The NHL Board of Governors officially approved league re-alignment earlier this month paring the current six divisions down to four larger ones based more closely on the geographic location of the teams. The new-look NHL will include two eight-team “Western Conference” divisions and two seven-team “Eastern Conference” divisions breaking down as follows:
The “Wild Wild West” Division:Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Jose and Vancouver.
The “Middle America” Division:Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis and Winnipeg.
The “Northeast and Florida”Division:Boston, Buffalo, Florida, Montreal, Ottawa, Tampa Bay and Toronto.
The “Subway” Division:Carolina, New Jersey, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington.
Essentially this re-alignment was made to appease bitchy fans of Detroit, Dallas and Columbus who incessantly complain about staying up late to watch games that are out of their time zone. While the travel schedules will indeed be more appealing to the teams, they will nonetheless be punished with visits to lovely Winnipeg 2-3 times a year. The unbalanced divisions does give some legs to the rumors that Commandant Bettman will finally allow the Coyotes to leave Phoenix though. If the Yotes moved to Quebec City it would re-balance the “East”, but imagine the confusion a new Nordiques franchise could impose on a casual Hockey fan…
On July 23rd, the world lost Amy Winehouse. The millions of fans of her jazzy music and soulful lyrics were left to wonder if we would ever hear her beautiful bluesy voice again. On October 31st, the official Amy Winehouse website posted that a posthumous album of finished, yet previously unreleased music would be available for the public on December 2nd by Island Records.
Although clearly devastated by her untimely passing, this 45 minute CD was almost like a treasure she left for her fans. The CD was appropriately titled Lioness: Hidden Treasures.
I got the CD the day it was released. Not only has the album not left my CD player, but it has been constantly playing on loop. I have read her biographies and own every piece of music that she has been a part of. I would definitely consider myself a huge fan of hers. I must say that it is horribly depressing that Amy is now part of that dreaded club where everyone is 27, overly talented, and dead. At least she left us these 12 tracks to help ease the pain.
There are songs on the new CD which we have already heard, such as “Valerie” and “Wake Up Alone“. Although we had already heard them, these are different versions of these songs. In fact, the Lioness version of “Wake Up Alone” is much more emotional and literally brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. There are also songs that we have heard before, but not by Amy Winehouse. For instance the 60s and 70s hits “The Girl From Ipanema“, “Our Day Will Come”, “A Song For You”and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” are redone with the Winehouse touch that not only displays immense talent, but also could choke up the most soulless listener. Also, there is a duet with Tony Bennett. And lastly, the new tracks which I absolutely love: “Between the Cheats”, “Half Time”, “Best Friends, Right?” and “Like Smoke”. I must say that this album shows more than the one-dimensional side of Amy Winehouse that the world tried to force on us. Yes, she sings about drug use. Yes, she sings about quarrels and falling outs. Yes, she sings about drinking. But listen closer, and you will get a beautiful life story. Listen to her first album, Frank, then her second “Back to Black” and this final compilation of treasures. She tells a tale of heartache, success, failure, disappointment, love, lust, and overcoming her own demons. A portion of every CD purchased goes to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which is a charity set up by Amy’s parents on what would have been her 28th birthday… so don’t download this one.
I am obviously giving this album a 5/5 rating. I hope that you will all listen to this gem. It is an instant classic.
Before I begin, I’d like to mention that in my previous post I had confused some of the facts regarding the two companies involved in the Avenger controller situation. Paul Christoforo, the anthropomorphic human waste at the core of this whole thing, was running a one-man PR company, Ocean Marketing (Remember, that’s two T’s on Twitter!), which was handling the marketing of the Avenger controller, a device created by a separate identity, N-Control. The two businesses were otherwise unrelated. Apologies to N-Control for lumping you in with Christoforo.
I think I can clear things up more effectively with a visual aid. Starting at 1:12 in this clip of John Carpenter’s The Thing, Palmer (David Clennon, the “man” on the end of the bench) will represent Paul Christoforo/Ocean Marketing. The innocent men struggling to get away from Palmer will symbolize N-Control, and Windows (Thomas G. Waites, the unfortunate man near the end) will represent the victimized customer, Dave. Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade will be played by Mac (Kurt Russell). Let’s watch:
Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s get to it. Things have been moving really quickly in the short time since Dave and Paul’s e-mail exchange went viral.
Kotaku contacted N-Control as well as the PR firm who were marketing the Avenger prior to Ocean Marketing, The Hand Media, to try to get their opinions on the story.
It’s no surprise that N-Control have decided to cease working with Ocean Marketing, opting instead to hand the job over to an internal marketing manager at their own company. The controller’s inventor and owner David Kotkin had this to say:
[quote]”We apologize for our poor representation from Ocean Marketing[…]We wanted to give Paul a chance. He was rough around the edges, but he had drive and enthusiasm. However his behavior was unprovoked, unnecessary, and unforgivable. We are no longer represented by Ocean Marketing.“[/quote]
However, Kotaku went on to quote The Hand Media inc.’s CEO Brandon Leidel, who was handling the Avenger controller job prior to Ocean Marketing’s involvement. He gave a less political statement regarding Christoforo’s work ethic:
[quote]
” …[he] said ‘I know this guy at Gamestop. I know this guy at Best Buy,” Leidel said. “They saw dollar signs and decided to start working with him. We decided to walk away from this because it was a nightmare dealing with their problems and this guy Paul.”
Leidel describes Christoforo as a “rogue marketing guy” someone who operated without any rules and never checked in with The Hand Media about what he was doing.
“He was representing the company in a way I wasn’t comfortable with,” Leidel said. “I brought this up a few times and said I cant have this guy representing the company and not have any control.”
[/quote]
The poor man tasked with cleaning up the Avenger’s public image is the above-mentioned new marketing manager for N-Control, Eli Schwartz, who pointed out that Christoforo’s display has done substantial damage to customers’ opinion of the Avenger:
[quote]”At this point I’m just trying to point out that, what was said was someone who we hired, what he said should not reflect on the product itself,” he said. “So far the Amazon rating on the Avenger has gone from 4 and 1/2 to 1 star in around 8 hours. None of the reviews are true, they all just appeared today out of pure hate trolling.”[/quote]
Kotaku went on to mention, as Dave did in one of his e-mails to Christoforo, that this public recoil is an unfortunate thing, seeing as the controller does still work well, and provides much more control for disabled gamers who would find a standard controller unwieldy.
This is getting too serious. Did you know there’s already a Youtube video parodying Ocean Marketing? Yup. There is.
And finally, here’s the resolution to this whole fiasco. As you know, gamers and internet users are two groups which bear a reputation for being very vocal and opinionated. So it’s only logical that immediately after the story hit all four corners of the web, a riotous response from the internet community resulted in a massive flooding of Christoforo’s Twitter account and e-mail address. Well, Sir Paul of Ocean Marketing felt a little overwhelmed by this and went back to Mike Krahulik for help. Yesterday Mike (Or Gabe, rather) posted this in an update on Penny Arcade:
[box_dark]
“At 7:12am this morning I got another mail from Paul. It was one line and simply said:
“You have the power Mike Please make it stop”
[/box_dark]
An hour later, a more complete apology:
[box_light]
‘Hey Mike,
I just wanted to apologize for the way our emails progressed I didn’t know how big your site was and I really didn’t believe you ran Pax , So for what’s its worth I am very sorry. Your post has obviously made my life very difficult and I have not slept yet dealing with all the spam and personal information intrusion as well as my family being smeared on the internet. If you can please accept my apology and anything you can do to help if not me my son and wife please do. I have apologized to Dave and apologized to you what else can I do please tell me so I can make things good. I obviously care or I would not be emailing you.’
[ Gabe again] I think there is a big difference between being sorry and being sorry you got caught. I have a real problem with bullies. I spent my childhood moving from school to school and I got made fun of everyplace I landed. I feel like Paul is a bully and maybe that’s why I have no sympathy here. Someday every bully meets and even bigger bully and maybe that’s me in this case. It’s the same thing that happened with Jack Thompson. It might not always make the most business sense and it is a policy that has caused us some legal problems, but I really don’t give a shit about that. When these assholes threaten me or Penny Arcade I just laugh. I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the f–king ground if I think I can catch them in the flames.
-Gabe out”
[/box_light]
Well said. I don’t want to leave this story on a sour note, so I want to point out that Mike and Jerry, the guys running Penny Arcade, have proven time and time again that there is nothing ‘isolating’ or ‘lonely’ about the business of video games, and have done great work to develop a sense of community among gamers. I want to congratulate them for that. Thanks Gabe, Tycho.
Some of you who are old enough will remember going to a friend’s house when you were a kid and sitting down to play N64 or the original Playstation. If so, there’s a good chance you were stuck with the ‘other’ controller. You know the one – it was bulkier, the triggers felt weird and for some reason it was pea-green. Third-party controllers have been around for as long as consoles and their bizarre designs have always tried to give players a more ergonomic or responsive interface, but more often than not they end up looking impossible to use for human hands. I introduce to you, for illustrative effect, the Avenger N-Control:
It looks like H.R. Giger threw up on his Xbox.
This piece of hardware, that appears to have gained sentience and a few too many tentacles, is supposed to make button-mashing faster and easier for our primitive arm-stumps; an appealing concept for thousands of hardcore gamers, if they can figure out where to put their fingers on the damn thing. I’m saying the third-party controller racket is a weird place to find arrogant businessmen, but that’s what one customer, Dave, got when he ordered his Avenger N-Control from Ocean Marketing and found his shipment inexplicably delayed. Receiving no personal notice or public updates from the company at all, Dave sent an e-mail asking about his purchase, and what followed was an ugly exchange that Dave was kind enough to link to Penny Arcade. Some highlights:
“From: Ocean Marketing
To: Dave
Dec 26, 2011 10:14 AM
Yes it can be used with xtend play if you remove the stand and no one is allowed to cancel and re order if we catch anyone doing it we will simply just cancel your order all together and you can buy it retail somewhere else.
Things happen in manufacturing if your unhappy you have 7 days from the day your item ships for a refund. You placed a pre order just like any software title the gets a date moved due to the tweaks and bugs not being worked out and GameStop or any other place holds your cash and im sure you don’t complain to activision or epic games so put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else. The benefit is a token of our appreaciation for everyone no one is special including you or any first time buyer . Feel free to cancel we need the units were back ordered 11,000 units so your 2 will be gone fast. Maybe I’ll put them on eBay for 150.00 myself. Have a good day Dan.”
Anyone who reads this site with any regularity should already know how I feel about the Die Hard franchise, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it made the list. And truth is, I’d rather watch this 5 times in a row than watch any other movie on the list once. Hence, it’s representation of # 1-5. Yippee ki-yay.
I will assume every has already seen Die Hard, but as a refresh, here we go: John McClane is a cop from New York who goes to a Christmas party at his wife’s new office, the Nakatomi Plaza in LA. After arriving John takes off his shoes and all hell breaks loose. Hans Gruber and his group of “terrorists” brake in and take everyone hostage. Everyone that is except for barefoot John. From here McClane proceeds to sneak around the building, talking shit and killing members of Hans’ team…
As the movie progresses John kills more and more of Hans’ men, and we remain in awe at his ability to do it all without shoes. Eventually we learn that Hans is in fact not a terrorist, but instead just a very clever thief, and once it becomes apparent that Santa Claus in not gonna swoop in and save the day then it falls solely into the lap of John to save Christmas. And save Christmas he does. Barefoot.
With no available chimneys our hero is forced into the building’s venting system to deliver his presents (bullets) to Hans.
This allows him the opportunity to rescue his estranged wife Holly and her co-workers.
Grizzly Bomb 