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John Hodgman, famous minor television personality, recently started a new Podcast on Jesse Thron’s Maximum Fun network. I’ve been a fan of Jessie Thorn’s meta-comedy show “Jordan, Jesse Go!” for almost two years now, so I was more than pleased when I heard that John Hodgman was going to have a permanent home on the network. Recently, in a case over do parenthesis have any value in literature (this is the kind of quality arguments John Hodgman moderates) and after pointing out a rather well crafted use of parathesis in the novel “Lolita” he asked the defendant if the use was effective and exclaimed, “Don’t wait for the Translation: Answer the question!” I was immediately excited since, as we all know, this was a reference to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country where Kirk and McCoy are placed on trial for the murder of the Klingon High Chancellor. During the trailer General Kang exclaims, “Don’t wait for the transition, answer me now!”

I jumped on twitter and twatted:

Minutes later I received a replay:

The origin of the quote was from Adlai Stevenson who said it while he was grilling the Russian Diplomat at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. So, even through my face is red for assuming that all awesome quotes start and end at Star Trek I think it is important to remember this: John Hodgman knew exactly what quote I was talking about when I said he referenced Star Trek VI. Star Trek geeks unite!

Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.

I’ve only been in Florida during the Summer so I never realized how blissful warm weather during the holiday season could be. Growing up in New England the Christmas and New Year were linked irremovable from the bitter cold. Having the ability to walk around in a t-shirt, the euphoria of floating in a warm pool at 11 at night on New Years day, well those are delights that I could have never dreamed of.

The trip down was what can be expected from a long car ride. The “goal” of the trip was to move my brother down to school so driving down was unavoidable. But we made good time, getting from Southern Connecticut to Jacksonville in one epic day on the road, from 4 am to 1am the next morning, then eased our way to Orlando after a well deserved rest. We only made stops for food and two odd stops at tourist traps.

The first was a dive called JR. It started out as a tobacco stand right off the highway and now stands as a glorified gift shop with merchandise obviously picked up from others stores unwanted inventory. The largest item they seemed to carry were "Idiots guides", there were literally stacks of them. I even purchased a gem called "The idiot’s guide to drawing Shojo Manga" which i assumed is a an unfortunate product of the anime boom of the early 2000s, only later to look at the publication date and see 2008; the lowest point of the anime crash; no wonder they wound up at JRs. The only real benefit to the place was things were cheap because the volume of traffic was so high. They sold Hersey’s premium ice cream for 99 cents a scoop, which is a steal. I left only with a cup of ice cream, two cans of coffee, the idiots guide, and a box of dots. Mmmmm Dots.

Of course, no trip down south is complete without a trip to South of the Boarder. Anyone who has made the drive to Florida through South Carolina knows exactly what I’m talking about. For most sensible people who fly on vacations, South of the Boarder is a tourist trap that boils down to a collection of gift shops, poorly maintained rundown gift shops. There are themed stores that sell cheap crap, a poorly stocked ‘market’, a hot dog stand, fireworks shop, and a sit down restaurant that I would never dare to try. The place has a Mexican theme to it, the center of it being the massive statue of Pedro, the sombrero wearing mascot. It was nice to get out and stretch our legs, but South of the Boarder has no real purpose beyond pure camp value.

Florida trips are all pretty standard. I went to seaworld, celebrated New Years at Downtown Disney, ate like an asshole the whole time, swam, read two and a half novels, and simply relaxed which is something that I haven’t done in a long time. Just spend a few days relaxing. The last long vacation I went on, Las Vegas, was more stressful than anything because I spent a good fifty hours of it playing Poker.

It was a welcome respite and a good way to put a nice cap on my college career. Now I can concentrate on moving onto the next chapter of my life.. which will hopefully involve getting paid lots of money for writing about vacations on a blog.

Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.

Last week became a grind, for normal not-fun reasons like being stuck with a page long piece in Spanish, but also because I attended two concerts. The first one was the Trans Siberian Orchestra which is the remaining shell of the once great Metal band Savatage. The first half of the show was their standard pandering of the old people who have come to see an Orchestra. complete with the epic voiced narrator telling the story about an angel who flies around on Christmas eve blah blah blah, but the second half of the show took a hard left into the Metal realm. In their recent Album they resurrected their classic song “Believe” which was performed by a young singer chosen because he sounded like Jon Oliva. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGn8_g_fG1g&feature=related

Then a young girl came out to sing part of the Savatage song Sleep, and then the rest of the show was the band just going crazy and rocking out.

The other show was Blind Guardian in New York City. The last time Blind Guardian was in New York was four years ago, right after I had graduated High School and before the original iPhone came out if four years doesn’t sound like a long time to you, and they must put on the most amazing show I’ve ever seen. Granted, this is a band I’ve loved since the Seventh Grade and I practically know every single of their songs by heart. However, the energy of the crowd, the loyalty of the fans, make the experience incredible.

They also brought two pretty awesome opening Bands, Seven Kingdoms and Holy Grail. To summarize the experience… I saw two bands play two different songs both called “Valhalla.” Yeah, epic.
Now back to the normal routine of watching anime and failing Spanish.

Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.

Thanks to a friend and certain… connections he has in Sports he was able to get us some spectacular seats and a tour at Fenway Park over labor day weekend. We were able to enter into the Park via a side entrance and go on the tour of the park that including actually setting foot on the ball field  While we were restricted to only the dirt along the edge between the two dugouts it was still something I never believed I would be able to do. I always get a surreal feeling when I’m doing something I never believed I would be able to do, as if I was suddenly living a dream. It was a rare moment that is probably only comparable to playing Poker in Binion’s Casino in Las Vegas.

From there the tour guide took us up on the Green Monster, something else that I believed I might never be able to do, and just allowed us to look out on the mostly empty stadium. I’ve been to Fenway when the Green Monster was just a formidable monolith and to actually stand on top of it back then would have only been possible in a dream. Being able to stand on it on that day was incredible. I felt overcome with that child like fascination of Baseball again. The feeling that you are looking at something bigger than yourself, something almost timeless.

That feeling didn’t go away as we moved into the Baseball Hall of Fame where they had plaques dedicated to the greatest Red Sox players of all time and some memorable moments that happened at Fenway Park. The most impressive was looking at the awards, the physical awards, handed down to the players and the organization throughout the years. They had all the Cy Young Awards, Golden Gloves, Silver Sluggers and the two recent World Series trophies. From there we were treated to an excellent meal in the EMC Club under the press Box (this is also where our seats were) and then enjoyed the game which was, unfortunately, a loss. The one big highlight of the game itself was watch former Red Sox Manny Ramirez booed by the once adoring Fenway crowd.

The next day I spent a fantastic day in Boston with my friend and his family. We visited the famous Eagle’s

Deli plus walked around Quincy Market and some of the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston. I bought this cute Ramona Flowers plushe! It was an extremely pleasant way to spend Labor Day weekend.

Hit the jump for some videos taken during the game.

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Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.

I had to admit I was wrong a few weeks ago. I refused to accept any of the hype leading up to the launch of Starcraft 2 and I insisted that I wouldn’t buy it. That the game was simply a rehash of the original being that the style of the RTS is mostly unchanged and the majority of the units are identical. However, Starcraft is not pretending to be anything that it is not. Starcraft is a refinement of the classic RTS formula and the way the game has been updated graphically and the tweets to the units and introduction of new units have made the multiplayer balance almost perfect. It is the most fun RTS multiplayer experience I’ve had in a long time. Not intense. In terms of intensity Supreme Commander 2 far out shines Starcraft but Supreme Commander lacks the polish and refinement of Starcraft. It is a polish that only a company like blizzard can implement and it is difficult to put into words.  The multiplayer games have a flow and structure that is able to take the set amount of units and three races and make it infinitely complex and enjoyable. Each game becomes completely different even if you try and play it the same exact way. You need to adapt and change with the pace of the game, think and rethink what your opponent is doing.

The multiplayer infrastructure is also far superior to anything attempted outside of steam before. The matchmaking is fast and accurate, a feat many have promised in the past and no one has been able to deliver. Not to mention the rich campaign which features a non-linear storyline and some of the deepest story I’ve ever experienced in a real-time strategy game. I’ve been playing mostly multiplayer but desperately want to finish the campaign, It has become hard to juggle the two. >_<

I didn’t want the game, I want to make that clear, but after playing the seven hour trial I found myself wanting more and had no choice. For a great read on the history and growth of StarCraft check out this 1up article. If you want to add me to your friends list just use my email: Gundampilotspaz@gmail.com Now I have to go back to climbing the rankings.

Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.

I love messing with any kind of wallpaper on any kind of device but the wonderful screens on the iPhone 4 and iPad make it even more of a treat. After watching Evangelion 2.22 I have a new found obsession with the classic series and a love for the new character, Mari. Here are my current home and lock screens. I’m very proud of them.

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Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.

It stated off where I was the son of the president in a haunted house. I saw some terrifying things but when I went to alert my father he was off limits because he was in a meeting. I remember the images were really gruesome, severed heads and the like.

The next part was so real that I reached the point where I didn’t believe it was a dream. The point where you start to reflect how the things that happened are going to affect the future and it becomes truly frightening. I was at an anime convention with friends and we didn’t want to spend money at the normal garage so we park in a strange place where the safety point is raising the car above the ground so criminals can’t get at it. I don’t remember it happening in the dream but stuff we bought at the con gets put into the car because we think it is “safe” but when we put everything inside the passenger side door falls off of the minivan. We can’t do anything about it so we shrug and raise the car again. When I return at a different point the entire van has been stripped down to the frame and, of course, all our things are gone.

Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.

A storm came out of no where today. It died down quickly but there were some of the hardest rains and strongest winds I’ve seen in a while. This storm caused some serious damage in Bridgeport when a tornado touched down.

Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.

Conan’s live show was fantastic, a real treat that came out of a rather unfortunate incident. The iPhone doesn’t resolve light well so many of them are washed out but the sound quality of the video is pretty good.

Click the jump for the videos.

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Originally published at Scott Spaziani's Blog. You can comment here or there.