey's mom? Or Richard Dunn?? (Okay I do love Richard Dunn to death, but I digress.) These questions will never have answers. As long as I can hear Mr. Druwing - a seemingly normal and on-the-level type of guy - sing a song about masturbating in his car, I will be satisfied.

And you know what, "I Wanna Be In Love"'s been stuck in my head for days. No joke.

Carson, We Hardly Knew Ye: A Trubute to TRL

Kids, have you heard the news? TRL died today. That's right - after ten glorious years at the top of the business, the only program on MTV that bothers to show music videos anymore is leaving forever. In the age of late-night VH1, FUSE, and MUN2 (it's Spanish okay), America has just run out of love for TRL. How sad.

I know what you're asking yourself - why? And you're not alone; it's a question every warm-blooded American across the country is asking themselves right now. What sparked the tragic downfall of America's Greatest Countdown? Was it when Carson left? When N*Sync broke up? When Eminem lost his sense of humor? When Blink did that crappy "Miss You" Song?? God, I don't know. We'll never know, will we? And asking these questions will not bring our beloved TRL back. We, as a nation, have to let this one go.

Two things pop into mind upon hearing this news. One, I realize that 1998 was ten years ago. (Ughhh.) Two, I realize that TRL, despite its crass commercialism and questionable musical content, made me love music videos - and pop music in general - as an ever-developing teenager. I mean, the show started right when I hit the sixth grade, and peaked right smack dab in the middle of the seventh; boy bands, rap rock, irish girl pop (come on, B*Witched ruled) were all over my radar. Hell, I watched TRL before I even bothered listening to the radio when I went to sleep! That's gotta mean something, right??

Oh, sure, I stopped watching the show after I grew a couple balls my freshmen year of high school (I guess 9/11 changed everything... but not really). Carson Daly left, popular music turned from teen-pop confection to crunk and that "I Kissed A Girl" song, and I started listening to the Beatles. But for all intents and purposes, TRL was the most important music-based TV show in my formative years, and I will never forget it. Even when they only played like 30 seconds of a video, I still loved it!

Here's a few of my personal favorite popular TRL videos from back in the day. A warning: you're not gonna find much of anything past 2001 here.

Korn - Freak On A Leash

Say what you will about the song itself, this is one cool video. I've never been a Korn fan, and probably never will be one, but this video was one of the first to attract me to TRL. Not only is it a compelling mish-mash of animation and live-action, but it's got a part where there's a bullet, and you see the bullet go through shit in slow motion like the Matrix. My favorite part: the bullet narrowly misses a fat man cannonballin' it into a pool.

N*Sync - I Drive Myself Crazy



Boy bands always had great music videos - mostly 'cuz they had the money and the fame to pull it off. Hell, most of the success of late 90's boy bands could be directly connected to their success on TRL. My personal favorite has to be this one, featuring the members of N*Sync goofing around in a looney bin jaded by their past lovers. See, they were all materialistic and mean to their ladies, so they got dumped and went crazy and ended up in a mental institution - HENCE the video, HENCE the SONG! But then at the end they're all released for some unexplained reason, and their WOMEN end up replacing them! Ha ha! I have no idea how that makes any sense!

Sum 41 - Fat Lip



This, ladies and gentlemen, is the ultimate pop-punk cream dream. Kings of Rock Sum 41 play in the middle of a GEEEEEEI-GANTIC skatepark, with black-haired lip-pierced dumb teenagers moshin' around, skating in cardboard suits, riding around in shopping carts, shaving a girl's head - you name it, they're punkin' it. There's even a 13-year-old-lookin' kid getting macked-up on by some HOT CHICKS! Man, I wished I were him back in 2001. "Fat Lip" was already the most cartoonishly ridiculous pop-punk song ever recorded when it came out - all it needed was an even more ridiculous video.

Sugar Ray - When It's Over



I remember thinking when this song first came out, "Man, Sugar Ray are BACK!" It was mid-2001, two years after the Raymen graced us with such laid-back classics as "Every Morning" and "Someday" - and now here they were, with a bangin' new tune and a bangin' new video. The concept: the five Sugar Ray dudes can't think of a video for the song (how META!), so we get a glimpse of what each one wants to do. That's right - we get to peer straight into the minds of some of the early 2000's best pop musicians. After a bunch of weird detours, hunky lead singer Mark McGrath puts a stop to it all, saying "Why don't we do what's right for the SONG?" And they do - the rest of the video is just the band ridin' around on mopeds and partying down. And ain't that just what Sugar Ray's all about??

Come back to us, Shuggs. We miss you.


Eminem - The Real Slim Shady and Blink-182 - All The Small Things



Seriously, there are so many videos I haven't covered here it's embarrassing. It doesn't help that my white-boy instincts have tainted the legacy of Nelly, TLC, Jay Z, and numerous other hip-hop artists that deserve my prized recognition in this blog post. So I'll take the lazy way out and include the two most notable "joke" videos during TRL's peak - videos that perfectly encapsulated almost every aspect of TRL culture in the span of three minutes. While Blink-182 cheerfully parodied the videos for "I Want It That Way," "Someday," "Genie In A Bottle" and "Livin' La Vida Loca," Eminem thoroughly dissed weirder targets like Tom Green's inexplicably popular "The Bum Bum Song" and a bizarro love triangle between Fred Durst, Christina Aguilera and Carson Daly. Sure, they're completely dated - nobody that wasn't alive in 2000 is going to know just what the hell is going on in these things - but as pop-culture catch-alls, they pretty much work perfectly. It was videos like these that made my dumb teenager self watch TRL every single weekday.

Get ready to pull out those Kleenexes come this November, Requestophiles. I know it won't be easy.

Album Review: "Middle of Nowhere" by Hanson

Why the hell do they look so serious?

Let's get this straight: I love pop music. Absolutely love it. I guess that's kind of a broad statement, since everybody has their own definition of what makes "good" pop music. And for the past 20-plus years or so, pop music has been sliced 'n diced into so many little pieces that it's almost impossible nowadays to call ANY kind of music "pop." You've got your crunk-pop, your RnB-pop, your power pop, your neo-grunge-pop, your punk-pop, your indie-pop, your emo-pop... the list goes on and on. So me coming out and saying "I love pop music" doesn't really mean anything, does it? For all anybody knows I could be talking about the Killers! And I do hate those Killers!*

I guess what I COULD say is that, because I love pop music, I love Hanson. To me, Hanson are pop in its purest form, at least in the context of the mid-to-late-90's. Their (best) songs are bright, bubbly, and completely over-the-top pieces of pop confection (like a cake or something) that will infect the brain of any listener that dares to hear them. I like to think that Hanson were to the 90's what ABBA were to 70's, or what Wham! were to the 80's - upliftingly fun pop music, produced specifically to cater to the masses by utilizing the popular sounds of the period. So while ABBA embraced disco and Wham! used synth, Hanson use hip-hop beats and DJ disc-scratching - all, of course, married to wonderful pop melodies. Honestly, I can't resist it.

Hanson are a little tougher to like, though. For one thing, they're still considered something of a one-hit wonder, since they never scored a hit quite as massive as "MMMBop," a song people still vehemently hate to this very day (I'll get to that later). Secondly, they're also credited with kicking off the boy band era of the late 90's, despite not really being a boy band themselves - beside the fact that they wrote almost all of their own songs, they weren't much for choreographed dance moves. Third, they were a bunch of freaking kids with long blonde hair that looked like GIRLS! I mean, c'mon - they're almost begging for ridicule.

But Hanson were NOT the Spice Girls, or N*Sync, or the Backstreet Boys, or any other members of that lousy manufactured teen-pop fad they tend to be lumped in with. While Middle of Nowhere is definitely a product of the late-90's teen pop boom, with its excessively slick production and occasional cheesy piano ballad, Hanson - at least to me - are a lot funnier, cuter, and more entertaining than any of their so-called contemporaries. Maybe it's the fact that they were all kids when this album came out (Zac at 11, Taylor at 14, and Issac at 17) that gave the music its innocent prepubescent charm; I can't imagine anybody older than 16 singing "MMMBop" without sounding like an ironic fool. Vocally, the younger two have kiddish voices while Issac has a more adult voice, which leads to a lot of cutesy vocal interplay not unlike the Jackson 5 circa "I Want You Back." And man, they all sound so gosh-darned excited to be singing and playing, I can forgive the completely calculated production techniques utilized to bring in the teenybopper crowd. Back in '97, Hanson were one big intoxicating rush of silly, innocent youth, something a mass audience wasn't used to in the age of techno and grunge.

Now, I'll be honest, Middle of Nowhere is a mixed bag as an album - which I guess is appropriate for a teen-marketed pop album. Here's the rundown: you've got 7 mostly-killer pop songs, 4 cheesy ballads, and a couple kinda-sorta funky things. The ballads are, for the most part, pretty lame; the only one I like is "With You In Your Dreams," but the others - "Yearbook," "Weird," and "I Will Come To You" - are kinda generic and boring, mainly due to the influence of outside songwriters. The aforementioned "kinda-sorta funky things," "Speechless" and "Look At You," aren't bad but suffer the same problem as the ballads: they don't sound like songs that three long-haired suburban white kids should be singing. But the pop songs? WHOOO-EE, I love the pop songs on here! Seven spunky, vibrant pieces of supremely catchy pop music. If this album were pared down to just these seven songs, I daresay we'd have a perfect pop record on our hands. You've got "Thinking Of You" with that cool piano breakdown, the epic "Where's The Love," the hilariously cheesy "Lucy" (sung charmingly by 11-year-old Zac), the Issac-sang "A Minute Without You" that's probably the most over-the-top (and hence greatest) song on the album, the sunny pop of "Madeline," and of course "Man From Milwaukee," a song about a crazy man communicating with Mars. (Sample lyrics: "He's been talking to long on his yellow walkie-talkie / he's talking to Mars, but I think he's whacky." Hanson wrote this song all by themselves!)

Oh yeah, and then there's "MMMBop." People, let's talk about "MMMBop." I know a lot of you don't like this song - you hated it when it came out, and you hate it now, a full decade-plus later. Why do you? Well, it's corny! And it's sung by little kids! And what an ANNOYING chorus! It certainly has none of the sheer depth of Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead or Cake. So why waste your time with it?

Well I am here to tell you that you are wrong. DEAD WRONG. "MMMBop" is, in my estimation, the best pop song of the 90's. Again, we could argue about the definition of "pop" music all you like, but I'm talkin' bubblegum here - sheer, concentrated optimisim, chunneled through a catchy-as-sin chorus. That is "MMMBop." Just listen to the song again, I dare you. The lyrics? They're about growing older and holding on to the ones who really care! That's somethin', huh? And catch those verses - they're different, every single verse! They keep CHANGING! And the Dust Brothers' production - PERFECTLY 90's. Those disc-scratches and those sampled drums - I mean, if anybody knew how to produce a perfect 90's pop song, it had to be the guys who did Odelay and Paul's Boutique. But let's not forget Hanson! They deliver that chorus with GUSTO! It's just a wonderful, dizzying piece of pop beauty that is never ever boring. You cannot tell me that the most perfectly produced 90's pop song is a flash-in-the-pan - I will not believe you.

Yeah, it was everywhere in 1997. BUT THERE'S A REASON FOR THAT. IT WAS GREAT.

Think about it historically - back in '97, nobody was recording songs like "MMMBop." Middle of Nowhere came out the same year as OK Computer, and Dig Your Own Hole, when ska-punk was hitting its peak and Matchbox 20 and Silverchair were still churning out boring post-grunge hits. "MMMBop" was an unironic, unpretentious, purely happy pop song - of course everybody's gonna hate it! And nowadays, in an age of boring indie rock and crunk, people have even more of a reason to hate it! But obviously somebody got the message, 'cuz the song was a #1 hit.

When I was ten years old, I hated "MMMBop." Hated it to death. Now that I'm older and smarter, I love it - ironic, since the song was marketed to kids my age. I could listen to it everyday. And I do.

So you've got "MMMBop" and six other songs that are practically as good. Give them a chance, people. Believe it or not, Hanson are still around, and while they're still writing some decent songs (look up "If Only" or "Crazy Beautiful" sometime - they're great), they will never recapture the sheer rush of their Middle of Nowhere days. Why? Well, they all sound older now, and as such they don't have that funny innocent spunk anymore. Now they just sound like a bunch of dudes with good voices. Where's the fun in that?

Also they're all married. Taylor Hanson has three kids. Seriously. Look it up.

*I am required to diss on the Killers every 3-4 posts. I'm sorry. It's just a habit.

Album Review: "Damn the Torpedoes" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

As of today, there has not been a new edition of "Tom Petty Comics" in two weeks straight. Good Lord.

People, I have to say that I am truly sorry for all this. Sure, I am not Stephen Winchell, creator and illustrator of said Tom Petty Comixxx, but I personally would like to apologize to all of you for putting faith in this man. I mean, sure, the Stigmata comic was pretty damned funny, and ending on that one would be a pretty cool way of bowing out of the comics business forever, but jeez. People wanna read this damn comic, Winchell! This blog is useless without it!!

Either way, he's busy. But he still loves Tom Petty (who doesn't), so I'm sure there is a Tom Petty Comixsx #5 in the works. One that I'm sure will answer the age-old question: "Who the fuck is Jeff Lynne?"

(Kidding. Of course I know Jeff Lynne. He's that Xanadu guy.)

So taking Mr. Winchell's negligence into consideration, I have decided to replace his usual hilarious comic with a not-as-hilarious-but-quite-informative review of an actual Tom Petty ALBUM. That's right, that long-haired lothario's not just a superhero concerned about testicular cancer. He's also quite the musician! I'm sure you'd love to hear about him.

So let's discuss Damn The Torpedoes, probably the best album ever recorded by a Tom Petty.

Lookit that face. He HAD to become a rock star.

Damn The Torpedoes is the ultimate feel-good rock album for those of us that dig kickin' rock old school, with those Byrds and those Rolling Stones and alla them. That's probably why the album was such a hit in the late 70's - it eschewed all that punk, new wave, and progressive claptrap that cluttered the airwaves and scared away eager record buyers who just wanted to hear some fun, sweet, straight-ahead 4/4 guitar-bass-drum-keyboard rock tunes blasting through their stereo. Tom Petty and his Hoppin' Heartbreakers (their full name) were pretty much the perfect solution to this problem; Petty's voice was like Dylan mixed with Jagger, and the whole band sounded like the Stones on vacation. (OK, that made no sense, but you dig my trip bro - they were nicer than the Stones.) I guess you could lump them into the "mainstream roots-rock" category that Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger occupied back in the 'ol days, but where those two were more romantic and dramatic, Mr. Tom was straight-up rockin', never stopping for an overwrought sax solo (sorry Broos) or weepy piano ballad (sorry Bob). And hey, that appealed to a lot of people! For good reason!

I'm sure you know the hits here. You must. "Refugee"? "Here Comes My Girl"? "Don't Do Me Like That"? All kick-nut. But this one's also chock full of great album tracks - which is a good thing, 'cuz with album with only 9 songs on it, it helps if more than 1/3 of the album is good! Otherwise it's not a very good album at all, is it? "Even The Losers," "Shadow Of A Doubt," "Century City," "Louisiana Rain" - hoo-ee, thems some great tracks. Admittedly, some of the album tracks sound just a smidge too similar - once in a blue moon I'll still forget which melody is which between "Even the Losers" and "Shadow of a Doubt" - but man, when that samey sound is so good, you really can't complain. Tom Petty's one of these rare artists, like AC/DC or the Ramones, that only benefits from sounding pretty much exactly the same from one album to the next. Why mess with perfection?

Lyrically, there's not much to write home about on Damn The Torpedoes - Mr. Petty's never been known for his lyrical prowess, nor does he need to be - but there's hardly anything embarrassing here. I guess you could lump in Tom with BROOS in the lyrical department, since a lot of the time he seems to cover similar subject matter: dead-end towns, heartbroken dreamers, soulless 9-to-5 jobs, etc. etc. It's nothing new, but when it works, it really works; specifically, "Here Comes My Girl," a piece of rock romanticism worthy of Springsteen, features a lovestruck Mr. Tom speak-singin' about the rough life he leads in a crappy town he hates. His redemption? A LADY. Sounds a little overwrought on paper, but in the context of the song it's genuinely exciting - hearing Tom shift his voice from a downtrodden street crawler in the verses to a rock 'n roll yelper in the chorus is enough to sweep any listener off their feet.

I have one genuine problem with Damn The Torpedoes: whenever I listen through it, I usually drop off after "Don't Do Me Like That." Why is this? Well, the songs get a little slower, a little groovier, and a little less exciting. I can't really blame this on a dip in musical quality; it's just that after the pure rockin' sweetness of "Refugee" through "Century City," plus the pop confection of "Don't Do Me Like That," hearing the slow "You Tell Me" doesn't quite fit with me. Whenever I crave a quick, perfect blast of Petty, I'll put the first side on, but not the second. So while I would say the first side of the album is stronger than the second - mostly 'cuz of "What Are You Doing In My Life?", which is kinda fun but inconsequential - the second side has "Louisiana Rain," a really wonderful ballad that closes the album.

So basically I'm complaining about nothing.

Tom Petty's 58 now. That's right - 58. He will never capture the wild youth preserved forever on the classic Damn The Torpedoes LP, no matter how many times he plays the Super Bowl (once, and counting). I mean, this IS the album that saved his career, allowing him to continue making wonderful music until he finally met his destiny as one of Jeff Lynne's Terrific Travelin' Wilburys. If you're not grasping the gravity of the situation, think about this: if Tom Petty had never made Damn The Torpedoes, he would have never been a megastar, never would have hobnobbed with "Got My Mind Set On You"-crooner George Harrison, never would have joined the Wilburys, and - I hate to say it - the classic reggae-tinged Petty classic "Last Nite" would never exist.

Ponder that shit. In your dreams. Or your nightmares.

DS Review: "Final Fantasy IV"

The box art for this game is kinda boring, but the box itself is shiny!

As somebody weaned on Square RPGs since the age of 9, it might be surprising for some to know that I have never, on any level, played Final Fantasy IV before picking up the recent DS remake. At all. The closest I got was playing a bit of the beginning of the Advance remake, but that was after my house burned down and I think I've blocked out the memory. Either way, I have often felt somewhat dirty in admitting my ignorance of FFIV - as someone who grew up on Final Fantasy and still loves the series despite its many awkward flaws (and there are many), having not played what some might call the Final Fantasy for so long is just ridiculous. I mean, considering the amount of times I've re-played VI, VII, and - guiltily - VIII, not to mention Chrono Trigger and Mario RPG, why couldn't I reserve just a little more time for the RPG that started it all?

Maybe it was the erratic remakes Square loves to churn out. Maybe it was 'cuz I only had an old crappy GBA without a backlight. Maybe it was 'cuz I thought the early SNES graphics were too primitive. Maybe it was 'cuz the original US translation is universally reviled by hardcore fans, and I'm not too fond of online fan translations. There are many many reasons for me never playing this game, each one more shallow than the last.

But finally I picked up this 3D Nintendo DS remake of the game, with a Best Buy gift card from my uncle. It was an impulse buy (or is that not possible with a gift card?), probably the most rewarding impulse buy I've had in a while. While I was a little worried that FFIV DS's new 3D sheen would diminish the charm of the original game, those worries were dusted away the moment I started guiding Dark Knight Cecil around Baron Castle, with Nobuo Uematsu's Theme of Baron playing in the background. Yes, even with the 3D, this really felt like Final Fantasy - or at least, how Final Fantasy used to feel.

You know what I mean. Silly fantasy-book characters. Giant world map filled with random enemy encounters. Villages burning down. Kingdoms under siege. Summon monsters and human beings just trying to get along. Monstrous boss-fights with that fist-pumpingly-epic Uematsu score making everything sound cooler than it already is. Everybody learning a lesson about life at the end, with just enough time to fight the Sum of All Evil in the Middle of the Universe. Yeah, some could call this nerdy and lame. I get a goddamned hard-on from it.

Lookit that diff'rence!

There's not too much to say about the gameplay here - if you know how most early-90s turn-based RPGs work, you'll know what to do here. Modern Final Fantasy fans should note that this game was the first to employ the Active Time Battle system, removing the usual "wait till your turn"-style gameplay in favor of making the player choose their potions REALLY FUCKING FAST HURRY UP OR THAT PURPLE GUY'S GONNA KILL EVERYBODY. It's a formula that Final Fantasy used up 'till FFX, where turn-based battling miraculously came back for a little while. Nevertheless, it's one of the most widely-imitated battle systems in RPG history, and for me playing another game with it is like going home again. It's such a fun, tried-and-true formula that I can't get enough of it - where pure turn-based combat can feel a little methodical, ATB gives yah a little kick of suspense.

Now let's talk about plot, please, because Final Fantasy IV was probably the first Final Fantasy game (and one of the first console RPGs overall) to have a serious, character-driven storyline that kept developing while the player advanced through the game culminating in one big fat plot twist at the end (hint: there's MOON PEOPLE). Now to modern video gamers, FFIV's plot is probably no great shakes. It's overdramatic, silly, cliche-ridden, and it ends with MOON PEOPLE, so I don't think you're going to catch many people sitting down drinkin' a Corona on the beach and playing FFIV for its plot alone. Having said this, I find the plot nothing but charming - harmlessly charming. Maybe because, deep down, I miss silly plots like these and find them very sweet. There's a lot of characters here that just beg to be endeared - the affable airshipman Cid, the wussy bard Edward, the proud monk Yang, or the befuddled old dotard Tellah will all wiggle their way into your heart (that is, until all these fun characters eventually leave your party and you're stuck with five dully-serious dudes at the end of the game... whoops, more spoilers!!).

If you love crushing moral ambiguity, you will love Cecil.

If you're looking for a Final Fantasy game with a more developed plot, jump on the FFVI train and never look back. Even as an adult, and even with its obvious flaws, I love the plot and characters of FFVI wholeheartedly. But to be fair, in the case of FFIV, I can see why people would love its plot game growing up. It's not gonna win a Peabody anytime soon, but it'll rope you in and make you actually care about what happens next. Maybe it's just the gameplay? Who knows.

So yes, the plot is fun if not a little too dour for my tastes. Maybe the one absolutely indisputable aspect of Final Fantasy IV is its music. Oh God, the music. Do you realize what kind of a roll Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu was on in the early 90's? Motherfucker was on a tear. The moment you boot up FFIV, you hear his gob-fuckingly great Red Wings theme. Then the Baron theme. Then "Theme of Love," now used to teach Japanese schoolkids how to play clarinet or something (no really, Google it). Then the overworld map theme. Seriously - no hyperbole - every single theme here is memorable. If there is ONE aspect of Final Fantasy IV that will suck you into the game RIGHT from the get-go, it is the music. This was Nobuo Uematsu's first Final Fantasy score on the SNES, and right from the bat the guy was the undisputed master of the SNES sound chip (to be utilized to its greatest extent in FFVI). And it all sounds lovely on the DS - I heard the GBA version compromised it a bit, and I hear no problems here.

Hey, if you're just a video game music fan, don't buy the game! Just buy the soundtrack!!

...okay, that's really not fair at all.

Either way, I hope most hardcore FFIV fans enjoy this DS remake as much as I have. Maybe I've been sullied by playing a bastardized 3D remake first before even touching the original pure 2D, I don't know. There's no way for me to know that. What I do know is that Final Fantasy IV on the DS is a very attractive game. Characters are rendered in a cartoony style, more like what you would imagine the original cartoony 2D sprites to look like in 3D - which is why I like it. Whenever I see older FF characters rendered as anatomically-correct human beings, it just takes me right out of it. There's some new high-falootin' Augment system in this remake that probably makes no sense to players that swore on the original; I only understood it 'cuz I used a GameFAQ. You don't have to do that. It's not necessary to beat Zeromus or anything.

But hey, I really like Final Fantasy IV! I should have played it earlier! It took me about 40 hours to get through, plus sidequests, and it felt like a breeze. You'll never get bored, and you'll barely ever have to endure constant level-grinding, something that hampers even the finest entries in the Final Fantasy series. But despite its breeziness, it's also challenging as all hell - especially in the lead-up to the last boss where every random encounter is pretty much a boss fight. But man, it's fun! Wastes a lot of your time in a GOOD way, like all RPGs should! A perfect way to relive your childhood and burn your precious DS lithium battery to the ground all at once. Buy now!

Comics Update: "Tom Petty Comics #4"

Hey folks. I'm here to offer up my deepest, deepest apologies to those waiting for your Tom Petty Comixxx fix this Sunday night. I have no excuse for this late update. I had the comic, and I didn't update.

Why?? Well maybe I'm just jealous of Mr. Winchell's unrelenting talent. Often I feel that Mr. Petty himself chose him as some kind of creative conduit, sending him these beautiful stories of heroic altruism. And I kind of wish he'd chosen me. If only I could draw.

Either way, here's your comic:



You heard it here first, folks: this "Tom Petty" guy is gonna be a big deal someday.