We have a little poker tournament coming up, as Gabe mentioned. It was sort of a last minute thing, but playing games to raise money - for Child's Play, especially - just has a kind of symmetry to it that is hard to resist. I know Joel's Fünde Razor event in Brooklyn last year was well received, and he's got another one planned for this year. Fun scenarios where people get together and hang out, and then (by some not-wholly-understood process, amazing things happen for geographically distant children) could stand to be a much larger part of our annual effort.

On Saturday October 21st we will be taking part in a very special signing and charity poker tournament at the Comic Stop in Lynwood.

Tycho fucked up the text in today’s comic. He has the word “version” twice in the first panel. I suppose I should have caught it when I dropped the text in but honestly at that point I’m just thinking about making his disgusting words fit without obscuring too much of my beautiful artwork. It’s a delicate balancing act.

The post I made about it existed in some shadow realm, only visible depending on where exactly the moon was or through the use of primo psychotropics. We've identified ourselves as devotees of Access Software's Links series on PC and, ultimately, the Xbox. But with the sale and eventual collapse of the series' development home, it was starting to seem like the alternatives to Tiger's own extraneous crap were no closer to the actual game, as it is played: one could either select very large heads, or a round of golf where there was a very real chance your shot might bounce off of a mushroom and then land in a magic pipe.

The demo for this thing just hit Marketplace, so we grabbed it.  Weighing in at just under a gig - now the baseline for modern demos - it delivers a round of golf as classy as has ever been dropped.  I don't know what's in store for last-gen holdouts, I haven't played their versions.  But what's I've played of the next-gen product is challenging, no bullshit, simulation golf the likes of which we have consistently agitated for, and assumed EA would not or could not deliver.  We were wrong.

(CW)TB

Robert broke down what the next three months are going to cost us, and even the conservative version of the list - the one that includes only "must play" games, not statistical outliers like "Garfield: A Tale Of Two Kitties" - is something like fifteen hundred dollars.

You might notice that in Today’s comic Tycho is reading Bloodlines. We both just wrapped the book up and it’s incredible. I’ve always been a huge Boba Fett fan and now thanks to Karen Traviss I know why.

Gabriel apparently holds these... "films" to very high standards indeed.  I imagine he's routinely disappointed by the genre.

Welcome to the show notes for Downloadable Content 10/04/2006, "Zune And Very Zune." The episode is available for direct download at this link, or feel free to subscribe to our iTunes compatible feed here. This guide will help you navigate our frequently insane and often rambling conversation. Apologies for the cell phone noise that creeps in - we'll store them in a lead-lined crate during future podcasts.

Poking around at the 'Avatar yesterday, hungry for news, we came across a link to Engadget's verdict on the Zune. At least, the Zune as it is currently conceived - before the animal hunger and ingenuity of the open-source community penetrates it. I got the impression that Engadget was as surprised as we were to find a lot of the gadget's potential - things that seemed natural to expect, seeing as they are currently made manifest by competing devices - was sort of missing in action.

Our latest Podcast went up over the weekend. I figured many of you probably missed it, so here's Tycho's post from Saturday.

When I started reading articles about Senator Brownback's bill - the one that would require that the ESRB play through games in their entirety - I expected to agree with it in principle, but take issue with its execution. The shrill phase of the site, where I would don armor and ride under the aegis of the true gamer no matter how mild the incentive, now rests in the reliquary with Xbox Controller Jokes and Jabs At User Friendly. I had chosen a singularly poor moment to become reasonable. Upon further examination, the Senator's plan (which I think may be rightly called a machination) is the sort of thing one might forge in the fires of Mount Doom.

Welcome to the show notes for Downloadable Content 9/20/2006, "In Breach Of Warranty." The episode is available for direct download at this link, or feel free to subscribe to our iTunes compatible feed here. We have not settled on a schedule, rather, we've just begun leaving the recorder on every time we write. It's different: people can actually just walk in, and without their knowledge they've become a part of the "show." It may become more standardized as we refine our process, but I know better than to make promises on this score. I hope you enjoy it, it's been gone a lot longer than we intended. This helpful guide should help you get the most out of it.

So I decided to bring back gabeart. For right now I’m using Blogger.com but eventually I should be able to get it integrated into PA.

Gabe was instructed to find and subsequently purchase the new Little Mermaid title for Kara, whose enthusiasm for teenaged fish has not abated since the film's release in nineteen-eighty-nine. I had the opportunity to hear him call no less than twelve places yesterday in search of the product, each time with a voice carefully modulated to insist that he had absolutely no interest in such a thing. There was less and less Gabriel left with each inquiry, until finally he was making the calls via the speakerphone, sprawled out on the floor.