Waste of Time Awards - Alternative Media

In a third day of shocking results, someone is going to be walking home with two awards this year.

Seriously, how crazy has this all been? I bet you're all shocked out by now. Like, if you'd have had hiccups when these awards started, they'd be destroyed by now.

And the winner of Biggest Waste of Time in Alternative Media is "Fullmetal Alchemist." Yes, yes. I know what you're thinking. How can it win when it already won in Film and Television. Well, as luck would have it, that anime series is based on an even more excellent monthly manga series.

As much as I'd love to spread the awards around, there was no bigger waste of my time over the past year, urging me to check back for translated mangas over and over again. And even better, the series ended just around issue 100, long before I lost my interest. Yes, while "Bleach" had the enemy turning into a larva, a butterfly, then a guy with longer hair, then a weird-looking guy, Fullmetal Alchemist had the enemy turn from a guy to a monster to a god to dead. Very quickly, might I add.

Edward Elric will be going home clutching an award in both his real and mechanical arm this year.

(Note: That's probably why you shouldn't learn alchemy on an empty stomach.)

As alternative media is literally anything, I won't be ranking the rest of the top five. Instead, I'll just have them in no apparent order. If you need to assume one is better because it appears first, then go ahead, though.

Taco Bell Food - As much as I hate to admit it, I'm captivated by Taco Bell. I'm excited for new items. And I don't just wait - I literally go to their website a few times a week to get sneak peaks. With the addition of the Volcano items (again - this happened five years ago, too), I'd say they had a great year.

Caffeine - They say a candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Well, not really. Because with caffeine, I burn three times longer and ten times brighter. Then...I crash and the analogy sort of falls apart. Unless candles start falling down and slurring after six hours, too.

"Penny Arcade" - In the world of nerds, these guys are essentially royalty. What nerd wouldn't like to sit around all day playing video games and writing about them? That wasn't rhetorical - if you know one, I'll need his name and address. They should be studied or something, because that's just weird.

"High School of the Dead" - This manga combines two of my favorite things. Zombies - check. More zombies - check. This is probably the one storyline set in high school that isn't boring. Think of it like "Dawson's Creek," except Dawson has a sawed-off shotgun.

And that concludes the three main categories of the Wasties. Tune in on Saturday for the "Best in Show." Who will win? The video game I show obvious favoritism for, or the series that's already won two awards? Who knows? I do.

If you want to know, you should check in tomorrow.

Don't Fear the Remake

I've spent a lot of time hovering between "cautious optimism" and "wanting to write strongly-worded and somewhat immature letters to Nintendo" regarding their remake of "Goldeneye" for the Wii.

During my crazier 64-bit cartridge days, it was one of my favorite games. That's not saying much, as it was practically everyone's favorite. (For the record, I only think the "Beatles" were okay, though, so it evens that out.) What was impressive, however, is that it managed to be my favorite in spite of the fact that I don't even like first-person shooters. Then again, most shooting games don't give you the option of shooting thousands of Russian soldiers in the crotch and watching them dance.

The thought of a remake was initially bad news for me. Sure, I'd love a great new game to play. But remakes of any kind tend to range in quality somewhere in the range of "awful" to "Amy Winehouse."

After a lot of thinking, though, I realized that maybe that's the point - even if remakes suck, they can never take away the three years of fun I had misusing proximity mines so long ago.

Look at it this way. A lot of people thought the new "Godzilla" movie was terrible a while back. But consider what it was remaking. Was a poorly-dubbed monster tearing through cheap cardboard cutouts of buildings really all that amazing? I think the remake just pointed out flaws in the existing product - if you use an ugly model for a sculpture, your final product will look bad, too.

And, if nothing else (and I'm pretty sure there was nothing), that movie did have a "Taco Bell" tie-in when they introduced Gorditas, so humanity did okay on that one, I think.

The important thing to remember is that we tend to put our fondest memories on a pedestal. After a few years pass, we may even idealize them to the point that nothing could possibly compete. It's no surprise when, a little later, the remake...well, doesn't compete.

Even if this new Goldeneye isn't all its cracked up to be, I think I'm okay with it. If it's great, that's fine - judging from the reviews so far, it looks like it's at least worth a rental. Either way, it could never make me love the good old blow-to-clean cartridge version any less.

One way or another, I'll always have fond memories, and when the wind blows, I'll hear it say, "Big head mode. Big head mode..."