Banya went back to Czech shortly after writing this letter to Nintendo, complaining about Wii availability:

Nintendo wrote back a little while later with a form letter apologizing and saying (quite defensively, I might add) that they didn’t generate the shortage for publicity. what?

Here’s a post for people who aren’t as big Zelda nerds as others.

I was going to write this in the style of Norm MacDonald’s impression of Larry King’s News and Views. Then I thought maybe a lot of people wouldn’t have seen it. I wish I could find a video of that, but it appears to be hiding in the dark corners of the internet. Here’s a transcript.

I’ve been watching the election-warm up stuff in the States a bit recently. People seem to be talking about Clinton and Obama a lot, but I don’t know. I don’t know anything about either of them that would really say that they what kind of president they would be. I just think that the idea of a woman or a black man as president scares the crap out of a lot of people. I hate to generalize, but I get the impression that there’s a lot of ignorant people out there who will vote based on something trivial.

I love Google Image Search.

As for the republicans, I watched the Youtube debate thing on CNN, and Fred Thompson was the only one who didn’t make my skin crawl. Later though, I read about him just telling outright lies to crowds of people about having the greatest health care system in the world and other countries wanting to copy it. He also talked about wounded soldiers who were sent home from the war wishing they could go back. Maybe they feel that way because they can’t go back to their old lives. Not after what they’ve seen, maaaaaan.

Speaking of CNN, they got caught being dicks by using deceptive editing in an interview with John Cena for a recent documentary, Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling. The biggest shame about this is that other than the shifty editing, it was a pretty good documentary. Made some good points, had some interesting interviews. For want of taking a better shot at the WWE though, CNN made themselves look like fools with an axe to grind.

If you get a chance, check out The Vintage Mangos. Cool band. Nice girls. If you’re ever in Edmonton, check them out. http://www.myspace.com/thevintagemangos

I talked about doing this a while back when Beaton still wrote here, but I never got around to it. Here’s a little checklist of what some of the Mr. Show castmembers are doing now-

Bob Odenkirk - directing various movies, like The Brothers Solomon, and Let’s Go to Prison
David Cross  - still doing standup, doing guest spots on a bunch of different shows, a lot of voice work for animated shows. Hopefully getting royalty checks for Arrested Development reruns.
Brian Posehn - regular castmember on the Sarah Silverman Program. Doing nerd wet-dream cameos as the minister in the second Fantastic Four movie, and as a scientist within the pages of an X-men comic.
Jay Johnston - regular castmember on the Sarah Silverman Program. Doing voices and producing for Moral Orel.
Jill Talley - doing voice work for Spongebob Squarepants and The Boondocks, making appearances on the Sarah Silverman Program.
John Ennis - getting parts here and there. Plays The Big Bopper in Walk Hard. Did some episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which I’ve never heard of.
Paul F. Thomkins - still doing standup. Just put out a comedy CD. Has been on 34 episodes of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which is another show I’ve never seen. Yes, I’m just reading some of these off IMDB. Don’t think I’m skimping on Thomkins though. He was one of my favorites. In fact, Champion the Drinker may have been the best character of all time. Let’s take a look…

Good stuff that.

Tom Kenny - making a great living as a voice actor as The Pengiun on The Batman, Starscream on Transformers: Animated, and most famously as the voice of Spongebob Squarepants. It’s also worth noting that I only recently found out Tom and his wife, the aforementioned Jill Talley, were the stars of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight Tonight” video. Neat.
Mary Lynn Rasjkub - making more money than anyone else who was on Mr. Show with her role on 24.

You might argue that Jack Black maybe makes more than anyone on that show, but I would yell back, “nu-unh!” and say that he was never technically a cast member. So take that.

I heart Diesel Sweeties. I ordered this t-shirt from them half for the shirt, and half for the “Less Cowbell” pin. It’s over folks. I’m sorry. The statute of limitations on finding that skit really really hilarious ran out about four years ago.

On the Wii, they recently launched the Check Mii Out Channel, which is a place for Mii (little people to use in Wii Sports and other games) creating contests. I entered the “Mario without his hat” contest and got to the 7th level, with 10th being the highest level. Not too bad for a world wide contest. You also get scored on how well you picked the winners. I picked some of the top entries in the Cleopatra contest. I’m sure, like the Everybody Votes Channel, I’ll soon tire of it, and leave it to sit unattended, along with my downloads of Contra 3 and Wrecking Crew.

I used to rent Wrecking Crew from the video store near my house. They also had an imported NES cartridge of the Mario Brothers Lost Levels (Mario 2 in Japan). It was pretty cool. That, a weird hack called Invisible Mario and Double Dragon 2 were all in Japanese and came in those 2 part cartridges with the ribbon on them. Anyone else remember those? 31-in-1 was like that. Does anyone else remember 31-in-1? Or was it 41-in-1? 51?

I can’t find a picture of what I’m talking about, but I did find this -

North American cartridges were like the one on the right, as we all know. The Japanese NES originally used floppy disks and cartridges like the one on the left. The Japanese games I used to rent were like that, but there was a second part that the cartridge plugged into that made the whole thing the size of a North American cart. Generally, they had a ribbon in the middle as well. Somebody please tell me you remember this and I’m not just crazy.

This is a pretty crafty idea.

” Is it just me, or is anyone else sick and tired of Nelson Mandela?”

Why don’t we wash that pool-table slime out of our mouths with a nice happy Mario level that completely plays itself, no controls necessary:

Most sites and even the manufacturers themselves usually list game console sales in terms of “sold to the distributors” as opposed to “sold to the public.”

So when Microsoft says they’ve sold 11 million XBoxes, they mean 11 million have left the Microsoft factory, not sitting in someone’s living room.

VGCharts, however, makes educated guesses and polls information from retailers directly to get actual sales figures. And, according to them, Nintendo passed Microsoft this week and took the #1 spot. Congratulations, Nintendo!

(and all this despite Microsoft having a full year’s head start when they released their console early!)

So there is this kid in the Souther US who got arrested because he opened his Christmas gift, a GameBoy Advance, early.

I even have the official police report to back that up.

What kind of crappy ass parents would buy a kid a Gameboy Advance anyway?! The Nintendo DS is obviously the proper choice for a handheld christmas gift. I say bravo for that kid, showing his parents what a dire mistake they made.

Old and busted: Gameboy advance

New hotness: Nintendo DS w/gerbil

Hell I’d rather get this poster for christmas than a Gameboy Advance: