I saw this report on the guy who owns American Apparel on 60 Minutes. His name is Duv Charney and he is really eccentric and kind of a sleaze bag. I don't think I would ever buy anything from his company, just because the clothes suck.

But holy shit Johnny! Let's keep things in perspective! His company and George W. Bush's presidency are not even in the same fucking ballpark.

Yikes!

don't buy from these guys - American Apparel - Ever.

Looks like a sleezy company - if that's america - fuck that - go bush then!

I couldn't tell if the site was peddling clothes or (if you check in the model page) soft core porn on cellphone cam.

Oh god, I've been seeing that same fucking poster for months down here. I think it's a stock photo or something, or maybe that's a national charity. I can't even really look at it though, that shits sad.

| curse you and your hilarious ads

I'm on the bus. Just now I looked out the window and saw a poster featuring a baby with a Hitler mustache, and started chuckling. Then I realized it was actually a photo of a deformed baby with a cleft lip and was an ad for St Jude's, a local childrens charity. So then I felt terrible. Then I reasoned that was probably what Rudy's Werewolf character looked like as a kid and I started thinking about all that. I think I'll have to donate to them again to clear the karmic balance. At least it wasn't as bad as last time when I cracked up at how silly the bald kid looked.

I just got back from seeing Wall-E. Wow... surprisingly good movie. Amazing art direction and sound design and even a little bit moving. Lots of very cool post apocalyptic type imagery in the beginning with what I'm convinced is a direct influence from the Fallout games (old jazz songs used in a similar context). The sound design (a great deal of the movie is non-speaking) is by Ben Burtt, the guy who did all the sounds in the Star Wars movies... the guy who designed the light saber sound. For that reason the sound effect seem both original and different, and yet comfortingly familiar.

This was one of the few movies I've seen lately that felt worth watching on the big screen. Shrek it out!

I swear to god Eric. Point a webcam at the table where you Jon Enron Mike and whoever else are playing, and I'll join in from my webcam. I wanna play!

| WTF

1,780 blazes that have scorched more than 614,000 acres in California in the last two weeks.

Apocalypse?

The closest to us was the Watsonville fire and made it about 5 miles from the house down Highway 1. The fire made it right to the freeway, unless that was done on purpose to prevent the fire from jumping the freeway, I don't know. Either way, there are some burned-ass trees all along the freeway 5 miles from my house. Crazy.

| Dee Dee Ramone and Dee, 4e

In summation, fun. Highlights from our brief, one room, 4 kobold encounter, with some added insight from my Podcast listening and personal revelations from reading the books:

- Combat is fun! It is tactical, for sure, and benefits from the use of minis absolutely. Not to say you can't run the game without a grid, because it is still an RPG after all. Very much like a boardgame, which I like, of course this is after one play of one room.

- The DMG has a method for creating adventures, sort of like 3.x did, but this one makes more sense and is a little more formulaic, but I think that is okay. In essence, you multiply the number of PC's by the average creature XP for their level, and then use that number to 'buy' XP worth of monsters per encounter. Adding encounters with a -1/+3 to the character level works fine, they say. So, as a DM you are kind of 'building and army' per encounter, which is fun, and then WotC says every 8 - 10 encounters, the characters should level up.

Each monster type has a variety of iterations, so for example at first level, the basic monster is 100xp for like a kobold swordsmaster. THen, there are like 25xp versions of kobolds all the way up to 500xp.

Right now, this sort of mentally lends itself to dungeon crawls because it feels like the system is screaming for them, but I look at it as I did the PS2, and really most consoles: when it first comes out, developers and DM's just aren't sure how the system works and there is a learning curve before you can really make kickass games. The first few are gonna be straight forward, and sort of clunky. I gots no problem wit dat.

- The Penny Arcade podcast where they just record the game session is a good way to get a feel for the system. The PA guys are heathen goofballs like we are, so the play style is similar, and they seem to really be having fun. I was certainly inspired to play more DND listening to them. I would suggest it.

- MINIONS: are a kind of neat little addition to lower level games. Minions basically have 1HP and are designed to simply fill out encounters and make the PCs feel buff buy enabling them to cut swathes through the enemy fairly easily. A neat addition.

- Finally, I think the powers really allow all the players to have a valuable contribution to add to the game at all times. I remember sitting around and continually missing with my 3.0 fighter, Fared I think was his name. It was fun to roleplay, and goof off, and level up, but combat for a fighter that just keeps missing and can't do anything cool, kinda sux. Clerics were in a similar boat, I think. 4e allows each class to do all sorts of cool stuff every turn, and the basic attack of yore, is basically only used as a bonus attack due to other powers enabling bonus attacks.

It all seems very fun to me, and I am slowly getting my head around throwing together a game. Not that it is hard, it is just I am out of practice and lacking in the same amount of time and brainpower I used to have to burn. I totally think all AT members should play it wherever they are and whenever they can!

Hahaha... animatronic Showbiz Pizza band performing Usher. My favorite part is the rap/vamping part around 2:30. Kills me every time.