Just in time for Halloween, today we present not 1, but 2 spooky themed videos to commemorate the occasion.
First, musical super-band the Aquabats have taken on ManAnt, the Uberchaun and Space Monster M. Here they face off against their most sinister foe: Goth mall-rats who shop for clothes at Hot Topic! Here’s “Fashion Zombies!”.
Next up, one of the better tunes from Hasbro’s Littlest Pet Shop 2012 series. Sunil the mongoose and Vinnie the gecko expose themselves to a werewolf horror flick and have themselves a good ol’ freakout. This is “Wolf-I-Fied!”.
Given that Halloween is now 2 days away, we figured that we should do something spooky themed to mark the occasion, so I decided to showcase one the funniest spooky themed Looney Tunes shorts. It’s got Bugs Bunny going up against an evil scientist and his hulking pet monster. You’ve seen it. You know it. You love it. Here’s Chuck Jones’ Water, Water Every Hare. Enjoy.
Today’s Nerdvana is one of my current jams. Jason will tell ya, I’ve been listening to this A LOT.
I was first introduced to the band Three Merry Widows while watching an episode of an old and forgotten ESPN series titled Max Out, which would show footage of various extreme sports (surfing, skydiving, skiing, skateboarding, rock climbing, snowboarding, etc.) with alternative music playing over it (sort of a precursor to Fuel TV); it was the perfect sports show for a geekoid like me who’s not all that into sports and doesn’t participate in sports at all, but loves themsleves some alternative music. (This show also introduced me to the collaborative album between The Art of Noise’s Anne Dudley and Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman Songs from the Victorious City–if you haven’t heard this amazing album yet, more’s the pity.) The track in question is from the band’s first (and to date, only) major label album, Which Dreamed It?. It’s been so long since I’ve seen that show or heard any traces of Three Merry Widows that to this day I’m still not sure if this is the track from them that I heard on Max Out, but upon discovering it, I found that this song kicks MAJOR booty so this is the one I’ll be spotlighting here.
With a band name like Three Merry Widows one would expect a trio of doll-eyed ladies performing village-y type folk and New Age style songs a la Medieaval Baebes, but it’s actually 4 dudes and 1 lady, and this song is a funk-tastic burst of psychedelic grunge; it sounds like something Janis Joplin would’ve done if she had lived in the early 90’s. Three Merry Widows (well, some of them, anyway) have semi-sort-of reunited 20 years later and have bandied about the possibility of putting out another album (they’ve since uploaded some unplugged performances of some of their other songs, which sound folksier and more typical of what you’d expect a band called Three Merry Widows to produce, which we may be spotlighting somewhere down the line), but in the meantime, enjoy the mesmerizing awesomeness that is “Black Halo”.
This is another one of our jams. I’ve wanted to showcase this song here for a while, but finding a decent copy of it wasn’t an easy task.
When JG Quintel’s Regular Show made it’s debut on Cartoon Network on September 6, 2010, I noticed right off of the bat that this was not just your typical Saturday morning kiddie fare, what with the 80s-90s feel to it and the saltier language (although CN insisted that JG and company tone down the offensive words in later episodes). But then, RS aired an episode titled “Mordecai and the Rigby’s” and I heard this song for the very first time. Like many others, I immediately began searching for an mp3 of the song (I found one eventually). The song was written by RS writer Sean Szeles, who has a recording of the complete song on his blog with himself doing the vocals, although it was later-re-recorded with Mordecai (JG Quintel)’s voice. Also, in the episode, the song had to be cut for time because of course, there was a story to tell.
I couldn’t find a copy of the original version sang by Sean Szeles (it’s no longer on YouTube), but the song was used again for a Cartoon Network promo for Regular Show, which is the one that I’m going to use here. The visuals with the costumed actors look like they stepped right out of Cirque De Soleil, but it’s a great song. Enjoy one of my all time favorite songs, “Party Tonight”.
Today’s Player Two Start digs into the Digital Goody Bag and pays tribute to some of our favorite video game Power-Ups, those fun little boosts and advantages that make reaching the end of a level, completing a stage or laying waste to that Big Boss just that much easier.
First, the boring stuff: we won’t be reviewing any of these games, as we don’t do reviews here; there are already so many game reviewers in Cyber Land that us attempting to do it would be superfluous, especially since we’re even more clueless gamers than Conan O’Brien. Also, this list isn’t in any particular order, so I won’t be numbering them. That said, Press Start.
INVINCIBLE STAR (Super Mario Bros. games)
“Come at-a me now, bro! I-ah DARE you!”
Arguably one of THE most famous and revered Power-Ups in all of gaming. Snag this bad boy and you can just run through anything, knocking any and all obstacles out of your way for several second, accompanied by a Bossa Nova beat. It’s good to be the king.
“I told you clowns before. I’m UNSTOPPABLE!”
BOMB PIZZA (TMNT: Turtles in Time)
“PIZZAAAA POWERRRR!”
Similar to the Invincible Star, this greasy wonder will cause you to spin around like a maniac, bringing da pain to any and all surrounding enemies. Any Pizza served in a red box with a fireakin’ bomb on it has to he dangerous…or just loaded down with jalapeno peppers.
FIRE FLOWER (Super Mario Bros. games)
It allows you to whomp enemies with fireballs. ‘Nuff said. You’ll never look at a flower with eyeballs on it the same way again.
“Burn, baby, burn!”
CAPE FEATHER (Super Mario World)
This feather ain’t no lightweight.
This little beauty turns Mario into Caped Mario, allowing him to fly indefinitely through levels, and attack spiked enemies by spinning it around.
“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a-ME!”
WARP STAR (Kirby games)
It’s the little pink ball’s primary mode of transportation, that flies Kirby to another part of a level once he gets on it. Sometimes a Warp Star is the only way to reach the end of the level; sometimes they allow Kirby to reach secret areas; while other times, they just provide a faster (and safer) way to get across. Sure, it has a tendency to violently crash land, destroying itself in the process, but it’s a flying star. It’s just naturally cool.
SPINY SHELL & LIGHTNING BOLT (Super Mario Kart games)
These 2 are favorite ways of laying waste to your competitors.
The Spiny Shell (aka the Blue Shell), when fired, seeks out the lead car in the race and takes it out….
…While the Lightning Bolt shrinks all the racers except for the user, making them slower and vulnerable to being squashed by normal sized racers.
“Say, you know if I can get those on the black market?”
TANOOKI, HAMMER & FROG SUITS (Super Mario Bros. 3)
I’m listing these last 3 together since they’re all from the same game.
The Tanooki Suit may make Mario look like a college football mascot, but it can do some cool stuff. With it, he can fly across levels…
“I don’t mean to nitpick, but raccoons aren’t really known for their flying.”
…Plus it allows him to evade enemies by transforming him into a statue. (I don’t get the correlation between raccoons and statues, must be a Japanese thing.) Incidentally, if you time it just right, if you do the statue transformation move as Tanooki Mario is going down a pipe, when he comes out the other end, the Tanooki Suit will be gray. I’ve never done it myself.
The Hammer Suit allows Mario to fling hammers at his foes a la the Hammer Brothers, and it grants him invulnerability when he ducks down into his shell.
“Proper!”
The Frog Suit won’t earn you any style points, but it does enable you to swim farther and faster in underwater levels, and you can jump high and far on land.
-Plus, as a nifty little bonus, if you can manage to keep your suit while beating the Koopaling at the end of the level (I usually couldn’t), you’d get a different message from the King of that level!
Here’s the Tanooki King’s message:
Frog King message:
And the Hammer King message:
After all that, I can think of only one thing to say:
Twin Images 
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